by Selena Kitt
“What happens?” She glanced at Chariel. He waited patiently, face impassive, watching. The man was asleep again—the nurse had come in with more pain medication and he’d nodded off—but his breathing was different. Harsher. Eliza had noticed, brow furrowed, as she sat by his side.
“You don’t know?” The seraphim looked surprised.
“Well I know,” she replied. “I mean, generally. I just meant… I’ve never paid attention to what happens. After.”
More like, she’d avoided it like the plague. She liked to think of the couples she joined being together forever. It always saddened her to know that those bonds would ultimately be severed, if not by divorce, then inevitably, death. She hated death. Even the thought of it.
“Look at the center of his soul.” He nodded toward the bed. Muriel saw more than a pinprick of light now. There was a golden orb there, about the size of a golf ball. “That’s the essence.”
“The essence. Human essence?” Muriel moved closer, curious in spite of herself. The man on the bed stopped breathing, just for a moment, like a skip on a record, and then resumed again. Eliza gasped and Muriel did too, until Norman took another ragged breath. The alarm in Eliza’s eyes began to fade, although her body remained tense.
She senses it’s almost over—he’s fading.
“That’s the soul’s essence,” he explained. “And it’s what I collect when their time here is up.”
He folded his wings behind him, lowering himself to the floor.
“So what is all… this?” She gestured to the darkness, reddish-blue now instead of black, surrounding the golden orb. She would easily have been able to hit that target now.
“The soul’s experience.”
She remembered Jari’s excitement when she found out they were targeting a black soul. Such a rare thing. Strange, to consider someone else’s pain as a prized possession. Another notch on Jari’s belt, and a considerable one at that, one that might become legendary. But when she looked at Norman, at the sum of his experience on Earth, she just felt sad. How could something so beautiful and bright be buried under the weight of darkness?
She found it ironic that, in the human world, gold was so precious. Did humans somehow know or sense that this golden sphere was at the center of every being? Were they, intuitively, trying to get back to their essence? In the soul’s world, gold was indeed precious, but not because it was scarce. In the human world, they buried their golden souls in darkness and spent their existence seeking it once again.
Until this very moment, she realized. When the soul was returned to itself. Stripped bare, it was able to shine once more.
It made Muriel wonder—did angels have souls?
“I don’t understand why they cover it up.” Muriel peered closer at the golden sphere.
“It’s suffering that makes a soul dark,” he explained. “Humans can’t prevent it. The only difference between his soul and hers is their response to suffering.”
“It’s so painful.” It hurt to look at it. Muriel wanted to look away but she forced herself to stand her ground beside the seraphim.
“Yes.” His voice was sad, resigned. “Some people scar and heal. Some wounds stay open and fester. It’s the same with a soul.”
“How do you know all this?” She blinked up at him, pondering.
“It’s time.” He took a step forward, reaching out, but Muriel grabbed him, a silent protest.
“Wait!” she cried. Chariel frowned down at her, but he did as she asked. He waited. “Will he… will he wake again? Will he tell her he loves her just one more time?”
“She knows.” His eyes softened and she felt the brush of his wings against her cheek, a tender gesture.
And then he plucked the golden orb, like picking fruit, tucking it away somewhere under his wing. It disappeared entirely. Muriel cried out, seeing the thread she’d help create, which had already weaved itself into a nice, thick braid, snapped and frayed. It hung limply, still attached to Eliza’s soul, its end reddish and bloody from where it had been affixed to Norman.
“That’s it?” Muriel asked, looking at the man’s face. His eyes were still closed. He looked peaceful, like he was sleeping. But his chest had stopped rising and falling. That ragged breathing that had filled the room had disappeared. “That’s all there is?”
Eliza noticed. She shook him. She cried out, calling his name, but there was no answer, no response. The essence of who he had been was now tucked away with the seraphim. The body that remained was just a shell of who had been. She wondered if those little golden orbs were the same, just shells, containing the true essence of their existence.
“Norman!” Eliza’s voice rose, panicked. “Please! No! Not now, not yet!”
The woman’s tears fell onto the man’s face as she bent to kiss his lips, his stubbly cheek, cupping his face in her hands as if she could bring him back. The sight of this made Muriel ache all over. Her limbs shook as she watched Eliza rush to the door, calling for a nurse, a doctor, someone, anyone…
“Why?” Muriel looked up at the angel who had taken the man’s soul, who had plucked it from him as easily as taking an apple from a tree. She wanted to rail at him—this was his fault. All of this pain and sorrow. She glanced at Eliza, seeing her soul had already changed, from that deep amber color, to a dark bronze, dull and cloudy. Muriel doubted it would stop there.
