An Arrow In Flight (Seven Archangels Book 1)

by Jane Lebak

  The guardian touched a wingtip to his: he wanted to know what to do.

  It wasn't a matter of doing, Gabriel realized. The man needed nothing: there was nothing any of them could do for him, no healing (plainly it was time; the hand of God was on the man's heart) and no conversion. The man's soul would enter Sheol and there await the Redeemer in sleep for as long as it took.

  About to say that, Gabriel halted. There was a need here. But it wasn't Saul.

  "Come here," he said, and the guardian pulled up beside him. "Feel this." He ran his hands along the man's soul, guiding the guardian's perception so the angel could feel the places the man's soul was anchored into the body, five primary points and countless tinier fastenings. "Observe how that's pulling away. Normally you wouldn't be able to work your fingers around there." The guardian assented. "That's going to continue. It's like a nut pulling away from the side of the shell. Think of a deciduous tree turning colors for autumn. His soul is ready."

  The guardian pushed an urgent question.

  "When it's time, you'll take him like this," and Gabriel showed the guardian how he'd position himself. "You won't think about it then. It will feel right. You'll find his soul in your hands, and you'll carry him before God for judgment."

  The Angel's soul trilled, but his gaze remained steady.

  Gabriel said, "After a certain point, you won't be able to follow."

  The Angel started.

  "It will be just him and God. But afterward, he'll be released to you again, and you'll escort him to Sheol."

  The angel waited. Gabriel looked back at Saul, then at the Angel. He wanted to say, "And that's it. What more do you want?" but a moment later he realized the difference: the guardian was tense, but no longer frightened. There was still an expectancy, but minus the urgency.

  "Until then, we'll pray." Gabriel backed off, and the guardian again melted again around the man.

  The hour of death, not a clock-hour so much as a time surrounding death, the time for the soul to firm up into its eternal proportions and make its vector toward God or toward itself; a time for demons to try to change that direction and a time for the angels to hold territory so that moment could stand unbreached between God and His creation.

  At some point Archangels arrived, defenders. The guardian and the man stayed at the eye of this spiritual hurricane while Satan's forces acted. Close to the center, Gabriel waited, praying with the other household guardians. Watching.

  Abruptly the guardian flushed with power. Driven, he surrounded the man's soul like a sea-star surrounding a mussel. With tendrils of light streaming from his form, the guardian gripped the man, faced him straight in the eyes, and then the man's soul birthed itself out of his body and into the guardian's heart. Gabriel felt the relief of the moment, the thrill as the guardian clamped down on what was dearest, and next the quiet as the Angel flashed away, to God.

  The Archangels departed. The demons vanished. The household guardians continued praying. Gabriel found himself in silence. Alone again.

  He returned to the sheep field, still in angelic form, to find Zachary shepherding while half-asleep. He called the sheep together but didn't revert back to human. The exhaustion, the aches, the hunger – he could stay like this a few minutes longer.

  I think that was all I could do for Saul, he prayed. It wasn't anything in the long run. It all would have happened the same way without me.

  Silence. He thought toward God, He was so nervous, though. Maybe it helped him, just knowing what was about to happen.

  That look on the guardian's face, when instinct took over and he could finally act. The moment to release his strength and midwife that soul out, grasp it close, and then carry it home. The easing of the tension: would Gabriel ever feel that? How long had it been since he'd last seen God's face?

  With a couple of hours until sunrise, Gabriel settled on the ground. Father, if I'm done with that work, and I think I am, I guess I'll go back into a body now.

  The next moment, he found himself still seated, but on a road and not in a field, the air hotter and dryer, and the sun just rising.

  His clothing was different: a knee-length tunic, short sleeves, a shawl with long fringes. A belt—at least he was still wearing a belt. But this was cotton, not wool. What was going on?

  He scrambled to his knees, pressed his palm to the ground. Where? Where?

  His eyes flew open. "Michael?"

  Perhaps in response to his shrill tone, it wasn't even a second before the Archangel appeared holding Gabriel's pack.

  Gabriel was shaking. "I'm in Elam?"

