“I doubt she is afraid, Ephratha. Tess is a tough little Angel.” Dayspring gave me a significant look. “In fact, she was one of the spirits who took on Legion.”
Upon hearing such high recommendation, the young Seraphs turned to look at me with fresh eyes, and started bombarding me with questions.
“OK, you boys stop that right now. Go inside and wash up for dinner,” their mother instructed.
Gimel was the first one to turn with a sneer. “She doesn’t look that tough. If she can do that to Legion, then anyone can,” he murmured as he slinked away. Then the other two followed, but not without turning a few times to look back at me.
Dayspring visited with her family for a little while, then we went back to the spot where we had originally landed. There we sat in silence while I sorted out all this new information.
“I’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have,” Dayspring said after a while.
I had so many questions about so many different things that I didn’t know where to start. “Why did you tell your family that I was one of the strongest spirits? I know you meant it, but you are wrong. I am not as strong as you think I am.” I wanted to be that type of spirit, I hoped to be, but I wasn’t.
“Opposition, Tess…opposition has made you strong. It is the greatest teacher of us all. Think back to all the hard, sad, and seemingly unfair circumstances of your existence. You will find that each of those has shaped and strengthened your character.
“What makes you unusually strong is that you have consistently responded well to that opposition. That is what makes anyone strong.” She now turned to me with a smile and her tail started to sway lazily. We spent a few moments like this, me lost in thought, and she swaying her tail.
“Were you a Discerner in mortality?” I asked.
“No. Originally I had the Gift of Wisdom, but as I evolved I developed other gifts as well. In time I could have them all.”
“So how many do you have so far?” I asked, and oddly, her skin turned slightly pink around her golden face and her aura showed that she felt embarrassed.
“We don’t brag about those things,” she said and looked away from me.
“Sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Don’t worry. It’s no big deal. I’m just sensitive about those things.”
“So you are not perfect?”
“No…” she laughed. “Immortal beings are not perfect. Not by a long shot, but some of us have been proven worthy to keep evolving. We use eternity to perfect ourselves.” She sighed. “It takes a long, long time to be perfect. You see…every stage of your existence is a little test. If you pass the test of that particular part of your existence, you get to continue with your evolution.”
I nodded and thought about that for a while. “Do you have any children?” I asked curiously, but she seemed to freeze at my question. Her aura, all her thoughts, seemed to freeze and turn to ice so that they were impossible to discern. I couldn’t be sure, but it seemed like a tactic, a way to avoid other Discerners from reading her thoughts.
“I never got married,” Dayspring answered coolly. “Truth is, in mortality my brother and I were too busy fighting in wars to devote much time to relationships. So we formed none. Since then, my brother found a mate, but I haven’t. I have actually become quite a novelty among my people because of this.”
“I had no idea the Seraphs had wars. I thought you were a peaceful race.”
“We became a peace loving race, but we were not always so. When my brother and I lived, Seraphs were ignorant and quarrelsome. My brother and I were heirs to the dominating kingdom of our planet. Our world was one huge land mass and the boundaries of the two kingdoms were always under constant change. Initially our war was against some tyrants, but then my own father became the tyrant. When Daystar and I defied our father, he declared war on us too. We fought all our lives.
“Then everything changed when the Cherubs arrived. They were more advanced in technology then, and when the threat of their dominion became apparent, all Seraphs united under the rule of my brother and me to fight the invaders. The war was very devastating for both sides. They were more advanced, but we had fought all our lives and would not give up.
“After Daystar’s death, I managed to work out a peace agreement and after I saw that a lasting peace had been established I died of old age.” She smiled—the irony seemed funny to her.
“You must be quite revered among your people.”
She rolled her eyes. “Who cares about that! It makes no difference in the long scheme of things. I serve the Eternals as part of their personal guard. That is the greatest honor that I have ever hoped to achieve.”
I watched her with awe. She was such an enigmatic character, so easy to get along with at times, yet so guarded and complicated at others. She was a princess, a warrior, a personal guard for the Eternals—I longed to hear more stories, to know what it was like to be a Seraph and dwell with the Eternals.
“Come on. I really have to be getting you back. Your first mission as an Angel awaits.” She lowered her hind legs and motioned for me to climb on her back. She then took a few steps back and lunged herself off the cliff, spreading her leathery wings.
Dayspring was such a beautiful creature. She was tough yet feminine, even her wings were graceful, pointy at the tips and slightly curved upward. I noticed that Daystar’s wife was not as impressive as Dayspring—so once more I fell to wondering why Dayspring was alone.
* * * * *
Chapter 20
She placed me safely on the steps of the Angelic Missions building, gave me a few recommendations, and left me with the assurance that I would soon be told what to do. My pendant started glowing the moment that she was gone. The thin golden letters read “Archives and Records. Angelic Missions Building, Reubium.”
I found a billboard inside the Angelic Missions building that had up to date information on the whereabouts of every angel and trainer in heaven. I took this opportunity to not only find Reubium, but also get information on some of my clan members. Those who were Sentinels or Heralds were listed as “Undercover” which meant you could not reach them until further notice. Russell was apparently “Undercover” and Dorian too. Alex was somewhere on Earth being a Scribe. I looked up my own name and it simply stated that I was in the Angelic Missions building, as indeed I was. Reubium, however, was not undercover, but rather, underground.
