by Jane Lebak
Tabris groped for a chair, and then, huddled with his arms wrapped around his waist, he did everything in his power to push it down. Stop thinking. Just stop thinking. Everything had changed. He couldn’t go back.
Raguel neared him, and Tabris shook his head. “If you’re going to do it, we should do it now.”
Raguel hesitated.
“Waiting won’t make it easier.”
Tabris took a few deep breaths to steady himself, his color darkening, his wings enriching to a deep jade and an even deeper mahogany. He regarded himself momentarily, then looked back at Raguel, and in the next moment, Raguel took him away.
Two
“No!” the guardian angel shouted. “I won’t allow it!”
“Rock!” Raguel tried to block him from Tabris. “Rachmiel, stand down. Tabris—”
“—murdered the last one, and I’m not letting him get near mine!”
Tabris backed through a pile of resin horses until his back hit the wall, and he took every verbal lash without protest. Rachmiel had drawn his sword and positioned himself between Tabris and the tiny form who slept beneath the tousled covers. In the grainy midnight, Rachmiel’s eyes and weapon shed a glow like moonlight. So far the noise and the emotions had left the child undisturbed.
Raguel began exerting emotional pressure on Rachmiel to get control of himself even as Rachmiel tightened his grip on his sword. “If you think,” Rachmiel said, “even once, that I’m going to let him touch—”
Raguel got between them and disarmed Rachmiel by strength of will, but even without his sword, Rachmiel had his wings spread in a battle-stance. Tabris pressed against the scant security of the bedroom wall, knowing he could have passed through it and left at any moment. He and Rachmiel wanted the same thing.
Other angels flooded the room, a torrent of high alert and horror that swirled through the air. One of the other angels hovered alongside Rachmiel to urge calm, but he persisted. No, he wouldn’t let him near her, and this was obscene, and how could he be expected to guard her when they were bringing an enemy right into the home?
Tabris focused on the messy room rather than the whiplash of the angel’s anger. Posters of fluffy animals, ballet slippers and piano keyboards. Beside a heap of clothing lay a teddy bear, pushed out of bed by a sleeping arm. Tabris leaned toward it, then jerked back against the wall. Not his child to guard. Not really.
Rachmiel folded his arms. “And that’s final.” His pallor had given way to a flush, and he breathed heavily.
Raguel said, “They’re Divine orders.”
Rachmiel locked his teeth and blew out a long breath. His eyes glittered, sharp sparks Tabris could read as a demand for the exact specificity of how those orders were worded.
Then Rachmiel closed his eyes and flexed his head just a fraction, and Tabris could tell he was listening to God. Rachmiel’s light turned to gold, and Tabris sensed the other angels clustering nearer to Rachmiel as the Spirit wrapped around him. Like snowflakes in the sun, his objections melted. Tabris leaned away from his corner, his eyes round as he watched their Creator’s hand working on Rachmiel’s spirit.
He stepped forward, closer to Rachmiel—but also closer to the child. She stirred, and Rachmiel glared at him. “You,” and it was a whisper. “Out.”
Tabris blazed from the room like a comet, but he knew—he couldn’t outrun this, couldn’t evade, couldn’t leave it behind. He couldn’t shed himself. Like a laser he streaked across the clear sky, parallel to the ground for two miles before realizing in panic that he’d been bound to the child by a spiritual tether. It snapped taut, crashing him to the ground in agony.
He couldn’t move any further. His eyes stung and fingers clenched. He needed to move closer to his new spiritual homebase.
Guardian.
Tabris inched backward through the brown grass until sensation returned and he no longer trembled with cold. As the whistling subsided, he rubbed his temples to clear his mind. Stupid, stupid. A newbie mistake, forgetting the tether.
When semicorporeal, as they are most of the time, angels have subtle bodies, and those bodies have limits. In their purest form they exist as unalloyed intelligences, knowing and loving God in His most profound aspects. In order to act, however, they become more solid, opting for the shapes humans recognize as winged men and women. Tabris knew if he’d persisted in widening the distance between himself and the child, he wouldn’t have died, since angels are immortal, but he’d have lost consciousness until someone pulled him closer.
