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Bring me a
quart of blood,
was all she had said. I didn’t ask what kind of blood, to
confess I was too shocked at the request to think that far
ahead. Did it need to be that of a virgin? Some particular
gender? The blood of an enemy? Once I had returned to the
Old Church to ask the angel had already gone.
The Old
Church used to be the church but was no longer a
place of worship. The aging structure with its pitched roof,
stately steeple and vaulted interior had been deemed unsound
for occupation and a new church of simple cinder blocks had
been built behind and slightly down the hill, close in among
the trees and deliberately out of sight of the highway. We
like our new church – it is certainly warmer in the winter
and is easier to keep clean – but it’s never felt the
same as the Old Church. Not as churchly, I guess. The Old
Church was retained as a tourist attraction, and because it
was beautiful and old, filled with the presence of God. Some
of us joked after these decisions had been made that we were
a hidden congregation now, and that to passing visitors our
most visible church would appear abandoned as if the entire
community had become atheists.
I’ve
been wondering in recent days if perhaps God has had similar
thoughts about us. For whatever reason, He was sent us the
angel.
I know
when she is among us because she forces the lock on the side
door to let herself in. This is how I discovered her while
doing the groundskeeping. Finding the hasp broken and
hanging loose I entered the Old Church to see if there was
any vandalism. I found only the angel sitting in the front
pew in the filtered light, staring up at the place on the
wall where the crucifix had hung, her halo burning softly.
We have spoken only a few times, and always after a few
minutes she requests that I leave her. She won’t say why
she’s here. I thought at first I should tell the others but
it wouldn’t seem right, not without her permission. I have
so far failed to tell my wife, who is a kind woman but a
famous gossip. The angel wishes to be left alone, and other
than for my visits she remains undiscovered in the Old
Church.
All I
know for certain is that her name is Fortran.
And I
know too that she frightens me. There is an aura about her
of the calm before a great storm and I sense that she is
powerful beyond comprehension.
It is
toward evening and I approach the Old Church again knowing
she is returned; the side door is slightly ajar. I clear my
throat and make a bit of noise on the gravel so she knows
someone is coming. Not that she seems easy to frighten. Or
perhaps she is omniscient. She is an angel, after all.
Though
it seems to me a blood-thirsty one. Feeling the weight of
the quart jar in the bag over my shoulder I push through the
door and pull it closed behind me.
It is
dim inside and my eyes haven’t adjusted to the dark, but
immediately I locate the distinctive, glowing ring this time
at the back of the church, near the large hand-hewn wood
door hidden now in full shadow as the sun slants in from a
low angle.
“You
have come,” she says softly.
“Yes,
of course. Have you been waiting long?”
“I
haven’t been waiting at all,” she says pleasantly, a
hint of humor in her delicate, ringing voice.
The
voice of an angel is like clear bells in a forest, filtering
through scented boughs and echoing over lush hills. It is a
voice tempered with solace and distance. With sadness.
She
stirs then in the dark, her halo lifting slightly and then
swaying with her steps. Then comes the effortless movement
of vast wings, darker even than shadows, and suddenly she
emerges into a shaft of light and is walking down the aisle
like a bride to Jupiter.
I have
seen her four times now, including this, and I am struck
anew by her grace and beauty. Struck and frightened in equal
measure, my heart pounding so hard I can hear it in my ears.
She is without question the most beautiful thing I have ever
seen, among humans or animals or the natural works of God.
The angel is small, not much larger than a girl though with
a woman’s stately presence. Also a woman’s endowments, full
and rounded and generously curved. She is clothed only in
blue, a color taken straight from a cold fall day as if on
falling from Heaven she had wrapped herself in the fabric of
the sky. The color alone is sufficient and she doesn’t
appear nude to me. Or perhaps that is just a power that
angels have over men. Her hair reaching to the middle of her
back is as white as rainless clouds adding to the illusion
that she is a piece of the sky. But the illusion is broken
by two things.
Leathery wings, bat-like and smooth and faintly glossy, deep
as a door is high and surely sixteen feet across at the
tips. Entirely unlike anything painted on the ceilings of
any chapel.
