Triune

by Willow Polson

  In the process of sweeping the dust out of the corners and emptying the refrigerator of the food that had obviously been there since the previous occupant died, Brian had gone out to the dumpster and found, in the dying light of the evening, a number of interesting things. What at first looked like junk turned out to be spare parts for some of the vintage push button light switches, an original mica lampshade, a chair from the 1930s with a loose leg and worn upholstery that looked easy to repair, curtains and the original curtain rods from the front living room windows, and a large, heavy box with a pulley and thick rope on it. He brought his brothers over to see.

  “It looks like a dumb waiter, of all things,” said Barrett, blinking at it.

  “You’re kidding,” said Mike, and the three of them went back in to see if they could locate where a dumb waiter might have resided in the walls of the house.

  “Here!” exclaimed Brian with glee, opening the latched door between the kitchen cabinets and the door to the little basement below. The lot was sloped, and there was a half-basement with a low ceiling at the back of the house where the laundry, furnace, storage shelves, and black widow spiders lived.

  You’re kidding,” said Mike again, looking into the dark shaft, remembering the last time he’d had an encounter with a dumb waiter, grateful that this one wasn't on fire. It seemed to run through all three levels. He turned to say something, but his brothers had already gone out to retrieve the tiny elevator, and he had to chuckle a little.

  They determined that it would take more work to hook it back up than they were willing to do right then, so they took one last look through the dumpster, went inside, locked the place up tight, and teleported over to Mike’s place for the night.

  “That house... it’s like it was meant to be,” said Brian, stretching out one cramped wing, then the other. “It’s perfect. It’s everything we want. I mean, there’s a few problems with it, but that’s just because it’s old, and it’s nothing we can’t fix.”

  Barrett had been in the middle of sipping his tea when he swallowed and stopped. “Meant to be.”

  “Huh?” said Mike. Brian cocked his head.

  “Meant to be,” repeated Barrett, his gaze turning from inward thoughts to looking at them. “How much of this is meant to be, I wonder?”

  “Oh, well...” started Mike, but then had to stop and really think.

  “Some of it, sure,” said Brian, hiking this thumb over his shoulder. “I mean, these things behind us aren’t accidental.”

  Mike smirked. “Obviously not, but what about other stuff? Bear’s right. Aren’t angels supposed to be working for whatever’s upstairs? God or... whatever.”

  “That’s the funny thing,” said Barrett quietly. “You’d think we would have been told what the hell we’re doing, or supposed to be doing, at least. You know what this reminds me of? The Greatest American Hero.”

  His brothers blinked at him, lost.

  “The what...?” said Brian.

  “The Greatest American Hero. TV show from the 1980s. Basically, this guy finds this superhero suit, but there’s no instructions, so he’s left trying to figure out how the thing works. What kinds of stuff he can do with it on, like flying and all that. We’re kind of in the same boat, really.”

  Mike’s brow creased. “Sounds like. It really is strange, how three guys could suddenly, within a few days of each other, turn into angels, and then we’re just left hanging out to dry. It’s weird.”

  “I get the feeling something’s not finished, though,” said Brian. “Like... well, there’s still the whole void thing. Maybe we’ll get answers there.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” said Mike with a nod. “Do you think that’ll just kind of show up like the other stuff, or...?”

  “We’ll probably get hints or nudged somehow. I do get the feeling some of this stuff is being guided,” said Barrett. “I don’t think it was any accident that I ended up, of all places, underwater. The only big fear I had, and now it’s taken care of because I know I can’t drown.”

  “And that house, even. It’s perfect. It couldn’t be more perfect,” said Brian.

  “And the bomb on the plane,” said Mike quietly. “I was meant to be there and save that woman. Not a doubt in my mind.”

  They settled into a thoughtful silence over tea, broken only by the quiet sounds of distant traffic, feathers rustling against each other, and household things like the humming of the fridge or ticking of a clock. At last Barrett said something that had been on his mind.

