Falling From Grace

by SL Naeole

  "What he did caused both of you great pain, Grace," Ameila said, interrupting my thoughts. "It was misguided and it was a foolish mistake that no one who has lived for as long as Sam has should have made, but it is done, and though the two of you were hurt, the results are much better than I believe any of us could have hoped for."

  "Oh please, Mother. Sam did this deliberately to hurt Grace," Lark bristled. She was pacing, her hands curled into tight fists at her side. "He didn't forget what triggers our wings to appear. He just didn't want Robert's to come the same way his did."

  Ameila hissed at Lark to which Lark responded with a throaty growl, "I won't keep quiet about this. Sam's stupidity and selfishness nearly cost you your son! Stop defending him!"

  The unspoken arguments from Ameila would not be answered silently, as Lark once again shouted, "No, I won't stop talking about it. If Sam has such a problem with me talking about him, let him show up and tell me himself."

  Robert's hold on me grew tighter, and I felt the tension in his body as he listened to the exchange between his mother and sister. I locked my fingers together around his neck, not wanting to let go. His face seemed distressed by the direction that the conversation had taken. No longer about explanations, it was all about laying blame, and he wasn't about to allow it to happen.

  "This discussion ends now!"

  His directive wasn't shouted, but it still rattled the walls and windows with its finality. I had hid my face as the booming sound flowed through my bones and caused my teeth to ache. "The only person to blame here is me, not Sam. I made the decision to hurt Grace, and myself. The blame rests with me. Now, if you two will excuse me, Grace and I have a lot of talking to do. We will be in my room."

  Ameila made a motion to stop him. "Do you think that's wise, son?"

  Robert's body stiffened and he lowered me so that my feet were once again touching the ground. "Yes, I do think that is wise, but I think it would be in Grace's best interest if she makes the decision herself to come with me."

  I looked at the two of them, one with a warning in her eyes, the other with a soft plea in his. I didn't know what the warning was for, but I knew what the pleading was about, and I went with what I know. It's far safer that way.

  "Let's talk, Robert."

  He held his hand out to me again, and shyly, I took it, following him as he pulled me towards a room at the back of the house. It was past the kitchen, the room I had been in the last time I was here. I didn't want to think about what my foolishness had nearly cost me then, so I simply watched as Robert pulled me through a dark door and into a room that was painted a bright white. The dark hallway that led to the room reminded me of all that had happened at the school, and I could feel it all start to boil up inside of me again. I could feel the sob climbing up my throat, ready to leap out, dragging all of my fear and heartbreak behind it.

  "Shh, it's okay," Robert said soothingly, wrapping his arms around me yet holding me back far enough so that he could still look at me while talking. "I'm so-so sorry, Grace. I have so much to apologize to you for. I promised to never hurt you, and I've broken that promise twice now. I'm sorry for being so cold to you...for being so cruel and hurtful. I'm sorry, Grace, for lying to you."

  He lifted a hand to my face and smoothed out my eyebrow with his fingertip, the small movement igniting a pilot light within me that I could have sworn had been dampened by the tears I had shed tonight. "I know that this is no excuse, but when I saw you with Graham, it seemed like it was the right time; you were so happy, you were so carefree, and I could see that there would be hope for you after I had left, and that you'd be able to have the normal life that you said you wanted. I used the anger and jealousy I felt, used it to hurt you, and I will never forgive myself for as long as I exist."

  His eyes were glossy, and I watched in amazement as two silver tears rolled down his face and landed on the wooden floor beneath our feet with large thuds. I bent down to inspect them and gasped in shock. Not tears. Teardrop shaped crystal. I touched them, feeling their warmth and smiled. "These are just like the ones at the wedding."

  He bent down and picked them up, weighing them in his hands. "We've never paid attention to these things. They were always so trivial to us when compared to the causes of them."

  "You don't pay attention to a lot of things," I muttered, fidgeting with my hands that were lost for something to do--seeking a distraction.

