by Jane Lebak
Two
Walking with Jesus through the lamp-lit room, Mary paused, rested her head against the crying bundle of baby. Barely loud enough to hear, she whispered, “Raphael?”
Raphael appeared.
“I’m going to have to ask you to take him.” Her eyes were bloodshot. “I can’t keep doing this.”
Raphael beamed. “Really?”
“You don’t mind, do you?”
“No, and you’re supposed to be ordering me around.” Raphael solidified enough to take Jesus from her arms. “Sleep. You aren’t going to get healthy again unless you all get some rest.”
Mary seemed reluctant to let him go. “Why is he crying?”
“His throat hurts.” Raphael gentled the baby away from her. “I’ll see what I can do about it.”
Mary said, “You’re sure?”
“You’re supposed to say, ‘That will be satisfactory.’” Raphael began rocking Jesus, such a magnificent armload. “Go to sleep.”
With a look back over her shoulder, Mary lay down, then extinguished the lamp.
In the darkness, Raphael held Jesus to his chest and swayed a little, then found that neck-nestle position mothers have used for generations. With Jesus pressed to his chest, he found the proper rhythm of hips and shoulders to keep him moving in a continuous rock.
Gabriel’s voice emerged from the corner. “It’s the baby slow-dance.”
“Did you ever get a chance to do this?”
Gabriel hesitated, looked at Raphael with uncertainty, then projected a positive.
A moment after, Gabriel sent, I could do it again if you hand him over to me.
Raphael gave Gabriel a sarcastic smile. Not on your life.
Gabriel’s momentary disappointment washed over Raphael, but he only held Jesus tighter and continued walking him, his cheek pressed against the fine hair, his eyes closed. Little breaths, that intoxicating baby-scent, miniature limbs curled against his own body.
Do you know how many guardians would love to do this? Raphael sent, his soul overflowing with warmth.
Gabriel had relaxed again. All of them?
All of them.
Gabriel sang a lullaby, and Raphael joined him. The second time around, Gabriel took the harmony while Raphael maintained the melody, then repeated one line so they ended up singing as a round. By then their souls were in full bond, trading thoughts and feelings, Gabriel absorbing Raphael’s Seraphic fire while imparting on him Cherubic calm. He approached Raphael, and with Raphael’s permission he merged into Raphael’s form so they were both holding the baby.
He’s an incredible little bundle, Gabriel sent. Thank you.
Jesus had quieted down while they sang, but now he fussed again.
Gabriel kept his voice low. “He’s wet.”
Raphael said, “I’d rather not wake up Mary to change him.”
“I can change him.” And with that Gabriel was solid. He took Jesus from Raphael’s arms.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Raphael followed Gabriel to the diapers. “Do you know how to do this?”
“Some of us have watched Mary change diapers ten times a day for months,” Gabriel said. “You’d know how to do it too if you weren’t bedazzled by him.”
Raphael chuckled as Gabriel unfastened the baby’s clothing. “But maybe—”
He whipped off the wet diaper and grabbed a clean one. “It’s a diaper and a baby, and I’m an archangel of the Presence. What could go wrong?”
“You realize nine times out of ten, when someone says something like that, a terrible disaster follows.”
“Of course.” Gabriel handed back a dry-diapered baby. “But I’m ten out of ten.”
Raphael looked Jesus in the eyes, and a smile overtook him. In the dark, the baby had opened his eyes fully and watched his guardian angel with a quiet alert stare, as if absorbing every detail of him.
You can see he’s intelligent, Gabriel sent.
Raphael bubbled up inside, filled with joy so much that his wings vibrated.
Gabriel drew off the fire, but Raphael burned brighter. He smiled at Jesus, and the baby smiled back.
Raphael took him out into the courtyard and spread his wings.
“About something not being a good idea,” Gabriel said, following, “are you sure this is smart?”
That much joy couldn’t stay on the ground. Raphael ascended, holding Jesus close to his chest and slicing through the air with his wings.
“You’re insane.” Gabriel soared beside him. “Your charge has a sore throat, and you’re exposing him to the wind.”
