Tonight, all of heaven is singing. I know that it is not for me, but that is what it feels like just now.
Word didn’t come until only a few hours ago, just before the celebration was set to begin. I had taken on the first shift of the Guardians, so that I could be free to hear back, but I wasn’t looking forward to my lonely watch in the dark. Brid and Inca kept me company as long as they could, but then they too had to go to the singing.
At first, when Ero’an came to find me, I thought he was just coming to brighten my spirits. But then I looked more closely at his smile, and my heart began to lift.
“Peronel has called you, Asa’el,” he said. “She has the answer.”
And so I went with him, and with Salathiel and Orison at either side I knelt before the Seraph to hear the Word of God.
“The Will of the Father is unchanged,” she told me, her eyes—all of them—warm on my face. “You are to continue to let love be your guide, Asa’el, and it pleases our Lord that you should open that love in its fullness to Freya. Answer her calls and her questions, and protect her closely as you have done in the past, with your whole heart.”
In that very moment, as I bowed in overwhelmed relief and joy, I heard it. I didn’t realize that I had been listening for this all this time, but it came to me perfectly clearly—Freya was calling me.
I may well have sprung up and left them all then and there, but Peronel raised one hand, her brow taking on a more stern aspect. “But one warning,” she told me, and I stopped where I was. “Her knowledge of you must come gradually. Do not press to show yourself to her too quickly. Do not open her eyes or her ears—let her do that herself.”
I was surprised. “I did not know that I had the ability to make her see or hear better than she does now,” I said honestly.
Peronel smiled. “All angels gain this ability when we come to love a single human as you do. But it takes time, and to force such a revelation is frightening for a human. Restrain yourself, Asa’el, and let her see you in her own time. This will be difficult for you, but heed me, or risk all.”
The warning was clear in her voice, and I bent my head again. “I hear and obey, Seraph.”
Her hand rested on my head, and it burned like a crown of thorns. “The Father is pleased, Asa’el,” she said, and there was the slightest, small echo to her voice that chilled me to my very core.
Awed, grateful, joyous, I took my dismissal and fled heaven down through the dark, snowy night to the place where a well-known hand was tuning a radio.
The moment I arrived, she turned, her eyes searching the room. I could sense that Esther was gone, which was a bit surprising on Christmas Day, and I was tempted to search Freya’s thoughts for the reason, but I stopped myself. She was sitting on the floor of the kitchen, a drawer open above her, and the radio before her was dusty, its battery cover still hanging off. A woman’s voice was speaking quickly about discounts.
“Is that you?” Freya asked. Loud guitar started playing, and she jumped and turned it down.
She was nervous. I lowered myself to her level and looked at the radio. I had been worried that I would have forgotten how to change the stations, but it was as easy as before, and the rock song was cut off for a different woman’s voice speaking of a different business.
Freya exhaled in obvious relief. “Okay. Still not crazy. Good.” She put the battery cover back on the back of the radio and started to stand up. I pushed the drawer closed before she could bump her head, and she jumped, then laughed. “Thanks.”
She went to sit at the table, setting the radio in front of her. I settled down across from her and waited for her to speak, happy just to be able to see her face.
“So I have questions,” she said at last. A bouncy little song about a donkey began playing, and she grimaced at the radio. “Man, that doesn’t help my concentration.” She moved the station herself to find some music and turned it down again.
“I thought that I would just tell you what I think is going on,” she said, “and you can let me know where I’m wrong. Oh.” And she jumped up to borrow the pad and pencil from their place next to the phone. Sitting down again, she pushed her hair back. “Sorry, I’m a little nervous. I don’t usually talk to angels.” Then she paused. “Or do I?”
I didn’t say anything, only waited for her to continue.
Taking a deep breath, she began again. “So I think that you’ve been with me for a really long time,” she said. “Definitely since I met George, since I recognized the feeling of my car slipping and stopping, but maybe longer than that.” She glanced at the radio, but there was no clear way to answer that, so I didn’t touch it. “And you’ve been—what, protecting me?”
It was correct, if not complete, so I moved the station from 96.9 to 98.5.
Dutifully she wrote long time protecting me on the pad. “But not just protecting me,” she said, and I smiled at her perception. “Because you’ve been around when there wasn’t any danger, just when I was lonely or sad or upset about something. You’ve kept me calm, and you’ve comforted me, and you’ve helped me. So it’s not just physical danger that you’ve been worried about. Which makes me think that the danger came later on.”