  "I know. It's something that I will spend the rest of my existence making up for." He headed to a small dresser, obviously looking for a replacement for his shirt, and disappeared in a blur of motion.

  I stood up, not wanting to continue the conversation as it was, and took a look at his room while he changed. This was the one room that he had not shown me before. It wasn't that large, perhaps just a bit bigger than mine, and its focal point seemed to be a very ornate wooden bed that was stained black with snow white linens; it was always a war between black and white, light and dark with him. I rolled my eyes and continued my observation. There were matching nightstands on both sides of the bed, and a large chest sitting at the foot of it.

  The chest reminded me of something you'd imagine in a pirate story--old and wooden with a large keyhole that would suit a skeleton key. "Do you have buried treasure in there?" I asked, wanting to lighten the mood a bit, if only to help ease my frazzled nerves.

  He laughed and, taking my hand, led me to the chest. He knelt and pulled me down with him. "This has parts of my past that I chose to keep as mementos; these things that represent people, places, and events that were pivotal moments in my life."

  My curiosity piqued, I waited while he lifted the lid. How old were some of these things going to be? Would they be spectacular or ordinary? With the lid open, I peered inside. It wasn't overly full, which was surprising for holding some fifteen hundred years of memories.

  "Silly Grace, these are only the moments that were important to me. When you have forever before you, you can afford the luxury to be particular." He reached in and pulled out what looked like a horse carved out of wood. "The farmer who carved this had a little boy who had been very sick; he was the first human I had knowingly healed. In a display of gratitude, he gave me this. He told me that he had carved the toy for his son because he knew the little boy wouldn't live very long, and would probably never grow old enough to ride a real one. I had given his son the one thing he couldn't--time--and now he could grow up and ride all the horses he wanted. The farmer said that the boy wouldn't need the toy horse anymore, so he gave it to me as a thank you; it was the only thing he had to offer me.

  "I was humbled by the experience, and through wars and plagues, famine and feasts, I have kept this with me to remind me that what we do is worth it. It can be a hard thing to remember when we hear so much anger and rage and hatred from your kind on a daily basis."

  I took the horse and looked at it. Age had softened the stained and chipped wood, but the detail that had been painstakingly carved into it was still there. It had been made to look like it was in the middle of a full gallop, its mane and tail blowing out in the imaginary wind. "It's beautiful."

  He smiled, pleased that I could appreciate its simple beauty. He started to pull out a quilt--beginning its tale of importance as he did so--when something caught my eye. I reached past his arm to grab it. It was a shirt. I looked at his face as I opened the folded bundle. The absence of a blush didn't diminish his look of embarrassment. "This is my shirt," I said quietly as I gazed down at the object in my hands.

  The silly smiley face stared up at me from the front of the shirt, its tongue mockingly sticking out. "I threw this in the trash can," I said, mostly to myself. "I threw it away, and now it's here." I pressed it to my face and inhaled, my nose searching, but smelled only the slight fragrance of fabric softener. "Why?"

  Robert grabbed it out of my hands, and tucked it back at the top of the pile of items in his trunk. "It belonged to you."

  It was as simple an answer as I could have expecte
d, but he wasn't finished. "I couldn't have taken anything from you. Our nature prevents us from stealing, and I couldn't ask you for something of yours without explaining why. I saw you throw this away, and I knew that I had to retrieve it. I came back after I dropped you off at home that first day and dug through the trash for it. I washed it when I came home and placed it in here.

  "You want to know why I kept it, right?" He waited for confirmation before continuing. "It's because I knew that first day that you would change my life, Grace. I knew it the way I felt the burning fire in my heart, the way I could see the light surrounding you shine far brighter than anyone else's, the way I could hear your voice in my head, even though you were nowhere near me.

