“As you have surely come to understand,” said Emily with a voice full of tenderness, “we’re all angels. More precisely, we are missionaries, angels that are sent to Earth to repair the mistakes that have been made and thus, preventing terrible tragedies from occurring. We were born angel, a very long time ago, and we will remain so for as long as there is a living being somewhere in the Universe who needs our help.”
Tara listened. She didn't want to believe her, yet she couldn't forget what she had seen after the old man stabbed her.
“You’re different from us,” Emily continued, looking her in the eyes. “You’re the seraph Diane. That’s your name in the other dimension, the Sphere, and it has been for millennia, despite your multiple incarnations.”
Upon hearing her name, Tara was overcome with a violent emotion, like something deep inside her had just awakened. She felt guilty, even though she had no understanding of where the guilt came from, nor why. She couldn’t grasp it. Was it the other being inside of her that felt guilty, or was it her?
The feeling of guilt that had emerged from deep within her became so strong that something absurd happened: she burst into tears in front of Van der Worthen. Why? She had no idea. If she thought about it rationally, she had no reason at all to cry. Yet the words "forget" and "pain" resounded in her mind so strongly that she couldn’t ignore them.
“I'm sorry,” apologized Tara, taking her hand out of Emily’s to dry her tears. “I don't know what's gotten into me. I wasn't sad a few seconds ago!”
“Don't apologize,” reassured Emily, handing her a handkerchief. “Many things buried deep inside you are going to gradually resurface... Things you have no clue about... It's normal to cry. Please don't hold back your tears.”
Looking at her face, Tara knew that Van der Worthen understood what she herself couldn’t begin to imagine. Full of love, she took both Tara’s hands in hers and brought them to her mouth as though she wanted to kiss them. Her whole body trembled as she let out a cry of joy:
“I'm so happy to have found you again Tara. We all missed you so much. We searched for you for two hundred years, but you wouldn’t stop hiding from us. You incarnated into bodies and were born in places where we would never had thought to look for you.”
Emily was crying now too. Tara could feel all the pain that was buried in her heart. After she dried her tears, she continued in a grave and broken voice:
“Fifty years ago, the incarnation of Hugo had finally found you. At that time, you were living in China in a small village in the Yunnan province ... We had never been so close to getting you back before that...”.
Emily smiled bitterly, looking absent. Then, with a voice full of tears, she continued her story:
“When Hugo approached you and tried to bring you back to us, you ran away and threw yourself off a cliff!”
With these words, Tara was propelled fifty years into the past. She was cooking alone in a small, dark room. The cooking utensils were modest, and the food was fresh and finely chopped. She threw the different ingredients into a wok, one by one. Suddenly, a man appeared at the door that had been left wide open. Tara recognized Hugo's aura. As he walked towards her, she noticed his brown hair and large, black eyes. He had come to give her terrible news. In despair, Tara ran out of her house, preferring to kill herself than to go back with Hugo.
Distressed by what she saw, she suddenly came out of her reverie. Emily resumed her story, not giving her time to think:
“Do you know what it means to be a seraph Tara?”
What a question. She was a consultant, not a nun!
“You’re hiding things deep within yourself that you’re refusing to face,” continued Emily with conviction. “A great seraph has buried herself so deep within your heart that even she has forgotten who she is.”
Tara looked at her critically. These could well be the words of a charlatan she thought, yet she felt the truth of them deep within her womb. Could she really have lived several lives? Was it possible that she really committed suicide? Had she really lived in China? She looked deeply into Emily’s eyes, hoping to find the answers.
After a few seconds, she pulled herself together and said:
“I'm sorry to disappoint you but I’m not Diane. My name is Tara Châvigner, I’m a consultant at Cesucom.”
“Tara...”
“I believe that you saw a spirit in the room earlier,” granted Tara, who remembered seeing her own wings. “But that spirit was me, it wasn’t Diane.”
Emily giggled affectionately, as she patiently waited for Tara to focus again:
“Yes, that’s true, you are Tara Châvigner... And no one can take that away from you. However, and you will end up accepting it in time, your soul and your essence is Diane. You are Diane. You were Diane yesterday, you are her today, and you will still be her tomorrow when Tara dies. Your face, your features, are those of Diane... Tara Châvigner is just the identity of your body, here and now, in your present incarnation.”
Tara looked at her with surprised eyes:
“I'm not human, is that what you're trying to tell me? That I'm some kind of immortal monster?”
“Of course you're human,” answered Emily kindheartedly. “A monster, certainly not ... You're a human being with your strengths and your weaknesses. But you're not just a human being Tara,” she continued optimistically. “You’re an angel and you’re a guide! You’re more important than the rest of us are. You always know when and how to take action. We, the legionaries and archangels, don't know how to do that. You’re the connection between this world and the Sphere. You must regain your memory Tara. We need you.”
Tara looked at her suspiciously, not making an effort to remember. How could she believe any of this?
Then, as she attempted to make Van der Worthen believe she wasn’t going to continue playing her game, something inside her told her to stop fooling herself. It was time. Time to accept the truth that was being forced upon her by these people.
