MeriPie
Typing in arm-warmers.
- Joined
- Feb 14, 2010
- Messages
- 82
Hi everyone. I'm absolutely phobic of writing opening scenes so I thought I'd seek some experienced opinions! I'm writing a sort of gritty urban fantasy, where most things are as they are, but angels are real. Here's a little synopsis I scribbled out, just to give you an idea of what the opening needs to say.
SYNOPSIS
They say that you come into this world the same way you leave it, naked, alone and helpless. You can’t bring anything in, and you can’t take anything out. In the end, it’s just you. You are alone and you are totally unique.
That’s not exactly true.
Every time a human is born, so is an angel, and when that human dies, so does the angel. Long since banned from taking human form due to their addiction to seducing humans, angels have become embroiled in their own squabbles and politics, and almost forgotten about Earth. But if you need to kill another angel without him even knowing you’re coming, what’s the easiest way?
Kill his human counterpart.
However, when an angel is sent to do just that, it turns out that things aren’t nearly so simple. Especially if the human you’re trying to kill turns out to be a Russian Mafia hitman…
Or if you fall in love.
I'm slightly concerned about the whole info-dumping thing, but there's quite a lot I need to establish early on, so I'd really appreciate if you'd pay extra attention to the info-dump related critiques! Here goes, opening chapter (or part of chapter, will see how I feel when I divide it up).
They say that you come into this world the same way you leave it, naked, alone and helpless. You can’t bring anything in, and you can’t take anything out. In the end, it’s just you. You are alone and you are totally unique.
That’s not exactly true.
My first sensation was cold, underneath me, motionless, and above me, drifting and catching on my skin. The second, a dizzily crushing feeling of weight, gravity, pressure. I peeled my eyes open to find them stabbed by shafts of coloured light, blinding clouds of purple boiling inside my head, and eliciting some strange, dry noise from somewhere… My throat, I realised. My eyes cleared and I could see tiny insects drifting in the columns of light, spiralling in some purposeful slow dance. I could hear a rumbling, throbbing sound, which coalesced into individual voices.
‘Manifestation successful,’ someone said. ‘Time, twenty-three thirteen, GMT plus two.’
‘That’s a relief. Anyone tracked it?’
‘No, all seems to be clear. I think we’ve got away with it.’
There was a collective sigh of relief. I rolled my eyes slowly, with difficulty, down from the silvery brightness above me. An unfamiliar pair of hands was curled in front of my face, the fingers twitching slightly. My fingers, now. It was hard to see it that way. I forced my mind to wander throughout the nervous system of this new body, curled up like a foetus on the cold stone floor.
‘Motor functions appear to be normal, we should be able to sit him up in a minute,’ someone said, and I could hear a pencil scratching on paper somewhere off behind me.
‘How are you feeling?’ someone asked kindly, very close to my face. I twisted my neck round slowly, carefully, looking up into a wrinkled, bearded face.
‘Sh*t,’ I croaked, and they all laughed, looking around each other with great pride. ‘Cold,’ I added, and the man stood up, out of sight. I turned my eyes back to those strange hands. Presently, a blanket, or cloak, or something was laid over me.
‘Can you sit up?’ the bearded man asked me.
I began to think slowly about all the movements required to do so, sluggishly going through them and levering myself in this strange new vessel upright. My body felt like a jug full of water, so that if I moved too quickly, I would spill out of myself all over the hard, cracked stone floor and would never be collected up again.
I eventually realised, gazing around at the monochromatic landscape, that it must be night time, and it was simply the unbelievable incandescence of the full moon that was stabbing into my eyes. I sat in the centre of a ruined temple, beautiful friezes and columns crumbled around me into milky-white chunks under the moon’s glow. The ground spilled away outside the temple, flowing like a crumpled blanket, punctuated by other ruins in the distance on which my eyes refused to focus, straining as they were just to see the men standing around me.
‘Thirsty,’ I said, gathering the blanket around myself. A younger man with butter-yellow hair was already carrying a plastic tumbler of water over to me. They were almost all wearing suits, dusty from clambering among the ruins, and I could see several briefcases standing on the fallen blocks of the temple.
‘Sorry we can’t give you glass,’ the bearded man explained. ‘It gets expensive, not to mention messy and a bit dangerous, giving glasses to new Angelic Manifests who haven’t got the hang of their hands yet.’
The cup was put on the floor in front of me, and I reached out the bizarre appendages to it, fumbling for a long time before I managed to wedge it between my palms and pick it up. I drained it quickly, after the initial confusion with swallowing, managing not to spill too much on myself.
‘Where am I?’ I asked eventually.
‘Eski Hissar, Turkey,’ the man replied.
‘What happens now?’