  “Do you think we’re immortal?”

  His brothers blinked at him, stunned. It hadn’t occurred to them at all. And there it was, suddenly on the table, rattling around in their heads loudly.

  “Well... angels...” stammered Brian at last. “Maybe...?”

  Mike stood up and rubbed down the goosebumps that had risen on his upper arms, his feathers and the hair on the back of his neck standing on end a little.

  “Whoa.”

  “Makes sense,” said Barrett. “I mean, let’s stop a minute and think about all this logically. We’ve been avoiding it, but I think we need to figure some of this out and really own this. It’s obviously not going away, so we need to figure out what the hell we’re doing.”

  “And what we can do,” said Mike, nodding in agreement. “I think we should work on figuring out as much about this void thing as we can in advance, and also try to figure out exactly what we’re capable of.”

  “All while trying to run a corporation,” said Barrett, pinching the bridge of his nose and sliding a little lower into the sofa, crumpling a few feathers. “Ow.”

  He stood up and shook out his wings, fluffing and shifting them, but couldn’t fix the kinked feathers. Thinking about it for a moment, he put them away, then brought them back out. Everything was perfect and good as new.

  “Nice,” said Mike, nodding with approval.

  “Stuff like that,” said Barrett. “Simple, but useful. We connect the dots ourselves as much as we can from now on. I’m tired of just going along for the ride. This is my life. Our lives.”

  Mike nodded. “I agree. Maybe once we tackle this void thing we’ll get our training wheels off and somebody will tell us what the hell’s going on once and for all.”

  “Wouldn’t that be nice,” said Barrett with a little snort. They fell silent again, thinking, then it was Mike’s turn to suddenly break the silence.

  “I’m still stressing over this dragon thing.”

  “Mike,” Barrett said, tossing back the last of his tea, “Dragons aren’t real.”

  Brian snorted loudly. “Are angels?”

  Barrett opened his mouth to shoot off an answer, then stopped himself. Mike groaned and put his head in his hands.

  “I’m screwed. I bet... I bet I... I’m screwed. This is so not fair.”

  “Maybe that’s not what it means at all,” offered Brian, scooting closer and putting a hand on his shoulder. “Maybe not all the windows are about us.”

  After a long sigh, Mike scrubbed his fingertips through his hair and sat back up straight. “Maybe. I dunno. But maybe it won’t be that bad. Or it won’t happen at all. I just... dammit.”

  “Yeah,” said Brian. Barrett got up and put the unwanted cups into the sink, returning with some crackers and brie.

  “Okay, enough pregnant pauses. What have we figured out we can do so far?”

  “Well... we can fly, obviously,” Brian said with a little shiver. “Wait, do we have any paper?”

  “Oh. I don’t think I do.” Mike’s brow creased as he thought about what might be in the house. It was a strange thing, having a place full of furniture and food and clothes and not having had anything to do with obtaining any of it.

  “No problem. Be right back.” Brian disappeared, then reappeared a minute later with a tablet and a couple of pens. “Okay, and teleportation,” he said cheerfully, adding a second item to the new list.

  “Languages, something to do with that.” Mike spread some
cheese on an herbed cracker and tried to prevent it from crumbling onto the coffee table as he bit in.

  “Not drowning,” said Barrett, watching them both.

  “I’m going to put that as... uh... well...” said Brian, cocking his head. He nodded, then took a deep breath and held it. Mike blinked at him, confused.

  “What are you...”

  Brian held up his hand, shook his head, pointed at the tablet, then rolled his eyes at himself. Oh, right. Telepathy, duh. He wrote it down on the list after “Languages.” I’m seeing how long I can hold my breath.

  Um... why? said Mike, his mouth full of cheese and cracker.

  To see if we need to breathe at all.

  Barrett’s eyes widened a little, but he nodded. It made sense. First the fire, then...

  “Oh, I know what,” Barrett said, reminded of something else from the fire. “We went through the walls and ceiling before. Passed through them.”

