Earth/Sky (Earth/Sky Trilogy)

by Macaulay C. Hunter

  When I stepped up to the curb, Nash materialized out of nowhere to peer at me through his bangs. “Hey, how are you doing? Why didn’t you call me back last night?”

  “I fell asleep early,” I lied.

  He grinned and followed me to my locker. “But where were you? Your grandfather said you weren’t home.”

  “I just went for a drive.”

  “You should take someone along who knows the area! There are all sorts of sweet spots around Spooner like the miniature golf place behind Dovey’s Athletics-” He jabbered on as I walked to first period, wishing for him to go away. I wondered if Savannah or London liked him especially, and if there was a way to subtly push them together. That would take more matchmaking finesse than I had. I hadn’t even dated in Bellangame. Boys looked right through me to the shinier girls.

  “See you after class!” Nash shouted when the minute bell rang. I sat down at my desk in irritation. Mr. Rogers spent the first part of class talking about the importance of eating breakfast, and how he’d had bacon and scrambled eggs.

  Bacon.

  Pork.

  Swine flu, I thought, and wiped down my hands with anti-bacterial cream. I didn’t think that was how it transmitted between people, but the mental association was one I couldn’t shake. Ugh. I should have bought the bigger container of hand cream, considering how many times in the day I was going to have to use it. My parents would come back to Bellangame with suntans and I was going to come back a pale ghost in full OCD meltdown.

  When the bell rang, I shot out the door to beat Nash’s arrival and was safely ensconced in second by the time he appeared at the window. I stared intently at my textbook until he went away.

  The second hand went around the clock with excruciating slowness through the period. Not wanting to spend the day dodging Nash, I decided to cut. If anyone caught me on the way out, I’d play up my leg. Why not? It looked worse than it felt, and I might as well milk the accident for what it was worth. And what I really wanted was some time to be alone, to think about the dream and reality. I didn’t have energy for school now.

  I had just gotten to the door of my mail truck when a silver racecar pulled in to a spot near mine. A smile broke out unbidden upon my lips to see Adriel, who looked up in surprise when I bent to the window and tapped. He rolled it down and called, “Not in the mood for school?”

  “So not in the mood,” I said. He dressed so nicely for high school.

  “Me neither. Hop in, if you want.”

  If I wanted? I wouldn’t even have accepted a third ticket to my parents’ cruise around the world over this. Letting myself in, I clicked the seatbelt as he pulled back out and drove to the outlet of the parking lot. This never would have worked at Bellangame, proctors stationed around the school to make sure no one made a break for freedom, but Spooner High didn’t monitor its students as closely unless it concerned the restrooms.

  “Where to?” Adriel asked.

  “Anywhere,” I said. He slowed at the outlet and I looked over the grass to see that this had not gone unnoticed. Easton and Savannah were there cutting to another building, and that meant Nash was going to know by lunchtime at the latest. It might give him a hint that I wasn’t interested. I could only hope.

  “Cadmon came back last night,” Adriel said once we were on the road.

  “I’m glad,” I said. “But you can see that, can’t you? You see my soul.”

  “With angelic sight, I can see almost anyone. It isn’t mind-reading though, I promise.”

  Gesturing to a bicyclist riding hard down the tree-lined road, I said, “What do you see in him?”

  Adriel reduced his speed and craned his neck to get a better look at the man. “Heavy shielding. I don’t know what it concerns unless I know him, talk to him some at least, but the amount . . . I would tell you to stay away, if you asked. Every human on this planet has some degree of shielding; it’s a matter of degree.” He edged out to the center of the lane to give the bicyclist more room, since there was little shoulder on the road. “So it was vengeance. I can’t believe he told you. But that makes it easier for us.”

  “How so?”

  “To understand. An angel’s primary obligation is to guard. It’s a sacred task. Drina was passive, allowing the death of her entrusted soul, but vengeance means that Cadmon brought about the death himself. To actively seek a charge’s death . . . to wield the blade . . .” Adriel checked in the rearview mirror, his expression one of incredulity. “It’s anathema to everything we are.”