‘Good question.’
He straightened up, snapping his fingers. Someone shouted a command and there was a roaring in the near distance, agony to my sensitive ears. I yelled and pressed my hands to them, my new, soft fingernails scrabbling my cheeks in the process.
‘It’s just a helicopter,’ the old man told me, clearly attempting to be reassuring, but I hadn’t the faintest idea what one of those was, or why it should be so incredibly loud. What had been just a breeze coasting gently over the surface of my skin now became a wind, and I huddled down into the blanket in confusion and panic.
‘Much easier when we just took them away in cars,’ someone murmured.
‘Come on,’ the bearded man said gently, helping me to my feet. I staggered, knees giving way repeatedly and my new feet refusing to respond. Someone else hooked my other arm around their neck and they almost dragged me across the rippling grass to the shining black machine. I suppose I must have gone into some kind of shock, because I felt suddenly weightless and dizzy, and as though my consciousness was watching this ridiculously clumsy new body from above.
They strapped me into a seat and wedged some earphones over my head, then all the other men clambered in, packed close together in their smart suits, briefcases balancing awkwardly on their laps.
‘Didn’t even have time to change,’ someone lamented. ‘Seems to lack a bit of ceremony, picking up a new Watcher in the clothes we wore to work.’
‘It’s never been all that precise,’ the bearded man pointed out. ‘We’ve never known until the last five hours or so exactly when it would be.’
‘Where are we going?’ I asked, interrupting.
‘Istanbul,’ the man who had given me water answered. He was the youngest of them all, and he must have been in his mid forties. None of this – at least none that was filtering properly into my bewildered mind – was quite what I had been expecting. ‘That’s where our… headquarters are.’
‘Why not nearer here?’ I asked, thinking that I barely had the energy to keep my eyes open.
‘It’s not a long journey,’ a man with rimless glasses told me. ‘We’ve been there a long time; it’s just the Manifestation site there was destroyed hundreds of years ago. This is the nearest one left.’
As he was talking, the engines suddenly roared even louder, drawing a cry of pain from my lips, and we began to lift up into the air, an incredibly unpleasant situation that made my delicate new organs feel like they were being dragged downwards by greedy, clawing hands. Against all odds, however, once we were up in the air, the exhaustion and trauma of my journey so far won against the panic, and I passed out, not waking up until the bearded man shook me gently and told me we’d arrived.
Everyone was spilling out onto a tarmac square surrounded by neatly trimmed lawns. The sky was pinkish gold, stained with the light of the rising sun, not yet strong enough to disperse the shadows of the lush green garden. I was helped down by the old men and told to duck as we moved away from the helicopter, towards a large, elegant white building topped with a blue glass dome. Spotlights illuminated palm trees within the white walls of the garden, and threw streaks of light up the building itself. Set into the garden wall I could see a tall metal gate, and cars were still rushing past it despite the early hour. A door was thrown open on the side of the building closest to us and the men assisting me headed towards it.
‘Reconvene in a couple of days,’ the bearded man told the others. ‘He’ll need lots of rest before he’s ready to talk.’
Somehow, this simple phrase sounded quite ominous to my ears, and I almost wanted to ask questions as we stumbled down the cool, tiled hallways inside the building, but before I had phrased a sensible one, we reached a small room with a neatly-made bed. The two suited men helped me to lie down on it, blanket wrapped around me. I think I fell asleep before they had even left the room, and the next time I opened my eyes it was dark. I managed to sit up but my head spun fiercely and I fell back down again, groaning. Immediately the door opened and someone ran in, muttering anxiously to the second person who followed.
‘Twenty-three hours of sleep. He’ll definitely need to eat by now,’ someone said. Within a few minutes, some kind of soup was brought and the kindly bearded man was spooning it into my mouth. I slowly began to feel better, steadier. Several more people arrived with various dishes and plates, and I ate until I literally could not force another bite into my mouth. It took quite some time, and I was feeling a little more settled in my body by the time I was done. The man gave me some blue and white striped pyjamas and left me to get dressed.
There was a long mirror on my wall, which I hadn’t noticed before. I stood unsteadily, stumbling towards it with a hand against the wall, nerves tingling, afraid of what I would see.
The body was male, completely hairless – without even eyelashes or eyebrows. My skin was completely smooth, unblemished, like a blank canvas. I was like a newborn baby, but in the shape of a man. From my dreams, the only thing I recognised of myself was my eyes, a dark chocolate-brown. Otherwise I just looked like some small, squat, sick alien. I stood for a long time, rubbing the skin of my face with my fingertips. Eventually, with a long sigh, I pulled the pyjamas on slowly, taking a few minutes to figure out how they worked, and stepped out into the corridor.
