Chapter 39
Feather
SOME YEARS LATER
Ilistened to Sunny’s voice while I worked on my cloud mural, fighting back a smile as she recounted the story of what the Guides had recorded as The Book of Feather: The Redeeming of an Unworthy Realm.
The Guides were really into the self-flagellation thing, and liked to be reminded of how awful they’d been, almost to a concerning degree.
It reminded me of the kinky shadow beast I’d left facing the wall in the sex dungeons of Sanctuary all those years ago.
I wondered where that little pervert had gotten to.
Whether he’d been redeemed and gone on to wherever, or was still haunting the corridors of the abandoned realm…
but not every thread of a story could be tied up, not if the story was true.
Or if it hadn’t ended yet.
I glanced at the void, examining it for any changes.
Nothing. It was so early in the morning that no one was up except me…
and Sunny, Precious, and Shadow, who had surprised me by already being awake and romping around the fields.
I loved seeing Precious play like she was still a toddler, though she was almost as tall as me now.
I shook my head and turned back to my work, only half-listening to Sunny. The edge of the Limen was so far away now, I could only just see it, so I stood to make certain my latest hot-glue arch was lined up before I spread more glitter around.
The angelic sigils I kept making between the semi-circular designs, even though I still didn’t even understand them all, flung light out into the void as soon as they were sprinkled, in brilliant, silent shouts for attention.
They seemed to flow from somewhere inside my mind, or my soul.
I liked to think they originated in whatever parts of me had been melded with Arabella, long ago.
“And then once your exceptionally brave Tata Sunny promised to take care of you, your mommy went back all by herself to save Papa Gavriel and Baba Rumple and all our friends from the old realm. Papa Gavriel made these big golden swords out of his wings.” Sunny mimed tearing off her wings, and then fighting with invisible swords as Precious sat on Shadow’s back, taking rides around the newest part of the Limen, where my mandala had reached.
The liminal realm had been the size of a bank lobby the first time I’d seen it; now it was many miles long, and at least a mile wide, running the length of the cloud wall between the Limen and the Celestial Realm. There were homes and winding pathways now, and even a playground for Precious.
The other Angeli had been wary of her and Shadow for the first year or so, but Perception had trained the dog beautifully, and once they got to know Presh, most of them had fallen just as in love with her as I was.
The Guides in particular had taken it on themselves to act as unofficial aunts and uncles.
Since she’d already been living with her “Tata” Sunny and Hope for months by the time we’d arrived, it had seemed natural for her to move into their bungalow next door, though Mikhail groused about it for at least a year.
It helped that she called him her Best Daddy, though she usually did that when she was trying to talk him into making her something with his naming chime.
She’d begun calling Hope Mama long ago, and Presh proudly told everyone that Sunny was her “real mom” as well as me. I supposed a child with three fathers wouldn’t see anything unusual about also having three mothers.
Some days, I could tell Presh chafed under the combined weight of so many parental eyes.
We’d all agreed, after the third time she’d tried to fly off into the void on an adventure—though she’d claimed she was running away to check on an imaginary friend—that she needed to be in school.
Imriel and Perception communicated via songs passed through the Celestial gate almost daily, and Imriel gave detailed instructions on the sorts of lessons he insisted she have, including complicated songs about Celestial histories, ethics, and control of power and balance.
Perception was her primary teacher now, which meant she half-hated him. He never allowed her to slack off.
“Imriel says I’m too easy on her,” he’d confided in me six months before. “I can’t be her friend when what she needs is knowledge. Preparation.”
I didn’t ask about preparation for what. But I knew Imriel was channeling soulfire into the Limen at a ridiculous rate, as if there were some unknown deadline looming. He kept pestering Perception to make sure Precious had everything she needed. But needed for what?
I, for one, was going to let her be a child.
Shadow kneeled down a few yards away, so his passenger’s legs could reach the ground, and she slid off and ran toward Sunny, who was sitting on a bench behind me.
Shadow had grown far wider than a pony now, and from the size of his paws, he still wasn’t quite done.
