by SM Reine
“Bonjour,” she’d said shyly, kicking her shoes through soil moistened by manna from Heaven’s breaking. Ariane had yet to drill social confidence into Marion at that age. She was self-conscious to be seen with her ruffled pink dress muddy, and her hair falling out of its braids.
“You know who I am, don’t you?” Benjamin had asked.
She’d nodded.
“Are you ready to come with me, Marion?”
Another nod. “Ouais. Je suis prête.”
He’d smiled at her as they joined hands.
They’d left Earth together.
Parts of Heaven hadn’t been falling. That was where Benjamin pulled Marion: to a slice of a blue-tinted garden with trees that had trunks as thick around as small cities. The canopy was so thick that she couldn’t see a hint of sunlight.
“This is Eden,” he’d said. “You’ll be safe here until it’s time for you to send me back.”
It hadn’t been a garden, but the garden: the place where Eve, mother of all angels, had once grown the entire ethereal race. It was Marion’s heritage. It was the home she hadn’t known she had.
For a long while, she’d played in Eden with Benjamin. He was tolerant of her childishness. In fact, he seemed to find it charming, and sometimes surprisingly funny. He often said things like, “I’m going to pick on you for that when I get back.”
“Back where?” Marion had finally asked. She’d been practicing her English with him. Between Elise’s early instruction and conversations with Benjamin, she’d improved to near-fluency.
“To later,” Benjamin said. “Sixteen-ish years from now.”
“What’s in sixteen years?”
“The question is more like who is in sixteen years?” He’d booped her on the nose. “You are. Much less adorable, though. Kinda scary.”
“I’m not scary,” Marion had said, right before knocking on a tree trunk to open a door to another part of Eden.
Whenever Marion had knocked at that age, doors had opened to take her wherever she went.
That had been a trick Benjamin had taught her too, though he’d been quick to ensure she understood, “That’s not one of your magical powers. It only works when you’re doing what the gods want you to do. The gods will open doors for you if you ask real nicely, and you ask by knocking.”
“Who are the gods?” Marion had asked.
“In this instant, I am,” Benjamin said. “Before, it was Adam. Later, it’ll be some other people. And after them, there will be more, just as there always will be.”
“Je ne comprends pas.”
“That’s okay,” he said. “Don’t worry about it. You’ll get it someday.” He tweaked her nose. “You’ll probably understand it better than you want to.”
Benjamin had vanished from the garden after that, in much the same way that Elise had stopped visiting Marion.
Everyone disappeared eventually.
Lush, beautiful Eden was a desolate place when Marion had to entertain herself. The trees were reasonably good conversationalists. They told stories of the beginning of the world, and they listened attentively when Marion told them nonsense stories about unicorns.
It hadn’t lasted long, though. Everyone else disappeared, and then it had been her turn to disappear too. She’d leaped through door after door. She’d taken paths out of Heaven and across Earth and through Hell. Gardens became cities became caverns of shadow.
She had knocked on doors until there had been no more doors to knock on.
Marion had died in Genesis while holding hands with Ariane.
Funnily, that was among the fainter memories that were scrawled into the pages of Marion’s mind. It hadn’t seemed all that important to her as a child. It was another of her life’s many confusing experiences, and one of the less traumatic ones, as it had been brief.
Onoskelis lingered over those days surrounding Genesis. She allowed Marion to relive the love that Elise had radiated toward her in gruff silence. She allowed Marion to revel in her early friendship with Benjamin, so different from the relationship they’d formed in her new adulthood. She allowed Marion to feel loved, supported, and cherished…
And then she went through the rest of it.
Ariane had babied Dana, the adopted sister they took on after Genesis. It hadn’t mattered how much Marion strove to meet her mother’s desires for a doll-like little girl. Dana was more like Elise—tougher, a fighter—and Ariane had treasured that even more than delicate femininity.
Marion had sought other avenues of attention. She enjoyed her summers at the sanctuary, playing with Rylie’s children. There was one little boy barely four years her junior. He had brown skin and crazy black curls.
“This is Benjamin,” Rylie had said.
“Benjamin?” Marion had asked, confused.
The brown-skinned toddler had smashed her in the face with a toy car and then laughed. He’d had only six teeth.
He became like her brother. A better brother than Dana was a sister—not least of all because Marion only had to compete with him for attention during the summer.
By the time he grew to resemble her teenaged playmate from Eden, she had already stopped thinking about her playmate, or Eden, or anything about Genesis really. She’d had much bigger problems.
Marion hadn’t fit in on Earth. Even as a little girl, people had been afraid of her. It wasn’t easy to grow up just this side of all-powerful without a single friend to her name.
In those awkward adolescent years, she’d been more comfortable staying with Elise.
Elise was God at that point, along with her husband. James was a half-angel like Marion. He knew magic similar to that which Marion possessed. He’d taken over Marion’s education, illustrating increasingly complex runes that Marion had absorbed hungrily. She had taken everything James had to give and made it her own.
“James tells me that you’ve learned all of his tricks,” Elise had said at one point, when Marion had been about twelve years old.