The building was clearly very old despite its perfect upkeep, with gleaming white-plastered walls and soft, worn terracotta tiled floors. A seemingly endless corridor of closed doors on one side and small arched windows on the other stretched off in each direction. The yellow-haired man was waiting outside my room. He smiled at me, placing his palms together, and gestured for me to follow.
We walked – slowly, as he clearly knew I would find it difficult at first – to the end of the hallway and down a long, narrow spiral staircase to a busier part of the building, where people in white linen robes passed us, staring at me open-mouthed. I felt uncomfortable as well as dizzy, and was relieved when we stepped through a mosaic-covered into a room with rugs on the floor and a large table in the centre, around which were seated eleven men – some of whom I recognised – wearing a mixture of the white linen robes and business suits. The yellow-haired man went and took another seat, gesturing for me to sit in the last empty one. I lowered myself down slowly, looking around the faces nervously. I recognised several from my Manifestation, and tried to smile at them, but they were just staring at me eagerly, as if I were a glass of water and they were dying of thirst.
‘So, tell some poor aged angels,’ the bearded man started, leaning forwards and linking his hands together. ‘What’s happening in Heaven? It’s been a long time, we’re very out of the loop.’
I was thrown immediately.
‘We don’t really call it that anymore…’ I said slowly, looking around at them in disbelief. It had never been called that in my lifetime.
‘Our last Angelic Manifest was nearly thirty years ago now,’ a man I’d not seen before explained, gesturing at the blond man. ‘We are desperate for news.’
‘How did you know I was coming?’ I asked.
‘Auguries,’ he answered simply, shrugging his shoulders. ‘It’s not very precise, but generally reliable. We have been expecting you for a few months.’
I nodded slowly, gathering my thoughts. I could not think where to start explaining everything that had happened in the last thirty years.
‘The system of government was dissolved ten years ago, and has since become democratic,’ I began, deciding to simply explain the crux of the matter that had brought me to Earth. They could ask me other questions later, when I felt less bewildered and overwhelmed. ‘However in recent years disputes have emerged, and the senate is significantly divided into two groups. We feel that the other faction are taking power they do not deserve, and so—’
The men had all started muttering furiously amongst themselves, looking terrified.
‘War, in Heaven?’ one of them asked, and they all fell deathly silent.
‘No,’ I said, irritated at their interruption. ‘Not yet, I am here in an attempt to prevent that.’
‘What are you going to do?’ they asked breathlessly.
‘I’m going to kill the leader’s counterpart.’
There was a long, heavy silence. The plan was, as I knew, riddled with flaws. That was why I was there, and not someone senior and important. For one thing, it was the greatest crime we could commit to take on human shape, although it had been known to happen many times in our past for various reasons. Some simply desired so much to escape that they risked whatever punishment would come upon them. Some, like me, had a task to perform. For another, it was against the very nature of our being to harm a human – a physical impossibility. We were ‘born’ when a human was born, their counterpart, their guardian – though we had long since lost interest in the duty and become involved thoroughly in our own squabbles – and were snuffed out like a candle when they died, often without warning. The only connection that remained to our human counterparts now was our dreams.
The leader of the faction, Siliel, was incredibly well protected, and there was no way to reach him within our world. The only way to kill him was to engineer the death of his human counterpart; as long as a Guardian’s human was alive, he could regenerate endlessly… but how on earth was one to do that, when it was physically impossible to harm a human? I was, in effect, a guinea pig. There were mentions of such things happening in history books, but the reports were sketchy and filled with disdain for the kind of angel that would do such a thing. I, however, had always been possessed of a complete inability to say no, especially in the face of threats and with the promise of being left alone and not bothered ever again at the end of it.
‘Is this the only way?’ one of the men asked me eventually. I felt a wave of despair, and shrugged, shaking my head.
‘I don’t know. It’s what I’ve been told to do, on pain of their reporting my Manifestation to the Higher Powers.’
The men looked at each other, shaking their heads and massaging their temples with their fingers.
‘Well, we must help you to do the best you can,’ the bearded man resolved. ‘It is too late to go back now. We must do everything possible to prevent war. That would be catastrophic.’
I nodded my agreement, and there was another long silence.
‘If you would be so good, we will leave you same paper and a pen. If you could possibly write as much information for us about the last thirty years as possible, that would be greatly appreciated,’ the man said.
‘Of course,’ I answered, nodding again. Another silence.
‘Well, if you could also tell us what information you have about your… target, we’ll start the search, and you can start your induction.’
