When Angels Cry

by Melanie Nilles

  "Killing 'us'? You and Jerantis?"

  The name stuck in her throat. She bit her trembling lip. Jerantis should have stayed close to her, but he hadn't. Damn him. Now his child would have no father, because he believed he alone could protect them.

  That's what upset her. Her child. She felt a strong need to protect her child, which had survived the moment through the portal when matter converted to energy and back. "Us…here." She put her hand to her abdomen. Surely Scott would understand. Humans bore their young also.

  Scott sat back, his eyes darting from her belly to her face, his eyes widening. "Whoa! Wait a minute. You mean you're pregnant?"

  She nodded, unable to speak through the lump that suddenly returned to her throat.

  "Good God! Why didn't you tell me?"

  She shrugged and wiped the tears blurring her vision. "Afraid."

  "Afraid?" He calmed and pushed his glasses up his nose. "Why? If you knew, you should've said something. I mean, for the paperwork, but I suppose it really doesn't matter." He muttered the last, his eyes glazing over with a distant look, but only for a moment. "I'm glad you told me now."

  "You…upset?"

  "Upset? No. Just…surprised."

  He wouldn't look her in the eyes. That wasn't like him, or what she knew of him in that short time. She bit her lip in hesitation but needed reassurance. "Bad surprised?"

  "No. Not bad. But it makes things…complicated. You know?"

  No, she didn't. She wasn't caring for a baby. She was barely into the pregnancy. "Not know."

  Scott stood up and ran his hand over his hair, pausing at the back of his neck to scratch. "It's just more than I expected."

  Oh. She knew what that meant. He didn't want her there. She should leave rather than impose any more. "I go."

  "No!" His hand clasped her arm. "Stay. I'm not mad or anything. It just feels weird seeing you and knowing you're pregnant."

  It did? That didn't make any sense. "Meaning?"

  He dropped his hand. "I don't know…I barely know you, but you seem like a nice person, and I want to help, both of you. Not just because it's my job. I mean, because I care—" His eyes widened and his words rushed out. "Because it's the right thing to do."

  A small part of her faded after his last statement in a way she hadn't expected, but it was all she could hope. "Thank you."

  He let out a gust of breath and his shoulders dropped. "I could do more if you tell me who's after you."

  "Not…telling good."

  "Sorry. I know it's hard. I don't mean to pry." He sat down again on the sofa near her. "This is just way beyond anything I ever expected." His eyes, small behind the glasses, fixed on her with a frown of uncertainty. "I'll do what I can. When you're ready, you'll tell me, though?"

  Padina nodded. If she ever was ready. There was one advantage to not speaking the language well—she could believably not explain details.

  She had told him enough, for now. He had accepted that she was in danger and allowed her to stay. For that she would always be grateful.

  6

  Two days passed with Scott home. The first day, he took her to a clinic, where the medics gave her a shot, a precautionary measure as a result of her attack. When they returned home, she begged him to read whatever he could to her, but by the second day he could barely speak through the hoarseness.

  Padina wanted to learn, though.

  After some begging, Scott finally sat down with her after the midday meal, except he didn't read. Instead, he taught her the alphabet and some reading with comments on how fast she learned.

  She warmed at the compliment but said nothing. The Starfire in her recorded everything in perfect clarity, so that learning new words was the easy part while putting them together was something else. She had to think about what she wanted to say and try to figure out the words in the right order, but she started relying less on the Starfire entities to translate.

  During the next few days when Scott was gone, she had the house mostly to herself and her tears and left her wings out to heal. The evenings were filled by his reading distracting her from the grief. She looked forward all day to those evenings. Another visit to the clinic passed sometime in those blur of days.

  Finally, a day came when Scott could spend the day with her. His presence for a whole day dulled the misery of her first full week on Earth. She stayed close to him out of her need of someone to chase away the emptiness within her, even if it wasn't Jerantis. Scott was kind and generous to her and his presence cast a ray of sunshine through the dark clouds of her heart. He was all she had on that world, the only human she had regular contact with and a good one as far as she could tell. And he spent all of the next day with her again.

  A couple days into his work week, Scott returned with her to the clinic for yet another dose of the treatment because of the animal bite. If she never saw another dog it would be too soon.

  After a check by one of the nurses, she sat alone in the private room of the clinic waiting for the doctor. In the chilly room, she studied the certificates framed on the wall and the pictures of smiling kids on the desk. She couldn't help but smile at the happy faces and clasped her good hand with the fingers of the hand in the brace.

  After some time and passing voices outside the door, a tall man with tan skin and neatly combed black hair entered, his smile reassuring.

  "Miss Shartrael…Doctor Torres. How are you today?" he asked.

  "Being…better if call Padina."

  His smile stretched tight. "All right, Padina." Like the last doctor she had seen at the clinic, he stopped at the raised bed in the center of the room. "If you'll sit up here, we'll take a look at you."

  Padina climbed up to the paper-covered bed and sat with her legs hanging off the end.