  The car slid to a stop at a red light. I asked, “Do you know how hard it is to look at him and not see a child?”

  “That was just his form for his last soul, and the one he will have to spend eternity within as I will spend eternity in this one. This morning he got up and hid everyone’s keys. He does that sometimes. I think it’s his way of saying he wants us all to stay home. But Taurin put these on our rings-” Adriel poked at a black fob dangling from his key ring, “-and they send out a signal to our computers. They aren’t very good at long-range, but so far he’s just hidden them around the house.”

  “Thwarted,” I said. “Where were they?”

  “Tucked in a dark corner under the kitchen sink. We would never have found them without these. Breakfast?” He turned into a drive to a charming diner called Sweet Touches, with flowers bursting from every corner. It wasn’t a place I expected to see in Spooner.

  The inside of the restaurant was just as cute, with little vases of flowers at every table and a tiny gift shop. The hostess came over to the podium and greeted Adriel in a familiar way. She was in her early twenties and very pretty. Looking me up and down, she said to him flirtatiously, “Is this a cousin of yours?”

  It was plain she knew I wasn’t his cousin, and I sensed she just wanted to establish that she saw him all the time while I was new to the scene. Her shirt was low-cut, and when she leaned forward on the podium, it dipped even lower. Adriel spoke in a polite voice. “She’s a friend of mine from school.”

  “Well, follow me,” she said exclusively to him. Her hips swayed back and forth as we went through the tables. She was making sure that Adriel noticed her short skirt with the purple fringe swishing over her thighs.

  Once we were seated in a corner booth and she had gone back to the front to greet more people coming in, I couldn’t help but ask, “What do you see in her soul?”

  “Fear,” Adriel said. “Every time we come here. That’s how she responds to young women, Kishi included. Even Drina. Like they’re competition for the guys’ attention, and she’s fearful that they will win.”

  “But she’s so pretty.”

  “She only feels that way if a man’s eyes are upon her. Then she likes her reflection, and only then.”

  Her attitude and obvious favoritism had made me feel snarky in reaction, but what he said just left me sad for that girl. I paged through the menu, noticing the high prices and trying to remember what I had in my wallet. Ten dollars? I should just get the fruit cup side and some hot tea. Just then, Adriel said, “What are you getting?”

  “Some fruit. I’m not that hungry.”

  “You’re shielding a little more. Tell me.”

  I sighed. “This is exasperating! It’s nothing.”

  “Gluten intolerant?”

  “No.”

  “Hate my company?”

  “No!”

  “Worried about money?”

  “No . . .” I said weakly, and he saw through it to the truth.

  “I’m paying,” Adriel said. “Get whatever you want.”

  The waiter took our orders of crepes. The restaurant was bustling if not crowded, plates clattering in the kitchen and voices pattering at the tables. The hostess walked two guys to a booth and hung out there to chat with them. Seeing a tray of delicious meals go by, I said, “Why do you eat if you can’t die?”

  “So I don’t get hungry,” Adriel said. “I won’t starve to death from not eating, but I would feel the pain of st
arvation keenly.”

  “Can you be hurt?”

  “Yes, just like you, except I heal more quickly than a human. I’m made of stronger materials, shall we say. To fall from the cliff would have killed you; it would have wounded me greatly, yet I would heal given some time no matter how bad the breakage.”

  “What if . . . not to be gross, but what if you were decaptitated? Would everything just grow back?”

  The fringe of the skirt swished past us to the podium. Watching it ruefully, Adriel smiled. “No, it wouldn’t grow back. Though it would be really, really hard to decapitate me. You would have your best luck doing that with an angelic sword, not a human-made one. But if it happened, I would continue as a fully conscious head for eternity. That would be very unpleasant. Now I’m sure that being a fallen angel is interesting to you, but it’s deadly dull to me. Tell me something about your life.”

