Messenger (Guardian Trilogy Prequel 1) (36 page)

I wanted nothing more in the world than to comfort him then, but there was nothing that could ease his pain, nothing that could stop the inevitable departure of my spirit from this earth.

“I-I have a confession to make,” he said, his voice hoarse. “It’s a secret I kept not knowing how…how you would react.” He swallowed, hard. “The night we met…on that road outside your family’s house…You were not a stranger to me.”

I felt my eyes widen as the memory of it came to me. With it was a sense of exhilaration. We had just started to know each other then…

“Don’t mistake me…,” he said, “I truly didn’t know it was you beneath your cloak then. That was…a pleasant surprise…because…we had never been introduced. I knew of you from afar. I had heard of you practicing, training, before you came here…before you fell.”

I knew this, yet we hadn’t spoken about it in years. He seemed to want to relive the memory, and I let him.

“I was amazed by you back then…enamored…” He paused and laughed to himself in recollection. “Like a school boy. But here, after spending a lifetime by your side…you are so much more than I imagined.” His lips briefly clamped shut but he opened them again to assert, “
You
are all I care about.
Nothing
else matters.”

I tried to lift my head, to go to him, and when my effort failed I tried to lift my arms. They too did not move. I found myself imprisoned, locked inside a dying body, but only for a short time.

Something began to happen then.

I felt a sensation telling me that my chest was rising, yet that seemed incongruous to what I saw. My body had not stirred an inch despite the feeling of being pulled upward. Next my arms began to float toward the sky, with my legs quickly following, even though I could clearly see that none of them had moved. Then my eyes were being drawn to the wood ceiling, away from earth, away from Eran.

As if sensing what was happening, Eran leaned in and tenderly placed his lips to my ear. Whispering tenderly, he promised, “I’ll see you soon.” A shudder ran through him and he spoke again. “But it won’t be soon enough.”

His head fell forward onto my cheek, coming closer to me than any other time since our kiss at the camp’s fire. His moist eyes settled onto my skin and I felt his tears touch me. He shuddered once again and then I felt no more.

Suddenly, I hovered above him, carefully evaluating the scene below. I wanted to see Eran one more time. Just once, just one more time so I could capture his image in my memory as he had done with me. Those in the afterlife knew it, and allowed me this freedom.

Eran’s head hadn’t moved. He didn’t seem capable of it. It was as if the life had drained from him. Then he drew in a breath, expanding his back to make room for it, and screamed it out. The sound pulsated through me, filling me, making me quiver.

It made me want to go to him and wrap my arms around him. I tried to control this floating visage I had become and found I couldn’t. Something else did.

A bright light stretched out before me and the pure compassion it channeled seemed to permeate through my chest. It beckoned me, pulled me toward it, insisting I follow its command. I knew this was where I was meant to go, where I would be surrounded by friends, where I would be sheltered, and yet I didn’t want to leave.

The reason was clear, unavoidable, and carved into my soul. I could not stifle it or deter it. It came from the deepest part of me that would not yield.

I wanted to stay with Eran.

The light had turned into a tunnel now, and I was being pulled toward it.

“Wait,” I called out to anyone who might hear me. “Wait!”

The pulling continued.

“Please wait!”

I became frantic, my head spinning back to look for Eran. He was smaller now, the distance growing greater between us.

«Wait!»

Yet the draw was relentless, pulling at my arms and legs and chest, and soon I was inside the tunnel. When I looked back Eran was gone and all I could see was white mist.

The tunnel was short, ending on the steps where I had fallen with Hermina so many years ago and where others from earth reunited with their loved ones in the afterlife. A group was greeting a little girl to my left. Beyond them, two others were just beginning their descent. To my right an elderly man was being welcomed by a woman of the same age. She was holding his face in her hands, just as Eran had done with me.

I uttered a cry which sounded distinctly like a sob and turned away.

The sounds of clothing brushed by me and stopped. I opened my eyes to it and found a face I hadn’t expected to see.

Hermina was smiling warmly at me with her hands clasped behind her. “Welcome back.”

I swallowed the pain of my separation from Eran and the shock of seeing her. “You’re supposed to be on the other side,” I said, noting the weakness in my tone.

She nodded. “I instructed Jeremiah to find me a safe place to rest as he said his farewells to you…so that I could greet you here.”

I was able to conjure a weak smile of thanks. While I felt the weight of the distance between Eran and me, it was helpful to have a friend to support me through my grief.

She observed me openly. “Do you know, this is the first time in existence that someone has returned to the afterlife without their heart full of joy?”

My head swung slowly back to the void from which I had come. “I’m not ready to be here.”

“Your time there is over, Magdalene. Your body is no longer available to you.”

“I know,” I said flatly. “I’m still not ready.”

Hermina reached out and settled a gentle hand on my shoulder in support. “Because Eran is not,” she stated.

“That’s right. He’s down there, crying out for me.”

“He will recover,” she reassured. “As will you.”

Staring into the void, I caught myself searching for Eran nonetheless.

“You can’t see him, Magdalene. Wait,” she encouraged. “Time heals all wounds.”

My subconscious caught it initially, causing my eyebrows to dip. “Wait?” I uttered. That had been the word I had used to plead against being here. I was denied that request and now I was expected to follow the command here?

“No,” I said, plainly.

“No?” Hermina said, taken aback.

“I’m going to fall again,” I declared, turning around. The simple proposal that I could be back on earth in seconds was enough motivation to lift the sorrow from my face. Then Hermina spoke.

