Chapter 1
Chapter
One
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Edict Two: Comfort the souls you ferry across.
The veil parts, and I step onto the freeway through smoke and a steady rain. The stench of burnt metal stings my nose, and ???∞? appears beside me in his black suit, our uniform of sorts. Before us, cars are twisted, overturned, and broken in the chaotic aftermath of a multi-car crash.
I know where my assignment is, but the pain and fear and sorrow of all the humans here makes me unsteady on my feet, makes me wish I could go to all of them to lessen their pain. But like most of the Elders, ???∞? seems unaffected. He even smiles at me.
“Always good to see you, ?????,” he says.
Sirens wail as he slicks back his wet, black hair, tucking it behind his ears.
“A lot of car crashes lately.” He looks up to the gray skies, one blue eye open and the other squinting against the rain.
“Humans struggle to control their vehicles on these wet roads.”
“More opportunities for us to serve.” It’s crass in the face of such suffering, but I believe it to be what ???∞? expects me to say.
He nods. The car beside us explodes into an orange fireball in my peripheral vision, illuminating the dim morning and reflecting off the arriving emergency vehicles. ???∞? and I mark it, but the heat and flames pass across us like a breeze.
He lifts his chin to me before turning toward it. “I’m a bit late on mine. Better nip him across. Want to join me later on the waves?”
“Maybe.” My assignment is taking her last breaths in the crunched-up car ten feet ahead of me, and my hands stuff into my pockets to tumble through my collection of human oddments.
I feel called to comfort my souls before they pass—not everyone’s interpretation of Edict Two—but I don’t want to offend ???∞? by rushing off.
“I’ll let you know,” I say quickly but carefully.
He nods and turns, and I slip in and out of the veil to move faster into my assigned soul’s sightline.
I occasionally enjoy surfing on the humans’ ocean with ???∞?—after all, he’s my closest compeer.
But like all my compeers, he is an Angel and not a soul like me.
And because he’s been on assignment for millennia longer than I have, our duties are quotidian to him. Unmiraculous.
But every summons is a chance for me to learn more about these remarkable beings.
Like 82.5% of my assignments thus far, my dying human and her periphery are covered in her bright red blood.
My fingers twitch, longing to drag through the crimson liquid, to study that which I declined for myself ages ago.
To understand what holds these ephemeral marvels together.
And why the red blood must be inside their bodies for them to be alive, and how, whenever it escapes its bounds and flows freely, they die.
How does it all work? And why do they struggle against death?
Why do they struggle against everything?
Her eyes are closed, and her breathing is labored and diminishing.
This one has many, many etheric cords in shining golds, bronzes, and silvers emanating from her head and belly, disappearing in the distance to connect to other souls.
She has loved deeply and has been loved well.
I smile softly and lay my hand against her aura, near her arm.
“All is well, Chantelle,” I say quietly.
Her eyes flutter open and blink slowly at me. They are large and brown, full of fear and fierceness, denial and such regret it makes my chest hurt. Her head shakes, no. “No,” she says, laying her head back and shutting her eyes tightly.
I send some of Our Heavenly Mother’s gentle comfort toward her soul, and her shoulders relax. “You are loved, Chantelle, and you are safe. I am here. I won’t leave you.”
I feel her soul acquiesce and let go. Her heartbeat goes silent, and her spirit’s eyes open, superimposed upon her body’s closed eyes.
They are large and brown too, and they focus on me.
So many human-experienced souls come back to their true life in this way, unwilling to leave their carbon forms behind.
Is it because they’ve forgotten where they began? Or does something they leave behind transcend whatever memories they may have of their true home beyond the veil?
Why do they cling so tightly to pain when paradise awaits?
“All is well, Chantelle,” I repeat, holding my soft smile. I reach my hand toward her, and she looks at it, takes it. Relief releases a breath from my chest. I dread the day a soul refuses my hand.
Her spirit stands with me, and her gaze passes across the grotesque scene around us and her own body lying at her feet. “It’s over?”
