by Justin Bloch
“They are…” he struggled to find a way to put what he was feeling into words, his hand twirling in the air in front of him. “Hard to keep track of.”
She seemed to consider this for a moment, then nodded. He was enchanted with this girl. Her song played endlessly through his head.
“Anyway, I do like it here. It gives me a great sense of pride to know that I am trusted to keep and hold the Pearly Gates. I am the very first person a soul sees when they come to Heaven. Not the Source, not choirs of angels, not even their departed loved ones. Me. I shape their first experiences of this world. And perhaps even more important than that, I stand between the Silver City and any who would seek to attack it. I know it’s not very likely that an assault will ever be mounted here where defeat would be so certain, but it’s not impossible. This is the only entrance to Heaven and the fact that it has been placed in my care, that I have been given the title of Gatekeeper, fills me with an immense feeling of pride.” She was quiet for a few moments, the soft susurrus of the waves against the steps the only sound between them. “And I love the sea,” she went on. “I love being close to the water like this, to never have to leave it behind. I was born on an island and water has always been close to my heart. I can’t sleep well without being able to hear the lap of waves against the beach and I don’t feel right when I’m not near. Here, no matter what time of the day it is, I have merely to turn and the sea spreads out before me. So yes, I do like being Gatekeeper. I love it, in fact, and it is crushing me that it has to end.”
He looked at her, confused, but she avoided his gaze. The pain on her face was so intense that he had the urge to take her in his arms, to take this stranger and promise her that everything would be okay, that he would make everything okay. “What do you mean?” he asked in his soft voice. “Why does it have to end?”
“They’re taking it away from me, that’s why,” she spat, the music in her voice fleeing like a mouse dropped accidentally from the mouth of a cat. When Sol jerked back in surprise, he saw the hurt on her face magnify. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to take it out on you,” she whispered, hanging her head. He could see wetness glittering at the corners of her eyes.
“But why?”
She was silent, looking out over the inky, slowly rolling waves of the sea. He put a tentative, trembling hand on her shoulder, sighed inwardly when she made no move to shrug it off. He could feel the smoothness of her skin through the white, diaphanous gown she wore. He wondered what was happening to him, how, after eons of existence, he was only feeling this longing for the first time.
“It has been ordained,” she began, then paused, taking a deep breath before going on. “It has been ordained that a disciple of the Son, the Resident known as Peter, shall take over watch of these Gates when he leaves that world for this. I am being replaced.”
Sol considered this carefully. He wasn’t good with words and was aware of it. Nova was the only person he spoke to with any regularity or at any great length, and even then they mainly stuck to the safe topics such as their profession or Residents. His sister often brought up the karma policeman’s emotions, how he felt about various things, trying to draw him out, but he had built up walls over the many years of his life, and not even she, who knew him better than any other, was able to find a crack in their construction. Sol was not of the opinion that words could help him more than a little, and he had grown silent because of it. Now, he struggled for something consoling to say like a novice juggler trying to keep all of the balls in motion and airborne for more than a few seconds at a time.
Luckily, Bertha went on before he became too frustrated with his lack of ability. “I don’t know what I’ll do if I don’t have this,” she moaned. “I have nowhere to go. I have nothing of my own. I won’t be able to stay here, in the Silver City. I’ll be like…like a feather being rushed along by the current of a stream, with no choice about where I may be carried.” The anger flashed across her pretty features once more and she slapped the sea suddenly, her hand cracking against the water and sending crystal droplets through the air. The sound was loud in the still night air, and two gulls that had been asleep and bobbing up and down over the waves cawed in annoyance and took off for a quieter location. There was pain, in Bertha’s eyes and sketched over her face, and the karma policeman saw how he himself must have looked when he’d confessed his rage to Nova over the seemingly hopeless Residents.