“Why do you do that?” Muriel’s voice was just a whisper as Eliza rushed out the door, going to look for help where none would be found.
“I’m sorry.” The seraphim apologized, wincing. “It’s just my job.”
“You have a terrible job.” Muriel hugged herself, feeling the bow and quiver on her back shift. She spent eons joining souls, only to have angels like this one tear them apart. What was the point?
“Death isn’t the end,” he reminded her as she stood looking down at the man’s still face. She felt Char’s wings circling, enveloping her, and she turned to face him, feeling herself trembling. The seraphim pulled her close, into an embrace. It was a tender, very human thing to do, and it surprised her.
What surprised her even more was how good it felt. Is this why humans embraced this way? Touched each other so often? She felt comforted, whole again in that moment. How strange.
“You gave this man a great gift today.”
His wings quivered as he drew her tighter so her head rested against his torso. She was enveloped in softness, pressed against his strong, solid body. Angels mirrored human forms, but only to some degree. Humans obviously didn’t have wings. And angels didn’t have flesh. Although their bodies were solid, they appeared gossamer, like tangible light. Cherubim were all silver, almost pearlescent, but all of the seraphim she’d seen were golden, like this one.
“A lot of good it’s doing him.” Her voice was muffled in the hollow made by his wings.
“Ah but it is.” Char unfurled and Muriel found herself longing for his embrace again as he reached underneath one of his wings to retrieve the orb he’d taken. “You gave this soul a chance to shine again. Look. Here.”
He handed it to her and she stared down at it, seeing, for the first time, the way the color shifted when she tilted it, as if it were filled with some liquid, something sweet maybe, like honey.
“But they had such a short time together,” she mused. The thing in her hand was warm. She thought it was from being protected under the angel’s wing, but it stayed warm. It was full of energy, quivering in her hand, as if it might leap away all on its own.
“Love knows no time.” He tilted her chin so she was looking up—way up—at him. “You redeemed his soul.”
“I didn’t do anything.” She turned the orb over into his hand, closing his fingers around it. It seemed impossible that this tiny thing was what had given life to the body lying still in the hospital bed, but there was something alive in it, all the same.
“You hit your target,” Char reminded her, tucking the orb away again.
“Why did you tel
l me to close my eyes?”
“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. Then he smiled. “I just had a feeling.”
“Me too.” She was having that feeling again—she knew, if she closed her eyes right then, she could have drawn her bow and still hit any target she wanted.
The room was filling up with people. Eliza sat in a corner, face in her hands, as doctors and nurses crowded around the bed, so they moved out into the bright white of the hallway.
“I’ve never seen a seraphim before,” she told him, more to make conversation than anything else. The fact was, now that his job was over, she was afraid he was going to fly away. And for some reason, she didn’t want him to.
“We usually keep to ourselves.” He walked beside her through the hall, a few more doctors and nurses rushing by and through them, heading into Norman’s room. Most humans could pass through them without any awareness at all. Once in a while, a person would stop, look confused, as if they’d forgotten whatever it was they had gone into the room for, as if passing through an angel had stolen their awareness, just for a moment. It threw them out of themselves and into something greater, just for a second.
“You can make yourself invisible?” She knew she sounded jealous—and she was. She’d often wished she could disappear for an hour or two. Angels had no privacy. No need for it, really. They had no needs at all. But sometimes she felt like she wanted just a teensy-weensy break from her partner.
“No, I can’t make myself invisible.” He slowed his stride, glancing down at her. She had to double her pace to keep up anyway.
“But—?” She frowned up at him, confused.
“I can make myself visible.” He winked. “If I choose.”
“You made yourself visible to me,” she mused.
“Yes.” He slowed again. She didn’t have to jog anymore.
“Why?” she wondered.
“I don’t know.” He gave her a little smile. “I had a feeling.”
So do I, she thought, but she didn’t say it. Whatever the feeling was, she couldn’t identify it. Angels didn’t feel things the way humans did—with that kind of intensity. If angels’ feelings were like the tide, slowly ebbing in and out, human feelings were tidal waves.
“You don’t look like the angel of death,” she remarked, giving him a sidelong glance.
“You were expecting a black robe and a sickle perhaps?” He chuckled.
“No, of course not.” She wasn’t about to admit her misconceptions, not after her rant to Jari about humans and their visions of Cupid.
“Death is only sad because humans see it as the end,” he said. “But we know it isn’t.”
“But imagine being human.” Muriel could imagine. She was. She found it easy to put herself in a human’s place, even if she couldn’t quite fully replicate the experience for herself. “What if you didn’t know? Eliza back there—had to part with a man she loved. Now she has to live without him. How painful that must be…”
“The human condition,” Char agreed. “If humans didn’t feel pain, how would they know they were alive?”