Raphael rolled so he drifted on his back. “Cold air is good for some kinds of coughs.”
Gabriel wore a grin. “And aerobatics—they’re good for an upper respiratory infection as well?”
“Not nearly as good as sarcasm.”
Gabriel glided a wingspan over Raphael. “Then he’s in luck because we’re overstocked on both tonight.”
Raphael met Gabriel’s eyes with a sparkle in his own.
“Aren’t you worried you’re going to drop him?”
“I’m a Seraph of the presence,” Raphael said, “and you’re ten out of ten. What could happen?”
Gabriel descended. “The worst that could have happened to me was I could have gotten moistened. Dropping him inhabits an entirely different category of bad.”
“I’ve got him tight.”
“I’d prefer if you had him in a sling or a harness.”
“You’d prefer I was on the ground.”
“That too.” Gabriel swung back around so he flew beneath Raphael. “I hope I catch better than you throw.”
Huffing in annoyance, Raphael banked and increased altitude. Gabriel sped up to follow him, starlight flashing over his wings.
Raphael looked over his shoulder. “You couldn’t catch me at your fastest.”
“You’ve got added drag.” Gabriel’s eyes glinted. “I’ll catch you.”
Raphael turned on the speed, leaving Gabriel behind. He tucked the baby closer at his chest, and he adjusted his arms to keep the worst of the wind off him. Six months older and this baby would have been be howling with laughter. Even now, he was reveling in the weightlessness he’d lost after the waters broke and pressure pushed him into an existence of light and temperature.
Gabriel had fallen behind, and Raphael slowed to allow him to almost catch up, but not entirely.
Show-off.
He’s loving it. You wouldn’t deny Jesus something he loves.
The Cherub-induced thought arose in his head that Jesus wouldn’t have loved flying until he’d actually done it, so remaining on the ground wouldn’t have fit the full description of denial.
Raphael sent back irritation. He sped up and stripped off his grey-winged pursuer. Up he soared through a clearing in the clouds, the nearly-full moon illuminating his wings. He shifted the baby so he could look into his wide eyes. God, thank you for him. Thank you, thank you. I never imagined. I had no idea what a guardian felt until now.
Curling his innermost set of wings around the baby, he arched the other two and went into a spin, supporting Jesus’s neck and head against his chest, the other arm beneath his bottom and curled thighs. A flexing of the primary feathers brought him upright so he shot toward the stars, and then he went over backward and dropped, curling his arms and legs up around the baby as if he were doing a cannon-ball into the clouds. Then he flexed his spine and flipped over so he was flying level at speeds that would make a racing horse look chained to a tree.
Against his chest, Jesus gave a belly-laugh, and Raphael laughed out loud too, then spiraled upward. He held the baby out at arm’s length and met his eyes again, and this time he was totally lost in the boy’s soul, the boy’s beauty, and purity and the startling depth of his humanity.
I will do anything for you, Raphael promised.
Drop him? He would never let go. He would never give up. He would never forget this moment, this power, this promise, this lov
e. This soul, entrusted to his care with a bond utterly different than Gabriel’s.
The baby studied him, and Raphael felt the answering promise from the boy’s soul: he would obey; he would grow in God’s love; he would be everything God wanted; and he loved Raphael too.
The Seraph clutched the boy close to his heart and hovered a mile above the earth, his heart rippling with fire and his being vibrating with excitement.
I had no idea, he prayed.
Gabriel caught up, and Raphael tucked his innermost wings around Jesus again.
A momentary unease swept through Gabriel’s eyes. Raphael reached through their bond, waiting for the answering fire to spark up inside the Cherub, but Gabriel didn’t grasp for it. Raphael kindled him up anyhow from his overflow.
As Gabriel’s soul responded, he resonated with confusion as to whether he still belonged with Raphael or whether he ought to distance himself.
Raphael beat his wings to move nearer. “Don’t question that! There’s room for two. We just need to negotiate things until we adjust.”
Gabriel folded his arms and looked aside. “He’s your primary concern. I can find other things to do for the next hundred years.”
