The Garden Gate

by Christa J. Kinde

  Marcus squeezed her hand. “Careful, kiddo. He might sound convincing, but he’s playing to your sympathies.”

  Koji nodded. “Regret is one thing. Repentance is another.”

  “He knew. He chose. He Fell,” Tamaes said with quiet authority. “Adin hates God, and he hates us.”

  Abner was saying, “You will not be permitted to plunder the garden and its trees. You cannot set yourself up as the Giver of Life to all those who Fell.”

  Prissie blinked. Was that Adin’s plan? “Does he want to be . . . like God?” she whispered.

  “Indeed,” Koji replied. “But it is no use. There is only one Savior.”

  She murmured, “Jesus.”

  Marcus said, “Amen and amen.”

  Suddenly, Adin’s gaze swung Prissie’s way, his face contorting with rage. “You tricked me!”

  The force of his hatred stole her breath, but he vanished in a swirl of warm light — ​bittersweet and amber. Tamaes’s wings hid her from the enemy, and Taweel spoke up. “You deceived yourself, Adin.”

  Marcus leaned sideways to try to see what was happening, but Tamaes sternly said, “Be wary, Protector. He is vicious when cornered.”

  “Sounds like my cue,” Marcus replied, letting go of Prissie’s hand so he could ease out of his jacket. Dropping it around her shoulders, he unfurled his wings and pulled Prissie and Koji close. “Gonna play it safe. Hang tight.”

  Tamaes suddenly surged forward, the flat of his blade barring Adin’s rush. The demon sneered at Prissie over her guardian angel’s shoulder. “Taking him from you wasn’t enough. I’ll take you from him! I’ll tear it all apart!”

  “Mouthy,” muttered Marcus. “Like saying it changes anything. God’s the only one who can speak things into existence.”

  “I am not so certain,” Koji replied, tightening his hold around the Protector’s arm. “Adin’s words inspire doubt and fear.”

  “Scared?” Marcus asked, folding the edge of one wing more closely around the Observer.

  Koji’s shoulders hunched. “Only a little.”

  Prissie helpfully supplied, “Marcus is spitless.” To be perfectly honest, she was . . . uneasy. Adin was outnumbered, and she had every reason to believe that she was safe from harm. But there was nothing reasonable about the demon’s plans, accusations, or actions.

  “He was once as Faithful as we,” Koji said solemnly. “Does that not mean we could Fall as far as he?”

  “Could? Sure,” Marcus candidly replied. “Gonna? Never. Uhh . . . uh-oh.”

  Prissie gasped as Adin’s battered wings reared back like a dozen lithe snakes. Each flexible spine came to a jagged point, a personal armory. It seemed very wrong that something designed to protect had been twisted to deadly purpose. Tamaes’s wings flashed forward to deflect their erratic stabs, and the instant he shielded himself, Adin whirled, bolting toward the First Gate.

  Taweel shouted a warning, but he needn’t have. Aril was there.

  The seraph’s six wings fanned wide, then whooshed forward in a powerful wingbeat as he whirled backward, transforming into a sword. Adin dodged, then dove, but with one slash, Aril sent him tumbling backward down the stairs. Rolling to his feet, the demon changed course again, hurling himself straight for Prissie and her companions, blood streaming down the side of his face, and murder glittering in his eyes.

  Although Taweel and Tamaes were already converging on him, Marcus didn’t wait for rescue. “Think light thoughts,” he growled.

  To Prissie’s dismay, Marcus backwinged, pulling her and Koji nearly ten feet into the air. “Too high!” she squeaked.

  “Kinda doing this for your own good,” the Protector retorted, lofting them again.

  Before Adin’s grasping hands could snatch at them, Taweel’s heavy sword crashed through the demon’s reach. Their enemy howled and whipped around, nicking the purple-winged Guardian’s arm. Bright blood bloomed against dusky skin, but Prissie’s attention remained riveted on the severed wing-spines twitching on the ground. “I don’t like this,” she whispered.

  Things only worsened when Tamaes swept in from the side, in a tackle that became a clench. He and Adin were locked together like a pair of wrestlers, both digging in with all their might, neither giving any ground. “It is no use, Adin,” Tamaes roared, gritting his teeth as stray spines lashed across his back and arms.