  "About a mile north of the port-city of Susa." Michael handed him the pack, unconcerned by the change in clothes, the change in appearance, the change in location. But then again, would Gabriel even have registered the importance of those details before this year?

  His head felt numb. "But that's hundreds of miles—"

  "You aren't needed in Lebonah."

  Gabriel scrambled to his feet. "But it's my turn to cook breakfast."

  That wasn't what he wanted to say. It was just the thing that made most sense, the only practical thing he could grasp.

  Michael shrugged. "They won't starve. I'll stop by later and tell them you were called away. That man Jacob, I think he'll make a good overseer until Saul's son takes over."

  So much for predictability.

  After a pause, Gabriel realized Michael wasn't going to add anything. This was ridiculous—he shouldn't have to beg for information, not when God had upended his existence. But instead Michael stood, an air of expectancy sparking around him, and Gabriel felt only flustered and abandoned. He'd worked for months to carve himself a niche in the Holy Land where he'd be useful, and his reward was God kicking him out of Israel.

  His eyes stung, but he only picked up his pack.

  Michael put out his hand. "Where will you go?"

  Gabriel stared at the road curling before him. What did it matter where he went? God wouldn't be there.

  "I'm facing north," he said, so north he went.

  Farmer

  Nissan 5

  Camped for the night, Gabriel was preparing dinner when another traveler hailed him in Aramaic with a strong Assyrian influence. Gabriel discerned the language and returned the greeting, but his voice cracked: he hadn't spoken to anyone in two days.

  The traveler stopped. With bright eyes and smooth cheeks he looked to be in late adolescence.

  "Would you like to join me?" Gabriel said. His dinner consisted of some dried fish and roasted round cakes with dates, but he had enough for two.

  The young man dropped his bag on the ground. "I would, thanks! I'm Raguel, son of Gabelus. What's your name?"

  "Gabriel." He said it with an Assyrian accent, but it was his name nonetheless. "Where are you heading?"

  "Ecbatana. Yourself?"

  "North as well, but at the moment I don't have a destination."

  Watching the boy Raguel unload his belongings from his donkey, Gabriel thought about the angel of the same name, and he shifted a little into the angelic realm to test; the boy's spirit didn't flicker with a preternatural glow, and he had his own guardian angel. His frame, while muscular, still lacked a man's shoulders. His legs had gotten covered with road dust, and his face was smudged where dirt mingled with sweat. Like Gabriel, he wore a knee-length tunic with the ubiquitous fringes and embroidery on the sleeves, but it looked to be finer than Gabriel's.

  Taking a seat at the campfire, Raguel ran his hands over his shoulders where he'd carried his pack. "So, traveler Gabriel, with a name like that, I assume you're an Israelite exile just like my family. Were you named after the angel?"

  "We were named at the same time," he said dryly.

  Raguel chuckled. "Yeah, yeah, from all eternity, by God's mouth, but your parents named you after an archangel. What an honor!"

  "For him or for me?" asked Gabriel, at which Raguel laughed out loud. "You're named after an angel, too, you know. Raguel is the name of one of t
he Seven."

  "My grandfather tells me that's what the Patriarch Enoch said." Raguel chuckled. "Gabriel's also one of the Seven."

  Gabriel murmured, "That's what they say."

  "So, two people with angel names meet on a road. It sounds like it should be a book in the scriptures." The young man's eyes crinkled with a laugh. "Actually I'm named after my great-grandfather."

  While Gabriel finished preparing the meal, the young man asked, "How come you don't have a destination? No home or a family?"

  "No." Gabriel didn't look up. "I want to find work somewhere."

  The young man said, "Oh! My family can hire you."

  "If you have need of me, by all means," said Gabriel. "Otherwise, I'll keep going."

  Raguel said, "Come with me as far as Ecbatana and see how it turns out. As long as you have no other place to go, how could it hurt?"

  "It can't." Gabriel hesitated. "What exactly does your family do?"

  "We devour random travelers." Raguel laughed out loud. "You don't need to be so cautious. We farm."

  Amused, Gabriel said, "Lucky me."