“They won’t let you,” she said, serenely. “Earth is not for that purpose. It was made so that we may learn. It is our classroom and for now your education is over.”

I went still as a realization rushed to me. “That’s why you came. You knew I would try to fall and you are here to tell me that I can’t.”

“Yes,” she said, plainly. “The rest of us thought it would be best if I delivered the message.”

“You’ve spoken about us? Eran and me?”

”We have.”

“And?”

I heard her sigh, uncomfortable with the second part of her message that she was about to deliver. “It has been decided it would be in both of your interests if you spent time apart.”

Bristled, I asked, “Did you agree with that judgment?”

She hesitated before confessing. “The judgment was not unanimous.”

I released my breath without ever realizing I had been holding it. “Thank you.”

Ignoring my appreciation, she insisted, “A guardian and his ward cannot share feelings at the level you do. It is for your longevity that it was decided, Magdalene.”

“That’s not their decision to make.”

“And yet it has been made,” she said, again placing a hand on my shoulder.

I leaned my shoulder down until it slipped off.

We stood quietly then. The voices of the returned carried to us. It was chatter filled with bouts of laughter, just as Hermina had warned was typical. Then why wasn’t this the case with me?

The pain of Eran’s loss filled me to the point that I no longer breathed. My lungs froze in my chest, my mind emptied of all thoughts, my muscles loosened until I collapsed to my knees and rolled to my side. Messengers were supposed to leave their shell on earth and resume their rightful bodies in the afterlife, but I broke that decree too. Through Eran’s loss, it didn’t matter where I existed. I was nothing more than a shell.

Hermina’s voice was soft over me. “I’ve never seen this,” she said, alarmed. “It isn’t…I’m not…I’ve never seen this.”

It sounded like she was talking to others, warning them.

“They’ve only just met and yet…You see what is happening to them. DON’T YOU?” She shouted this last part.

The noise around us quieted, the laughter faded, and we were blanketed in silence.

“As I warned, they are defying us…yet not in the way I ever expected. This is not a judgment. It is punishment and for what? The crime of love?” Hermina was speaking rapidly now, alarm clear in her voice. “Who are we to declare what is right and just when we don’t have any understanding of what we are dealing with?” She paused and then used a tone more passionate than I’d ever heard from her. “These two are DIFFERENT!”

Then it was Hermina waiting for an answer, a sign from others. Time stretched on without even a whisper. She placed a hand on my shoulder and I knew then that she was my sole supporter.

When she spoke again it was quiet, in a manner that confirmed she knew she was rebelling against the others and their judgment.

“As a messenger, the only way you could possibly see your guardian now, Magdalene, is to leave your shell here and visit him in spirit.”

I opened my eyes to her, confusion and hope surging through me. It was the latter emotion that allowed me the energy to take hold of her hand.

“As the guards do…,” I breathed, flooded with hope.

“Go,” she urged, “before I correct the lapse in my own judgment. I’ll take care of your body.”

Stunned almost to speechlessness, I managed to utter, “Thank you, Hermina. Thank you…”

I had never been in the state I was about to induce. Plenty of others had done it, jilted lovers and those with territorial obsessions, but I never had a reason to visit earth in ghostly form, not until Eran. It was exclusively him and the idea of seeing him again that gave me the force to will myself from my body. This time it wasn’t me being pulled,
I
was pulling, and before long I was freed and nothing more than a translucent shape of my former self.

Moving entirely by will, I rotated around and soared downward through the mist.

Very little time had passed. The guardians and messengers were just beginning to filter back into the small room that housed my body, all except for Hermina. They encircled Eran, set comforting hands on his shoulders, and spoke to him in kind voices. No one, not even Eran, realized I was present.

They couldn’t.

I had made a choice that left me in a place they could not see or hear.

I was an apparition now and I was limited in my ability to communicate with others.

For me, a recluse who was in love with a warrior, I was content. I could not speak to Eran, but I could see him and listen to him. And that alone was enough. But it wasn’t for Eran.

He gazed at my body, tears still wet on his face, as he began to speak. “She defied me every chance she got. But while I would never admit this to her, her defiance intoxicated me. To me, it represents all that she is…self-sufficient, tough, purposeful, courageous…stubborn.” He paused to groan. “So many times it made me want to roar with rage and so many other times I wanted to take her in my arms and taste her lips.” He smiled lightly, seemingly in a world unto himself now, oblivious to the looks exchanged by those around him. “Despite my position as her guardian, I don’t regret finally allowing myself the pleasure of her kiss, and if I have to wait an eternity to feel her lips again, I will.” Again, his nostrils widened and his jaw jutted out with purpose. “Our love has just begun.”

He wiped the tears from his eyes with the back of his hand and muttered, “Not much of a eulogy is it?”

Alban grunted loudly in disagreement. “Best one I’ve heard. Has me on the edge of tears.”

Eran didn’t seem to hear him.

“No,” he said, suddenly raising his head. “No.” He sounded firm, convinced of something. His head began to shake back and forth. “I don’t want this. I don’t want this life. I don’t.”

The guardians and messengers, our friends, looked to each other in alarm. They had never seen Eran in this state, unhinged, captive by his emotions.

Then Eran grew calm, motionless, giving us the impression that he’d come to a resolution.

That serenity continued as made his defining statement.

“No…what I want is Magdalene.”

Without warning, he sprang to his feet and rushed through the throng until he was outside. There, his appendages ripped from his back and thrust downward. He sprang up, his legs uncurling below him. Another pump and he was cast into the clouds, rain streaming off his skin and feathers. He moved fast through the air, without knowing I was still directly beside him.