The Ether

by Laurice Elehwany Molinari

  “Here’s where I leave you,” Raziel told the group. “This is your first official test.”

  “We can’t survive out here!” Vero protested.

  Vero knew he was showing weakness, but he was terrified of being left there. He was certain he’d quickly die of thirst — or worse.

  Raziel placed his hands on Vero’s shoulders. “Do what I told you,” he said calmly. “Do not be afraid. Trust your heart. Erase doubt from your mind and let God guide you out of here.”

  Raziel stepped back, curled up inside his tremendous wings, and said to the group, “Do not follow me.” Then he disappeared, flashing like a falling star across the darkening sky.

  Vero looked around at the others. They were on their own in this forsaken land.

  Uriel was standing in the green fields of the Ether when a sudden wind appeared, bringing Raziel with it. Uriel nodded to his fellow archangel, acknowledging him.

  What do you think of him? Uriel asked through his thoughts.

  I see nothing special about him, Raziel answered. He can’t even fly well.

  The Almighty hasn’t given us any clear signs, but I suspect enough, Uriel said.

  If he is the one, then we must keep his identity hidden from the Wicked One for as long as possible, Raziel said.

  And even then, it may not be enough time, Uriel said with great sadness in his eyes.

  16

  BEHEMOTH

  I’m out of here,” Kane said as he surveyed the vast desert.

  “Raziel said not to follow him,” Ada protested.

  “I don’t care.”

  Kane flapped his wings, determined to leave, but he couldn’t get airborne. The more he flapped, all he managed to do was stir up sand and dust, creating a sandstorm. Particles of sand flew into the eyes and mouths of the others, making their already grim situation worse.

  “Knock it off!” X shouted.

  “Stop!” Vero said, covering his eyes with his arm.

  But Kane grew more and more desperate, fanning his wings feverishly and making the sandstorm unbearable. Ada fell to the ground under the force of the gale winds and covered her head to protect herself. The others struggled to stay on their feet. Greer grabbed Kane’s left wing and wouldn’t let go.

  Through his obscured vision, Vero watched as she pulled Kane’s other wing and tackled him to the stony ground. While holding him down, she rubbed his face into the dirt until he came to his senses. Vero marveled at Greer’s incredible strength.

  Kane’s wings began to weaken and eventually stopped flapping. Greer released him and stood up.

  “Way to stay cool under pressure,” Greer said.

  Kane sprang to his feet, spewing dirt from his mouth. Vero couldn’t help smiling. Needing Greer to help him fly had made him feel inadequate. But now, seeing how easily she’d wrangled the well-muscled Kane to the ground, Vero felt a little better.

  “Some force out there is clipping our wings,” Greer announced. “Obviously, we can’t fly out of here, as Kane just demonstrated.”

  Kane glared at Greer so intensely that it made Vero feel uncomfortable. Kane’s look told Vero that Kane wasn’t the type to let bygones be bygones, though Greer seemed oblivious to Kane’s evil eye.

  “So what are we going to do?” Pax asked.

  “We’re going to do what we were told to do. Close your eyes and listen for guidance,” Greer said.

  “It’s kind of hard to concentrate when you’re dying for a drink,” Ada said.

  “Whatever we’re going to do, we’d better do it quick!” X shouted as he pointed to the sky.

  All heads turned upward to see a flock of enormous condors circling above. They were massive! Three times the size of any birds that Vero had seen on earth.

  And even from a distance, Vero could see they had a ravenous look in their eyes. They began circling the fledglings, around and around, never breaking formation.

  “Now we’ve got a ticking clock,” Pax said.

  “I can’t do this!” Ada cried.

  “Close your eyes and block out everything else,” Greer said.

  “It’s not that easy!” Pax shouted.

  “Of course not,” Greer replied in a calm voice. “But it’s your only shot at getting out of here.”

  Suddenly one of the massive birds nosedived right for them. X quickly picked up a rock, and with the skill of a quarterback, nailed the swooping bird right in the head.

