by Bea Paige
“Mum, you can afford a cleaner. Perhaps you should get yourself one? Give you more time for your hobbies,” I say, pointing to the embroidery in her lap. This one she’s working on is a depiction of Jesus Christ fixed to the cross, her religious beliefs influencing her passion for such artistry. She’s pretty good, but her subject matter is not my cup of tea at all.
“I’m not paying a stranger to enter my house and rummage through my things…”
“No, you just expect your daughter to be maid instead,” I mumble under my breath.
Her head snatches up. Her hearing is far better than my own. She glares at me and huffs.
“I do not treat you like a maid. That’s unfair, Fern. Maybe if you realised how much I miss you, I wouldn’t have to make up reasons for you to come visit.”
I sigh, resting my hand on her arm. “I’m sorry you feel that way. You just make it…” So hard to like you, to spend time with you. That’s what I want to say, but I don’t. I keep my words to myself. I’m not one for allowing them to hurt people. Mum, she doesn’t care. Words are her weapons and she has used them all my life to hurt me.
I’m scarred from all her words.
“Well, I didn’t bring you up to be selfish, Fern. You’re so ungrateful. All the things I’ve done for you. I took you in when no one else would. Christina’s daughters are always visiting her. They bring gifts, you know. They do her cleaning and cooking, take her shopping. You need to take a leaf out of their books.”
I took you in when no one else would…. That old chestnut. She loves to remind me about how grateful I should be for her taking me in when I was an infant. But adopting me had been her and Dad’s choice. It’s not as if anyone had forced them to do it.
“Taking a deaf baby no one else wanted…” she drones on. I flick my hearing aids off and turn away, so I don’t have to lipread the vileness I know is spewing out of her mouth. Half a minute later she taps me on the arm, forcing me to acknowledge her.
“Did you hear me?”
“I’m sorry.” I don’t have anything left to say. I know I am not the one who should be apologising, but I do it anyway. I don’t want an argument, I just want to go home.
“Christina is lucky,” she repeats. “Her daughters care about her.”
Christina is kind, that’s why.
“I care, Mum. I’m just exhausted. I’ll come back soon, okay?”
She purses her mouth, choosing to give me the cold shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” I repeat like a broken record.
“You should be. Christina can’t believe how you treat me. She thinks you’re behaving terribly…”
I switch off again. This is why I do not like my own mum. She is unkind, and an awful liar. I know Christina doesn’t think that way about me because I speak to her every day. When Mum turned cold towards me after my dad died, Christina opened her arms and welcomed me into her family. The reason I had so few friends growing up was because my mum hadn’t bothered to distance herself from the women and their children who had looked at me like I was a leper, who still look at me like a leper, just like my mum does. Christina was the only woman in my mum’s circle of friends who bothered to take the time to talk with me. She positively encouraged me to play with her daughters until I became close to Dani. I don’t see her often enough these days. The last time was almost a year ago, just after I lost Blakely. Time has flown by. I make a mental note to Facetime her, it’s been a while since we last had a conversation.
“You only get one mum, Fern…” Mum drones on and on. I turn my head away. There are few times I am grateful for being deaf. This is one of them.
Resting my hand on her arm, I squeeze gently. “I’ll ring you in a few days,” I say, grabbing my bag quickly. I don’t bother to look back as I leave, knowing that a tirade of abuse is following me out.
Grateful to be in the fresh air, despite the rain, I head towards my car. Lightning flashes above me as a roll of thunder sounds in the distance. Slamming the car door and shaking out my wet hair, I turn on the ignition and drive home. I’ve been living on my own for almost eight years now. Leaving home at twenty was the best decision of my life. I may not have a boyfriend, but I have a career that I love, a calling really, and that fills my time enough so that I can forget about the other stuff my life is missing. Men, and a loving relationship, predominately.
Don’t go there, Fern.