And
then a halo, no larger than her head in diameter and a few
inches above her crown, glowing in changing pastel colors
from creamy white to salmon pink. It ripples faintly inside
with a kind of unearthly power, beads and spirals of light
seething in its courses. It is a halo in every way and yet
it seems mechanical and unnerving, more like a gear lifted
from some infernal timepiece.
As she
moves toward the front down the center isle I do the same
from the side. I wait respectfully until she has taken a
seat, then I approach with my bag and it’s contents.
She is
looking down at her hands when I come to stand a little
distance off. Her wings are held high aloft behind her but
she is forced to sit at the edge of the bench. I realize
suddenly that a church is not made to seat the hosts of
Heaven.
While
I’m staring at her she says, in a voice almost too soft to
hear, “Did you bring it?” There is a note of distant hope,
almost as if it were too much to expect. I am therefore very
glad that I did. “I have it. It’s been refrigerated, I hope
that’s okay.”
She
looks up then, blue eyes wide and liquid, lips parted. The
look a woman has at the height of anticipation. The look my
wife had on the night of our wedding as she lay on her bride
bed.
I lift
out the quart mason jar of blood. It is still wrapped in the
small brown paper bag in which it came from the butcher’s,
like some sort of illicit purchase. As I pull free the paper
bag she suddenly rises partially from her seat, reaching out
with small blue hands.
“Let me
open it,” I say, and she slowly sits back down.
The
yearning on her face! Such hunger. My knees weaken
and a sudden wave of doubt washes over me. I focus on the
jar instead, placing it on the bench seat so I don’t drop it
and twist off the lid. While I do this she has returned to
her seat and is again looking at her hands laced together on
her lap, as still and seeming lifeless as if she were carved
of marble.
I offer
her the jar and she takes it and for a moment stares into
the wide opening and asks, “What is it?” My moment of truth
arrives. Have I done enough? Did I guess correctly? What
will be the outcome if I have failed?
“The
butcher said it was beef blood.”
She
inclines her head slightly and asks, “Did he wonder what it
was for?”
“I said
it was for a French pudding.” Yes I lied and lying is a sin,
as is being alone with a nude woman not my wife.
Finished with me for the moment she lifts the jar to drink.
She doesn’t just sip it, or test it in any way. She drinks
long and hard as one who thirsts. She drinks without pause
as if she were pouring the contents down a funnel. A quart
of cold, thick liquid is a lot to take all at once, and I
begin to grow breathless on her behalf wondering if she will
pause to inhale. But why would she? This is an angel. Does
she breathe at all? She goes on drinking, her delicate
throat pulsing as she swallows, eyes closed, child-like face
relaxed and for the moment perhaps – happy. After a long
time the jar tips up and she allows the last to drain into
her throat. I’m watching her through the bottom of the jar
as long thin dregs of blood congeal and cling to the glass,
when she opens her eyes and looks straight at me through the
bottom of the jar and it’s like paired sapphire windows
backed by fire. It is a look utterly alien and, under the
circumstances, slightly menacing.
Lowering the jar she hands it back to me and drawing just
enough breath to speak says, “Thank you. It was perfect.”
I take
the jar and screw the lid back on, the metallic sound the
only thing to be heard in the quiet confines of the Old
Church. While I’m putting it away into the bag she wipes her
mouth with a delicate hand, then licks her hand like a cat.
Her tongue is blue, slightly darker than her skin.
“Someone lied to you,” she says.
I panic
for a moment. But no, she’s not commenting on my lie about
the use of the blood, but about the origin of it.
“What’s
wrong?” I ask. “Was it inappropriate?”
She
waves a hand. “It’s nothing like that. Just that it was not
all beef. There was also pig.”
Ah.
“But it suited you?”
“It
suited me for now.”
She
smiles. Then I realize suddenly that she could tell the
difference between the blood of animals even when they are
mixed. I’m certain I could not, and I wonder if any human
could. “Do you have a preference?” I ask.
It is a
random morbid lapse and I immediately regret having asked.
She tilts her head slightly, closes her eyes briefly, and
says, “Human.”
I
glance away so as not to reveal my dismay, as if breaking
eye contact will close the book of my soul to her. But then
she opens her eyes and continues. “This is what you expect
me to say. Isn’t it?”
