by L. Penelope
“It is important that you explore all your options. You may not get another chance to select a guild. Openings are rare. Being as you are will make it that much more difficult to procure an assignment.”
“You mean being a halfling?” Her euphemisms sting even more than the discrimination.
“Yes, of course. You know what I meant. Halflings are barred from the honor guilds, leaving only — ”
“Records, Peace, Life, and Death. I know.”
“And somehow you have found a way to eliminate each of them.”
“The Angels of Death are glorified couriers. The Peaces are so boring. And the others never leave Euphoria. If I could do what you do, become an Angel of Destiny, I would have done it cycles ago.”
Her silver glow dims a bit. Angels are not completely immune to emotion. While they don’t experience it at human intensities, they do feel certain things. For Kalyx, it’s guilt for the position she’s put me in. I’ve never blamed her for anything — bringing me into the world wasn’t a crime — but I know her conscience weighs on her.
I move closer to her. “I didn’t mean — ”
“My selfishness is to blame here. I must take responsibility.”
“No.” I want to offer comfort, but that’s a foreign concept here. Something I only know of from endlessly watching the humans. “It is not your fault that I am barred from your guild. The Seraphim make the rules, and we must only abide by them.” I repeat the sentiment she’s shared countless times, though it always rang false to me. My future is unknown; if I don’t choose a guild, I will have no purpose, and that would be bigger disgrace than being angelborn.
“The last mission was a man, nearing the end of his time,” she says, settling into her resting position. Angels require no furniture; they dwell in structures made of light to offer privacy and order, but very little about their day-to-day life would be recognizable to humans.
I move beside my dam to listen to her, hovering close enough to touch, if such things were done.
“His soul was bright,” she continues. “He has, perhaps, only one or two more lives before he is ready for the eternal flame. His dreams were of a lost love, not of his late wife, who was reborn only this past cycle. He dreamed of a girl from his past, one he had rebuffed due to the influence of his mother.”
“Was she his one?” The idea of such a tragedy freezes me in place.
“Perhaps. But that was not my mission.”
My curiosity is a restless creature pacing the floor of its cage. I love hearing of the choices that make up human lives and affect the strength of their souls.
“A similar situation was in play with his granddaughter,” Kalyx continues. “She values his opinion and was at odds with her parents about a suitor. The grandfather was struggling with how to best advise her. A change to his dreams helped him make his choice.”
“What did he choose? How did he advise his granddaughter?”
“That was not part of my mission.”
“Of course not,” I mutter, feeling like a bird shot from the sky. If Kalyx altering his dream helped his soul, that was all that mattered, not the actual outcome of the people involved.
Spending so much time observing the humans has made my emotions more intense. They are still nowhere near human levels, but the disappointment is keen.
“However, I anticipated your inquiry and remained to observe. He told the girl to follow her heart, and she did. Now he is at odds with his son, but his conscience is appeased and his soul that much brighter.”
“Thank you!” The darkened portal beckons. What is the granddaughter doing now? How does she feel? If I could be a Destiny and walk the dreams of humans, I could help nudge them toward fulfillment as well. I could finally play a part in the engine of Euphoria.
“Why are halflings barred from the most powerful guilds?”
“There is too much humanity in you. You are weak and prone to emotionality. We must be objective in order to do our work.” To her this is just a matter of fact and not a judgment.
“But the guilds aren’t objective. They have their ideologies and beliefs. The Angels of War work directly against the Angels of Peace.”
“For some humans, conflict is the best way to enrich their souls. For others, peace is most effective. Another Destiny could have made a different decision on this mission. We all must serve the eternal flame.”
Inside, I bristle. “And halflings can’t be trusted?”
“Even now, you long for their world of struggle and strife. You make decisions based on feelings that may or may not serve the whole. You allow things such as boredom and wanderlust to prevent you from selecting a guild.”
“Have you never felt wanderlust, Kalyx? What brought you to my father in the first place?”
She dims again, and I’m sorry to have brought him up. “I never said I am immune to your curiosity. I once felt the draw as well. The tug of wonder. And I do not regret my actions, for they brought me you. I would have never known what it was to nurture one newly born otherwise. However, I do regret that my choices caused your life to be limited.”
The portal flickers to life as she brightens. “Observe your fill, Caleb. I do not wish to stop you.”
I glide closer, unable to help myself. A young woman appears, walking hand in hand with a man who obviously adores her. I envy the joy in their faces. They have no idea what is coming next, their lives are a string of experiences — learning and forgetting and learning again. They will die and live again without knowing what to expect, and still they walk forward into the unknown every day.
Kalyx’s voice comes from directly behind me, far closer than she usually gets.
“I fear for you. I understand it is logical for you to want to join them, to explore your human half, but it is distressing.”
The topic has been an invisible entity living with us for a while, but she’s never brought it up directly before. Always it’s been which guild and when, never if.
“I don’t have to go for long,” I say. “Certainly not so long that I won’t be able to return.”
“It is not that simple. Do not make the journey until you can be sure that if you are unable to return, the choice was worth it.”