  Intangibility? Is that a word? Something like that, said Brian, still holding his breath as he wrote it down.

  Mike readied another cracker and thought about all that had happened over the past few days. It all seemed like one long, blurry, crazy dream. Yet there they all were, sitting in his living room, talking into each others’ heads and winged. Just like in the stained glass windows.

  “Oh, duh. Healing,” Mike said. “Us and other people.” Brian tapped his forehead in a gesture that also said “oh, duh,” then nodded and wrote that down too.

  Barrett’s brow was furrowed. He was doing the same thing as his brothers – going over and over everything they’d done in the hopes of remembering the new things they could do. He stood up, still deep in thought and halfway through a cracker, and walked around a bit, looking a little like a really bad mime. At some point he realized they were staring at him, and he chuckled a little.

  “Retracing my steps, kind of. Like... if I were to leave right now, how would I do that? Would I just walk out the front door? No. I’d... OH!” He snapped his fingers and pointed at the paper. “I’d go invisible.”

  Brian wrote it down and looked over the list. After a minute, he added one more thing, then showed them. The last item read “Not needing to breathe.”

  I could do this forever. Nothing’s happening at all. He let the air out, but not because he had to, then started chuckling.

  “Only gotta breathe if we want to talk, I guess,” said Mike. “Or out of habit. Or so we don’t freak people out at the office.” They all chuckled and had to agree with that.

  “Yeah. It’s going to get harder to seem normal over time, probably,” Barrett said quietly. “Sooner or later somebody’s gonna slip.” He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck, but then shrugged and finished the forgotten half of his cracker and brie. There really wasn’t anything to do about it.

  “Time,” said Mike. “What was that you said about maybe being... immortal? Why do you think that?”

  “Makes sense, if you think about the classic descriptions of angels. They’re these ethereal beings, right? Messengers of God, flying around announcing virgin births and watching over people and all that. Why would they grow old and die? They wouldn’t, because they’re not human. They’re ageless beings. Spirits.”

  Mike blushed a little and looked uncomfortable. Brian stared at their older brother.

  “You keep saying ‘they’ like you’re not talking about us,” he said softly.

  Barrett suddenly paled a little as he realized that he’d gotten so involved with the logical part of what he was saying that, as Brian had pointed out, he’d forgotten that he was talking about himself. He was suddenly extremely conscious of the wings on their backs, and his own. They seemed to fluff and twitch a little of their own free will.

  “So... between that and the healing thing, I think so,” he said, avoiding it slightly. Or at least not being so blunt about it.

  “What’s the healing thing have to do with it?” asked Mike.

  “You ever read up on longevity research? A lot of them focus on cellular regeneration, because they figure if the cells are always repairing themselves, they won’t age. Aging is where the cells kind of get tired and break down some. If they don’t ever do that...”

  “...If they keep healing all the time. Regenerating,” put in Brian, understanding, “they’ll stay like they are forever. That means... we’ll stay like we are forever.” He looked between them, eyes wide.

  “I think so,” said Barrett.

  Brian hugged himself, feathers ruffling a little into the quiet that followed, his brothers getting a little goose flesh partly because of the sound and partly over what they’d just figured out.

  “I guess we won’t really know if that’s true for a long time though, right?” Mike said, moving over and squeezing Brian’s shoulders comfortingly. “Ten years at least. And if we look exactly the same...”

  “The longer it goes on... yeah. Then we’ll know for sure.” Barrett nodded, then had a bit more cracker and brie. It occurred to him that everybody else would realize it at some point as well, such as the people in his office.

  “I wish we could research some of this stuff. See what we should be looking for. Or looking out for,” Mike said.

  “Internet?” suggested Brian.

  “I would, but my laptop was on the plane,” he said with a wince and a sigh.

  “I’ll get mine.” Barrett vanished, then came back a few minutes later with his laptop and the power cord. He set it on the table and waited for it to find the wireless of the apartment complex, then started tapping through search terms. His brothers crowded around him. After a few minutes, though, Mike’s lip started to curl with annoyance.