He remained silent at first, letting her calm down some on her own. After a few moments, the Gatekeeper propped her elbows on her knees and lowered her head into her hands, her hair hanging about her face. In the moonlight her skin looked like alabaster and the policeman pushed away an impulse to run his fingers across the smooth lines of her exposed bicep. The neckline of her gown had slipped during her outburst, and he realized that he could see the curve at the top of one breast, her skin lightly freckled across her sternum. He looked away, guilty, and noticed that the hem of her dress now floated in the waves, the water slowly soaking up toward her knees.
“It’ll be okay,” he murmured in his strange, soft voice, not really knowing if it was true. “You needn’t fret too much.”
“You don’t understand,” she said. “I don’t have anywhere to go. The Pearly Gates are my home and they are stealing them away from me. And when I leave, I don’t know what will become of me.”
“What about your family? On the island where you were born? You could go back there.”
“They’re gone,” she said simply, her head dropping lower. Sol thought he heard tears in her words, and he slid closer to her and draped an arm around her shoulders. Her body was cool and he could feel the steady rhythm of her breath even as the rhythm of his heart sped up. “I am the last of my family. The island is long abandoned.”
“Then why not stay here, in the Silver City?”
“I will not be welcome among the angels.” She paused, then said with a tone of reproachful satisfaction, “They fear me.”
Sol’s lips pressed together, and he withdrew his arm from around her. He was suddenly very aware of the fact that he knew next to nothing about Bertha, that he had never asked anyone why an Inhabitant had been made guardian of the Gates. Inhabitants were mortal, susceptible to temptation, and could be dangerous. And Bertha was apparently so dangerous that she scared the angels. “Who are you?” he whispered. “What are you?”
She rose to her feet in one graceful motion and climbed a few steps above him. He turned to watch her, his neck craned upward. The moon sat full in the sky across from her, and she stood draped in its light. She looked down at him with a bright intensity, and he realized what she was going to do and his breath caught in his throat. Her lips parted and a song once more flowed from within her. The notes were clear and crisp and perfect and there was a beauty in what she sang unlike any he had ever before known. It was like listening to a flawless painting, like the sound of the splendor of true love. The song eclipsed even her previous one; the karma policeman’s head swirled with the power of it. He recognized with no real dismay that, with every word she sang, he was slipping further and further into some sort of trance. He wanted to go to her, to do anything for her, to be hers unconditionally. His skin began to glow, and he understood that he was very close to losing his grasp on this form, exposing his true, fiery essence, and he fought to regain some of his control.
He watched in growing amazement as the Gatekeeper’s body shivered and a pair of wings extended from behind her open arms, the feathers dark and thick like those of a raven. She spread them to either side of her, the moon casting a dull luster on their span, and her voice crescendoed in a final stirring, stunning note. She fell silent, her face pointed at the starry sky, and the karma policeman sat staring up at her, shocked, his mouth agape.
Bertha the Gatekeeper was a Siren.
Chapter XV
“I am the last of my kind,” the Gatekeeper said, still standing above the karma policeman, who had not yet recovered from the shock of learning what s
he really was. “The rest of them, my sisters, my mothers, my grandmothers…they are all gone. When I die, the Sirens will be no more. Vanished forever from the worlds.” She paused, her eyes flicking away from the sea and to his face. “Do you know what it’s like, detective, to know that you are utterly alone, that you have no one to call kin, and that when you die your race will be forgotten?” Sol remained quiet, and when Bertha went on, her voice had grown rough as stone “No, I suppose you wouldn’t. The angels do not fear death, they merely deal it.”
He did not speak. He knew what she was alluding to, but there was nothing he could say to assuage her anger because there was nothing he could do to change the past. Long ago, the Sirens had been wiped out by the Emerald, the group of angels responsible for the security of the Silver City. Not a single Siren had been left alive; no one had been spared, no matter their age. Bertha, Sol knew, had been installed as Gatekeeper long before that, but he wondered why she had been shown mercy. The Sirens had been massacred because they constituted a threat and the idea had been to rid the worlds of them.
