by Jane Lebak
The soldier said, "Yoram is old enough to understand you're lying, Irin. The Babylonians are idolaters, not a tool of the Most High."
The freak's head whipped around. "Wild isn't evil."
The soldier folded his arms. "You've become a wild thing yourself."
The freak-angel turned back to Yoram, desperation tingeing her aura. "Kid, who are you to challenge the will of God?"
Yoram's voice wavered. "But how can an invasion be His will?"
The freak was pulling back from the soldier, but Yoram had the sense she would resist leaving him—resist by fighting if necessary. Her fear and energy in combination left Yoram nauseated and self-conscious. The power surging from the soldier was just as strong, but it never wavered in its certitude.
The soldier said, "God delivered Israel from Egypt."
The freak said, "But He sent them there first. They needed that time in the desert. This is the same."
The soldier said, "Israel's sins sent them here as punishment."
The twins had locked onto one another again, and Yoram struggled to stay on his feet. Get control. Hah. It should be so easy, Just exert your authority. Were those old men insane? How had they gotten to be old men in the first place, doing stunts like this? But then again, they weren't here doing this now. It was easy to exert your authority in the situation by never getting into it in the first place.
He looked again at both, all the time noting more differences: the jewels on the first, the piercings and gaudy clothes. The other, undecorated, upright, firm. The same, and yet not. The gold on the freak had been replaced by dun, like dying wheat grains.
Fallen, it had to be. Its soul grew wilder every moment it stayed near the soldier, but the soldier's spirit had also begun surging. Rage, grief, the opposition of the pair tore into Yoram's heart like a minor key.
Were they one person? Is that what made angels twins, since they didn't have bodies and wouldn't have been born together? Or maybe two souls, absolutely identical, so each looked at the other and saw himself – herself – only now they were mortal enemies. But how could you be your own mortal enemy?
It didn't matter. "You," he said, pointing to the soldier. "Can you spare the city?"
"I can, or at least your own life." The angel's head bowed. "But you must hurry. The Babylonians are close."
"You can't!" The freak's voice grew shrill. "The city has to fall!"
The soldier said, "You must. God's people need you."
Yoram turned to the freak. "They need me! This can't be God's law! A nice God wouldn't do this! A nice God wouldn't want us to suffer!"
The freak exploded with screaming light. "He's not a nice God—He's a Holy God. And what you're doing is repugnant!"
Yoram collapsed to his knees, tears streaking his cheeks.
The soldier pointed its sword at him. "Are you worshiping an idol? Get to your feet."
Yoram screamed, "Both of you go away!"
"You summoned us." The freak sounded unhinged. "You have to make a choice, and if you choose neither of us then you've chosen me."
"Choose." The soldier looked right at Yoram. "This whore is a liar, but she's telling the truth right now. God wants you to choose, and you have to choose me."
In the distance: Metal and stone collapsing, the music of battle. The walls had been breached.
And in the house: Irin.
God, help me, he prayed.
"He's not going to help you." Yoram couldn't tell which had spoken. "You promised yourself to darkness. Choose wrong and that promise becomes permanent."
Choices. The eternal pit and eternal death. Save the city. Save himself.
Yoram looked at the freak. "You never told me your names. What is your name?"
The freak said, "Remiel."
No help there. He said to the soldier, "And yours?"
"Camael."
Again, no help. Still looking at Soldier Camael, Yoram said, "Why did you let Remiel fall?"
The Irin looked at one another, steady and focused, but the grief so strong between them. Two halves, ripped apart.
Camael said, "It was her choice. She renounced me and all I embraced."
Yoram closed his eyes. The world was a rhythm growing always more unchained, the pounding of feet on the roads and the clamor of frightened people dying. The ground vibrated beneath his knees.
"Remiel," he said, "why did you let him go?"
"Oh, Yoram," and Freak Remiel's voice broke. She finished in a whisper. "I did everything I could."
Yoram looked up, met Remiel's chaotic gaze and saw no more gold than before, but he continued looking at her.
