Chapter Thirty
“SOMETIMES THESE DAYS IT IS DIFFICULT TO REMEMBER MY brOTHER. HIS FACE, HIS SMILE, HIS VOICE WILL COME TO ME IN FITS AND STARTS. BUT STRANGELY, I CAN ALWAYS PERFECTLY RECALL THE SONG HE USED TO HUM, CONSTANTLY, FROM THE MOMENT HE DISCOVERED HIS VOICE. AND OFTEN AS HE DID SO, I FOUND HIM TURNING AND STARING OFF TO THE NORTH.”
I sleep.
I don’t plan on it, but I feel so exhausted and wrung out by the time we get back to the row house that I collapse on the bed upstairs and instantly slip into unconsciousness.
Mama sings.
I stand with her in the chapel in Covenant.
She sings Trinity’s song and it rises to greet her, growing louder and louder until it vibrates painfully in my ears and shakes the ground beneath us.
The statues of the Twelve Heralds tremble, cracks spiderwebbing across their surface, and then suddenly they crumble and flake away into piles of rust. The base of their dais splits wide, blue-white light pouring from it.
I bend low over the light, peering down inside the split dais.
There’s a swath of green—pure, rich green—and little stalks of purple flowers.
The creature from the Aaldenberg knot sits among them, a bushy tail curled around its body, big triangular ears swiveling as it looks up at me with amber-colored eyes.
A huge hand lands on my shoulder. Gasping, I spin around.
Herald Covenant looms over me, twice as tall as anyone I’ve ever met. His mouth doesn’t move, but his voice echoes around me.
Proof of life.
I start awake, cracking my skull against the headboard of the bed as I jerk upward. With a grunt, I sit up, rubbing at the sore spot on the side of my head as I look around for Halle and Kelda. The other side of the bed is empty and so is the chair, so maybe they—
My sleep-starved brain catches up to the rest of me, and reality sweeps through me like a vicious wind.
There is no they. Because Halle is gone.
Outside, Concord’s chapel bells start to ring, pealing through the sunlit air, and for one heart-seizing minute, they sound like other bells. Urgent bells that herald the arrival of Archangels.
But no. No, these are just the usual tones calling residents to late-morning service. There’s no threat descending from the turquoise sky. No sharp metal wings blotting out the sun, coming to take the little I have left.
Not yet, anyway. Judging by the light, it’s been almost a full day since the first Archangel landed. It won’t be long before it’s missed, before it’s traced back to Concord. We’re going to need to get out of here, today. I just need to figure out a direction to go in.
Still half bleary with sleep, I stumble downstairs.
The living room is empty, remnants of the Archangel’s frame still scattered about, but I hear Kelda’s voice and follow the sound to the parlor.
She and Dani sit cross-legged on the floor across from each other, that small bushy creature from the Aaldenberg knot padding about on oversize paws.
I freeze in shock, staring at it. I knew it would rewrite something in me to see it awake, and even so I’m still not prepared.
The only organic living creatures on Trinity are humans, and this obviously isn’t like us.
I don’t have a word for it. Creature feels close, but not quite right.
It seems like I should know it, like I’d dreamed it once, but I can’t quite catch the shape of it.
Kelda’s face is puffy, her eyes still red-rimmed and tired, but there’s the slightest hint of a smile as she watches this thing. She wiggles her fingers over the floor, and the creature tilts its head, its big, pointed ears pricked forward, and then pounces.
Dani laughs out loud, a high, bright sound, and I find myself tracing the lines of her face, the spark of happiness in her eyes.
She’s always been beautiful in a different way than Orion, with an underlying sharpness to her face and an edge in every quick glance.
But here, in this moment, she’s softer, lighter, her guard down for once as she scoops up the creature and drops it into Kelda’s lap.
She catches me staring and winks at me, and an embarrassed flush rises in my cheeks. “Can you believe this thing? I’ve never seen anything like it. Orion said he found it—”
“In the Aaldenberg knot,” I say, quickly looking away. “I know. When did it wake up?”
“It’s not an it, it’s a her,” Kelda says, running her fingers through the soft red-brown hairs along its back.
She clutches it close to her chest, bending down to lay her cheek on its narrow chest. Like she wants—or maybe needs—to hear its tiny heartbeat and quick breaths.