At least the specific danger that Asoharith presented. I moved the station again, up to 101.1, where a jazzy piano was playing.
Freya’s gaze softened. “Then, did that danger come for you, rather than for me?”
Up to 102.4, then, because I had a flash of guilt, back down to 101.9. Freya frowned as static rolled from the speakers, but it didn’t take her long to figure it out.
“Oh. So, that thing and its friends came after me…because they knew it would hurt you?” She watched as the numbers flicked up to 106.1. “And is that why you’ve been around less lately? Trying to draw them away?” Up to 106.7.
“But why?” she whispered. “Why do you care?”
There was no possible way I could answer that without words, except to rise and wrap her in my wings, filling her with all the love in my heart.
She wrapped her arms around herself and wiped sudden tears from her eyes. “Emotions,” she murmured. “That’s how you communicate. And I’ve felt this before, many times.” She laughed a little, covering her eyes. Then she got to her feet and turned to face me, her eyes still searching the air.
“I owe you an apology,” she said. “You saved me from a monster, and you’ve been propping me up for months, maybe years. And at the first hint of danger, I freaked out on you. That wasn’t very friendly of me.”
“You needed time,” I murmured. “I never blamed you for that.”
She shivered. “You’re talking to me, aren’t you? I can—I can kind of feel it, but I can’t make out the words. But the meaning—you forgive me, don’t you?”
She glanced at the radio, which jumped to 107.1, and smiled for the first time.
“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that an angel doesn’t hold grudges.”
Then the smile was gone again, and she looked at the dark window. “The thing that came after me—will there be more of them coming?”
I sent the station all the way down to 102.7, then, when she lifted a skeptical brow, reluctantly lifted it back to 103.1.
“So that means that they will be coming, but you won’t let them near me?” she asked. “Or that you’ll draw them off again?”
“Which would you prefer?” I asked, rather than answer.
She angled her head, seeming to get the sense of my question. “I think…if there’s a heavenly war going on, I’d rather keep my one protector close, rather than turn my face away and hope they leave me alone.”
She was very pale, but her courage blazed bright, lighting her soul and warming me right through. I simply basked in the glow of it. “I will never leave you in danger,” I said. “And you will never be alone if you don’t wish it.”
Maybe she didn’t hear the exact words, but she did know what I meant, and it comforted her greatly. For a moment she smiled again. Then, exhausted, she sank back into the chair and began to play with the pencil. “I wish I knew your name,” she said. “Assuming you have a name. It would make me feel just the slightest bit less lost in the middle of something that is way beyond me.”
I hesitated, unsure that I could do it. But then I reached out and plucked the pencil from her fingers. Of course, it immediately fell onto the table and rolled away.
She stared as I chased it and picked it up again. Slowly, painstakingly, I carried it back to the pad, where it fell again and clattered to the floor.
She could feel my frustration and laughed, the sound edged with wonder. Picking up the pencil, she held it loosely and set the end on the pad. “You’ve used my hands before,” she said, remembering how I’d taken control of the car. “Would this be easier? I give you permission.” Then, as an afterthought, she closed her eyes.
I wasn’t certain that I could do it in a moment that wasn’t an emergency, but I couldn’t resist the offer. Standing behind her, I slipped my fingers through hers, and there in the muscles I could feel the memory of many years of writing, the ways to twitch and push and tug to make words take shape. It was amazing, as was the smoothness of the red pencil under her fingers, and the scratchy resistance of graphite against paper.
I drew several straight lines, and then a curved line, and then a circle—but this wasn’t what she had given me permission to do.
“Hey, keep your head in the game, angel,” she teased me, sneaking a peek at the page.
I had to think how best to represent my name in English, but finally I etched it out, carefully, as big as I had left room for among my doodles. Then I stopped, stood back, and watched as she opened her eyes and read what we had written.
“Asa’el?” she asked.
I was startled, and then I laughed. She mispronounced it, or at least she spoke it in a different way than I am used to. But it didn’t matter, because it was my name resounding on the air, spoken by a human, and only the Voice of God itself has ever been sweeter in speaking it.
She felt my joy and laughed too. “Okay,” she said. “Well, it’s nice to meet you.”
It was then that she heard a car outside, and she hastily tore off the page of the pad and switched the radio off. Her mother was back, and there would be no more talking tonight. But she folded the page with my name and drawings and carefully tucked it in her pocket, and the radio went into her suitcase. And so I am happy, because whatever the new year may bring, Freya and I are allies now, and we will face it together.