by Sarah Mussi
‘That means they’re closing the ward,’ he said. ‘It’s the end of visiting.’
I smiled. The arbitrary opening and closing of hospital wards meant nothing to me.
‘And I’ll have to go and be there for the pill round,’ he added. ‘They’ve got some pretty massive painkillers. Give you one hell of a kick.’ He tilted his head. ‘Who knows, if I don’t get my next fix you might disappear.’
I jumped. What was I thinking of? I had to get to the surgical ward and Collect the old man! I had to get down to intensive care and kill the baby!
In a swirl of flame, hair floating wide, wings risen, I jumped up. I’d wasted all this time. I hadn’t told him about the deal, or how Larry had helped, or Joey, or what should have happened. What was going to happen! I hadn’t informed him about my repentance plan: the charity donation, the appeal to the Halls of the Dead.
I started to feel terribly angry with myself. I could feel thunderbolts building up inside me. How remiss, how unforgivable, how incompetent.
‘Hey, Angel, calm down. You can come another time,’ he said. ‘I’d like that. You can appear in a flash of light and wow me all over again.’
We had to get back to the ward. Right now.
Marcus struggled to raise an arm. He unhooked a lanyard from his neck, gathered something in his hand and pressed it at me.
I looked at him, uncertain, and helped him to his feet.
‘It’s a key,’ he said, ‘to my place. I haven’t got anything else to give you.’
‘But you don’t have to give me anything,’ I said.
‘I do,’ he said. ‘You saved me. I owe you. That’s how it is in my world. It’s the street code. Now you can call on me any time you like.’
I shook out the lanyard. Looped through it was a key.
‘I’ve never given that to anyone before,’ he said. ‘It’s just a way of saying my yard is yours, and if you want me to change, I’ll give it a go. And that’s a promise. I know you don’t need a key. You can walk through walls.’
I was so stunned I didn’t know what to say.
‘I’ll look out for you, then,’ he said. ‘We can argue a bit more – you know, about life and truth and reality.’
Argue? Had we been arguing?
‘About sex and drugs and rock and roll.’
Sex and drugs?
‘Just kidding,’ he laughed. ‘Only drugs.’
Oh, he was joking. He didn’t want to see me again.
‘Please come,’ he said. ‘I’d really like it.’
Serafina 18
I was late.
So I did everything in a rush.
I got Marcus back to his room, helped him on to his bed, but I couldn’t fix all those tubes back. I couldn’t wait till a nurse came to do it either. It might take forever. But if I left him?
There was nothing for it; what was five hundred years in Torium anyway? So as soon as I got out of apparition mode and back to my full powers, I performed the advanced Pick Up Your Bed And Walk Miracle (adapted, obviously). I healed him completely – right there and then. And I was right, I made a perfect A* job of it. I know, don’t say it. I don’t even want to think how many rules I broke.
The miracle knocked him out, though. With a strange little cry he collapsed on the bed, completely flattened. (OK, maybe it would only have got a B+.) I made him as comfortable as I could and left him lying there insentient.
Then I got moving. And I would’ve been OK, if I could’ve flown from one bedside death to the next and hurried the souls along, but Robyn slowed me down. She was so attached to her human form she insisted on walking.
I got quite cross with her. I told her to let it go. I ordered her to hold on to me and allow me to guide her. I even threatened her, told her I’d leave her if she didn’t hurry up. I wasn’t very nice. I’m so sorry for that. I really didn’t give her a great send-off: making her wait and then bullying her to keep up.
Somehow we made it to the baby in intensive care. That was horrid. She was such a tiny little thing and was struggling so bravely to breathe, her minuscule chest inflated by machines, her incubator just a mass of tubes and plastic. It wasn’t her fault she was born too early.
Her mother was hardly more than a girl herself. She looked tired and strained. She must have been sitting beside the child for days. She knew the little thing couldn’t survive. She knew that each breath was a fight, each heartbeat took such courage. It was a mercy to release the infant from her painful brush with life. Maybe Marcus was right. Maybe after all life was a bad joke.
