Gabriel
“Ow!”
Raphael lurched upward, and his head conked against mine before I fully reoriented myself back to Heaven’s receiving room.
He swiveled his head back and forth, from where I presumed Siren and Bedlam sat in the archangels’ golden chairs to the bodies scattered across the room. “What happened here?”
I rubbed my hand against my forehead and wondered whether I could get a bruise in Heaven. “We’re not sure. Our general plan is to wake up the seraphim and see if we can come to any conclusions.”
Raphael scrunched his face together tightly enough that his wide forehead seemed to take over his whole face. “What’s that?” He pointed somewhere above my head. “It’s like my nightmare but… not.”
I spun around, terrified that a dragon had somehow invaded Heaven in my absence. I let out a sigh of relief when I found only black splotches above us, and they seemed to be hanging in the air rather than infecting anything. I also noticed they were shaped into a hasty—but surprisingly tidy—handwriting that I knew all too well.
“Gabs, Sunshine and I decided we were better off heading down to Earth to try to figure out what was going on, so that’s where we are. If Michael comes back, tell him to quit worrying about me and get back to Khet. Hugs! Bedlam.” He had left a flourish shaped like a large, leftward-slanting Z underneath the short paragraph.
As if the words had awaited my perusal, they faded after I’d skimmed them twice. Good. I hadn’t wanted to explain to Michael why I had let Bedlam graffiti the receiving room.
“How does he do that?” Raphael stared at the fading words with a face as wide as it had previously been scrunched. I had seen a theater exercise like that once, where the players made their faces as small and big as possible. Raphael had probably been practicing it for centuries, albeit unintentionally.
“Bedlam doesn’t like to limit himself to what he knows angels can do.” I stood up and brushed off my robe, though of course, no dust hung on it. “As to the rest of what happened… We’re not sure. Something knocked out all of the angels in Heaven, and I’m waking up the seraphim so we can decide what to do next.”
Raphael’s mouth opened in an excited grin. “I can help with that! What do I need to do?”
I glanced at the angels scattered on the floor and noticed a redhead and a brunette right outside the door. “Well, Sybil and Somniel are right over there. All you have to do is think of a time when your thoughts and emotions aligned perfectly with theirs, and you can enter their heads. Find out what nightmare is blocking them, and talk them into waking up.”
Raphael nodded. “I can do that! I can…” His features scrunched up in the middle of his face. “But I have no idea what Sybil and Somniel feel. Do they even feel?”
I patted the smaller angel on the back. “Do your best.” Raphael might be able to wake them, or he might not. I had to make him feel as though he was doing something. If he wasn’t done by the time I had woken up the others, I would double back and take care of them.
As Raphael knelt and put a hand on Somniel’s carrot-colored head, I moved past him out into the entry chamber. Blue flowers lay scattered among a cadre of unconscious female angels, all beautiful. I moved toward the one with a wreath of green woven into her long brown hair. She looked so peaceful in sleep. Awake, she always looked distressed and conflicted. For all her difficult decisions, Keziel wasn’t happy.
I glanced at the faces around me. Angels weren’t happy. Not me, not Raphael, not Siren, not Michael. We were all a miserable lot. I should do something to change that. I thought my unhappiness was just about me, but it never was. I need to help everyone. I shook my head. Not now, though. Now I need to focus on Keziel and the last time I understood her.
I ladled out lentils at a soup kitchen in the bowels of Baltimore and noticed that the person to whom I handed the bowl of steaming glop had hands far cleaner and smoother than those I expected to serve. I glanced up and realized that the woman they belonged to would have looked out of place anywhere in the city, except maybe the local Renaissance Fair. Her long brown hair hung around her face in a complicated arrangement of braids, and her green dress was at least three centuries out of date.
I pulled the bowl back from her and handed it to the next person in line. “Bedlam’s not here.”