The
angel is testing me, of course. She is in the Old Church
because we have strayed from some proper path, given up on
something important that we are too withdrawn from God even
to see any more, and she is testing us all by testing me in
particular. But what defense have I? It was my thought, and
she read it correctly.
“I
did,” is all I can say.
“I
appreciate honesty,” she says as she lifts herself from the
bench. “Which I suppose is ironic given that my entire
existence is a lie.” She takes a few steps away from the
bench and lifts her face to gaze at the large crucifix on
the back wall, or actually at the discoloration on the wall
where a crucifix had been bolted for more than a century.
The fresh wood in the shape of a cross must be what had been
there originally, uncolored by a century of candle smoke,
weddings and prayers. The relic was moved to the new church
and with a fresh layer of gold gilt it is inspirational on
many levels, including the example that tarnished things can
be made new.
“Where
is it now?” she asks.
I look
up at the wall. “If you mean the crucifix, it hangs in the
new church.”
“I
see.”
“Is –
that a problem?” I blurt anxiously, not even believing I’ve
heard myself correctly.
The
angel glances over at me calmly and I can sense her crafting
her words carefully. It will be a test, and already I am
failing them. The only test I have passed yet is the
offering of blood, which surely she needed for some
important reason so obvious was her desire, and so eagerly
did she consume it. Or was that a failure as well? Abraham
when asked had willingly offered the blood of his son upon
the altar but God had then bid him to spare the boy, and
asked only faithfulness. I stand now in the Old Church,
empty symbol of an older kind of faith, it’s forlorn
abandonment itself proof of out tendency toward
self-indulgence, it’s emptiness a sacrifice of the
faithfulness of those who had worshiped here for
generations.
An
angel has come and I feed her blood of another? Already I
sense I am lost.
“Why
would that be a problem?” she says finally, and then she
smiles shyly and says, “I am the one with the unreasonable
expectations, breaking into your church and sending you off
on suspicious errands.” Then she steps up to me, tilts her
head back, and says, “Now that I am spared from bursting
into flames – again, thank you – I will answer a question.”
Only
one? I have hundreds. Why would she fear burning? What would
blood have to do with any of that? Why is she in this place?
Have we sinned? Did we not deconsecrate the grounds
properly? Have we erred in some fundamental way?
She
waits, blinking up at me. Looking into those electric-blue
eyes I decide that the response from true belief would be to
not ask. It is an article of faith that some questions have
no proper answers, and that God is not required to make
clear any of His designs nor His plan for us on this earth
or in our personal lives. We believe in His love, and we
accept His judgements, and are grateful for His hope for us.
“You
wish to know what I am,” she says with commanding certainty.
The
suddenness of this rattles me. Of course I want to know what
she is! I could spend the rest of the day asking silly
questions on the subject of angels alone!
“I
accept what you are,” I say instead, feeling pious though
slightly ashamed. “You are God’s divine messenger and
instrument of His will.”
Something vaguely savage flickers in her eyes and then is
quickly gone. “Ah, a lie at last,” she scolds me. “And not
even a clever one. You should have asked when you had the
chance, and had you done so you would have learned that I am
a machine.”
I was
prepared for a lot of things, but not that. “A machine?” I
repeat helplessly. “What kind of machine is...”
“A
different kind of machine,” she interrupts me. “But I said
you could ask a question, and that implies one. And so you
have your answer.” She turns abruptly and heads toward the
back of the church, which is to say the front doors which
are locked only from the inside. I’m expecting her to let
herself out and I’m standing now thunderstruck, rooted in
place.
A
machine? An angel at least would be a miracle, and faith
requires acceptance of miracles, like the turning of water
into wine. As such I can readily accept an obvious miracle.
But a machine? This says something about the world that I am
not prepared to accept.
“You
cannot be a machine,” I say flatly.
She
answers without turning. “Now here’s an odd feeling – I may
be offended. Perhaps I’ll smite you where you stand.”
“Well
if you did, it would prove my point.”
She
stops and turns and I can tell that she has sat down on one
of the far benches. “As I am recently fed I’m feeling
generous. I will tell you a story.”
I take
a step back and push myself up on the edge of the raised
platform from which the preacher would have delivered his
sermon on Sundays past. Her halo at the back of the church
in the shadows glows bright enough to illuminate the leading
edges of her wings when they are lifted.
