by Jane Lebak
Brennos pulled a flat bread from his pack and tore it lengthwise, then handed half to Gabriel. The boy stuffed his face while talking, and Gabriel took a tentative bite. Sense and smell burst on him, raw, but once those hit, his body wanted to keep eating. Sharing a meal. A social interaction.
A motion at the edge of the meadow caught his attention: a family of deer. A doe stood at a tree and gripped the bark with her teeth, pulled, and tore away a long strip. The naked wood gleamed beneath, just like Gabriel's heart. He flinched as a yearling did the same, peeling back the skin and leaving everything an exposed nerve.
Brennos said, "Hey, look, deer."
Gabriel couldn't look away because that tree looked just the way he felt: the outer edges stripped away and everything open to the world. God. He needed God, and God was gone.
He called the stag away from the tree before it stripped more bark, and as it stepped closer, Gabriel glanced at Brennos. "Have you ever touched a stag?"
Brennos shook his head. "My father says they're too wild to get near. You'd need a horse."
"I wouldn't," said Gabriel. "Stay still. Keep silence."
With closed eyes, Gabriel coaxed the stag until it advanced across the grass toward the stream. Gabriel sent images of safety, a sense of desire, and the animal kept moving until it stopped before him.
"You don't know whom you've come to," the Cherub murmured in his native language, "just what."
It was a good size, five hundred pounds and three cubits at the shoulder, five-pointed antlers sprouting from its skull. Gabriel drifted to a stand, then set his hand on the animal's flank and rubbed it. He scratched it behind the ears, rubbing those spots on the head that animals like because they're so difficult to reach. The stag enjoyed it, but Gabriel also used it as an opportunity to kill an army of parasites.
He reached for Brennos with his heart before remembering he needed to speak. "Come now."
Smaller when confronted by an angel and a wild animal, Brennos peeked around Gabriel's wings.
Gabriel took the boy's hand and laid it on the stag's flank. The animal huffed, but it didn't run.
"Wow." The boy laughed. "He's so…huge."
"Now, I want to offer you a trade." Gabriel made his voice low. "I'll keep this animal right here with us, and you can spend the day with me, but in return, I want you to teach me to act just like you."
The boy frowned. "What?"
"I want you to critique my performance," Gabriel said. "Tell me whenever I do something a real person wouldn't do. Messengers need to look like real people, and I can't do that yet. I need someone who's an actual person to tell me all my mistakes."
The boy said, "I don't want you to get mad."
Gabriel's brow furrowed. "Why would I get angry?"
"If I criticize you."
He shrugged. "I need to learn. I can't do that on my own."
The boy agreed, and then he said, "You don't move right, though. You're rough. You need to just…be smoother. And your face is really blank, like a mask."
Good. Exactly what he needed to hear. Gabriel made his wings vanish, and he led the stag back into the woods.
"Wow," Brennos gasped under the canopy of the forest. "This is great. I'm glad I came for you. I'm glad I found you. This is great."
"Don't be too excited," Gabriel said. "How's my walking now?"
They spent the day wandering or resting. Brennos showed Gabriel how to find good plants, and they picked berries or fruit just turning ripe. Gabriel asked every question he could come up with about living like a human, how to know what the body needed and how to meet those needs when they arose. He asked what fevers felt like and how you knew when your blood glucose levels had dropped, how to tell the difference between dreams and reality, how to attach varying levels of importance to rival sensory stimuli. "You said I asked too many questions," Brennos said at one point. "You ask even more, and I don't even understand what you're talking about."
In exchange, Gabriel made plants sprout and branches erupt into buds out of season and then into flowers. He spun up the wind into little cyclones that made dust devils dance at their feet. He turned the spray coming off a waterfall into ice in mid-air, and they watched it melt as it floated downstream. Gabriel brought honeycomb out of a beehive, and they tasted the honey while he kept the bees calm.
