The Hidden Deep

by Christa J. Kinde

  The young Observer hummed and said, “He is lost, but he is not alone. God is never far from those who are His, and I can reach him in dreams.”

  “You talk to him?” she asked in surprise.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, then why can’t anyone find him?”

  “I do not know. Shimron says that a thing can be impossible until the time is right. We must wait until the time is right, and then Ephron will be returned.”

  “Do you know that for sure?”

  “I have hope.”

  With a sigh, she looked off toward the barn roof. “I wish I could help with the search.”

  Koji leaned closer. “Make your request known to God.”

  “You want me to pray for Ephron?” Prissie asked.

  He nodded seriously. “In this, you can do what I cannot.”

  “You can’t pray?”

  “Prayer is a gift given to mankind.” An expression of concentration overtook the Observer’s features as he tried to explain. “Between you and me, the communication is reversed. Your voice reaches heaven, and heaven’s voice reaches me.”

  “God talks to you,” she recalled. “You can hear Him audibly.”

  “Yes,” Koji confirmed.

  “What’s it like?” she whispered.

  “It is like God.”

  Her brows drew together. “Can’t you compare it to something?”

  The young angel scooted a little closer to her. “Nothing compares, Prissie.”

  “Oh,” she sighed, feeling a little left out. “That must be wonderful.”

  “Wonderful and terrible, all in one.”

  “So God hears me, and you hear God, but I can’t hear God, and you can’t pray.”

  “That is correct.”

  “How odd.”

  Koji tipped his head to one side. “I prefer to think of it as symmetrical.”

  15

  THE

  AWKWARD

  APOLOGY

  Koji was singing a song about cider and swords, hedges and harvest, when Marcus dropped through bare branches on golden wings. The apprentice Protector took up a post on the roof of the pig shed and watched his teammate upend slop buckets into a trough. “Man, they’ll eat anything.”

  The young Observer smiled, and his song changed to include pigs, pearls, and prodigals. When Tad moved around to the other side of the pen, Koji quietly asked, “Have you been Sent?”

  “Nope. Jedrick has me patrolling so I can stretch my wings for a while.”

  Nodding, Koji gazed curiously at the Protector, sure there was something more. Marcus snorted softly and jumped from the roof to the fence, hopping lightly from one post to the next until he reached the boy. Using his wings for balance, he crouched down and asked, “What’s Prissie got against Ransom?”

  “I cannot say,” Koji replied seriously.

  Marcus scowled. “Her attitude is messing with his head.”

  Tucking his chin to his chest, Koji softly said, “I have hope.”

  “What have you noticed, Observer?”

  “Prissie has been thoughtless, but Ransom thinks things through,” Koji explained. “Once he sorts out the mess in his head, perhaps he will hear the cry of his heart.”

  With a sigh, Marcus muttered, “Amen and amen.”

  On Saturday morning, Jude was unusually quiet. Tad was the first to notice, and he crouched in front of the listless boy. “Momma, I think you better take a look at Judicious.”

  Grammie Esme peered over her glasses at the youngster and declared, “He’s a mite peaky, Naomi.”

  “Green around the gills,” added Grandpa Carl with a solemn wink.

  Jude offered a half-hearted smile at the attempts to cheer him up, but a thermometer quickly confirmed his fever.

  Tsk-ing in concern, Grammie turned to her daughter. “You’d best quarantine the boy, dear. Elsewise, your whole brood will come down with chicken pox. Or worse!”

  “They’ve already had the chicken pox,” Prissie’s mother said calmly.

  “Mumps!” suggested Grandpa Carl. “Measles! Scarlet fever!”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” Momma said with a smile.

  Grandpa was just warming up. “Typhoid! The Black Plague!”

  “Honestly, Carl!” Esme snapped. “Are you trying to scare the boy?”

  “You know I was just joshing, right, little mister?” he asked ruefully.

  “ ‘kay, Grandpa,” the six-year-old said.

  The old man’s expression grew serious. “I’ll run you into town for medicine if it’s needed.”

