by Jane Lebak
Eliakim rose and stood by the window. "It's a shame that all these plants will go to waste. The poor folk will harvest them, and maybe one of them will bury me. I'd have them do it here, on my own property. Not that you'd care."
Raguel sat holding the empty cup.
God reached out to Raguel.
But he's not a cruel man, Raguel prayed.
In answer, God refilled Raguel's cup. He tasted, and it was better wine than before.
"This was my life's work." Eliakim still looked out the window. "My wife is buried here, and two of our sons. It was my father's land before mine, and so back to Joshua's time. But it's tired. The fields need to lie fallow for a few years."
"Maybe they'll get that now."
"It's more than that: they need rain; they need shade. This land needs someone who understands it."
"You?"
Eliakim nodded. "I did everything here. How would you feel if God came and took away all your work, all at once? And not because you did anything wrong, but just because He could."
Raguel flinched. "I like working for God. I ask for assignments."
"But if he took away all your assignments, and wouldn't give you any more, wouldn't you care how the next person did them?"
Raguel said, "Well, to tell you the truth, yes."
Eliakim said, "This is the work I had to do. I did it. I did it well."
Raguel took his hand. "And you're angry at God that it's going to end?"
Eliakim lowered his head. "God is the king. I can't curse God and live."
"I wouldn't ask you to curse God." Raguel touched his shoulder. "But getting angry at something you don't understand? I think we all do that. But then you trust. You wait it out."
Eliakim said, "Like harvesting. You don't know how the plants grow, but you figure they'll do it, and you wait."
Raguel nodded. "Yeah. Just like that."
"That's hard."
Raguel said, "Is that why you'd ask Ashera for help? Because it's automatic – you tell the Ashera what to do, and if you did it right, she has to answer?"
Eliakim took a deep breath.
"You can't control God," Raguel said. "God's got control, and He's going to do what He wants. But that makes it harder to let go."
"Maybe so." Eliakim looked glum. "Hold on. There's something I need to do."
He got up from the table and rummaged in the corner until he came up with another small figure, an Ashera. He threw it into the fire. He took a number of small jars filled with incense and other powders and threw them into the fire too. Raguel raised the flames, and one by one Eliakim threw amulets into the fire. "There," he said. And then paused. "No, there's one more."
Raguel said, "You know what you need to do."
Eliakim took the amulet he'd used to find Raguel in the first place, and into the hearth it went.
His face sagged as he watched Raguel, waiting. Then he looked back into the fire, but when the amulet was gone, Raguel still remained. "Aren't you going to disappear?"
Raguel said, "It never had any power over me anyway. I'll stay."
Eliakim sat again, rubbing his temples. He said, "That's it, then. There's nothing between me and the Lord."
Raguel said, "Likewise, they weren't really protecting you. You did what you needed to."
"I don't know anything anymore," said Eliakim. "I doubt there's sun and rain in the realm of the dead."
"But there's souls," Raguel said. "And goodness grows in souls just like seeds do. The Messiah will direct us to reap when it comes time."
Eliakim raised his eyes. "Tell me more about that."
"I'm not sure," said Raguel. "God hasn't revealed all that much about the Messiah, except that judgment has been reserved to him. And until then, you'll wait in Sheol. It might be a thousand years, but God's promised, and the Messiah will come."
"That's a long time to wait in an ante-room." Eliakim sat with a heavy puff. "But I'm glad I'll get to farm again."
"The real future is in fishing," God said through Raguel, who then laughed.
Is that a hint? asked the angel. That's going to drive the Cherubim crazy.
Eliakim drew up short. "Fishing?"
Raguel reached across the table. "We'll learn together."
Eliakim sat forward. He breathed heavily, and one hand found its way to his left arm.
"Am I going to meet you again?" asked the old man.
"Shortly." Raguel touched the man's hair. "Let yourself sleep."
Eliakim rested his head on the table, and Raguel returned to his angelic form.