By sunset, with Brennos stumbling with exhaustion, Gabriel returned him to his home. The stag bounded back into the woods, and Gabriel made sure it knew where to find its family.
"That was great," whispered Brennos. "Thank you. Thank you so much."
"You're welcome." Gabriel smiled. "You've helped considerably."
Brennos said, "Do you want to do this again tomorrow?" When Gabriel replied only with silence and a lowered glance, the boy said, "Where are you going?"
"To the Holy Land."
The boy lunged forward to hug him. "Remember me."
Gabriel tensed under physical contact that felt more like an attack than a social gesture, and as soon as Brennos released him, he stepped backward. "Don't cry. Go home and know you've had today."
Brennos tried to step toward him again.
"I'll pray for you." Gabriel arrested the boy's movement with a long glance, and then the angel dissipated.
Tishri 7
Gabriel touched down in Jerusalem and took on a man's body. This time he changed his appearance: darker hair, a beard, and clothes to match the general population. Standing out didn't seem like the best idea, not when he hadn't fully mastered the art of carrying himself.
His senses exploded again like a tree stripped of its bark, but worse than before because now he'd made his form fully human. Assaulted at once by a half-dozen conversations, by the smells of smoke and sewage and sweat, by colors and motion, he felt nauseated and wanted to go numb, but what could he do?
Worse still, through his angelic senses he could feel the holes in the fabric of the city, the spiritual webbing that tied Heaven and Earth at this particular point. It smoldered, a fire not completely out but not quite ablaze. Continuously the spiritual coals devoured the city's soul, but not enough yet to destroy the spiritual connection. Hot enough and those coals could have demolished the earth. A second's hesitation, a handoff rather than a grab, and now he walked through a city that would survive the chaos to which God had resolved to abandon it. Try as he might, he couldn't ignore the fire, and he knew the angels in the city felt it too.
But he had no choice, so he tucked his head, pushed his hands into his pockets, and tried to walk the way Brennos had taught.
Gabriel went first to the Temple in the northern part of the city. Crowds pushed past along with their animals and other offerings: fruit and bread and wine. In the Temple courtyard, he struggled to find a place to pray, but so many people moved around. He got bumped too often, touched or breathed on. It felt just like Sodom, and he couldn't pray.
Further in, the priests were conducting sacrifices. Gabriel had nothing to sacrifice. He'd never needed to own anything, and anything he valued had already been taken away, so he instead found a group discussing a minor point of the Law, and he listened. They were getting it wrong, but when he tried to correct them, they shouted him down.
By the evening, even though the crowds thinned out, Gabriel had trouble thinking. He recognized this as the dizziness Brennos said could indicate dehydration and hunger.
He approached one of the priests. "Is there a place I could spend the night?"
The priest said, "There are plenty of lodging houses in the eastern part of the city. Ask there. They don't charge much."
Gabriel said, "I don't have any money."
The priest said, "You're out of luck then."
As the priest turned away, Gabriel stepped forward. "And where can I obtain food?"
The priest said, "Well, without any money at all, I guess you could beg."
And that was it for help. No one else had any better offers, so Gabriel found a secluded alley and returned to his angelic form. Rel
ief rushed through him, and he chose a spot on a roof where he could spend the night in prayer. Quiet prayer. Prayer with no one touching him or yelling in his ear. Then at the next dawn, he returned to a man's form.
The city buzzed more as the days progressed toward Yom Kippur. The city grew only louder and more confusing, and Gabriel did his best to keep both his distance and his identity. When he got hungry or tired, he returned to angelic form just long enough to recharge. When someone asked his name, he used his God-given one. He might be cut apart from Heaven, but he didn't have to lie.
Tishri 10
For Yom Kippur, crowds filled the Temple precincts. Gabriel gave up trying to filter the sensory input and watched the goings-on from the Temple roof. Thousands of angels clustered there as well, not all of them guardians. Gabriel kept his slate eyes from focusing too long on anyone he knew, absorbing the churning motion of the white-clad crowd and the indistinct but interwoven voices. In this form at least he didn't have to deal with the touches, the smells, the demands of five conversations taking place in the same space.