“And invented many of my own,” Marion had said. She’d never felt the need to downplay her accomplishments with her god-family, the way that she did with her mortal family. Anything she did, the gods could do better. They were not impressed.
“Do you think you’re ready for real work?” Elise had asked.
“She’s twelve,” James had interjected softly.
“So what?”
All three of them had been sitting on the root of a tree, thicker and sturdier than a steel I-beam. Their feet had dangled over the edge and trailed in puddles of water that swirled with galaxies. Of course, Marion’s feet had been the only real, corporeal feet, but Elise and James had been under her substantiation charms by that point, so they made a good show of appearing to have feet as well.
“I’m ready for real work,” Marion said. “I can handle anything.”
“I think that’s true,” Elise had said.
“But should she?” James asked.
Elise had banished him momentarily to another corner of the universe, annoyed by his doubt.
“I want you to help me on Earth,” Elise said. “I’m going to give you jobs to help make sure things stay rock-solid. You’ll end up in a lot of danger. You’ll get hurt.”
“I can’t wait,” Marion had said.
She’d meant it.
How fun it had been, blustering around with that much power, immune to criticism.
It had gone to her head, just a little bit.
But it hadn’t really been a problem until she’d started blustering at Elise.
“I’m onto something with the angels,” Marion had said. “Leliel has allied with the Summer Court. They’re spilling magic all over each other. What do you think that means?”
Elise and James had both been present at that time again. Despite their frequent squabbles, they forgave each other their tempers just as frequently. It would have been hard to live with each other for eternity if they hadn’t. “The alliance means we’ve waited as long as we can to make su
re everything goes right.”
“How so?”
“We have to send Benjamin back through the Genesis warp so that he can make sure Genesis happens,” James explained. “He was there the first time around. He was directly responsible for altering events in such a fashion that they occurred.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Marion said. “He hasn’t done it yet. How could Genesis have happened?”
“Time is merely another dimension,” James said. “Mortals like you only move forward in time—a drawing that can only walk from one corner of a paper to another. The drawing is incapable of moving toward the viewer. Few of us can move off the page entirely. Things always exist as they are now, and have been in the past, just as your pencil doesn’t disappear if you turn your back on it.”
Marion still hadn’t understood. She wasn’t sure that she ever would—not without complex diagrams and far superior metaphors than James’s paper concept.
It rankled that she couldn’t wrap her mind around the idea of it. How her childhood friend could simultaneously be a teenager with her, right in that moment, and a teenager in the past, when she had been a small child. How Benjamin could have ensured that Genesis happened, even though he hadn’t gone back yet.
“Don’t patronize me,” she snapped at James. “I know how time works.”
“Watch it,” Elise had snapped at Marion.
For all that Elise and James had fought, nothing got Elise angry faster than rude behavior leveled at her husband. But James always deserved it. He was patronizing, as she’d said, and so much more—condescending, dismissive, manipulative, a liar.
All the worst things about angels had been packed into their god. That was James.
“Anyway, in order to get everything on track with Benjamin, you’ve gotta work with Seth Wilder,” Elise had said. “Which is why you’re going to have to find him first.”
“Seth is the third god of our triad,” James added.
Marion had frowned in confusion. She’d never heard the name before, much less seen a third god around, and she practically lived with the gods for half the year. “You two are the only beings in eternity.”
“Right now, where you are on the page, we are the only ones here,” James agreed. “It has not always been so. Seth has fled in a fashion that was, frankly, unnecessarily dramatic, after saying words that I suspect he’ll regret.”
“I’ll make him regret them.” Elise had seemed to crack her knuckles, though she had no more knuckles than she had feet kicking in the water.
“Initially, we had no trouble tracking him. Seth ruled Sheol for some time. That was well enough. We don’t mind if he telecommutes, so to speak.”
“The privacy was nice,” Elise muttered, shooting a look at Marion.
It wasn’t the first time that Marion suspected she’d overstayed her welcome in eternity with the gods. She’d tried to dismiss the idea of it. They did have all time together, and Marion only had perhaps a hundred years alive, so they could tolerate her for one tiny blink of existence.
“Seth vanished recently,” James said.
“Not in this timeline,” Elise added.
“We can’t find him anywhere. It’s likely he’s entered an avatar form, permitting him to interfere on Earth. We can give you information about contacts from his mortal life to make it easier to find him.”
“Seth is sentimental,” she said. “He’ll gravitate toward old friends.”
The back of Marion’s neck prickled at the way they talked over each other. Two gods, but practically one mind.
No wonder that Seth guy had left.
“I won’t do it,” Marion had said.
Elise seemed to have been expecting the answer. She wasn’t surprised. But she also wasn’t pleased. Her hazel eyes loomed large, staring out of the hawk-like face that Marion perceived. “You want to rethink that answer?”
“No. If a man doesn’t want to be found, it’s for good reason. You disrespect him by refusing to acknowledge his wishes.”
“You can’t side with him,” Elise said. “You don’t even know him. I’m family and you do what I tell you.”
