Bird Song

• PREFACE
  
• FENCES MAKE FOR GOOD NEIGHBORS
  
• ARRANGEMENTS
  
• RETURN
  
• SEX, TALK, AND VIDEO TAPE
  
• FASHIONABLY LATE
  
• MISS MARJORIE MAY MULLIGAN
  
• BOMBS AND BOMBS
  
• SETTLEMENT
  
• QUEST UNLIKE
  
• FREAKS OF A FEATHER
  
• SPEED BUMP
  
• LOOKS AND DAMAGES
  
• ADMIRERS
  
• THREE BLIND HUMANS
  
• PUT A SPELL ON YOU
  
• SHOES
  
• GAMBLE
  
• BLANK
  
• MYTH
  
• BYGONES
  
• COMPOSITION
  
• FLEE
  
• FRAYED
  
• FORGIVENESS IS DIVINE
  
• SPRING BREAK-IN
  
• ROLES
  
• WEDDING MARCH
  
• IN YOUR DREAMS
  
• DECLARATION
  
• SONG BIRD
  
• THAT OLD FAMILIAR STING
  
• EPILOGUE: ALBUM
  
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
  
• About The Author
  

Bird Song

© 2010 by S.L. Naeole

All rights reserved.

All of the situations and characters in this novel are fictional.
 
Any similarities to actual people or situations are completely coincidental and wholly unintentional.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

S.L. Naeole

Visit my website at
www.SLNaeole.com

Visit the official website for Falling From Grace at
www.GraceSeries.com

Black Halo, Book Three in the Grace Series Coming Out October 2010

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To
Rere
~ best friends forever.

 
“
Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven

That rustle through the unquiet Heaven

Uneasily, from morn till even,

Over the violets there that lie

In myriad types of the human eye-

Over the lilies there that wave

And weep above a nameless grave!

They wave:- from out their fragrant tops

Eternal dews come down in drops.

They weep:- from off their delicate stems

Perennial tears descend in gems.
”

Valley of Unrest—Edgar Alan Poe

Loss is the catalyst to the weakening of faith.
 
How many times have I lost, how much can one lose before faith becomes a dream; far off and out of reach?
 
How much can I witness before my eyes finally stop believing and my heart finally ceases to hope?

I see him; Death is ready to take from me once again.
 
How much more am I willing to sacrifice to keep my own wings above ground?
 
Heaven holds no promise for me if even the rewards exact a cost.

The icy bite of the December air was a rude awakening for my barely conscious mind.
 
If the sound of fluttering hadn’t clued me in, the warm lips against my ear did as they encouraged my slumber to flee.
 
I smiled at the soft words.
 
“You keep kidnapping me and I’m going to have to start locking my window at night just to get some sleep.”

“You know that won’t keep me away from you.”

“Mmm, promise?”
 
I said sleepily, nuzzling the silky skin of his neck.
 
“Where are we going?”

His thoughts told me were heading to the spot we always visited at this time of night—to his family’s retreat.
 
Robert Bellegarde, my kidnapper, was taking me, his willing victim, to view the sky before another winter storm rolled in and covered the ground with white and the sky with grey.
 
The stars were always the clearest at this time of night, and he knew how much I loved to just stare at them while lying together, content to let the rest of the world spin around us.

“Why are your wings open?” I asked, picking up the sound of whistling as the wind sifted through his ebony plumes.

Robert smiled at me and answered quite bluntly, “Because you like them.”
 
And he was right.
 
I did like them…very much.
 
I’d told him many times just how much I envied them how he had something that made him different and yet so admired amongst his kind.

His kind…angels.
 
The mythical creatures that have haunted our faiths and our fantasies since the beginning of time were real.
 
And now they haunted my reality.
 
I could never dream of going back to the semi-normal existence that I barely survived before meeting Robert.
 

His secret, his life had altered mine in ways that spanned the endless chapters that made up the story of me.
 
And now it was the story of us; of how with the simple telling of one painful, black lie, he had lost his life.
 
And with the forgiveness of truth, had regained it all back with the key to Heaven in his hands, and his heart in mine.

But, as with all great things, there was a price to pay for escaping death.
 
And for Robert, his price was one that would have been the reason that life itself should have no meaning.
 
Robert had lost the beating of his immortal heart.
 

Born without wings, as all angels are, and in a human body, Robert had needed a catalyst, a wing-bringer who would trigger within him what the angels called the change.
 
He had searched and waited for fifteen hundred years, his ambition to ascend and receive his call his only driving force.

And then he met me.
 