It—she licks and nibbles at Kelda’s ear, making tiny squeaking sounds. “And her name is Ember.”
Dani puts her hands up, surrendering the point to Kelda. “Ember here apparently woke up, like, an hour ago.”
Right when I was sleeping. Did I dream about it because I knew it would wake? Or did it wake because I’d dreamed it?
If Halle were here, if I’d been the one to fall into the Depths instead of her, she’d know what to say to Kelda. Something compassionate to soften the haunted look in her face. She’d know just how to hug her in a way that made Kelda feel loved and protected and not pitied.
I don’t know how to do any of that. The grief splitting my sternum is too cavernous; I can hardly breathe around it, let alone find a way to comfort anyone else.
“I … need to talk to Orion,” I say, and step out of the parlor, following the hallway to the room at the back of the house.
The Aaldenberg knot is on the table, looking exactly the same as before, and Orion sits in a chair next to it, frowning as he twirls the little flower between his fingers and stares down at the engraved tablet.
He sits up as I come into the room, his expression immediately shifting from thoughtful to concerned. “Hey, how are—”
I slash a hand through the air, cutting him off. “No.”
“Got it.” He leans back again, waving at the puzzle of items in front of him.
“I was just going over this all again, trying to figure out … Well, honestly, any of it. I keep thinking there has to be something more here than just a plant, a troublesome fuzz ball, and an extremely short and unsatisfactory message that’s possibly from a Herald but maybe not. ”
He sighs, tossing the tablet onto the table with a clatter, and I pick it up, turning the polished silver rectangle over in my hands and rereading the words etched into its surface.
To whomever finds this,
Proof of life. There are answers at the gate. Find me there.
Signed, Samuel Covenant
“The Gate of Heaven.”
Orion frowns up at me. “What about it?”
I hold up the tablet, pointing out the words. “‘There are answers at the gate.’ Meaning: the Gate of Heaven.”
He humphs, skeptical. “Yeah, that was my only real guess so far, too. But it doesn’t make any sense.
There’s no such thing as a literal Gate of Heaven.
It’s just a concept to make the afterlife feel more real and concrete.
And then they can slap it on banners and stained glass windows and preachers’ robes for show. ”
He’s not wrong. If you ask a hundred people on Trinity where exactly the Gate of Heaven is, they’d all probably just point vaguely upward, into the sky.
It’s just the place somewhere where Archangels come from and the souls of the dead are gathered from the Depths before they pass into the Heralds’ heavenly afterlife.
Except it has to be more than that. It has to be an actual, physical place that the Archangels take saints to, not some vague heavenly realm, because something there is taking us and turning us into Archangels.
And I know down to my bones that whatever it is will send more after me.
Now that they know a saint is out here, they’re not going to stop, which means Kelda, Orion, Dani—they’re all at risk.
My mind flicks back to Sorcha, gaunt and empty and trapped in that cage of monstrous metal, stripped of everything she used to be.
I think about Gabriel Cirillo, taken away six years ago.
How young he’d been. How he’d reminded me of Kelda.
They would be close to the same age now, if he were still here.
Even if I do the impossible and find a way to shake the Archangels for good, what happens to the next saint?
And the one after that? And the one after that?
Strings of kids stretching into infinity, robbed of their lives and their futures, ground into bone and blood for the very religion that claims to venerate them.
Orion. Mama. Dani. Halle. They all stood between me and the greedy grasp of the chapels.
Halle even lost her life because of it. Why did I deserve to be protected when none of the other saints were?
Who will protect the ones who come after me?
If they don’t have a Mama or a Halle, an Orion or a Dani, the chapels will collect them, and the Archangels will eat them up.
Unless someone stands up for them. And puts a stop to this fucking cycle once and for all.
“You said this was really old.” I shrug, putting the tablet down. “Maybe it was a real place back when he wrote it.”
Orion tucks the little purple flower into the tiny cup of water we can spare for it. “Maybe it was,” he admits. “But that does jack-all for us now.”
“Still…” I move a few steps closer, leaning against the edge of the table and staring down at him. As much as possible anyway given how tall Orion is, even while sitting. “It’s not like we really have any other leads…”
He chuckles, his grin big and broad. When I keep staring him down with that same expression, though, the laughter fades into shock. “You’re serious. You want to try and find the Gate of Heaven?”
“Ghoulie, you’ve got to be joking.”