Chapter Forty #4
“I started walking in the direction of the shop. It wasn’t close to where I was, and I didn’t have money for any other way to travel.
I was lucky that I didn’t get arrested for walking in the middle of the road, because I did that some, I remember getting honked at and then realizing I was in the middle of the damn road. ”
It startled me that he cursed. We had all been taught that curses should be saved for when you meant them. Jamie didn’t mean the road to be damned, or a road to Hell. I wanted to remind him why he shouldn’t use it so casually, but I kept my mouth shut and listened.
“I made it to the street where the shop is, but then I heard or saw someone’s thoughts.
This man just walked by and he was thinking so hard that I just started following him.
I probably would have followed him for miles, or until his thoughts calmed down, but a woman walked by us wearing a T-shirt with roses on it.
It made me stop, literally stop on the sidewalk.
I was able to let the man’s thoughts go.
I could hear them getting farther away, but I turned and started following her. ”
I wondered how the woman had felt about being followed by Jamie before he’d cleaned himself up.
The tea timer sounded and saved me from letting my body language tell him what I was thinking.
I was too busy lifting the tea cozy off, taking the tea bags out, and fishing with the tongs for the one that I’d lost in the tea.
“I followed her through the door into her shop. I mean I was right behind her. I’m lucky she didn’t call the cops.”
“Were you able to tell her why you were there?” I asked, getting our mugs off the table so I could put sugar in them.
He gave a laugh that was more bitter than funny. “Tell her that a bunch of wandering prophets told me to look for a woman with roses. The truth didn’t sound very sane.”
“Did she believe you?” I asked, as I poured tea into the mugs, adding cream to both.
“She did, and I know whatever I said to her wasn’t as clear as what I’m saying now. She should have called the cops, or told me to leave her shop, but she had this gentle energy. It reminded me of how I used to feel when I prayed, and God liked the prayer.”
I set his tea in front of him and sat down across the table from him, because I wanted to see as much of his face as I could. Profile wasn’t enough for me to read him.
He looked at me with those big brown eyes. They’d always dominated his face so that you saw his eyes and then the rest of him. Compelling was what one of the other female Angel Speakers had said once: “Levanael’s eyes are so compelling.” She’d been right.
“What happened next?” I asked.
“Emma, that’s her name, said that she dreamed about me coming to the shop.”
“Wow,” I said, and felt like we were ten again and had just seen some bit of angel magic we’d only read about before.
“I know, it was extraordinary. Not just that she had the dream but that she was willing to trust it enough to take me back to one of the small rooms where they do reiki and tarot. You know what I looked like before, Heaven help me, smelled like before, but Emma just took me in the room as if I was normal.” He smiled and sipped his tea before adding, “The owner of the shop was there and wouldn’t let Emma close the door.
In fact, she stayed at the door watching over us.
I can’t blame her. In fact, I’m glad she was looking out for Emma.
She’s this amazing gentle energy that just feels good to be near. ”
“Like the right kind of angel,” I said.
He nodded. “That’s sort of how she feels, but it’s like when we were around the priests that felt right. The energy of faith, true faith.”
“That’s really rare,” I said, drinking my own tea. It was good and I really needed to drink it before it got cold this time.
“It is.”
“What did she do to”—I made a vague motion at him—“for you?”
He took another sip of tea, sighing happily. “I’m so glad I can taste things again.”
“Me, too,” I said, and meant it.
“The healing started with Emma’s energy, and then she did actual energy work on me. Part of it was reiki, that’s what she’s got certificates in, but part of it was just intuitive energy work, that’s what she called it.”
I drank my tea and didn’t say that I’d never seen just energy work make a miracle like this. It could help, but this kind of change took more than one miracle cure.
“It was crystals and herbs and her guides talking to my guides.”
“You mean your Guardian Angels?”
“Not just the angels, but the other spiritual beings that are supposed to help protect me.”
I thought about Ravensong’s raccoon, the great bear and the blond Goddess or Valkyrie at her back. “Spirit guides and totems, you mean?”
“Yes,” he said.
I wondered if I lowered my shields and opened my senses, would I see some new power around him?
I didn’t do it because it was too risky.
I’d seen what was around Ravensong, and then I’d been in that place beyond where music was visible and angels moved along the humming strings of the universe.