The Archives and Records room was not what I expected. This room was huge. I felt dwarfed by the size of it. The ceiling was at least ten times the size of a human, and the walls were filled with scrolls all neatly stored in little diamond shaped slots. Each slot was perfectly sized to the scroll occupying it. Some scrolls were large and some so small that the ends were touching each other.
The room was lit by a massive candelabrum that hung from the center. Right below it was a huge table, thick and rough hewn, with several scrolls scattered on it, waiting to be filed, I surmised. Among all the scrolls was a long scroll that seemed to have no end. It hung from the table at either end and both ends were resting on the floor. Next to this huge scroll, on the table, were an equally large plume and a red ink stand.
“Reubium?” I called tentatively, and got no answer. Then I called again, louder this time, and I was rewarded with a gruff, “What!”
“I was sent to find Reubium.” My voice made a strange echoing sound as I spoke.
“Here,” the gruff voice replied from somewhere above and behind me.
As I turned I saw that the voice belonged to the small Cherub from the presentation. He had to be the smallest, chubbiest Cherub that I had ever seen, and I stifled a giggle.
He must have suspected my thoughts, or maybe even read them, because he grunted loudly then turned his attention back toward his filing.
“I’ll be with you in one moment. One has to be organized in this job, wouldn’t want to put the wrong life in the wrong slot.” He said this and snickered at some inside joke. His wings batted quickly t
o keep him afloat as he filed the scrolls away. Then he added, “So you were sent were you?”
“Yes, by the pendant.”
“I see.” He finished putting away the last of the scrolls that he was holding, and started his descent. “Filing lives…a meticulous job,” he mumbled as he came down. “You are meticulous, I hope?”
“Oh…um…I wasn’t sent to help file lives,” I told him.
He grunted and mumbled something as he lightly touched down on the floor.
I looked around the huge room, noticed that, even though many niches had been filled, many, many more remained empty, but not for long. Inevitably, someone’s life would end and their scroll would take its place in one of those slots, until this room was filled and this heaven became completely empty.
Reubium was now at his desk, with plume in hand, jotting down some things on the big scroll. It dawned on me now that the hugeness of the table and all the items on it had to do with the fact that it was Cherub size—normal Cherub size—but Reubium was so small, that the items dwarfed him even further. The plume was so long that it curved over his back, and the table was so tall that the Cherub had to stand on a stool to comfortably reach the top.
“Your name?” he said tartly.
“Tess.”
“Mmm…Tess…here we go, Scribe. You will join the Scribes in…England. You’ll take over for…Luz. She will tell you who to take record of.”
“Luz! Oh, she’s there!” I said with enthusiasm, but it was soon quenched by Reubium’s irritated look.
“Don’t get so excited, little miss. We don’t go on Angelic Missions to socialize. As a Scribe you will have to remain silent at all times.”
I nodded somberly.
“OK, be off.” He peered at me to make sure I was taking his admonition seriously, then signaled with his free hand for me to go, then looked back at the scroll and made a quick annotation.
“But…”
“No buts, you want to serve, now go do it,” he reprimanded without looking up.
“I have no problem serving, Sir. I just don’t know how to get there. Is there a window I can walk through? Or should I just fly there?”
He stopped what he was doing and looked over at me. “New?” he asked in that same gruff voice.
“Yes, I am new.”
He mumbled something to himself, finished his writing, put the plume down and continued his mumbling as he grabbed my elbow and led me out of the room.
“Window…new angels…have to do everything myself,” he mumbled. “This is the door.” He pointed to the door with an exaggerated gesture. “It works much like a window, but it’s a door—see Heaven’s Door—the only one on this side of the Veil. The difference between this door and a window is that it has no pad to enter coordinates. The door is voice activated. You just tell it where you are going and you open it. Then you walk right through where you told it to take you.” He released me and I was about to do as he said, when he quickly grabbed my arm again and drew me back.
“Now coming back is a bit trickier. There is no knob on the other side. So to come back you have to call it back—no matter where you are on Earth—and it will appear. Do you understand?” He said this slowly, much in the same way the young Seraphs had been.
“Yes, but if there is no knob, how will it open?”
“Didn’t I say?”
“No”
“Oh…well you knock, and it will open,” he said.
“Got it.”
Reubium grunted and turned to leave, but stopped mid stride and turned abruptly. “Remember, when you are on the other side there will be no speaking.” He shook his finger accusatorially. “This mission requires you to be silent at all times.” He turned in a huff and fluffed his wings as he went.
On the other side I found myself in a very different looking Earth than its spiritual replica. The real Earth had not matured yet, the cities were still too primitive and mostly agrarian. Our spiritual Earth was different in many ways. For instance, the colors were all muted by the sheer fact that everything was spiritual in nature. The vegetation that we had was in its paradisaical state, no weeds or thorns, all fruiting and flowering when they were supposed to—everything was and looked the way it was meant to be. The third difference was that on our spiritual world all of Earth’s creations were mixed together, the latest and most modern discoveries that our civilizations would be able to achieve were mixed with the old and primitive, thus giving spirit Earth a different look altogether.