“Just as you always did what Isaac told you?” Marion asked.
Her pride had been jabbed at too much that day—and worse still when she considered the years she’d spent smashed under James’s superiority complex. He would never let her forget that they were gods and she was not. She would never be more than the Voice. A mere mortal.
That was what made her spit out the cruelest thing she could think of: evoking Elise’s loathsome sperm donor, who had competed with Marion’s sperm donor for the “worst person before Genesis” award.
She still didn’t expect Elise to substantiate a hand and slap her across the face. The contact had been barely more than palm-to-cheek. It barely stung, although it was loud.
That was why Marion told nobody when she learned of a terrible secret.
Marion had nobody to trust with her secrets. Not her half-sister or brother-in-law. Not her mother, who would have given the information over to the first sexy male angel who asked her nicely. Not her petulant, whining boyfriend who bitched when Marion gave more attention to the gods than she did to him.
She’d formulated a plan. A great plan.
Marion had gone to Onoskelis, with Ariane as witness, to ensure that the plan would go through. She made a deal. It had led to her memories being copied and saved for later.
The last thing that was restored to Marion’s mind was walking into Onoskelis’s den.
And then…
Nothing.
The Librarian had only been able to copy what had already happened to Marion. Onoskelis didn’t know exactly how Marion had lost her memory. The book of her mind snapped shut, its first volumes refilled, and Marion was left sprawled on the grass trying to remember how to breathe.
Underneath her fingers, springy blue-green moss formed damp curls. Crystal-pure water trickled through it. The rocks were shiny white. The walls to either side of her were tall and smooth and white.
Marion pushed to her feet, and only when she reached out to touch a wall did she realize it wasn’t a wall at all.
She stood between two enormous roots of a tree. Its trunk was so thick that it could have fit an entire town inside if it had been hollowed.
“Merde,” Marion said.
She recognized this place. She’d just remembered it.
And that meant Marion was exactly where she needed to be.
With the restoration of her whole self, Marion felt calmer than she had in weeks. Months, really. She hadn’t felt this calm or clear-headed since losing her memories.
She turned to see Leliel. The angel held a flaming sword in one hand and a glowing, bloody key in the other. “It’s you,” Leliel said. “I shouldn’t be surprised. You’ve a talent for bumbling through my plans and ruining them.”
“Have you found Benjamin?” Marion asked.
Leliel looked surprised. “He’s here?”
She hadn’t found him yet. He was presumably hiding somewhere in Shamayim, just as he’d once hidden with Marion in Eden.
Marion had arrived in time to make sure he didn’t die.
Onoskelis had thanked her by restoring her memories in the nick of time.
Leliel moved toward Marion with deceptive slowness. She was a graceful woman—as deadly as she was beautiful—and she was angling herself for a killing blow.
Marion said, “In paradisum deducant te Angeli.”
The other angel stopped dead.
“What did you say?”
“In paradisum deducant te Angeli,” she said. “Æternam habeas requiem.” It was more than a prayer. It was a code phrase that Marion had agreed upon with Leliel more than a year prior.
Leliel’s eyes brightened. “Your memories have returned.” She dropped the sword. “Thank Eve.”
They embraced, and Marion was consumed by the smell of smoldering incense.
At last.
“Yo
u hired assassins against me,” Marion said.
Leliel held her at arm’s reach, every hint of violence vanished from her face. “I thought you’d betrayed me when you vanished. Once I realized you’d lost your memories, you became impossible to handle, and I did what I felt necessary to protect our goal. How have you returned?”
“I had a contingency plan—a copy of my memories held by a Librarian. I’m back now.”
Leliel held her hand out. “Does that mean you’re ready?”
“Yes. It’s long overdue.”
Marion grasped Leliel’s hand, and the other angel lifted them effortlessly with shimmering wings.
They soared through the widely set trees. Even the frailest branches were thicker than Marion, and she felt tiny among them, like a common garden pixie.
Leliel took her to the largest tree in the garden. It was surrounded by so many smaller saplings that its roots looked bushy. There were cobblestone paths through the underbrush that allowed them passage, though Marion’s arms kept getting scraped by twigs. The trees wanted to touch her. They sensed her blood—Metaraon’s blood—and they remembered what she meant to them.
Underneath the roots of the tree, there was a pool, broad and glassy.
Within that pool, there were hundreds of boulders. Each was the size of a car.
“Does anyone realize what we’re doing yet?” Leliel asked.
“Not yet. They haven’t even begun to suspect the enormity of our plan.” Marion stepped into the shallows. The water that lapped at her toes was the exact temperature of the humid air.
“Good. You’ve done well.”
“I know.” Marion rested her hands on the nearest boulder. Something was thumping inside. “They’re almost ready to emerge. You’ll take care of them?”
“Until you can join us,” Leliel agreed.
“Then do what you must.” Marion spread her arms wide, exposing her chest. “Aim well.”
Leliel kissed Marion on the cheek. The blade of her sword blazed white, not unlike balefire.
She buried it into Marion’s belly and pushed until the blade erupted out the back. Silver blood dribbled down her gown.