Raphael shook his head “He’s my primary concern, but I want you here to balance me out so I can do a better job.”
Gabriel nodded. “If only for that, then.”
Raphael said, “Just don’t keep questioning my judgment.”
Gabriel said, “Don’t leave me behind again.”
Raphael hesitated, then assented.
A moment after, he looked at the baby’s slack face, his partially-opened mouth. “He’s asleep now. We ought to bring him home.”
They flashed to the courtyard, and Raphael walked through the house to bring Jesus back to Mary’s bed. He laid down the baby gently, but as he desolidified to let Jesus rest beneath the blankets, the baby made tiny nursing sounds. Mary rolled to her side to latch him on. She murmured, “Was everything okay?”
“No worries.” Raphael stroked Jesus’s hair. “It was perfectly satisfactory.”
Three
Year Three
Gabriel sat alongside the house after the family had breakfast, watching Jesus scratch a finger-sized trench beside the fence with a stick. Raphael had gone to help out a friend guarding a dying man, so for the moment it was just himself and the boy in the sunlight.
Jesus turned to him. “You’re Gabriel?”
Gabriel assented.
“What do you do?”
Opting against an exhaustive list, Gabriel said, “I teach.”
Jesus tilted his head. “What do you teach?”
He hadn’t expected that. “What do you want to learn?”
“Mom teaches me cooking. Dad teaches me the Torah.” He jumped up. “Can you teach me numbers?”
Numbers? Really? Gabriel crouched in the dust. “Bring me that stick.”
Numbers were life. Numbers were code. You could do anything with numbers, translate anything into numbers. Of course, the Hebrew alphanumeric system wasn’t adept enough for the kind of work Gabriel would want, so he skipped the traditional counting systems in both Roman and Hebrew and went straight to ordinal numbers. “This is much more useful,” he said, “even though no one else is going to understand you.”
Jesus nodded, and Gabriel began writing.
Math. Why hadn’t he thought of this sooner? The kid could design bridges and palaces and aqueducts and pyramids. His father was a carpenter, after all. Maybe he’d fulfill God’s plans by building something incredible. And for that, you needed a good grounding in mathematics.
Grounding. Gabriel sighed. Writing in the dirt wasn’t as useful as it should be, but it was all they had to work with right now.
Jesus caught on, though. He took the stick and made his own characters. He asked questions, and then after hearing the answers asked even more complicated questions. Gabriel gave him just enough information each time to keep him asking more.
He’d just finished writing out a new equation when he felt Raphael approaching at speed. “Watch it!” he shouted, Guarding Raphael off the dirt. “You’ll mess things up.”
Raphael stopped at the edge of the wall in the shimmering air. “What are you doing? Mess up what?”
Gabriel gestured to the ground. “He’s solving for one variable, and he’s worked on this for a while.”
“Look, Raphael!” Jesus jumped in place. “Seven! The answer is seven!”
Gabriel took down the Guard, and Raphael landed, disturbing the figures in the dirt.
“Tell me you’re kidding.” Raphael stepped forward gingerly. “Please. This is simply a joke because I was gone longer than you thought I’d be.”
Gabriel frowned. Had it been that long? It couldn’t have been—unless it wasn’t the same day. But no, it didn’t feel like that. For one thing, Mary wouldn’t have let the child go a full night without sleep.
“You’re hopeless,” Raphael said.
Hopeless? “He wanted me to tell him about numbers.”
“So you taught him algebra?”
“I didn’t start with algebra.” Gabriel put his hands on his hips. “We started by counting, and then he wanted to add, and he realized the limits of a letter-based system for counting, so I showed him base ten counting, and once he got that we kept going.”
Jesus was grinning. “It was fun! Can you give me a problem too?”
Gabriel beamed. “He’s ready for two variables if you want.”
Raphael rubbed his temples. “I think I’d rather go inside and apologize to Mary.”
Jesus tugged at Gabriel’s wing. “You need to tell me. How do you do two variables?”
Before he could answer, a warning shot through Gabriel, and Mary shouted, “Gabriel!”
