Chapter 4 #2
The young angel reached the desk, taking the wooden back of the chair and tugging it aside; it was rather simple, which was odd.
All the handiwork in Heaven was typically more ornate, even after the war — there was nothing to do in paradise except pray and focus on the details of every piece of labor.
Enoch must’ve had this made recently, quickly.
Humans always work with such fatal urgency.
Dina saw that there was an open book before him and touched too-thin papers before feeling the boards at the end, which were flimsy and nothing like the old leather that bound his fairytales.
Dina didn’t know yet about work meant for mass production; he was an angel.
Though he was a sinner, alone in Heaven without friends, he was an angel.
For the first year in the dark, Dina mostly copied, following Metatron’s orders and listening to the star’s as well.
‘Good,’ the star cooed when Dina parroted new phrases to him.
‘You’re learning well.’ And he began to formulate what the largest branches of language might be, though imperfectly — focusing on surface-level similarities such as tonal use, rather than similarity in syllables.
He was no angel of words; Dina didn’t believe he was the angel of anything.
‘Oh, do you think so?’ Scratching, scratching — the angel’s quill on paper filled the silences between Dina’s own breaths and the star in his mind.
‘I think you could be the angel of anything you like.’
‘I want to be the angel of whatever my Father desires.’
‘Why? Make something of yourself instead.’
‘That’s how the devil speaks.’ And Dina bookmarked a page, thinking to return to it after he slept in the cot that Metatron had thrown down two weeks after imprisoning the angel. ‘I remember it. How he speaks. It’s one of the few things I remember of before the war.’
‘God will never tell you what you were made for.’ Before Dina could reply, the star added, ‘But if you don’t want to decide what you’re for on your own, then I will help you.’
Dina’s lips twitched at the ends, wanting to smile. ‘You will?’
‘All angels are tools, weapons. I’ll wield you if God won’t.’
‘I want to be wielded.’ He would like to be used.
‘I’ll make use of you.’
The second year passed quicker. Metatron seemed happier in an empty house, an angel in its basement to do the work he didn’t want.
Dina had largely accustomed to the darkness now, and to the lovely praises of his star, and a few tongues.
Unfortunately, he had spent too long becoming half-conversational in ancient languages — according to both the star and Metatron — which were apparently not spoken on Earth anymore.
Appropriately, Dina was told these were dead languages.
‘How is it dead? Where did it go?’
‘All its speakers have died or moved on.’
‘We angels move on from things, but we can always return when we wish. Do you think the humans will return one day to their old ways of speaking?’
‘Humans are like angels — forgetful, but they’re not as skilled at recording their history. You can hardly remember your infancy, such is the case with humans. They don’t remember their first tribes or cultures. They’ll invent stories.’
‘I invent stories too, sometimes, when I want to feel better about the past.’ It feels wonderful to admit to someone. ‘We’re not so different from humans.’ Dina missed his fairytale books, but Enoch wouldn’t give them to him.
‘You miss paradise.’
‘I don’t remember it.’
‘But you long for it.’
‘Terribly.’
On the third year, the star reminded Dina — though he’d done this many times before — to study human history, but the angel distracted himself with a new language.
‘I will get to it soon, I promise. Star.’ He didn’t know his name.
‘There are so many ways that the humans write. Some of it is so similar to the way we’ve written in the past. It’s like they’re repeating our history. ’
‘For the angels, the world ended twice. Once, when God created the stars, and a second time when Satan fell. The humans have suffered an end when it all flooded. They must all know to burn now.’
As Dina tried to sleep — at some unknown hour in maybe the fourth or fifth year — he lay sprawled on the cot, thinking of a story he’d read of a princess in a tower, trapped, waiting.
‘She was beautiful with long, endless hair. One day, a prince heard her singing, and he tricked her into letting down her hair before climbing up to meet her.’ ‘He must’ve fucked her.
’ ‘That’s a sin.’ ‘But it’s what humans do, and it’s what the sinners do, and what the fallen angels do.
