by S. L. Naeole
Table of Contents
PREFACE
FENCES MAKE FOR GOOD NEIGHBORS
ARRANGEMENTS
RETURN
SEX, TALK, AND VIDEO TAPE
FASHIONABLY LATE
MISS MARJORIE MAY MULLIGAN
BOMBS AND BOMBS
SETTLEMENT
QUEST UNLIKE
FREAKS OF A FEATHER
SPEED BUMP
LOOKS AND DAMAGES
ADMIRERS
THREE BLIND HUMANS
PUT A SPELL ON YOU
SHOES
GAMBLE
BLANK
MYTH
BYGONES
COMPOSITION
FLEE
FRAYED
FORGIVENESS IS DIVINE
SPRING BREAK-IN
ROLES
WEDDING MARCH
IN YOUR DREAMS
DECLARATION
SONG BIRD
THAT OLD FAMILIAR STING
EPILOGUE: ALBUM
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
About The Author
Bird Song
By: S.L. Naeole
Bird Song
© 2010 by S.L. Naeole
All rights reserved.
All of the situations and characters in this novel are fictional. Any similarities to actual people or situations are completely coincidental and wholly unintentional.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
S.L. Naeole
Visit my website at www.SLNaeole.com
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Black Halo, Book Three in the Grace Series Coming Out October 2010
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To Rere ~ best friends forever.
“Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven
That rustle through the unquiet Heaven
Uneasily, from morn till even,
Over the violets there that lie
In myriad types of the human eye-
Over the lilies there that wave
And weep above a nameless grave!
They wave:- from out their fragrant tops
Eternal dews come down in drops.
They weep:- from off their delicate stems
Perennial tears descend in gems.”
Valley of Unrest—Edgar Alan Poe
PREFACE
Loss is the catalyst to the weakening of faith. How many times have I lost, how much can one lose before faith becomes a dream; far off and out of reach? How much can I witness before my eyes finally stop believing and my heart finally ceases to hope?
I see him; Death is ready to take from me once again. How much more am I willing to sacrifice to keep my own wings above ground? Heaven holds no promise for me if even the rewards exact a cost.
FENCES MAKE FOR GOOD NEIGHBORS
The icy bite of the December air was a rude awakening for my barely conscious mind. If the sound of fluttering hadn’t clued me in, the warm lips against my ear did as they encouraged my slumber to flee. I smiled at the soft words. “You keep kidnapping me and I’m going to have to start locking my window at night just to get some sleep.”
“You know that won’t keep me away from you.”
“Mmm, promise?” I said sleepily, nuzzling the silky skin of his neck. “Where are we going?”
His thoughts told me were heading to the spot we always visited at this time of night—to his family’s retreat. Robert Bellegarde, my kidnapper, was taking me, his willing victim, to view the sky before another winter storm rolled in and covered the ground with white and the sky with grey. The stars were always the clearest at this time of night, and he knew how much I loved to just stare at them while lying together, content to let the rest of the world spin around us.
“Why are your wings open?” I asked, picking up the sound of whistling as the wind sifted through his ebony plumes.
Robert smiled at me and answered quite bluntly, “Because you like them.” And he was right. I did like them…very much. I’d told him many times just how much I envied them how he had something that made him different and yet so admired amongst his kind.
His kind…angels. The mythical creatures that have haunted our faiths and our fantasies since the beginning of time were real. And now they haunted my reality. I could never dream of going back to the semi-normal existence that I barely survived before meeting Robert.
His secret, his life had altered mine in ways that spanned the endless chapters that made up the story of me. And now it was the story of us; of how with the simple telling of one painful, black lie, he had lost his life. And with the forgiveness of truth, had regained it all back with the key to Heaven in his hands, and his heart in mine.
But, as with all great things, there was a price to pay for escaping death. And for Robert, his price was one that would have been the reason that life itself should have no meaning. Robert had lost the beating of his immortal heart.
Born without wings, as all angels are, and in a human body, Robert had needed a catalyst, a wing-bringer who would trigger within him what the angels called the change. He had searched and waited for fifteen hundred years, his ambition to ascend and receive his call his only driving force.
And then he met me. Simple, plain, unadulterated Grace Shelley, who would have given anything to simply vanish into thin air, rather than draw the attention of anyone or anything other than that of my best friend. But Robert saw—no, he felt something within me that acted like a magnet, drawing the two of us together.
Polar opposites on the playing field of everything that mattered in my world, he was beautiful, while I wasn’t. He was popular while I was committing crimes with my lack of a social life. And yet, his perfection was merely a façade, while my perceived shortcomings were the veneer that covered who I truly was underneath. I was his soul mate.
