by Jane Lebak
"What value could I possibly have?" Gabriel asked.
Tobias said, "You don't need your arm to teach."
Teacher
Sivan 22
Hi, God. It's good to be coherent again.
Tobias decided to keep me. He's a wonderful man, and I can understand why You chose him to be visited by Raphael with hundreds of other families in grave predicaments all over the world. By the way, it's fortunate that I can write with my right hand, otherwise this journal would stop for a few weeks. Although it galls me, I've become attached to writing. Father, chalk one up for Saraquael.
How do I feel? That's what I'm supposed to write about, and for the first time I have an answer: I'm in pain. My eyes bother me if I focus on close objects for too long, a category into which written characters neatly fit, so I take this slowly. My arm aches until I touch it, when it scales up to hurting. When they tightened the bandage this morning, I learned that some things can hurt so much you can't even breathe. I actually saw sparks.
This pain system is remarkably inefficient. If its purpose is to let me know something is wrong, it can stop now. I know: the bone broke. What's the point of the arm and the shoulder and the head whining at me, "We're still damaged. We're still damaged. We're still damaged"? It's like being surrounded by thirsty toddlers asking for water. Although maybe if it went away, I'd stop paying attention and injure it again, the way a man's conscience stops bothering him about habitual sin. Maybe a thousand years ago, my own conscience told me something once. Maybe I buried it, and maybe it should have kept singing, pestering me, reminding me. But I've lost track of the point.
So odd, this idea that the family intends to keep me around. There's ample reason to throw me out of the household: I'm as useless to them as I am to the other angels.
What an amazing family. They have the most lively trust in You that I've encountered so far. Tobias founded the whole family on You, and that makes it a true community.
Community. I guess I never really considered it vital to the soul. All the community I need is God: that was my working hypothesis. But there's more than one of us, so does that mean that interaction on a level is as necessary as vertical interaction to the Almighty?
It's a thought.
I never relied on my friends. We coexisted. I think they loved me, but it never occurred to me to wonder if I loved them. I do love them. I never needed them, never asked for help from anyone but Raphael, but now he's gone and the rest do more for me that I would have imagined. I didn't ask for any of it. It's not even necessary, but they've remained constantly—watching, if not visible.
How does that make me feel?
I'm not good at this, even after so long. Raphael always did the feeling for me. In a difficult situation, I took my cue from him. I can't do that now. But I guess it hindered me even then. I tried to be a team by giving him what I considered the 'dirty work' but what he loved to do. So I wasn't whole then, either, just leaning. Maybe I became more entire when You cut me off.
How does that make me feel?
Make me—feelings are compulsions: we don't have a choice. No one ever said, "I'll feel excited today." How does this make me feel?
Well, it feels good to ask that. I've never not had an answer before. A right answer. One I could debate, define, deduce. A premier experience, and I feel excited.
It denies my nature, though, or do I simply misunderstand myself? Even so, I'm not angelic any longer. I've become a man. Angels don't write journals. Angels don't get headaches.
Angels see God. Sometimes. Most of us.
But I've mislaid the point I wanted to make, that being my new-found community. Tobias and Raguel-junior and the whole family genuinely care about me, and it's all built on their service to You. It's a family that Raphael founded. He sowed; I reap.
Father God, I wish I hadn't left him then. I wish I hadn't acted so stand-offish. I think I was wrong then. I had no idea what it would be like being alone.
It's an exercise in lateral outreach. How does that make me feel?
Too much, too fast. You gave me a full year for this. I have time.
Sivan 23
Remiel sat on a writing desk in Tobias's study while Gabriel prowled the scrolls. "I have to admit," she said, "it does my heart good to watch you sort through this stuff. That way I don't have to."
Gabriel smiled. "There's so much here! But much as I'd like to spend the next months reading, what I really need is a guidebook on how to teach Hebrew to human children." What if someone had already written one? Would it be breaking the rules to have Remiel scour up one and deliver it overnight? "Teaching angels is easy: you explain, and they get it. Human brains require trickery, mnemonics, repetition, and all these other techniques I never really utilized before. You teach a child to spin by making him spin and eventually the muscles take over without conscious thought. But teaching a language?"