You’re a sinner. What’s stopping you from doing anything?
’ ‘God will be angry at me.’ “He will be angry at you no matter how you act, Dina.’ On the sixth year, Dina recounted another children’s story to the star, and the star framed it as a tale of lust once more.
Dina listened longer this time, one hand over his stomach, thinking and also not thinking.
‘You should know some of the evils of the word,’ said the star, ‘before wickedness is gone forever.’
‘But won’t I become wicked and God will do away with me too?’
‘You will be done away with no matter what. You know that you’ve died already, Dina. You will die again. Eternal life is to die an infinite number of times.’
On the seventh year, the star offered his name, which was Apsinthos.
‘The world should end, the world should end.’
‘You will do it.’
‘God will be happy?’
‘I will be happy.’
‘I do like you. Very much.’
The eighth year — the languages with the most numerous speakers in the world were perfectly known to Dina now.
Impatient, however, Apsinthos began to urge Dina: ‘That is more than enough now. You need to visit Earth. You’ve spent enough time here.
Human life is so short. What has been mere seconds to us has been enough for millions of births and thousands of deaths on Earth.
You must leave.’ And so when Enoch next opened the latch and called out, the young angel hurried to look up at him, veil gone, hair frayed, unwashed for days, eyes bloodshot.
Parting his lips to ask if he could be let out now, but Enoch shuddered at the sight of him, told him he’d send down a bucket of water.
The next time that Dina begged, Enoch insisted the young angel was not done.
‘We’re losing time. Dina. Dina, the world’s apocalypse will be halted by those who don’t understand why it must end. You must leave this place.’
‘The world must end. The world must end.’
‘Attack Metatron!’
‘Beneath his skin, he is like chariots, fire, and wheels. I am nothing but wings. He will make me dust.’ He slept little now, a plate of food untouched and stacked with another full plate at the front of the desk, which already was buried in a disarray of paper, ink, books, scrolls.
‘And I am to serve him. When he stepped into Heaven, the Lord’s booming voice called out for us to serve him. ’
‘You must act, Dina.’
‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’
And it was on the tenth year of the youngest angel’s imprisonment that archangel Uriel finally returned.
He did it with a detesting, exhausted sigh as he landed by the great fountain at the center of the eternally divine city.
Then, he looked all about himself, saw some white-robed angels who'd been passing by, who all staggered to a stop to bow and intertwine their hands together in respect.
If Metatron had done some good, Uriel supposed, it was that the other angels now seemed to appreciate the stern, scornful prince of wisdom some more.
Their old Uriel had never struck them or snarled, at least not in excess, and he was an angel like them, not a man who argued angels were not capable of thought and were all instruments for human salvation.
An angel took Uriel’s arm — tight, urgent.
Tilting his head to the side, the eldest of the heavenly host quirked a brow at a smaller angel of wavy hair, the color of almond, gathered into two braids.
His face was freckled extensively — instantly, Uriel thought of Dina — even if this was clearly the archangel Gabriel.
Like everyone else, he donned a colorless tunic, but a rebellious white lily was tucked by his left ear, whispering, humming.
“Uriel—” the youngest prince called, his brows curved in worry, his pale pink lips opening, then closing. “You’ve returned from Earth.”
“Yes,” said Uriel briskly, looking to their surroundings again to see the same Heaven he’d left years ago.
It was quite the contrast to the deplorable plane in which the living humans toiled; a part of him was still shuddering at all that he’d witnessed.
“What is it?” Uriel tore his arm away, swallowing thick.
‘That is why you sent me to Earth, isn’t it, Father?
To see and to shudder?’ But Uriel had shuddered in Heaven, too, in the last many centuries.
Every time he noted all the new homes that the angels had built, sitting empty and waiting for human to fill them — Uriel would feel all his blood run cold.
“Do you have a message for me, messenger?” It could have been a joke, or it could have been an insult; Uriel wasn’t sure.