I know that sounds ridiculously melodramatic, but when you’re talking about angels, and dying, and growing wings, what else can you be? It’s not like I’m talking about your typical high school romance here. In another life, that was all I ever wanted. But as soon as Robert’s eyes caught hold of mine, the world and everything that I knew about it had changed. Girls who date high school kids don’t get mowed down by cars, or nearly strangled to death by rogue angels hell bent on hurting your boyfriend.
And…girls who date high school kids don’t end up sailing across the night sky in the arms of Death.
Along with Robert’s wings came the one thing that all angels strive for, their destiny. It’s a song, a never ending song of duty and devotion that they‘ve named the call. It demands their absolute loyalty and they give it without question. For most, it’s simply a duty of walking amongst us and ensuring that we remain faithful; mundane duties when compared to the darkness that consumes Robert’s call.
He had hoped that his ability to heal the human body would have given him the call of a healer, someone who performed miracles for the sick and injured. Instead, the wickedness that is cruel irony sentenced him to the role of Death. He’d be taking life instead of saving it.
He w
on’t tell me how many lives he’s taken, how many souls he’s had to help make the journey across time and physical boundaries to their final destinations, whether it be Heaven, Hell, or some place in between. But each time he returns to me, it seems like a small piece of who he is has been chipped away. The hope and optimism in him has dulled a bit and I often fear that he will come home to me one day unrecognizable, so consumed by the darkness of his call that he won’t be Robert—my Robert. Instead, he’d become…Sam.
“Are you woolgathering?”
“What?” I looked at him, confused, his question catching me off guard. “Woolgathering—what does that mean?”
Even in the smooth flow of flight, his body shook with his amusement. “It means thinking, collecting your thoughts. You’re quiet, and your mind is closed off which usually means you’re thinking about something important. What is it?”
“Are you saying that my thoughts are like itchy sheep’s hair?” I tried to sound insulted, but he could see right through me. There was no pretending when it came to him. “Okay, alright. I was just thinking about the past few months, about how so much has happened since September. I can’t believe everything that’s happened since I first saw you. It’s overwhelming, and I’m not sure what else life has in store for me now.”
Robert looked at me with inquisitive eyes. “You’re not telling me the whole truth.”
Of course I wasn’t. I wasn’t about to tell him that I was worried about his soul. He certainly knew much more about that than I ever would or could. My ignorance about much of the angel world was slowly diminishing, but I doubted that it would be completely eradicated in my lifetime. And of all the things that I was sure of, the very last thing I’d learn was the condition of the angelic soul.
“Robert, you worry too much,” I chided and then changed the subject. “Do you think that the ground is going to be too wet to lie down?”
The warm air from my mouth forced wisps of vapor to float around me, and I continued to blow out streams of warm haze in a poor attempt to occupy my wandering thoughts. Robert was taking an awfully long time to answer my question, which was unusual, especially when a question can be merely answered with a thought…
Oh. I was blocking his thoughts again. Sorry.
I looked up to see him shake his head, sighing in amused frustration. You’re doing this much more frequently now. It’s getting harder and harder to fight the shifting and stay where your thoughts are focused.
“This” was a complication that neither of us had expected. While we both knew that I could intentionally keep his kind from reading my thoughts, it seemed that since I had turned eighteen nearly a week ago, my mind was shutting Robert out on its own more frequently. When given notice, he was able to follow the thoughts in my head so that he wasn’t shut out. But it was becoming more and more difficult to differentiate when my thoughts were separating and when they weren’t.
Sorry. There wasn’t much else I could say. It wasn’t as though I had wanted it to happen that way. I enjoyed the ability to keep some thoughts private; I am human, after all. But, there is also something incredibly intimate about being able to share one’s innermost thoughts with another person.
As Robert slowed down, and the ground drew closer, I saw that the blanket of snow that covered the large field was not going to be bearing its stargazers tonight. “What do we do now?”
Robert’s feet touched the ground and sank into the cold covering, and I shivered just thinking about how it must feel to him. “It doesn’t feel all that different than standing on a beach, actually,” he said aloud, answering the question that I had not voiced.
I felt the line of dissatisfaction stretch across my face while I thought about that for a bit. “You know, you’re not going to be winning many points with me if you keep on bragging about going to the beach when I’m stuck in Ohio during one of the worst winters in history.”
He laughed out loud, his voice echoing around me, the sound a beautiful symphony of bells and brass and strings all blending into the only sound that could erase the very chill from my body. “You just say the word and you’ll have your toes dipping in warm, Pacific waters in no time.”
I shook my head. This was the hardest part when it came to what Robert was—at least it was for me. He wanted me to take advantage of what he was, use his abilities to help me, help my family out in ways that we both knew would be beneficial. It wasn’t breaking any code, he had explained. I just didn’t like the idea that by relenting, and allowing him the pleasure of doing this for me, I’d be using him.