  The doctor's smile melted away as his eyes settled on her hands. He took the braced hand and lifted it, exposing a black mark on one of his hands that looked familiar but disappeared too quickly to be sure. She must have imagined it.

  "So, your arm and a leg, is it?"

  "Yes. Dog bite."

  "Let's take a look." He proceeded to push her sleeve up and unlace the brace on her left hand. "How's it feeling?" After removing the brace, he turned her hand around a little in his and lightly traced the bones along the back of her hand but paused with a frown at the Starburst marks. "Interesting marks," he said and gently turned her hand over.

  The temptation to pull her hand away was strong, but she let him manipulate it. He wasn't hurting her, but his curiosity set off warnings.

  "You were born with them?"

  "Yes." Suspicions rose higher at his question. How could he know?

  His smile returned and he slid the brace onto her arm. "Bruising is gone. You must be taking care of it."

  "Yes."

  He secured the brace and tightened the laces. "You have someone helping you?"

  "Yes."

  Doctor Torres finished the brace in silence, the marking on his palm occasionally exposed to her, but never enough to confirm what she had seen. "Lift your legs."

  She did as commanded and he pulled an extension from the table. She set her legs down.

  "Which leg?"

  She pointed to her right leg, and he proceeded to roll up the pants to examine her lower leg.

  Surprise lifted his brows. "It looks good. I can't tell you were ever bitten."

  "This is good?" She could care less about the leg; it was healed. But she had to see his hand. What was it? Had she seen an Inari symbol or was that her imagination? Why did he have it?

  He pulled her pant leg down and pushed the extender back into the table beneath her. "Very good. Some might call it a miracle, but I suppose you're familiar with them." His voice hinted of something she should know.

  "Not knowing."

  "That's all right. I'm glad I had the chance to help you."

  He offered his hand sideways. The gesture had been offered before, and Scott had shown her in the hospital the meaning behind it when he t
ook the doctor's hand there, but she had other intentions.

  Padina took his hand, but turned it up—

  And almost dropped it in shock. An Inari symbol stared up at her. "What being?" How did he come by that? Why?

  "An old tattoo. You like it?"

  "Tattoo?" She'd never heard that word before. "Why have?" Did he know something about her kind? Could she trust him? The prospects trembled through her in a new excitement.

  "An old college impulse."

  "College impulse?" What was that? It couldn't have been anything but on purpose.

  "Before med school. It's nothing…You know what it means?"

  She met his soft brown eyes, her pulse racing with the answer. "Protector."

  He pulled his hand away and straightened with a look on his face hinting of a deeper knowledge. "So it does. And it's a doctor's duty to protect the sick. As I said, it was a college impulse. I was told it had significant meaning and thought it would be interesting. That hasn't been the least of it."

  There had to be more to it. She had to know, but she couldn't tell him she wasn’t human without knowing if she could trust him.

  "I look forward to serving you again." He stepped to the door, his hand dropping to the lever. "The nurse will be in with your injection, then we'll see you back in two weeks. It's been an honor, Padina."

  Before she could formulate another question, he bowed his head and left the room, closing the door behind him.

  What did he know of Inari symbols, of anything about their kind? What did this mean? She had to talk to him. Were there humans who knew about them? Could she trust them?

  Too many questions. She would ask them next time she returned.

  7

  Four to five weeks at the very least remained before she could risk traveling through a portal, and Padina grew restless. She longed for home; every day was an agony of emotions and memories and an insatiable desire to fly. And there was the fear and curiosity of what humans knew, if a doctor could wear an Inari symbol. She still wondered what he knew, if anything. How was he aware of that particular symbol?

  She'd find out next time she went in for shots—the last one and her last chance for a good reason to see Doctor Torres. It could be for nothing; she tried to convince herself, but she didn't want to believe that.

  Aside from that, she had Scott. He was kind to her, making her stay on Earth tolerable. She anticipated his return home from his job every evening and the light of hope he inspired within her. He never asked for anything, even after she'd drenched a few of his good shirts in tears.

  His work was important, but she wished he could tell her if another alien had applied to stay. Where was the Shirukan?

  If only she wasn't afraid of the threat, she might go out flying when Scott wasn't around, or at night. She hadn't felt air beneath her in more than two weeks, and it drove her mad with restlessness.

  The birds outside taunted her with their airborne antics. The desire to join them tightened around her heart in a crushing agony as she watched day after day from inside the house.

  Her wings needed real stretching now that the feathers had grown back. She wanted to fly!

  Inari weren't meant to be grounded like this. She needed to fly, but the best she could do while home alone was to stretch her wings. Scott was at work and would be staying home the next two days again, when she would have to hide them all day.

  There might be a way. During the day, the neighborhood was quiet, Scott was gone, and the backyard was fenced and large enough to take off and land.

  Anticipation tingled through her. It would be risky.

  She had to fly.

  If the Shirukan saw her, he wouldn't hesitate to attack.

  Let him. She could fight back. Her spirit yearned in desperation to fly.

  But the humans would see her, especially in the broad daylight.