‘Our spy close to Siliel – the target,’ I explained, remembering that they would have no knowledge of him whatsoever, ‘before he died last month, gathered a lot of information about Siliel’s human dreams. Siliel was created just over twenty-two years ago, his human is male, healthy and whole. His name is Nicholas, or Nikolai; our source was uncertain. His surname begins with an S and has some kind of association with ‘magpie’.’
‘The dreams are certainly strange,’ one old man commented, and everyone rumbled their agreement. The forms my dreams took were always bizarre. Sometimes they were symbolic, sometimes I walked behind my human as he went about his normal business, and sometimes I saw everything through his eyes and felt everything he felt. It was quite normal to talk aloud during these dreams, and many of us painted or wrote about what we saw to try to drive out the strange lonely melancholy that one left in its wake.
‘I miss them,’ someone said sadly, and there were several nods.
I was slightly confused, and made a mental note to ask about it later, but for now there were more important things to talk about.
‘He has often painted cityscapes covered with snow. I have several memorised and can attempt to replicate them as best I can,’ I offered.
‘That would be very helpful, thank you. We will provide art materials for you in your room.’
‘There are several other minor details, which I will write down for you as and when I remember them,’ I said. ‘I still feel quite unwell.’
‘That is to be expected,’ the bearded man told me gently, rising to his feet. The meeting appeared to be adjourned, and he gestured for me to go ahead, saying, ‘I’ll catch you up.’
As I shut the door behind me, I heard him tell them not to bother me with questions about Heaven, that it was not their place to ask, and to begin searching for possible surnames that meant ‘magpie’. One of the pitfalls of communicating in a universal language was not actually being aware of what language was being spoken, and simply understanding it and replying in kind.
The bearded man let himself out of the room quietly, and placed a hand on my shoulder, gesturing for me to walk.
‘Well, there you go! The Guild!’ he said. ‘My name is Lucas, by the way.’
‘A pleasure,’ I murmured.
‘Shall we go outside? Get some sunshine, hmm? I think the sun’s risen by now,’ he suggested, smiling. I shrugged an agreement and we continued down the hallway.
‘What does the induction involve?’ I asked curiously. If they thought they were the ones with all the questions, they would be surprised. I was starting to wake up a bit, and find so much to ask about.
‘I’m afraid it’s a hard slog, especially as it seems like you’re on a time limit,’ Lucas apologised. ‘This’ll be your last day of rest in a long time! You will have classes in clothing, speech, manners, traditions, obviously tailored to whatever country you’ll be going to, once we know. Also lessons on history, world and local. You will read as much important literature as you have time to read, and watch films when you are too tired to do anything else. Anything you think you have left out, simply request it from us and we will endeavour to include it.’
‘Right, thank you,’ I said slowly.
‘Trust me, it has become much easier!’ Lucas said, laughing. ‘When I manifested, it was all books, books, books!’
‘When was that?’ I asked.
‘Fifty…nine years ago now, my boy,’ he chuckled, and I stared.
‘How are you still here? Your human…?’
‘Died while I was here,’ he finished for me. ‘So I am trapped, tied to this body.’
‘How awful,’ I said, aghast, but Lucas just chuckled again.
‘Oh it’s not so bad,’ he said. ‘Though I’d be happier if he’d died a strapping young man, eh?’
I tried to laugh, but I was so shellshocked by the notion of being stranded here, unable to get home... I tried to push it out of my head.
‘Did you meet him?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ Lucas replied dreamily. ‘He had a bit of a panic at first, I can tell you! Catholic though, so he came around to the idea pretty quickly.’
‘Catholic?’
‘They’re fans of ours,’ Lucas explained, waving a wrinkled hand. ‘You’ll get that in the induction. So I understand you were chosen because your counterpart is in Rome?’
‘Among other things,’ I muttered darkly. ‘Apparently a Manifestation is easier, or something, if the counterpart is close?’
‘Easier, more successful and harder to detect,’ Lucas agreed, nodding. ‘It takes less time for the creation of the body if it has less distance to travel, as it were, so the Higher Powers are less likely to notice. Rome is both reasonably physically close to here and spiritually linked very tightly. The temples transported here by Constantine when he took over and made it Constantinople act as a sort of… beacon, if you will. A mirror, maybe…’ He went quiet, apparently pondering the best word to use.
We stepped out into a courtyard, the white walls being stained pink by the rising sun, edged on one side by arches that led out onto a green lawn. Lucas walked out to a worn stone bench on the lawn and we sat, sun warming our faces as we breathed in the smell of the new day.
‘Can I meet him?’ I asked.
Lucas looked thoughtful, but shook his head. ‘It’s best if you don’t. General rule seems to be that once you meet your counterpart you just can’t bear the thought of leaving them. Instinct, you see, is to stay and protect them.’