Still, she put on a falsely rebellious voice in the hopes of silencing her inner knowing:
“I wish I could remember everything you're telling me, but I can't. I just don’t believe it. It's too much. If I had had signs throughout my life, special powers, special abilities... I certainly would have believed you. But this is coming out of nowhere.”
“How about dreams of past lives?” asked Emily, with a mischievous grin.
Tara's blood froze. She immediately thought back to her dreams of Madeleine... which had begun shortly before she met Nina...
Still, it seemed too implausible for her to believe. Looking away, she lied unscrupulously:
“No, no dreams.”
“What about the wings you saw earlier?” insisted Emily. “And the angels that surrounded you? Isn't that proof enough? You saw them with your own eyes. You felt those two powerful red wings in your on flesh. Wasn’t that by far the most indisputable of confirmations?”
“Perhaps,” answered Tara coldly, not managing to lie. “I don't know. I need time.”
“I know,” reassured Emily with love. “I know and I'm here to help you reemerge. Even Diane has forgotten who she is, it's not surprising that you’re struggling with this.”
At that moment, Emily’s eyes made it clear that she had to leave the room but that she would be back soon. Reluctantly, she let go of Tara’s hands and silently stepped out, leaving her alone on her bed. Then, Tara began to overhear fragments of a conversation between Emily and the old man. They whispered, hoping that she wouldn’t hear:
“We mustn't rush her Stanislas. We’ve already had so much trouble finding her. We don’t want her committing suicide again. Who knows where she might reincarnate next!”
“Stubborn as she is, she could very well decide to go and live with the Inuit...”
“And the stabbing... I never thought you would really do it... Couldn't you have chosen a softer method? How do you expect her to trust us now?”
“I warned you Emily! With a sof
ter method, she could have run away and we would have lost her completely. But look now: we have both Diane and Tara.”
Their conversation lasted a few minutes. Although Tara heard most of it, the situation wasn’t any less mysterious to her. A few minutes later, Emily returned, accompanied by Hugo and Nina. The young gladiator gazed at her with a bold and confident look, while Nina didn't even deign to look at her.
“They’re going to be your guardians until you regain your memory,” said Emily. “You will accompany them in their mission. We think it will help you understand who you are.”
Tara nodded while Van der Worthen slipped away, allowing them to get to know each other. The young man approached, honored. He was as handsome as a god, and the shy smile on his face charmed her. Almost bowing to her, he delicately took her hand and apologized:
“I'm sorry I was so rash with you the other day. It's not really our style to stab people in the gut to make them wake up. If there had been another way to make you see, without risking losing Diane, we would have chosen a gentler approach.”
“So I was told,” replied Tara uneasily, thinking back to the old man with no eyes who slowly pushed the knife into her belly.
“It's John who had the most trouble accepting it,” continued Hugo, taking a more jovial tone. “He must have picked the wrong body when he incarnated: he's as frail as a little girl, he wouldn't hurt a fly. He'd do better to reincarnate as soon as possible and become a real warrior.”
Tara looked at him without saying a word. She realized that she was amongst genuine exterminator angels. Then, she looked over to Nina, the lean-bodied woman who seemed to feel such deep hatred towards her.
“John is more the artist of the group,” resumed Hugo. “He has that attribute and it can't be taken away from him. When we incarnate, we live with and accept the characteristics of the bodies we choose. The angels that we are by nature are strong, almost omniscient, but the simple act of taking on a body, causes us to lose a large part of our abilities, which makes the task much more challenging.”
“Why do you incarnate then?” asked Tara, puzzled. “You’d be much stronger if you remained angels.”
Hugo laughed. Nina took on a hopeless look, refusing to answer a question that she considered ridiculous. The young man asked, amused:
“You really don't remember anything do you, that's incredible!”
Tara didn't answer, feeling uncomfortable. Hugo continued:
“Angels live in a parallel dimension that’s interconnected with the human dimension. They can't influence the real world, on a physical level I mean. They can however communicate energetically with humans; they can connect with their minds to make them see reason if they are about to encounter danger, for example. They can also influence outcomes, like a lottery draw for instance,” he said with a wink. “On the other hand, they can’t touch people, or hurt people, or do anything at all that requires physical force and a material body. Except for some very rare cases that humans call miracles. So, in order to accomplish our missions here on the earthly plane, it’s necessary that we incarnate, keeping in mind that we do maintain some of our original powers.”
Tara nodded. This wasn't exactly her idea of what angels were.
“In that case, angels are mortal? They grow old and become weak like any other human being?”
“Yes... Well no,” began Hugo, who didn't really know how to answer the question. “When we die, only our incarnations, our human bodies, die. We, the angels, then regain full consciousness of ourselves, as angels. We remember who we are, and we remember our past lives. It’s a time of absolute consciousness. We then return to the Sphere to reunite with our people. This is where we receive our orders and choose the most suitable incarnation to accomplish our next mission. Of course, we sometimes make mistakes,” he joked, turning to Nina. “For example, before she was born into this body, Nina incarnated into an embryo that was aborted three weeks later.”
