The Way of Sorrows

by Jon Steele

  Katherine flashed Marc Rochat again.

  He was leading her through the same tunnel after she had taken sanctuary in the cathedral. Rochat said he wanted her to see things to help her remember she was an angel who was lost in Lausanne . . . I’m very sure you’ll like it. Katherine blinked to nowtimes. “Wow,” she whispered to herself. Max was staring into the tunnel, too; his emerald-colored eyes sparkled with candlelight.

  “What’s in there, Maman?”

  “Something from once upon a time, I think. Let’s go see.”

  Katherine bent down and scooted through the tunnel, Max following after her. She came out in the tribune, a forgotten balcony hidden from public view by the massive wooden cabinets housing the organ’s pipes and horns. Katherine straightened up, saw the secret space was lit by a lone candle standing on the floor stones, just the way it was with Marc Rochat. She looked up, saw the crucified Christ in the darkening stained-glass window embedded in the cathedral’s west wall. Max emerged from the tunnel and saw the image too. He moved close to his mother and she stroked his hair.

  “Be not afraid, Max. This is a safe place.”

  “Is that the angel who died, Maman?”

  Katherine saw the face of the suffering man nailed to the cross.

  “Yes, honey, that’s him.”

  Corporal Mai came through the tunnel now and stood next to Katherine. She pointed to the metal ramp leading to the organ console platform. “Your seats are that way.”

  The ramp was set between the massive cabinets. They framed a partial view of the nave beyond, and a familiar-looking cloud of light hovering in the high vault. Seeing it, Katherine lost her balance. Corporal Mai held Katherine’s arm and steadied her.

  “Ça va, Kat?”

  “Just a lot of looping hitting me at once. It’s hard to keep up.”

  “It’s all fine, Kat. I promise.”

  I’m very sure you’ll like it.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  Katherine picked up the lone candle from the floor and offered it to her son.

  “Before you were born I was brought here by Marc Rochat.”

  “Le guet before Ella.”

  “That’s right. He gave me a candle just like this one, and he asked me to lead the way to the organ platform. He said if I did I’d see something wonderful in the nave. Since you’re such a big boy now, I think you should lead the way this time.”

  Max thought about it and liked the idea very much. He took the candle, turned, and walked along the ramp, careful not to spill melting wax. He stepped down onto the cantilevered platform that jutted out over the back of the nave. He stood very still. Katherine trailed slowly after him, stopping when the great expanse of the nave was revealed. She saw candles hanging from the pillars and arches of the aisles, lining the triforium and upper balconies running all round the cathedral, in the giant chancel dome and at the edges of the altar square beneath the lantern tower.

  “Oh, my.”

  She remembered seeing it with Marc Rochat in beforetimes. It was like beholding a mystic vision, as if a cloud of firelight had lifted the cathedral and the great gothic thing were now unconnected to the earth. She wondered what effect the vision would have on her son, but she realized he wasn’t looking at the cloud of light. He was looking to his left on the platform, to something hidden from Katherine’s line of sight. She watched him tip his head from side to side as if studying a new word in a book.

  “Max?”

  He turned to her, his face aglow with excitement. “There are two of them, Maman.”

  Katherine looked at Corporal Mai. “Two of what?”

  “I guess you’ll have to find out for yourself.”

  Katherine walked to the end of the ramp and was about to step onto the platform when a woman in a sheepskin jacket, smiling and flipping japa mala beads in her right hand, stepped out in front of her. “Hello, Kat,” the woman said.

  “Karoliina, you’re here! Did the band make it, too?”

  “They’re playing the Église de Saint-Germain-des-Prés tonight. But driving into Paris before the gig, they let me off at Gare de Lyon and told me I had ten minutes to make the TGV to Lausanne. So here I am. Surprised?”

  “Unbelievably so. I mean, I don’t understand this. No one was here when Marc lit up the nave for me in beforetimes. It was just him and me and—hold it. You had something to do with this, didn’t you?”