“Yes, it’s over. You have done so well.” I don’t know whether she means the wreck or her time on Earth, but both are over.
Her sorrowful eyes pull at my heart, and I squeeze her hand and transfer a modicum of heavenly peace to her, though not enough to muddle her thinking.
“Your mother, Georgia, and your brother, James, are waiting for you.” I gesture to the light pouring from the veil that ???∞? and his soul have just gone through and congratulate myself for speaking those human familial relations—mother, brother—correctly.
“You lived a beautiful life, and now it’s time to rest. Are you ready to go home?
” I hold my breath, remembering to smile with my eyes and raise my eyebrows to convey excitement like I’ve seen humans do.
But her expression clouds over, and she shakes her head. “No. No, my father. He lives alone. I have to tell him. I have to let him know I’m going.” Her eyes plead with me.
I bite my lip. There are only four edicts to being a psychopomp, and technically, letting her tell her father goodbye doesn’t break a single one.
Rather, it cracks one of the not-quite-edicts, the prudent guidelines the Elders formulated over millennia for ferrying souls through the veil.
I should know—I have them all inscribed in the notebook I carry inside my suit jacket’s pocket.
On the other hand, souls with hurt-ties to people they leave behind or things they’ve left undone can have trouble transitioning, and I don’t want that for Chantelle. And she hasn’t technically crossed the veil yet.
Heavenly beings don’t dance upon the head of a pin, but sometimes their decisions do.
“Of course.” We slip through time and space like thought and reappear in a bedroom where an old man with hair as brown as hers sleeps in the still-early morning hours. I breathe a sign of relief; dream vision is an ephemeral gray area, and even less of a potential violation.
She leans over the bed, her hand grasping mine tightly like a lifeline. “Daddy, I was in an accident,” she begins.
He can’t hear her, of course. She won’t learn how to communicate with him herself until she reconnects with Our Heavenly Mother across the veil.
But I let her speak, and I send a vision-Chantelle into her father’s dreams to communicate her words: she’s okay, she’s sorry she’s gone, she loves him, and he’d better take good care of himself because she wants to be with him soon, but not too soon.
Transmuting Chantelle’s message into dream vision has me aching both with the effort and with the heavy, messy, exquisite tangle of her human love, which can only ever be vicarious for me. I deliver it all safely to her father’s soul, leaving myself a clean slate.
She turns and smiles at me. “I’m ready now.”
With my free hand, I gesture to open the veil and commute Chantelle across into the waiting arms of her earth brother and her…I pull out my notebook and check my notes. Her mother. That’s the word I’m always forgetting, as it sounds so close to brother.
My task complete, I withdraw from the joyful homecoming to record the mission in my notebook. I’ve recorded every one since my first, even though I’m not required to. I write Chantelle’s father’s name and location, too. Will he remember the dream? How will he mark her passing?
I write the slender words, “Chantelle LeBlanc: mourning ceremony?” I’ve never been to one—I believe they are called funerals. Being around that much human grief has seemed far heavier than I can bear. Much like I chose not to live a human life out of fear for what I might suffer.
I’m nothing like Chantelle. She was so brave.
But the longer I stare at the words I’ve just written, the thicker my throat feels. Grief will be there, but so will love—the kind I have excluded myself from. Maybe I will go to her mourning ceremony and be brave in this small way, for Chantelle.
And perhaps, a little for me.
A soft chime snags my attention. With one last glance at Chantelle smiling transcendentally, wrapped in the glory of both human and heavenly love, I sigh.
Envious? Perhaps. When you’ve spent the ages meditating in a near-nascent state, you have precious few compeers who even notice if you’re around, even after working with them for a few decades.
No one misses me when we’re apart. No one, save Our Heavenly Mother, loves anyone as fiercely as humans love each other and their animals.
What must that be like? To love and be loved in that reckless, messy way?
I sigh and slip my black notebook back into my jacket pocket. Not much sense in meditating on that. I made my choice eons ago.
A second chime rings again from nowhere and everywhere, and I duck between the veil toward my next assignment.