Temple dogs in the Celestial Realm didn’t grow this big, Perception had assured us. Or this color.
“Keep going,” Presh urged Sunny, as she picked her way carefully around my still-warm cloud art to sit beside me. She had a handful of pale flowers she’d plucked from somewhere, and began braiding them into a wreath for Shadow’s head.
From her perch behind me, Sunny went on, “Then they all met at the gate, and one of the shadows—”
“Valor,” Presh interrupted. “Don’t leave off the names. They’re important.”
“Yes, Valor. He saved your Papa Gavriel at the very last second. He became completely purified at that instant—”
“Like I will, Mom?” Presh interrupted again. She popped a marshmallow in her mouth and stared intently at my new designs, tilting her head at the angelic sigils.
I didn’t answer. I’d told her a year before, when she was crying at how different she looked from everyone else in the Limen, that of course she would be purified someday.
Truth had been standing nearby, as well as Sunny, and they had both gotten violently ill.
The bitter uncovering of the lie had revealed a terrible truth: that Presh would never ascend.
I wasn’t sure what lay in her future, but it was not the Celestial Realm.
Sunny hummed. “Do you want me to keep telling the story or not?” Presh nodded, and flopped down to her stomach on the wispy silver grass, still weaving the flower crown.
“Even though Valor could have ascended right then, he chose to stay behind with Revel, to give your Mommy and Daddies a chance to escape to the Limen and get back to you.”
At this point in the story, when Sunny had told it before, Presh had always cheered. Today, though, she sighed heavily.
“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” I asked.
For a moment, she didn’t answer, only studied the sky, the vast, empty expanse of the void that surrounded us on all sides, save the cloud wall that separated us from the Celestial Realm.
Then she said quietly, “I feel sorry for Revel. He’s stuck there, and he never did anything wrong.
Valor as well. Even if he was a bad guy before, he got good, right?
He changed.” I could tell the answer to this was vital.
“Yes. He did become good. You know, we don’t know what happened to Revel or Valor. Maybe they went to Earth through the Flight Hall. Maybe they ended up defeating all the Abyss beasts and are still sweeping up the mess.”
She giggled. “Maybe they found the old nursery that Papa Gavriel made me. And they’ve been eating horrible yak yogurt from the magic box for years and years.
” I closed my eyes while she went on, her hands moving in an oddly hypnotic pattern as she wove flowers into the crown on her lap.
“Maybe Revel’s waiting there, for his princess to come find them.
And then they’ll all go together to fight the void monsters.
And they’ll kill them all, every one of them, for making Revel have to stay away from…
” She broke off with a tiny exhalation, almost a sob, and I opened my eyes and sat up in alarm.
Then she whispered, barely loud enough to hear, “I’ll go back and save him someday. I won’t let him stay there forever.”
I heard the deep truth in her words, and when I glanced at Sunny, she nodded, though she was frowning slightly. “If anyone can, it’s you, Presh,” I agreed.
She’d finished the flower crown, but for once, she didn’t put it on Shadow’s head. This time, she placed it over her own lavender and purple hair. “You like it, Mom? It’s my practice crown.”
“Practice crown?” I repeated, determined to ask for more, but then she leaned back on her elbows, staring out into the void.
“Look, Tata, Mom! That star’s coming right to us!” I followed her pointing finger and saw immediately what she meant.
A flare of fire, shining more like a sun than a star, was burning its way across the void. It was following the same path all the human souls did, but this one was so much brighter, the trail it left across the void an enormous, shimmering tail of power.
“Rumple,” I whispered, and began to run for the edge of the void. I wasn’t certain how I knew it was him, but something inside me insisted it was. What else would shine this brightly, if not the First of the Celestial Children?
As I ran, I called Gavriel. Come quickly, to the edge! It’s Rumple, it has to be! I need you to light up my pattern! If he didn’t see what Sunny called the Limen’s welcome mat, he might overshoot and go to the Fields of Joy, at the far reaches of the Celestial Realm, or even farther.