Gabriel (8 page)

****

Calla opened her eyes, and
her vision swirled. She tried to lift her head, but a wave of nausea forced her
to lie still. The room was filled with a woodsy-earth smell. Birds were
screaming; and squirrels were ripping through the tree bark, and that damn dog
was in her yard again.

Every sound was magnified. It
became difficult to breathe. Her chest felt heavy, as if oxygen was being
sucked from the room, while the walls closed in on her. If she could keep her
eyes open long enough she could find a quiet place to seek refuge. The
amplified sounds continued to assault her senses. She gave in, closed her eyes,
and placed her hands over her ears.

The bed shook, and Calla
cracked her lids to find the source. Gabriel sat next to her, his lips moving.
But she couldn’t make out the words. Before the sounds were just loud, but now
everything ran together; and it was impossible to differentiate one from the
next. She flinched when his hand brushed her temple. Gabriel started to
retreat, but she didn’t want him to leave. How was she going to tell him? Her
mind was a jumbled mess, and she couldn’t speak. Getting up was not an option,
so she grasped for his arm, connected with his wrist, pulled and felt the bone
snap. She released her hold.

Wide-eyed, Gabriel backed
away as he held his wrist tight to his chest. Sweat dripped from his forehead,
and his brow pinched together. Calla reached for him again, but he stepped out
of her reach this time. She wanted to tell him sorry, and that she would never
hurt him on purpose.
 
If only she could
quiet her mind long enough to speak.

****

Gabriel moved away from Calla
until he reached the window. He stared at her as fear covered her face. Her
arms were still extended towards him. With caution he approached the bed. Calla
stared into his eyes as if trying to communicate.

Gabriel’s broken wrist
throbbed and started to swell, but he needed to find out what was going on. How
was she was strong enough to break bones without any real effort? What else was
she capable of now? He didn’t want to read her mind, but he didn’t think there
were any other options.

 
His
consciousness brushed the edge of hers and he staggered backwards from the
onslaught.
What is going on?

He edged closer to Calla.
“Can you understand me?”

Calla nodded. She opened her
mouth, but nothing came out. She clasped her hands over her head as if she was
struck.

“
Calla, I am going to enter your mind.”

Gabriel made an effort to
breach her mind; he needed to touch her soul, but was met by chaos. His
consciousness slid along hers and found a mass of turbulent images and
thoughts. He tried to seize just one thought, to make some sense of what Calla
was experiencing. He grasped an impression. It was an image of Calla as a young
girl. She sat on the last cracked concrete step with her hands on her face and
elbows resting on her knees. She was waiting for her grandmother. They had
squeezed lemons all morning, and the lemonade was just about ready.

A man wearing a uniform
strode up the walkway. He offered a strained smile as he passed her and knocked
on the door behind her. Calla stood up and watched as her grandmother, Ella,
opened the door, holding a tall clear pitcher, with sliced lemons floating on
top. Her hand opened, and the glass shattered on the ground. Ella fell
backwards. The man in the uniform reached for her but was too late. Calla’s
screams brought her grandfather, Charles, from the rear of the house. The
uniformed man spoke into the black box that rested on his shoulder. Charles was
holding Ella in his arms, and tears streaked across her face. Ella’s eyes
opened, and she clutched him. They both looked at Calla, with her long, ringlet
curls and holding a baby doll in one hand, who had stopped screaming when
Charles arrived. He helped Ella to a chair on the porch, then approached Calla
and wrapped his arms around her. She stood still, not a tear shed.

Gabriel was jerked out of the
past. With hesitation, he detached himself from the memory.

He held Calla closer
murmuring sweet reassurances. “I need to try again, Calla.”

Calla sat under a tree, with
a black Labrador panting next to her side. There was a tall fence surrounding
the yard, and wildflowers in full bloom ran along it. There was a gate wide
open, and a trail of red from where the dog had dragged himself across the yard
to finally rest under the old oak tree where Calla had found him.

She stroked the dog’s head
while moisture dripped from her cheeks onto its soft fur. The dog was a gift
for her ninth birthday, and he was only a year old and loved to play. Her
grandfather, Charles, had installed the fence along the driveway so Max would
have a place to run. When she went to school that morning she had been in a
hurry and had left the door in the yard open. Max must have gotten out while
she was gone and was hit by a car.

 
She rubbed
her hands together, and they began to glow. Calla had been born with this gift,
or curse, depending on the day and whether or not it worked. Her mother had had
the same gift, but since her death Calla had not had anyone to guide her and
teach her just how special she really was. Her mother had told her not to show
or tell anyone about it, and Calla had made the pinky promise of a
four-year-old.
 
Her heart was full of
love and grief. She whispered a small prayer and placed her palms on Max’s chest.
The radiance intensified, covering Max’s body. The shine disappeared, and Calla
collapsed onto Max. The dog shimmied his way out of her arms and ran through
the yard stopping every few minutes to lick her face until she was awake. Calla
wrapped her arms around the dog. A smile spread across her face.

Gabriel again returned to the
present. “You had a dog that was dying, and you saved it.”

Calla nodded. She gripped her
head and pulled herself into a tighter ball. Her body started to shake. He
wrapped himself around her, setting the injured wrist on her shoulder. The
jostling made him wince from the pain. He closed his eyes and concentrated,
healing it.
Good thing that happened to
me and not to a human without my abilities.

“
I’m going to try this again.”