  “Let me call Jayce,” said Momma. “He can meet you at the pharmacy.”

  “I’ll go along!” Prissie offered.

  Koji stood. “Me, too.”

  After being dropped off at the corner, Prissie and Koji hurried to the pharmacy, but just outside the door, the young angel hesitated, then grabbed her coat sleeve. “I will wait for you out here,” he announced solemnly.

  “What?” she protested. “It’s freezing out here!”

  “I do not feel the cold as you do,” he reminded in an undertone. “I will stay here until your father and grandfather join us.”

  “Why?”

  “This is where I have been Sent.”

  “I thought you were supposed to stay with me?” Prissie argued.

  “This time, I will wait.” With an encouraging smile, he said, “You will not be alone.”

  “Oh, fine.” She marched into the pharmacy alone. On her way down the aisle, Prissie gave the case of angelic knick-knacks a sidelong glance and nearly ran into someone she most definitely hadn’t expected to meet. “Marcus!”

  “Yo, Prissie,” he replied with a smirk.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Keeping a friend company,” he replied, glancing over his shoulder. To her dismay, Ransom was strolling their way. With a broad wink, Marcus said, “I’ll go hang out with Koji for a while. See ya.”

  It wasn’t until her so-called nemesis stopped in front of her that it occurred to her that she didn’t know if Marcus had been visible or invisible. “Hey, Prissie,” Ransom said, sounding pleasantly surprised.

  “You don’t have to be nice,” she muttered. He might have asked for half a chance, but that didn’t mean she wanted him to return the favor. The guy was supposed to be angry with her, and it bugged her that he wasn’t.

  “I’m not being nice,” he corrected. “I’m being polite. You should try it sometime.” Prissie fumed inwardly, but Ransom kept the small talk rolling. “What are you doing in town?”

  “My brother’s sick.”

  “Which one?”

  “Jude.”

  “The little guy, huh?”

  “Yes,” Prissie said and stepped past him. To her annoyance, Ransom followed her down the aisle. “What?” she snapped.

  “I was kinda hoping to run into you sometime. I’ve got a few questions.” He was clearly unintimidated by her mood.

  She wanted to run from this conversation, but at the same time, she felt obligated to face it. “Fine!” she growled. Flapping her hands in an impatient gesture of surrender she muttered, “Just … fine. Let’s get this over with.”

  Ransom seemed amused, but he cut to the chase. “What don’t you like about me?”

  That was simple. “Everything.”

  “Right,” he replied blandly. “Can you be more specific?”

  Who in their right mind asked to have their faults listed? While she was sure Ransom had loads, she was drawing a blank. Working up a scowl, she said the first thing that came to mind. “You make fun of me!”

  “Still not specific enough.”

  “You’re always contradicting me!”

  “That’s because you’re wrong a lot of the time,” Ransom replied, quirking a brow. “Someone has to point out the flaws in your reasoning.”

  With a huff, she retorted, “And you pick on me!”

  “Since when?”

  Thinking back to the day they firs
t met, she said, “You tied my braids together!”

  “Oh, yeah. I remember that,” he mused aloud. “Looks to me like the knot came out.”

  “That’s hardly the point!”

  “Really?” Ransom asked. “Is there a point to holding grudges?”

  “Look, I don’t like you!” Prissie said, enunciating each word clearly.

  “I don’t particularly like you, either.”

  He said it without a speck of meanness, and Prissie was completely thrown off. Part of her wanted to lash out, to hurt him so he would go away, but she remembered the bitterness of that kind of triumph. Thoroughly confused, she asked, “Then why are we even talking?”

  “Partly because you’re the boss’s daughter, which makes you really hard to avoid,” he said. “Partly because you’re different when you’re hanging out with your conscience, and I can’t figure out why.”

  “Koji?” she asked, startled.

  “Yeah, where is he, anyway?” he asked curiously.