  The distant barking of one of the neighbor's dogs sent a rush of panic through her and sealed away her desperation. Memories surfaced with the clarity of having happened moments ago. Her leg, though healed, ached in sympathy. She pulled her wings tight to her, an instinctive defensive posture.

  That was it. She would stay inside. Maybe at night, when even the dogs must sleep, she could sneak out. She would be safer then.

  For now, she would wait for Scott. He would be home at the end of the day.

  After calming from the panic of the dog, which couldn't harm her as long as she stayed inside, she relaxed and lifted her wings in the confinement of the house. Nighttime couldn't come soon enough.

  Unfortunately, Scott did. The moment she heard the hum of the garage, she closed herself in her bedroom and found the resonance, focusing it on shrinking her wings. It ended when the door between the house and the garage thumped closed.

  "Paddy?"

  She let out a breath from clenching her jaw on the cry of pain from the transformation. Her shirt fell over her flat back and she breathed easier. After wiping away a line of sweat from her forehead, she rushed out to greet him.

  Scott's smile fell into a look of concern. "You weren't asleep, were you?"

  "No. Was being awake." And more like her old self than he would ever know.

  His eyes fell on something on the floor beside the sofa, and he reached down.

  No! She thought she picked up the few feathers that normally shed. She'd grown complacent and too comfortable the last two weeks. This required some quick thinking.

  He held the small feather between his fingers. "Where'd that come from?"

  She shrugged, hoping he didn't ask her more. She would check the hallway and bedroom as soon as something else distracted him.

  Food! It was almost dinner time. She was hungry. The perfect excuse to distract him. "You to be making food?"

  He blinked and dropped his hand, but not the feather. "Sure, if you don't mind hotdogs again."

  "That is good. Yes."

  He hung up his jacket and set his shoes in the bottom of the closet. "If you say so."

  When he disappeared into the kitchen, she breathed easier and stepped through the hallway with her eyes on the carpet for stray feathers. Nothing there.

  The feathers she found on the bed she bent and tucked into her palm to carry through the dining room past Scott. He looked up from the stove with a smile as she slid open the deck door and stepped outside. In the backyard, at a steep angle to the kitchen window, she dropped the feathers over the fence into the neighbor's yard.

  There. They were gone, and Scott wouldn't think anything more of it.

  * * *

  Where was she going now? Scott watched from the window as she threw something over the fence.

  What was going on? He opened the cabinet under the sink and peeked at the feather he'd thrown away. It matched the others in color. Where had this come from? He'd found nothing in the garbage this time, just the single feather on the floor.

  The deck door hushed open, slamming his heart against his chest as he slammed the cabinet door and straightened abruptly. She shut the deck door and stopped, her face reddening.

  "Not staying out?" Stupid! He forced a smile anyway.

  "No. Dog." She glanced out the door and hurried past to the sitting room.

  Scott peeked out the window but couldn't see anything over the tall fence. His neighbor wasn't out, but if the dog was, it might have torn up whatever she threw over the fence.

  This didn't make sense if she was afraid of the dog.

  Was it more feathers? Why would she throw them to the dog?

  He didn't want to believe Padina hid some horrible secret of killing birds herself. He really didn't want to believe that. There had to be a good explanation.

  8

  Scott didn't say anything more about her going out or about the feather. Maybe she could get out to fly, but that night wasn't the right night. Scott stayed up late with her, which was just as well. His company kept Padina from sinking too deep into grief over Jerantis or worrying about other things.

 
But she would fly. The best chance came after a weekend with Scott, when he went to bed early to get a full night's sleep before getting up early for his job. She couldn't wait for Sunday night.

  That hope thrilled her into staying up listening through the bedroom doors for Scott to fall asleep. The anticipation of flying after more than two weeks grounded chased away the sense of loss that entered with the quiet of the house.

  Careful not to make a sound, she passed his door, which was open a crack, and crept through the short hallway and the dining room. With extra care not to make too much noise, she slid the deck door open and stepped out into the cool night. The fresh air filled her lungs and revitalized her in anticipation of the freedom to come.

  The neighborhood was quiet. Perfect for a flight. She was tired from waiting so late into the night for this, but she could rest during the day when Scott was gone.

  The pain of growing her wings was worth the freedom of flapping into the air, despite the rips inflicted on the tee shirt. She would hide it from him and use it for flying to spare any other shirts.

  A chilly breeze lifted Padina into the sky over the houses. Scott's small home shrank beneath her as she soared higher, up to the clouds that formed and shifted, and caught a warm layer.

  Crystal fire! It had been too long. She tumbled and twirled in the sky, adjusting her wings with the winds to glide steadily, or pulling them tight to dive until she spread them to catch an updraft that lifted her high again.

  Not since before the Shirukan attacked had such exhilaration filled her.

  She had almost forgotten about him. Almost, but not quite. A sense of caution rippled through her and steadied her flight. Where was he? Had he noticed her? He couldn't have, or he'd have attacked, but he might be waiting for the right moment.

  Maybe the time had come to return to the house. She missed flying, but the threat of the Shirukan overshadowed her desire.