  Karoliina nodded. “Marc’s soul rose again a month ago, while Ella was rehearsing for the concert. He told her all about that night with the candles. He said he was very sure you would like to see it again, with your son this time. She contacted me, I contacted the Lausanne partisans, et voilà. Like it?”

  “I love it. And I love seeing you.”

  “Me, too. It’s been too long.”

  Katherine kissed Karoliina’s cheek. “How are you doing on the road?” Katherine said.

  “Oh, you know. It was difficult at first, heading out without Krinkle. But when the Swiss Guard took over security around the cathedral, I knew it was time. Besides, it’s what he wanted me to do. ‘Keep on keeping on, sister,’ was the last thing he told me before he left for Jerusalem. That’s what I’m doing, that way he’s always with me. And it’s kind of fun traveling the world in his bus, hosting his radio show. There are more than a billion followers now.”

  “That’s so great. And really, thank you for all this, thank you for coming. How’s Goose? Does he like being a roadie?”

  “Ask him yourself,” Karoliina said, easing to the right a bit.

  Katherine saw Goose sitting on a stool at the far end of the platform. He wore a white ski cap, and a white scarf around his neck. He looked swell in his denim overalls. Katherine signed:

  Goose!

  Hello, Madame Taylor. I would not miss this concert for the world. Hello, Max. How are you?

  Max signed, too.

  I’m very happy to see you, Goose! We’re going to the belfry for tea after the concert. Would you like to come?

  Goose held up a bag from Blondel’s on Rue de Bourg.

  I would love to. Otherwise I’ll have to eat all these chocolates by myself.

  Oh, my favorite!

  Katherine shook her head. “Man, this is all such a huge surprise.”

  “It isn’t finished, Kat.”

  “What?”

  Karoliina swung her beads and stepped aside again. Katherine saw a raven-haired woman with hazel-colored eyes. Next to the woman were two identical girls sitting on the organist’s bench.

  “Shalom, Kat,” the raven-haired woman said.

  Katherine drew a sharp breath. “No way.”

  Max tugged at his mother’s hand. “Who is this lady? Who are the two of them?”

  Katherine knelt next to her son. “Honey, this is Batya Amini and these are her nieces. They’re from Jerusalem.”

  Max bowed to them. “Welcome to Lausanne, Madame Amini and her nieces from Jerusalem.”

  “Thank you, Max,” Batya said. “I have looked forward to meeting you.”

  The two girls jumped down from the bench and took turns shaking Max’s hand.

  “My name is Niloo. It means ‘water lily,’” the one on the left said. “And I’m Nikoo. It means ‘beautiful,’” the one on the right said.

  “I like your names very much,” Max said.

  “Toda,” the twins pronounced as one. It was the third new word Max had heard this evening. He would read about it tomorrow after shalom and resonance.

  “Goose and I are having tea and chocolates in the belfry after the concert,” he said. “Would you like to come? You can see the bells and watch Ella call the hour. And she has a picture book about my mother when she was a princess. And there’s a big flying caterpillar in it, and funny pirates with paper hats and wooden swords.”

  “Oh, yes, please,” Niloo said. Nikoo pointed to the organist’s bench. “Come sit with us, Max, so we can be friends.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  The twins too
k Max’s hands and lifted him onto the bench and sat on either side of him. The three of them watched the cloud of light. Batya stood and hugged Katherine.

  “It is so nice to see you, Kat. I hope you don’t mind that we crashed your evening. Chana’s girls so wanted to come and see the cathedral, and it seemed like a good time, three years on and all.”

  Three years, Katherine thought. Three whole years since you left us.

  “No, it’s wonderful you came. I’ve been thinking about you a lot.”

  “I have been thinking about you, too.”

