Falling From Grace (Grace Series)

by S. L. Naeole

  She watched the birds sail through the sky, and sighed, continuing with her list. “We’re not allowed to use our powers for personal benefits outside of what we need. We don’t live hand to mouth, of course, because that wouldn’t be believable for society. They see us—so beautiful and graceful in comparison to you—and they can’t believe that we’re poor or uneducated.

  “For whatever reason, you humans seem to think that beauty and intelligence go hand in hand, so we fill the roles that society and humanity dictates we belong in. It is the easiest way to blend in, and we don’t fight it. Besides, the money we get as a result can be far more attractive to you humans than any innate charming ability we possess.

  “No angel can break our laws without judgment from the Seraphim, and punishment from the Thrones-”

  “Seraphim? Thrones?” I knew I sounded confused because I genuinely was. “You have punishment thrones?”

  “The Seraphim are the elders, some of the oldest of our kind who hand down judgments either for or against our actions, while the Thrones…they’re the angels who actually dole out the punishments to the condemned that are handed down by the Seraphim. When one of the rules are broken, and a sentence has been handed down, they are the ones who carry out that sentence,” she explained, her eyes shimmering like iridescent glass—cold and hard with an ethereal light that had no explanation…no source.

  She closed them, realizing that I had been staring, and gave me a half-smile. “Now, where was I? Oh yes, there can be no interfering in the destiny of a human. We can see the destinies of most people, and sometimes, our nature dares us to interfere, to help or punish as we would see fit. But, the majority of us are not Seraphim, nor Thrones, and for good reason. If you want to know, most of us are your typical, push you out of the way of a moving vehicle type guardian angel.

  “What else? Oh! We’re not allowed to harm wing-bringers-“

  “What are wing-bringers?” I interrupted, the name sparking an immediate interest in me.

  “Yes, Robert didn’t tell you about that either, did he?” She shook her head. “A wing-bringer is someone who is the catalyst to the rebirth of an angel, meaning they are the person who triggers the growth of an angel’s wings. Call it puberty for angels.”

  I looked at her, shocked. There really were winged angels? After seeing all three of them without wings, I had assumed that they were merely symbolic, or a part of the mythology that was told to throw humans off of the truth.

  She shook her head again. “Just because you don’t see them on us, that doesn’t mean we don’t have them. Well…Robert and I don’t have them. We haven’t met our wing-bringers yet. That reminds me of another one of the rules; we’re not allowed to show our wings in public. Even in flight, most of the winged ones don’t use them. They’re merely decorative, from what many have told me, and bear no real purpose when it comes to flying.”

  “So why the significance of the wing-bringer, if the wings aren’t all that important?” I asked.

  She turned her head to look at me, her face very serious then. “Wings are extremely important. We cannot get into Heaven without them.”

  I looked at her in shock. “But, you’re angels! Isn’t that where you belong? Isn’t that where you live?” The few stories and the pictures that I knew all told a different story entirely compared to the confusing one that was now being laid brick by brick in my mind.

  “Grace, toss your preconceived notions about those naked, harp playing sissies you’ve seen painted on church ceilings out of the window. Angels are born on earth, just like humans, and live on earth until such time that we’re deemed worthy to enter Heaven. But—and I want this to be perfectly clear to you—we do not live there. Simply being an angel doesn’t mean that we’re automatically granted access—it is not our dream to end up there like you humans do. You should know above all things that there are no guarantees in life. That rings true for human and angel alike.

  “Robert is over fifteen-hundred years old. He hasn’t even seen a feather pop up, much less a complete set of wings. He knows his destiny is to ascend and answer the call. It is all of our destinies. We’re just not sure when exactly that will be and what it will be. I’ve only been around for five hundred years; that’s practically an infant when you compare me to some of the others. I might have to wait a millennia before I even get an idea as to what my call will lead me to, and even then, only after I meet my wing-bringer and the circumstances are right.”

  I felt breathless at all of the information that she was revealing to me—so many secrets and yet, I knew that this wasn’t even the tip of the iceberg—there was so much I still wanted to know. “So, this wing-bringer…what exactly does he or she do—how do they bring wings?”

  She seemed to contemplate that for a bit. “You know, I don’t know. It’s not something that is written down as an exact science. Wing-bringers have been human lovers, human enemies, complete strangers, newborns, the aged and the infirm. The belief amongst some of the elders is that there must be a great pull of emotions for the wing-bringer in order to trigger the change.

  “For example, love is a very powerful emotion, but rage and jealousy can often times be more so. Mother’s wing-bringer was a man whom she thought she was in love with. She thought he loved her too, but unfortunately, he was in love with another woman. When she found out that he had been wed to her in secret, she became incensed, and nearly killed him in a fit of jealousy and rage. Her anger triggered her change.”

  After meeting her, and talking to her, it was difficult for me to picture Ameila as anything but serene—despite what I had already seen from Robert—so the idea that she could become so angry that her body suddenly sprouted wings just went beyond the scope of my imagination. I looked down at the darkness below us and asked the one question that begged the loudest for an answer, “What’s ‘the call’?”