He lurched to his feet and scanned the area. Raguel had brought him to the countryside, far enough from any city that the sky looked deep, the stars distant, and the universe heartless. Fighting a gnawing sense of abandonment, he turned his gaze to the stars, remembering how a sky unpolluted by city lights looks like a dome that gets more distant toward its apex. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d seen one.
He walked. The cricket song reminded him that not all in the world had changed. His last assignment had been in one of the modern city walls people called suburbs, the rows of identical houses with identical lawns and an identical tree and driveway, each with a picture window and a potted plant beside the kitchen sink.
Guardian.
That child, two miles away, he thought—and then paused. He wanted to think of it as unlucky, but he couldn’t. Its heart was pure. Her heart, he corrected himself. He knew her to be innocent. Young. The best way to help would be to jettison her and never touch her. If God wanted him to guard her he could very well do it from two miles away and, over time three, four, five, infinity. He could pray for her just as well from Jupiter as from her bedroom.
But another part of him, the part he had to call instinct, felt compelled to fight anyone who might harm her. It wasn’t like being told to guard a bank or a country. There you wanted to do it because you wanted to do a good job. But guarding a human—it wouldn’t let you not do it. Your soul vibrated in time to the human’s soul. You fit together. It felt wrong to be apart. Be there, be near, be her defense. Guard that purity and innocence.
Rachmiel and I are a lot alike.
Except, of course, Rachmiel hadn’t raised his hand against the girl. Tabris should never forget that. When danger had appeared, Rachmiel had driven off the threat, and Tabris had turned against the victim.
He spread his wings and flew the perimeter of his tether. When what bound him to the girl was love and not force, he’d be able to travel anywhere in creation and still feel her heart beating within his own. Now he wouldn’t have recognized her existence at all except for the chain pinning him to one spot, making him a radius that strained ever outward.
No, that’s wrong, he thought. Do that and she’ll grow up feeling abandoned.
As he glided, he thought how different this was from his first guardianship. It had been textbook-normal until the disaster. Nine months curled up beside a developing embryo, snuggling the child and shielding it as it grew, semiconscious days of dreaming protection, loving what as yet had four cells and an immortal soul and had rooted itself in the body of another living thing. Then birth, the laughter, the admiration when he first saw the tiny body, the pride as he stood over the bassinette in a hospital room—Sebastian! His vows still rang in his ears.
He sailed over the remnants of a rock wall and cupped his wings, angled upright, and dropped to a stand. The long grass licked his calves, tickling him where it could, but he had no energy to play with the plants, to tell them to think about God while they stretched their blades toward the sky. The grass settled back, disappointed after he passed, then forgot him and returned to playing tag with the moonbeams.
Tabris embraced the cold as he walked, draining all the warmth from his body for an instant to crystallize the evanescence that was him. He loved God’s world. It was good to be here.
A trickle caught his attention, and he angled toward it. His favorite season was fall... Autumn, he corrected himself. Within a few weeks the piles of snow and blistering wind woul
d settle on the land, and he could lie on the rooftops at night, warming up the ice dams and talking to his Father.
He stopped in his tracks.
Wait a minute—could he even…?
No, not that. He wanted to know, but he didn’t, couldn’t. He shut his eyes and struggled to force down the fear, then told himself to delay, don’t ask that question right now because you shouldn’t ask questions whose answers would destroy you.
He’d arrived at the stream, but for now he ignored it.
The black shape of trees and the subtle farmland gave the gift of silence Tabris both needed and feared. He hadn’t prayed since it happened. He’d been too stunned at the time, too numb afterward, too afraid now. Just as Sebastian’s parents hadn’t spoken to each other when they’d learned of the accident, gripping each other’s hands in wretched silence, so too had Tabris gripped God’s hand without words, not wanting to let go until the moment God would rip him off like brittle duct-tape. He’d only released his grip when Raguel took him home.
