by Jane Lebak
Tabris closed his eyes, whispered, “I’ve sinned against Sebastian and against you.”
God said, “Come home.”
“I no longer deserve to be called your son.”
God said, “Come home.”
“Treat me like one of your slaves.”
God said, “I have no slaves. I have sons.” And then a picture came into Tabris’s mind, a pair of hands outstretched, cupped, with God pouring something into them.
God wanted to give him a gift.
Tabris shivered, but you never say no to a gift from God; so with bowed head, he crossed his arms over his chest.
Calm settled over him. Tabris examined himself, feeling no different but realizing God had changed him so no other angel could detect him. Confused, he said, “What should I do?”
“You should visit someone,” said God. “You can do this once.”
Tabris frowned. “Whom?”
God said, “Free Will, make your choice.”
Sebastian. Sneak up on Sebastian and watch the boy in unobserved silence for an hour or two, reassure himself Casifer had the child well on the way to Heaven, maybe even overhear Sebastian rail about the unfairness of it all. God was giving him the gift a silent goodbye. Do that and Tabris could release the hope and the grief at the same time. He could cry over the kid if he had to and no one would try to comfort him. Sebastian wouldn’t feel manipulated into offering forgiveness. It was everything he needed so he could move on.
And yet... And yet, if Tabris could use this gift once only, there was something more important. Not something he needed, but something someone else needed.
“Thank you.” Tabris braced himself. “Thank you, Father.”
He flashed to the roof of the elementary school, arriving not fifty feet from the school’s guardian. He tensed, but Zohar didn’t detect him. Tabris projected toward him, but again, he sensed nothing. Good.
Elizabeth: beneath him, he could feel her in her second floor classroom. At her side, Rachmiel. He opened his heart to catch Rachmiel’s projections, and he found him spent but praying. And emerging from him in pulses, encouragement.
Elizabeth’s soul seemed dim like a light behind a lampshade. But whenever Rachmiel strengthened her, the lights would intensify, embers under a gentle breath.
Tabris lay on the roof and closed his eyes, spread out his wings, and poured his senses into the classroom, absorbing the activity. He’d never watched Rachmiel, really watched him. Always when they’d been together they’d divided the labor. Even though Rachmiel had most definitely gone “off duty” to observe Tabris in action immediately after his assignment, Tabris never had done the same. Why?
Elizabeth. Elizabeth, sweetheart. You deserve the best there is. And I think you have him. I wanted to give you better than the best. I’m not even sure I was wrong.
Tabris slipped through the roof to the second floor. The fourth graders worked on a reading assignment, their guardians assisting them or defending the perimeter. He watched only Elizabeth, Rachmiel embracing her and shedding encouragement into her heart. Gentle. Coaxing.
Elizabeth’s pulse and adrenaline levels were elevated. She fidgeted. Tabris got a reading of her blood pressure, her eye movements, her tension. The way Rachmiel would feed her energy, then back off, and she’d look at the teacher. The way she’d bitten her eraser right down to the pencil. The way she’d go back to work, and then Rachmiel would encourage again, and she would bite her lip.
When the bell rang, the students shut their books. Elizabeth stood from the desk to get her backpack, and Rachmiel breathed into her soul again, fueling those embers.
Before Tabris’s gaze, the chokehold of her sin slipped, and grace trickled in faster.
Elizabeth stood at her desk until the other students had departed, then set her bag on the chair. She went to the teacher, who was stacking papers in her messenger bag. Standing before the teacher, Elizabeth said, “I need to take the makeup test with Alex and Ben on Monday.”
The teacher looked up, puzzled. “Why? I’m sure you did fine.”
Elizabeth stared at her feet, unaware of the light shining again in her heart. “I looked at the answers. You had them on the desk when I brought the supplies.”
She had tears in her eyes. Rachmiel had tears in his.
The teacher’s breath caught. “Elizabeth, I’m disappointed.”
“I’m sorry.” She bit her lip. “Math is so hard.”
The teacher sat in her chair so she was face to face with Elizabeth. “I’m not sure what’s the best way to handle this. I’m glad you came to me, but cheating is serious.”