Gabriel sent himself in once
more, trying to bypass all the chaos that lurked on the surface. He plucked
another thought and was pulled into her past yet again. Calla was working, and
she was standing in a small room of the ER.

A young woman was lying with half
her neck ripped out, and blood pooled on the floor next to the bed. She was
pale and hooked to wires. The time of death was called. Calla covered the
patient’s face with the sheet, exited the room and went into the bathroom. She
swayed as she entered, and with all the force she could muster closed and
locked the door. Falling to her knees she vomited into the toilet. After a few
minutes she stood up and looked into the mirror. A pale face stared back at
her. She rinsed out her mouth and splashed some water onto her forehead. She
lifted her chin, put on a tough façade, and walked out to face her co-workers.

As she passed a few other
nurses, she saw the same defeat radiating in their eyes. Over fifteen young
people had died in this very place over the past three days. As she rounded the
corner another family huddled together crying and screaming. Calla stared
straight ahead and continued towards the nurse’s desk. Another nurse slid a
chair over to her.

 
“
Is that your
patient’s family in the hallway?” the nurse asked.

“
Yeah.” That was all Calla could manage to get out.

“
Seeing the families like that makes it so much harder. I’m sorry,
Calla. The whole team did their best.”

“
Yeah, thanks,” Calla said as she stood up and went to see her
other patients.

Gabriel came back yet again.
“You tried to save another victim at the hospital.” Gabriel tried to look into
her eyes, but Calla couldn’t meet his gaze. “They are called Kematians, and
they carry a poison in their bite. There wasn’t anything you could have done for
them. They were already dead when they entered the hospital.”

Calla appeared confused and
then pointed to her neck.

 
“Yes, you
did survive, but only with my help. I am not sure what all the consequences are
of me interfering. I have seen your thoughts, and everything is mixed and
jumbled. It is as though your life has been broken into a puzzle and dumped
randomly in your mind. I have seen your past, but I have also caught mere
glimpses of things you couldn’t possibly know. I do not know what this means.
They are so small and fleeting I could not grasp them. The only thing I am sure
of is that I could not watch your life fade away. I will figure out what is
happening to you, and I will find a way to help you.”

Gabriel closed his eyes for
the fourth time. He plowed through all the thoughts and disturbing images that
filled her mind. He found her soul and reached the bright glow that could only
be Calla and noticed it resembled a leopard, covered in dark spots. They
weren’t there before. He was sure of that, but now, where to start?

He merged his essence with
hers. It was as though her soul was the missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle. Her
soul completed him. As Gabriel watched this union he kept a close eye on those
dark spots. Some were removed, but a lot of them stayed; and that worried him.
Gabriel retreated back to his form.

Gabriel opened his eyes. He
watched to see if he had been successful repairing the damage to her mind.

“
We are soul-mates? You said before you had a soul, but you are an
angel,” Calla said.

“
Yes.”

“
I have thought about this before, but I didn’t ask. I want to
know—no, I need to know. How can an angel have a soul?”

“
Am I not alive?”

“
Um, I think so, but I don’t really know. Are you alive? Were you
created, or do you have parents?”

“
All of creation was created.” Gabriel brushed his hand across her
cheek. “Do I feel alive?”

“
Yes, you do. The things I have read don’t match with the man
standing in front of me. You seem more man than angel. Except for the way you
talk and of course the wings that sprout out when I’m least expecting it.”
Calla placed her head on his beating heart. “And you have a heartbeat. What is
the difference between you and me? What makes you an angel, besides the wings,
immortality—and you never answered my question about parents. Do you have any?”

Gabriel stared off into the
distance. He was trying to remember his home, but it had been so long since he
lived there that the details had dulled like an old photograph. He remembered
the love and light he was wrapped in every second of every day, but every other
memory of home had faded with the passage of time.

“
It is difficult to compare my life before I entered this plane to
this one, but I will try. Here I have a physical body, but there I did not. So
as I exist here I am like you in many ways. I am also different. I can be
killed, although not as easily as a human. I do not need to eat, but I have
found eating food to be enjoyable. I experience emotions, but they are so new I
often do not understand what they mean. I have always known love, but I have
never been in love, until now.”

He brushed his lips across
her head. “I was not born in the sense you understand, but I was not created in
the sense you know either.”

“
When the Kematians are dead, will you leave?”

“
I will stay for as long as you want me.”

“
Are angels supposed to fall in love? Are you allowed?”

“
We were supposed to defeat the Kematians and return home. We
failed. I do not know what is expected of us now except to accomplish this
task.”

“
Nice evasion of the question, angel boy. Are you allowed to love
me? Can we ever be together? Does God speak to you? Why aren’t you pissed at
Him for not helping you and your brothers?”

Gabriel laughed. “You ask a
lot of questions, but I will do my best to answer them. Love is a gift from
God. Why would he exclude us from such a precious gift? We will be together,
make no mistake, Calla. I have waited my whole life for you, and I am not
giving you up without a fight. As for being ‘pissed’, I have no reason to be
angry. I feel ashamed that I was not able to defeat the Kematians the first
time. We failed our Father, and for that I feel regret.”

“
You guys did the best you could, but I don’t understand why He
didn’t help you, or at the very least warn you of what you were up against.
Does God talk to you?”

“
He speaks to all of us. We just have to listen.” Gabriel placed
his cheek onto Calla’s head.

“
Are you still immortal?”

“
My mortal form can and will die. My greatest desire is to stay
here with you, have a family, grow old together, and then enter the next life
together.”