I found myself in thirteenth century England, on a farm of sorts. In looking around I spotted some spirits hovering together. Each was holding a scroll and was writing in it with a plume as they saw fit. One of those spirits was Alex, who looked up at me the moment I came into view. He beamed at me for a moment, and then his outer aura changed and looked very depressed.
Next to him was Luz, who smiled with her usual giggly smile. She handed me her scroll and pointed to the girl whose life she was making a record of. Before she knocked on Heaven’s door, she looked at us and smiled one last time, then stepped through an unseen opening in the fabric of the scenery around us. Alex looked longingly after her.
“What’s wrong?” I asked him.
“Shhh,” an irritated spirit said from a ways off.
Alex looked extremely irritated by him, but said nothing.
“Alex, can you hear me?” I said in my head, as I tried to establish a link with him.
“Not so loud, Tess!” he grimaced.
“Sorry, is that better?”
“Much,” he smiled. “I’m so glad you are here now. I am dying a slow, boring death.”
“I can see that.”
The spirit who was a little way off shot a glance in our direction and looked as if he suspected foul play between us. But upon finding no apparent reason for chastisement, he resumed his work.
“What exactly are you supposed to write?” I asked Alex.
“Every decision they make that shapes their life and character.”
“So what happens if you miss something?”
“Well, there is another spirit assigned to the same person so if I miss something that spirit over there, no doubt will get it.” He pointed to our punishing angel. “Then the two versions are compiled into one, and it gets filed away until they are needed.”
“When will they be needed?”
“When we are judged, no doubt.”
I nodded and the spirit quickly turned his face hoping to have caught us in conversation, but we made no sound, so he remained disappointed.
“Your aura looks terrible,” I told him as I picked up my quill and pretended to write.
“Thanks,” Alex said acidly.
“What’s wrong? Besides being bored to death.” I shot a look at the suspicious spirit.
“You’re in my head, can’t you just extract my feelings? I don’t feel like explaining.”
I searched his head, and what I found there was not good. It was nice, to be this open with him, but at times like this…I felt his feelings so keenly that part of me would have rather not known at all.
“Do you like what you see, Tess?”
“No,” I said flatly.
“Yet there it is! What do I do with it?”
“You deal with it,” I said, but as I said it I knew that it would be much more involved than just that. His feelings startled me so much, that I had no ready answers for him.
He was jealous of Russell who got a better assignment right off the bat, and then to add insult to injury, he gets stuck here, with Mr. Sunshine over there and no one to talk to. Then the people he has to keep records for were, in his opinion, most average and dull. He felt that if life was going to be that boring he would rather not live at all. The repetitious menial jobs they did, day in and day out, without variation at all, were driving him insane. They had no apparent passion for anything beyond mere survival, and this frustrated and annoyed him to no end.
“How, Tess, do I deal with these feelings
?”
I thought about what to tell him, when I remembered my recent experience with Dayspring. I knew that there was something in there that would be of use to Alex, but I couldn’t quite pinpoint the actual memory that would help him. Perhaps Alex would be able to find it himself, so I unleashed my memories on to his mind.
“Wow, wow, wow! What was that? Go slower. I want to know what she told you. Where did you go?” His questions bombarded my brain.
“OK, OK, I’ll start from the beginning.”
He looked at me eagerly, “Finally, something interesting to think about,” he thought, so he settled to receive the whole story, straight from my head. The story however, of my recent encounter with Dayspring was intermingled by random annotations we had to make of the events below us—so it took some time to convey the whole thing.
When I was done, he started incorporating all this new information into his brain, and seeing it from his point of view.
“Do you remember rescuing me from Agatha?” I asked him after some time.
“Not exactly, all I remember from being an intelligence is being drawn to you, your presence influenced me somehow and I needed to be near you. But Agatha was in the way. I felt like…”
I smiled. I could see it right in his mind all his feelings exposed to me. “You felt like I would complete you,” I told him.
He turned to face me. “Yeah, just like that.”
We looked at each other for some time, and this was not missed by our little chaperone, whose eyes were fixed on us.
I thought it would be prudent to get some work done, so I disconnected with Alex and took some notes. But after some time, I too was growing bored of scribing and was beginning to understand why Alex was so depressed. Just then I remembered the conversation I was trying to recall. Dayspring had said that opposition is what makes everyone strong. This Angelic Mission would no doubt push Alex to the very limits of endurance, but it would only make him stronger—if he made the right choices with it.
I wanted to convey this message to him quickly before I forgot it, so I elbowed him to get his attention. Not only did I get his attention, but the other spirit too. He scolded us with his eyes, now sure that we were up to something and he promptly glided over to our side. He perched his thin little face between us looking down into our scrolls—they were full now that we had a bit of time to catch up on the notes. He seemed satisfied, but still suspicious as he glided back to his spot among the more dutiful spirits.
Veiled Page 16