  “Oh, he’s around here somewhere,” she said, waving vaguely toward the front of the store. Prissie was beginning to get the idea that Ransom was a little like Tad and a little like Zeke. Her biggest brother had to take things apart and put them back together before he felt like he understood them, and her younger brother was a bundle of questions, most of which began with why. Questions had a way of making Prissie uncomfortable, especially when she didn’t know the right answer. “Is that all?”

  “No. There was one other thing.”

  Just one. For a moment, she was relieved, but Ransom’s expression hardened in a way that made her squirm.

  “You don’t trust ‘people like me,’ “ he quoted. “That’s what you said.”

  Prissie blushed in embarrassment. “I already apologized for that.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why did you try to apologize? Did your dad make you?” This time, it felt as though Ransom was mocking her, but she couldn’t lie. When she gave a grudging nod, he shook his head incredulously. “Unbelievable.”

  “He just wanted me to do the right thing,” Prissie said defensively.

  “Because you did a wrong thing?”

  “Stop it!”

  “Stop what?”

  “Twisting my words around!” she hissed.

  “People like me,” Ransom repeated. “What’s so terrible about someone like me? Because I sure don’t want to be like you. I’m not even sure you want to be like you.”

  “Who else would I be like?” she asked in exasperation. The conversation was going in circles, and she was having a hard time keeping up.

  “It’s been bugging the heck out of me that what your dad was saying didn’t look anything like what you were doing. He finally told me it’d be best to let God speak for Himself.”

  “God only talks to angels,” she replied flatly.

  “I’m talking about a Bible. Geez.”

  Wait. “You read the Bible?” she asked in a hushed voice. The buzz of anger inside Prissie tapered off, which made it easier to hear what Ransom was saying.

  “Yeah. Your dad gave me one,” he readily admitted. “I’ve been working my way through it for a couple months. It’s not like I’d jump into this blind.”

  “Oh,” she replied weakly. Giving Ransom a Bible was definitely something her dad would do. But why would this guy bother reading it? Because he wanted to keep his new boss happy? She supposed it was possible, but … Prissie glanced toward the front door. Two members of Jedrick’s Flight—her best friend and Ransom’s best friend — had been Sent outside so this conversation could happen. Milo had said angels were attracted to eternal things. Didn’t that mean something? Maybe Ransom was serious. Maybe she should listen.

  “So I want you to explain it to me.”

  Prissie’s attention snapped back to her classmate. “Wh-what?”

  “Christianity,” Ransom prompted. “Tell me what you believe.”

  “Umm …” Prissie had never felt more clumsy in her life. “I’m not sure how to explain.”

  “Isn’t that kind of lame? I mean, if you don’t know why you believe what you say you believe, how can you be sure you believe it at all?”

  Prissie had tasted manna, flown with an angel, and stood in a garden bathed by heaven’s own light. If anyone could be sure, it was her. “Look,” she said seriously. “I don’t know the right words, but it’s really real. Make fun of me if you want, but I know that much.”

  Ransom studied her face. “All right. Then I’ll tell you what I’ve figured out so far, and you tell me if I’m on the right track.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll try.”

  He shoved his hands deep into his jacket pockets and started to rattle off the essentials. “The way it sounds to me is … I’m doomed because of the whole sin thing. The only person who can undoom me is Jesus. He’s willing to save me, mostly because He’s awesome like that.” Ransom quirked a brow at her, she nodded, and he went on. “Somehow, I’ll change. Thankfully, it doesn’t sound like I’ll change into you. No offense.”

  The basics of salvation had been paraphrased almost beyond recognition, but Prissie was ashamed to say that he was explaining it better than she could. One thing came across loud and clear. “You’re thinking about becoming a Christian?”

  “I dunno. Maybe.” Glancing around the nearly empty pharmacy, he said, “It makes sense when your dad explains stuff, but I wanted a second opinion.”

  “I could introduce you to someone who could say it all clearly,” she hastily offered. “Mr. Mercer wouldn’t mind …”

  “But I’m talking to you, Miss Priss,” he cut in. “You’re the one who’s been making me wonder, so you’re the one I want to ask.”