  Karoliina checked her watch and clapped her hands like a schoolmistress. She rushed to sit next to Goose. “Grab a stool and sit down, everyone, it’s almost eight o’clock. The concert is about to begin,” she said.

  Katherine sat with Batya, and Corporal Mai took a position on the ramp, three steps behind Katherine. Mai scanned the triforium and upper balconies. She keyed the microphone of her comms kit.

  “Control, Vega and Moonstone are secure,” she whispered.

  But Katherine heard it. Those were the new code names for her and her son. “Everything good back there, Mai?”

  “Just checking in, Kat. Enjoy the concert.”

  Katherine read the corporal’s eyes. “Thanks,” she said, and turned back to the nave.

  The place really was packed. Every seat taken, people standing in the aisles and the north and south transepts; even the area beneath the chancel dome was filled with people sitting on the floor stones. All eyes were on the altar square, where two chairs were set directly under the lantern tower. One chair was empty, the other held a bow for the Cremona cello in the nearby stand. Just then Marie-Madeleine rang from the belfry. Her muffled voice rolled through the nave. Batya Amini grabbed Katherine’s hand.

  “Are you all right, Batya?”

  “Loud sounds make me jump sometimes.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Still?”

  “Still.”

  With the toll of the eighth bell the nave fell quiet and the sacristy door near the Lady’s Chapel opened. A slender form wrapped in a black cloak and black floppy hat stepped out. The form pulled aside its cloak and raised an old lantern lit with a bright but delicate flame. And when the form lifted its head, the audience saw the pretty face of Ella Mínervudóttir, le guet de Lausanne. She weaved through the crowd and climbed the three steps to the altar square, followed by a fat gray cat. She rested the lantern on the floor between the chairs, then picked up the bow from the chair next to the cello and sat down. The fat cat took the empty chair and promptly went to sleep. The attending hush was broken by the voices of children echoing from the back of the nave.

  “What a funny fat cat, Max.”

  “That’s Monsieur Booty. Sometimes he lives with me and sometimes he lives in the cathedral with Ella. He’ll join us for tea and chocolates, too.”

  “Sababa.”

  Laughter rolled through the nave, now.

  Ella looked up and saw Max waving from far away, and she returned the greeting. She took the cello from the stand and stood it between her knees. When she lowered her head, her face was hidden from view. She curled her left hand around the cello’s neck and pressed down on the fingerboard. She drew a slow breath and pulled the bow across the strings with a legato stroke. Then came a low, droning harmonic that rose into the lantern tower, slowly ascending in tone and pitch until melody took flight like some broken angel leaving the world.

  Three years since you left us, three whole years.

  Katherine closed her eyes and let the music carry her to a recurring imagination. Sometimes it came to her in those moments before sleep; sometimes it came to her in the middle of the day as a lucid dream. Sometimes she would simply call it up whenever she needed a touch of comfort. The imagination was always the same. She was sitting with Harper at LP’s Bar. He was as when she first met him, long ago. Tough-looking but handsome, dressed in his cheap tweed sports coat, his beat-up mackintosh on the stool next to him. She sipped at a glass of white wine, he nursed a beer. Their conversation was always the same, too, and it always started in mid-sentence . . .

  “. . . that the rain rains upon,” Harper said. “That’s the rest of it. It was a line from a poem. ‘Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon.’”

  “Why did you say that?”

  “It’s all I could think of in the moment.”

  “Who wrote it?”

  “A British soldier of the Great War. His name was Edward Thomas. He was killed in action on Easter Monday, 1917.”

  “You knew him?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Why did you die, Harper? Why didn’t you leave with the rest of the angels that night?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. Maybe I got used to the feel of the world under my feet. Besides, this way I get to hear you tell me the story of what’s happened in the world when my feet were no longer on it.”

  “After you died, and they carried you away into the shadows.”

  “That’s right.”

  “How many times have I told you the story?”

  “Many times.”

  “And you never get tired of hearing it?”

  “Not at all. Tell me.”