Tabris felt himself becoming more solid. His gift was ending. He had to leave or become visible.
He completed the process, and Rachmiel turned to him, shedding a mixture of pride in Elizabeth and wariness about Tabris.
Tabris bowed his head. “Please forgive me.” He reached for Rachmiel’s hands. “You’re right. I’ve been fighting the wrong enemy.”
Twenty-Five
Rachmiel would have lost the bet, had they bet on it. Sebastian didn’t visit that night, nor the next.
Now that he was projecting more, Tabris emitted a cloud of resignation as he worked with Elizabeth. Rachmiel didn’t ask where he’d gone or what he’d done, but Tabris had given him the outline. That demon, gone forever. Thank God. And that he’d spoken with his Father. Not prayed, but still, spoken.
Rachmiel had said, “Did He tell you anything about Sebastian?”
Tabris said, “I don’t think he’s coming back,” and Rachmiel felt that stone-dead weight in his stomach.
The nights came and went. Tabris didn’t leave for the pond any longer, and although he didn’t open up in prayer, he did join the other guardians in theirs. When they asked one another for prayer intentions, he would ask for prayers for Sebastian’s well-being. He’d never done that before. He prayed for Casifer too, that Casifer could be the guardian Sebastian needed.
With Elizabeth, Tabris had a new unsteadiness, a wire-walker gaining his balance after stepping off the platform. Although he had the same vigilance, his focus had shifted, and Rachmiel found him less directive, more suggestive. He wasn’t forcing her virtue; instead he guarded her openness to the gifts God gave her.
More nights. One night Miriael asked Tabris to watch Kyle, and Tabris seemed first surprised as he agreed, and later sad.
And on the eighth night, after Elizabeth changed into pajamas but before she went to bed, Rachmiel turned around to find Sebastian.
The boy shifted his weight and stared at the floor. “Hello?”
Beside Rachmiel, Tabris had gone still with shock. “Hi.”
Rachmiel panicked for an instant before grabbing Sebastian and flashing all three of them a quarter mile away, to where Elizabeth wouldn’t sense him.
“Oh, sorry.” Sebastian gave a nervous giggle. “I guess I should have asked if now was a good time.”
Vibrating with excitement, Rachmiel said, “It’s always a good time, just wasn’t a good place.” When Sebastian relaxed, he said, “How are you?”
“Doing good. Nearer to Heaven than before.” Sebastian shifted his weight. “I was wondering if I might borrow Tabris for a few hours.”
Rachmiel could feel Tabris’s heart pounding so hard it hurt, and he wondered if Sebastian had grown sensitive enough to detect it. In a low voice, Tabris said, “I’d love you to.” He hesitated. “Where’s Casifer?”
“He sent me, but he stayed behind.”
Tabris still hadn’t taken his eyes off him. “Do you want Rachmiel?”
The boy shifted. “Well, if you want. I hadn’t planned on it.”
Sebastian was just as nervous as Tabris, and Rachmiel ached with anticipation. “I’ll stay with Elizabeth.” Needing to keep calm, he reached for her heart; she lay on her bed finishing a makeup math assignment as part of the consequences for cheating. “Have a good time. Send a post card.”
Sebastian looked cautious. “Angels have a postal system?”
“Angels have a silly sense of humor,” said Tabris.
As they flashed away, Rachmiel laughed in relief. Thank you, God. Please help them get through this. He flashed back to Elizabeth.
Mid math problem, she rolled onto her back and smiled at the ceiling, her gaze intercepting Rachmiel’s eyes and warming him to the core.
Tabris flashed Sebastian to a flat field in a flat plain where you could see flat land for about ten flat miles because of the flatness. It hadn’t occurred to him until Sebastian arrived that they’d need to go someplace, and on the grounds that Sebastian would never come back, he hadn’t planned on a place to take him. But since Casifer had taken them someplace interesting to prevent talking, this time he chose someplace bare like a bald man’s head.
Here it was still daylight. Sebastian took a look around. “I love this world.”