“Your kind were dangerous, Bertha,” he said softly, using the same tone of voice that he would were he explaining that kittens were soft and circles round. “Together, the Sirens could have taken the Silver City with almost no resistance whatsoever. All they would have had to do would be to make their way here and sing. It would all be over, they’d have taken Heaven.” He thought of the trance he had slipped into when she had revealed her wings, deep enough that he’d nearly lost his grip on himself. He had been defenseless before her and never sensed any peril. “Even the angels can’t stand against your song. And they are the only protection Heaven has.”
“That’s not true, detective,” she murmured, and glared at him, her face twisted ugly by spite. “Do I not protect Heaven? Am I not Gatekeeper?” And there, imperfectly hidden just beneath her anger, the karma policeman could see a deep hurt within her, a pain at the loss of her family and at his decision to side with the Emerald. He didn’t think he had misread her while they talked, she had felt the same stirrings of attraction for him as he had for her. Her wings, which had been folded neatly behind her, shivered and withdrew into her back between her shoulder blades, hidden once more from view.
The seraph stood. His long jacket hung lifeless and dark around him. Bertha was perched only one step above him now and the karma policeman looked into her eyes. They were beautiful, the color of the ocean, and a whisper of her song slipped through his head. He forced it away. “You are a Siren as well, Bertha. You could not reasonably be expected to stand against your own kind.” As he spoke, he watched the last of her warmth for him disappear like ice in the sun. Whatever they had been creating between themselves, it was gone now.
“I was given this position by the Source, detective,” she seethed from behind clenched teeth. “It judged me worthy and ordained that I be given the responsibility, and I have stood by these Gates since their creation. It judged that I would be able to keep and guard the Gates, that I had the power. And I do. I have kept my vigil here for millennia and not a single being has slipped by me. Think of the defense I provide! Even the Source’s precious angels aren’t immune to my song.” She paused in her tirade, staring at him. The breeze picked up again and sent her hair streaming behind her. “I am Bertha the Gatekeeper before anything else, detective, even before I am Bertha the Siren. None can stand before me should I not wish it.”
“The Sirens were dangerous. They were a threat to the welfare of—”
She cut him off, slashing the air as if her hand were a blade. “They were no threat. They had existed for thousands of years before someone took it into their minds that at some point they might rise up. They threatened nothing. And now, because of the lies spread by the angels, I am forced to hide my wings and my identity, so that none will know me for what I am and despise me for it.” She spat the last words like an epithet, then pushed by him to stand with her feet dipped in the Shimmering Sea. The karma policeman turned to her, but she stood resolutely with her back to him and her arms crossed over her chest. “Go,” she whispered hoarsely. Her breathing was ragged. “I don’t want you here.” When he didn’t move, she half-turned to him, her eyes narrowed dangerously. “Go.”
He tarried a moment more despite her words. He wanted to say something, to apologize, to tell her he understood why she was so upset. He wanted to put his hands on her shoulders and ask for her forgiveness for what his kind had done to hers. He wanted to, but he did not.
He spun on one heel and climbed the steps quickly enough to send his jacket floating out behind him. He strode through the Pearly Gates just as they began to close. They clanged shut behind him, and he thought of looking back to see if she watched him, but walked on instead. His pride was deep and ingrained, too established to be broached. He had lived in solitude for thousands of years and he could continue to do so, if need be. He left the pier and folded into the long shadows cast by the sleeping city, and if he felt any dismay at the return of his turmoil over the Residents, the turmoil that had disappeared while he had been talking with Bertha, he hid it.
On the day of the ascension of the Son, the skies of the Silver City were so choked with tickertape that it seemed as if the metropolis was experiencing its first ever cloudy day. The streets thrummed with activity as angels rushed hither and thither to reach their appointed positions or to finalize preparations. There was to be a great feast and costume ball in the central park that evening and the revelry was not expected to finish until well into the next night.
