Falling From Grace

by SL Naeole

  "Oh my God," Lark whispered, her trembling voice mirroring the pain I felt pulling me under.

  I wouldn't look. I refused to look.

  "Mom, let him go. Let him go, Mom, look!"

  I looked.

  The body of my beloved angel started to lift, his arms hanging lifelessly at his sides. His legs dangled below him, bending at odd angles, his shoes planted flat on the ground. Ameila reached for his hand, bringing it to her lips and kissing it, while brushing his hair out of his eyes. All things a mother would do to a child who slept soundly. Did she not realize that he wasn't asleep? She began to rise as his body did, never dropping his hand, never breaking contact from him. I felt the heat of jealousy bubble up in me as I stood up, too. He loved me. He loved me and I should be the one holding him now.

  But I couldn't say it. The thought alone burned me, and added to the guilt that was slowly starting to build up inside of my chest as I played over and over again in my head the last exchange I had had with Lark about Robert, about not caring about hurting his feelings. I had lied out of anger, and spite, and now I'd never be able to tell him that I was sorry, beg him to forgive me for being so selfish for being so...human.

  Another gasp brought my attention to his shirt--one that I didn't recognize--as it started pulling at his front. The buttons were straining against his chest, and one by one, they popped off, sailing into some obscure corner or rolling under a door. Higher he floated, until, as we stood around him, his head was nearly level with ours.

  "Robert..." the three of us whispered together.

  His shirt hung open behind him, and beneath his back--no, from his back--I could see a grotesque branch-like staining of his flesh bulging and pulsing with darkness. Ameila hissed at it, and lurched forward to--I don't know what she planned on doing, and I probably never would because Lark held her arm out to stop her.

  The sound of Ameila crashing into Lark's arm sounded like a giant hammer hitting a steel beam. It echoed around us, but only I seemed to notice it. Lark and Ameila were both staring at the grotesque markings that were spreading across Robert's back. I watched in fascinated horror as the branches started to protrude out towards the floor. The skin was pulled so taut, it was nearly translucent, a dark film of flesh and...bone.

  "Oh my God, it's his wings," Ameila breathed, her hand over her mouth in shock, her other hand gripping Lark's shoulder so tightly, I could see a grimace of pain on her lips.

  The branches and skin stretched further as Robert's body rotated so that he was upright, his head lolling to the side, like a puppet whose string had been cut. I wanted to help hold his head up, the silly human worry that his neck would get stiff causing me great concern, but Lark shook her head, her hand grabbing a hold of my arm to prevent me from interfering.

  As his body rose higher, the branches on his back stretched further. Wings, Ameila had said. Biology class was paying off in a strange way as I could make out the rough skeletal shape of a wing in the base of the branch, but the outer branches, they were not so easy to identify. As the branches grew in number, smaller and smaller still, the dawning of recognition hit me. Each one of the divisions weren't bones. They were feathers.

  "Yes," Lark breathed, nodding her head in agreement. Her face was filled with awe.

  Fully formed, fully plumed, the span was surely beyond even the width of the hallway. I shook my head in amazement at such an unfathomable sight. Robert's body was still limp, but stretched out behind him--in a magnificent display of unintentional beauty--were his wings. Full, glossy, and...

  "Black," Ameila gasped.

  Like the wings of a raven.

  His body started to lower, his wings folding inward. Lark rushed forward to catch him, her diminutive form belying her strength as she handled him with ease. She gently laid him to the ground, carefully settling his wings around him, shimmering tears falling from her face as she did so. "Brother, you did it. You've got your wings. Open your eyes and see them. Open your eyes and see that those who care the most have shared this moment with you."

  Her voice was so soft, I could barely make out what she was saying, and I wanted to ask why she was saying them at all but the answer was already there. She couldn't think them, because he wasn't there. He would not receive her thoughts. He wouldn't receive any of our thoughts anymore.

  "But I thought angels didn't die," I murmured, mainly to myself because I knew differently--other angels died, but not mine. "You're not supposed to die."

  I felt a pulse of emotion start to softly beat within me as I stared at my beautiful angel lying prone on the ground, his strong and sarcastic sister broken and crying on his chest. Ameila, beautiful even in her sorrow, stood stony, her arms at her sides, as though she accepted this, accepted the fate that had befallen her son. The slow beating within me grew. It grew bold, and loud, and strong, and fierce. It pushed me, jerked me around like a rag doll in the hands of an unruly child. It grew hot inside of me, and it leaked out in scorching tears that ran down my face.

  "No!"

  The shout echoed around the hallway, the final crack in my heart, the fissure now too large to stem the overflow of emotion. It was angry, fire drenched, and vengeful. "No! No, no, no!" I leaped onto Robert's still form, my intense reaction somehow enough to shock Lark away. I began to beat on his chest, his shoulders. I grabbed his head and looked at his face, perfect and exquisite, even in death, and shook it. "No, you're not supposed to be the one to die, damn you!"