"I choose you," he said to Remiel.
Only then did Yoram see the tears in her eyes, the yearning. The glow had hidden them, but they were there after all.
Camael raised his sword, then stopped as though restrained. Remiel looked at her brother the way she had looked at Yoram, locked together for another moment, wishing time and the winnowing had never happened.
Camael bowed to Remiel. "Well met."
He vanished.
Remiel shuddered, then covered her face in her hands.
"Remiel?" Yoram could barely hear his own voice over the chaos in the streets.
"I'm here, kid." She moved Yoram and made him look up with one finger under his chin. A fruity smell mixed with the dusk of her presence.
"Did I choose right?"
"I think so." Her eyes watered. "It's hard to tell sometimes. But Nineveh can fall now. And Israel gets home someday. So you did all right."
In the street, a woman screamed. Yoram winced.
"The city will fall, but let me take you away." Remiel held his hand. "Anywhere—Jerusalem, Shechem, wherever."
He pulled away. "This is my city. Please go."
She lowered her hand and then disappeared. The scent of her lingered in the air, but Yoram didn't argue with her to leave. He took up a sword and went into the streets to defend his city however he could.
- + -
Remiel stood outside a semi-circular building with her aura eclipsed so she could stare at the distant stars and the close empty spaces.
Home. Heaven.
God's voice beckoned in her heart, but she closed her eyes. She could look into His face, but then she'd see how He loved her despite this thing she was now and what she could have become—Camael, Camael…
Instead she walked into her building without illuminating it. But the emptiness, it echoed, so she raised her wings and engulfed the interior in light to reveal an arena surrounded by mirrors. She concentrated until the air itself blasted music: clashing, minor-keyed, and with a driving thrum.
Remiel danced. She stamped and swung until she and the music couldn't be parted. Ten minutes, twenty—what did time matter? She refused to ease up, because if she kept going, kept going until she was so tired she couldn't think, maybe then…well, maybe then she wouldn't think.
Turning to the mirror at one wall, Remiel saw wild eyes and her hair fallen about herself. She raised a bangled arm to brush it back, but then turned, driving her soul's frantic music louder. No one outside the studio would hear it except God, and He would hear it regardless.
Her temples throbbed. She looked a second time sideways into the mirrors. Her hair stuck to the sweat on her cheeks.
Between one note and the next, she called scissors into her hand. She flashed to the glass, then yanked the ends of her hair and started shearing. The severed strands dropped. She snapped the blades until whatever hair remained stood up on its own. She slashed the bangs, then went back for the bits she'd missed.
She lowered the music with a blink.
Turning her head, Remiel saw not only the cropped hair but also all of her earrings in the mirror.
Mirror.
She smashed the scissors into the glass. Ugly – horrible – an obscenity in the sight of God. She beat the reflection until it became nothing but fragments. Just little parts of herself, millions of them, the only piece of junk God ever made. Worthless
. Disgusting. But no, Camael was so, so beautiful, and they were the same image. She could have been that – but he could have been her too. And now what were they?
She yanked the rest of the glass off the wall and sent it skittering over the varnished wood. Nothing. She hurled the scissors after the glass. She didn't even deserve to exist.
She dropped to the floor shaking on broken glass and hugging her knees to her chest. Camael. Camael. Oh, God, why?
The music stopped.
She felt it arrive—present the way smog clings to the ground, delivered like a package with Divine fingerprints lingering all over its soul. Raising her head, she recognized a shade, a fraction of a human spirit. It studied her as one awakened in the watches of the night and unsure where he was.
"Yoram?" She reached out hands speckled with mirror shards. It drifted as if on the wind, but it neared her. Nothing but a soul longing for its body. But finished. Elect.
Remiel rocked on her knees as she embraced the shade against her heart. It had promised itself to something it didn't know, and now it was hers, so she gave it back to God. Dismissed, the spirit began dispersing, but it struggled to stay together. It reached for her, fingered her sharp-edged hair like a toddler touching its mother.