  “What the hell’s all this crap? It’s just a bunch of newagey... I don’t even know what I’m looking at.”

  “It’s not that bad,” said Brian. “Look, see? Here they’re talking about the different choirs. Do you think it’s like singing choirs?” He got a little chill of excitement at the thought of being in a real angelic choir, just like in the stories.

  “Bri. The page is fricking lavender. With nothing but blonde girl angels in dresses with flowers.”

  “But...”

  “Where’s all the dude angels?” Mike commandeered the laptop, tapping through some pages in the search engine. The backgrounds on some of the others were less effeminate, featuring mostly clouds on a blue background or churchy themes, but the information varied little.

  “Look, here’s something on the archangels. They’re male,” Barrett said, stopping his brother’s constant tapping and scrolling. He was as bad on a computer as he was with a TV remote.

  “See? Now that’s what I’m talking about. Armor and swords.” Mike nodded approvingly at a statue of Michael, clearly on the upper story of a church from the camera angle, looking very regal and ready to kick something’s ass.

  “I’d like to sing in an angel choir,” said Brian quietly. Barrett smiled fondly and wrapped an arm around him.

  “Maybe you will. We’ll find out more. Maybe we’ll get to ask somebody about this stuff. We have forever to learn.”

  Brian looked up at him, all baby brother puppy eyes, and Barrett melted further, just holding him close and protective as their brother continued to be disappointed by the Internet.

  “This really isn’t a lot of help,” Mike said, finally giving up and standing to crack his back. “It’s all woo-woo mystic crap. It’s like people think we’re fairies or something, and we’ll show up if they leave out a dish of cream.” He stretched, first one wing then the other, then went to put on his pajama bottoms.

  “Maybe we should get some books? Or talk to a priest?” Brian realized how odd that probably sounded, but the idea of talking to a priest intrigued him.

  “I think we’d probably give him a heart attack. And then, assuming he was still alive, we’d only get the Christian perspective,” said Barrett. “Wait... are angels only Judeo-Christian? That would be pretty disappointing,” he muttered half to himself as h
e took back control of the laptop. Mike returned and leaned over the back of the sofa, watching and reading over his shoulder.

  “Well, that’s a relief,” he said. “Looks like there’s... our kind of things all over the world but they’re called different things.”

  “I really didn’t want to have to be stuck in one religion,” said Brian, relieved. “I’m kind of more Unitarian than anything.” His brothers agreed – having been in several different foster homes, they’d all gotten samples of many beliefs, including atheism. Joseph Campbell had been required reading at Mrs. Wainwright’s.

  “So maybe there’s others. Other people in other parts of the world like us,” Barrett reasoned, thinking about all the cultures he’d seen in his travels. “And maybe what’s familiar to them and their culture is how they manifest. I can’t believe for a minute that we’re the only ones this is happening to. Out of seven billion people? And it just happens to be us? No way.”

  “And that’s probably exactly what someone else would say if it happened to them. Or if they won the lottery, or got hit by lightning, or got some bizarre disease,” Mike said, shrugging. “I guess we’ll know if we run across any.”

  “Other angels...” said Brian, gaze distant, a little faint smile on his lips. “Wouldn’t that be cool.”

  “Maybe we’ll find some that can tell us what the hell’s going on,” said Mike with a little snort.

  “Ah, the irony of that statement,” Barrett said, then went in to get ready for bed.

  Mike cracked open the window just enough to let in a little spring night air, and looked around the place. It was nice enough, but not entirely his sense of style or comfort. The clean lines his brother preferred were fine, but where Barrett leaned toward modern, Mike leaned toward art deco and craftsman. Brian, being the most artistic of the three, went for more of an art nouveau or Victorian feel. Their new house would fit the bill perfectly, being a combination of their tastes, and with separate bedrooms, each could have his own little world apart from the common areas of the house.