by Cynthia Hand
“Like I said, she’s taking us camping, and you’re invited. We’ve got tents and sleeping bags and even those metal poles you roast hot dogs on.”
“I don’t understand,” Angela says. Her gaze flits to the window. “It’s snowing.”
“So true. I don’t understand either, believe me,” I say. “So are you coming camping with us or not?”
In less than ten minutes she’s packed a duffel and is seat-belted into the back of our SUV, looking like she’s had a few too many cups of coffee, she’s that jittery. To some extent, Angela is always this way around my mom. It has something to do with her never knowing any other angel-bloods before she met us. Certainly she’s never had an adult angel-blood to look up to, just her quiet, broody, fully human mom with all her religious beliefs, who right now is standing on the boardwalk waving good-bye with tears in her eyes, like she’s afraid she’ll never see Angela again.
Mom rolls down the window. “It’s all right, Anna. I’ll bring her back to you safe and sound.”
“Yeah, it’s fine, Mom,” Angela mutters, embarrassed. “I’ll be home Sunday night.”
“Yes, okay,” Anna says in a low voice. “You have a good time.” It’s quiet on the drive into the mountains. Jeffrey turns the radio on, but Mom lowers the volume so we can barely hear it. Then we wind our way up a series of hairpin turns, the road narrowing to a single lane, one side cut against the sheer rocky face of the mountain, the other dropping to a ravine below. I wonder what would happen if we came upon somebody on the way down. Finally, after more than an hour, the road levels into a small turnout. Mom pulls over and parks.
“This is as far up as we go in the car. We’ll have to hike from here.” She gets out. We’re met by a blast of absolutely freezing air as we open our doors to grab our packs from the back.
We stand for a minute staring at the trailhead and the distant ridges of the mountain over the treetops.
“At least it stopped snowing,” Jeffrey says.
Mom leads us into the fresh powder, followed by Jeffrey, then Angela and me walking side by side. The snow on the trail is halfway up our boots. We walk for a long time. The air seems to get thinner. The whole trip reminds me of the time Mom brought me to Buzzards Roost when I was fourteen, where she told me about the angel-bloods and flew out across the valley to prove that she was serious. I wonder what she’s going to reveal to us this time.
After a couple of hours of monotonous trudging, Mom turns off the trail and toward a deeply wooded part of the forest. It’s colder here, darker, in the shade of the towering pines. The snow is much deeper off the trail, sometimes almost to the knees. Within minutes I am chilled to the bone, shivering so violently that my hair pops loose from its ponytail. Beside me, Angela suddenly slips and falls, getting herself completely covered with snow. I reach down to help her up.
“Bet you’re wishing you’d given this whole camping trip thing a bit more thought,” I say through chattering teeth. Her nose and cheeks are bright pink, almost clownlike against her shock of black hair.
“We’re supposed to have an immunity to cold,” she says with her eyebrows drawn together, like she just can’t figure out why it’s not working.
From ahead of us, Mom barks with laughter.
“Sometimes, Angela,” she says, not without affection, “you really are full of crap.” Angela’s mouth opens in shock for a second, but then Mom keeps laughing, and it quickly spreads to the rest of us, even Angela.
“I read it in a book,” she protests. “Seriously.”
“It’s when you use glory,” Mom explains. “Glory keeps you warm. Otherwise, I’m reasonably certain you could freeze to death.”
“Like now, for example,” I chime in.
“Okay,” says Angela sheepishly. “I’ll have to write that down. Just as soon as I can make my hands work again.”
“It’s not much farther,” Mom promises. “Hang in there.”
Sure enough, after another ten minutes of miserable progress in the snow through the deep woods, Mom stops us. She lifts her head and smells the air, smiles in a kind of serene way, then tells Jeffrey to make a sharp right turn.
“There,” she says, pointing to a narrow gulley a bit farther down the mountain. “We need to go through there.”
Jeffrey leads the way, taking us down the slippery trail until he stops so suddenly that Mom almost crashes into him. His pack slips from his shoulder. Mom grins, a tired but triumphant gloaty expression, and steps aside to let Angela and me pass through so we can see what they’re looking at. Then we stop too, our mouths dropping open, our own packs dropping to the ground.
“Holy. .,” breathes Jeffrey.
Yep. That’s the right word.
It’s some sort of meadow, a vast, flat stretch of land surrounded on two sides by mountains, the third edge a beautiful shining lake that’s clear enough that you can see the landscape reflected back perfectly. A few feet from where we’re standing the snow disappears, becoming instead a long, soft grass, so green it almost hurts the eyes to look at it after so many hours of white on white. It’s not snowing here. The sun is sinking behind the far mountain, and the sky is a riot of oranges and blues. Birds are winging their way back and forth across the meadow, like they too can’t believe that they’ve stumbled into this paradise out here in the middle of nowhere.