Remiel chuckled. "Better you than me."
Gabriel studied her until she arched her eyebrows. He said, "I agree."
"Hey!" Laughing, she fired an arrow of light right through him. It tingled where it passed. "You're mean. Michael! Gabriel's being mean to me!"
Michael appeared. "I'm sorry, what?"
Remiel dissolved in giggles, and Gabriel grinned. "She requires your defense."
Michael shook his head. "I'm on break now. You'll have to call a legion of Principalities instead." He looked at the scroll on the writing desk. "Should you be working your arm that much?"
Remiel said, "It's knitting a bit crooked, but otherwise fine. I bet Gabriel had no idea how resilient the human body was."
Gabriel huffed. "I could have lived forever without that knowledge, too."
Remiel made a face at him. "You need a sense of humor about it."
"You can afford to have a sense of humor about it because you're not living it." Then Gabriel paused. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't be bitter. I'm convalescing, and that's a new experience. That and living completely off the charity of others."
Michael said, "You're going to teach."
"They don't really need a teacher." Gabriel rolled through the scroll looking for a specific passage. "Although housing me in return for questionable services is of great merit to Tobias's soul, it's very frustrating to me. I shouldn't have snapped. Please forgive me."
She winked. "It's okay, Sport. I've been there."
Gabriel forced his gaze to Michael. "It's like that with you, too. You're always on call, and you're being a better friend to me than I would have been to you if positions were reversed. Thank you."
Michael's eyes widened. "You're welcome. I told you it's not a problem."
"Michael's great." Remiel turned to Michael. "I'm not just saying that to embarrass you."
Gabriel looked at her. "He's very non-assuming."
She said, "Whatever that means."
Gabriel frowned. "Does that make me assuming?"
She leaned forward. "And I really don't know what that means."
Gabriel leaned on the desk, but then his arm shot fire through the rest of him, and he jerked back. So easy to forget, but not easy to forget for a long time. "I'm always assuming something—usually right, always defendable. But Michael, you don't do that. You're sometimes wrong, sometimes right, always graced, and always God's. You make other people strong. I wish I could do that."
Michael shook his head. "Should I call Saraquael and host a little admiration party in my honor?"
Gabriel rubbed his arm. It still ached. "Well as long as I'm wishing, I'll also ask for Saraquael's knack for making people feel special and Uriel's utter acceptance of every soul."
Michael said, "But you bring people to know God. That's important too."
Gabriel had stopped moving through the scroll, just staring at a passage too complicated for teaching children. "But maybe… maybe whenever someone asked me to listen, I gave an analysis while you gave understanding and Saraquael gave undivided attention."
He took a seat. Why should it be so
hard to stand nowadays? His legs weren't hurt. "The thing is, that's what Cherubim do. We stay detached from our arguments and dismantle others' theories, and that's how we derive truth. It's not bad, except maybe I've done that at times that weren't appropriate, or made people re-define views they didn't want to re-define."
He looked up at Remiel. "You can't tell me that's not true."
She grimaced. "It's true."
He looked at Michael, who also said, "Well, yes."
He traced his fingers over the parchment. "You guys put up for centuries with someone who wouldn't back off from sensitive subjects and reacted to a confession by dissecting the speaker. That's not right. You have to knock the arrow out of the air."
Michael said, "Maybe you weren't quite that bad."
Gabriel said, "Maybe I can improve."
Remiel said, "You're a Cherub – define improvement. Goodness comes in so many styles that you'd go mad trying to combine them all."
Gabriel went back to scanning the text. "Cherubim have to detach ourselves from our arguments or else we'd get entangled in our own opinions and have a harder time finding truth. But what did it get me, except detached from God?" He rubbed his temples. "For a Cherub, I'm so stupid sometimes."