  "Harvest time gets crazy, you know? I have six uncles and a lot of aunts, and about thirty myriad cousins, and we're out in the field all day every day."

  Gabriel passed some fish and a date cake to Raguel, who began eating but then stopped long enough to squeeze in a few whispered prayers.

  Gabriel said, "It sounds like you don't need help."

  "Oh, no," the young man swallowed to say. "My father and uncles always bring in servants for the planting and harvesting. They sent me out on business because no one else could be spared. I'm supposed to be back right away for the start of the barley harvest and the sheep shearing. But I got delayed, and that's why I was walking at almost dark. Trust me, they'll take you on."

  While Gabriel took some food for himself, Raguel added, "My family has a policy of always being kind to travelers."

  Gabriel shrugged. "That's doubly lucky."

  "It's my grandfather's special idea, passed on to him by his father, but I don't know if it goes back any more."

  Gabriel stopped eating as though choked. He considered the area, the time, and the names he had heard so far, and he reached a dreadful conclusion.

  Is it wrong to stay with him? he prayed, but he heard no answer.

  Gabriel and Raguel prayed together that night and rose before dawn. Raguel talked constantly, but it wasn't invasive. He had a knack for conversation that Gabriel had never mastered, letting one topic flow into the next into the next as one thing reminded him of something else. Although superficial, conversation was easy to follow, and Gabriel resisted his impulse to grab a topic in a stranglehold and wring every bit of information from it. The only downside was that eventually Raguel asked how Gabriel had ended up homeless.

  Gabriel experimented with Raguel's technique for redirecting the conversation (and succeeded!) twice before Raguel finally pressed for an answer. So Gabriel told him he was a prince, but he'd displeased his father the king and gotten sent away.

  Raguel whistled. "Will you ever be able to return?"

  "I have to wait a while. Maybe after the harvest I can try again."

  "I hope he takes you back," said Raguel. "What kingdom is it?" Gabriel replied with the holy name of Heaven, which Raguel didn't recognize. "Is it one of those little city-states no one's ever heard of?"

  Gabriel sighed. "Sometimes it feels that way."

  "My dad says that since Nineveh fell there's a new kingdom popping up every month. But your home sounds Hebrew."

  Gabriel said, "Oh, you speak Hebrew? I do too."

  Raguel's eyes popped. "You're kidding! Could you speak to me in Hebrew so I'll know it really well by the time we get home? My grandfather will be so surprised. I can barely understand it, but my grandfather says we have to keep praying in it because that's what the scriptures are written in, just in case we ever return to Samaria. That's where my great-grandparents come from."

  "How well can you understand me?" Gabriel asked in Hebrew.

  Raguel's eyes got big, and after some work, he said, "Um, okay?"

  It was a gift, Raguel's presence: a pupil. A Cherub. A subject in need of learning and a long road on which to learn it, a road that suddenly seemed a lot shorter than it had before.

  Nissan 9

  Raguel had a better Hebrew background than he had admitted, and fluency came with constant exposure. One night Gabriel prayed for an hour after the young man went to bed, and the next day Raguel found himself thinking in Hebrew when he wanted to.

  Meanwhile, Gabriel wrestled with the ethics of the situation, and whether staying with a traveler he'd met by coincidence was breaking the spirit of the law to avoid Raphael—or had it really been coincidence? Was he being tempted?

  He considered asking Michael, but he was a Cherub—he ought to be able to figure this out himself.

  Raguel didn't have to tell Gabriel when they drew close to his home about four hours after noon. Gabriel recognized the land, the fences on the border of the property, and the layout of the trees. His mouth went dry, and he drank the last of the water from his supply. Raguel recited psalms in Hebrew right through Gabriel's silence, upping the pace as they approached the gates of the house.

  The house sat among fields, two stories tall, mudbrick and wood construction with a tiled roof. It sprawled in the multigenerational manner of farm houses everywhere, rooms added as necessary. Nearby stood a barn, and beside them a stand of trees with their crowns just tall enough to block the setting sun. Gabriel knew there would be a spring feeding the trees, and beyond them a row of grain silos. Further out lay crops absorbing the light, readying for harvest. Approaching the property from ground-level was a new perspective; every other time Gabriel had been here, he'd waited in a tree or on the roof.