  “Eat that!” X shouted.

  The bird flapped around in midair, briefly disoriented, and then rejoined the others, still circling above.

  Greer turned to Ada and said, “Grab my arm.”

  The moment Ada latched onto Greer, Ada visibly relaxed.

  Vero closed his eyes, which was rather unpleasant due to the sand particles that were now scratching his eyeballs. He desperately tried to ignore his fear and the strange, consuming thirst. He thought of his mother and wished she were with him, and then he decided to focus on her.

  Vero pictured his mom sitting on the edge of his bed like she did when he was sick with a fever. She smoothed his hair, dipped a washcloth into a bowl of cold water on his nightstand, and dabbed his forehead. Thinking of its coolness and his mother’s comforting presence eased Vero’s discomfort momentarily. With his eyes tightly shut, Vero began walking as the image of his mother gently smiling at him guided him and reassured him that he’d be all right. He forged blindly ahead.

  Again, his mother finished wringing out the washcloth and tenderly placed it back on Vero’s forehead. This time he could actually feel the cold against his skin. Vero opened his eyes and discovered he was standing before a cold stone wall. He stepped back and saw an arched stone doorway. He did not see any of the other angels around. Desperate to flee the desolate scene behind him, Vero walked through the doorway.

  Once inside, he instantly felt better. It was much cooler inside the lofty rock walls. Passageways greeted him in every direction. Vero counted three different paths to travel, but he had no idea which one to take. Vero felt a tap on his shoulder and quickly spun around to see X and Pax.

  “Where are the others?” Vero asked.

  “Don’t know,” X said. He was bent over with his hands on his waist.

  Pax crazily shook his head like a wet dog to get the sand out of his hair.

  “I feel like I can’t breathe,” X said between labored breaths. “I need water.”

  “Maybe we should go look for the others,” Vero said.

  “How?” X asked. “I can barely stand up. I need water first, and then maybe my head will stop spinning, and I can help find them.”

  “Shh . . . ” Vero held his finger to his mouth. Something was making his skin tingle. Vero placed his hands on Pax’s shoulders to stop him from moving.

  The three listened intently. The sound was difficult to make out at first, but after a few moments, it became crystal clear. Water! Faint droplets echoed throughout the cavern. The boys’ spirits immediately rose.

  “Let’s go!” X rasped. “I hear it coming from this tunnel!”

  X followed the sound into one of the tunnels, but suddenly stopped short. Pax and Vero ran into him.

  “What?” Vero asked.

  “I don’t hear it anymore,” X said, and the excitement drained from his face.

  “Let’s try this one,” Pax said as he walked to the entrance of another tunnel. But once again, the sound of water droplets disappeared.

  Vero stuck his head into the remaining tunnel. “Guys, it’s definitely this one!”

  Pax and X raced over to Vero. But when they stepped into the tunnel, only the sound of their labored breathing could be heard.

  “I know I heard it!” Vero yelled in frustration.

  “Maybe we’re hallucinating,” Pax began. “That’s what happens when you get dehydrated.”

  “We’re going crazy,” X panicked. “It’s all in our heads!”

  “How can that be if all three of us heard it?” Vero asked.

  �
�Then we’re all going nuts,” Pax said.

  “No, I can feel it. There’s water here somewhere.” And Vero knew it was true. “Raziel said this lesson will teach us to hear God’s voice. It’s our only way out.”

  Vero put his hand over his heart and spread his fingers apart like Raziel had shown them. He closed his eyes tight and concentrated as hard as he could. The next thing he knew, something inside of him was nudging him forward. Vero stepped into the tunnel directly in front of him. X and Pax followed.

  The tunnel grew darker, so Pax grabbed Vero’s shirt. X also reached for Vero’s shirt. Vero pushed on through the passageway.

