by L. Penelope
That is what they want me to become. A creature with no feeling, no curiosity, no care. That is my future and my destiny. It seems wrong to me. Unnatural. I would rather fade away than become one of them. I have barely lived at all, and the idea of such a bleak existence is unfathomable.
What would it feel like to rejoin the Flame as the elders do? I have no memory from before my emergence, and none of the knowledge in my head gives any clues as to what it’s like. But I sense that I am close to finding out—my light continues to dissipate. I am not trying to fade, but I am not trying to stop it either. I fall—the desires to keep my form aloft has disappeared. Wren reaches for me, but I am no longer solid.
I fall down and down, through the floor of the chamber, through the foundation of the Hall of Records. I descend into the bowels of Euphoria, looking up at the lights of the city. Insubstantial to the point of nonexistence. There is the sense that if I continue on this path, there is no going back. I will dissipate until the pieces that used to be me make their way back into the Flame.
And then something moves through me. The sensation gives me pause. I look down to see the emerald glow of Wren’s form taking up the same space as mine. We are one mash of greenish-gray light. I do not know what this means, but the feeling is so odd it wakes me up.
He is calling my name over and over. Lyrix. Lyrix. Lyrix.
It’s a chant that makes me want to be again. I remember being solid and feeling his touch. I want that again. I want to be more and do more and feel more.
My falling stops. Our light mingles as we hover in the darkness below the city.
“Lyrix, come back to me,” he says. I stretch out my form and see how weak my glow is. I am nearly all gone.
I disengage my feeble light from his strong one. The pull of the Flame’s energy tugs at me, offering strength if only I take it. As I latch onto that, a pulse of vitality returns my glow to me. It is pale and muted, the separation between colors barely visible.
Wren reaches out a hand to me, solid and comforting. I ignore it and hurtle into his arms, coming back to myself with him so close.
“I can’t do it, Wren. I can’t become one of them.”
“One of who?”
“The Seraphim. They feel nothing. There is no joy or compassion inside them.”
“There isn’t much of that in any angel,” he says, his tone harsh.
“Then something must be wrong with me. I must be broken somehow, for I feel those things all the time.”
“You’re not broken. I think you may be perfect.” The last is said in a whisper, but the words dissolve my despair, making me glow brighter than ever. He and I are different from others in Euphoria. Both the knowledge in my head and Zox’s thoughts and memories confirm the disparity, but at least we’re different together.
Chapter Six
“What did you say to her?” Beetrix asks me after we are done with our shift.
“What do you mean?”
“The Nascent has chosen to work the stream for a time.”
Shock buzzes through me. “Are you certain?”
“Yes, Mannix told me. The Seraphim have given her leave to study the guilds and gain a better understanding of those she would rule. It is an odd request, is it not?”
The last Nascent worked a guild before becoming a Seraph, but that was when the Flame was stronger. I want to tell Beetrix that Lyrix is a bit odd, but that would feel like a betrayal. I’m glad she’s the way she is.
“She’s really chosen to work in Records? Not something more exciting, like Life or Destiny?”
Beetrix’s glow is bemused. “She will not transform, but she will work among us, learning. Records was apparently her preference. It is peculiar.”
I work hard to dim my excitement over seeing Lyrix again. Angels in Euphoria don’t have friendships. Alliances are often made to achieve common goals, but sharing one another’s company because it is enjoyable is simply not done. If an action doesn’t serve the Flame, angels see no point to it. Only the dams and their angelborn spawn enjoy the kind of relationship that Beetrix and I have, and only because the angelborn are dependent on their dams for the first years of our lives.
“It’s peculiar,” I say. “But she isn’t like any other angel I’ve ever met.”
My dam doesn’t understand, and I can’t think of a way to explain it to her.
Beetrix and everyone else gets firm evidence of Lyrix’s uniqueness when the Nascent insists on taking the station next to me on the stream. She could have any position she wanted, but she chose to be here near the bottom. More than one curious gaze lands on me when she arrives, and keeping my glow predictably stable is a huge effort.
In another bit of good luck, Tyrex is moved to Quality Control and tasked with reviewing the bins of data for cataloging errors. It’s a miserable job, but he excels at it.
Lyrix tends to chatter as we sift. Short of viewing the human world through a portal or traveling there and observing, gathering data from the pearls is the best way to learn about humans. We spend many cycles side by side as she absorbs information from the stream, and I realize how much I’ve taken for granted about my position.
She treats every bit of information as unique and special. Even the most unremarkable facts sound fresh and exciting when she repeats them to me.
“Actasi Eponu lived to be one hundred and five and died peacefully, surrounded by his four children, eight grandchildren, twenty-two great-grandchildren and four great-great-grandchildren. How do humans keep up with all of those descendants?”
“I didn’t realize they could live to such an age,” I say.
She catalogs the data and turns to me. “I wonder if anyone has done any research on the souls of the very old—do they even need more lives to mature? What if you had a human who lived four lives and each time died at twenty, and another who lived one life until eighty? Would their souls hold the same power?”
Her enthusiasm is infectious. “I suppose it would depend on how they lived. Four terrible lives versus one great life. Or vice versa.”
