Divinity

by Michelle L. Johnson

  “Why? Why you? Why now?” Julia shouted at the letter through her choked tears, shaking it for emphasis. When she realized she was damaging the paper, she got to her feet, pulling herself up with the table. She placed the letter on the polished top and flattened it out.

  Wiping away her tears, she picked up the small box. It was silver-blue, with a purple satin ribbon. She slowly untied the ribbon, steeling herself for another heart-wrenching discovery. When she opened the box, there was another box inside—this one a hinged jewelry box.

  A warm smile touched her lips as she opened the lid, revealing a beautiful platinum necklace with a teardrop pendant. It looked black and solid, but when she held it up to the light, it was translucent. There was a small note card stuck to the lining in the top of the box with only two words upon it: “Apache Tear.”

  Julia gasped, both for the beauty of the gift and for the thoughtfulness. Julia and Alex had visited a gem store a few months before. Alex had marveled at the story of the Apache women spilling their tears for their fallen warriors. Julia loved the hidden transparency, and the healing qualities the stone was said to have—specifically for grief and emotional distress.

  Though her eyes remained wet, her tears stopped spilling when she took the necklace from the box and placed it around her neck. Holding the stone between her forefinger and thumb, she lifted it to her mouth and kissed it softly.

  “Always.”

  “Do you see the trick of it?” Zachariah’s smooth voice rippled into Gabriel’s ears. “How she does it?” His wings, at least two feather-lengths shorter than Gabriel’s, rested on his back easily. His dark eyes held a flickering light that most perceived as mischievous. His black hair was spiked straight and short and looked like it had been doused in hair gel. His build was slight compared to the other angels, almost spindly.

  “Does what, Zachariah?” Gabriel turned his steel-blue eyes toward the other angel and adjusted his wings. They seemed fuller than they had only moments before. If Zachariah noticed, he gave no indication.

  “She has a remarkable ability to stave off her human emotions in order to continue functioning.” Zachariah trailed his dark brown fingers over the arcs of his white wings, smoothing them down. “None of the others is so adept. If we could teach them, we would be doing so much better, don’t you think?”

  “We can’t teach them. We are not able to tip the scales in that way, and you know it.” A small flap of Gabriel’s wings and they appeared larger still. “Why are you watching over mine? Do you not have your own to attend?”

  “Yours is much more interesting, Gabriel. Do you think she’s able to do it?”

  “I am not sure, Zachariah. She still has much to overcome.” Gabriel placed himself between Zachariah and his view of Julia. “Any news of the others?”

  “Not lately,” said Zachariah, raising an eyebrow and smirking. “Don’t worry; I am not interested in your fledgling, Gabriel. Unruffle your feathers; you look like an overstuffed peacock.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time you tried to seduce one of mine. It isn’t a competition to see whose gets to the finish line.”

  “No, I suppose it’s not.” Zachariah smoothed his hair the same way he had just smoothed his feathers. “Off to see my girl in Australia. They are very similar you know—her and that one.” He pointed toward Julia, smiled, and then vanished.

  Gabriel turned back around, watching Julia explore her new house. Her eyes were now dry, and she was smiling, running the fingers of her left hand along the bindings of the books on the shelves while the fingers of her right hand clutched the small pendant that hung around her neck.

  “She does do that remarkably well,” Gabriel said to himself before he also vanished. “I do wonder how she manages.”

  XXVII

  Julia wandered through the rooms of the house, wondering how it was possible that all these shelves were able to remain dust-free for so long. She ran a finger along the bindings of the books, reading each title and smiling. All of Alex’s favorite books were here—and were now hers. She felt like being here in his space was giving her back a little piece of what she had lost.

  She stopped when she came to a section of leather-bound books that had no titles on the spine. She pulled one out, opened it, and saw Alex’s flowing cursive script on the first page.

  Her fingertips brushed the words and her mouth hung open as she realized these were his journals. She flipped to the date they’d met.