The guardian wrapped blue wings about the old man and placed a hand over his eyes. In the next moment, the guardian looked driven: he squeezed his arms around his charge, and with a gasp, he wrenched backward as his wings flared.
In that moment, the man's soul was in the guardian's arms, the angel in shock.
No longer an old man but a human spirit, Eliakim recognized both his guardian and Raguel. Raguel blessed Eliakim, and then the guardian ushered the man to Sheol.
Raguel stood alone in the room, then gathered the man's body. He went into the field, and as the sun rose, he created a grave and buried the body. Day dawned, and Raguel knelt in prayer, reaching for God and wondering if he'd done any good at all.
Well done, Rague'li.
Raguel looked back over the farm, the grain heads and the vines. The farm without a farmer.
Come home, God said. He'll make election now.
Stones
1015 BC
David's hands shook as he stripped off Saul's armor, dropping it with a clatter to the hard-packed earth of the river bed.
Goliath.
What had he gotten himself into? An hour ago, standing before the King of Israel, it had sounded so simple: he protected sheep, and if he could protect sheep, how much easier must it be to protect men? Men weren't stupid like sheep. Men could defend themselves.
And yet now, after bragging that he'd defeated bears and wolves while shepherding, David wondered if his father would see him ever again. How bad it would hurt to die.
He glanced at the armor on the ground. It offered some protection, at least. He ought to take it. Armor too heavy to walk in. A sword too heavy to lift. A warrior giant too tall to see without craning back his neck, standing with the sun at his back and roaring with laughter at a frightened Israelite boy.
An insect crawled over the dirt by David's sandal. He thought of the bug's armor, the snap if he were to push on it with his heel, followed by the death of the soft creature within.
There was no way he could do this. His brothers were right — his mouth and his ego had gotten him into trouble again. But after they'd accused him of bragging, how could he back down? He'd be the same kind of coward he'd accused them of being.
Well, a living coward. Maybe that was better than a dead braggart.
No one would see. He could run.
His eyes turned toward the brush on the hill across the river, but before he found a path for escape, he saw someone watching.
His heart hammered.
The person's eyes were so intense, a purple so deep they appeared black, that it took David almost a minute to notice the lavender wings.
He slipped out of his sandals. Holy ground. He swallowed and inclined his head.
The angel studied him. David waited for words, instructions, admonishment, but nothing came. As the wind rustled the bushes and the water clicked over stones, he watched the angel watching him in return.
With features neither male nor female, in appearance not much older than himself and slight of form, the angel sat with knees tucked, arms wrapped around its legs. The silence continued, and David shifted with discomfort.
Finally he said, "Speak, lord, for your servant is waiting."
The angel maintained silence.
He said, "Will you strike down the warrior giant for me?"
No motion from the angel, but David had the strong impression of a refusal.
He said, "W
ill you come with me into battle? To defend the Lord's people?"
For the first time, the angel responded: its head tilted, and the eyes lowered.
Again a strong impression in David's heart: someone more powerful would accompany David in battle.
David almost asked if an even stronger angel were on the way, to combat a man so tall and so broad that he surely had Nephilim blood. But the words caught in David's mouth as he realized what the angel meant.
He swallowed. "May the Lord defend his people."
The slightest of smiles passed over the angel's face, and a warmth stung behind David's eyes, blossomed in the base of his throat, and spread from there through his chest. Gasping, he felt the pure pleasure of an angel beholding himself and beholding God at the same time.
David stepped away from the fallen armor and searched the river bed for the things he needed. Stones, rounded by time and by water, small enough to cup in his palm, heavy enough to fill his sling. One. Three. Five.
His pouch full, he looked up to thank the angel, but it was gone. In its place he saw only a distortion of the air, an ember amidst a hot haze.
"Uriel," he whispered. Fire of God.
He replaced his sandals and returned from the river.
In Carnation
973 BC
Saraquael arrived in the morning.
