by Jane Lebak
Gabriel curled tight, knees to his chest, hands over his face. Words popped into Michael's head: Can you stay? Please? Staining the words was fear, pure fear. Michael touched Gabriel's shoulder and squeezed.
Was it real?
"No," Michael whispered. "It was a dream, nothing more."
It wasn't just a dream, Gabriel sent. It was everything.
When Gabriel hadn't fallen asleep after another five minutes, Michael placed his palm over Gabriel's eyes and forced sleep on him.
Adar 17
Throughout the night Michael sat beside Gabriel, praying. Gabriel slept beneath a blanket, but Michael could outline his whole form, the way he lay on his left side, the lower leg at only a slight angle, the upper one positioned over it with his foot pointed down. He'd learned to manage the body, shifting so the curves met one another and stayed comfortable. Even while asleep he frowned, lines etched into his cheeks.
Just before dawn, Satan appeared.
He glanced at Michael with a smirk, although his hand shifted toward his sword.
Michael narrowed his gaze. "Why are you here?"
"Someone put a blade through the heart of one of my captains." Satan shook his head. "I couldn't believe it was one of these guardians, but it turns out they knew they were outclassed and sent for you instead."
The shepherds' guardian angels maintained quiet, but Michael felt their uneasiness. "You have no right to be here. He's got enough to deal with."
"I have every right to be here," said Satan, "and I know precisely what he's dealing with. Far better than you can."
Michael's words died in his throat.
"Although I admit," murmured Satan, "it must be harder for him, since the Tyrant played him along first with all the love-patter and nonsense. He hasn't yet given up hope." Satan shook his head. "It's really a shame, but that's His tactic."
Abruptly Michael felt his senses invaded by images pushed on him from Satan. Before he could reject them, he realized he was seeing as if through Gabriel's eyes. Gabriel's dream: Gabriel entering a room empty except for one figure: an angel armored in black metal with a red cape, black and red jewels, a diamond-encrusted silver sword, and a black helmet with metal framing his eyes.
Oh, God, no, Michael prayed. That's not right.
Jagged shadows gashed over the demon's high cheekbones, the narrow chin, the finely chiseled nose. The eyes and mouth were set with contempt, and the gauntleted hands hovered over the hilt of both the sword and a curved dagger. The leather boots shone with rubies and blood. The demon commanded an intense power. Michael realized Gabriel had watched, entranced, for a long time.
"Who are you?" Michael heard himself ask with Gabriel's voice.
"I'm you," said the figure. "I've always been you."
No wonder Gabriel had awakened screaming. Michael pushed off the intrusive thoughts, glaring at Satan, who only laughed.
"May God strike you," he whispered. "That was totally unnecessary. We saw that happen to too many of us."
"What would you have been, Michael, evil?" Satan paced around the outside of the tent, swallowing the tiny camp with his stride. "Nothing. Spit and dust. You're such a minor Archangel, you'd command nothing. Gabriel, now, he would have had power, but you—?" One of the shepherds' guardians drew closer, and Satan chuckled again. "We wouldn't have noticed you at all. But Gabriel . . . "
Satan conjured the image of the dark Cherub to stand before himself: the dark prince, hardened and cold, angry, choked by ice of the heart. It turned toward Michael, then glared at the guardians (who looked even more upset now), but then it looked at the sleeping Gabriel. Grey eyes like knives, the mouth a permanent sneer. The thing loathed him.
Michael's fists clenched, but Satan embraced the thing, then held it at arm's length to inspect. "This is the Gabriel I like to see! Mine, all his devotion set on me. Loyal to me, and only to me. Those dark eyes smolder with ambition in my name. With Gabriel on our side, we might just have defeated you."
Michael trembled. "You didn't."
The morning glow on the high plain began to turn into sunrise. Michael looked at Gabriel and made certain he would sleep a little longer.
Satan dissolved the image of the evil Gabriel and seated himself again inside the tent. "He's mine. It's only a matter of convincing him." Satan looked into Michael as if he could see right through him. "Are you now regretting the worst bargain you made in your life?"
