“How are you feeling?” Ivy’s cool, slender fingers stroked my head.
“Like I’ve been hit by a bus,” I replied honestly. “I really don’t know what happened. I was feeling fine.”
“Surely you know why you fainted, Bethany,” Gabriel said.
I gave him a blank look. “I’ve been eating properly and taking all your advice.”
“It’s got nothing to do with that,” my brother said. “It was because you saved that girl’s life.”
“That sort of thing can really take it out of you,” Ivy added.
I almost laughed aloud. “But, Gabe, you saved that girl’s life,” I said.
Ivy looked at our brother to indicate that he should explain and discreetly moved off to set the table for dinner.
“I only healed her physical wounds,” Gabriel said. I gave him a stupefied look, wondering if this was his idea of a joke.
“What do you mean only? That’s what constitutes saving someone. If a person gets shot and you remove the bullet and heal the wound then you’ve saved them.”
“No, Bethany, that girl was going to die. If you hadn’t given her your life force, nothing I could have done would have saved her. Closing wounds can’t bring someone back once they’ve reached that point. You spoke to her; it was your voice that called her back and your strength that kept her soul from leaving her body.”
I couldn’t believe what he was telling me. I had saved a human life? I hadn’t even known I had the power to do that. I’d believed the extent of my powers on earth to be only good for soothing bad tempers or helping retrieve lost belongings. How was it possible that I had found it in me to save a girl on the brink of death? Power over the sea, over the sky, over human life, that was Gabriel’s gift. It had never occurred to me that my powers might be greater than I was aware of.
Ivy looked across at me, her eyes bright with praise. “Congratulations,” she said. “This is a big step for you.”
“But how come I feel so bad now?” I asked, suddenly alerted to my aching body.
“The effort of reviving someone can be very debilitating,” Ivy explained, “especially the first couple of times. It sends your human form into shock. It won’t always be like that; you’ll grow accustomed to it and eventually you’ll be able to recover more quickly.”
“You mean I’ll be able to do it again?” I asked. “It wasn’t a fluke?”
“If you’ve done it once, you can do it again,” Gabriel answered. “All angels have the ability, but it develops with practice.”
Despite my exhaustion I felt suddenly buoyant and ate my dinner with appetite. Afterward
Gabriel and Ivy refused my offer of help with the cleaning up. Instead Ivy steered me onto the deck and pushed me into the hammock.
“You’ve had a very tiring day,” she said.
“But I hate not being useful.”
“You can help me in a minute. I have a whole lot of hats and scarves to knit for the thrift shop.” Ivy always found time to connect with the community, through small earthly tasks.
“Sometimes it’s the little things that count most,” she said.
“You know, the whole idea of those places is that you donate your old clothes, not make new ones,” I teased.
“Well, we haven’t been here long enough to have old things,” replied Ivy. “And I have to give them something; I’d feel just awful if I didn’t. Besides, I can whip them up in no time.”
I sat in the hammock with a mohair blanket around my shoulders, trying to process the events of the afternoon. In one way, I felt I understood the purpose of our mission better than before, but at the same time I’d never been more confused. Today had been a prime example of what I should be doing—protecting the sanctity of life. Instead I’d been spending my time absorbed in a teenage obsession with a boy who didn’t really know anything about me. Poor
Xavier, I thought. He would never be able to understand me, no matter how hard he tried. It wasn’t his fault. He could only know as much as I allowed him to know. I was so busy trying to keep up my fa?ade that I hadn’t considered that sooner or later it would all have to come undone. Xavier was tied to a human life and an existence I could never be part of. The satisfaction I felt at my success that afternoon faded, and I was left feeling strangely numb.
His Kiss
Sunday mass was the only time I felt I could truly reconnect with my home. Kneeling in the pews and listening to the chords of “Agnus Dei” brought me back to my former self. There was an airy tranquility inside the church that couldn’t be found anywhere else. It was cool and calm, like being at the bottom of the ocean, and I always felt that as soon as I stepped through its doors, I was in a safe place. Ivy and I were altar servers on Sunday, and Gabriel helped Father
Mel in giving out Holy Communion. After the service, we always stayed behind to chat with him.
“The congregation is growing,” he observed one day. “Every week, I see new faces.”
“Maybe people are starting to realize what’s important in life,” Ivy said.
“Or maybe they are following your example.” Father Mel smiled.
“The Church should need no advocates,” Gabriel said. “It should speak for itself.”
“It doesn’t matter what brings people here,” said Father Mel. “It only matters what they find here.”
“All we can do is lead them in the right direction,” Ivy agreed.
“Indeed, we cannot force them to have faith,” Father Mel said. “But we can demonstrate its great power.”
“And we can pray for them,” I said.
“Of course,” Father Mel winked at me. “And something tells me the Lord will listen when you call.”
“He listens to us no more than to others,” Gabriel said. I could tell he was concerned about giving away too much. Although we’d never so much as hinted to Father Mel about where we came from, there was a tacit understanding between us. It was only natural, I thought. He was a priest—he spent all his time trying to connect with the forces above. “We can only hope that He will bless this town,” Gabriel added.
Father Mel’s blue eyes flickered over us all. “I believe He already has.”
The next day Xavier had a sports meeting at morning break, so I spent the time listening to
Molly and Taylah talk animatedly about a clothing outlet just out of town. There they could buy fake designer labels that looked so authentic no one would guess they weren’t the “real deal.”
When they asked me to go with them, I was so preoccupied that I agreed without hesitation.
Even when they invited me to a beach bonfire that Saturday night, I nodded my consent without really registering the details of the invitation.
I was glad when fifth period finally came around and Xavier and I had French together. I felt a rush of relief to be in the same room as him even though I could barely focus. I desperately needed to talk to him now, even if I hadn’t decided what I was going to say. I just knew that it couldn’t wait.
He was less than a handsbreadth away, and I had to sit on my fingers to keep them from reaching out and touching him. Partly because I wanted to reassure myself that I hadn’t imagined him but also because it felt as if we were two magnets drawn to each other; resisting was more painful than succumbing. The minutes crawled by, and it seemed as if time had slowed deliberately just to spite me.
Xavier sensed my strange mood and stayed seated after the bell, watching everyone else file past. While I put on a charade of packing up my books and pencils, he sat very still without fidgeting. A few curious onlookers cast glances in our direction, probably hoping to pick up some threads of the conversation that they might report back to their friends as juicy gossip.
“I tried to call you last night but there was no answer,” he said, seeing that I was struggling to start. “I was worried about you.”