Simple, plain, unadulterated Grace Shelley, who would have given anything to simply vanish into thin air, rather than draw the attention of anyone or anything other than that of my best friend.
 
But Robert saw—no, he felt something within me that acted like a magnet, drawing the two of us together.
 

Polar opposites on the playing field of everything that mattered in my world, he was beautiful, while I wasn’t.
 
He was popular while I was committing crimes with my lack of a social life.
 
And yet, his perfection was merely a façade, while my perceived shortcomings were the veneer that covered who I truly was underneath.
 
I was his soul mate.

I know that sounds ridiculously melodramatic, but when you’re talking about angels, and dying, and growing wings, what else can you be?
 
It’s not like I’m talking about your typical high school romance here.
 
In another life, that was all I ever wanted.
 
But as soon as Robert’s eyes caught hold of mine, the world and everything that I knew about it had changed.
 
Girls who date high school kids don’t get mowed down by cars, or nearly strangled to death by rogue angels hell bent on hurting your boyfriend.

And…girls who date high school kids don’t end up sailing across the night sky in the arms of Death.

Along with Robert’s wings came the one thing that all angels strive for, their destiny.
 
It’s a song, a never ending song of duty and devotion that they‘ve named the call.
 
It demands their absolute loyalty and they give it without question.
 
For most, it’s simply a duty of walking amongst us and ensuring that we remain faithful; mundane duties when compared to the darkness that consumes Robert’s call.

He had hoped that his ability to heal the human body would have given him the call of a healer, someone who performed miracles for the sick and injured.
 
Instead, the wickedness that is cruel irony sentenced him to the role of Death.
 
He’d be taking life instead of saving it.

He won’t tell me how many lives he’s taken, how many souls he’s had to help make the journey across time and physical boundaries to their final destinations, whether it be Heaven, Hell, or some place in between.
 
But each time he returns to me, it seems like a small piece of who he is has been chipped away.
 
The hope and optimism in him has dulled a bit and I often fear that he will come home to me one day unrecognizable, so consumed by the darkness of his call that he won’t be Robert—my Robert.
 
Instead, he’d become…Sam.

 
“Are you woolgathering?”

“What?”
 
I looked at him, confused, his question catching me off guard.
 
“Woolgathering—what does that mean?”

Even in the smooth flow of flight, his body shook with his amusement.
 
“It means thinking, collecting your thoughts.
 
You’re quiet, and your mind is closed off which usually means you’re thinking about something important.
 
What is it?”

“Are you saying that my thoughts are like itchy sheep’s hair?”
 
I tried to sound insulted, but he could see right through me.
 
There was no pretending when it came to him.
 
“Okay, alright.
 
I was just thinking about the past few months, about how so much has happened since September.
 
I can’t believe everything that’s happened since I first saw you.
 
It’s overwhelming, and I’m not sure what else life has in store for me now.”

Robert looked at me with inquisitive eyes.
 
“You’re not telling me the whole truth.”

Of course I wasn’t.
 
I wasn’t about to tell him that I was worried about his soul.
 
He certainly knew much more about that than I ever would or could.
 
My ignorance about much of the angel world was slowly diminishing, but I doubted that it would be completely eradicated in my lifetime.
 
And of all the things that I was sure of, the very last thing I’d learn was the condition of the angelic soul.

“Robert, you worry too much,” I chided and then changed the subject.
 
“Do you think that the ground is going to be too wet to lie down?”

The warm air from my mouth forced wisps of vapor to float around me, and I continued to blow out streams of warm haze in a poor attempt to occupy my wandering thoughts.
 
Robert was taking an awfully long time to answer my question, which was unusual, especially when a question can be merely answered with a thought…

Oh.
 
I was blocking his thoughts again.
 
Sorry.

I looked up to see him shake his head, sighing in amused frustration.
 
You’re doing this much more frequently now.
 
It’s getting harder and harder to fight the shifting and stay where your thoughts are focused.

“
This
” was a complication that neither of us had expected.
 
While we both knew that I could intentionally keep his kind from reading my thoughts, it seemed that since I had turned eighteen nearly a week ago, my mind was shutting Robert out on its own more frequently.
 
When given notice, he was able to follow the thoughts in my head so that he wasn’t shut out.
 
But it was becoming more and more difficult to differentiate when my thoughts were separating and when they weren’t.

Sorry.
 
There wasn’t much else I could say.
 
It wasn’t as though I had wanted it to happen that way.
 
I enjoyed the ability to keep some thoughts private; I am human, after all.
 
But, there is also something incredibly intimate about being able to share one’s innermost thoughts with another person.