  Raguel let out a shout at the gates, and instantly family members poured from the doors, from the barn, and from behind the house. Gabriel halted as Raguel let go of his donkey's lead to run toward the crowd, talking in rapid bursts as boys and girls his age came to welcome him back, little children, then women dusting their hands on their aprons. And finally an older man who gave Raguel a firm hug, then held him at arms' length to inspect.

  Gabriel turned away quickly, grabbing the donkey's tether and bringing it to stand near his shoulder.

  Raguel called him, then ran toward Gabriel, who tried to look impassive as he approached the family. "This is Gabriel!" Raguel said, and the family welcomed him as well, thanking him for "looking after" Raguel on his trip, inviting him to come inside. Someone took the donkey from him, and a moment later Gabriel found a four-year-old girl clinging to his leg asking to be carried. He lifted her as everyone went into the house. More chaos: the scents of meat, bread, garlic. Onions and herbs were strung across the ceiling. The women brought him and Raguel water, barley cakes and wine and promised a proper meal in a couple of hours.

  At some point, Raguel took off to go talk to his grandfather, and Gabriel found himself alone—alone except for ten family members whose names he all knew even though he hadn't been introduced.

  "Would you like anything else?" said a woman who looked enough like Raguel to be his mother. Which Gabriel knew she was.

  "If you don't mind," Gabriel said, "I'd like to clean up."

  They led him to the well, gave him a water basin and a towel, and then left him alone.

  I hope it's all right to be here, Gabriel prayed in the blessed silence. Please stop me if it isn't.

  Ten minutes later, Gabriel returned to kitchen. The little girl scampered over to him, took the basin and the towel, then darted away again, leaving him at the threshold alone.

  Gabriel's heart hammered. He wanted to run.

  The girl returned. Taking his hand, she led him through a series of rooms to the front entrance where her father—Raguel's father—was standing.

  "That's good, Rafaela," said the man. "Now run along."

  The girl beamed at Gabriel before darting off
.

  The man turned his full attention to Gabriel. "So," he said in Assyrian Aramaic, "you accompanied Raguel from Susa?"

  Gabriel nodded.

  Raguel's father squinted at him. "My name is Gabelus, by the way. You're Gabriel?"

  With that Akkadian influence, the name sounded more like "Zhavreel." Gabriel nodded again.

  Gabelus regarded him. "You don't speak very much, although apparently you speak Hebrew well enough. My son hasn't stopped chattering since he arrived, and I'm afraid he's going to wear out his grandfather's ears before he gets used to the idea that yes, we can say the same thing two ways." Gabriel smiled. "You've had to put up with him for days, I know," Gabelus said, "but it's a new experience for me not to be able to shut him up. You taught him quickly."

  Gabriel said, "We had a lot of time."

  Gabelus grimaced. "He says you're a prince, but you're at odds with your king. Is this true?"

  Gabriel tensed as he agreed. He could predict the man's next question.

  "What have you done?"

  "I disobeyed my father in a small matter."

  Gabelus was examining him more minutely than even Saul had: his character, whether he was lying, and whether he was a danger to the children.

  Gabelus said, "Why weren't you thrown in prison?"

  "Arguably I should have been." Gabriel bit his lip. "But he is my Father. And my sisters pleaded for me."

  Gabelus said, "Is he a harsh king?"

  "Not usually." Gabriel looked down. "I'm not good for much, but Raguel mentioned I might work for your family."

  "In Hebrew, no doubt." Gabelus had not stopped openly studying him, and Gabriel became very conscious of how Gabelus was taller, broader, his hair thicker. How odd, to feel smaller than a man. More than that: he was trembling.

  Around the back of the house, a number of children played, and for a moment both men in the courtyard could hear them daring one another. Half an hour ago, they'd all run outside to welcome home their brother, their cousin. And Gabriel realized, when he returned home, it would be through the back door, an embarrassment no one would call attention to, although maybe some would be relieved it was all over.