I nodded, disappointed, but I could see the sense in his words. Saviour – Salvatore – my counterpart, had played large in my eventual agreement to take on this task, so I maintained a small, quiet hope that I could meet him before I went home, at the end.
Whenever that would be.
Thanks in advance!
SYNOPSIS
They say that you come into this world the same way you leave it, naked, alone and helpless. You can’t bring anything in, and you can’t take anything out. In the end, it’s just you. You are alone and you are totally unique.
That’s not exactly true.
Every time a human is born, so is an angel, and when that human dies, so does the angel. Long since banned from taking human form due to their addiction to seducing humans, angels have become embroiled in their own squabbles and politics, and almost forgotten about Earth. But if you need to kill another angel without him even knowing you’re coming, what’s the easiest way?
Kill his human counterpart.
However, when an angel is sent to do just that, it turns out that things aren’t nearly so simple. Especially if the human you’re trying to kill turns out to be a Russian Mafia hitman…
Or if you fall in love.
I'm slightly concerned about the whole info-dumping thing, but there's quite a lot I need to establish early on, so I'd really appreciate if you'd pay extra attention to the info-dump related critiques! Here goes, opening chapter (or part of chapter, will see how I feel when I divide it up).
They say that you come into this world the same way you leave it, naked, alone and helpless. You can’t bring anything in, and you can’t take anything out. In the end, it’s just you. You are alone and you are totally unique.
That’s not exactly true.
***
My first sensation was cold, underneath me, motionless, and above me, drifting and catching on my skin. The second, a dizzily crushing feeling of weight, gravity, pressure. I peeled my eyes open to find them stabbed by shafts of coloured light, blinding clouds of purple boiling inside my head, and eliciting some strange, dry noise from somewhere… My throat, I realised. My eyes cleared and I could see tiny insects drifting in the columns of light, spiralling in some purposeful slow dance. I could hear a rumbling, throbbing sound, which coalesced into individual voices.
‘Manifestation successful,’ someone said. ‘Time, twenty-three thirteen, GMT plus two.’
‘That’s a relief. Anyone tracked it?’
‘No, all seems to be clear. I think we’ve got away with it.’
There was a collective sigh of relief. I rolled my eyes slowly, with difficulty, down from the silvery brightness above me. An unfamiliar pair of hands was curled in front of my face, the fingers twitching slightly. My fingers, now. It was hard to see it that way. I forced my mind to wander throughout the nervous system of this new body, curled up like a foetus on the cold stone floor.
‘Motor functions appear to be normal, we should be able to sit him up in a minute,’ someone said, and I could hear a pencil scratching on paper somewhere off behind me.
‘How are you feeling?’ someone asked kindly, very close to my face. I twisted my neck round slowly, carefully, looking up into a wrinkled, bearded face.
‘Sh*t,’ I croaked, and they all laughed, looking around each other with great pride. ‘Cold,’ I added, and the man stood up, out of sight. I turned my eyes back to those strange hands. Presently, a blanket, or cloak, or something was laid over me.
‘Can you sit up?’ the bearded man asked me.
I began to think slowly about all the movements required to do so, sluggishly going through them and levering myself in this strange new vessel upright. My body felt like a jug full of water, so that if I moved too quickly, I would spill out of myself all over the hard, cracked stone floor and would never be collected up again.
I eventually realised, gazing around at the monochromatic landscape, that it must be night time, and it was simply the unbelievable incandescence of the full moon that was stabbing into my eyes. I sat in the centre of a ruined temple, beautiful friezes and columns crumbled around me into milky-white chunks under the moon’s glow. The ground spilled away outside the temple, flowing like a crumpled blanket, punctuated by other ruins in the distance on which my eyes refused to focus, straining as they were just to see the men standing around me.
‘Thirsty,’ I said, gathering the blanket around myself. A younger man with butter-yellow hair was already carrying a plastic tumbler of water over to me. They were almost all wearing suits, dusty from clambering among the ruins, and I could see several briefcases standing on the fallen blocks of the temple.
‘Sorry we can’t give you glass,’ the bearded man explained. ‘It gets expensive, not to mention messy and a bit dangerous, giving glasses to new Angelic Manifests who haven’t got the hang of their hands yet.’
The cup was put on the floor in front of me, and I reached out the bizarre appendages to it, fumbling for a long time before I managed to wedge it between my palms and pick it up. I drained it quickly, after the initial confusion with swallowing, managing not to spill too much on myself.
‘Where am I?’ I asked eventually.
‘Eski Hissar, Turkey,’ the man replied.
‘What happens now?’
‘Good question.’
He straightened up, snapping his fingers. Someone shouted a command and there was a roaring in the near distance, agony to my sensitive ears. I yelled and pressed my hands to them, my new, soft fingernails scrabbling my cheeks in the process.