Too late. My black-haired, black-winged angel enters my thoughts once again, and by the time I pull up outside my house I am cursing myself for letting him careen into my head once again.
It’s been a year. A year of torture, of sleepless nights. Of constantly looking over my shoulder. Looking at every man with black hair and strong frame, half of me hoping it’s him, the other half hoping it isn’t.
But nothing, I don’t even hear the singing anymore.
I hear nothing and rather than feeling happy about it, I feel utterly bereft.
I should hate him. I should be glad that after all this time, the singing has stopped. That, finally, I am free from death.
Yet, despite what I had witnessed that day, despite Natasha’s grief and pain that haunts me still, I’ve never wanted anything more than to see him again.
My dark angel.
My?
How can I be so possessive over something that is most likely not even real? How can I want to see someone who took something so precious?
Perhaps I had envisaged him to help me cope with the trauma of losing a life. It had been a traumatic experience after all. I feel responsible for that little boy’s death; it has haunted me every day since, alongside the angel with the glacier eyes.
Perhaps I should have done something differently, perhaps I should have triple-checked the machinery and not relied on my gift. I beat myself up over it every day, going over everything I did. Maybe I missed something when I ripped out my hearing aids. Perhaps my deafness had brought death once again, except this time I was responsible.
Entering my home, I flick on the light switch and head directly to my studio. It’s just a large cupboard really, but it has a window that looks out onto the garden and during the day has the best natural light in my house. This is my sanctuary, where I go to draw, to paint. A hobby I picked up as a child that has become a passion now I’m an adult.
When I step inside the room, I am accosted with the same image repeatedly. My dark angel painted, drawn in pencil, charcoal, water colour, acrylic. He covers every available surface. I see him in my dreams, when I awake. He stalks my every thought.
He haunts me so much more than the singing ever did and yet, since that day, my world has been even more silent.
Sighing, I drop my bag and coat on my desk, rip off my jumper and settle in the chair. Pinned to my drawing board is another image of him. Its half finished, but out of everything I’ve created it is the first drawing that has begun to capture the essence of him. I lay my palms flat on the table either side of the paper and stare at my reflection in the window.
How did I get here? I feel as though I am going mad. I don’t recognise the person staring back at me. She is a shadow, a ghost. For the last year I have been living in this world, but not really living at all, just surviving one moment after the other. My fingers reach up to my hearing aids, and I remove them, placing them on the table, and wait.
I wait for the singing.
I wait for his voice.
I’ve never wanted death to visit as much as I do right now.
There is nothing.
Every night since I saw him, I have done the same, and every night I am left in a vacuum of deafening silence. A silence so thick and cloying that I need death’s voice to break me free from it.
Another bolt of lightning flashes across the sky, illuminating my tiny garden momentarily. My reflection is replaced with…
What the hell?
I stand abruptly, my fingers reaching for the windowpane, my heart galloping in my chest.
Was that…?
&n
bsp; I wait, stuck in the same position. Afraid to move, to breathe. Have I finally lost my mind?
Lightning flashes again, illuminating the man who has shadowed my thoughts all this time.
My angel of death has returned.
Our eyes meet and shock registers on his face before darkness falls over my garden once again.
Pain…
Sudden searing, burning pain wraps around a finger of my left hand. I lift it up and sitting on my ring finger is a plain brass ring. It’s scratched and marked, dented with years of wear.
“What the hell is this?” I twist my hand, unable to understand where it has appeared from. The shock of seeing it sitting on my finger as if it has always been there has me momentarily forgetting who is standing in my garden.
He’s here…
Twisting on my feet, I run from the room and to the back door that opens onto the porch. I throw it open and step out on to the decking.
“Please don’t leave,” I say into the darkness. Rain lashes against my face and clothes, instantly drenching my skin. I don’t care. I need to see him again. Peering into the darkness, I take a tentative step forwards.
Lightning scores a white line against the black night and my back garden is illuminated once more. Except this time, it isn’t one man standing before me but three, and they all have wings.
