This evening Freya had a meeting with a writer that ran long, and both were so absorbed that they did not notice that the weather was getting bad. Inca was uneasy about guiding Freya back to her home on her own, but no one else was available, and so I came myself to join them.
Freya drove carefully, and while Inca kept close to her, I flew behind to watch over her. All seemed well, until Freya made the last turn onto her street, and her tires caught a patch of wet ice. The car skidded and slid towards another car parked on the street, and Freya shrieked.
I stooped and set myself against the car, levering all my strength against it, and it stopped. Freya stared out the window, her face white and astonished, but entirely unharmed.
I collapsed to the ground, exhausted but pleased. Inca dropped down next to me and put a wing around my shoulder. “Well done, brother! Your skill at moving the physical has come a long way from where you began.”
“A very long way,” I said ruefully, remembering the days when I had struggled to stir so much as a leaf. On the night that George had nearly the same accident, it had taken sheer panic to allow me to lift a handful of stones, and afterward I had been weak and shaky for almost a full day. Even as I write this I feel like myself again. What a difference training and rank make! “I am just glad that I could do what needed to me done.”
“Amen,” Inca said.
We both looked up at the sound of a car door opening. Freya had no room to open the driver’s side door, but she’d slid across the seat and jumped out the other side. Now she came around the car, shivering, and stared at the narrow gap between the two cars.
I watched her face and her thoughts as she knelt next to me and rested her fingers on the icy road. She, like me, remembered a similar incident—a car sliding on ice, a fearfully close call—and she was making the logical connection.
“How long—?” she breathed, then swallowed.
She wasn’t frightened, just stunned. All this time she has thought that my presence was a new occurrence. But now, thinking of that moment almost two years ago, she wondered if she had only just begun to realize something that had been a part of her life for years, or maybe for always.
I said nothing, of course, but I reached out and lightly touched her face. She flinched and brushed at her cheek, then got up quickly and clambered back into her car.
From where we stood, we could see her house, and so we stayed there and watched her drive up and hurry inside. She looked back only once, just before closing the door behind her.
“It is hard for her,” Inca murmured. “And for you, my brother.”
It is hard. I know that giving her the answers she seeks will cause a break in her world that would not be easily mended. All that has happened thus far could still be denied, could still fade back into the shadows of her spirit.
And yet it is so frustrated to come so close to being known by her, being seen, and have to turn my back. This day should never have come so soon. I ought to have had years standing by her side, protecting and guarding her.
But I should not complain that she is exemplary among humans. If she were not, I would not love her so.