‘It’s just a helicopter,’ the old man told me, clearly attempting to be reassuring, but I hadn’t the faintest idea what one of those was, or why it should be so incredibly loud. What had been just a breeze coasting gently over the surface of my skin now became a wind, and I huddled down into the blanket in confusion and panic.
‘Much easier when we just took them away in cars,’ someone murmured.
‘Come on,’ the bearded man said gently, helping me to my feet. I staggered, knees giving way repeatedly and my new feet refusing to respond. Someone else hooked my other arm around their neck and they almost dragged me across the rippling grass to the shining black machine. I suppose I must have gone into some kind of shock, because I felt suddenly weightless and dizzy, and as though my consciousness was watching this ridiculously clumsy new body from above.
They strapped me into a seat and wedged some earphones over my head, then all the other men clambered in, packed close together in their smart suits, briefcases balancing awkwardly on their laps.
‘Didn’t even have time to change,’ someone lamented. ‘Seems to lack a bit of ceremony, picking up a new Watcher in the clothes we wore to work.’
‘It’s never been all that precise,’ the bearded man pointed out. ‘We’ve never known until the last five hours or so exactly when it would be.’
‘Where are we going?’ I asked, interrupting.
‘Istanbul,’ the man who had given me water answered. He was the youngest of them all, and he must have been in his mid forties. None of this – at least none that was filtering properly into my bewildered mind – was quite what I had been expecting. ‘That’s where our… headquarters are.’
‘Why not nearer here?’ I asked, thinking that I barely had the energy to keep my eyes open.
‘It’s not a long journey,’ a man with rimless glasses told me. ‘We’ve been there a long time; it’s just the Manifestation site there was destroyed hundreds of years ago. This is the nearest one left.’
As he was talking, the engines suddenly roared even louder, drawing a cry of pain from my lips, and we began to lift up into the air, an incredibly unpleasant situation that made my delicate new organs feel like they were being dragged downwards by greedy, clawing hands. Against all odds, however, once we were up in the air, the exhaustion and trauma of my journey so far won against the panic, and I passed out, not waking up until the bearded man shook me gently and told me we’d arrived.
Everyone was spilling out onto a tarmac square surrounded by neatly trimmed lawns. The sky was pinkish gold, stained with the light of the rising sun, not yet strong enough to disperse the shadows of the lush green garden. I was helped down by the old men and told to duck as we moved away from the helicopter, towards a large, elegant white building topped with a blue glass dome. Spotlights illuminated palm trees within the white walls of the garden, and threw streaks of light up the building itself. Set into the garden wall I could see a tall metal gate, and cars were still rushing past it despite the early hour. A door was thrown open on the side of the building closest to us and the men assisting me headed towards it.
‘Reconvene in a couple of days,’ the bearded man told the others. ‘He’ll need lots of rest before he’s ready to talk.’
Somehow, this simple phrase sounded quite ominous to my ears, and I almost wanted to ask questions as we stumbled down the cool, tiled hallways inside the building, but before I had phrased a sensible one, we reached a small room with a neatly-made bed. The two suited men helped me to lie down on it, blanket wrapped around me. I think I fell asleep before they had even left the room, and the next time I opened my eyes it was dark. I managed to sit up but my head spun fiercely and I fell back down again, groaning. Immediately the door opened and someone ran in, muttering anxiously to the second person who followed.
‘Twenty-three hours of sleep. He’ll definitely need to eat by now,’ someone said. Within a few minutes, some kind of soup was brought and the kindly bearded man was spooning it into my mouth. I slowly began to feel better, steadier. Several more people arrived with various dishes and plates, and I ate until I literally could not force another bite into my mouth. It took quite some time, and I was feeling a little more settled in my body by the time I was done. The man gave me some blue and white striped pyjamas and left me to get dressed.
There was a long mirror on my wall, which I hadn’t noticed before. I stood unsteadily, stumbling towards it with a hand against the wall, nerves tingling, afraid of what I would see.
The body was male, completely hairless – without even eyelashes or eyebrows. My skin was completely smooth, unblemished, like a blank canvas. I was like a newborn baby, but in the shape of a man. From my dreams, the only thing I recognised of myself was my eyes, a dark chocolate-brown. Otherwise I just looked like some small, squat, sick alien. I stood for a long time, rubbing the skin of my face with my fingertips. Eventually, with a long sigh, I pulled the pyjamas on slowly, taking a few minutes to figure out how they worked, and stepped out into the corridor.
The building was clearly very old despite its perfect upkeep, with gleaming white-plastered walls and soft, worn terracotta tiled floors. A seemingly endless corridor of closed doors on one side and small arched windows on the other stretched off in each direction. The yellow-haired man was waiting outside my room. He smiled at me, placing his palms together, and gestured for me to follow.