Remiel put her hand over his. "You didn't know." Her voice cracked. "I hadn't seen him. Hadn't seen him since—what he'd done to himself. But it's all right. I forgive you. Sleep in peace."
Remiel hugged the soul to herself until it finished fading back into Sheol. Cradling the boy in her arms among shards of glass and shorn hair, she finally let God inside her heart to share how much she grieved for half herself.
Wanderer
593 BC, Elul 29
"I love these!" Remiel hovered over a line of emperor penguins, her hands clasped at her chest. "Gabriel, quit admiring the permafrost and get over here!"
He looked up from the ice to see her drop to a stand behind one of the penguins and imitate its waddle.
Dobiel, the guardian angel of Persia, said, "How do they know where to go?"
Remiel said, "Why destroy the mystery of it? They know where they're going because they know."
Gabriel sifted some snow through his fingers, watching the way the miniature pieces fluttered back to the surface and re-compacted. Such dry air here – great for experimenting. He'd have to come back later.
Dobiel said, "Gabriel, do you know?"
"If you visit in the summer," Gabriel said, "the coastline is a lot closer to the nesting ground. They're making this trip repeatedly as the ice grows outward, so it's all familiar ground. It only looks unfamiliar to us because we haven't been making the journey every day." He shrugged. "What looks like wandering is very different when you're living it."
"You're destroying my fantasy," Remiel called from the line of penguins. "I like to think the Holy Spirit is leading them."
Gabriel said, "I never claimed He's not. Only that they're not working from a blank slate."
Again he paid attention to the multitude of snowflake forms, then snaked out his heart for Raphael.
Raphael dwelled in intense adoration directly before God, so in love he was actually burning. Raphael had opened wide his entire heart, showing God his whole self and offering everything he had even as he bubbled with joy.
The Spirit asked if Gabriel wanted to join, but Gabriel withdrew, shivering at the nakedness of that kind of union. He adored God too – of course, that went without saying – but when Raphael did that, just so open and vulnerable, well, that was private.
Remiel looked up. "Afraid?"
Gabriel said, "What?"
"I just got a sense of fear off you."
Gabriel shook his head. How odd that she picked up fear from him, not when he could see God just as well in created things as in contemplation. God was all around. Wasn't Remiel finding the imprint of God right now on those penguins?
Abruptly all three angels' attention was drawn toward the Divine Will, and Gabriel felt a summons. Making himself docile to the calling, he found himself drawn away from snow, away from linear time and into spiritual time. The Spirit drew him into the prayer-vision of a prophet in ecstasy.
Remiel's heart shadowed his until she separated from him and wrapped around Ezekiel in the Temple. The prophet was engaged in an ecstasy similar to Raphael's in Heaven.
Gabriel didn't coalesce in one place as much as gel into a vision of the Temple on Earth as a reflection of the Temple in Heaven. The proportions were the same but the sizes different, one rooted in space and the other encompassing all. Gabriel was located in Ezekiel's mind and in the Spirit and in the shared space between them.
Ezekiel fixed his attention on Gabriel, who took a place at the base of the Chariot of God. It wasn't so much a real structure as a mystical construct, untrue but more than true at the same time. God tended to use these pictures even though Gabriel would have preferred to use the real thing: just let the humans accept that some questions were mysteries.
Remiel kept Ezekiel's heart open toward the Spirit of God; she trained his attention on Gabriel, and Gabriel found himself represented as a man wearing white linen.
Steadying himself, he waited.
Gabriel's focus swept through the vision Ezekiel was seeing, looking at the likeness of a throne of sapphire over his head, and beneath that throne, he sensed the souls of other Cherubim. To Ezekiel's mind, they were represented as wheels, giving the universe its rotational force and at the same time moving only because of the power of the Almighty.
The Lord said to Gabriel, "Go in among the wheels beneath the Cherubim. Fill your hands with burning coals from among the Cherubim and scatter them over the city."
The city? Jerusalem.