“How terrible do you have to be to forfeit your soul?” she whispers.
“And end up in the Wasteland?”
She shudders, a wave of dimness rolling through her light.
“Only the worst of the humans end up there,” I try to reassure her. “Or those unfortunate enough to be targeted by the djinn. And, of course, the unlucky angelborn.”
She trembles again and plucks another pearl from the stream.
"Diary entry of Louisa Geiger, dated September the fourth: He has his father’s eyes and I don’t know how I can bear to look at him with those blue orbs staring back at me. I fear that I will gouge them out just to avoid that stare.”
A quiver of dread snakes through me, and Lyrix dims even further. She looks upstream towards my dam. “Did Beetrix ever tell you why she went to live with them?” She leans closer, her action leaching away some of the sadness of the last pearl.
“Beetrix wanted to create life. She was curious, much like you are. Humans are fascinating.”
I pluck a swift-moving bit from the stream and absorb its knowledge. “Grayson Dunfrey awoke one morning missing two fingers from his left hand with no recollection of how it occurred.”
Lyrix sparkles at this. I file the pearl away. Suddenly, she pulls her hands from the stream. “We should go.”
“We still have half a cycle left on our shift.”
“No, Wren, I mean we should go to the human world. We should experience what it’s like.”
Thrills of excitement and fear thread their way through me. But the more I’m around her, the more questions I have. My memories of being among humans are locked away. Touch, smell, taste—these are all just vague notions. I blocked them from my mind in order to survive in Euphoria without them, but now I wonder. What human form would Lyrix choose? What would she smell like? What would she feel like?
“Go together?” I ask, needing to be sure.
“Of cou
rse. It seems like a frightening thing to do alone, but it would be an adventure with you.”
“An adventure?” I repeat dumbly.
“Like this.” She holds up a bit of data. “‘Italian prince, Rodolfo Velluvio—first to climb Mt. Zailaniryana. He made it to the top in three weeks and planted his flag at the summit.’ We could be like that, going where no one has gone before and planting our flags.”
“Angels have gone to the human world for millions of cycles.”
“Yes, but never together. Think of all the things we could experience.”
I focus back on my section of the stream, the longing within me having no place to go. “It would be dangerous.”
"Other angelborn have gone, have they not?"
"Yes, there are those who have risked life away from the Flame. But remember, it is different for us. Away from the Flame our powers eventually fade to nothing. We become fully human with no souls. Some are lucky—they fall in love with a human and bind with them to share their soul. They're reborn together, two bodies with one soul, again and again, but others..." I shake my head, and Lyrix's light weakens, her sadness over that grim fate apparent.
“It won't get to that point, Wren. We would be sure to return before your powers diminished. I wouldn’t risk you dying there soulless and being sent to the Wasteland.”
“Would the Seraphim even allow it?”
She grabs my arm with both hands, startling me into dropping the pearl I’d just picked up. As humans, we could touch all the time and no one would think anything of it. No one would darken with disapproval or stare the way they do here when Lyrix brushes against me. Plus, I would be able to feel it with skin and muscle and bone, far more deeply than even my light-made-solid angel form could. But if that wasn’t enough to sway me, the emphatic voice she uses does it.
“I have to be back for the next Adjustment," she says. "Until then, I can do what I like—I don’t see why exploring the human world would be off limits.” She fades sharply. The sight wounds me. “It is my duty to become a Seraph—my destiny. This will be my only chance to ever experience real life. Please say you will come with me.”
I cover her hands with my own, trapping her against me. Though I’m aware of the contact between us, it isn’t true sensation. There’s no temperature, no texture. The most we can experience here is a just a shadow of what it would be like with human bodies.
I would never have done it on my own, but Lyrix’s pleading makes me realize how much I want to. Perhaps have always wanted to.
“Yes, I’ll go with you,” I say.
She shines, making no attempt to hide her feelings or fit in with the rest. For a moment, I give up the pretense as well. We gleam, both of us, until we’re brighter than the Eternal Flame.
Chapter Seven
SAN FRANCISCO, 1905
Lyrix and I emerge from the portal into a chaos of sight and sound. In contrast to the orderliness and quiet of Euphoria, the scene before me is jarring. Our angel forms are invisible to humans. We float above them, taking in the mayhem. Horse-drawn carriages, carts, streetcars, bicycles and pedestrians vie for position on the road. They weave through one another without apparent care—it’s a wonder a collision does not occur.
The walkways are crowded with bustling passersby, some hurrying to their destinations, others stopping to consider the wares of those hawking flowers, fruit, vegetables and newspapers. Towers of brick, wood and glass loom over their heads. Beside me, Lyrix freezes, overwhelmed by the scene below. I draw closer to her, taking her bright hand in mine.
“Why San Francisco?” I ask her.
She tears her attention away to look at me. “I don’t know. When I saw it through the portal, it just appeared more enthralling than other places.” The chime of a streetcar jingles merrily up to us. “Where should we start?”
“You need to choose your human form. We should find a place with many people gathered.”
“Are these not many people?” She points to the hundreds on the busy street below us.