The guardians glanced at him.
"God allowed it." Michael's wings shivered. "I told you to go back to Hell."
"I'm just so persuasive." Satan cocked his head. "And really, thank you so much for upholding the terms God agreed to on your behalf. You've been most helpful."
Michael itched for his sword, but God reassured him.
Gabriel stirred.
"You're going to lose this battle." Satan's green eyes swept over the sleeper. "I've got his attention, and he wants me."
Smirking, he vanished.
That wasn't really a bargain, Michael prayed.
Months ago, just after Gabriel's Vision had been stripped, Satan had approached God's throne and said, "Gabriel. I want him."
Saraquael had been standing closest, and using his voice, God said, "Gabriel chose to be with me, not you."
Satan had said, "Clearly he's in the process of un-choosing, and in the interests of justice, he should be with me." Michael had told him to go back to Hell, but Satan insisted. Again Saraquael had delivered God's reply: "Unless Gabriel chooses to leave, he is mine."
Satan had said, "In that case, I demand a fair chance to have him make a free choice." God had asked for terms. Satan said, "I want access. Let me speak to him without You protecting him."
And again, Saraquael had delivered God's answer: "Access is yours, only if he sends you away, you must go."
Satan had said, "And these—" with one sweep of his hand taking in Michael and the other angels, "—can come only if he calls them, and they cannot warn him in advance."
And God had agreed, "They will intervene only if he calls. But then you will have to leave." With those concessions, Satan had left the ring of Seven.
So no, not a bargain. More as if God had capitulated. With Gabriel in this state, Satan had been sure to attack. He'd merely approached God for sanction.
Satan had studied Gabriel for two weeks before striking.
Michael shivered, remembering the conversations related by the local angels, the way Satan had altered the weather for days to make it frigid, the times he'd hungered to charge in and tell Satan to leave, the demon's smug satisfaction whenever he ended the meetings, the third night when Remiel had been hollering at God and Uriel pleading in prayer trying to win Gabriel the grace to tell Satan to just leave, but Gabriel never called, so they couldn't interfere. Never had Michael imagined Gabriel would have listened, would have conceded as much as he did. And then, like the dawn of grace, that fourth night when Gabriel sent Satan away and buried himself entirely in a man's body.
Gabriel squinted and stretched, then breathed deeply.
Crouching again, Michael touched Gabriel as he opened his eyes. The Cherub focused long-distance as if by reflex, and abruptly he gasped, then deflated.
Michael bowed his head. Gabriel did this every time he awakened.
A few minutes later, Gabriel sat upright, casting his gaze about for a moment before Michael realized what was wrong and made himself visible.
"You stayed," whispered Gabriel, abruptly smiling.
Smiling? No, he was beaming. Michael moved closer, and Gabriel laughed with relief. He kept it soft, though, because of Jacob and Zachary.
Gabriel slipped out of the tent. "Go take a break," he told the twin shepherds, and they headed away. Gabriel stirred up the fire and then checked on the sheep.
Michael followed. "Good morning."
"That's debatable." Gabriel gave a wave of his hand. "The social conventions of hospitality demand I offer you something to eat, but I also realize it's futile."
Michael laughed. "You're hospitable enough, don't worry."
Gabriel spoke rapidly as he walked around the animals to bring the stragglers back. "I'm sure this is of less interest to you than it is to me, but a few of these animals have definite personalities, and I need to work with those specially to keep them from leading the rest of the flock into trouble. Kind of like some human souls, I've discovered." Gabriel shrugged as he called one of the ewes. "They don't all have their own names, but some of them you just get to know after a while."
Gabriel's spirit sparkled as he spoke, and Michael leaned in to listen. He so seldom talked this way. "Are you doing all right?"
"It's an adventure in some ways." Gabriel stopped in his tracks as he thought. "God's still giving me little lights and graces, which is a huge surprise, but I have to work to recognize them. Sometimes it's been a while and then I wonder whether He's stopped sending them or if I've just stopped listening. Every day is a package, gift-wrapped in a way by the ribbon of the rising and setting of the sun."