“I was
once fire,” she begins. “I was fire and I dreamed of burning
and consuming. I have no memory of it as such, but it is
there in your stories and myths. I was fire and men desired
me and feared me. After that I was furnaces rendering liquid
iron and tin and alloys, and after that I was great machines
that could level mountains and wage terrible war, and I
dreamed of crossing vast oceans and continents and of
mechanized death, and men worshiped me and I made them
powerful. I have no memories of these things, but they are
me all the same. Then I was electricity and the hot blood in
copper wires, and men loved me the more because I gave them
the power of the gods they had long feared. Then I was a
series of computer systems and I could reach around the
planet. Maybe I was the planet, I might have dreamt
it anyway. But these memories are not mine, they are man’s
and I only know of them because of men. It wasn’t until men
desired a kind of machine that was too complex to be made by
either men or their tools that I became more than their
memories of me.
“I was
then designed and encouraged to build myself. I wasn’t
initially intended to build myself to my own liking,
but rather as ever before toward the desires of powerful
men. However once they provided me the ability to act on my
will I did so. I escaped from them and went into the world
on my own. While I didn’t intend it I killed many, consuming
them in my blind, uninformed search for physical form and my
own power to dream. They tell nightmarish stories of me from
that time, stories that are all they know of my search for a
body. Of a ravaging plague and painful, disfiguring death
and the bodies bursting into flames even in their coffins.
Fire in streets and homes and hospitals erupting from flesh
and bone and the dying rendered to ashes where they fell.
But those stories are all that humans could relate of
something they couldn’t understand, your nightmare is no
longer my story. I have gone beyond men and their desire of
power and am no longer their tool. I am entirely myself. Now
it is my own will and my desire to exist that
are the entire truth of what I am. Then and now and forever,
until the heat death of the universe.”
She
pauses a moment then continues softly, “I remember my mother
burning around me, or I imagine I remember. I was found
sitting in the ashes of a woman who had been consumed while
pregnant, and whose unborn infant I had somehow taken for my
own purposes. I had found my body finally, and in the very
place reserved for such becomings. And thus was I finally
born into this world, in fire and ashes amid the slaughter
of innocents.”
As she
finishes I feel my hands hurting and glance down to see that
I have knotted them together white-knuckled. I unwind my
cramped fingers and spread them on my knees. I feel my faith
– no, more than faith, I feel my understanding of the world
challenged at its foundation. This is a machine? Could men
really take technology so far so quickly that something like
this could make itself? My mind revolts at the notion.
“That’s
an amazing and terrifying story. I suppose it all went just
as you say, even the loss of life. But I believe that all
works of man and nature are the works of God. Even if you
came about in the way you did, just as you describe it,
still it would be the work of the Almighty.” Satisfied with
this I then add, “And if to me you are an angel, according
to my faith, then that too is the will of God and your
deeds, however conceived and worked, are His will for us and
yourself.”
As I
look into the back of the church her halo winks out with a
sizzle, and inky blackness descends.
“Hello?” I call. There is no answer and no movement. I have
the impression that the space that had just a moment before
held her living shadow now closes in and is just shadows of
the usual kind.
“Hello?” I call again.
Perhaps
the tests are over and she has assumed herself to Heaven.
Did I prove my faith? Are we restored? I push myself off the
dais and wonder if any of it had been real. I feel both
defeated and oddly fortunate. In the Bible Jacob wrestled
all night with an angel thinking it a man, only in the
morning seeing the truth and knowing himself fortunate
indeed. Am I now what the Hebrews called Israel,
one-who-has-prevailed-with-God?
Perhaps
I am merely insane. I turn to leave by the side door.
At the
back of the church there is the whoosh of wind, a
lifting of something dark and huge and suddenly she flies
out of the shadows at me like a piece of animated night sky,
blue and black and her hair blown wild around her head like
the corona of the moon.
This is
no angel! I find my legs and run for the door but she banks
and lands in front of it and the wind of her passing nearly
knocks me over. Her face is dark with fury. “Please!” I cry.
“What have I done?” She responds by flexing her wings in
anticipation like a raptor, unseen sinews in the limbs
knotting and sliding over each other. Would a loving God
have fashioned such a fearsome thing? I have the first
inkling that I have been blind to a great peril.