Gabriel slipped through the roof into the sanctuary and watched the Holy of Holies, the seat of God on Earth. In addition to the angels packed inside, priests filled the anteroom of the Temple, and the chief priest read one of David's psalms. He wore a chest-plate with twelve stones, one for each of the tribes.
Gabriel's heart tensed as all the angels fell silent. Waiting. Atonement. Forgiveness.
The chief priest opened the curtain to enter the sanctuary, and Gabriel watched for a glimpse of the Ark.
He couldn't see it. He could see where it ought to be, but not the Ark.
Closing his eyes, Gabriel inhaled and tried to keep steady. Prayer continued around him, but his ears rang.
A touch at his arm.
Michael.
The Archangel indicated Gabriel should accompany him, and they both reappeared on a housetop a mile from the Temple. Gabriel had his wings tucked as close as he could to his body, his arms folded, his head bowed. With bleak eyes, he stared into the city.
"You didn't need to take me out of there. I couldn't see the Ark anyway." Gabriel spoke with his regard rather than his mouth, which had remained tight.
Michael sat beside him. "I could tell. I kept praying everything would settle on Yom Kippur and you'd have finished atoning, but as soon as you looked, it was obvious."
Gabriel tucked his head. "No, of course not. I can't be forgiven like a man because I'm not under the same covenant they are." Gabriel kicked at some rotted leaves on the roof. "It was ignorant to hope for more."
Michael wrapped a wing around him.
Gabriel shifted sideways and quoted the prayer for the day. "The great trumpet is sounded. A still, small voice is heard. The angels shudder, saying, 'This is the day of judgment,' for God's very ministers are not pure before Him. Least of all myself."
Michael said, "Go on. But penitence, prayer, and charity may avert the harsh decree."
Gabriel let out a sigh. "I can't stay here."
Michael said, "Come back with me."
That wound inside reasserted itself, a burn exposed to air. Go home, as if it were that easy. "I don't have an assignment. I've got nowhere to go, and I can't do anything for you. I've decided to stay on Earth. I just can't stay in this city, near this Temple and these people. It's too much."
Michael blessed Gabriel before he left.
Tishri 11
Sensory stimulation seemed less intrusive in the dark, so Gabriel went solid at one of Jerusalem's gates just before dawn. Already he could hear noise from the city, but in the relative quiet, it was easier to focus. He needed to find work, and he needed to leave the city. Raphael had found work as a guide, so it made sense that he could too.
The first five people he approached didn't need a guide, and several others were only looking for temporary workers. Gabriel considered taking an offer for manual labor, but then he saw a man leading four donkeys while his wife guided their three children. Gabriel approached them, and as he did, he sensed a double-presence about the wife: she was pregnant.
"Could you use a guide?" he asked.
"Do I look like I don't know how to get home?" snarled the man.
He didn't appear lost, no. "I could help with the animals," Gabriel said. "Instead of a day's wages, I need food."
The man eyed him. "Well, you look strong enough."
"Please, Joachim," said the woman, "let him help. We have a long way to go."
The man spat onto the road dust. "All right. You get two meals, same as the rest of us, and you take those two animals."
Gabriel took hold of the tethers. The man stalked ahead, not saying anything else. Gabriel laid a hand on each donkey, then sent calm and sleepiness into their minds. After a few minutes they followed without tugging the leads.
They had traveled about a mile when the woman said, "What's your name?"
Until now, it hadn't been clear whether social speech would be accepted across the employer/hired man divide. It still wasn't, so he kept it brief. "Gabriel."
The woman smiled. "My husband is Joachim. The children are Ruth, Rebekah, and Joseph. I'm Martha."
Joachim said, "I hope you have places to go in the North. We're stopping at Lebonah."