The Son was scheduled to arrive just before sundown. He would come alone, carried in one of the sailboats which ferried all souls to the Gates. The disciples would follow shortly thereafter, grouped together in the boats. When the Son reached the pier, he would wait at the bottom of the steps for his followers, and once they had all arrived, they would ascend the steps together and pass beyond the Pearly Gates and into Heaven.
All except for one.
Peter would not continue on with his friends. He would instead assume the role of Gatekeeper and would, for the remainder of eternity, protect the Silver City from harmful or malicious intent. He would greet the dead and usher them into Heaven. And he would replace Bertha who, Sol had no doubt, would fade quietly into the background and leave Paradise, returning to the Library where she would finish her solitary life.
The karma policeman had other ideas, however, and he meant to see them through. He stalked through the city, hardly noticing the angels bustling by him on either side as they made frantic last minute preparations. Many yelled at him as he refused to give way and they were forced to swerve out of his undeviating path. He ignored their cries. He sought a single seraph in a metropolis teeming with angels, and there was no way to tell where she might be, not today, when she would be in no particular place for any extended period of time. He had to locate her though; he had given himself no choice in the matter. Bertha’s fate rested on him now.
He had been so fraught with guilt the previous night after his meeting with the Gatekeeper that he hadn’t been able to sleep once he’d made his meandering way back to his home. He’d done his best to convince himself the encounter meant nothing to him, but with little success. His mind had refused to quiet, and he spent the entire night wondering why he’d felt it so necessary to defend the actions of the Emerald when, for the most part, he himself did not even care for the pompous guards of the Silver City. But defend them he had. The stupidity of it astounded him.
For some reason, he had thought that if he could just explain to her why the Sirens had been killed, she would see the light on the subject, see why it had to be done. The Sirens were known for their strong family bonds and their great desire for companionship. They detested loneliness and solitude, but he had thought that with the proper explanation, all of that would become moot. It was true what the Emerald said: the Sirens were the most dire threat to the safety of the Silver City. But Bertha also had an interesting truth to share,
and Sol thought that Bertha’s might even trump the Emerald’s. Because although the Sirens might one day have decided to attack the Silver City, they had never so much as whispered of an assault in the eons of their existence. When the karma policeman thought about that fact, he felt his heart swayed toward the Gatekeeper’s side. Speculation was not justification for murder.
And it was not fair, what was happening to her. She had held the Pearly Gates since their creation and never once deviated from her duty. That she should be cast away as just another Inhabitant was unthinkable. And for whom, one of the Twelve (and how Sol despised the incessant fives and sevens that determined so much)? A Resident who did not even have any means of defense, as a Siren did? Bertha had served the Silver City well and she deserved better. Sol intended to give it to her.
The only way he could think to do that, however, was to appeal to the captain of the Emerald. He had met her on only a few occasions, but he knew her by impressive reputation. She had been the one who had led the angels against the Morningstar in the Elysian War after all, and to victory. Today, with the return of the Son, she could be anywhere in the metropolis, making sure nothing was amiss or afoot, making sure the Son was protected.
Sol stopped outside of the Glass Palace, his hands in the pockets of his dark jacket. He’d had no luck finding the captain, and he had run out of options. He had already checked the Son’s scheduled route, the towers that bordered the route, and the area where the celebration would be held. He could think of only one other place the captain was likely to be, and he dreaded going there to seek her out. But the sun already hung low in the sky, and the walls of the Glass Palace had begun to darken toward navy. The karma policeman remained where he was for a moment, taking in the elegance and beauty of the palace. His head craned back, he gazed up at the stained glass-tipped tower jutting into the sky. It was backlit by the sun and shone like a kaleidoscope. Sol’s eyes traced the spire to its sharp tip before he returned his attention to the matter at hand and began to make his way toward the pier, where the Son would soon be arriving, and where Bertha spent her last hours as Gatekeeper.