Tabris said, “Are you being sarcastic?”
Sebastian giggled, an infectious laugh that came from his belly. “Well, kind of. Even here, though. I didn’t care for the world much when I was here, but now I see it in more detail, all the different animals and bugs, and it’s neat.”
Sebastian started walking, and Tabris kept pace. “What parts do you like best?”
“So far, the oceans.” Sebastian’s eyes widened. “They’re wild, but they’re under control by the moon and all this other physics I don’t understand yet. I keep bugging Casifer to teach me natural science, but he got me a book and taught me theology.”
Tabris laughed out loud, fighting a hope he didn’t dare feel.
Sebastian said, “How many stars are there?”
Tabris said, “You want an actual number? Wouldn’t that diminish the drama?”
“I suppose.” The boy shrugged. “It would be handy for Angel Trivia Night, or whatever you guys do when you get together for games.” He stopped. “Okay, so rather than beat around the bush for six hours, I should probably just say something.”
Tabris stopped, his stomach tight and his hands trembling. Sebastian stepped closer and looked into his eyes.
“So I’m not that subtle and you can probably see right through me because you’ve known me since I was a blastocyst, but I’ve been praying lately, and working really hard at it. Casifer said I’m doing pretty good, whatever that means. I see God a bit clearer now, and it doesn’t leave me feeling like I want to run and hide all the time.”
That was terrific: at least one of them should feel that way. Tabris said, “That’s a big step toward entering Heaven.”
“That’s what Casifer says too.”
Tabris felt Sebastian teeter on the cusp of changing the conversation to an academic discussion of the steps one goes through prior to entering Heaven. Not that it was totally obvious. Not that Tabris had ever deflected a conversation the same way.
The urge passed. Sebastian took Tabris’s hands, and Tabris squeezed. The boy said, “But anyway, I’ve learned a lot about God and looked back at the stuff I remember and saw a lot of the things He’s done for me, and— Well, God’s always forgiven me for everything, and I’ve done some pretty bad things, you know, but He took me back when I asked, and I want to be like Him.”
Tabris’s hands tightened. Sebastian looked at the ground. “And the thing is, I can’t be called a Son of God if I’m not acting like Him, and—” Tabris could feel him in a bit of a panic because he’d gone too far to back out. “I prayed about it, and I need you to help me out here. Because I get totally pissed off when I think about what you did to me. I don’t get why you did it, and I wish you hadn’t. I’m supposed to forgive you, and I don’t want to. But I’ve been trying.”
Tabris said, “What can I do to help?”
Sebastian said, “Well, so far I’ve tried what Voriah said. He told me to pray to want to forgive, and if I couldn’t do that, to pray to want to want to forgive—”
Oh, that trick. “How many levels back did you get before you could do it?”
“Four,” said Sebastian. “God worked it down to two. I want to want it.”
Tabris raised his eyebrows. “You’re doing better than I would have.”
Sebastian looked up. “Really?”
Tabris shook his head. “I’m not at that point myself.”
“Well, I’m stalled. And then I had a great idea. I thought, maybe if you and I prayed together, I could understand what happened and I’d be able to see your heart and then I’d be able to forgive you.”
Tabris went numb, just numb all the way to his core. And then the anger built, and he yanked his hands back from Sebastian, clenching his fists.
Sebastian said, “What...?”
“I... This is blackmail!” he shouted at God. “I thought you wanted me on my own terms! You said I could wait it out!”
Sebastian took a huge step backward. “But—”
The Holy Spirit coalesced before them and with a touch calmed Sebastian. At the same time, Tabris felt the presence of God urging him to stand down: God was in no way forcing this. Praying together had been Sebastian’s idea, and Sebastian on his own had decided to ask.
Sebastian was saying, “They always said the family that prayed together, stayed together, and you’re supposed to be something like my family, right? Voriah thought it would help for him to pray with me, and he’s not even part of this.”