  Lark was silent for the first time since we had started our flight. I didn’t know if I had asked the wrong question or not, but remembering how Robert had reacted when I had asked him what he was that second day, I feared I had once again over-stepped my bounds.

  “You did no such thing. Stop being such a ninny,” she snapped, annoyance dressing every word. “You’re right—I’m annoyed. I’m merely trying to think of a way to explain it. I don’t exactly get to reveal these kinds of things to people on an everyday basis, so I’m trying to find a way to do so without using terms that you’d just ask me about immediately afterwards.”

  “Oh. Okay then. Sorry.”

  She clicked her tongue in disapproval. “Alright, so you wanted to know what ‘the call’ is. You know now that the change brings an angel’s wings…but it also acts like a switch that turns on a sort of internal speaker. It is through that speaker that we hear the call. It is what every angel lives for, it’s why we’re born. In short, it is our destiny.

  “You probably know about archangels, especially if you’ve gone to a church-” she felt me shake my head and sighed “-okay, you didn’t go to church, but I won’t doubt that your knowledge on archangels is fairly limited to what human minds were allowed to remember. The archangels are the quintessential examples of what the call is. They live only for their duty. Their duty is the call. They do not do anything else but answer it. They have all made sacrifices, leaving behind their soul mates, their wing-bringers, their children, in order to fulfill their duty to it. They are the standard that many of us hold ourselves to. They are the angel equivalent to workaholics.

  “Without the call, many of us just wander aimlessly, no objective, no goal; we’re all just waiting for the call. To put it simply, it gives us a sense of purpose beyond what this human life offers. There are those who have no problem with their lives on Earth, of course. Those who are content to be farmers, teachers…even politicians, and have no problem waiting for the call, willing and hoping it would take its time even though they know that their destiny involves them receiving it.”

  The idea of angels as politicia
ns caused me to bubble up with laughter again. “How can an angel be a politician? They cannot lie, and yet by running as a human being, they are, in fact, lying. It’s incredibly ironic.”

  Lark nodded her head, understanding the point I was trying to make. “You have to remember that the only boxes any person checks when they run for office usually revolve around whether they’re male or female, a citizen or not, what their race and ethnicities are, and how old they happen to be. There are no ‘human’ and ‘inhuman’ boxes to check, and any documents that are required can easily be obtained.”

  I choked on my laughter. “So how many angels put down born in five hundred A.D.?”

  She grimaced at that. “There is a loophole around lying when it comes to protecting our identities. We can say we’re any age we want to be, and give any name we want to give, if it ensures that our secret is kept safe.”

  I couldn’t help myself. The laughter just kept coming out of me as more and more, I realized that Lark had been right in telling me to throw out all of my preconceived and terribly misinformed notions on what angels were. They were beautiful, but they sure weren’t perfect, nor were they honest either. It was all very enlightening.

  “I’m glad you’re amused,” she remarked with sarcasm, her body stiff, her smile now gone. “It’s difficult to do that, you know. Tell a lie, even if we’re allowed to. It’s physically painful. Robert, for example, has to tell everyone that he’s eighteen, when you already know he’s not. Every time he says he’s eighteen, it’s like he’s branding a big L on his chest. He’s been telling people that his name is Robert for so long, he’s used to that sting of a lie, but his real name is N’Uriel.”

  I remembered Ameila using that name first, then correcting it when she was speaking to me about him. “I thought N’Uriel was his middle name.” I started feeling the stirrings of sadness as that conversation started to come back to me, but quickly shook it off. I was not going to allow myself to take away anything from this moment.

  “He was born N’Uriel. No last name. That came much later, along with the Robert.”

  “So why the change?” I asked. “I kind of like it. It’s different.” Like me.

  “N’Uriel became Robert during the Crusades, when names that sounded too Moorish or too much like a Saracen were an automatic death sentence. It wasn’t his life that he and my mother were fearful for, but rather the exposure that trying to kill him would have brought; and, during a time when even the most devout were questioning whether or not God existed, our presence would have been seen as an evil omen, rather than as a blessing. There was also the matter of having to destroy the witnesses.

  “I know you are aware of what happened after Robert’s birth, what my mother had to do. You know now that what she did was against the rules. She believed she had just cause, of course. She was, after all, protecting her child. What could warrant more justification than that?

  “The Seraphim, however, were angry. She had killed over a hundred innocents to protect what they thought was an infant that had been ill-conceived. There was a great uproar among them, and they began to gather. It is rare when they all come together to discuss a punishment, and they all wait until each one has arrived before coming to a uniform decision, so when the rumblings started that all who sit above were gathering, everyone knew that it was very, very bad.

  “The Seraphim have their own calls that they have to fulfill, and so it took over one thousand years before the verdict was handed down; it came with such great pomp and circumstance, you’d think she were being promoted.