Anyway, she didn’t slow me down. I simply cradled her in my arms and soothed her with a song until she fell into such sweet oblivion. It was sad she wasn’t bound straight for Heaven. The mother should really have had her baptised. It would have been so much more sensible than wringing her hands. Human love. Such a complicated thing, so much emotion, so little sense.
I carried her gently for all that. Poor little soul. Life isn’t fair, is it? I wondered how God explained her in His understanding of Free Will.
Free Will. So much seemed to revolve around that idea. I glanced down at the Manifest. The child’s name was definitely on it. So that meant the Senior Team knew she was going to die. They knew she wasn’t going to be baptised. They knew Robyn was going to die. They knew Robyn was going to kill herself. And so they knew both of them would not be bound for Heaven. So how could their actions ever have been free, if the Senior Team had known about their sin in advance? Didn’t it mean God had determined their actions in advance? It confused me. Did God know about Marcus’s future? Was there any hope? Any point in trying to save him at all? And how unfair on the baby. Was she to blame for Satan having tricked Eve? Why did she have to go to Hell?
So, weighed down by heavy thoughts, I finally made it to the geriatric ward. Straight away I saw the reason why we’re supposed to deliver souls individually to their destinations. Bunching them up like this was very problematic. For a start the man was bedbound. He was too weak even to sit up. My arms were full, plus I’d got Robyn still comatose in tow – how the hell was I going to get them all to Hell?
I ended up having to give the baby to the girl, which wasn’t ideal. Not that she could have dropped her or anything, neither of them actually having a body.
Anyway, she held the baby, or rather thought she did, because the baby wasn’t too worried about bobbing about in her microscopic spirit form, and leaving the memory of her tiny little shape floating around too. While Robyn did that, I coaxed and carried the old man until he figured out that even though he was dead and wanted to stay with his body, it was much easier to leave it behind and glide.
We must have looked a very odd little band going down the broad and pleasant highway. I got quite a few disapproving looks from other Seraphim. But I just smiled and nodded. I was getting only too used to doing everything wrong.
Still, it was a relief to turn off towards Mount Purgatory and escape. I’d made a decision. I was NOT going to take the baby to Hell. If she couldn’t go to Heaven then I’d take her to Torium. Not only that, I figured while I was at it, I’d give Robyn and the old man a break as well. I’d take the whole bang lot of them there.
That was probably against every Rule in the Book. But sometimes, you know, you’ve just had enough of rules. Plus I could interpret a piteous cry as repentance if I wanted to, couldn’t I? And I don’t care what they say at the Cloisters, I don’t think suicide should be a sin – and Hell is no place for babies. And as for the old man, well, he was so . . . (I don’t like to say it – but ‘forgetful’ will do); he’d been far too confused to give a straight answer when I’d asked him to repent.
So, what the hell, I took them to Purgatorium. There you are, I did it. I handled all the aerial toll-houses on the way – the baby was too young to speak for herself, the old man too old, Robyn still thought she was in a deathly coma and I was in no mood to be trifled with.
I was in a very strange mood. Although I’d just spent the whole afternoon with
Marcus, and I ought to be feeling deliriously happy, I wasn’t. Instead I was feeling very flat. I didn’t understand his jokes. I’d been too cowardly to own up about Joey, and I was no nearer sorting out what we were going to do about the contract. Half the time I wasn’t even sure he’d believed I was really there. The rest of the time I got the distinct impression he didn’t want to repent at all, and that he’d only give it a go because he felt indebted to me for saving his life. I was pretty sure that didn’t count as repenting ‘freely and willingly and with a whole heart’. Plus I’d somehow managed to break a zillion more rules without even trying. I told myself that if I carried on messing up, I’d have to go and tell St Peter everything. Without fail.
That gave me a shock. It would no longer be a matter of Ave Marias and Our Fathers. Even if I escaped Community Service in Purgatorium, he’d have me totally grounded. But that wasn’t the worst of it. If St Peter reported me to Jehudiel, not only would my fate be sealed, but Marcus’s too.
There’d be no more going down to Earth, he’d have Raquel’s spare pass off me like a shot and Marcus’s Extension would be cancelled.