No, actually. It was a few moments earlier. Tabris thought back through time to the echoing judgment hall and realized his sense of God’s presence, what humans call the Beatific Vision, had been strangled down at the same moment he’d been placed on probation. What he had now wasn’t a Vision. More like a Glimpse. He could still make contact, but as if through layers of glass, and that change had shocked him into releasing his grip.
Tabris shuddered. Can I pray?
Asking God would be a destructive test: reach for God with his whole heart and either God would fill him, or more likely, God would say nothing, which would be its own answer. So Tabris answered himself: he wouldn’t try anything more than reciting words, not yet anyhow, not real prayer. He’d avoid the purer forms: contemplation or meditation or unification...he’d wait. Maybe it would become clear. Maybe it wouldn’t have to.
Finally he stepped into the stream and walked against the flow of the water to the furthest point of the tether. Numb, he lay full-length in the center, allowing the wet cold to rip right through him. He couldn’t fly any further, but if he lay still and let the water rush past, it was almost the same. He could let the stream scour his soul, untangle his hair, and saturate the two-toned feathers, and maybe when it was done, maybe there wouldn’t be that blot of ugliness after all.
He dug his hands into the tiny stones at the bottom until he found the softer sediment, and he closed his eyes.
Guardian.
I’ll do it, God.
The moon shone its round glory on the sleeping hills, casting a haze on the inhabitants of the night. Tabris, his eyes and ears closed by water, realized the glow was vanishing when he felt another angel’s spirit brush against his own.
Rachmiel.
“Come back,” said the other guardian. “It’s not right to leave you out here.”
Tabris followed, dry the instant he left the water, and was brought directly to the girl’s bedroom. Full sensation returned as the tether slackened. The room was empty of all the other angels that had filled it earlier, even Raguel.
The other guardian made it clear he should sit on the bed. Tabris complied mutely. Rachmiel too had remained wordless, his heart rather than his voice conveying the instructions.
Rachmiel settled in the chair by the corner window, the moon illuminating him like a spotlight, revealing that the other angel’s previously-strained features were sensitive, his blond hair had a gentle curl, and his wings were orange. The moonlight accentuated the color of his eyes, sunset-toned so they would range the full spectrum of a night sky, most likely orange when he was calm but deepening to purple when he was upset. Now they were purple. He’d drawn his knees against his chest, and while Tabris studied him, he studied Tabris.
For a while they remained in this still-life, Tabris longing for a way to cover up his soul, but he braced himself and let his new supervisor inspect him.
Finally Rachmiel turned his gaze to the sleeping girl. Images appeared in Tabris’s mind, accompanied by Rachmiel’s gestures, his carriage, his emotions: thoughts of time, of compelled acceptance, and of the child. He unclenched his hands, and then looked at the girl and smiled.
Tabris said, “Elizabeth?”
Rachmiel’s confirmation filled Tabris with sadness, enough at odds with everything else that it had to be Tabris’s own. Facts blossomed in his mind like a tree erupting in springtime: Elizabeth Hayes was ten years old; she had three brothers; she liked pounding on the piano; she was smart but shy. Her personality unfolded for Tabris, her history and her skills, and underlying all this was Rachmiel’s love that started cracks spreading along Tabris’s already-striated heart.
The love changed then to ferocity: if Tabris hurt her, Rachmiel would defend her with his life.
Tabris whispered, “I wouldn’t.”
The other guardian’s eyes flared.
Tabris averted his gaze, at first pretending to look over the girl and then actually doing it. He reached out to touch the red hair that covered her shoulders, then stopped himself. “May I?”
Sullen for only a moment, Rachmiel nodded.
Tabris extended a hand to her cheek, freckled and soft, in the process of losing the tan earned bit by bit every day of the summer. With two fingers he traced the curve of her cheek, the information now coming to him as readily as if he were a doctor reading a patient’s chart. She had good health except for a scab on one knee. Her eyes, he learned, were blue. Her face hadn’t lost its baby-roundness yet. Trivial information: her shoe size, the length of her hair, her blood pressure, her lung capacity, what she’d eaten for dinner. Her pulse and her temperature. And he could feel her dreams.