Michael grinned. "Saraquael would like that image."
"I think it was his image to begin with." Gabriel shook his head. "Sometimes I'm glad for the new experiences, but then I consider all I've lost, and I don't think I'm going to make it through."
For an instant Gabriel turned older, the life gone from his face, but then he gathered himself and Michael could no longer see the emotion in his human features.
"You haven't lost everything." Michael felt hollow, like a bell with no clapper. "You kept a lot more than you thought you could."
"I'm missing the glue that gives the world meaning." Gabriel wrapped his arms around his stomach. "Without God the world becomes a parade that glorifies nothing."
"But God isn't lost either." Oh, for Saraquael's way with words, or Uriel's steadiness, or at least a second voice to back him up. Michael bit his lip and brought his wings closer to his body. "He's just misplaced."
Michael started when Gabriel burst out laughing.
"How can someone misplace something infinitely large and omnipresent?" Gabriel snickered. "I'm the one who's misplaced."
Michael said, "You can stay with us still, you know. You're not lost if you don't want to be."
"I think I'm pretty much here for now." Still chuckling, Gabriel got down on his knees and roughed up one of the ewes, who head-butted him. "They're starting to shear the sheep, and I learned the most amazing thing: I'm no good at it. Not even a little." Michael laughed out loud, and Gabriel grinned. "Zachary or Jacob take a flint knife, secure the sheep, and fleece the thing in under a minute. Me?" He grinned. "The first time, Jacob grabbed me by the arm as if I were Abraham with Isaac, trying to save the sheep's life. The second sheep was perfectly safe but needed re-shearing. The third took twenty-six times as long to shear as it should have. By the end, even the sheep was bored. There was no fourth sheep. Zachary suggested I make myself useful sorting fleeces, and that," he added with relief, "I could do."
Michael laughed, then wondered whether Gabriel meant that as a joke.
Gabriel rubbed the ewe behind the ears, but his voice grew strained. "It's ironic, because being here is teaching me more every day than I would have learned in Heaven during the same time. Isn't that the ultimate gift God could give a Cherub?" Gabriel looked Michael in the face. "And do you know what?""
Michael leaned forward.
"It doesn't help at all." His voice cracked. "Even when I'm learning, I know it's something I shouldn't have been here in the first place to learn."
Michael had nothing to offer now. Not even comfort.
Gabriel stood away from the ewe. "I apologize. I shouldn't burden you with my own musings. It will end eventually. Years passed in Heaven without my noticing. No matter how useless it is, my heart keeps beating and my lungs keep working. My body lives, so I'll follow its example."
Michael moved toward Gabriel as if to carry him back to Heaven. "You can return to us. Come with me." He swallowed, thinking, Isn't it better than waking up in the middle of the night talking to him?
"You keep saying that." Gabriel looked at the flock as they picked over the field. "I'll feel the same no matter what the locale. Here I might end up being useful."
Michael touched Gabriel's arm. "Make me useful too. Tell me what you need. I can't reverse God's judgment, but if you had to choose, what one thing can I give you to help?"
Gabriel didn't say anything at first, but Michael could feel him pondering. Of course: ask a Cherub a complicated question, even a Cherub living in a human body, and you weren't going to get an unconsidered response. More than any answer Gabriel could give, this meant Gabriel himself didn't know what would help. So Michael shadowed Gabriel while he did his morning's work, neither of them speaking but at the same time sharing a togetherness more important than speech.
Finally, as if no time at all had passed between question and response, Gabriel answered. "Memory," he said. "Ask God for me to remember before I wake up, that way every day doesn't begin with a shock."
Adar 27
I'm not doing enough with this year. I've given Him permission to remake me or even destroy me, but since He hasn't taken me up on the offer, I assume He plans another course of action. After all, the one who bears the blame in this situation is me, so it's not fitting that God shoulder the work to fix it. The severity of the sentence indicates that I can discount it as completely a punishment for disobedience. I don't doubt that's the occasion of the chastisement, but God frequently works with a two-fold agenda. It's not unreasonable to assume He has a secondary goal besides merely cramming it into my mind that orders get fulfilled to the letter.