I couldn’t risk having Jamie follow me into that place, because it was traveling to it that had driven him mad.
“Did Emma help you get cleaned up, too?”
“She helped me get some clothes from Goodwill and she let me use her bathroom to get cleaned up. Her boss made sure that Emma’s roommates were home while I was there.”
“I take it that the owner of the New Age shop doesn’t have the same energy as Emma.”
He stirred his tea, smiled, frowned, smiled again, and said, “No, her energy feels very pointy like a porcupine, so that nothing gets in her shields.”
“Anyone sensitive to energy wouldn’t want to be around that.”
“True, maybe she only was pointy at me, keeping my energy off outside her shields,” he said, sitting back down with his tea. He wrapped his hands around the mug as if it didn’t have a handle. He didn’t drink from it right away, as if he was more warming his hands on the mug.
“You look great,” I said.
He shook his head. “I look better, but great, I’ll get there.”
I reached across the table and put my hand on his arm. “You look great to me, Lev-I, Levi.”
He put his hand over mine. “Thanks, Z. I’m sorry for everything I put you through.”
“You don’t have to apologize, you were sick.”
“I do need to apologize, but thank you for saying that.”
“Does Emma know what caused everything to go . . . off?”
“You mean why I went crazy at the very end of training to be an Angel Speaker?”
“Yes, but if it’s hard to talk about we can wait. It’s just that no one at the College understood what happened.”
“We’re not a hundred percent certain, but we think it’s my telepathy.”
“There are other telepaths at the College,” I said.
“But no one as powerful as I am, Z.”
“No one but Master Bachiel,” I said.
“Emma thinks that he, or some of the teachers, should have protected me more. She says I had almost no ability to shield my gift.”
“They did teach us how to shield ourselves,” I said.
“I never got good at personal shielding, remember?”
I thought about it. “That’s right, it was your weakest skill set.”
“Inside the College it didn’t matter; the wards around it are so solid and well constructed that they protected me.”
“They protected us all,” I said.
He nodded. “But when we started working directly with the realm of angels, there was nothing to shield me from them.”
“Shield you from the angels?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No, not from them, from the thoughts of all the people praying to the angels and to God.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Can’t you hear prayers?”
“Sometimes, if I’m not shielding tight enough, or if the prayer has a lot of need or emotion behind it.”
“How did you filter out the prayers inside the angelic realm?”
“I don’t hear prayers unless I’m listening for them there.”
“What do you hear?”
“Music,” I said.
“Music, just music?”
“Beautiful, amazing music like the universe is created out of music and light.”
He stared at me as if I’d said something terrible. “Music and light, just music and light?”
“I see angels and I see the light and lines of creation.”
“You didn’t hear the voices of all the people praying, asking for God’s help?”
“No,” I said.
The blood drained from his face so suddenly that I got up to put a hand on his shoulder in case he fainted. “Jamie, Levi, are you okay?”
“I heard voices, millions and millions of thoughts, prayers, screams of pain, people screaming in agony and begging God to help them.”
I knelt by him so I could look into his face. “You heard people screaming for help, while the rest of us saw music and lights?”
He nodded, his face so pale his lips looked bloodless. “I couldn’t shut it out. Even when the teachers brought me back from the heart of creation, I could still hear them.”
“You could still hear prayers all the time?”
“No, I could shut out prayers, you know, unless they were strong like you said, but it was the people screaming and crying for God to help them that I couldn’t shut out. So many people calling for help and no one answering.”
“God answers prayers, but sometimes the answer is no,” I said.
His eyes looked black in the white of his face like burned holes.
“These weren’t prayers, Z, they were people crying out in torment, begging God, or someone, to help them, and no one ever came.
I didn’t hear the people that were being helped, all I heard were the ones that didn’t get a visit from an angel, or anything good. ”
“And you’ve heard that in your head for fifteen years?”
“Yes.” I didn’t know what to say. What could I say to make up for him being trapped like that for so long? Nothing. I said the only thing possible.
“I am so sorry, Jamie.”
“Levi, I am Levi now, a name of my choice. Not my parents or the College, but my choice.”
“Levi, I am so sorry that happened to you and that no one at the College understood what was happening to you.”