  "I guess I can say that in hindsight, what I felt that day was my entire existence being rewritten--I spent the past fifteen hundred years merely existing, but since you entered my life, I've spent the past few months living. I know that to you, that might sound ridiculous and unrealistic, but it is what I have come to understand and appreciate as the truth. And since I've said it, and I'm still here, it cannot be anything but."

  "Robert," I huffed, "what sounds ridiculous and unrealistic is that there are angels in Heath, going to Heath High...dating me." My head cocked to the side as a thought popped into my head then. "If you cannot take something that doesn't belong to you, how were you able to come into my room that night I met your mother--you came in and you took me out of my house."

  "You are mine," Robert answered simply as he took my hand and laced his fingers with mine. "Mmm." He closed his eyes and squeezed my hand. "I don't think I ever want to get used to this." He looked at my impatient expression after opening his eyes and sighed. "Grace, there's no denying that fact. You are mine. I knew it the moment I saw you. I might not have recognized it at the time, but it doesn't make it any less true.

  "As to the existence of angels in Heath, the majority of people in this town like to think that my kind exists. They want to have faith in my existence, but whether or not I was real wouldn't matter. The human psyche is set up to only accept what it wants. You have to be willing to believe that you're right or wrong, not just say that you are. What do you think would happen were I to announce to the school body what I was? Would I be feared, or accepted?"

  I shrugged my shoulders, not wanting to vocalize my answer, knowing that he'd hear it in my mind anyway.

  "See, you know that people wouldn't accept what I am, even though they are taught that my kind are supposedly good." My puzzled expression at his last comment seemed to amuse him. "You don't know much about my kind, do you? Even after all that you have read, after all Lark has told you?"

  I shook my head. "You know that I wasn't raised in the church. My mom liked to read the bible, and she loved to sing the psalms, but she was adamant that we never go, and Dad never felt like it was necessary after she had died. Everything that I knew before meeting you came from stories and movies--I admit that I did some research about angels after the accident, but most of it consisted of Botticelli type illustrations with biblical verses and personal accounts that did not sound anything at all like what I have seen so far. Even the wings--there were no descriptions on angels being born without wings with the exception of the Jimmy Stewart movie."

  Robert laughed as he recognized what I was talking about. "Ahh yes...that line has plagued us for decades. The children of the electus patronus are always walking around those of us who have yet to receive our wings with bells, hoping that one of them will make them appear."

  I giggled. I could see it in my head. I looked at Robert suspiciously. "Are you doing that?"

  He shook his head. "Those images are all yours."

  I gazed down at our hands meshed together, and sighed with contentment. "So you can feel this now. Why? What happened that caused this?"

  "Grace, I wish I could explain it. Even I don't know. I just know that there has never been a feeling quite like that first time I touched your skin and I could feel it through my own. It might be part of the change. It might have been part of me accepting my love for you. I've been fighting it for so long and when I heard your thoughts, felt your pain, it mirrored my own. I was hurting you, and it hurt me--it killed me--knowing that you were suffering because of me.

  "But I thought it was the only way that I could let you have what you wanted. You wanted a normal life, but what kind of normalcy would you have had, always worrying about when I'd get my wings, when I'd get the call, where would I go? I said I was giving you what you wanted. But I was lying to myself, too. No, not exactly lying to myself, but denying an additional truth. I was doing it because I thought I was saving myself the pain of having to leave you later. I thought that if I left sooner, it would be easier for me. It was me being selfish."

  I reached my hand up to touch his face, and marveled at the way he pressed his face into my hand, sighing as he did so. For the both of us, it felt as though I was touching his face for the first time. "You know, I wish all of you would stop talking about what I want as if you know how I feel. You don't understand that for me, normal now means that you're in my life. Normal doesn't exist for me anymore without you in it. And yes, you were being selfish. A very un-angelic thing to do."

  "Your definition of angelic and mine don't match up. Right now, I want to be very angelic with you," Robert teased.