Keziel bristled as the man pushed around her, I thought more because a homeless person had touched her than because she resented my comment. “Why is that the first thing anyone says to me? I come here for other reasons!”
I gave her a small, sympathetic smile. “No, you don’t.”
She wrinkled her nose, and again, I couldn’t determine whether she reacted to my words or to the smell of the individual shoving past her. “Do we have to talk here?”
Do we have to talk at all? I thought, but I chastised myself for the ungenerous sentiment.
“Well, you came here.” I glanced at the clock on the wall. “But I should be done in half an hour if you want to meet me outside.”
“Fine. But don’t take too long. This is urgent.” She turned and pushed her way back through the crowd to the door.
It was actually about forty-five minutes later when I exited the building. I’d had to help wash up. Keziel grabbed my arm and tugged me down the alley away from the stragglers among soup kitchen attendees and volunteers.
“You said half an hour,” she said. “I told you, I’m on a deadline.”
I resisted the urge to sigh. “Sorry, I didn’t know what you wanted. We were especially busy today.”
“It’s fine. We still have time.” She glanced in both directions, presumably to make sure no one was watching. “It’s about the rainforest.”
“The rainforest?”
She bit her lip. “Well, and the golden toad. It’s this species native to Costa Rica, and the males are bright orange, hence the name.”
I nodded. “So I assume they are dying out because of deforestation.”
“Well, deforestation, or Chytrid Fungus. It’s kind of hard to tell with some of these localized species.” She pursed her lips. “So will you help?”
“What exactly do you need me to do?”
She clasped her hands in front of her chest. “Well, the problem is that the toads aren’t merely dying out. They’re nearly extinct. There’s only one golden toad left at all in the world, and this afternoon, these bulldozers are going to destroy the piece of rainforest it lives on. I can distract them for a little while, but I need someone to go in and bring the toad somewhere else.”
I rested my hand against the graffitied brick wall. “Wait a minute. If there’s only one toad left in the world, how will saving him help? Don’t they need two to reproduce? And how do you know there’s only one left in the world?”
Keziel gave an exasperated sigh. “I made the world, didn’t I? So I know what’s going on with all its creatures. And I’m working on a plan to save them. I need one toad to hang on until I can convince Michael to let me do it.”
“Ah.” It was like a little light bulb turned on over my head. “So that’s why you’re coming to me for this. Official channels have deemed this a waste of time.”
Keziel’s body tensed. Her fists clenched at her sides, and for a second I thought she might stamp her foot. “But it’s not! You see that, right?”
I sighed. “Honestly, Keziel, not really. Not that I don’t care about the environment, but don’t hundreds of species go extinct each year? What’s so important about this one?”
“Actually, over a hundred species go extinct every day. That’s hundreds of thousands each year. And I know when every single one happens!” Tears welled up in her eyes. “But I can’t help it if I have a few favorites among the millions of different life forms. I really love those little toads, and the idea of them dying out is more than I can stand.”
I never could resist a person crying. “All I have to do is move the toad?”
She sniffed and wiped away the tear that had fallen from her eye. “Yep, just carry her to another part of the forest. Fifty miles or so should do it.”
“Fifty miles!?” I could feel my eyes practically bulging out of my head. “I can’t teleport with a living creature, Keziel! I’ll have to walk that whole distance.”
“Running would actually be better.” She grinned and threw her arms around me. “Thank you, Gabriel! I knew you would help me.”
After I disentangled myself from the grateful balance angel, I let her teleport me to a place I assumed from the exotic green foliage and humid atmosphere was the Costa Rican rainforest.
“The toad is over there.” She pointed in the direction of a cluster of trees. “I recommend heading due east.”
I looked up to see if she could give me more guidance about finding the toad among the hundreds of leaves and branches in the area she specified, but she teleported out before I could ask. I headed over to the area she’d indicated and realized that this plan had a problem. While I could deal with nature in the abstract, when surrounded by so much wild foliage and undiscovered animal species, I became terrified for my life. This was stupid because I was immortal and could teleport away from any immediate danger, but somehow, it didn’t relieve my jitters. There was a reason I spent most of my time helping humans.