  And so she did.

  After the comet lit up the sky over Jerusalem, the violence across the Middle East calmed and the world entered a time of reflection. From madman to wiseman, no one could escape the feeling that humanity had been shaken by an intervening force from beyond the planet. And when the Israelis lifted the communications blackout, the world discovered that the point of intervention was the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The news media were full of stories about great flashes of light and explosions from within the church that night. And there was endless speculation about the droning harmonic that was heard throughout the Holy City. Hundreds of Jerusalemites recorded the sound on their cell phones and uploaded it to the Internet; the sound was heard around the world by more than three billion human beings. The Internet buzzed with theories and interpretations about the meaning of the sound. Scientists had no answers. Millions, then billions, of people began to look to the stars for guidance and meaning. The Hubble Telescope website had become something of a new Bible, where instead of words, pictures of the universe became the new Gospels. Many people began to leave the cities and live in places where they could see the stars and planets. Those people began to perform acts of compassion and kindness wherever they went. They said they were seeking the wisdom of the angels: one soul, one life, one universe. Commentators called it the birth of a new religion.

  Months passed, then a year.

  Many religious leaders, tired of watching their followers leave their churches and temples and mosques to watch the stars, began to deny that the events of that mysterious night in Jerusalem held any true spiritual meaning. They called on their flocks to return to the true faith and abandon the search for “a false god in the stars.” Governments, rattled by citizens who pressured them for social and economic justice for all, encouraged their people to get back to their normal lives. Political and military leaders began to speak of dangers and threats that must be put down. Wars began again. Soon, the press referred to the time of reflection as a short-lived cultural phenomenon, much like the hippies and the days of peace and love in the 1960s.

  Then, on the night marking the second anniversary of the comet, the Internet was taken by storm with an anonymous post. The source of the post was never identified. It was a photograph of the rooftops of Jerusalem. The picture was grainy, but clear enough to identify the silhouette of a winged angel standing atop the Church of the Holy Sepulchre as the comet blazed through the sky. The angel held a sextant in its hands as if reading the stars. Under the photograph was the sound of the drone that had been heard throughout the Holy City that night. Then the picture of the angel dissolved and was replaced by a mathematical construct using 420 hertz as a baseline for zero; the construct revealed a message hidden within the drone’s tonic note. T
he message then appeared on screen in its original language, Zend. Then the ancient script fell away and English words appeared on the screen. Then came streams of code showing the same message revealed in all the languages of the world; spoken, unspoken, forgotten:

  As you are one with the universe, we are one with you; we await your ascension to the point of knowing.

  “Goose, I bet,” Harper said. “He’s the one who cracked the code.”

  “Yeah. And he seriously broke the Internet doing it.”

  “Well done, him.”

  Katherine turned her glass, watching light reflect in the wine.

  “Will we make it, Harper? Will we make it to the point of knowing?”

  “I don’t know the answer to that one, Madame Taylor. Like I told you in Jerusalem: it’s your world now, it’s down to you. And sure, there are ripples of evil in paradise, still. Fear and greed were bred deep. It’s going to take time. All you can do is keep Max safe until he’s ready to guide the creation.”

  “That’s a tall order, Harper.”

  “It was your destiny from day one, Madame Taylor.”

  “No choice.”

  “No choice.”

  Harper sipped his beer, Katherine watched him.

  “I wish you were still here. I miss you so much,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “Can’t you come back? I mean, if I can see you in my imagination, maybe you’re not really dead. Look at Marc Rochat, he’s alive and well within Ella. Astruc lives on in Goose’s flesh and blood, Krinkle lives on in Karoliina’s heart. Look at Max and Corporal Mai.”

  “You, Max, and the half-kinds were all born with souls. Human souls were meant to dwell in paradise, moving from one body to another and evolving in wisdom and compassion until they find their place amid the stars. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

  “We’re trying, we’re trying so hard, Harper.”