  “You who have life, do not scorn me for grasping at it!” Another strike laid open Tamaes’s upper arm, and Adin’s voice turned silky. “If it can be found, I will take it. If it can be plucked, I will hold it in my hand. If it can be had, I will savor its sweetness once more.”

  Taweel closed in behind Tamaes, sheltering his apprentice with his wings. “End this,” he said gruffly.

  “End?” the Fallen laughed in their faces. “This gate will move, and the maddening chase begins again. God dangles hope before the outcasts, driving them into an endless pattern — ​dispersion, migration, occupation. Nothing will end here! This is forever a place of beginnings!”

  Tamaes’s voice carried a sense of sorrow. “Give up. You cannot achieve your purposes.”

  “Wrong!” Their opponent’s enthusiasm hadn’t diminished in the slightest. With a vicious smile, Adin claimed, “I am more than this. I am more than all of you! Do you doubt me?”

  “With good reason,” Tamaes said, glaring directly into Adin’s eyes.

  Prissie found their face-off disconcerting, as if Tamaes were battling his own shadow. But the strangest part was . . . they sounded as if they were rehashing an old argument. They sounded like old friends. Or maybe even the brothers Adin claimed them to be.

  “That girl’s tears are my masterpiece. That first Observer’s scars will endure.” Adin’s gaze flicked to Marcus’s face. “That whelp’s memory burns with shame for every fraction of a moment I caused him to lose faith, to know doubt, to embrace fear. Even you, my twin,” he purred. “My existence is carved into your face. My memory festers in your heart.”

  “That is your immortality?” Tamaes asked.

  Adin’s lip curled. “Not if you let me through that gate!” With a violent shove, the Fallen ripped away from his rival, making another bid for paradise.

  Prissie was so sure he would impale himself on Aril’s ready blade that she covered her eyes.

  “Enough!” Abner’s voice rang off the walls, resounding through the small clearing in which the First Gate stood.

  When Prissie opened her eyes again, Adin was caught, suspended mid-leap, mere inches from the flames that licked along the Gatekeeper’s keen edge. The demon’s eyes rolled back as he sought the Caretaker who strolled up alongside him. “You cannot oppose me,” Adin hissed. “You said so yourself.”

  “I’m not your opponent,” Abner said. “Think of me as your . . . informant.”

  Adin’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t budge. Probably because he couldn’t.

  Abner continued, “This gate cannot be breached. These walls cannot be climbed. There is only One who walks here. From time to time. Usually in the cool of the evening.”

  Shock registered on the demon’s face.

  “This is His garden. Did you expect to find it abandoned?” With a small shake of his head, Abner said, “Eden is not a taunt. Its beauties and bounties are a gift, sown across the earth. A reminder of things past. A foretaste of future glories.”

  Glancing up at Marcus, Prissie whispered, “Is it safe?”

  He nodded, and she slipped free of his protective embrace, hurrying to Tamaes’s side. The warrior quickly opened his own wings to receive her. Prissie reached way up to press her hands over the wound in her Guardian’s arm. “At least try to stop the bleeding,” she groused, blinking back tears.

  His knuckles brushed her cheek. “Do not fret, little one.”

  “Then don’t give me reason to worry!”

  Just then, Koji wriggled his way into the circle of orange wings, and Marcus quickly followed. “You might wanna check out what’s going down. I’ve never se
en nothin’ like it.”

  A strange grating accompanied a tremor in the ground beneath their feet. Tamaes parted his wings enough for everyone to see a stone pillar rise from the earth right behind Adin. Like all the local rock, it was gray, but this column wasn’t decorated by fronds, fruit, and flowers. Only chains. Heavy, stone chains stood out against an otherwise smooth surface. The whole thing forcibly reminded Prissie of the way into the Deep.

  In the sudden commotion, the demon dropped to the grass and scrambled backward in an undignified retreat. “What are you doing, Caretaker?” he demanded.

  “Why do you assume this is my doing?” inquired Abner.

  Adin’s shoulders hunched, and his gaze flickered between the gate and the sky above. “N-no.” Creeping toward the relative shelter of the thicket that hid the entrance, his muttering came in sharp bursts. “Not yet. Too soon. Not now.”

  “You wanted to be here,” Abner said calmly. “Here you will remain.”