Gilded with sunlight, Saraquael stood by the open frame of the window, six cerulean wings folded at his back. Naomi approached the vision, and she smiled. Eyes round, she touched the silk of his tunic, fingered the fringes of his overcoat. Only eleven, the daughter of King David and Queen Bathsheba stepped backward, beckoning him, but Saraquael refused.
Naomi paused, puzzled. And then she realized: this was goodbye.
Saraquael stood with silent shimmerings about himself, gnats of God-love that hovered over his head. His eyes sparkled like opals. He handed Naomi a glass bubble the size of a human heart, and she accepted it with tight eyes. Saraquael bent his height toward her, kissed her on the forehead, wrapped her in his wings, and dissolved into the air. Naomi remained holding the bubble.
- + -
Naomi lay on her bed all morning, worrying the maid-servants and dismaying her mother. The smoky glass sphere, Saraquael's goodbye, stayed beside her on the pillow.
Staring at the glass, she wondered what was inside, what he expected her to do with it. Was this the kind of gift they gave in Heaven? The smoke had dissipated throughout the morning, and Naomi strained to see with the bubble held close to her eye. Nothing was clear.
The morning passed, as mornings tend to, and eventually it became an afternoon. The sunlight hung vertically from her curtains like stockings waiting to drip-dry. An hour after an uneaten lunch, the smoke vanished.
Saraquael had sealed a flower within the bubble.
How had he done that? The pink flower had no stem, and it had multiple petals in a half-sphere, crisp and wrinkled.
Only a pink one—but no, she never should have expected him to give her a red flower as if he were a man. His red flowers went only to God.
But at least he had thought her worthy of a flower at all. How many people made friends of angels? Nobody nowadays. Maybe some in scripture, and those were either long dead or else absorbed directly into God's heart, like Enoch. So meeting him at all had been a gift, and the fact that he'd spent time on her. She shouldn't have expected more.
Naomi cradled the bubble in her hands for a while, imagining the flower needed her warmth. But when it was time for dinner, she threaded a silk string through the glass loop and hung the gift from the drapery rod at the western window.
- + -
A young princess, Naomi wandered within the palace walls hoping someone either would or would not notice her. She spent a lot of time in the gardens, but she never dug in the dirt.
Naomi first met Saraquael on a day like any other in the House of David, a routine in its own living rhythm. Naomi awoke and her maids set out her clothing, brushed her hair and made up her eyes and face. Rings and necklaces and slippers, and then breakfast in bed.
She'd continue the day with a stroll through the gardens, and after lunch her tutor would aid in the study of Torah and other pastimes deemed appropriate for a young lady of the House of David. She learned to spin, to weave, to sing, and to play music.
The day she met Saraquael, she had walked through the garden only a few hours before nightbreak; he had stood among the royal foliage. She'd rounded a corner and had seen Saraquael fingering the leaves of a fig tree.
She gasped, and he spun to face her, and before she could stop herself Naomi was gaping at those tremendous wings, the strong frame that could lift a body into flight with sweeping strokes. Kneeling, she begged him not to vanish. She asked his name and asked again until he answered her.
When her panic subsided, Naomi met his eyes with a smile and lost a part of her awareness forever. Every awkwardness sloughed from her as eyes that viewed God face to face focused on her, eyes large enough to encompass the world and small enough to see her. Naomi pleaded with Saraquael to stay longer, to talk.
So he stayed. They talked. Saraquael mentioned he was a poet, and when Naomi asked to hear some, he recited.
His eyes, leafy like the banks of the Jordan, had danced every time they lighted on Naomi. Some of the love he shared with God reflected from those twin convex mirrors whenever she felt his attention.
That evening she wrung a promise from him that he would return the next day. Saraquael refused at first because he hadn't intended to be visible in the first place. Naomi asked, since it had been accidental, then could it have been God's will? At her insistence, Saraquael asked his Father, and with permission he visited her every day for more than a month.