Tabris said, “She’ll wake in an hour?”
Rachmiel shrugged, meaning a little longer.
Tabris winced, looking again at Elizabeth because it was better than letting Rachmiel look into his eyes. As if he’d sensed this, Rachmiel reappeared in front of him, on the other side of the child. A question: would he like to meet the other angels in the household?
He had no choice, so why phrase it as a question? But Rachmiel wanted a response, so he agreed.
Rachmiel flashed them downstairs to a living room. Two angels sat talking on the thick carpet, and a third perched on the carved mantelpiece. Rachmiel projected to the others, who faced Tabris and extended a greeting by smiling and opening their hands. It felt staged.
Rachmiel gestured to a female angel with straight brown hair that rippled over her shoulders. “Josai’el guards Elizabeth’s grandmother, Bridget.” His voice sounded much gentler than his initial protests. Josai’el bowed, and Tabris made a deferential gesture toward her as the head of the household.
Rachmiel continued, “This is Hadriel. He guards Elizabeth’s mother, Connie.”
Hadriel greeted him, but Tabris could feel the tension, the objection. Rachmiel said, “And lastly—”
“I’ve met Mithra.” Tabris didn’t look him in the eyes. “Hello.”
The smaller angel said, “I guard Andrew, her father.”
Tabris’s mouth tightened. “I remember.”
Josai’el projected a call, and three more angels appeared, the guardians of Elizabeth’s brothers. Tabris felt the names and identities slipping past him, too much to absorb. But over time, he’d be able to match the personalities and the pairings. Katra’il, a female angel with blond hair in tight curls. A blue-and-white eyed angel named Voriah. An archangel named Miriael. The names came and went, and Tabris would just have to figure them all out again later.
The introductions made, Tabris felt the others anticipating something. Only what could he say to allay their fears when he wasn’t sure he could do that for himself? He looked at his hands. Rachmiel had known his crime the instant he’d arrived, so there was no reason to assume the rest of them didn’t know. But conscious that he rode the fringes of being tolerated at all, he forced the words. “Thank you. I’ll probably be asking a lot of questions about how things run here.”
“You’ll get into the routine quickly.” Rachmiel’s eyes had gone softer. “I’ll talk you through at first, but I’m sure you won’t need much help.” The emotions projecting from him had changed, less sharp and more warm, and Tabris shifted backward: he’d expected protectiveness from Raguel, but not from Rachmiel. “The days can get pretty hectic, but at night you’ll get a chance to recharge.”
“I know—” Tabris began and then stopped when he thought about the past. The past? Yesterday? Yesterday, when he and the guardians of Sebastian’s parents had sat on the rooftop to pray the evening offering together, and then curled beside their charges in their warm beds, an angelic wing thrown protectively over human shoulders.
Miriael’s voice drew him back to the present. “The demons around here tend to attack in groups. This household is large enough to ward off most strikes, and sometimes we’ll go out on loan to the neighbors if they need us.”
Mithra said, “An old woman lives alone at the top of the hill. I help her guardian a lot.”
Tabris took in the seven of them with a glance and registered how they fit together, their familiarity with each other’s motions and habits, how they anticipated which one would speak next and made space for one another. In a living room that had long since sacrificed elegance for practicality, this team resonated with unity and flexibility. With mutual trust. But him? Would they ever trust him? More than that, would he ever feel as comfortable again with anyone?
Even a human could have deciphered the tension ghosting their eyes: Why are you here? Raguel must have taken advantage of the time he’d spent outside, sitting them together on the worn sofas and explaining that damnation had been as close as the dotting of an i. He’d probably teased out their concerns, persuaded them to confide their worries, and then urged them to call if they had any doubts. Like a session for friends of a teen suicide: get them all in one place and talk.