  Feeling nervous, I brought the subject back to a more serious level. "You said that I don't know much about your kind. Do you mind explaining?" I thought I would be prepared for whatever it was that he had to tell me. I was very wrong.

  "Grace, the stories of angels are always filled with light and purpose of doing good. Lark and I have told you about some of our rules, we've told you about what we are--to an extent. But, there is a dark side to who we are. There are angels whose sole purpose--their entire reason for existing is to cause pain and suffering to your kind. Their calls may require that of them, but inside, they are wicked--you might even say that they are evil. They enjoy doing what they do, and do not follow the rules that the rest of us have to abide by.

  "It would seem that each of us receive the call that is best suited to our inner nature. My mother says that my call will probably involve the healing of the faithful. I have always taken that to mean that I would never have to feel the failure of not being able to heal someone.

  "But, I would also be bringing upon me the wrath of the dark ones, because I would be undoing much of their work. It is a symbiotic relationship, but it doesn't mean that either of us have to like it. And unfortunately, I would not be powerful enough to stop the dark ones if they choose to cause harm again. It is up to the faithful to ask for my help."

  My mind was reeling at this new revelation. The idea that there were angels who were sadistic in nature and spirit went against everything that I thought I knew. It simply didn't want to register in my mind, as though it was rejecting the information, unwilling to allow it to take root and branch out into its own set of ideas. "But what if you're not supposed to heal anyone? What if your call is something else?"

  "It cannot be anything else. Mother's ability to change shapes, to shift her physical appearance is the basis for her call. She becomes what the human needs to see in order to set them on the right path, the right journey. If they need to see the image of a lost loved one, she becomes that person. Whether it's a person, an animal, or a mythical creature, she'll take that form if that is what it takes to accomplish her duty," Robert insisted.

  What could I say to that? Robert's gift was to heal. He had demonstrated that to me time and time again--I was alive because of it. If he wasn't destined to be the greatest healer when he received his call, what else was there left for him?

  LIFESONG

  When Robert finally brought me home, I felt that I understood less now than I had before the day had even begun. We had continued to discuss the dark ones, as he liked to call them, and I questioned him about whether they were different in appearance as some of the fictional books I had read suggested.
Although he felt he was reassuring me when he said that there was no real visible difference between them, I wasn't exactly feeling too confident.

  "There is only one way a human can tell that an angel is a dark one," he said softly. "They don't have shadows. Our history tells us that it is because their souls are so dark with their task, they cannot bend the light the way everything else can."

  "So now I'll spend the rest of my life looking for people with no shadows. I shouldn't have asked," I grumbled.

  He squeezed my hand gently as he drove me home. "You should have asked, and I'm glad that you did. I would have read your mind anyway, but it is much better knowing that you are asking, rather than just wondering."

  As we pulled up to the driveway, I looked at the clock on the dashboard. "Oh no, I'm past curfew," I moaned, looking at the door and knowing that behind it was an angry father ready to ground me until I was thirty.

  I turned to look at Robert, the silent question passing between us. "You'll be fine. I will be back in a little while," he said reassuringly.

  I grimaced, not knowing what to do. It wasn't that I didn't trust Robert--because after witnessing what it cost him to tell a lie, I would never doubt him again--but rather, I didn't trust Dad's reactions versus his thoughts.

  I stepped out of the car and waved as Robert drove off, a knowing smile on his face the last image of him left in my mind. I took a deep breath and walked towards the front door, opening it as quietly as I could. I turned the outside light off as I closed the door, and tip-toed into the living room, my only goal: heading up the stairs to my room.

  "How was the carnival, Grace?"

  Damn.

  "It was fine, Dad. We won the contest."

  Dad, in his tattered robe I had gotten him for Christmas about three years back, stood up from his favorite chair and gave me a hug. "I'm glad, kiddo. Stacy called me and told me that you were going to be a bit late, that you were hanging out with Graham since Robert was out of town or something."