  Oh God, there was nothing interesting about me. “It’s basically been a lot of school and little else. The first amazing thing to ever happen was the cruise my parents won, and that wasn’t even about me.”

  “You didn’t like that question. I’ll ask you one that almost everyone has a ready answer for. What’s something you can’t stand?”

  “My grandfather’s stupid disco fish on the wall of his house,” I said immediately. “It goes off every time one of us goes up or down the stairs, the music makes me nuts, and I can’t get rid of it because it’s a memento of his from my late grandmother.”

  “A disco fish?”

  “It’s a novelty item.”

  His eyes pierced into mine. I looked away with a teasing smile, and wondered what he was reading from my soul. Sitting back, he said, “You didn’t know your grandmother, did you?”

  “How do you know?”

  “Your soul had no reaction when you talked about her.”

  “I didn’t know her,” I admitted. “She looks nice in her pictures, but she died before I was born. What did you see when I mentioned my grandfather?”

  “Amusement. Distance. Irritation.”

  That summed it up well, although I was embarrassed about the irritation. “Can you read the souls of your family? Other angelic souls?”

  “Yes, but it’s a more complex energy to understand. And there you’ve done it, changed the conversation back to me.”

  “It’s a gift,” I said. “You don’t move from place to place and do high school all over again, do you? I could never live like that.” Though it explained how he could do the homework so rapidly, if it was all old hat to him.

  “It’s lonely, having only the five of us for company,” Adriel said with a shrug. “I enroll as a sophomore to go through three years in each place, and it gives me a community. Then I go off to the junior college for a while and take whatever looks intriguing, a class or two a semester. Kishi takes a full load since she’s a lot more social. You’ll like her. You can’t not like Kishi.”

  The hostess seated two women and passed them the menus without any friendly banter. Swinging by our table, she tapped her fingers on the tablecloth and refilled our glasses with water. With mock sternness, she said, “Shouldn’t you be at school, young man?”

  “I’ll go right back,” Adriel said. “Thank you.” He looked away from her to me, and she left in disappointment.

  “What are Drina and Taurin like?” I asked. “Are they really married?”

  “Well, that’s complicated,” said Adriel. “They go through cycles of being married and just being friends. It’s been over a thousand years of that. They’re in a friend stage currently, but the very best of friends. He interacts a lot more with humans at work, he’s really social like Kishi, and Drina’s a homebody. But that’s good for Cadmon, since he has to be home for the time being. She has a very soothing energy. I remember . . .”

  “What?” I asked when he didn’t continue.

  “My memories of my first years as fallen are full of big holes. I have the most vague memory of the woods I was living in, being hungry and cold and scared, hiding from hunters going through for deer. I remember Drina looking into this makeshift tent I had. That’s clear. She kept coming back day after day with food and water and blankets, until one day she convinced me to go with her out of the woods. She took me home. It’s what she does. She’s the closest thing we have to a mother.”

  Our crepes came. I didn’t want to eat, being fascinated by this conversation, but I tucked into my plate since he was enjoying his. “Do all of you . . . fly around together?”

  “Sometimes at night. There are places around here without any people, or we can go deep out over the sea. On overcast days, we might go above the clouds. We just need to catch a breath of that music.”

  “It was louder when you flew faster,” I said.

  He froze over his crepe. “You remember that?”

  “Yes. A little.”

  “We used to live in that music. Before we fell, we could fly unnoticed anywhere in the world. That was what I did when my guarded soul didn’t need me, or when I was between souls. I just flew around and around this earth to listen to it, so soothed by those chords.” He glanced wistfully out the window to the sky. “That’s what hurts the most about falling, being severed from it.”

  “Do you regret what you did? The act that made you fall?”

  Adriel met my eyes briefly and then looked away. After a minute of quiet eating, he said, “No. I can’t regret it. But I miss the music with all of my heart and soul. We all do.” He paused. I readied for another silence, but then he kept going. “The one I was guarding at the time had a good soul. A kind one. I was lucky in all of my time to never have to face a decision like Drina or Cadmon. All right, your turn. Which one do you like better, Diego or Nash?”