  Chains unwound, sliding away from stone with a clink and clamor. Trailing ends caught at Adin’s ankles, swiftly spiraling to his knees. More trapped the bristling remains of his wings, shattering a few of the smoky shards as they tightened. Blank fear overtook the Fallen, and he scrabbled for purchase on the ground at Abner’s feet. “It’s not time!”

  “Technically, this place exists outside of Time.” As the chains dragged, lifted, and lashed the demon to the pillar, Abner said, “The day you Fell, you chose your end. Today, you have chosen your waiting room.”

  Adin snarled and spit, struggling against his bonds as he flung invectives at everyone and everything in earshot. Prissie was grateful when Koji’s fingers found hers, and Marcus casually clamped his hands over her ears.

  Abner waited impassively, hearing the Fallen out. When the raving ended, Marcus let Prissie listen in once more. That’s when the Caretaker spoke with frightening finality. “I can offer you one mercy.”

  “I want none of it!”

  “Frankly, I think this is for Aril’s sake,” Abner replied, stepping closer and placing one hand over the captive’s heart.

  Under the Caretaker’s fingertips, colors changed. Dingy raiment and darkened skin took on the same gray cast as local stone. Adin’s struggles ebbed as an unnatural rigor mortis claimed his limbs. Abner’s touch was turning their enemy to stone.

  Adin’s final words were flung to the skies. “Leave me alone! Let me be!”

  “I will.” Abner’s soft voice carried easily in a silence that settled eerily around them. “For all Time.”

  20

  THE NEW PAGE

  Abner gazed into the evening sky. “I’ll give you it was dramatic, but a pillar of salt might have been more poetic.” His lips quirked. “What’s done is done. I’m satisfied.”

  “Here you are, sir,” Padgett said, coming out onto the back porch of their small cabin. “Our coworkers are arriving.”

  “To send me off in a flurry of well wishes?”

  “That is the purpose of a retirement party, sir.”

  Gazing over the top of his glasses, the Caretaker asked, “Must you keep up this pretense, Padgett? I’m no longer your superior. Neither on earth nor in heaven.”

  Padgett lowered his gaze. “While that’s true, I can’t bring myself to withhold any respect.”

  “Even if it means withholding your friendship?”

  “S-sir?”

  Abner sighed, then offered a tight smile. “Beginnings and endings have a way of overlapping, but we are no longer in the place we started. Call me sir if it sets your mind at ease.” Poking his former apprentice’s chest with one finger, he added, “So long as you consider me your friend here, I won’t hold it against you.”

  Padgett’s dark eyes held a smile. “Thank you, sir.”

  Prissie gave up trying to keep up. “They’re being ridiculous,” she complained, tossing her braids for emphasis.

  “Come, sit with us,” Pearl invited, patting the bakery’s back step. She and Ida were watching the proceedings from this safe vantage point. “It’s no use. They’ve all got their strut on. Even Lo.”

  Ida giggled as her husband sauntered by, manfully carrying three boxes through the door he’d painted bright red just the day before. “They’re treating this like a competition.”

  “Who’s winning?” Prissie asked.

  “Me!” Ida smoothed her hand over her stomach and corrected herself. “Us. We’ll be in our own home just in time to expand it.”

  “I’m just so thankful that Jayce thought to put in those apartments upstairs,” Pearl said. “It’s like he was making a place for you, Lo, and your little one even before we knew you’d be here!”

  Prissie toyed with the hem of her sundress. She’d been so certain that the bakery fire was an attack on her family, but Pearl’s perspective almost made the disaster sound . . . providential. Amberly, who was looking more like her mother every day, peeped out from behind Pearl’s shoulder. Prissie held out her hands to the two-year-old. “Did you see the little house upstairs? Isn’t it cute?”

  With a shy smile, Amberly slid onto Prissie’s lap. “Red.”

  “That’s right. Because red is my auntie’s favoritest color in the whole world!”

  Footsteps thundered down the narrow stairway leading to the second story, and a pack of boys exploded into the back alley, all jockeying for position. Neil, Ransom, Brock, and Joey had a slight edge on Pearl’s husband, Derrick.

  “Daddy!” Amberly called, stretching out her hand and giving a wiggle-fingered wave.

  He sauntered over, reporting, “It’s gonna be snug.”