I can go to the human world and live among them, but eventually my angel powers will fade, making it impossible to take my angel form and pass through a portal to return home. And if I die in my human form, there will be no Angel of Death coming to usher my soul away, no Angel of Life to pair me with a new body. I will meet only the specialized sect of warriors who guard the place that most in Euphoria don’t ever have cause to speak of.
The Wasteland represents the failures of the angels to effectively elevate souls.
“When will it ever be enough?” I ask, watching the man and woman walk through a field of grass so green I long reach out and touch it, to understand what it would feel like beneath my human fingertips.
“When will what be enough?”
“When will we have cultivated enough souls that we can stop? That we can just leave them be? There was a time before the angels came to this world and the humans managed to live and die just fine without our help.”
“We came from a place to which we cannot return. This is what we must do to survive, Caleb. The eternal flame energizes us, just as souls drive humans. There will not be an end. This is the way it is now.”
Through the portal, the vibrant green of the field has a hypnotic effect on me. I want to taste food and experience laughter. To touch and smell and feel. I do not want to record the lives of others — I want to live my own.
I want to be like these two and fall in love. Find my one.
Kalyx disappears, leaving me to stare through that window to another world.
She would prefer I not leave, but she accepts my choice. It is really only a question of when.
* * *
Now
The clatter of a tray onto a nearby cafeteria table startles me. Caleb sits across from me, his eyes dreamy.
/> “So angels are just using us? For power? We’re just batteries, like in The Matrix?”
“Perhaps.” He draws the word out into three syllables as he considers. “I don’t know what the matrix is, but, yes, your soul is an energy source, comparable to a battery. It moves through the lifetimes, growing and changing, becoming stronger and more powerful … the grand journey. Angels are tasked with cultivating souls, leading them into new bodies over and over, affecting their destinies and futures so that eventually they’re strong enough to join the eternal flame — the driving force behind Euphoria.”
My fingers are shot through with pinpricks, like when I’m out too long in the winter without gloves. The chill extends through my whole body. I can almost feel my soul cooling, hunkering down, reflexively rebelling against any attempts to manipulate it.
“That’s kind of fucked up.”
Caleb looks down. “It’s just the way it is.”
“Well, at least you get to avoid being cultivated.” The word sounds dirty in my mouth.
“Yes, but without a soul, I can live in this world only once. When the soulless die, we face the Wasteland.” The despondent note in his voice is an icy finger down my spine.
“So, hell, basically?”
“There isn’t any torture, no burning, fiery pits. But it’s bleak and empty. An eternity without any real hope of coming back here.”
“Sounds like a place you never want to visit.”
“No, I don’t ever want to go back.”
I spit out the soda I’d just taken a gulp of. “Wait, you’ve been there?”
He sops up my spill with a wad of napkins and waits until I finish coughing. A sad smile plays on his face.
He explains how this is his second time around. The whole harrowing escape from the underworld story sounds fantastical, but the truth of it shows in his haunted gaze. I recognize that look from the mirror.
“But wait, why would you ever risk staying on earth if you knew the only place it would lead was to the Wasteland?”
“I took a chance … on love.”
Something that had been hovering at the edge of my consciousness comes into focus. Suddenly everything clicks into place. “Genna?”
He nods. “Her name was Vivian when I knew her before, but she’s the same soul. I recognize everything about her. I remember. Part of her remembers me, I know it, but I still have a long way to go, and not much time.”
“Time for what?”
“To get her to bind with me. The only way for me to avoid the Wasteland is for a human to bind her soul with me. It allows us to be reborn like you, and always find our soul mate again in any lifetime.”
I want to say that sounds incredibly cheesy. I want to say it’s so saccharine I’m about to heave. But it’s not. It’s the sweetest, most romantic thing I’ve ever heard. I clear my throat to try to rid myself of the sudden emotions.
“So what happened with Genna, before?”
His eyes turn downcast. “She was saying the words — all she had to do in order to bind with me was to say, ‘Caleb, I bind my soul to you for all eternity.’ But she didn’t finish before we died.”
He stares at the table, looking so lost. My heart goes out to him. I want to comfort him. I even reach out toward him but then stop short and change direction to straighten the napkin container and line up the salt and pepper shakers with the hot sauce bottles.
My hands fold in front of me, close to his but not touching. His fingers are long and strong, with perfect half-moon nails. I can’t tear my gaze away.
“How long ago was that?” I ask, trying to refocus.
“I died in 1940.”
I figured it was something like that. “So you’re an old man. Maybe that explains your fashion sense.” I freeze, surprised at what just popped out of my mouth.
He frowns and looks down at himself, then around at everyone else. “I acquired these from the thrift shop. We arrived here without money or clothing, so…” He shrugs. I try to push the image of him flying around naked out of my mind. “Is this the wrong thing to wear? It appears similar to what everyone else is wearing.”