Lebonah sounded as good as any other spot on the map. For now, Gabriel was enjoying the relative silence of the road. Fewer people, less motion, easier rhythm. The travel might give him a chance to get used to filtering his senses.
After an awkward pause, Martha said, "Where is your family from?"
Gabriel drew breath and then said, "It doesn't matter. I'm looking for work now."
Rebekah, the oldest, tugged at Gabriel's cloak. "Is your family with God?"
"Most of them." The child looked sad when he met her eyes. "The rest of us have scattered around the world."
"It's a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead," Rebekah chirped. "That's what the Levites say!"
Gabriel said, "It's good that you listen to their teaching."
The donkeys jostled against Gabriel, and he scratched their warm faces while he walked.
"Were your family farmers?" asked Martha.
Gabriel's gaze dropped. "In a way. We shepherded, too. Or anything else we found needed doing."
Martha said, "Joachim, isn't Saul ben Zadok looking to hire more shepherds?"
Joachim looked over his shoulder. "If you need work, he's a good man. If you work an hour for him, though, you work a whole hour. No one makes a fool of him."
Rebekah tugged at Gabriel's tunic again. As he looked down, she raised her arms and smiled hugely.
Even never having worked with children before, Gabriel recognized a request to be carried. He scooped her up and set her laughing on the back of one of the donkeys.
Joachim whirled. "He'll throw her."
But the little girl held with two fists to the mane, and the donkey didn't break stride even when her pumping legs pounded his sides.
When they made a camp for themselves, Joachim grudgingly admitted that Gabriel did work well with animals, and Martha fed Gabriel as promised. He paid attention to the way she cooked, trying to figure out what needed to be done to make food edible because invariably he'd need to do it himself. Soon after, eating was a relief because at least that one sense stopped pestering him for now.
Gabriel lay down that night with the stars for a tent and prayed before sleeping. Again his senses were at war, but a different war: he was exhausted from travel, true, but as soon as everyone went sleep, he tensed. Because sleeping in this form – how could he protect himself? Did he trust Joachim? One of the children flung out an arm and brushed Gabriel's back, and he sprang up, but no one else moved. So he prayed. He opened his angelic senses and prayed, and eventually his human form took him into darkness.
The heaviness began lifting, and as Gabriel awoke, he reached for God. Nothing.
Heart racing, he bolted up, stared, stared again, and then in one moment of heartbreak,
he remembered.
Shoulders slumped, he closed his eyes. No. This wasn't right. This couldn't be.
Pressed against his leg was the young boy Joseph. Gabriel edged away, then poked the campfire. It had smothered under the weight of its own ashes. He ought to rebuild it, but for now he sat in the chill.
The stillness made his mind vibrate with thoughts, and the thoughts resounded off the distances, the stars, and the sparse trees stacked in the miles. In sleep, the children sprawled haphazardly. Martha and Joachim slept on a blanket behind him, leaning against one another as the night trudged into morning.
He ached. God should be available in a sunrise, in the starlight, in the curling breeze. But instead, flatness. Emptiness. The wound was back, and worse, Gabriel felt hungry again. It was so much to process, and he had no one to discuss it with.
For a moment he considered speaking to the family's guardian angels, but he pushed that from his mind because guardians have so much to do, and he might be an imposition. If he spoke to them once, they might feel pressured to speak to him every time he found himself alone. He might not, either.
Raphael. If anyone would have been able to help him through this, it would have been Raphael. But he couldn't, and who else would know?
A moment later, a bright presence wrapped around his world, and Gabriel looked up to see Saraquael. The Dominion said, "Good morning!"
It slipped out before Gabriel could stop it: "That's debatable."
The Dominion smiled with an ease that left Gabriel feeling crowded in the morning that only moments before had seemed empty. "I thought maybe you needed something."
Gabriel looked down. "Everything. But you can't bring it to me."
