A Gift of Wings (13 page)

Lucky replaced the statue back on the shelf where it had been, her fingers lingering a moment before she drew back her hand. The little woman made Lucky uncomfortable, and she didn’t want her thinking she was going to buy the piece. She hadn’t seen a price on it, but she was sure it was beyond her means.

As if guessing her thoughts, the old woman said, “It’s not as expensive as it might appear—at least not to the right buyer.”

She tilted her head and studied Lucky with piercing eyes that were as pale as moonlight. After several moments, she nodded as if satisfied. She moved nearer to Lucky, leaning heavily on the cane with each step, and then reached up and lifted the angel statue off its shelf with her free hand. She gazed at it fondly and then held it out to Lucky.

“Take him, dear,” she said. “He is meant to be yours.”

Lucky took the object from the old woman’s hand, her fingers closing around it with a sense of inevitability. As she clasped the statuette close to her, she felt something settle into place inside her. Yes, it was right that she have this, no matter what the cost.

“What do I owe you?” she asked.

The old woman patted her arm. “Don’t you worry about that.” She turned toward the back of the store and gestured for Lucky to follow her. “Let’s wrap him up well, so you can get him safely home.”

Lucky followed her into a little office as cluttered as the rest of the store. Somewhere amid all the items that seemed to fill every available inch of space, the woman located some thick paper and twine, which she used to wrap the statue, her fingers moving more nimbly than Lucky would have thought possible. After she cut the loose ends off the twine, she handed the wrapped statue to Lucky as if presenting her with a gift. Instead of taking the package, Lucky reached into her backpack for her wallet.

“How much does it cost? I don’t have much cash, but I do have a credit card.”

The woman shook her head as she pressed the parcel into Lucky’s hands. “There is no charge. He is yours.”

“Are you sure?” Lucky asked, slipping her wallet back into her backpack and closing her hands around the package.

The old woman nodded as she covered Lucky’s hands with her own. “I am sure. He has not spoken in such a way to anyone else. No one else has the same need of him.” Her hands tightening, she added, “He is the leader of the Forces of Light. He will protect you from the Dark that is coming.”

“Lucky, there you are,” Mo said, sounding relieved, as she appeared in the door of the crowded office. “I thought I’d lost you. This place is a maze.” Seeing the package in Lucky’s hands, she raised her eyebrows in surprise. “You bought something?”

“Well, not exactly,” Lucky said.

Turning to the old woman, who had moved away from her to sit down in the single chair beside the cluttered desk, she offered a thank you that she couldn’t help feeling was inadequate, no matter how heartfelt. “Thank you for this. I’ll take good care of him.”

The woman nodded. “As he will of you,” she said, as softly as her scratchy voice would allow.

Then she waved her hand at them, dismissing them from her little room and her store.

“What was all that about?” Mo asked, when they had closed the door of the little shop behind them.

Lucky motioned to the parcel. “She gave this to me. She saw that I wanted it, and she wouldn’t let me pay for it. She said it was meant for me.”

She paused to shrug her backpack from her shoulder so she could tuck the package inside it.

“What is it, anyway?”

“A statue, a carving, of an angel.” Lucky answered. “She said he’s the Archangel Michael, and that he’ll protect me from the Dark.”

“Okay, so that’s a little strange. But given what’s been going on with you, maybe you need him, right?”

Lucky nodded as she repositioned her backpack on her shoulders. “Maybe so.”

***

It was late afternoon, and the girls were about to give up any hope of success in finding Lucky a dress for the dance. With only fifteen minutes before closing time, they stopped in one last shop, not really expecting to find anything, but feeling they should make one final attempt before calling it a day. They split up so they could scan the merchandise more quickly. Lucky was half-heartedly flipping through a rack of prom dresses when she felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned around to find Mo holding something behind her back and looking very excited.

“What did you find?” she asked.

Mo kept uncharacteristically silent, but her expression became smug as well as excited as she showed Lucky the dress she had found. Lucky’s eyes grew wide. It was beautiful. “So, do you want to try it on?” Mo asked.

“You know I do,” Lucky answered, taking the dress and hurrying toward the small dressing room in the back of the store, with Mo following behind.

Lucky pulled the curtain to the dressing room and slipped out of her sneakers, jeans, and t-shirt. She dropped the dress over her head, pulled up the side zip, and was stunned by the reflection she saw in the mirror. The dress was sleeveless with a scoop neck and made of satin with an overlay of filmy lace shot through with a scattering of small, glistening beads. The variegated color darkened from a pale jade at the bodice to a deep sea green at the base of the skirt. The lines of the dress clung close to Lucky’s body, the skirt flaring slightly at the hips and falling to just above her ankles.

“Oh, Mo, it’s perfect,” she breathed.

As soon as the words left her mouth, her friend had pulled back the dressing room curtain. “You look amazing in that,” she agreed, her smile widening as she gazed over Lucky’s shoulder at her reflection in the mirror. “I know just what we should do with your hair, and you can borrow my strappy silver sandals. They’ll be perfect with that dress.”

“Thanks,” Lucky said. “That would be great. Now, get out. I have to get changed—the store is going to be closing any second now—and there’s not enough room to move with both of us in here.”

Mo ducked through the door and pulled the curtain as Lucky shimmied out of the dress. After she put it back on the hanger, she peeked at the price tag, which she hadn’t even thought about looking at before. The cost was a little more than she had planned on spending, but she loved the dress. She knew she’d regret it if she didn’t buy it, and she rationalized the expense by telling herself she’d never find anything else that looked as good on her for less. She yanked on her jeans and t-shirt, shoved her feet into her sneakers, and before she could have second thoughts, hurried to the cashier at the front of the store to make her purchase.