Michael knelt on the floor in front of Gabriel and rested his hands on top of Gabriel's. "No, you're being too hard on yourself. You grew in the wrong direction. You're making corrections now, and God's guiding them. You're going to be all right."
Gabriel leaned forward. "What if I forget what it's like seeing God?"
Remiel said, "You can't forget that. It's like existing. The Vision has nothing to do with you handling it correctly. It's not as though you'd blink and miss out on God Almighty."
Gabriel laughed out loud, and then he realized he was laughing and laughed even harder. "What if the Vision comes back and I miss it because I'm facing the wrong way?"
Remiel laughed too then. "Whoops! Too bad."
Michael squeezed his hands. "You're doing much better than you were. Now that you're making lesson plans for the children, you actually smile in your sleep. You always slept frowning before. And you've stopped referring to yourself as fallen."
Gabriel hesitated. "That's not a good thing. The demons don't refer to themselves as fallen either." He rubbed his chin. "So what am I if not semi-fallen?"
Remiel said to Michael, "Now you've done it."
"Buried?" Gabriel frowned. "Blinded?" He shook his head and said, "Hey, Raphael, I need an opinion."
And froze, with ice right through his heart.
That hurt. That hadn't happened for months.
He closed his eyes, but Remiel rushed to him. "Oh, I hated when I did that. I'm sorry. It just springs up on you."
Gabriel swallowed hard and tried to make the unshed tears stay unshed. "Raphael said Tobias did that right before burying Sarah, tried to ask her a question about her burial." He rubbed his eyes. "I'm sorry."
Remiel pressed her forehead against his. "It's okay. No, actually, it's not okay. It stinks. It truly does."
What are you doing now, Raphael? What kind of angel am I? Do you ever try to ask me something, or are you used to reaching for your other bonded Cherubim? Do you still pray for me? Did you see the sunset the other night, when all the sky turned pink except for some clouds that were utterly black on the tops and the sides but lifted blue along their bottoms? Have you written any music lately? Did you ever notice the way bees clean their faces when they sit, rubbing their front feet over the flat parts? I bet you never knew that just touching a tomato plant will leave your hands smelling like tomatoes for a few minutes. I wanted to show you that rock I hit with my shovel last month only to have it splinter into lots of flat sheets. I wanted to tell you that even after all these months I miss you like blazes, and I'm sorry I abandoned you.
But maybe you know that. I wanted to tell you all those things before I forgot them, only I can't save up all those moments to bring them to you any longer, and now when my first reaction to something is "Raphael would have loved to know that," I don't try to keep it in my mind. I'm sorry. Because somewhere in Heaven, I'm sure you're doing the same. And I hate that.
Sivan 27
With the side-effects of the concussion fading and Gabriel's eyes able to withstand brightly-lit places, he started teaching Tobias's grandchildren and the servants' children.
Every day, Gabriel awakened before sunrise and spent an hour with the Torah. One at a time, the children came to him after breakfast, and Gabriel taught them new words, new tenses, and old variants on new words. He threw in a few close-reading tips when they stumbled through a section of the Torah. With the older children, who already knew the Torah well, he had some difficulty convincing them not to recite from memory, so he tried to make it fun. He gave them scavenger hunts and pop quizzes and word puzzles.
Children were loud. Their high-pitched voices were perfectly designed to pierce right through his skull (Another design flaw, Father?) and he tired out quickly. On the other hand, repeated and constant exposure to a language they were already familiar with helped them pick it up a lot faster than he thought they would.
Teaching the children to read was a lot more fun. Gabriel used the Torah to demonstrate letters and words. He drew the characters with a brush on broken pottery shards or had them trace letters in the ground.
Satan appeared one morning as Gabriel listened to one of the children reciting in Hebrew, tapping his foot and smiling sharply. Gabriel's shifted his eyes without turning his head. A Seraphic warmth permeated the room, but this he ignored. The child continued without knowing about the new visitor.