  This is awful! I can’t continue to see this woman. I am supposed to pick her up at the restaurant today to go on another horrible date. I am going to meet her at the restaurant and break it off.

  I walked in the door, and there she was. The sunlight was streaming through the windows behind her, framing her perfectly with a full-body halo of light. She smiled, welcomed me to her restaurant, and that was it for me. There is something in her eyes when she smiles. Something I have never seen before. Grace is the word that comes to mind, but it is so much more than that.

  I know she is the one. I suddenly feel like I have been looking for her all my life.

  Poor Sandra. I stood in the doorway, mesmerized, and Sandra saw the whole thing. She took it surprisingly well, though. She even introduced me to Julia before winking at me and walking away. I hope she’ll be all right, but honestly, I am glad to be rid of her.

  I asked Julia to join me at my table. We sat and talked for hours. When the staff started to vacuum around our feet, we decided to call it a night. She reached across the table and laid a hand on my arm. It was electric.

  I was about to beg her to see me tomorrow when she suggested I come in for lunch. She actually said, “I feel like we have a lot of catching up to do.”

  I am head-to-toe goose bumps, and so wired I’m not sure I’ll sleep.

  Julia smiled, holding her pendant tightly. She well remembered the day they met and kept the staff at the restaurant three hours past closing. She’d almost forgotten the brief period of time Sandra had dated Alex. Julia closed the book and set it next to her on the small sofa. She took the few steps over to the fireplace. To her surprise, there were logs set up and ready to light, with kindling underneath.

  “There must be a maid or something,” she mused.

  Julia struck one of the long, wooden matches against the box, lit the fire, then returned to the couch to sit and stare into the flames. She took a deep breath, leaned back, and closed her eyes, listening to the crackle of the burning logs. She felt at peace.

  After a few moments she stood up and went out to the kitchen to make herself a pot of coffee.

  She played with the pendant on her chain as she listened to the coffee brewing, the soothing aroma wafting through the house. When the coffee had finished, she poured herself a cup, returned to the sofa, holding it with both hands, and simply sat for a moment. Halfway through her coffee, she got up and put the journal back on the shelf with Alex’s letter to her tucked inside the front cover. She didn’t think she had the heart to read all of Alex’s most intimate thoughts.

  No, the answers she needed wouldn’t come from Alex’s journals. She looked to the ceiling. “Why only a year, Michael? Why couldn’t I have had longer?”

  “She is calling you,” Gabriel said when he noticed Michael had joined him.

  “I am aware.”

  “They are harmless questions.” Gabriel spoke quietly.

  “She needs to find her own path to the answers. And some of the answers will do her no good.”

  “It’s true, she will likely move on far more quickly without some of this knowledge.” Gabriel turned and shrugged. “Has there been any sign of the A’nwel?”

  “No, Brother. Not that we know of.” Michael’s voice was wrought with tension. “Of course, the only way we would have known of it is if she alerted us.”

  “Yes.” Gabriel sighed. “We must think of something, Michael. Some way to fight it. Destroy it. If dogs can detect it, and ward it off, perhaps we should suggest one for her.”


  “I will give it some thought,” Michael said. “This thing tips the scales far more than anything we ever have done.”

  Gabriel bowed his head in acquiescence. “Perhaps it is something only the humans can fight.”

  “They are far too busy fighting themselves to be able to deal with something like this.” Michael looked back toward Julia, who was now asleep on the small couch, clutching the stone around her neck. “She is isolated now.”

  “Training?” Gabriel’s wings rose in time with his eyebrows.

  “Yes,” Michael said, his voice full of purpose. “It is time to train her.”

  XVIII

  JULIA opened her eyes and felt a strange sensation, like she was being watched. The fire had gone out completely, leaving the room chilled. She sat up, rubbing her arms, and gave a start when she found Michael standing before her.