I gingerly lifted a few of the leaves on the nearest tree and tried not to think about the millions of insects buzzing in the near vicinity. I jumped when a wasp-like creature as long as my index figure and twice as wide around emerged from under a branch and flew up in my face. I screamed and jumped around for a minute, and when I couldn’t see it anymore, I took a moment to catch my breath.
It’s gone. It’s gone. You can’t see it anymore. I avoided thinking about the nigh-invisible mosquitos I could almost feel biting my skin. I could get rid of the itchy bumps, and I didn’t begrudge them the nutrition in my blood, but for some reason, the idea of their little probes piercing my skin disturbed me.
I combed through more plant life, and while I didn’t find any more threatening insects, I also didn’t find a small golden toad. A lizard skittered up the tree after I uncovered its hiding place, and a black frog with yellow-and-red spots breathed menacingly at me from near the roots.
I looked up at the canopy and wondered if I should try climbing the tree. I didn’t think the climb would be too difficult, assuming those long green pipes were sturdy vines and not boa constrictors.
I had just figured how to get my first foot up on the nearest tree when I felt something rustle behind me. I spun around, terrified I was going to come face to face with some wild jaguar, but instead, I beheld Keziel standing behind me without a stitch of clothing on.
“Are you naked?” I averted my gaze. Her long brown hair covered any parts of her that might be considered indecent, but I still wasn’t entirely comfortable looking at her.
“Yes.” She put her hands on her hips, brushing her hair away from her breasts for a moment. “What of it? I don’t know when everyone got so uptight about nudity. I’m pretending to be a dryad rushing through the trees, letting the workers see me for an instant then disappearing and reappearing somewhere else. It’s a pretty effective distraction.”
“I’m not sure how well that’s going to work.” I focused on a root that had grown out of the earth and curled into nearly a perfect circle. “People these days don’t really believe in dryads, and I don’t think anyone in this part of the world ever did. They’re probably going to decide they were seeing things.”
“I know that.” Keziel’s voice held a bite. “That’s why you are supposed to quickly grab the toad and get out of here. Pretty soon, they’re going to disregard my apparently fictional presence and start chopping and burning.”
I couldn’t help but look back at her in frustration. “There aren’t any small orange frogs here, Keziel! I’ve looked everywhere.”
“Well, of course not.” She walked toward me. “I told you it was a female. The female golden toads are black with red-and-yellow spots.” She pointed at the amphibian I had already noticed. “She’s right there.”
Well, how was I supposed to know that? I bent over to pick up the animal but paused when I thought about its coloration. “Is it poisonous?”
Keziel’s brow wrinkled. “Honestly? I’m not sure.”
I spread my hands in exasperation. “You made it. It’s your favorite animal. How can you not know?”
“Well, sometimes, it’s hard to keep straight what is and isn’t poisonous, especially when it can’t kill me.”
I heard the sound of a machine roaring to life in the distance, and Keziel looked over her shoulder. “Look, just take it and go. Make yourself some gloves or something. If you get woozy, put it down and blink out and back in or something.”
I started to pull the cuffs of my blue plaid sleeves over my hands. “I’ll probably have to do that anyway, if you expect me to run two marathons with the thing.” I squatted next to the tree and picked up the creature.
Despite Keziel’s advice, I suspected that running through the rainforest would be a poor choice unless I wanted to trip over a variety of roots and wildlife, thereby falling flat on my face and likely killing the poor creature I was on a mission to save. I began to move at a swift walk through the underbrush, not taking the time to appreciate the unique plant life that surrounded me, the species that might not even be around in fifty years.
I looked down at the little animal in my hand and considered that it was a remarkable little creature, and I could see why Keziel liked it so much. I mean, sure, it was black and bumpy and kind of weird looking. But I had to admire that every creature that God made—through Keziel or not—had its place in the world—except for those giant wasps the size of my finger. Clearly, those were the unnatural spawn of Satan.