  I slapped him. I don't know why, and I'll always question myself later what compelled me to do it, but at that moment, it was the only thing that seemed reasonable. My hand began to throb; I forgot how hard and unforgiving their skin was. Unlike the punch that I had given to Lark, this was supposed to cause pain. This was supposed to bring with it hurt and contempt to the abused, and instead I was the one feeling the bite of it. But I didn't care. Pain was better than falling numb again because if I accepted the numbness then that would mean that I accepted Robert's death, and I couldn't accept that. I wouldn't accept that. Instead, I slapped him again.

  "You're not dead. You can't tell me you love me and then leave me. You're not dead, do you hear me? You're not, you're not!"

  For every crack that lined my heart, for every single tear that I had shed, I hit him. I hit him for things he had had nothing to do with. I hit him for every plan that might have been made but now wouldn't. I hit him for every dashed away hope, for every crushed dream, for every single moment that now stretched out before me, empty and without reason. I hit him for every single time I doubted myself, doubted him. And, mostly, I hit him because if I stopped, if I thought about stopping, I feared I wouldn't know what else there was left for me to do in this world.

  A hand grabbed my aching wrist as it rose once more, stopping it before I could cause more damage to my hand. I looked at it, strong, determined, and followed the lines of the wrist, to the arm...to its owner.

  Two liquid pools of mercury stared up from beneath me.

  Reason would have demanded that I pass out from shock. But there wasn't room for reason in my world anymore. There never had been. There was only room for drowning in those eyes that held mine locked onto them. Oh, I was in shock; the fact that I couldn't move, couldn't breathe was proof enough of that. But I also couldn't blink, afraid that if I did so, those glimmering orbs would disappear when my lids rose. I couldn't let the sight of something so beautiful disappear. I desperately fought the human instinct to close my eyes.

  "Grace."

  And I blinked. Because apparently shocking one's ears coincides with the need to blink.

  "Grace, please stop hitting me."

  I shook my head at the absurdity of it. I must be hallucinating, because the dead didn't speak. They didn't gaze up into my eyes and say innocuous things that made me feel like I could leap off the very edge of the sky and never touch ground. I shook my head because forget reason, forget logic, this miracle couldn't possibly be mine.

  And yet, the gasps behind
me--of a mother's joy, a sister's hope--weren't absurd. They were the confirmation that I wasn't in the midst of a mental breakdown. "You're here," was all I could form by way of recognition. He was alive, he was here, he was holding onto my wrist and that contact was mending my battered hand as surely as it was the other parts of me that I believed had died right along with him.

  He sat up, his grip around my wrist loosening, and then made motions to stand while I moved away, making way for his family to embrace him in a way that I couldn't. His mother's arms, strong and firm, gripped him tightly to her chest, his sister wrapped around his neck, the three of them lost in the joy of their reunion. They were silent, their heads pressed together, sharing their thoughts.

  It was such a private moment I almost felt like I was intruding. Almost. I had questions of my own that needed to be answered. But, more than anything else, I needed to hear him say those words again. I needed to hear them, to reassure myself that I hadn't imagined them, that it hadn't been a figment of my imagination brought on by shock. I needed them because I had stopped breathing when he had opened his eyes, and without them, I don't think I'd be able to remember how to start again.

  Slowly, Lark lowered her arms from around Robert's neck. Ameila gently released him, but held onto his hand. I stood silent as they moved to his side. He was looking directly at me, a concerned expression on his face. He reached a hand out to me but started to pull it back when I looked at it skeptically, hesitantly. Seeing what he was doing, what he had interpreted in my thoughts, I rushed forward to grab it. I knew what chances I had were few, and I wasn't about to miss out on any of them. I held his hand clasped in mine, and looked into his eyes.

  "I'm okay," he said softly, and pushed a piece of my hair away from my eyes with the hand that I was holding onto tightly. "I'm better than okay. You're still here. You didn't leave me."

  Nervous laughter poured out of me. Hadn't I said the very same thing to him a few weeks ago? What was I supposed to say now? How does one deal with stuff like this? This reality that wasn't...real? Broken hearts were one thing, but I had just watched him die. I watched as his dead body changed, watched as it grew wings--wings for goodness sake! And now, he was talking to me, as though everything was normal. Was there ever going to be a moment when I became comfortable with things like this?

  He pulled me closer, and I was hit with a sudden sense of shyness and fear. He sensed my hesitation and eased his hold on me. "I-I don't know how to be with you," I said softly, and I didn't. He had turned my entire sense of self upside down in just a few hours. I didn't understand anything that had happened, and I didn't understand why I couldn't have just walked away.

  "You couldn't walk away because your heart knew where it belonged," Ameila responded to my thoughts, which elicited a gasp from her children. She had not done this for such a long time--why now? She placed a hand at my back and turned my chin to face her. "There is so much you have yet to be told, little one. But let us not do it here. People are coming."

  I didn't have a chance to express my objections to leaving when I felt a sharp pull and found myself pressed up against Robert's chest, my face in the small hollow of his neck. His arms were wrapped around me, clamping me to him like a vise. I didn't know what was happening, only that the bite of a cold wind was stinging my back and shoulders. I wound my arms up around his neck, though I'm not exactly sure if it was to keep from falling, or just to be closer to him. I simply didn't care at the moment.