  “Oh,” she repeated lamely. “There’s lots of better people.”

  Ransom snickered and said, “Now that’s something I never expected to hear from you.”

  The full weight of her father’s words came back to her then, and Prissie’s shoulders sagged. Her behavior really had become an obstacle, and it had taken her dad’s prayers and the intervention of at least two angels to give her this chance to make some kind of amends. With her heart pounding, she said, “Umm, Ransom?”

  “Yeah?”

  Face pale and eyes steady, she whispered, “Sorry.”

  He smiled crookedly and replied, “Y’know, this time, I believe you.”

  16

  THE

  WALKING

  DREAM

  Tamaes tread lightly upon the braided rug in Prissie’s bedroom. Hunkering down beside the bed, he studied his charge’s flushed face. “She has a fever.”

  Harken’s voice was warm with compassion as it echoed through the Guardian’s mind. “There are some things you cannot protect her from.”

  “True,” her Guardian said with a soft sigh.

  “Come along,” urged the Messenger.

  Drawing his sword, Tamaes took a seat on the floor; moonlight gleamed against the bared blade as he laid it across his knees. With one last glance at Prissie, he put his back to her mattress and shut his eyes. It was time to join the dream.

  The sensation reminded her of the fleeting dream she’d shared with Harken at summer’s end. There wasn’t the usual fuzzy, disjointed feeling that accompanied most of her dreams, and as the moment of clarity solidified, fingertips brushed the back of her hand. “Prissie, can you open your eyes?” Koji asked earnestly.

  She obliged and was startled to find the young angel kneeling before her in a dark place, a candle between them. That wasn’t right at all. “Is something wrong?” she whispered.

  He shook his head and gave a small smile as he pushed his hair behind one ear. Suddenly, Prissie realized that Koji’s disguise was gone. His black hair hung loose around his shoulders, and his ears came to points. Even his old clothes were back, the cloth of his raiment shining as if it had a life of its own. “All is well.”

  Glancing around, Prissie was startled to discove
r that while they were surrounded by darkness, it wasn’t pitch black. Stars glittered coldly around them. In a moment of panic, she looked down, but to her relief, she seemed to be on solid ground. They knelt together on a smooth surface that reflected the stars and the candle on the floor between them. Its flame was warm and gentle, and she felt safe in the circle of its light.

  Prissie whispered, “I don’t know where we are.”

  “You are sleeping,” he replied. “Harken let me come for you.”

  “Are we going somewhere?”

  “Indeed.” The young Observer rolled to his feet and picked up the candle. Extending his other hand, he said, “I have never done this before, but Harken promised to help. Take my hand, and do not let go.”

  As they walked along, Prissie stared in amazement at the stars. They seemed nearer and brighter somehow, and they twinkled with flashes of color that dazzled her eyes. “What time is it?” she wondered aloud.

  “We are leaving time behind.”

  “For how long?”

  He laughed softly, but Prissie didn’t know what was so funny. Before she could issue any complaints, a deep voice beckoned from somewhere just ahead. “That’s the way. You’re doing very well!”

  “That was Harken!”

  “He is meeting us partway,” Koji explained.

  The Messenger strode into view, and he, too, was no longer in human guise. Harken stood tall and strong, without a trace of gray in hair that now hung in heavy coils. Gleaming raiment shone against dark skin that bore no wrinkles. “Hello, Prissie! I see Koji was able to reach you.”

  “This is the strangest dream I’ve ever had,” she announced. “It’s so real!”

  Harken’s laughter rang out as he slipped his arm around her shoulder. “That’s because it is. I’m really here, and the others are waiting for you to arrive. This way, please.”

  Together, the angels guided her toward an archway from which light spilled. Abner leaned against the entrance, coolly watching their progress. Prissie offered the Caretaker a tentative smile. His lips quirked, but he addressed Koji. “Observer turned Graft turned Guardian turned Messenger? Will you be taking up a Protector’s sword next? Or shall I make a Gatekeeper out of you?”