But I could see why Keziel wanted to go to all this trouble to save one creature. I might have done the same, if it were a single human life. And I guess this was an entire species riding on my actions.
Keziel. Uptight, obedient, strangely noble. Keziel.
I stood in the entranceway to Heaven and was somewhat surprised to find a crowd of angels walking past in every direction. They all seemed to be clad in the white garb that was Heaven’s norm, but when I tried to get a focus on any of their faces, I couldn’t discern particular features. It was as if a hundred faceless, commuter angels walked through Heaven on their way to some greater destination.
As they walked, several of the angels dropped the blue flowers Keziel and her Handmaidens handed to angels as they entered. Under the feet of the traversing angels were scores of trodden flowers, their blue petals smashed as if they had been crushed against concrete instead of the fluffy gold cloud of Heaven’s floor.
I scanned the crowd, trying to find Keziel amid the sea of empty faces. To my left, I heard a hysterical sob contrasting with the steady hum of Heaven’s business as usual. I turned in that direction, and the mass thinned as I walked, parting to reveal a huddled figure on the ground.
Keziel sat on the floor with her hands clasped around her knees. Tears streamed down her red face, and strands of her brown hair stuck to her cheeks. She wore a green dress that matched the stems of the bouquet of trampled flowers she clutched in her hand.
“Keziel?” I crept toward her. “What’s the matter?”
She looked over at my feet and let out a cry of frustration. I looked down and found that under my foot, half-hidden beneath my sandal, lay a flattened blue flower. I lifted my foot and bent down to lift the flower. I brought it to my nose and noticed that it still held the same pleasant aroma I had come to expect from Keziel’s gifts. I continued toward her, tiptoeing so as to avoid crushing any more of her offerings.
I knelt down beside her. “What’s wrong?”
She held up the handful of limp flowers. “I give these to everyone who comes into Heaven.”
“I know that.” I put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “We all appreciate it.”
Keziel glared at me. “No, you don’t. You think it’s stupid. ‘There goes Keziel,’ you say. ‘Giving everyone a bunch of useless flowers because she can’t do anything productive like the rest of us.’”
I opened my mouth to say that wasn’t true, but we both knew it was.
“I know it’s not big and important like Jophiel’s prayer center or Rachel’s Warrior training, but it’s something. It’s a place I have, something that I do that makes Heaven a little nicer, that makes the angels feel appreciated.”
“I understand.” I tried to make my words as soothing as possible. “Why are you crying about that?”
She flung her hand out to indicate what seemed to be the entirety of Heaven. “This isn’t what’s supposed to happen.”
“People aren’t supposed to walk through Heaven?”
“They aren’t supposed to drop the flowers!”
Huh. Really, with the way she hands those things out, there really should be piles of flowers everywhere. “Where do the flowers usually go?”
“They disappear.” She pulled her arms back in and wrapped them around her knees. “They’re not real flowers, here in Heaven. They’re the idea of flowers. It only takes a small part of the energy that it takes to, say, create the world. But they’re designed to disappear when the holder forgets about them. They fade back into the mist of Heaven.”
I nodded. “That’s practical.”
“But it’s not working!” She let out another sob. “I have one useless job, and I can’t even do that right!”
“Keziel, I—”
“I tried to pick them up.” She thrust the bunch of flowers in her hand in my face. “I thought I could at least clean up after myself, but there were just too many of them, and people kept dropping more. But I should have expected it would happen. I’m a failure at everything. Nobody likes me.”
I rubbed her shoulder. “That’s not true.”
She brushed a strand of hair out of her face. “Do you like me?”
I considered this for a moment. I thought about lying, but it wasn’t instinctive. Besides, angels weren’t supposed to lie. “Not really.”
Keziel made another desperate noise. “See? And you’re super nice. You like everybody.”