  It took only minutes for Robert to finally place my feet back on solid ground. My knees had started to shake from the crush of emotions that were welling up inside of me. For the first time since we had met, Robert didn't let me get used to it on my own. He picked me up again, one arm beneath the bend of my knees, the other around my back, and carried me into his home. This was where I would be told the truth.

  He carried me into the living room, but instead of setting me down onto a sofa or chair, he simply remained standing with me in his arms. "There is so much to tell you," he murmured into my hair. "I don't know where to begin."

  Ameila appeared then, followed by Lark. I hadn't realized that we had gotten there before the two of them. "Let me explain it, son. She still has feelings of distrust, and I do not blame her." Ameila reached for my hand, and, with all three angels standing in the middle of their living room while I was cradled in Robert's arms, she began to explain to me what it was that I had just endured.

  "Sam had misled Robert. He's been mentoring him these past few decades--having him accompany him while he fulfills the duties of his call--and Robert had looked up to his wisdom and experience like any one would of a big brother, for that is what Sam's role was intended to be. But Sam took that trust too far. He told Robert that his wings would come only while suffering a great pain."

  Ameila's voice grew soft then as she looked at her son. "But what is there in an angel's life that can cause us true pain other than to betray our hearts?"

  I looked at her in confusion. "I thought that the only way your kind felt pain was when you lied?"

  She nodded her head. "Yes. But you see, it is in our hearts to be honest. We cannot be who we are, fulfill the roles in this world that we're meant to play, if we are not honest with those that we are born to protect, born to care for, and...born to love. You, my dear Grace, are the truth that is my son's heart, and when he denied you that, when he denied himself that truth by lying to you and saying that he did not love you, it caused him a pain so great, it k-" Ameila's voice caught in her throat as she struggled with the words "-killed him. You see, foolish boy that my son is, he was doing this not only for himself, but for you as well. He thought--he believed that if he could receive his wings, he'd receive the call, and then he'd be able to let you go.

  "He thought this would make it easier for you to have the normal life that you craved, and he assumed that you understood he'd have to leave one day when this happened. However, he and Sam forgot that our wings do not come because we will them to, or because we want them to. You cannot tell a lie so blatant and expect the pain of dying to be enough to trigger the change.

  "But Sam told Robert that lying to you, the pain that he'd feel through you, coupled with the punishment our bodies dole out when we break one of our own rules would do just that. And Robert paid the price for it. Our wings...they are tied to our emotions as angels. It takes a great catalyst of feeling to bring them forth. Love, hate, anger, jealousy, sadness, compassion...it takes a combination of so many emotions to spark our body's physical change, but one emotion, far more significant than all of the others, always stands out--the trigger to it all."

  I felt Robert pull me in closer to him, his cheek resting solidly on the top of my head. I rested my face against the cool material of his shirt, and searched for the soft wooshing of his heartbeat, needing its steady beat to comfort me as my mind fought to sort out all of this new information. His chest was silent.

  "Ahh, yes. There is an issue that was confusing me at first, but I understand now why that is. You hear no heart in his chest."

  I turned my head to look at her, nodding unnecessarily while swallowing down the fear that was slowly creeping up within me.

  "Grace, you know how Robert came into existence--how different he is, even among us. His birth was not like Lark's, in that he was born from a corpse. Do you understand what that means? It means that he has always been on the cusp between life and death, owing his soul to both. Death won out tonight when his body could take no more, but you--you came back for him, and you allowed him his last bit of peace. He knew he was dying, and so to make peace, he could finally tell you the truth. He would see you with a normal life. But, none of us, especially not Robert, knew what would happen as a result.

  "You are his salvation, Grace. His love for you brought his wings, and your love for him brought him life. And, to be given life through death, not once, but twice...it must exact a cost, even if only in a minor way. His price was that of the part that makes him the most human-
-the most human like you."

  I turned my head to look up at Robert, whose gaze was pointed down towards me, his eyes focused and intense. I knew it in my own beating heart that it wasn't what made me human. The literal heart could beat forever, but the figurative heart, the romantic heart was what kept love alive. His heart was still there. I could feel it in me, even if I couldn't hear it in him.

  "You understand," Ameila smiled. "I am glad for it. But, you must question why his wings are that color..."

  I looked at Ameila and she knew that I honestly had not until that moment. "I was always under the impression that angels' wings are supposed to be white."

  She nodded her head, and then took a step away from us, her head lowered, and I watched in amazed horror as arm like limbs started to jut out from behind her, tearing through her blouse and lengthened, branching out like Robert's had done, but far more smoothly. The branches splintered and grew outward, each end bisecting multiple times, finally blooming into a pair of immense wings that were a white that reminded me of cotton balls and baby powder--pure and innocent.

  "My wings are like all of the others. They do not alter in color or shape. Only in size do our wings differ. But no one--absolutely no one else has black wings. Robert is the first of our kind. Our history has never had such an occurrence before, and I do not know what this could mean for him--or for us. I will have to discuss this with the others, but for right now, it is a blessing that he is here."

  But what about Sam? What he had done had caused Robert so much unnecessary pain, and I couldn't get around just how much I wanted to cause him that exact same pain. If there was any justice in this world...or his...