"You're barred from direct contact with Raphael," said Satan in flawless Hebrew, "and none of the angels who call themselves your friends consent to shuttling messages. I alone know how you think at the moment, and I will ease your mind. I'll transport those messages for you and provide you and Raphael the consolation you require during your disgrace."
Gabriel's eyes narrowed, but he said nothing. The student continued reciting.
"I'm going now as a favor," said Satan. "I'll tell Raphael you pray for him and think of him often."
Gabriel had no time to object. Satan vanished.
Gabriel turned back to the student.
The message was true, no matter its origin. In all likelihood, Raphael wouldn't even consider responding. But the fact that Satan was trying this now when he'd never tried to approach Raphael before – did that mean he thought he had a chance? Could he really use Gabriel to nab Raphael?
Fallen bonded pairs always changed, manacled to one another's souls, hating each other the way they hated God, each blaming the other, each trying his best to deprive the other of every privacy. They'd work together because they had to, but they knew each other well enough to wound each other right down to the core. Insults. Resentment. Disgust.
Raphael. Hating him.
Gabriel shuddered, and he leaned against the table. The student stopped. "Are you all right?"
"Say it in Hebrew," Gabriel said.
Raphael wouldn't listen. He'd laugh Satan out of the choirs. The other angels would intervene.
Although they hadn't helped him when Satan came.
Satan was a Seraph too. What if he played up Raphael's Seraphic fervor and worked on the loneliness, on the separation—what if he did, and Raphael listened?
Gabriel shivered, at which the young student asked again (in Hebrew) if Gabriel felt all right.
Raphael, his Raphael, evil. That Gabriel from the dream had never left him, that vision of himself with a dark twist. Raphael should never have a dark twist, fiery with hatred and his eyes wild rather than Gabriel's would-be cold.
Gabriel said, "Look over the passage again. I'll be right back."
He walked from the room, from the house. No one stood outside, and no one watched. Raphael. A cold-eyed Cherub with black armor, and a disgusted Seraph filled with loathing.
Gabriel ran without thinking.
God, he pr
ayed, grab me!
He leaped into the air and transformed into an angel.
One panicked thought brought him to the ring of the Seven. His drawn sword blazed so brightly it blinded him.
Satan stood at the periphery of the ring by an empty space.
"Lucifer!" Gabriel used his momentum behind his descending sword. "No!"
Satan laughed and met Gabriel's sword with his own. The block jarred Gabriel's arm all the way to the shoulder as though he remained human.
"And you think you can stop me?"
Still airborne, Gabriel swung again. "Leave us alone!"
Satan might have done more than block Gabriel's strike, but suddenly a half-dozen angels clustered near. Michael and Raguel with their flashing swords, short-haired and golden-armored Remiel, Uriel with a stronger core than any of the Seven understood, Saraquael glowing white, and Dobiel who regarded Satan with disgust.
Satan's eyes had gone wide, but it was at Gabriel he stared. "You can't even see each other?"
"Go!" Flush with energy, Gabriel raised his sword. "In the name of God, leave!"
With a glimmer, Satan turned to the left. "He's living with—"
"No!" Gabriel unfurled all six wings and emitted a concussion forceful enough to silence the final words. The power knocked everyone backward, even Raguel. Satan vanished.
Gabriel's sword clattered to the ground, and he dropped to hands and knees, shaking. His weapon flickered where it lay.
Saraquael and Michael exchanged looks, glanced at the same point to Gabriel's left, and flashed away.
Gabriel's head dropped. "Please watch Raphael. Don't let him get fired up."
Raguel crouched near the Cherub. "We won't let that happen."
Gabriel visage had glowed when he'd arrived, but that energy dropped off. He turned his head by reflex to look at the Throne of God, just inside the circle of Seven…and saw nothing.
He crumpled to his knees, shivering with the memory of a smile and the glory he should have been able to see.
Uriel helped Gabriel to a stand. "Would we let Raphael leave? No. And you watch your own flame. You burn brightly yourself when you're needed."