Tabris stopped glaring at God and looked Sebastian in the eye. “I don’t expect you to understand, and you didn’t know what’s going on. I haven’t prayed—really prayed, not human prayer—since you died. All along, there’s been coercion from Rachmiel and Voriah and your mentor, and God’s been asking me to do it, and I keep saying no. I’m not ready. That’s not something anyone can force.”
Sebastian’s eyes were wide. “And—how do you know when you’re ready? When will that be?”
“I don’t know. It takes time.” Tabris glared back at God, his eyes darkening. “And you approved this? It’s blackmail.”
The Spirit made Himself more fully present to Tabris: Sebastian would forgive him in time whether he helped or not. The grace would be his, and the gift of forgiveness would be given to him. Tabris was free to refuse. God loved him and would continue to love him even if he never opened his heart again.
Sebastian turned away. “I shouldn’t have said anything. It was a dumb idea. I was tired of being angry and I thought this would be easier. I understand if you don’t want me. I should have tried to work it out on my own.”
Tabris grabbed Sebastian before he could call Casifer to take him back. “This isn’t between us. The prayer issue is between me and God. It always has been.”
The Holy Spirit put a picture into Tabris’s head: two hands together. You won’t trust me?
Tabris thought back, Apparently not.
Sebastian pulled away. “I don’t actually care what you do with God.” He clenched his fists. “I thought you’d want to help me.”
Tabris looked away from Sebastian, his feathers standing apart. Calm from the Holy Spirit; shock from Sebastian. And from himself—Tabris couldn’t begin to catalog it. This isn’t between us. But it was between them. Or rather, Sebastian had gotten caught in the crossfire, and whose job was it to fix that?
That fire churned inside, the one that led him to risk damnation for the sake of his charge.
“I do want to help.” He spit out the words without thinking about the consequences. “I’ll do it.” Just do it. Clench your teeth and go through with it. He couldn’t do it for himself. He’d have to do it for the kid.
Sebastian folded his arms. “Maybe I don’t want you to anymore.”
Tabris said, “Please don’t give me the chance to change my mind.”
Sebastian looked at him, and his mouth set. Tabris could tell the Holy Spirit was talking to him, and the kid glared off sidelong. “Fine.” He sat on the ground. “I know you guys pray best standing, but I need to be sitting.” Tabris sat facing him. Sebastian made himself quiet, and Tabris did the same.
Sebastian bega
n by whispering a formula prayer, and Tabris joined him: Holy One, Mighty One, Immortal One, hear your creatures and look on us... Words were easy. From the start he’d been able to do the words. What came next...well, best not to dwell on that yet. You are holy, you are holy, you are most holy... Praise. Thanksgiving. Petition. Unification.
Unification. Or, the time when God refused him.
When they reached that point, Sebastian took a deep breath like a skin diver and opened his heart. He’d been practicing since that night on the cliff and didn’t need any help to get started. Tabris felt God pour into the young soul, filling him to capacity.
With teeth clenched, Tabris thought of Sebastian, and steeling himself for rejection, he reached forward with his heart to meet God on holy ground.
God rushed him like sea water, sweeping back Tabris’s anticipation of aridity. Tabris cried out, his spirit blown back by the contact, the coolness, the soothing of an ache he’d thought never would ease.
Rain over the desert. The withered parts of his heart crinkled out, drinking in the water and the spirit, releasing the tightness necessary to preserve life during a rainless season. Eyes closed, Tabris let out a long sigh that turned into a shiver.
He visualized an old woman revisiting her childhood home, racing from room to room accompanied by the past, hungering to see every space, seeing the bed where she was born, recalling the old positions of the furniture, noting all the changes but still loving the house as her own.
His vision of God in the world heightened until once again he registered all the motes of God’s presence in every created thing. Like a string of Christmas lights illuminating one bulb at a time, the world went from dark to light: the air, the ground, the palm-sized puddles between the rows of newly-planted crops. It ached: he’d been so hungry for this, craving any glimpse he could find, and now after so long here it was, only he didn’t want to stop focusing on God to look at the world.
It’s okay, said the Spirit. The world will still be here afterward. Although to be fair, so will I.
I’d rather be with you, thought Tabris.