Jesus’s face went impassive, and Gabriel flashed before Mary. She looked stern, and Uriel’s visage had darkened. One of them must have detected a demon.
Mary looked directly at him. “Why were you watching Jesus?”
Gabriel said, “Raphael had another assignment.”
“Raphael’s assignment should be my son.” She’d perfected an inflection-free voice that wasn’t rude but bordered on condescending. They’d worked on it for an hour one night, trying to achieve the right mix of superiority and standing-on-ceremony. “Is that understood?”
Uriel had a very worried look, so Gabriel smoked his form a bit. “I assumed my presence was sufficient.”
“I asked for Raphael. I wanted him with my son, not you.” She held up a bag. “Joseph forgot his lunch. Bring it.”
Raphael’s sword in its scabbard had little flames around the visible blade. Jesus had wandered back into the kitchen. Gabriel tried to look infuriated. “Yes, my lady.”
This time he heard it: demonic snickering, and now the irritated look came naturally.
Mary hesitated. “Are you thinking of blowing the roof of my house?”
“I would smile while I did it,” Gabriel said by means of reassurance.
“Good,” Mary said, a little softer, “because I hope you and I both understand why you’re doing this.”
Gabriel smiled with an edge sharper than a dagger. “I never forget why I’m doing this.”
“That’s satisfactory, then. Dismissed.”
He vanished to Joseph’s carpentry shop.
As he laid the bag on Joseph’s work bench, a demon behind him convulsed with laughter. Gabriel took a deep breath and turned to find the Seraph Asmodeus and his bonded Cherub Belior. Together the pair were Satan’s top advisors.
“That’s completely worth the price of admission.” Asmodeus wiped tears from his eyes. “I didn’t think I’d live long enough to see anything this funny.”
Gabriel frizzled with tension.
Asmodeus said, “Don’t worry, we’re laughing with you, not at you.”
“Actually,” Belior said, “if you’ll take note, Gabriel isn’t laughing, therefore we are laughing at him.”
Gab
riel folded his arms.
“What did you do wrong this time?” Asmodeus said. “First you end up human for a year, and now you’re serving humans.”
Gabriel bristled.
Asmodeus leaned against the wall. “Why haven’t you killed her yet?”
Gabriel answered, honestly, “I don’t know how to kill someone God hasn’t ordered me to kill.”
Belior stepped closer. “I can tell you that. You ask me, and I do it.”
“I’m not going to—”
“I won’t ask you to curse God,” Belior interrupted. “You’ll just owe me a favor.”
“The price is too high,” Gabriel said, “but thanks for thinking of me.”
Belior said, “I’m curious, because I have a line of people a mile long who would love to be able to enthrall you. How did she do it?”
Gabriel put two fingers together and touched the back of them to his lips.
“That’s powerful,” Belior whispered. “You can’t even hint?”
Gabriel closed his eyes.
Asmodeus huffed. “It’s too bad. Think of the fun we could have had.”
Gabriel sighed.
Belior sounded incredulous. “Did she actually demand Raphael be the guardian of her baby? Doesn’t that mean she pushed off whichever angel was supposed to guard him?”
“That sounds like a tremendously bad idea, doesn’t it?” Gabriel said. Again, totally honest.
“No kidding.” Belior’s eyes sparked. “Even when the guardian and the charge are a perfect fit, you have trouble keeping a human on a straight path. Mess with the fit and the kid is essentially ours.”
Gabriel made his voice low. “I’m under orders to protect him too, so keep that in mind.”
“You won’t need to protect him because maybe we won’t bother attacking him.” Asmodeus stretched his wings. “He’ll undo himself thanks to her.”
The pair looked at one another, and Gabriel shivered as the Seraph and the Cherub (quite probably) reached for one another through their bond. There was a momentary flicker in Belior’s eyes, an answering sparkle in Asmodeus’, and an instant later both appeared a little stronger, a little more balanced.
Gabriel reached in his heart for Raphael, who sent back reassurance. No demons remained at the house. Also, apparently Uriel had relayed to Raphael that Mary was worried she’d hurt Gabriel’s feelings.