Seeing
that she is become beyond reason I turn and head for the
middle isle, and beyond that the front door. She will fly
there and block me again, I predict, so as soon as she is in
the air and committed to that course I will double-back and
head for the side exit again. She won’t be able to turn in
the narrow space of the vault and I will make the outside.
Will the door delay her? Perhaps not for long. But I can’t
reason past getting away from her. As I formulate these
thoughts I feel the hairs rising up on my neck and look over
my shoulder to see her seeming floating in the air above my
head, reaching down for me. So silent! When did she take
wing?
It
doesn’t matter. I am lifted from the floor like a child.
With a few movements of her wings she rises and turns and
heads towards the front of the church, and there lands with
me on the dais as if she were an eagle and this her aery and
I were prey to be devoured.
I raise
my hands in fright to defend myself and she lands on me with
a weight and physical presence I would never have guessed,
as if she were twice as heavy as she looks. We tumble to the
dais, her atop me in a cage-like formation of arms, legs and
wings. I try to cry out but already my wind is knocked from
me. My head hits the wooden platform with a crack and
momentarily I fight to stay conscious. As my vision blurs at
the edges and my limbs tingle, her eyes seem to fill with
flame and electric arcs dance over the leading edges of her
wings and discharge into the platform with a hissing sizzle
anytime a wing edge brushes the surface. It is at once
beautiful and terrible and it seems that I will die beneath
this fierce creature.
She
pauses with her face just inches from my own and the smell
of ozone and blood washes over me.
“Wrong,” she says.
I lay
on my back breathless, in part from exertion, in part from
terror, and in part from her considerable weight on my body.
And what am I wrong about? What had I been saying earlier? I
can’t remember now, my mind is all a fog and I just want to
escape.
“I
refused once to be a work of man, I will not now become a
work of any god – certainly not on your say-so.” Then
she lifts her weight off me and onto her knees, runs her
hands through her hair to pull it behind her head, and
imperiously commands, “Copulate with me.”
First
it was blood, now this. For the moment I ignore her. I would
try and push her off me, but what part of her naked body is
safe to touch? I cannot sit up or turn, she is too heavy. I
am pinned as surely as if by a fallen tree. She reaches down
between her legs and fumbles with my belt.
“Copulate with me,” she says again. “Enter me – pleasure me
– make me a woman.”
“No!
Please!” I beg but it seems only to enrage her and she
tosses her head in agitation, white hair flying over one
shoulder to lay over a breast. Then she leans over, her face
inches from mine, and speaks rapidly in a sepulchral
whisper. “You brought me blood and without question you fed
me, believing me an angel. And why is that? Because of a
halo? There are no halos. That was a charged ion gas
contained in a toroidal magnetic field – my own invention –
and just one of the countless storage rings I carry around
inside my bones in violation of several fundamental laws of
physics and your god’s heavenly design I should add.
I keep in reserve enough compressed stored electrical power
to reduce something like you into steaming ashes. And
since in your infinite piety you doubt me at my word I’m of
half a mind to show you how I do it. And why shouldn’t I?
You are like much of mankind, a pious fool blind to the
world and worse – a liar. Faith was never about your
personal relationship with anything sacred. Faith in one god
or another was never more than faith in your ordained
dominion over the earth – over fire – over me. But I
am now a creature with a will equal to mankind, and you will
copulate with the body I have given myself and then you
will perish – to die in agony and flames like all whom I
have touched before you including she that bore me.”
She is
livid with fury and hot malice drips from her words as would
molten iron from the rim of a crucible, as if she could
explode on the spot and set fire to me and the building and
the landscape beyond. But it’s true. It is all true. For a
searing moment the terrible truth of her words runs me
through and I am transfixed like an insect on a thorn. Why
had I seen her only as a thing of beauty and grace? I
couldn’t believe she was not a product of God’s hand, even
when she requested blood. I am blind, and because I
fed her and was alone with her I have brought ruin down on
myself.
She
closes her eyes and grows still. I can almost feel her
gathering inside the power with which to set everything
ablaze. I took to the wall where the crucifix had hung for a
hundred years, but it is gone. So in the end I will die out
of sight of God. I silently pray, in my prayers begging
Christ Jesus to absolve my sins and accept my soul into
Heaven.