But the meadow’s not what we’re looking at. What has the three of us (not Mom, of course, since she obviously knows all about this) gaping stupidly out into the sunshine is the fact that the meadow is crowded with tents. About two dozen people are bustling around, some building campfires, some fishing on the lake, some simply standing or sitting or lying down in the grass talking.
My eyes are drawn to one particular woman, mahogany-skinned with long, lustrous dark hair, a face like the Sacagawea golden dollar. And a pair of dazzling wings folded like a magnificent white robe against her back.
“This,” Mom says, gesturing around the meadow, “is what’s called a congregation. A gathering of angel-bloods.”
“Congregarium celestial,” breathes Angela.
The lady with the wings sees us and waves. Mom waves back.
“That’s Billy,” she says. “Come on.” She removes her coat and the rest of her winter gear until she’s only wearing a flannel shirt and jeans. Then she strides off barefoot into the grass.
“Come on,” she calls back to us again. “They’ll be eager to meet you.” We leave our packs at the edge of the grass and move hesitantly into the meadow. Several people stop what they’re doing to watch us.
“What is this?” Jeffrey asks beside me, still confused.
Mom’s already reached Billy, who throws her arms around my mother like the two are old friends. Then they turn and start back toward us, and when she gets close enough this Billy woman hugs me too, a giant bear hug with surprising strength.
“Clara!” she exclaims. “I can’t believe it. I haven’t seen you since you were knee high to a grasshopper.”
“Uh, hi,” I reply stiffly against her hair, which smells like wildflowers and leather. “I don’t remember. . ”
“Oh, of course not,” she says with a laugh. “You were tiny.” She peers over my shoulder.
“And this is Jeffrey. Good God above. Already a man.”
Jeffrey doesn’t say anything, but I can tell he’s pleased by this announcement.
“Meet Wilma Fairweather,” announces my mom as a formal introduction.
Wilma smirks at us. “Billy,” she corrects.
“And this is Angela Zerbino,” says my mom, not to overlook any of us.
Billy nods, looking at Angela so intently that Angela actually blushes. “The Pink Garter, am I right?”
“Yeah,” says Angela.
“Welcome! Are you hungry?”
We glance around at each other. Food is the last thing on our minds.
“Of course you are,” Billy says. “Why don’t you go over there and get some grub?” She gestures off to one side
of the meadow, where there’s a plume of smoke coming up over what looks like a big stone barbecue grill. “Corbett makes the best burgers, I swear, enough to get me to eat meat a few times a year, anyway.” She laughs again. “Go eat and then you can start setting up your tents. I want you all right by me.” She links her arm with Mom’s. “You finally got the guts to bring them, Mags. I’m proud of you. Although I guess this means—”
“Bill,” Mom says with a warning in her voice, looking at me. Then she shakes it off and smiles at Billy. “We’ve got a million things to talk about, you and I.” And with that, they walk away, leaving us staring after them.
We make our way over to the barbecue. When we get there we can see that it’s being manned by a white-haired guy with a long ponytail wearing a Hawaiian-style flowered shirt, khaki shorts, and flip-flops. He’s flipping meat on the grill like a professional.
“What’ll it be, young’uns?” he calls back without bothering to turn around.
“Cheeseburger or regular?”
“Cheese,” answers Jeffrey, who can always be counted on to think with his stomach. “I’ll take two.”
“Right-o,” says the guy, and then he turns and squints at us. “What about you, Clara?” It’s Mr. Phibbs. My English teacher. Mr. Phibbs in flip-flops. My head is going to explode.
“A bit of a shock?” he says good-naturedly, taking in our expressions, as if it has only now occurred to him that we might be surprised to see him. “We decided that it was for the best if you didn’t know.”
“Who decided?” I can’t help but ask.
“Your mother, mostly,” he says. “But it was something we all agreed upon.”
“You’ve known about us all this time?” Angela manages.
He snorts, which is the strangest sound ever coming from him. “But of course. That’s why I’m there. You kids need someone to keep an eye on you.” He turns back to the grill, whistling. He serves us up two hamburgers each, which we balance on paper plates with potato chips and fruit salad like this is a Fourth of July picnic. We wander off dazedly to sit in the grass and eat. I discover that I’m ravenous. And the food is wonderful.
“Oh my God,” Angela says, when she finally stops eating long enough to talk. “This is so cool. I would never have guessed there’s a group. The congregation.” She says the word like she’s trying it out on her tongue, like it’s a word with magic powers. “I want to talk to Billy again.
She seemed fabulous. Holy geez,” she exclaims, pointing across the meadow. “That’s Jay Hooper, you know, who manages the rodeo arena in Jackson.”
“Are all these people from Jackson?”
“Don’t think so,” she says. “A few, though. I can’t believe that I’ve lived here for my entire life and I didn’t know about this. I wonder if it’s like this in every city, or if it’s just Jackson. I have that theory that angel-bloods are attracted to the mountains, did I ever tell you?