A shudder went through me. Raquel’s spare pass was the only thing left that allowed me to get in and out of Heaven. What with the new checkpoints and the curfews and the breach and the Army, I had to hang on to it.
Serafina 19
I said as much to Raquel later, when the day’s work was done and the jars of amber nectar filled. We were hanging out under some palms by a crazy beautiful beach, south of the City. Raquel was in a hammock and she’d got on an ‘awesome’ sarong filled with all the colours of the rainbow. And I was telling her I adored Collection Duty (and thank God for her spare pass).
‘Why?’ said a sad voice I remembered from the evening of the garden party.
I turned my head. There was Kamuel, the same tall, sombre, melancholy figure, still as breathtakingly beautiful, still as noble.
‘Why,’ I stammered, suddenly overcome by the sheer grace of him. ‘Why, because Collection Duty is the only real work of God.’
Kamuel pulled himself up a chair and sat. ‘Why do you say that?’ he asked.
I thought of Robyn and the senseless waste of her life. I thought of the baby, so innocent, so damned by man’s Original Sin. I thought of Original Sin and the Devil and his waging of war against us. I thought of the stench of Hell, the fiery pits. I thought of Joey and his pleading eyes. I thought of Marcus and how he’d laughed in the face of God’s bad joke.
I turned to look up to Kamuel. ‘I’ve seen things,’ I stammered. ‘I’ve seen the darkness. I’ve seen it and I can’t forget it or unlearn it. I . . .’ My voice trailed off. Why the hell had I said that?
Kamuel studied me gravely.
‘I think, I’ve seen it for a reason,’ I continued. I didn’t know why I was telling him this. I shouldn’t be. I clamped my mouth shut.
‘Here, honey, have some angel cake.’ Raquel slid a dainty slice of pink and yellow and white gateau at Kamuel. (We angels practically never eat; we live on fresh air, ambrosia, honeydew and perfume.) ‘Just a nibble, it won’t hurt.’ She smiled, all dimples, all charm.
The sickly-sweet smell of the cake mingled with the salt tang and the ocean breeze. I thought of the streets on Earth. Life wasn’t all romantic beaches and cake there, was it?
Kamuel, noticing that my bounce had gone, that the fiery brilliance of my eyes was dimmed, placed a hand upon my shoulder. And Raquel, tiring of such gloomy faces, got up and said she was going for a dip. She picked up a towel and headed off down the beach.
‘So thoughtful,’ murmured Kamuel. But whether he was referring to Raquel or my gloom, I couldn’t divine.
But I nodded anyway. I was thoughtful.
‘And very beautiful,’ he added. I looked after Raquel’s departing figure. She was very beautiful.
I didn’t reply. I’d started worrying about Marcus again. What was he going to do when he found out about Joey? I quivered from my neck to my wing tips. There was something about Marcus that frightened me – something so volatile and reckless. He might do anything.
Kamuel lifted his hand from my shoulder. ‘I need to ask you to help me with something,’ he said.
I was so glad he’d spoken. I immediately said, ‘Yes, of course.’ (And to be asked by an Archangel for assistance is the highest honour.)
‘It will not be an easy task,’ he said.
‘No?’ I looked at him.
‘It will demand loyalty and sacrifice.’
I nodded, suddenly worried that I might mess it up. ‘I’m a bit scatty,’ I said anxiously.
‘You’ll be fine,’ he said, ‘if you truly see your mission as to ease suffering and save souls.’
I nodded. I hoped so. I waited for him to tell me what to do.
‘Then meet me later after you’ve left your friend.’
I nodded again.
‘Meet me by the North Gate.’
‘The North Gate?’
‘Yes, where the Army is watching over the Abyss.’
I gulped. I blinked.
‘I’ll meet you there,’ he said, ‘by sundown.’
He stood. He bowed to me. He took my hand and kissed it in a strange old-fashioned way. Then he left.
I sat there, faintly shocked.
The North Gate?
That was madness! God’s Army would be everywhere. All my feathers curled up at the thought. For Christ’s sake why had I ever opened my big mouth?