Hugo burst out laughing:
“Talk about a failed incarnation!” he said, bending over backwards in hysterics.
Angry, Nina left the room. Then, Tara heard John say something to her in the corridor:
“Go ahead,” she answered. “But I warn you, you won't find anything interesting...”
Tara swallowed with difficulty, her heart felt heavy. To think she had come all this way just to find the coach.
The next moment, John rushed to her bedside:
“So, how do you feel?”
There was that question again. Tara hesitated to answer, but the young man looked so sincere that she couldn’t blame him:
“I feel like a woman who's been stabbed by her kidnappers...”
“We're not kidnappers,” corrected Hugo jokingly. “Let's just say we wanted to keep you close to us so we can take better care of you...”
“I was doing just fine on my own,” replied Tara.
“Don't listen to him,” John interrupted, taking her hand. “It's true that we were a little brutal and I'm sincerely sorry about that.”
Tara looked at him, surprised. His gentleness and innocence contrasted radically with Hugo's force and warrior spirit. Without realizing it, she had already become attached to him. Nonetheless, she was quickly brought back to reality when she heard the gladiator's deep voice:
“It seems that two centuries ago you experienced great trauma... We lost all trace of you. You didn’t want to be in the Sphere anymore: every time you died, you reincarnated immediately so the Decision-Makers wouldn’t find you. You always chose eccentric places where no one would think of looking for you. The last time I saw you, after searching for over a century and a half, you lived in the middle of the Chinese mountains. When I approached you, you suddenly remembered who you were and killed yourself instantaneously. You then reincarnated into another body, allowing yourself to forget your trauma all over again...”
“You mean I’m running away from something?” Tara asked, worried.
“We don't know for sure,” John resumed, excited like a child. “We weren't there with you when it happened. But we know you well enough to know that it must have been something very serious. You were one of the best seraphs! You were an outstanding leader. And we're determined to help you re-claim your status.”
Tara nodded. She, who a few weeks earlier was so upset that the promotion she wanted was awarded to someone else, suddenly realized how pathetic her earthly concerns were, compared to the angelic duties these people were informing her of. She realized that her life as Tara Châvigner didn’t have the importance that she had always given it. Her career and climbing the hierarchy ladder, paying her rent every month, earning money to feed herself and to spend on earthly pleasures... She understood that her human life, with its obligations and social constraints, held her back from honoring what Diane seemed to have been born for. And that was precisely Diane’s intention: to lock herself into a human life that would keep her in the dark.
Standing beside her, the two boys looked at her with such joy and hope that it disturbed her. They were so enthusiastic that it seemed she had no right to doubt. One thing was certain, they would never let her out of their sight again. When she understood that she would have to give up her life as a consultant, she felt a strong pinch in her heart:
“What’s going to become of me?” she asked, talking to herself.
“You're going to stay with us,” replied Hugo, as if it were good news. “You didn't come to Earth to learn, like most human beings. You came to Earth to protect it.”
Tara's heart became heavy. She was a prisoner now. Her thoughts went to her sister, her niece Julie, and especially to Victor...
Victor! He must be worried sick! She promised him she'd go back to his place after work with Max.
“How long have I been here?” she asked, suddenly in a panic.
“It's Sunday. You've been with us for four days,” John answered with a smile.
All of a sudden Tara became very anxious:
“Wher
e's my cell phone? I need to contact someone.”
“Not right now,” warned Hugo, in a tone that allowed no negotiation. “You're still in shock.”
“My boyfriend must be worried sick!” cried Tara, who had no intention of accepting the situation passively.
“It’s already been taken care of,” reassured John. “We answered his messages to reassure him. He knows that you’re okay.”
“You answered him in my name, on my phone?” snapped Tara, shocked. “Give it back to me, I need to call him!”
“Tara!” interrupted Hugo dryly. “Stop being so childish. Your earthly life is secondary now. You need to focus on your mission.”
“What did you say to him?” Tara asked, feeling her eyes well up with tears.
“It doesn't matter. The important thing is that he knows you're safe. You'll get your phone back when you're ready, but for now, you're too fragile and not focused enough on your spheric mission. We don’t want you making any mistakes.”
Realizing that she wouldn't be able to get in touch with Victor for a long time, she suddenly burst into tears. She who had finally found the man of her dreams, a generous and honest man, who loved her for who she was and who filled her every day with joy; she who had surrendered to a passion she would never have dared to dream of, she was being asked to renounce her love, give up this man, this happiness, that was so precious to her. As she cried her heart out, she realized she was losing one of the most beautiful things that had ever happened to her in this lifetime.
In the face of her sorrow, Hugo and John remained silent. They felt her pain and knew they had no choice but to let her cry. When her tears finally dried, Hugo said with a voice full of compassion:
“We don't exist solely for our mission. You have the right to your own life... But your human life is secondary. Your mission must be your priority. When you’re ready, you’ll be able to go back to this man.”
HAGEN: 1. Revelations Page 9