Chapter Six
“You?” The dark-haired one steps towards me. Beside him, another man, angel, Christ, I don’t know, snaps his head around.
“You know this woman, Gabe?” the white-haired man asks him.
Gabe? So he has a name. My gaze flicks between them. Dark hair versus pure snow-white.
“I…” Gabe looks from him to me, the words lost on his lips.
“Do you?” the white-haired man insists.
“Ether, I don’t know how to explain,” Gabe starts, but Ether cuts him off.
“This is a conversation we shall take up another time,” he says, returning his gaze to me. His eyes are just as blue as Gabe’s, though nowhere near as cold. There is heat beyond the ice.
“I appreciate this is unusual…” Ether starts.
Unusual? I would have laughed had I not been so utterly mute. They all have wings, for crying out loud. If three men standing in my back garden wasn’t unusual enough, then having sodding huge black wings certainly puts them at the top of the goddamn unusual mountain.
Rain pelts harder, lightning erupts in angry strokes, but all I can do is move involuntarily towards them. A pull in my stomach wrenches me forward. I should be running away, screaming. I should be inside calling my mum, the police, a goddamn priest, but I do none of those things. Rain runs in rivulets over my skin, clamping my hair against my head as I step down onto the boggy grass.
The third angel moves forward, holding his hand up. I stop in my tracks. He shakes his head.
Slightly shorter than the other two, with dark blonde hair and a kind but haunted face, he steps towards me. Summer-blue eyes regard me with weariness, but behind that is something else, something strange, given the circumstances… Awe. He appears in awe of me, though perhaps it is just my own feelings reflected in his eyes.
“Mihr, what is it?” Gabe asks.
Mihr? I’ve never heard that name before. I stand transfixed, my clothes plastered against my skin, my hair stuck to my face and my teeth chattering as I absorb the three men, imprinting them into my memories. They all have the same soul-searching eyes, all a bright blue but in varying shades. None look older than their mid-twenties, but something about them makes me think they are far, far older than that.
“Mihr, what do you sense?” Ether asks, following up Gabe’s question with another.
I have the sudden, sick-making feeling that they won’t be staying long. Why does the thought of their leaving make me feel so bereft? I should be terrified, knowing what they are. Well, knowing who one of them is, at least. I have no idea whether the other two men take lives like he does. Are they even men?
Gabe moves forward and rests his hand against Mihr’s outstretched arm.
We exchange looks and something squeezes infinitesimally tighter around my heart. I was wrong, the drawing inside hasn’t captured Gabe’s essence at all. How can I capture sin wrapped in heaven, darkness wrapped in light? Or is it the other way around? I don’t know. I don’t understand what it is that I see, that I sense about this man. About all of them.
I take another step forward.
Mihr shakes his head again and points his finger upwards, before moving his fingers and hands in a way that is familiar, yet utterly alien. Is that sign language? It isn’t any that I recognise but Gabe and Ether appear to understand him well enough. Mihr drops his arm, and steps back. His mouth is drawn in a thin line over a tense jaw. He doesn’t take his eyes off me. Not once. What is he trying to say?
Should I fear him, fear them all? Is he trying to protect me? Are they here to take my life, just like Gabe took that baby boy’s?
I have so many questions, but I am mute now, as well as deaf. Wait? I should be deaf. I shouldn’t be able to hear them. My hearing aids are indoors. How can I hear them? I feel the rumble of thunder, the pull in the sky before the lightning flashes once again, and I know that if I had my hearing aids in I would have heard the sound, but I don’t. So why can I hear these men speak? I don’t understand. None of this makes sense.
“There are many things we need to discuss, daughter of Celeste and Eos, missing daughter of Clan Vitae, but it appears we have been summoned. If we do not return, Queen Adrielle will become suspicious. I am sorry we have arrived only to leave you once again. The next time we shall stay, explain. I promise you this…” He stops, realising he doesn’t even know my name.