  “After living out of suitcases for the last few years, it’ll feel like a palace,” Ida replied brightly.

  Derrick just shook his head and smiled. “Always on the bright side. Gonna be good to have you back in town, Ida Red.”

  Neil made it first to the back of the moving truck and called, “Load me up, Gramps!”

  “Hold your horses.” The old man indicated two flat boxes. “Those are next.”

  Hefting them, Neil frowned. “I can take more’n this!”

  “No need,” Grandpa Pete retorted and waved him aside, muttering about young bucks.

  “He’s a glutton for pie and punishment,” Tad interjected, dropping a box of books on top of his brother’s load and sending him staggering.

  “Speaking of pies . . . !” Neil grunted. “When’s pizza happening?”

  “Not until the truck’s empty,” said Grandpa Pete, handing off boxes to Brock and Joey.

  Zeke and Jude came bouncing down the stairs after Jayce. With a pleading look at their father, Neil wheedled, “Halftime?”

  “Let’s see now,” Mr. Pomeroy replied, checking his watch. “It’s a quarter to milk-and-cookie time, by my reckoning. See how much more you can unload before then. Oh, and loan me Ransom.”

  “Ransom’s on cookie duty!” Neil exclaimed, all smiles as he charged for the back stairs.

  “Dunno if I should feel needed or unwanted,” Ransom remarked as his friends disappeared inside, shortly followed by Loren and Derrick. “You need me in an apron, sir?”

  “No, no. Ida and I baked off those cookies early this morning.” Flashing some folded bills, Mr. Pomeroy said, “But we’ll be needing a couple gallons of milk. Head over to the corner store for me?”

  “Glad to.” Ransom quirked a brow at Prissie. “Wanna supervise?”

  “Only if Koji comes along.”

  Ransom nodded. “And I’ll grab Marcus.”

  Prissie helped Amberly hop down, then stood and smoothed her skirt. “Where is he? I haven’t seen him in a while.”

  “Him and Koji were giving Beau a hand in the baby room,” her explained angling toward the red door.

  “It’s a nursery,” she corrected.

  “A bakery with a nursery. Maybe I’ll have the chance to learn something about babies after all.” Dropping his voice conspiratorially, he asked, “Or is Ida gonna do the whole mama bear thing and growl at me?
”

  “Aunt Ida’s always been generous. All you have to do is let her know you want the chance.”

  “Uh-huh . . . and how’m I supposed to do that?”

  “Auntie,” Prissie called. “Ransom’s volunteering to babysit if you’ll teach him the ropes.”

  The expectant mother didn’t even bat an eye. “Sure, Ransom. You’ll get your fair share of cuddle time.”

  To Prissie’s surprise, Ransom looked flustered. As he plodded up the stairs, he muttered, “Nobody said nothin’ about cuddling.”

  “Be grateful. Cuddle time only happens when a baby’s clean and fed. Much easier than diaper duty.” They edged around the stacks of boxes in the tiny apartment, moving toward the second bedroom. “You’ll get to use baby talk and make goofy faces.”

  In the nursery, four people knelt around the scattered pieces of what would be a crib. Milo smiled as they entered. “I’m fluent in baby talk!”

  “And Chinese?” Ransom asked.

  The mailman sat back on his heels and ran his hand over the top of his head. “I’m not sure I followed that leap in logic.”

  Ransom pointed to the directions for assembly spread before the Messenger. Koji leaned over and helpfully turned to the page with instructions in English. The young angel said, “Perhaps that is why we have been experiencing difficulties.”

  “Ida’s faith in me was greatly misplaced,” Milo sighed. “Clearly, I lack the gift of construction.”

  Beau said, “I think Marcus is on the right track.”

  The Protector was watching Ransom. “You need somethin’?”

  “You. If Mr. Mailman can spare you for a little.”

  “And Koji,” Prissie interjected. “Just to run to the store.”

  Milo waved them off. “Beau and I will manage until you get back.”

  A few minutes later, the four of them strolled along Main Street, walking two-by-two. Prissie’s steps dragged. She’d been doing everything slowly lately, trying to hang onto each moment. Less than a week remained before Koji would have to say goodbye, and she wanted to stretch the minutes. Put off the inevitable for as long as possible.