We walked – slowly, as he clearly knew I would find it difficult at first – to the end of the hallway and down a long, narrow spiral staircase to a busier part of the building, where people in white linen robes passed us, staring at me open-mouthed. I felt uncomfortable as well as dizzy, and was relieved when we stepped through a mosaic-covered into a room with rugs on the floor and a large table in the centre, around which were seated eleven men – some of whom I recognised – wearing a mixture of the white linen robes and business suits. The yellow-haired man went and took another seat, gesturing for me to sit in the last empty one. I lowered myself down slowly, looking around the faces nervously. I recognised several from my Manifestation, and tried to smile at them, but they were just staring at me eagerly, as if I were a glass of water and they were dying of thirst.
‘So, tell some poor aged angels,’ the bearded man started, leaning forwards and linking his hands together. ‘What’s happening in Heaven? It’s been a long time, we’re very out of the loop.’
I was thrown immediately.
‘We don’t really call it that anymore…’ I said slowly, looking around at them in disbelief. It had never been called that in my lifetime.
‘Our last Angelic Manifest was nearly thirty years ago now,’ a man I’d not seen before explained, gesturing at the blond man. ‘We are desperate for news.’
‘How did you know I was coming?’ I asked.
‘Auguries,’ he answered simply, shrugging his shoulders. ‘It’s not very precise, but generally reliable. We have been expecting you for a few months.’
I nodded slowly, gathering my thoughts. I could not think where to start explaining everything that had happened in the last thirty years.
‘The system of government was dissolved ten years ago, and has since become democratic,’ I began, deciding to simply explain the crux of the matter that had brought me to Earth. They could ask me other questions later, when I felt less bewildered and overwhelmed. ‘However in recent years disputes have emerged, and the senate is significantly divided into two groups. We feel that the other faction are taking power they do not deserve, and so—’
The men had all started muttering furiously amongst themselves, looking terrified.
‘War, in Heaven?’ one of them asked, and they all fell deathly silent.
‘No,’ I said, irritated at their interruption. ‘Not yet, I am here in an attempt to prevent that.’
‘What are you going to do?’ they asked breathlessly.
‘I’m going to kill the leader’s counterpart.’
There was a long, heavy silence. The plan was, as I knew, riddled with flaws. That was why I was there, and not someone senior and important. For one thing, it was the greatest crime we could commit to take on human shape, although it had been known to happen many times in our past for various reasons. Some simply desired so much to escape that they risked whatever punishment would come upon them. Some, like me, had a task to perform. For another, it was against the very nature of our being to harm a human – a physical impossibility. We were ‘born’ when a human was born, their counterpart, their guardian – though we had long since lost interest in the duty and become involved thoroughly in our own squabbles – and were snuffed out like a candle when they died, often without warning. The only connection that remained to our human counterparts now was our dreams.
The leader of the faction, Siliel, was incredibly well protected, and there was no way to reach him within our world. The only way to kill him was to engineer the death of his human counterpart; as long as a Guardian’s human was alive, he could regenerate endlessly… but how on earth was one to do that, when it was physically impossible to harm a human? I was, in effect, a guinea pig. There were mentions of such things happening in history books, but the reports were sketchy and filled with disdain for the kind of angel that would do such a thing. I, however, had always been possessed of a complete inability to say no, especially in the face of threats and with the promise of being left alone and not bothered ever again at the end of it.
‘Is this the only way?’ one of the men asked me eventually. I felt a wave of despair, and shrugged, shaking my head.
‘I don’t know. It’s what I’ve been told to do, on pain of their reporting my Manifestation to the Higher Powers.’
The men looked at each other, shaking their heads and massaging their temples with their fingers.
‘Well, we must help you to do the best you can,’ the bearded man resolved. ‘It is too late to go back now. We must do everything possible to prevent war. That would be catastrophic.’
I nodded my agreement, and there was another long silence.
‘If you would be so good, we will leave you same paper and a pen. If you could possibly write as much information for us about the last thirty years as possible, that would be greatly appreciated,’ the man said.
‘Of course,’ I answered, nodding again. Another silence.
‘Well, if you could also tell us what information you have about your… target, we’ll start the search, and you can start your induction.’
‘Our spy close to Siliel – the target,’ I explained, remembering that they would have no knowledge of him whatsoever, ‘before he died last month, gathered a lot of information about Siliel’s human dreams. Siliel was created just over twenty-two years ago, his human is male, healthy and whole. His name is Nicholas, or Nikolai; our source was uncertain. His surname begins with an S and has some kind of association with ‘magpie’.’