“I don’t think—”
She continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “It’s because of Bedlam, isn’t it? ‘Poor Bedlam.’ That’s what everybody thinks. ‘Life’s been so hard for him since Keziel betrayed him. Keziel, the original friend-zoner. We can’t blame him for going psycho and trying to destroy the world or joining Lucifer in the war.’ Does it ever occur to anyone that maybe I didn’t want to spend eternity tied to someone who thinks that a rational solution to his emotional problems is to blow up everything in sight? It’s no coincidence humans recognize the name ‘Azazel’ as a prominent demon, and there is a reason that the Norse myths paint Loki as a monster.”
She kind of maybe has a point. “Is Jophiel really any better? From what I can tell, he doesn’t let you decide anything for yourself.”
She frowned. “It’s not perfect, I know. But what angels have a perfect relationship? Rachel and Nathaniel are the only happy ones. Jophiel and I have lasted a lot longer than most angel couples, and it’s because we’re willing to compromise.”
I leaned back on my hands. “How is doing everything he says a compromise?”
She snapped her head up and glared at me. “I don’t see you in a happy, healthy relationship with any room to judge. You ignored your duties as an archangel for two thousand years over a girl, and you never even bothered to tell her how you feel.”
“I don’t… I mean, I’m not… Have you been talking to Bedlam?”
She shook her head. “No. He won’t talk to me because… Well, it doesn’t matter. But everyone knows about you and Cassia, Gabriel, or knows that there’s nothing to know. But don’t chastise me for my romantic relations when you can’t make a decision about your own.”
That was fair, especially coming from someone I’d just admitted to not liking very much. But I had to wonder, if everyone knew I was in love with Cassia, did she know as well? She could read minds, so I couldn’t fathom how she could not know. But why wouldn’t she say anything? Did she not feel the same way? Or did she sense my hesitancy and not want to be the one who, as the expression went, made the first move?
I looked down at my hand and noticed a squashed blue flower underneath it. I gave my head a shake and remembered where I was—stuck in Keziel’s head while there was an attack on Heaven. It was not the time to discuss romantic foibles, even with someone I wanted to spend time with.
I leaned forward and put my hand on her arm. “Keziel, none of this is real.”
She snorted, and since she had been crying so much, an unattractive glob of snot came out of her nose. She wiped it away. “Just because you don’t want to deal with something doesn’t mean you can deny its existence.”
“I don’t mean our love lives”—or lack thereof—“I meant all of this.” I waved my hand to indicate the throng of angels still treading through the room. “We were in Heaven, and something attacked us. All the angels passed out, and I’ve been trying to wake up the seraphim so we can decide what to do. Everybody seems to be trapped in some kind of nightmare.”
“Nightmare?” She gazed up at me with red-rimmed eyes. “Then the flowers are still disappearing?”
I had to think that wasn’t what she really meant. The flowers had to symbolize something to her, though I didn’t have time to figure out what that was. “There was not a flower in sight before I entered your head, only a lot of comatose angels, who presumably had other things on their minds.”
Her brow furrowed. “How did you get into my head?”
I used my hands to push myself to my feet. “You can thank Bedlam’s tendency to experiment. He managed to wake himself up, and he had a technique.”
She had started rising at the same time I did, but she stopped at my words. “Bedlam. He returned to Heaven, and someone attacked us.”
I held out a hand to help her the rest of the way up. “He says he didn’t do it, and I’m inclined to believe him.”
She clasped my hand and pulled herself to her feet. “It can’t be a coincidence, though.”
I shook my head. She was right, of course, and I wondered for a moment how Keziel had come to be the first person I could talk to rationally about this. Was Heaven really that hard up for good leadership, or did I trust Keziel more than I knew?
She looked around at the solid-appearing Heaven in front of her. “So how do I get out of here?”
I leaned forward and covered her bright-blue eyes with my hands. “Open your eyes.”