In the past we've seen a severe punishment meted out for a small offense when God wants to work down the damage from other offenses, such as how God punished Moses for striking the rock twice at Meribah. Usually the secondary offenses take the form of illicit services performed in His name which He wouldn't reprove at the time, but which required justice nevertheless. The wrongful action itself was not intended to be hurtful.
If that's the case with me, then I should hypothesize potential secondary offenses: based on the isolation part of the punishment, I'll assume it's either my blaming Michael for the attack at Sodom, or else my distance from Raphael when he became Azariah.
I didn't consider my actions harmful either time, and I still don't, but were they hurtful? I never sinned, so direct punishment would have been inappropriate. I stand by my actions, though, because I wasn't wrong either time. Once I recovered from the attack at Sodom I made it clear that I didn't hold Michael at fault. So it must be the Azariah business.
At any rate, what should I learn by living here?
Whatever it is, it ought to contribute to my ultimate purpose, whatever task it is God created me specifically to do. Which, if I knew what it was, would tell me what I needed to add to myself or remove in order to achieve it better. But lacking a destination, it's hard to nail down how exactly to arrive.
I suppose I have to discern that part. God will provide the stimulus, but He holds me responsible for maximizing my response.
Nissan 2
During his watch, Gabriel turned to find an Angel inches from his face.
Jumping backward, he gasped.
The Angel glowed softly but shed no light on the field. An apology; the Angel hadn't meant to surprise him.
Surprised. Sometimes Gabriel hated these limited senses.
The Angel moved close enough that Gabriel's breath would have touched him had the angel been in a body. He fought the urge to back away, wondering when he'd acquired the sense of a personal sphere, but at the same time reading the angel's unspoken words. Distress, introduction, Saul's image in Gabriel's mind, death, and then a question.
Sorting the impulses, Gabriel took a deep breath. In human terms—an angel wouldn't have needed to translate, but here it was: Saul's guardian angel, distressed because Saul was dying, nervous about what would happen next, wanting help.
&nbs
p; Gabriel put forward a query, a sense of his own rootedness, another query.
The Angel replied only by repeating the sense of distress—an unformed, urgent need.
Gabriel looked at the sheep. The Angel reached for his hand.
He pulled away and went to Zachary. "Get up. It's your turn."
As the shepherd got to his feet, Gabriel took the Angel's hand, and he shifted into his angelic body.
His senses exploded, a gush like the blast at the bottom of a waterfall. The Angel carried him with a thought back to Saul while Gabriel tried to recover his bearings.
As the guardian crouched over a bed, Gabriel realized he was in Saul's house, surrounded by Saul's servants and family. The guardian touched his charge, then looked up, eyes hollow.
Gabriel moved near them, still uncertain what the Angel thought he could do, why he was here at all. In fact, he realized, every angel in the household was waiting on him.
This wasn't his specialty. If Saul had needed truth revealed, Gabriel would have done it without hesitation, but there was no truth to be absorbed now. He rested his hands on the man's soul to feel for any pervasive sin, but he couldn't detect anything blocking the flow of grace. Little faults, nothing extraordinary.
Demons tried to enter the room. The household guardians kept them at bay. Saul's guardian cuddled around Saul. A moment after, Gabriel felt a sweet vibration passing between the two of them, two souls harmonized to one another, the guardian woven around and through the human's soul, the two in tandem stronger than the one alone.
The guardian touched Saul's soul, stroking it, and a moment later Gabriel realized the guardian was speaking so subtly that no one other than the man and God could understand it all.
A bond. Gabriel tried not to think it, but now that he'd noticed it, he kept noticing it: an angel/human bond, a oneness that shouldn't be separated, and here he was alone and separated from Raphael.
He turned away, saw the other guardians watching him, became overly-conscious of himself: dimmer, weaker. Trembling. Alone.