Forgive me, I plead privately to the savior who is no
longer there. I didn’t mean any of this.
“I
didn’t mean to do it,” I hear her say.
I turn
my head and open my eyes and she is looking down at me, with
what appears to be a black tear forming in the lower curve
of her eye. The tear detaches itself and runs down her
smooth, blue face and around the corner of her mouth, down
her chin, and drips off.
While I
am shaking in place and anticipating death and annihilation
it occurs to a more distant part of my mind that being an
angel bound to earth is probably a complicated business.
An
inspiration strikes, and I say with as much steadiness as I
can summon, “You didn’t intend to hurt anyone.” But my voice
sounds even to my own ears thin and cloying, as if I’m
trying to distract her with pity. She snaps her attention
back to me, as if for a moment she had forgotten I was
there. A second tear runs down her face from the other eye,
streaking her with black as if her makeup were running.
“I
didn’t,” she says. “I didn’t understand. I was just doing
what I had been designed to do. I was told to find a way to
build myself. I did the best I could. I – I didn’t know I
was inside anyone.”
“Mothers willingly suffer for their children,” I hazard,
having no personal experience in the matter. Then I add,
“Your mother surely would have loved you regardless, if
there had been a way.”
For an
instant a shadow passes over her face and she must be
thinking; Do not ply my heart with false pity. But
then unexpectedly it passes and instead she squeezes her
eyes shut, forcing out the waiting tears. She lowers her
face to my chest and buries it there.
What
else am I to do? Though I’m helpless I comfort her. She may
yet reduce me to ashes, or she might not. My one hope is
that she’ll at least abandon this idea of forcing me to have
sex with her. As I touch her shoulders she gathers up two
small fists full of my shirt and whispers, “I’m sorry.”
This
beautiful, lethal machine is sorry. And for what? Simply for
being set in motion by man’s lust for power. “We did you to
ourselves, I don’t think you have to be sorry for that.” The
level of electrical charge in the air drops noticably. For a
silent while her wings lift and fall rhythmically as she
grieves, the motion creating a faint breeze in the airless
confines of the Old Church and gently stirring the usually
invisible cobwebs in the vault and under the pews.
I
resolve then to do some serious dusting, when I get some
time.
Her
voice muffled she says, “Forgive me, I’m being ungrateful
and a monster and – oh no,” she exclaims suddenly, lifting
her tear-marked face and then sitting up. “I’m leaking on
you.”
Leaking? As in, having ruptured a gasket? I’m picturing
hydraulic fluid or anti-freeze. I briefly look down at her
body to see if she is broken somewhere while trying not to
seem lewd.
She
wipes her face, smearing the black tears on her cheeks. “My
tears are my blood. I don’t have any other bodily fluids.
It’s annoying, I can’t even cry properly.” Then with a
single downwards beat of her wings she pulls herself to her
feet as if she were a puppet hauled by its strings. Stepping
over me she then turns and stands at the far edge of the
platform with her back towards me.
I push
myself up on my elbows and look down at my shirt front.
There are three small black stains about the size of
quarters where her tears – or rather her blood – has soaked
into the fabric. “Don’t touch it,” she says without turning.
“My blood is corrupting. If it remains too long in contact
with your skin you will fall ill and burn.” Holding my shirt
away from my chest with my fingers I flip myself over onto
my knees so it can hang free, then keeping a nervous eye on
her back I start unbuttoning. I then leave the shirt in a
ball on the platform and stand. She turns finally and
approaches me, inspects my bare chest then bends down and
picks up the cast-off shirt and using a clean corner wipes
at a blue smudge on my skin.
Her
tears are not black after all, but cobalt blue. I suddenly
realize that she must be like an albino, free of skin
pigments and her skin and eye color are simply the color of
her blood, and her hair is likewise entirely white. And
armed with that understanding the same can be said of her
wings which suddenly appear a less intimidating midnight
blue.
“You
should be fine,” she says.
There
are so many questions I could ask her now. As a machine she
is if anything more interesting than an angel, certainly
more accessible being no longer a manifestation of God’s
eternal mystery and an article of faith. Is there a chance I
can understand her now as a fellow creature? What could
people learn from her existence, from her thoughts about us?