Jerusalem had been degrading itself for generations, less and less worthy to be the City of God which housed the Holy Temple. Still, to destroy it like Sodom: it was a pity. No one here had ever harmed Gabriel directly, but what they'd done was worse. Although the Sodomites had attempted to harm a foreign woman, Jerusalem had been treating with even less hospitality the God who had been revealed to them in fire, in the law, and in their salvation.
As Ezekiel watched, Gabriel entered the wheels.
Gabriel took in the whole of Jerusalem, and he hesitated. What God was instructing would result in the city's destruction. Those coals would burn out the spiritual connection between Jerusalem and God, but like most visions this one had a connection to reality, and the city itself would burn. Just like Sodom. But surely there were ten good people in Jerusalem—?
God repeated, "Take fire from among the wheels, from among the Cherubim."
Probably God needed to make sure Ezekiel heard what was going on, and also to prompt him because he'd missed his cue. Gabriel knew how this sort of thing was supposed to go: Ezekiel needed to beg for mercy on Jerusalem, and then God would grant it because ever since the Exodus, God had given Jerusalem chance after chance. The Redeemer hadn't come yet, so there was no real chance God would destroy Jerusalem the way He had Samaria. God was giving Jerusalem a good scare, giving them a chance to learn and mend their behavior.
There would be suffering of course, but everyone knew souls learned and grew through suffering.
Moving alongside the throne, Gabriel took his place beside one of the Cherubim, and instead of stepping into the fire to gather coals, he extended his hand.
The Cherub within took up some of the fire and poured it into Gabriel's hands, and Gabriel went out into the Temple area where Ezekiel again could see him. In full view of the prophet, he scattered the coals over the city.
The Cherubim and the throne rose with a rushing, whispering sound, and the glory of the Lord departed from the threshold of the Temple.
The Spirit eased Gabriel out of Ezekiel's vision until he was once again standing with Dobiel and Remiel. But Remiel – Remiel looked terrified. At him. She was looking at Gabriel with horror.
The voice of the Lord spoke inside all three. "Remiel, Dobiel, return to me. Gabriel, stand bef
ore me this instant."
The three angels appeared before the Most High without hesitation, but Gabriel had gone tense. What was wrong?
God had shown him to Ezekiel. Go take the coals. Go scatter them over the city. He'd scattered the coals – he couldn't be punished for that. He'd taken the coals…
"Take your places," God commanded.
No, he hadn't taken the coals. He'd had a Cherub hand them out to him. A moment, just a moment, but a moment that gave the coals time to cool. He'd changed God's instructions.
All the Seven had assembled. Gabriel took a place beside Raphael, his wings touching the Seraph's. Raphael looked startled, only Gabriel didn't dare meet his eyes. God was using the same voice that had condemned humankind to struggle and death.
"Gabriel, approach."
He didn't look toward Raphael as he stepped forward, but he kept one wing touching him. Then he took another step and lost even that contact.
"You disobeyed."
A chill enfolded his body, like a hand over a glass figurine it didn't want to shatter.
God regarded him without saying anything.
Questions arose all around him, and Gabriel retreated inside his head. He had no plausible deniability here. He knew it. God had said to take the coals and destroy Jerusalem. And instead he'd spared Jerusalem on his own volition and his own authority.
But it didn't make sense—surely God hadn't wanted flaming destruction! God had to have wanted what Gabriel thought he had—another chance for Jerusalem, the continued covenant, their growth—
Gabriel stared back into Divinity, unblinking, unmoving.
"You aren't the first to try to stare me down, Gebher'el."
Gabriel bent forward, holding his wings close to his body and wrapping his arms around himself. "I'm not. But—" He could see it now—he'd heard one order and fulfilled what he thought that order should have been. But— "You can't," he said, "you wouldn't," because as a Cherub, he knew, "oh God, no—" what was coming.
Like a blink, the Vision of God closed from his sight.
Gabriel huddled in stillness. Paralyzed. His eyes dilated, but he couldn't see divinity. Just emptiness. In his heart, no sense of God.