Whoa, that’s Mary Thorton. Wow, I wouldn’t have pinned her as the angelic type.” I stare at her blankly.
“I guess you never know,” Angela says, still looking around. “Oh, and there’s Walter Prescott. He owns the bank.”
“Walter Prescott?” I whip around to see where she’s looking. “Where?”
“The blond one, in front of that big green tent.”
I locate him, a tall light-haired man building a fire. I wouldn’t have guessed he was Christian’s uncle, looking at him, mostly because his hair is that towheaded blond that almost looks white, nothing resembling Christian’s dark messy waves.
“I wonder if we’ll see Christian,” says Angela.
In that moment I know he’s here. I can feel him.
“There he is.” Angela points to a group of people who are helping to guide a motorboat trailer into the lake. “Christian!” she yells suddenly. She cups her hands around her mouth and belts it out. “Paging Christian Prescott!”
Mortifying, but effective. Christian turns at the sound of his name. Sees us. Then he’s striding toward us through the grass, wearing rolled-up jeans and a T-shirt, no shoes, which seems to be the style here in the meadow. He seems relaxed, hands in his pocket, not in a particular hurry to get to us.
“Christian,” someone yells from by the lake. “I thought we were going to water-ski?”
“Maybe later,” he calls back, waving. He stops in front of us. “Hey, Clara. Angela.” His gaze swings to Angela briefly before coming back to me. “Jeffrey here, too?” I look around but can’t see Jeffrey.
“Yep, we’re all accounted for,” says Angela. “The Angel Club has arrived. Isn’t this crazy?”
“Right. Crazy. I guess.” He shrugs.
“Don’t tell me, this is old news for you. You knew about all of this before, didn’t you?” Angela asks.
He grabs a potato chip off her plate and tosses it in his mouth, crunching it loudly.
Angela glares at him, then sniffs and stalks off across the grass toward Billy and Mom.
Christian raises an eyebrow at me. “What’d I do?”
“Dude,” I say with a smile. “You are in so much trouble.” Later, after we watch the most spectacular sunset I’ve ever witnessed that wasn’t in a movie, Christian helps me set up the tent that Angela and I are supposed to share tonight. Angela, predictably, is nowhere to be found. She didn’t even bother to retrieve her pack from the edge of the meadow. Christian and I lug both packs over to the campsite, pick out a space, and start pitching like crazy. We have to hurry because soon it will be too dark to set everything up, but it’s no problem, really. Christian seems to have done this tent thing a hundred times before.
“So,” I ask him as he’s pounding in the tent pegs, the final step in the process. “How long have you known about this place?”
He shifts to work on another peg. “My uncle brought me up here last May. I was pretty surprised by the whole thing, too, believe me. Before that I had no idea.”
“So you really were camping with your uncle,” I muse, finally putting two and two together. “And here I thought. .” I stop myself.
He stops hammering to look at me. “You thought what?”
“Oh, nothing. I thought it was an excuse so you could skip. Because of—”
“Kay,” he finishes for me. “You thought I skipped school to dodge Kay.”
“I guess so.”
He starts hammering again. “Nope. But it was because of her, in a way. When I broke up with Kay, my uncle saw that as a sign that I was getting serious about my purpose. So he said it was time. He brought me up here, and we spent the week flying, training, meditating, all that, and then on the weekend the congregation showed up.”
What made my mom decide it was time to bring us here? I wonder. “Did you see my mom?” I ask, because even though she hasn’t been up front with the angel info, part of me still can’t believe that she was involved with all of this and never told me.
“No. I heard some people mention a Maggie,” he answers, “but I didn’t know who she was.”
“Oh.” Suddenly I realize that I’ve pretty much been peppering him with questions for the past half hour, and he’s done most of the work putting up the tent.
“You must think I’m an idiot,” he says then.
I look up, startled. There are a lot of words I’d use to describe Christian Prescott: mystery, enigma, conundrum, destiny, terrifying, and, well, just plain hot, if I’m being honest, but the word idiot has never crossed my mind. Except maybe that one time at prom. “Idiot?”
“Because all the signs were there, pointing to you being the girl from my vision, you being an angel-blood, and I never figured it out. If I’d only figured it out sooner, maybe. .,” he trails off.
I swallow. “What signs?”
“I always felt like there was something different about you, even the first time I saw you,” he says.
“You mean when I passed out in the hall? I guess I must have seemed different, all right.”
“I hadn’t had my visi
on yet,” he says. He sits back in the grass. “I thought I did something bad to you, and that’s why you passed out.”
“Something bad to me?”
“With my mind.”
“Like your talking-in-my-head thing.”
He starts picking at the grass, pulling on tufts and smoothing it between his fingers. “I didn’t know how to control it yet,” he says.
“Have you always been able to do that? Talk in people’s heads?”
“It started last year, right before you showed up, actually. I still can’t do it with everybody.
I can pick up what people are thinking, and sometimes I can send thoughts back, but I think the person has to be able to receive them, too.”