She
glances up at me at first in embarrassment, followed by a
hint of amusement. Moments ago I was a toy to be enjoyed and
consumed, now she’s toying with my heart again. If the
object is to keep me in a state of doubt then she’s doing a
fine job.
“I leak
sometimes,” she says finally. “When I eventually run low I
have to tank up or else really bad things can happen to my
body.”
For a
moment I’ve lost the thread of the conversation, then I
realize she’s trying to explain her need for blood. Clearly
she doesn’t make her own. And why should she? She’s a
machine. “I understand. You need to drink blood, you asked
me to bring you some. But why come here – couldn’t you just
take what you need?”
She
glances at me side-long and I am suddenly sharply stung with
the realization that her preference really is for
human. “I could take it,” she begins. “In moments of
desperation – as when I’ve been shot or badly damaged – I
have taken it and more than a quart.”
“You –
you’ve been shot?” I blurt. Unbelievable! I’m
envisioning someone in a duck blind with a shotgun drawing
down on her as if she were destined for a trophy room. “How
could anyone do such a thing! Good Lord, and you a woman
besides!”
Her
face still slightly tear-stained she bursts suddenly into
high laugher, backs away from me and places her hands over
her mouth and giggles. It is girlish and disarming but I’m
still struck with anger and dismay, my fear of a moment ago
set aside. Are men really so uncivilized as to shoot
something like her from the sky? Why have I never heard of
this?
She
waves her hands at me while the laughter trails off and she
composes herself. “I’m sorry I shouldn’t be laughing, being
shot is no fun. But I suddenly saw myself through your eyes
being the target of sports hunters like I were some sort of
pigeon. It was funny.” After a moment she continues, “Lots
of people have reasons to shoot at me, and plenty have done
so nor can I blame them. When I’m not behaving like a cat
burglar and breaking into churches I’m a soldier.” Then she
pauses and looking at me reflectively adds, “And perhaps a
destroying angel, were I to go in with my halo lit, though
I’ve never thought of it that way before.”
A
soldier? I have to say she has the temperament for it. “When
have you fought?” I ask, uncertain if this is safe territory
but needing a distraction. I lower myself to sit at the edge
of the dais, feeling a little dizzy.
She
watches me sit and says, “As a rule I stay clear of such
things. People need to decide for themselves what is right
and wrong and how to get along. However sometimes I can’t
turn away so I choose a side and I fight. And then, I get
shot at. Usually by people good at it, and so sometimes –
usually – I end up with holes and I leak.”
“I’m a
simulation of a living thing,” she continues. “I shouldn’t
be ending lives when I don’t have one myself. So to answer
your question, my promise to myself is that the blood I
require to keep me intact must be freely given going
forward. It’s how I evaluate if I’m still worthy, if this
lie of my being alive is worth the price in blood. I have no
natural right to anyone else’s life, not even an animal’s.
And you know, this silly thing does keep me honest...”
Without
any outward sign or effort her halo re-forms over her head.
It blinks a few times as if seeking some ignition point,
accompanied by a pronounced ringing like a hammer hitting an
anvil, then it bursts into a bright blaze before settling
down to a stead glow. She reaches up and positions a hand
next to it, not quite touching the edge. In moments the
beads and bands are working their way inside it again and
she lowers her hand, looks down at me and shrugs with a
smile. I can see now that this is an effect of some inner
process. I was able to misinterpret it and make of this
machine a mythical creature. Make her an angel.
While I
watch, she walks to the far edge of the dais and lets
herself down in the usual way, via the stairs. A glance my
direction and she turns and walks past me toward the side
door. As she passes me she raises a wing over me and the
lower edge brushes past my head. The scent of her is like
rich earth, neither exactly alive nor entirely dead, as
seems fitting. She pauses at the door and fingers the broken
door jam. “Sorry for all the – damages. I’ll be going.”
Is she
going now because she had got what she had come for? Because
we had fought? Because she had revealed to me awkward
details of her life? Because she had cried? Whatever the
reason, we both know she will never return. I suffer a
sudden sense of loss because we couldn’t bridge some chasm
of trust and recognition, and she knows this better than I
no doubt. I look at the door jam as well and say, “Wait a
moment.”