Raquel returned. She towelled down. ‘Cripes, thank God, Kamuel’s gone!’ she cried. ‘He makes me feel so serious. Everything is so solemn and he’s so brooding. Even you started getting glum.’
‘I like him, though,’ I said loyally.
‘Of course you do, darling, everybody adores him.’
‘But I do like him,’ I said.
She threw her marble-white arms around me. ‘What a serious little softy you are,’ she cried. ‘What was all that “I’ve seen the darkness” rubbish? When you’ve been down to Earth as many times as I have, you get pretty fed up with the darkness; it’s all so boring and useless and nobody’ll ever sort it out. But you’re a legend! You completely saved me today.’
‘It’s nothing,’ I said. ‘I like all work, and I love Collection Duty.’ I started to wax lyrical about the timing of a Passing Over and how wonderful it was to make it serene and how an extra slanting ray of sunlight or a rainbow shimmer worked miracles on a half-repentant soul. Raquel looked at me, wide-eyed.
‘Wow,’ she said, ‘if you like it that much, you can help me out every day!’
‘Yes,’ I breathed. ‘Yes, please.’
‘There! Aren’t you a treasure,’ she said. ‘I told Maybelle just as much, though she seemed to think God’s Army were after you for something.’
‘God’s Army?’ I said, instantly petrified.
The contract?
Larry?
Raquel laughed. ‘Said she’d heard it on the Fig-Vine.’
‘Heard what?’
‘Oh, just that. God’s Army are on to you, sweetie.’
Serafina 20
When the sun was just sinking below the crest of the Sapphire Mountains I left my cell. The Seraphim were still holding their vigil, the Superiors attending devotions. The Cloisters were practically closed since the breach, so there were no new arrivals, no one to spy on me – thank God.
I didn’t know what work Kamuel intended to give me, but God’s Army were camped north of the North Gate, so knowing we would meet near there, I tied my hair back and chose a dark raiment with cloak and hood. Raquel’s words still rang like a knell of doom in my ears: God’s Army are on to you. I had been warned. With a pounding heart, I drew the cloth close around me. I must stay as invisible as possible.
I glided out of the building, more quietly than a cloud passes across the face of the moon. But no sooner had I reached the Cloister gates than a uniformed being suddenly materialised out of nowhere. My blood froze.
‘W
ho goes there?’ he hissed.
I didn’t answer.
‘Halt. Show yourself.’
I stayed in the shadows.
‘Don’t try to leave the Cloisters without one.’
‘Without one what?’ I whispered.
‘Standard-issue Cloisters-Only Identity Bracelet,’ he ordered, and thrust something at me.
I backed away, heart hammering.
‘Your choice,’ he said.
I stepped forward very cautiously.
‘Hold out your arm.’
I held it out. He slipped the security band over my wrist and fastened it. ‘Don’t remove it if you know what’s good for you,’ he hissed. ‘It’s the new curfew rule. Just be grateful they haven’t put your number on it yet.’
‘My number?’
‘Show it if you get challenged, or you’ll be arrested.’
Arrested?
‘You can go.’
I did.
I moved as only the Seraphim can – silently and with the speed of the west wind through the shadowy streets.
The Golden City is not very big. Only angels dwell in its confines. The souls of the dead live in the huge Suburbs-of-the-Saved, which stretch in every direction across the great Elysian Plains. They’re lovely places. Sometimes I wander there, through the leafy green lanes of the un-living, but even dead humans have their own ways; it’s not easy to mingle amongst them.
So it didn’t take me long to reach the North Gate. I stayed close to the Jasper Wall all the way. Shadows dappled off its jewelled ramparts and threw enough variance of light to confuse any watching eyes. Not many would have been able to make me out gliding through the darkened streets. Even if they had, they would have been confused, for angels don’t slink around in their own city.
At least I supposed they didn’t. Up until then I’d never had any reason to suppose differently. But perhaps there were others like me – out on clandestine missions, weighed down by guilty secrets. Hurriedly I cast a glance behind me to make sure I wasn’t being followed. What was that? A darker patch of darkness? A figure ducking into an alcove?