  “Stripped of her wings, they said. She would be banished to the human world, average, normal, powerless. It had been unanimous. The decision would include us, and that made the punishment all the more terrifying. But then the Seraphim discovered what my mother had protected all those centuries ago. They discovered what Robert was. No longer an infant, but a young man; strong, vibrant, and gifted. He was a healer, and his birth was…extraordinary. His destiny was laid out for all eyes to see, and to be the one who banished him and his mother? That was unforgivable.

  “They had no other recourse but to pardon my mother for her crimes. But, the pardon was a one-time deal, and had my mother not changed how we all lived, we’d all be dead. My mother no longer read the humans’ minds. She didn’t come to aid those she knew were in trouble—she only answered her call. We stopped being farmers, and lived simply as a wealthy widow with two children. It kept her from having servants, employees…anyone whom she might become attached to. She ceased living…she just existed so that we would.”

  I tried to figure out what had made Robert so special that his existence was enough to save his mother and sister’s lives. I also tried to grasp the concept that an angel could somehow die.

  “Oh, we die, Grace. We’re immortal, not invincible. There are a few ways that an angel can die; the most common is by becoming human. We don’t choose it…well, most don’t anyway. Usually it is a sentence that we’re handed when we commit a crime that goes beyond redemption,” Lark said softly, her voice hinting at something I was afraid to touch on.

  She sighed, her mood changing. She was displaying a muted orange glow now. I could only assume it expressed sorrow or sadness, just going by the way the lines on her face appeared out of nowhere, defining her emotions like nothing else could.

  “Angels die…someone I loved very dearly was sentenced to a human life here. He made mistakes, horrible, terrible mistakes, and this was seen by the Seraphim as a complete and total rejection of our way of life. So they sentenced him to a human life on earth.

  “To you humans, it’s nothing. You’re born and raised for this life. You find what you’re good at, or learn the skill sets to be good at it, and then you do it. For an angel who is born with powers that are limitless, no requirement for the things that humans need due to biology, it is a shock to the system. Many of us have no marketable skills without our powers. It’s easy to be a farmer when you can change into a swarm of bees and pollinate your own crop, or be a stock market analyst when you can see the future. But when you suddenly lose all of those abilities, you might as well jump into the river with an anvil tied to your leg.

  “And…for an angel to see a former angel grow old and die—there is nothing in this life for me that can compare to that pain.”

  For a moment, I realized how similar we were. We both had the knowledge, the experience of seeing someone we loved very dearly die. We both felt the emptiness inside of us, and it hurt us both still, although hers could be centuries old.

  “Who was it—the angel that was turned human?” My voice was very soft and affected…rough with sorrow for the two of us and our losses.

  She remained silent. I had gone too far.

  “I’m sorry for overstepping my bounds, Lark. I didn’t mean to offend or hurt you,” I told her while looking away, trying not to see the overwhelming sadness on her face that I could feel coming from the chill her body gave off.

  She nodded her head and I knew that my time for questioning was over. I had already learned a great deal from her—much more than I had from Robert—although the information that he had shown me was very personal while hers was more general. It spoke a great deal about the differences between our relationships.

  I had to remind myself, of course, that where Robert had intended on taking our relationship was not running in sync to what I had hoped. He knew he was going to leave me if his wings came. His family knew. That I would most likely be merely a temporary stop on whatever journey he was taking towards his “call” was painful to acknowledge, but also very infuriating. I was merely a distraction on his way to wherever it was he was heading, and I did not like it at all.

  But I also had to admit to myself that I still wanted it. I still wanted that short amount of time with him, even if being with me was merely something to pass the time. As hurt as I was knowing that our lives couldn’t be joined forever like he had made me believe, I still wanted it, fake or not, because at
least with him, I was more than just Grace. I was someone to trust, to care about.

  I was so lost in my concessions that I did not realize that we were in my bedroom. How had Lark gotten me in without banging my head against the frame or sill?

  Skill.

  She set my feet on the floor and I quickly sat on my bed, the overwhelming need for sleep battling with my desire to apologize to Robert, to tell him I’m okay with whatever he wanted, as long as it included me.

  Silly human. To sell yourself so short—it reeks of desperation. Guys don’t like that. Play hard to get. It works a lot better on angels than it does on humans, especially if you have the ability to keep us out of your thoughts.

  I looked at Lark with droopy eyes. “But I don’t know how to do that; I don’t know how to keep you out of my thoughts.”

  Lark shrugged her shoulders. She wasn’t going to argue with me about something that she thought was ridiculous to begin with.

  You go to sleep, Grace. Thank you again for the fun. I do have to say that talking to you about all of this was quite cathartic. I might have to do it again. Maybe.

  I nodded my head, vaguely aware of lying down on my bed and pulling the covers up to my chin. I opened my eyes and started to tell her thanks for bringing me home but she was gone. As if she had never been there. As if nothing had even happened that night. I could only hope that someone else would think so, as well.

  BREAK A LEG

  I didn’t hear from Robert again after that night in the park. I wish I could have said that I didn’t notice his absence. It wouldn’t have been hard to believe. Both Stacy and Graham made it their life’s mission to spend as much time with me as possible, and whether that was to actually spend time with me or to intentionally get on each other’s nerves, I don’t think I’ll ever know.