  “Neither,” I said.

  “London or Savannah?”

  “Nope.”

  The hostess stopped by to check on our water glasses and smile at Adriel. When she went away, I said, “Why can’t you have a relationship with a human?”

  “It’s part of the punishment. That would change the tapestry.”

  “But what does it matter if it’s with someone who isn’t an anchor?” This whole eternity in punishment didn’t sit well with me. “No matter what you and the others changed, Adriel, it can’t be that bad since the world is still turning!”

  He pushed his empty plate to the end of the table, where a busboy going by collected it without a break in stride. “You don’t know that, how things should have been, and it isn’t your judgment to make but the Thronos. We committed an unforgivable breach, and to then change yet another thread of the tapestry, no matter how small, is also a breach. It will go very badly if it’s discovered, and I shouldn’t even be with you right now.”

  “Then why are you?” Not hungry for the rest of my meal, I pushed the plate to the end of the table.

  “Because I’m being very selfish,” Adriel said, and motioned to the waiter for the check. Discontent gathered in his forehead and muted the sweet sea blue of his eyes. “I let myself forget what I’ve done, and I should never do that. I shouldn’t even have brought you here. If I were good, I’d move away from Spooner and let you forget me. You would in time.”

  I didn’t consider that a remote possibility. He pressed sixty dollars into the little black book with the check inside. Horrified that he might carry through on his threat, I said, “Please don’t move! I’m going to be gone in June. Why disrupt your entire life over this?”

  Intensely, he said, “My life is meant to be a disruption to me, Jessa, just as I disrupted the natural order. This is the consequence. But it isn’t supposed to be a disruption to you, and I caught you. That’s the biggest disruption of all.”

  It was like he was taking the most beautiful, miraculous moment of my life and twisting it into something vile and ugly. We walked out of the restaurant. I was upset at having my rescue be the reason for further consequences for him. Standing at the car door, I exclaimed, “I don’t know what you did or how the worl
d should have been, and I don’t care. It is what it is! Saving someone from a grisly death isn’t a bad thing, and screw a tapestry that says it is. And I think it’s pretty horrible to dole out angels depending on how important someone will turn out to be! My life matters to me, even if it doesn’t play a part on any grander scale.”

  He flinched and averted his eyes. In a temper, I demanded, “What?”

  “Your soul blazes when you’re angry.”

  We drove back to school in a stony silence. My arms were crossed as I looked out the window. He didn’t speak, probably sensing from my soul that I wasn’t in the mood. And it made me even angrier to have lost that privacy. Once back in the parking lot, I slammed the door and stalked away to the library, where I remained through lunch. The road rash on my leg burned and I hiked up my jeans to reapply the cream. The pain muted and vanished.

  Kitts and I both got in trouble in fifth period, me for going too fast through the work, and she for persistently clinging to her hunt-and-peck method of typing. We rolled our eyes at each other when the teacher walked away to land on another student for something petty and ridiculous.

  “Why can’t I just read a book or something since I’m done?” I grumbled.

  “Because this is typing,” Kitts chided playfully. “Not reading a book.”

  I stared out the window for something to do. The flowers looked lovely in the wine barrel planters. The planters which were doomed to rot, and make Zakia start all over again moving them out and putting new ones in. This was such a stupid school, and I didn’t want to hear anyone complain about budget problems. It was great that Zakia had a job, but it was for a really foolish reason.

  Cutting sixth period was tempting, but I decided just to go and get it over with. Adriel grimaced a little when I walked in two seconds before the bell. I guessed I was still blazing. The handicapped table in the front was unused this period, so I asked Mr. Rogers very sweetly if I could have it to stretch out my wounded leg. He shook my hand and said yes. The whole period was taken up by reading the play out loud. I wasn’t assigned one of the parts, so the hour passed with me only turning pages and trying to ignore that presence in the back row. As soon as class ended, I was out the door.