  “Good morning,” Michael greeted her with a smile.

  “Is it morning?” Julia asked, bending her neck slowly to the left, then the right. She walked past him, into the kitchen. “Need coffee.”

  “There is coffee made.”

  Julia saw and smelled the fresh coffee simultaneously and spun around, at a loss for words.

  “I thought it would save us some time,” he said. His face bore no expression.

  “Save time for what? Would you like a cup?” Julia asked, plucking a cup out of the cupboard and pausing to see if she needed another.

  “I thought we could try to hone some of your skills today, girl.” He shook his head. “No coffee for me. It can cause earthquakes.”

  “Really?” Julia’s mouth hung open. At the last second, she noticed she was about to overfill her cup. She set the coffee pot back on the burner.

  “Of course not,” Michael said.

  Julia’s cheeks flushed with embarrassment. She pulled a chair out from the kitchen table and sat, motioning for Michael to take a seat. He shook his head and stayed where he was, standing a few feet away, facing her.

  She pondered her strange lack of awe that the Archangel Michael was standing across from her—and had made her coffee. She supposed she should be scared or something, but because she knew the truth, or rather felt it, Michael’s presence neither frightened nor dumbfounded her.

  After quietly sipping her coffee for several minutes, Julia placed her cup on the table and raised her eyes to meet Michael’s. “What skills are we to hone? And how?”

  “We should go outside.”

  “Why? And why don’t you ever answer me? It’s frustrating, you know.” Julia finished her coffee and stood up.

  “I answer you more often than you realize. We should go outside because the trees, the earth, the air, and the water are much more able to absorb and disperse the energy with which we will be exercising. The windows and walls of a house would not fare as well. Also,” he added, “there is something waiting for you out there.”

  “Oh.” Julia looked down at her slacks and blouse, then back to Michael. She pictured working out in her dressy clothes, and her mind flashed to yoga pants and a T-shirt. “Should I change?”

  “That outfit would certainly have its own appeal, but what you are wearing doesn’t matter. It is not that kind of exercise,” Michael said, and before she could blink, they were both standing outside, in the large yard behind the house.

  “How did you do that? Can you teach me?” Julia’s questions all ran into each other on the way out of her mouth. Michael had transported her before, but always to another realm—never from one spot to another on Earth. It hadn’t occurred to her that it could be done.

  “You will learn everything you are capable of in time, girl,” Michael said.

  “You said there was something waiting?” Julia glanced around the yard, then down toward the water’s edge. She half-expected to see a boat moored at her little dock, or Gabriel standing out here, waiting. She was glad it wasn’t Gabriel. She still had no idea what to say to him.

  Michael smiled and spread his arms out to the sides.

  Julia opened her mouth to speak, when she saw it coming straight at her. The A’nwel was making its awkward, stickish way toward her, both arms reaching out in her direction. In a flash she grabbed for the stone in her pocket, and before she could think to be thankful she hadn’t changed into yoga pants, she had the shield up. Tendrils of it stretched out toward the apparition. They sliced through the air with a hiss. When they reached the monstrous being and touched its space, the illusion shattered.

  A bundle of dried sticks fell to the ground, smoldering where they were slashed. Julia didn’t let go of her shield, still not fully registering what had just happened. She stared at the space in front of her that had held the A’nwel seconds before, and saw what looked like small rips in the air. “What the…?”

  “Hold the shield, girl! Hold it! We must study it!” Michael was shouting at Julia, but his voice sounded very distant. Julia saw that he, too, was looking at the place in the air that seemed torn. The stone in her palm was getting warm, almost uncomfortably so, but she held the shield up and ignored the heat.

  Before her eyes, the small tears seemed to heal themselves. When Julia looked toward Michael, she thought she heard Gabriel’s voice.

  “…tear the fabric…”

  “…dangerous to allow her…” A robust, female voice this time.