I had argued that we had been getting along fine without him, his money, or his gifts, and we’d do well without it. I needed to be able to stand on my own two feet, I told him, because there was no other way for me to exist. It was why I had worked at the library. It was why I rode a bike instead of driving some used clunker. It was why I wore second hand clothes from thrift stores and garage sales. Everything that I did, I wanted it to be done my way.
“I’ll be able to support myself,” I had explained to him one night after he had argued against the possibility of me taking a job at the mall. “I don’t plan on living at home once I go to college, Robert. After the baby comes, what kind of study time do you think I’ll get?”
“You don’t have to get a job, Grace. I’d be more than willing to support you while you go to school,” Robert had argued. “Besides, you don’t even like the mall. How will you be able to be in some store you can’t stand and sell items to people you don’t like?”
I smiled sweetly at him and replied, “The same way you angels can help people you despise.”
It had been the wrong thing to do—Robert had been very sensitive as of late because of his call—but I couldn’t take it back, and I wasn’t going to either. Humans and angels weren’t so different that they couldn’t be just as deceptive as the other in order to achieve set goals.
There had been no winner in that argument. He couldn’t forbid me from working, and I couldn’t force him to like it. We were at an impasse in that regard, and I didn’t mind it at all because the wall was on his side of the fence this time. He had set up so many boundaries and rules since the very beginning of our strange relationship that it was nice being the one with the gate key for a change.
I can hear that.
Of course he could hear it. I had allowed him back in. And? It’s true. You’re the one who’s set up all of these ridiculous rules, and I’m stuck following them whether I like them or not.
He had walked over to our bench—where we had had our first real conversation, where everything began for the two of us—and used his wings like some kind of built-in broom to sweep the snow off of the seat. “Why are you doing that? You won’t get cold if you sit on the snow,” I commented, watching him.
“Because I don’t want to get my pants wet. They’re new.”
I rolled my eyes. Robert had discovered that being Death eased the restrictions on him that would have otherwise caused him significant harm. Lying, for example, would normally cause him extreme pain and eventually result in death if he didn’t confess the truth. As Death however, some of the darkness that comes with the power to extend or take away life allowed for him to lie…a little, and Robert chose to use this leniency to joke around. He was like a kid with a new toy, but I knew that it wouldn’t be long before it got on my nerves.
“You’re not seriously trying to make me believe that you care about your pants?”
As he sat down, his wings retreated into the mysterious lines that crisscrossed his back, mirroring in some way the branches of a large tree with Robert as its trunk. I immediately felt saddened by their disappearance. I had definitely grown used to seeing them, and thought they were the most beautiful things to have ever been created. It didn’t hurt that I was the reason for their existence.
“Grace, I don’t care about my pants. I was just trying to get your mind off some of the trivial things. Like this gate or wall notion you have in your head. You
know that the rules I have set up are to keep you and your family safe.”
I shrugged my shoulders, knowing what he had said, but not appreciating the reason why he had said it. “Robert, you told me that I can never tell Dad about what you are. I said fine. You told me that Graham can never know. I said fine again.. I’ve told no one about you; even Lark and I have never discussed it because you said it was uncomfortable for the two of you.
“But then you decide that I can’t even say your real name, like I ever had anyway, and that I cannot discuss your absences with anyone, that I should just play dumb. I don’t get that. It’s not like I’m telling Madame Hidani that you’re off in Swaziland ferrying souls to Heaven, Hell, and to Kosher Knishes for some lox and bagels. I’m supposed to be your girlfriend, and when I have to play dumb and say I don’t know when people ask where you are, I feel like everyone is starting to feel sorry for me again.”
I avoided mentioning the main arguing point, that neither of us had made any headway with…or concessions. Intimacy on a mental level was one thing. Intimacy on a physical level was something entirely different, and he had cut me off.
Robert’s angelic lack of awareness when it came to feeling the physical touch that so many humans took for granted had made him ignorant to the simple pleasures of experiencing things, like a holding a hand, or kissing. As Robert’s mother had explained, juveniles—angels without wings or a call—were more prone to experience physical pleasure through those of the humans they were with because that’s the only way they could feel them.
And now that Robert had his call, his wings, now that he could feel, could enjoy the wonders of soft lips and smooth skin himself, he had chosen to abstain. And in doing so, had forced me to abstain as well.
“It’s too much for me to deal with, Grace,” he had explained when I had been particularly angry and hurt at being rejected yet again. He refused to go into it any further, and I was feeling too dejected to push it. Rejection was my forte, so I knew I could handle it quite well. He, on the other hand, couldn’t. He just wasn’t used to it.