“Now you sound like Jari.” She sighed, slowing to a stop, drawn to the sight of the babies behind glass in the nursery. It was compelling. Their souls were perfect golden orbs above their delicate heads, still attached at what the humans called the “soft spot” in their skulls. That would harden over time. And so would their poor little souls. “I don’t think the point of human existence is pain.”
“What do you think it is?” He stopped too, peering down at the newborns.
“Love.”
“Says the cherub.” Now he was the one giving her a half-smile and sidelong glance.
“I can’t think of anything stronger than love.” She crossed her arms, cocking her head at him. “It redeemed that man’s soul today, didn’t it?”
“That it did.”
“Do you think babies can see us?” Muriel stared at the little dark-haired newborn wrapped in a pink blanket burrito—obviously a girl. The baby had been fussing and sucking hard on her fist when they stopped but now her face was turned toward them, her blue eyes wide.
“I don’t think they can see very far.” Char leaned closer to the glass, pressed to it, but not through it. They could go through it if they wanted to, it just required a modicum of effort. The baby closest to him, a blue burrito with a little bit of peach fuzz on his head, turned his face toward the angel. “But I think they sense us.”
“They sense the fey too.” Muriel nodded to one of the incubators in the corner furthest from them. There was a tiny baby in there, smaller than the others. One little fairy hovered outside, looking in. The baby had turned toward the little light. There was another sitting on top, chin in hand, looking very bored.
The fey were everywhere. To the cherubim, and Muriel imagined, to the seraphim too, if they bothered to consider them at all, the fey were more a nuisance than anything else. Like gnats, they were tiny little bits of light, flying around, here and there, influencing human lives everywhere they went, all based on The Maker’s directives.
Or The UnMaker’s.
The UnMaker issued directives too, and the dark fey obeyed. There were as many dark fey as there were light—shady complements to their bright counterparts. And neither knew the other existed. It was often a comedy of errors, watching the fey interact. A dark fey would come along creating havoc, and a light fey would follow, never seeing the dim fairy who had caused the chaos—just the mess it made and left for the light fey to clean up.
They passed each other, light and dark, never knowing the other existed.
“What’s he doing?” Muriel leaned against the glass, seeing a shadow on the other side of the incubator-baby. “Look, there’s a dark fey in the crib.”
“His job.” Char’s mouth flattened into a thin line, watching.
“He’s going to smother it!” Muriel cried, the shadow creeping closer, covering the baby’s tiny face.
“It wouldn’t be the first time.” The line of his mouth grew even thinner but he didn’t move.
She knew what he said was true. Many babies perished in their first year of life. They made easy prey for the dark fey.
“We have to do something.” She pushed through the glass, appearing on the other side.
Chariel followed, stopping her by grabbing hold of her arm.
“You know we can’t,” he said. A nurse went right through them, down the aisle, carrying a bottle filled with formula.
The Maker made it very clear. Angels weren’t allowed to interfere with the fey. They had their missions. Stepping in could change the course of a human’s fate, and unless an angel was directed to do so by The Maker, they weren’t supposed to intrude.
But this was a baby!
“It’s just a baby!” Muriel said out loud, struggling against Chariel’s hold. “It’s not fair! Let me go! He’s going to—!”
“No, Muriel.” Char pulled her in close, her back against his front. His voice rumbled through her. “I would know. This child isn’t going to die.”
“You promise?” Muriel glanced up at him, doubtful, then back to the newborn.
“Hey, Alex, aren’t you supposed to be doing something?” The fey hovering in front of the incubator nudged the bored one sitting on top.
“Okay, Sam, I know, I know!” The bored fey hovered for a moment and then zipped over to the other side of the room, where the nurse with the formula bottle was changing another newborn’s diaper. There were no other nurses or hospital personnel around, although there were a few gazers outside the nursery window.
“They can’t see it,” Muriel murmured, the dark shadow looming over the newborn’s face. “They don’t know.”
“The Maker knows,” he reminded her softly. “Let the fey do their job.”
The nurse left the newborn she was caring for only half dressed and crying in its little bin, frowning as she crossed the room toward the incubator. Muriel knew the fey called Alex had influenced her, and just in t
ime, because the dark fey had succeeded.
The newborn’s breath had stopped completely. Satisfied with a job well done, the dark fey rose up and flitted off, probably to answer another call from The UnMaker, just like the light fey followed the voice of The Maker.
“He’s not breathing,” she whispered. “He’s gone—he’s gone!”
“No,” Char assured her again, keeping his hold on her. “Watch.”
The nurse opened the little porthole in the side, reaching in to touch the baby. His tiny chest was still. His heart had stopped beating. Muriel struggled against the seraphim’s hold, aching to intervene.