  Julia squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. When she opened them, the sticks on the ground had stopped smoking. She looked at her web of light. There were threads of purple and blue and red all woven together, forming a shell around her. The wisps that she had shot toward the image of the A’nwel had been pure white, but they had retracted back into her the moment the threat was gone.

  “I can feel it, Michael! I can see it!” Her voice wavered and her knees buckled, but Michael put a steadying arm around her waist. The shield didn’t affect him; instead, it seemed to open a spot for his arm.

  -Let it go, girl,- Michael’s voice buzzed in her ears. -We’ve seen enough.-

  Julia stopped focusing and her shield immediately winked out. She regained her footing and straightened. Her heart was racing, adrenaline still coursing through her.

  “I could see it, Michael. Each piece of it. And I think I could make it again.”

  Michael let go of her and moved back. He appeared to be examining her from head to toe. For several minutes he said nothing.

  “Can you separate the part that damaged the…” he looked down at the pile of branches at their feet, “sticks?”

  Julia should have been angry for the deception, but she knew why he had done it, and accepted the necessity of it. “Yes, I can. But I have no names for any of the parts, I can only tell you how I see and feel them.”

  “You are never to use that part again. Unless faced with the actual A’nwel.” Michael’s face was grave, his voice firm.

  “Of course I wouldn’t, Michael.” Julia struggled to find names for things there were no words for on Earth. “So, if the white burning part did damage, it was the weapon?”

  “Yes. A very powerful weapon.”

  “The other part was meant to shield,” she said. “So it was protection?”

  “That is a simple way to put it. Did it drain your strength?”

  “No, I’m okay now. It was just a little disorienting, I think.” Julia pocketed the stone and looked down at her hand. A blister had formed where she’d held the stone. She touched it with her thumb and cringed; it was still hot to the touch. Julia looked over her shoulder at the house and then sheepishly back at Michael. “I wouldn’t mind sitting down for a while.”

  Michael laughed heartily. “This time we’ll walk, girl. I am not an amusement park ride.”

  From somewhere behind the trees on the wooded side of the property, there rose the bay of a wolf, long and lonely. The hairs stirred on the back of Julia’s neck and she rubbed absently at her arms.

  “That was chilling,” she said. “Do wolves howl in the daytime?” She glanced at Michael to see if he�
��d had any reaction.

  “Interesting timing,” he replied. A flash of recognition shone in his eyes.

  Julia filed it away for future questioning. Right now, she needed to sit down.

  Gabriel and Raphael stood and watched as Julia sliced through their illusion. No words were spoken as they held up a shield around the yard where Michael and Julia stood. The shield the Archangels had spun served a different purpose than the one on which Julia was working. Theirs was, in essence, a camouflage net, designed to keep the energy being used hidden from malevolent forces that would be attracted to it.

  It wasn’t until Julia used her energy as a weapon that Raphael finally spoke, and though her voice didn’t give her anxiety away, Gabriel felt it in her words.

  “I am not certain winning a battle with a weapon like that would be a good thing.”

  “Nor am I, Raphael. This seems to be the only way we know of to defeat this creature.”

  “Every time she uses it she requires immense healing.” As she spoke, Raphael cascaded her green-hued healing energy over Julia, and the air surrounding her. “And now I see she is not the only one who will require healing.”

  “But you are able to heal both her and the damage to the planet,” Gabriel said. It was not a question.

  “For now. To what extent will this continue? What if there is an army of them? I will not be able to heal her quickly enough and definitely not on a larger scale.”

  “I have never seen an energy weapon that could tear the fabric of being.” Gabriel watched Julia closely. Witnessing her capacity for destruction was unsettling.

  “It is too dangerous to allow her to use that as a weapon. We do not know how much it can rend asunder. There must be another way.” Raphael’s wings fluttered as she spoke, but her concentration did not waver. The shield she and Gabriel were maintaining was firm, and the healing she sent was intense. It was over seconds after it began.