  Vero felt like a mole. Moles were completely blind, yet they could successfully claw their way through their burrows to find food. Despite all the rocks on the ground, Vero was amazed he never stumbled. Pax and X held firmly onto Vero as he snaked his way through the winding tunnel. Gradually, slivers of light began to break up the blackness. Vero looked around for its source, but there wasn’t any. The light just . . . was. Then Vero heard a voice.

  “What took you guys so long?”

  It wasn’t God, but Greer. She was perched on the edge of a heavily eroded rock wall above a small pool. Next to Greer was a small stream that flowed into the pool below, where Ada was madly scooping water into her hands and drinking her fill.

  Vero, Pax, and X ran to the pool and began gulping up the water at a frenzied pace. It dripped down their chins and soaked their clothes. X dunked his entire head into the pool.

  When he’d finished drinking, Pax asked Greer, “Is Kane with you?”

  “No, I thought he was with you,” she answered.

  “Then he’s probably still out there in the dust,” Pax said.

  Vero looked at Ada nervously. He couldn’t imagine being trapped in that awful desert. “He could die out there,” Vero said.

  “Then I guess he’s gonna be singing tenor for all eternity,” Greer said.

  “We have to go back for him,” Vero said.

  “Have fun,” Greer said.

  “I don’t get you,” Vero said. “One minute you’re acting all nice and being helpful, and the next minute you’re all rough and tough. So which is it?”

  “First of all, I’m never all that nice. And second, when I save you, it’s only because I have zero tolerance for stupidity. Going after Kane fits into the stupidity category.”

  “It’s the right thing to do,” said Vero. “Even if it is stupid.”

  Greer hopped down off the wall and got up in Vero’s face, glaring at him, daring him to go against her word. But Vero held her gaze and refused to back down. He sensed that X, Ada, and Pax were waiting nervously to see which one would cave first.

  It was Greer. She ran a hand through her spiky hair and pulled at the strands until the blonde streaks stood on end. Then she nodded at Vero with a smug, sideways smile. “You’re not as wimpy as I thought,” she said.

  Vero stood strong, making sure he didn’t crack a smile or relax his body in any way that might give an indication of weakness.

  “You guys better drink up if we’re going back out there,” Greer said to the others.

  Vero breathed a little easier. He was glad he hadn’t backed down. But then he thought of the horrid desert and wondered what he’d gotten himself into. Going back into that oppressive air would be agony.

  “All right, tough guy, let’s go,” Greer said.

  Vero took one last drink of water. Ada doused her head like X had done earlier, flattening her wild red hair into tight, dark ringlets. Pax took off his glasses and opened his mouth under the running spring.

  The group turned to leave but then stopped short.

  The landscape had completely changed.

  Where moments before there had been a tunnel, now there was a solid rock wall.

  “Okay, Genius,” Greer said to Vero, “what’s Plan B?”

  Vero ran his fingers along the wall. But no matter how much he explored or felt for that internal nudge, Vero felt nothing. And the wall remained an impenetrable mass of stone.

  Vero beat his fists against the rock repeatedly. After one particularly hard punch, Vero screamed as he smashed his knuckles against the stone.

  Greer crossed her arms as she stood back, observing. As Vero tried to shake off the pain, he became aware of the others watching him. “You done?” Greer asked.

  Vero nodded, feeling the weight of their stares upon him. A moment ago he’d felt proud of himself for standing up to Greer and setting a good example to the other fledglings. Now he just looked like a fool.

  “So since you’re done and all,” Greer said, “could you please move? You’re standing on the exit.”

  Vero looked down and realized he was standing on top of a wooden door that was carved into the ground. Vero stepped aside as Greer kneeled down and pulled on a clasp that had been indented into the wood.

  “Wait!” Vero said, grabbing her arm.

  Greer looked up at him.

  “If we go through that door, we’re only gonna be that much farther away from Kane.”

  “Well, that little voice inside of me is saying the only way out is through this door,” Greer shot back. “And my intuition is a lot more developed than any of yours.”

  “Oh really? And why is that?” Vero asked.

