Chapter Eight #2
“I had wings.” The words scrape on the way out.
“Couldn’t see them, but I felt the bastards.
Felt the weight of them pulling across my back, felt muscles move where there’s nothing now.
” I reach behind me, fingers digging into the scars near my shoulder blades.
“And I knew what I was supposed to do. Nobody gave me orders. Nobody had to. It was already in me, deeper than instinct.”
Her eyes stay on mine. “What were you supposed to do?”
“I don’t fucking know.” Anger bites through me, hot enough to make my fist clench.
“That part’s gone. I only remember knowing.
” I push away from the table and pace because sitting has become impossible.
“And there was a sound.” I stop near the window, staring out at the snow.
“Not music. Nothing I could hum back to you. It went through my bones and made everything feel ...” I grind my teeth, hunting for the words built for something no human mouth was meant to explain.
“Right. Whole. No pain, no doubt, no wondering what came next. Everything had a place, and for once, so did I.”
The silence behind me stretches.
“I think I’ve been listening for it ever since I woke up out there,” I say, quieter. “Every fucking night. Wind hits the trees, fire cracks, Bear starts breathing heavy beside me, and some stupid part of me waits for it to come back.” I look down at my hands. “It never does.”
When I finally turn, Lily hasn’t moved. Her hands are still holding the snare, and there’s something in her face I can’t read.
“That sounds like Heaven,” she says.
I go still, the word hitting somewhere deep enough to make my stomach tighten.
“Heaven?”
“You said there was light everywhere, other beings around you, wings, a purpose you didn’t need explained.” Her eyes move over my face. “What else would you call it?”
“A fucking problem.”
Lily’s mouth twitches. “You’re taking this surprisingly well.”
“I woke up in the snow with no memory. I heal faster than I should, understand shit nobody taught me, and apparently used to have wings. My standards for surprising are pretty fucked.”
She laughs under her breath, but it dies quickly. “Do you believe in Heaven?”
I sit down and lean back in the chair. “Ask me a few weeks ago, I’d have told you I didn’t know.
Now?” I rub a hand across my chest, trying to ease the strange pressure sitting behind my ribs.
“I remember somewhere I belonged. Somewhere I knew exactly what I was, and every part of me wants to get back there even though I can’t remember the fucking place. ”
Her expression softens. “That sounds a lot like believing.”
“Yeah.” I look at her. “I think it does.”
Lily watches me for another second, then says, “Wait here.”
“Wasn’t planning on sprouting wings and flying off.”
“Prophet.”
“Going nowhere, Doc.”
She crosses to the shelf beside the reading chair and starts pulling books free, stacking them against her chest until she comes back to me.
“What the hell is all this?”
“Possible answers.”
Lily dumps the stack on the table. There’s a field guide swollen from getting wet and drying out too many times, a couple of medical references with cracked spines, and buried underneath them two old books with worn covers.
I pull the first one free. “A theological encyclopedia?”
“My grandmother’s.”
“Your grandmother kept an encyclopedia about God?”
“She thought everyone should own at least one book about Him, whether they believed or not.”
I look at the second book. Angelic tradition in the early church.”
“Also hers.”
“And you read these?”
“First chapter of each.”
I look at her.
“I got bored.”
A laugh gets out of me before I can stop it. “Good to know my entire fucking existence might be explained by books you couldn’t be bothered finishing.”
“You’re welcome.”
We start with the field guide because neither of us is ready to open the God books yet. She finds an entry on ravens and turns it toward me.
“Look familiar?”
The drawing shows a big black bird with its head cocked, watching the world as though it knows something everyone else missed. I shake my head.
“Ravens have been associated with prophecy for thousands of years.”
I lift my eyes to hers. “My road name is Prophet.”
“I noticed.”
“And you waited until now to mention this?”
“Until an hour ago, I didn’t think you were a fallen angel.”
I stare at her, and she stares right back at me.
“You’re enjoying this.”
Lily’s lip curls in a half smile. “A little.”
That gets another laugh out of me, but the feeling doesn’t last once she reaches for the medical books.
We go through those together, her shoulder pressed against mine because the table is too small for us to sit any other way.
Lily shows me drawings of muscle and bone, explaining how tendons attach, how nerves branch, how the body heals when it’s damaged.
I already know most of it, and she catches on after the third page.
“You know this.”
“Seems so.”
“Where’s the brachial plexus?”
I tap the diagram without thinking. “Here.”
Her eyebrows rise.
“Don’t look at me like that. I don’t know how I know.”
Lily flips several pages. “Scapula?”
I point.
“Clavicle?”
Another point.
“Median nerve?”
“You gonna keep testing me, Doc?”
Without hesitation, Lily says, “Absolutely.”
There’s something different in her voice now, steadier and more confident because this is ground she knows, and I find myself watching her more than the book.
She gets animated when she explains something, fingers moving across the diagrams, words coming faster, and every few minutes she throws another question at me.
I keep getting them right, and eventually she closes the book.
“Prophet, you know human anatomy.”
“Apparently.”
“No. Not apparently. You know it well.”
I look down at my hands, another piece of a man I don’t remember.
“So what the fuck was I doing in Heaven that required me to know how humans are put together?’
“Maybe we should find out.”
Lily puts the medical book away and reaches for the theological encyclopedia. “Ready?”
“Not even a little.”
“Good.” She opens it anyway.
We work through the pages of angels painted with halos, white robes, and pretty fucking wings, men with peaceful faces staring down from clouds while Lily reads names and ranks aloud.
Seraphim. Cherubim, Thrones. Dominions. Half of it sounds made up, and the other half feels wrong enough to piss me off.
“Anything?” Lily asks.
I shake my head. “Nothing.”
She turns another page. Moe wings. More halos. More men who look as though they’ve never thrown a punch in their lives.
“If I looked like any of these assholes, don’t tell me.”
Her mouth twitches. “I think you’d look lovely in a robe.”
“Careful, Doc.”
That gets a quiet laugh out of her, and for a few minutes we keep going, her reading while I wait for something inside of me to move.
Nothing does.
Page after page, name after name, and I’m starting to think we’re chasing bullshit while I reach across to turn another page and find the plate.
I know the formation before I know why, and my hand begins to shake.
Not a tremor. A fucking shake hard enough to rattle the page between my fingers, and Lily’s hand comes down over mine before I can get it under control.
The second her palm covers my knuckles, some of the violence goes out of it. “Prophet?”
I stare at those wings. At the men, no angels, fuck! Whatever they are. They are standing shoulder to shoulder. Something inside of me is pulling toward them so hard it hurts.
“I know them.”
“You remember them?”
“No.” I swallow. “That’s the fucked up part. I don’t remember a single one of them, but I know what it feels like to stand there.”
“With them?”
“Yeah.” My fingers tighten beneath hers. “With my brothers.” I continue, “It’s not a memory. A memory gives you something you can use. A face, a name, something that happened. This is...”
I look down at the engraving again. “My body knows it, but my head doesn’t.”
“That’s still something.”
“It’s not enough.”