My lips curl up into a smile, and it feels funny on my face. It must look strange as well because Caleb stares at me oddly. I force my face back to its normal configuration. “Your T-shirt could be considered ironic in some circles, barely, but your sneakers have to go. Pick up a men’s magazine and try to find stuff that looks like that. And just wear solid colors until you get a better handle on pop culture of the past hundred years.”
He pulls out a little notebook and scribbles something down. I wonder if he has Captain-America-style notes on things about this century that he needs to brush up on.
“So you don’t regret it? Leaving Euphoria? Even though you ended up in the Wasteland?”
His eyes grow dark and serious. It’s like they’ve changed colors. “I don’t regret it. But I can’t fail again. I’ve been given a second chance, and I need to use it. I need to get Genna to bind with me before it’s too late.”
I want to ask him what the rush is, but outside, the clock tower bell chimes the hour. I’m about to be late for class.
“I’ll put away your tray,” he says as I scrabble for my backpack. Damn him and his impeccable manners. It makes it much harder not to believe him. To want to help him in some way.
But whether he’s a ghost or not, I need to stick by my policy of non-involvement. I need to be Switzerland, completely neutral, not swayed to feel compassion for rogue half-angels escaping hell to find their true loves.
I run across campus, reminding myself of that over and over. I don’t get involved. I don’t get involved.
* * *
Before
I walk into a nightmare. I’m still in the doorway, but I immediately want to turn around and run away. The walls are a pleasant light blue. The furniture looks comfortable, no springs jutting out or peeling paint, but there is one very big problem.
Two little kids sit on the living room floor with toys scattered all around them. It’s like Toys “R” Us exploded in this little brick rowhouse. A pathway has been cleared from the front door to the kitchen, revealing the tan carpet. Another makeshift walkway leads left, over to the staircase.
My head pounds, once for every doll, truck, animal, weapon, and figurine lying scattered across the carpet. My hands ball into fists and clench so tight that my short nails dig into the skin of my palm. I close my eyes and will my body to stop shaking. Breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth like I read about to try and calm down.
I can’t live here.
Karen, my new foster mother, drops her keys on a side table and steps into the chaos.
“These are the twins,” she says, motioning to the boy and girl in the sea of toys. She announces their names, but I miss them as the war in my head starts. Try to act normal, Maia, one half of me says. They’re just toys. Kids are messy, you know that. It’s better than a group home. The other half of me vibrates, suppressing the need, the compulsion, to bring order to the mayhem before me.
How can I live here?
Breathe in through the nose. Out through the mouth.
Karen breezes into the kitchen. “Your room’s upstairs,” she calls out. “First door on the left. Go on and get settled, I’ll have lunch ready soon.”
A girl about my age appears at the top of the stairs. Glaring at me. Great, I’ve been here all of sixty seconds and already made an enemy. On top of everything else.
“I’m Maia,” I say, waving up at her.
The boy twin cranes his neck to look at me for a second before resuming rolling a dump truck over a graveyard of toy soldiers. The girl on the stairs frowns, but doesn’t respond. If anything, her scowl intensifies. She turns and disappears around the corner.
I hitch my backpack on my shoulder and step along the toy-lined path. If I don’t look at the mess, it’s like it doesn’t exist. Right? The rampage in my head only quiets once I make it upstairs. The hallway is
blissfully empty, and all that air I’ve been taking in finally makes it into my lungs.
The room is clean and sparse. It holds a single twin bed, frilly curtains, a desk and dresser. Bigger than my last one, and I’d had to share that with two other kids. But my relief is short-lived when the glaring girl appears in the doorway.
“This is my room,” she says.
I look around. There aren’t any personal belongings anywhere. No posters or pictures. I open the closet to find it empty.
“If this is your room, where’s your stuff?” I ask, getting tired of her attitude.
“Doesn’t matter, it’s my room.”
“Whatever.” She wants to prove she’s the alpha dog here by laying claim to everything in the house. That’s nothing new. I sit my backpack on the dresser. Carved into the wooden surface is the name Natasha.
“See,” the girl says from right over my shoulder. “It’s got my name on it.” She sounds proud of herself, like she’s proven something to me.
I unpack my few belongings into the empty drawers while Natasha buzzes around me, hovering. Warning me that I won’t be here long. That this is her house, her room, her family.
“Listen, bitch,” I say, whirling on her. “Just shut up. I get it, you don’t want me here. Too bad I don’t have a choice about it. Get out of my room and leave me the hell alone!”
“Who are you talking to?” a little voice says from the doorway. The boy twin stands there, dump truck in hand.
“Natasha,” I say, pointing to her. She’s near the window, boring holes in me with her eyes.
“Who?”
Ice fills my veins. I walk toward the boy and reach out to nudge his shoulder. My finger connects with the fabric of his shirt.
“Quit it!” he shouts. “I’ll tell.”
I walk back to Natasha and try the same thing. My finger moves through the air, through where her shoulder should be, until I have to catch myself from stumbling into empty space.
I swallow and turn back to the boy.
“Never mind, I was just talking to myself.”
“Don’t poke me no more,” he says, scowling.