“This may be too many. You’ll need to focus to become human. How about somewhere a little more quiet?”
I lead her away from the busy main artery of the city to a grassy park square. Concrete walkways slice the lush greenery, but the traffic is far less dense. People sit on benches or on blankets on the grass, enjoying the midsummer sunshine. Tiny human babies crawl and laugh, their mothers watching them with smiling eyes.
We hover just above their heads to view the humans more closely. Lyrix zips around, wanting to get a good look at everyone. It is so different seeing them up close as opposed to through a portal.
“There are so many choices,” she says.
“Most angels simply choose someone to copy.”
She shakes her head emphatically. “I don’t want someone else’s face. I want to create my own.”
I hang back and let her scrutinize the features of those present. But half an hour later she is no closer to deciding.
“Show me your form, Wren. Maybe that will help me.”
I lower myself completely onto the ground and begin to dim, focusing on my human shape. I have not been here since I was a child, and my physical body has now reached maturity. I feel the difference in my limbs, longer and stronger than before. At the last moment, I remember to become invisible—a naked man appearing suddenly in the middle of a park would likely not be looked upon kindly.
“You look…somehow different than them,” Lyrix says. My human form cannot see angels, but I hear the wonder in her voice.
“My father was a merchant peddling goods from China along what they now call the Silk Road. Beetrix chose a form similar to his.” I shrug. My skin tone is a few shades darker than that of those gathered in the park, closer to the gold of sand rather than pale pink. Short dark hair bristles under my touch as I rub my head.
After a few moments, the air before me ripples, and a form comes into focus. Long legs, generous hips and a narrow waist. She is tall and strong. High, firm breasts would fit perfectly in the palms of my hands. Thick dark hair cascades to her shoulders. Her skin has a bronze sheen to it, darker than mine and healthy to the point of nearly glowing. Her face is complete with dark onyx eyes delicately canted similarly to mine, a straight, sculpted nose and lush lips. She is perfection made physical. Speech leaves me.
A gasp sounds nearby. A human woman stares, mouth agape. I chuckle and charm her into forgetting the naked woman in the park with a wave of my hand.
“You’re scandalizing the humans.”
Lyrix gasps and flickers, but cannot quite manage invisibility yet. I turn the attentions of the nearby humans away while she works it out.
“Just will it. Stay calm and allow your power to work through the limitations of this form.”
“I keep shifting back,” she says, a note of alarm in her voice. “I can’t hold on.”
“Yes, you can. There’s no rush, take your time.”
She lets out a frustrated groan and flickers back, fully visible before me. “This is more difficult than I thought.”
I focus on her eyes, not her nakedness, which has filled my human body with an embarrassing amount of sensation.
“Am I scandalizing you?” she asks.
My face heats, and I clench my jaw. She must understand the reaction, for her eyes brighten and she preens before me. “Do you not like my body? I hoped it would be pleasing to you. I like it very much myself.”
I allow myself another glance down at the perfection of her features and swallow. Then swallow again. “You are magnificent, Lyrix.” I rub the back of my neck to cool the burning sensation there. “But we need clothing.” I become invisible and wait for her to do the same.
In a few moments, she disappears from my sight entirely. In my human form, my already weak angelborn powers are even weaker. I can charm and soothe, to influence the humans and calm them. I can fly and heal, but my abilities come much more easily when I take angelic form.
As an angel, Lyri
x maintains her full powers as long as she takes her angel form regularly to receive sustenance from the Eternal Flame. If she stays in her physical form, her powers will eventually weaken to nothing until she shifts again. She can see me when I’m invisible to humans and even when I can’t see her. Her hand reaches for mine, gripping me tightly. I tug at her until we are flying again, back towards Market Street, which houses a number of well-stocked shops where we can find supplies.
Though I cannot see it, her hand in mine is solid and warm. I stroke her smooth skin with my thumb, and relish in the chills that run through me at the action. The first step of our human adventure has begun.
Chapter Eight
My first meal in my human body is chicken salad, toast, and hot tea sweetened with so much honey, Wren warns that my new teeth may be at risk. But he smiles and orders dessert for me—chocolate cake with a thick, delicious frosting on top. I eat every bite.
Human skin is a wonder. I rub my arms over and over again just to feel its smooth softness. I chose this particular body to be able to run fast and far, to laugh long and hard, to be strong and capable—everything a human was meant to be. I also wanted Wren to like it—the glances he gives me when he thinks I’m not looking let me know that he does.
Others look at me oddly, though. When we walked into the restaurant, fully clothed in outfits straight from the pages of the catalog at the department store, the host scrunched his nose as if a bad smell had invaded. I’d noticed Wren charming the store clerks since we had no currency, and thought nothing when he also used his power on the host, who promptly showed us to our seats. But the stares from the other patrons now feel challenging.
A man and a woman pass by, the looks on their faces decidedly unfriendly. “I wish they’d stay in Chinatown,” the man mutters. Wren’s face tightens, but he stays silent.
“Why are people staring? Am I doing something wrong?” I watch the women around me carefully to see how they eat and ensure I am doing it correctly. Wren reaches for my hand across the table.