‘The dreams are certainly strange,’ one old man commented, and everyone rumbled their agreement. The forms my dreams took were always bizarre. Sometimes they were symbolic, sometimes I walked behind my human as he went about his normal business, and sometimes I saw everything through his eyes and felt everything he felt. It was quite normal to talk aloud during these dreams, and many of us painted or wrote about what we saw to try to drive out the strange lonely melancholy that one left in its wake.
‘I miss them,’ someone said sadly, and there were several nods.
I was slightly confused, and made a mental note to ask about it later, but for now there were more important things to talk about.
‘He has often painted cityscapes covered with snow. I have several memorised and can attempt to replicate them as best I can,’ I offered.
‘That would be very helpful, thank you. We will provide art materials for you in your room.’
‘There are several other minor details, which I will write down for you as and when I remember them,’ I said. ‘I still feel quite unwell.’
‘That is to be expected,’ the bearded man told me gently, rising to his feet. The meeting appeared to be adjourned, and he gestured for me to go ahead, saying, ‘I’ll catch you up.’
As I shut the door behind me, I heard him tell them not to bother me with questions about Heaven, that it was not their place to ask, and to begin searching for possible surnames that meant ‘magpie’. One of the pitfalls of communicating in a universal language was not actually being aware of what language was being spoken, and simply understanding it and replying in kind.
The bearded man let himself out of the room quietly, and placed a hand on my shoulder, gesturing for me to walk.
‘Well, there you go! The Guild!’ he said. ‘My name is Lucas, by the way.’
‘A pleasure,’ I murmured.
‘Shall we go outside? Get some sunshine, hmm? I think the sun’s risen by now,’ he suggested, smiling. I shrugged an agreement and we continued down the hallway.
‘What does the induction involve?’ I asked curiously. If they thought they were the ones with all the questions, they would be surprised. I was starting to wake up a bit, and find so much to ask about.
‘I’m afraid it’s a hard slog, especially as it seems like you’re on a time limit,’ Lucas apologised. ‘This’ll be your last day of rest in a long time! You will have classes in clothing, speech, manners, traditions, obviously tailored to whatever country you’ll be going to, once we know. Also lessons on history, world and local. You will read as much important literature as you have time to read, and watch films when you are too tired to do anything else. Anything you think you have left out, simply request it from us and we will endeavour to include it.’
‘Right, thank you,’ I said slowly.
‘Trust me, it has become much easier!’ Lucas said, laughing. ‘When I manifested, it was all books, books, books!’
‘When was that?’ I asked.
‘Fifty…nine years ago now, my boy,’ he chuckled, and I stared.
‘How are you still here? Your human…?’
‘Died while I was here,’ he finished for me. ‘So I am trapped, tied to this body.’
‘How awful,’ I said, aghast, but Lucas just chuckled again.
‘Oh it’s not so bad,’ he said. ‘Though I’d be happier if he’d died a strapping young man, eh?’
I tried to laugh, but I was so shellshocked by the notion of being stranded here, unable to get home... I tried to push it out of my head.
‘Did you meet him?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ Lucas replied dreamily. ‘He had a bit of a panic at first, I can tell you! Catholic though, so he came around to the idea pretty quickly.’
‘Catholic?’
‘They’re fans of ours,’ Lucas explained, waving a wrinkled hand. ‘You’ll get that in the induction. So I understand you were chosen because your counterpart is in Rome?’
‘Among other things,’ I muttered darkly. ‘Apparently a Manifestation is easier, or something, if the counterpart is close?’
‘Easier, more successful and harder to detect,’ Lucas agreed, nodding. ‘It takes less time for the creation of the body if it has less distance to travel, as it were, so the Higher Powers are less likely to notice. Rome is both reasonably physically close to here and spiritually linked very tightly. The temples transported here by Constantine when he took over and made it Constantinople act as a sort of… beacon, if you will. A mirror, maybe…’ He went quiet, apparently pondering the best word to use.
We stepped out into a courtyard, the white walls being stained pink by the rising sun, edged on one side by arches that led out onto a green lawn. Lucas walked out to a worn stone bench on the lawn and we sat, sun warming our faces as we breathed in the smell of the new day.
‘Can I meet him?’ I asked.
Lucas looked thoughtful, but shook his head. ‘It’s best if you don’t. General rule seems to be that once you meet your counterpart you just can’t bear the thought of leaving them. Instinct, you see, is to stay and protect them.’
I nodded, disappointed, but I could see the sense in his words. Saviour – Salvatore – my counterpart, had played large in my eventual agreement to take on this task, so I maintained a small, quiet hope that I could meet him before I went home, at the end.
Whenever that would be.
Thanks in advance!