  “Because I wasn’t raised with some perfect loving family like the rest of you. When I was sent to earth, I got one lousy foster family after the other. Each one was worse than the last. You wanna know how I got to the Ether my first time? Do you?”

  Everyone looked at her, waiting. Vero let go of her arm.

  “Foster mother number seven lost her temper when she saw that I’d forgotten to make my bed, so she picked up an aluminum baseball bat and mistook my head for the ball.”

  Vero fell silent, not sure how to respond. No one spoke. But Greer wasn’t the type to want their pity anyway.

  “So the bottom line is — I had to tap into that intuition sooner than the sorry lot of you, or else I wouldn’t have made it this far. And besides, do any of you see another way out of here?”

  Vero studied their surroundings. Greer was right. Solid stone walls enclosed them on every side. The pool of water was still there, but now it was as if they were trapped in a big rock box.

  Greer pulled open the door. There was nothing to see, only darkness.

  “Later,” Greer said, and she jumped feet first into the complete unknown, disappearing without a sound.

  Ada peered into the open hole. “I can’t see her. She’s really gone.”

  Vero looked into the uneasy faces of his fellow angels. What to do? X walked to the edge of the hole and stood tall. His hair was still wet from the spring, and his T-shirt was soaked. X saluted the others and took a step into the darkness.

  Now it was down to three.

  Ada turned to Vero, “I really don’t want to go down there,” she said, nervously twirling a finger through her curls.

  Vero sighed heavily and said, “Greer’s right. There’s no other way out.”

  “How about we hold your hand, Ada,” Pax said. “So whatever happens, we’ll be together.”

  Vero nodded, though he couldn’t help thinking Ada was going to have to toughen up if she was going to make it as a guardian. No one would be there to hold her hand if the maltures came for her. Still, he stepped to the edge of the hole and smiled at her.

  “Come on,” Vero said. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Ada and Pax stood next to him with Ada in the middle, and the three joined hands. Vero didn’t know what they would find in the unnatural darkness, but he had to admit that he felt a little better knowing he wouldn’t be facing it alone.

  “On the count of three . . . ” Pax began, “One, two, three!”

  Vero, Pax, and Ada jumped off the rim of the opening and blindly fell into the abyss.

  Vero lost track of time as they plummeted through the darkness. It could have been two minutes or two hours. He was reminded of the ti
me when he and Clover had made their way through a maze of mirrors at an amusement park. With strobe lights blasting and mirrors reflecting their distorted images, Vero had walked through it completely disoriented, as if in a dream.

  This time, though, the feeling of Ada’s fingernails digging into his palm kept him in reality.

  Ha! Reality!

  As they continued to fall, it suddenly occurred to Vero that if there would eventually be a bottom to this fall, then they could hit it at any moment.

  “Open your wings!” he shouted. “Hurry!”

  Vero willed his wings to open. But the space was tight, like they were falling down a narrow well. So his wings wouldn’t fully extend. The others had trouble releasing their wings too. Flying was no longer an option.

  “I can’t fly!” Ada yelled.

  “Just keep them open as far as you can! We have to slow our descent before we hit the bottom!”

  As they continued to fall, Vero became aware of his outermost wing feathers as they scraped along the uneven crags of the rock walls. He shut his eyes, bracing for the inevitable impact. He hoped they wouldn’t land on top of Greer and X.

  Suddenly, his wings, even though they were still fairly close to his back, caught an updraft of wind. Finally his wings had some air to bite into, and he was no longer free-falling. The speed of his descent abruptly slowed to a leisurely glide, with his wings acting as a parachute. Vero had thought that his feathery appendages were only for flying distances, and he was never so glad to be wrong about something. Pax and Ada’s wings had also caught the current.

  As the three drifted down, a dull light began to illuminate their surroundings. It grew brighter and brighter until Vero had to blink repeatedly as his eyes adjusted to it. Suddenly, the stone walls disappeared, and their wings were able to fully extend. They all landed safely without so much as a sprained ankle.