“Fern, her name is Fern,” Gabe says softly.
The sound of my name from his lips pulls me towards them once more. I am under his spell, their spell. I take another step. The ground seems to undulate beneath my feet, as a woozy feeling ripples up my body. Who are Celeste and Eos? Clan Vitae? Queen Adrielle? What is Ether saying? I don’t understand any of it. They blur in front of me, and I blink back the raindrops, wiping at my eyes.
“Fern, we will return for you. Take this,” Ether says, handing me a cold, jagged stone. Our fingers touch only briefly but a searing heat zings against my skin, despite the freezing rain. “We have no need for this anymore, now that we have found you…”
“I can hear you…” I say, the words leaking from my mouth. “How can I hear you?”
Ether cocks his head to the side, a frown pulling his eyebrows together. Rain streams down his face and drips from his strong jaw.
“We shall be back, angel,” he says.
Angel?
Behind him, Mihr steps forward and clamps his hand on Ether’s shoulder. They exchange glances. Ether nods his head sharply then launches himself into the sky. I stumble back at the suddenness of his exit, the cold blast of wind prickling my skin.
Just like that he is gone.
Mihr catches my arm, steadying me. I feel a faint warmth where his skin touches mine, it is different to Ether’s blazing heat. Mihr’s is a steady warmth, like spring sunshine heating a crisp April morning. It compels me to move closer. As ridiculous as it sounds, I want his touch, if only to warm the cold seeping into my bones. I sway unsteadily, and he lets me go. Mihr doesn’t say a word, he simply considers me for long moments before dropping his head to his chest. Then he does something completely unexpected; he drops to his knee like a knight would to his queen. His black wings spread out behind him, stretching wide. His wingspan is huge. I have the sudden urge to touch the sleek, black feathers but as I lean over, my fingers outstretched, he stands upright once again. With one final curt nod of his head, Mihr beats his wings, throwing raindrop pearls into the air as he lifts off into the sky. In seconds he has disappeared. I try to spot him, but just like Ether he has disappeared into the darkness. Gone, as though he had never been here at all.
Then there was one.
Tran
sfixed to the spot, the cold now seeping into my bones, I watch Gabe approach me. He glowers. I don’t understand what I’ve done wrong. I don’t know why I even care. I should be scared, terrified, knowing what he is capable of.
“It shouldn’t be you,” he says.
“What shouldn’t be me?” I wipe at the rain on my face, my teeth chattering in earnest now.
“I had no idea. I didn’t know,” he rambles.
“Didn’t know what? I don’t understand.”
“You saw me and now you are the one who has the power to…” His voice trails off. Shaking his head, he steps towards me. It’s as though he is as drawn to me, as much as I am to him. I don’t understand what it is that I feel, morbid curiosity, or is it something else far more frightening?
He steps forward again, closer than I feel comfortable with, yet not close enough. Rain falls steadily onto my upturned face as I gaze up at him. His eyes draw me in, they frighten me. They remind me of the baby he took and the heartache he dished up.
“Look at you,” he says.
It takes me a few moments to realise it has stopped raining, only to find that his wings are encasing us both. That he has made a shelter from them. We are cocooned together in this private sanctuary of dark, velvety feathers.
“You’re soaked through. You must go inside now,” he says, concern pulling his brows together.
But I don’t want to go inside. I have so many questions. Too many questions. Why arrive then leave so soon?
“It’s been a year…” I say, wanting him to understand in some tiny way the impact his absence has made on me.
“It’s been many years longer for me.”
“What do you mean?” It hasn’t been years!
“There’s no time to explain, Fern.”
I am captured by the way he says my name and the deep bass of his voice. The voice I have become so accustomed to over the past few years. The voice that abandoned me for twelve long months. A voice that scares me as much as it thrills me. I want to back away, I want to lean into his arms.