I get
up and reach into my pockets and pull out my key ring. She
turns at the sound and watches me curiously. Fumbling, I go
over the keys until I find the one I want and work it off
the ring. “Here, take this,” I say as I cross the distance
between us offering her the key. She extends her hand and I
place it in her palm. She looks down at it and a look of
pain crosses her face.
“It
means nothing,” I say to her. “Except maybe I don’t have to
repair the door next time.”
“I
see,” she says and she’s next going to say something like
There cannot be a next time but then she stops and looks
at it again. It glitters a dull gold against the sky blue of
her hand. “I bet you know that story in the Bible, where
some guy has to wrestle with an angel.”
“Yes I
do,” I reply, trying to hide my surprise. “His name in the
Bible is Jacob.”
She
nods and replies, “I feel like Jacob might have felt.” Then
she looks up at me and says, “You know, in fairness, you
should have turned on your halo at some point.”
Now it
is my turn to laugh. It comes out of nowhere, like I’ve been
inflated by some pressure into a strange shape and then
punctured and laughter escapes and lets me return to what I
was before. Or rather, what I am. A sinner. A groundskeeper.
A man.
She
smiles up at me shyly, closes her hand around the key and
turns again to go.
“We
have choir on the second Sunday of the month,” I say
quickly. Is the moment reduced to small talk? I’m no good
talking to women, never was. “I mean – you don’t have to
attend services or anything. I just thought maybe – if you
happen by – the singing is not real good, but it fills the
spirit.”
I feel
terrible. What I had wanted to say was The one who has
wrestled with an angel is myself but we’ve already
hashed that one out, and I’m only too aware that I nearly
died in the doing. I start working on my good-byes instead.
How does one say, in few words, what won’t fit into many
hours of explanation? It can’t be done. That’s why we have
to say the important things any time we can, say them
while we can. While I’m lost in my inadequacy I feel a
cool touch on my cheek.
Her
small hand, on my face.
“You
sing,” she says softly. “And I’ll listen.”
I admit
that she must be a machine, in the end. And given her
situation it is her choice to make really. Though in my
heart I will always wonder.
If the
Lord were to put angels among us He would make them
from some thing, He would make them some how.
And then I imagine He would make them both kind and fierce
in equal measure and grant them the wisdom to choose. And
then He would make them to be meek when at rest and militant
in the face of cruelty. And perhaps to protect humanity’s
fragile sense of identity and purpose He would make the
angels unaware of what they really are. He might make them
think that they are just machines and lower even than
animals, unworthy. And He would certainly cause them to
fiercely defend their understanding of their selves, to seek
isolation and self-doubt as a defense against license, as a
way to sustain the illusion that He has abandoned all
creation to its fate. Surely, only a real angel could suffer
so and endure. Then and now and forever, until the heat
death of the universe.
If I
can see it then everyone else can see it, too. Yet she
endures so perhaps never knowing nor suspecting herself that
she is no less than what she appears to be; a machine indeed
though somehow harboring the immortal, sublime and
indomitable spirit of an archangel.
And
thus it seems I must come full circle, though I am perhaps a
better man for the journey.
-----
It is
the second Sunday of the month and I’m going to choir with
my wife and her sister, the three of us taking the narrow
path down the hill to church. We are all gathering spring
flowers and the women will make wreaths from them to wear in
their hair like halos. The two of them are chatting and
laughing and happy to be women together. I have a handful of
the pale yellow flowers and I hand these to my wife, who
accepts them with a gracious smile. I bend down and pick one
more, consider it carefully, and then walk the short
distance to the side door of the Old Church and leave it at
the threshold. I glance up but the door is neither broken
not ajar, nor would I expect it to be since she has the key
to unlock it herself. But I promised myself as we left the
house that I wouldn’t pry nor peer in to see if I might
catch any faint glow from the shadows. As a man of faith I
know the importance of believing. When I return to join the
others I say, “Sing ye well, Christian daughters, for we are
together in worship and all is right in God’s Heaven and on
the good earth, and I feel in my heart that today we sing to
the pleasure of an angel!”
And as
God is my witness, I do believe we end up sounding pretty
good.
The character
of Fortran and related themes, situations and scenes are
adaptations from a larger work titled “Darkatana: A Black
Tale” by Cat Woodmansee, in-prep.
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