Naomi received Saraquael's flower the morning after she decided to fall in love with him.
She missed Saraquael's poetry, but more than that she missed the poet. An angel—what could an angel want with a human girl? She had been selfish to waste his time with her friendship. Every power of Saraquael's was focused on God. Who was she in comparison? A princess of the House of David or a fig tree or even a stone would all be the same to him.
If Naomi had not wanted to love him, maybe Saraquael could have stayed.
- + -
Her maid noticed the bubble. Although the maid said nothing, Naomi figured the gossip would start about an unknown suitor for Bathsheba's daughter. Her mother would visit and discuss propriety. Perhaps Naomi would mention Saraquael. Thinking about her mother's response, though, she wondered if she had rather not.
After two days, the base of the bubble filled with a finger-width of water and roots. When sunlight struck the glass, Naomi would lie in bed watching the flower, wondering how the flower got its air. The bubble had no seam; how had it grown at all?
Miraculously, a rumor spread that David himself had given his daughter the gift, and no one came to discuss proper conduct with suitors. Naomi also learned the flower's name: dianthus. Carnation. But despite that, she didn't get a visit from her mother.
- + -
The first week after meeting Saraquael, Naomi had swung like a pendulum between urgency and peace. She pestered her tutor with questions about angels and absorbed whatever lore he knew: God had created angels in nine orders; seven angels had the honor of standing directly before God; one-third of the angels had rebelled. Angels did not have bodies; they did not eat; those who loved God loved him fully, but not to the exclusion of every created thing; they were sinless but not perfect because only God is perfect.
Saraquael told her the same things differently: that every angel is individual in the eyes of God, and that He who makes souls sees each as a new species, one as different from another as the birds are from the beasts from the fish from the bacteria (something Naomi had never heard of before and seemed a little scary). Saraquael told her about the Vision of God, a sight more than a sight, that showed him all the beauty in the world and simultaneously revealed its potential. He said the Vi
sion was something he needed, that it made Creation more wonderful than it could be otherwise. He said with it, God showed him the art of the world, and wonder filled him with the love of it all.
Saraquael said that although he wrote poetry, some angels sang, others studied the Earth, and some invented. When Naomi asked if she might become a poet like him, he said she should try. He produced ink and parchment for her, and he turned her loose.
Unfortunately, using heavenly parchment didn't make for heavenly poetry. She gave up after her first try, but the next day he asked her to try again. She asked him to keep reading to her, just so she could learn, and he'd recite other poems and dissect the way they worked. She brought him a scroll of poems her father had written: Psalms. Saraquael was delighted. That afternoon she listened to him reading for hours, then promised Saraquael that someday she would match it.
Nowadays, without him, Naomi crossed out more words than she retained. She told herself if poetry were creation, then these were labor pains.
With all her practice, the results ought to be better. Something blocked her. Her urgency showed through the words she chose, her frenzied rhythm, her uneven parallels. He'd told her about resonance and symbolism, but the technique she couldn't learn from Saraquael was his peace. Among so many accomplished people, so many brilliant and wise men who would change the world, Naomi hungered to be more than an ornament, more than a flower in a glass sphere.
When Naomi wrote poetry by lamplight, she dreamed about astonishing her father by reciting her best work. The whole court would know the king's daughter had inherited her family's gift of wordplay. Her father would come to her and listen, and her mother would approve.
The flower grew, its roots spreading through the water. Naomi looked on it daily, often resting the bubble against her cheek. The flower neither withered nor faded, thriving on her attention.
Day by day, Naomi continued writing; at nights she held her pages by the lamp-flicker, wondering what Saraquael would say, what would make him laugh, how he would give direction without making her feel inept. At one of the worst lines of poetry ever written, Saraquael had burst out laughing because she had tried so hard. After a sullen pout, Naomi found herself laughing too. And he, with his smile, had helped her try again.