Carrying their shopping bags, the girls made their way to the closest ‘L’ stop. While they were standing on the platform waiting for their train, Lucky scanned the other travelers, looking for anything strange. On the opposite platform, she noticed a woman with a girl who looked to be her daughter, both of whom seemed to have shadowy, transparent wings if she gazed at them at just the right angle. Her eyes lingered on a group of four young people about her own age, two boys and two girls, who were standing only a few yards away from her and Mo. Something about them seemed different, but she wasn’t sure what it was. As she stared at them, one of the boys looked up and smiled at her. His gleaming, white teeth were all unnaturally long and pointy. Lucky looked away. She waited a few moments, and making sure none of them seemed aware of her attention, she studied his companions. One of the girls appeared to have the same predatory teeth as the first boy. The other boy and girl did not, but if she allowed her eyes to lose focus, she found that they looked to be much larger than they at first appeared, and their skin no longer looked smooth and tanned but gray and rough.

Lucky was surprised at the clinical nature of her observations as she studied the crowd. She found that she wasn’t in the least shocked upon catching glimpses of wings or pointy teeth or rough, gray skin. She also discovered that, for the first time since she had begun seeing such things, she wasn’t questioning her own sanity or doubting the truth of what she was seeing. She stopped her little experiment when the train arrived, and she and Mo hurried aboard, finding places to stand amid the crowd as the doors closed behind them. But as she and Mo chatted about the events of the day, their purchases and the upcoming dance, in the back of her mind, she was wondering what had changed to make her suddenly accept her strange, new way of seeing the world as somehow real?

***

Aidan was exhausted. No, exhausted didn’t even begin to describe the depth of tiredness he felt or the pain he experienced every time he moved. He was tired and achy all the way down to the bone. He was aware of every single muscle and sinew in his body, and they all groaned in agony. Even his hair hurt. He was undergoing serious training alright, and it felt like a serious butt-kicking. He had known that after two years off the field he wasn’t going to be at the top of his game, but this was ridiculous. The muscles in his right hand trembled as he held his heavy sword at shoulder height, the point just touching Kev’s throat.

“Good,” his half-brother said, lifting his hand to press down on the flat side of the sword, indicating to Aidan that he could drop his arm. “You’re getting better. A few more days of this and you’ll be almost as good as you were.”

“A few more days of this,” Aidan groaned, “and I’ll be dead.”

Kev chuckled. “Being the lead singer of a popular band made you soft?”

Aidan lifted his middle finger, and the muscles of his hand protested at the gesture. He sighed. “Being human has made me soft,” he conceded.

Backing up a few feet so he could lean against the wall behind him, he slid to the floor, placing the sword beside him, point angled away so he wouldn’t do himself any damage if he suddenly toppled over onto it in exhaustion.

“What’s it like?” Kev asked, lowering himself to a seated position a few feet away.

Aidan’s eyes had drifted closed, and he opened them to look a question at his brother. “What’s what like?”

“Being human. Living a normal, human life.”

Aidan blew a small breath out in a “hmmph,” closing his eyes again as he considered the question. It wasn’t like his life had been exactly normal—or even completely human—for the last two years. But it had been a lot more humanly normal than it had been before or, it seemed, than it was going to be, at least in the foreseeable future.

“It’s peaceful,” he finally answered, his eyes still closed. “In comparison. Don’t get me wrong—everyone has their worries and fears, their losses and sorrows. But they aren’t cosmic. You aren’t carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders every second of every day.”

“I doubt that it’s the same for them,” Kev commented.

Aidan opened an eye in inquiry.

Kev shrugged his shoulders. “Well, they aren’t used to, as you put it, ‘carrying the weight of the world.’ So, their worries and fears and losses probably feel pretty cosmic to them.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Aidan agreed, closing his eye again.

After a few minutes, he opened both eyes and looked at his brother with a serious expression. “I think I always knew it was just a kind of vacation for me. Even though I swore I’d never come back, that as soon as my wings were returned, I’d undertake permanent Renunciation, some part of me always knew this was where I’d end up.”

“You mean, on the floor, after getting your butt kicked by your big brother?” Kev asked with a grin.

Aidan lifted his middle finger again. It hurt a little less this time; his body was already starting to recover. Being half Seraph had its advantages.

Chuckling, Kev rose to his feet. He stepped over to Aidan and held out his hand. Aidan took it, allowing Kev to help pull him up to standing. Aidan groaned as all the aches and pains reasserted themselves. They were less intense than they had been before his rest, but he still felt like hell. He winced as Kev clapped an arm around his shoulders, his hand closing in a squeeze on Aidan’s bicep.

“Let’s call it a day,” Kev said. “You get some sleep. I’ll see you back here tomorrow, bright and early.”

Aidan slid out from under his brother’s arm, and turning, reached out a hand to clasp Kev’s. “Bright and early. I’ll be here.”

Kev’s eyes glinted. “Be prepared for company.”

Aidan groaned. That couldn’t bode well.

Lifting his hand in a half-hearted farewell, he walked across the training room floor to the outside exit.

Once outside, he took a deep breath, mentally preparing for the pains that would assault his body when he summoned his wings. He felt the heavy weight of them as they took shape on his back. He paused a moment, allowing himself to readjust to the feel of them, his muscles tightening and recalibrating their effort as his center of gravity shifted. Flexing the extra muscles in his shoulders and back, he spread his wings and launched himself into the sky. He stifled the groan that threatened to escape his lips as he executed a couple of practice loops above the training center. This was his first flight since he had renounced his wings two years ago. He probably needed flight training too, and despite his aching body, he might as well get that started.

He flew a few more loops, practicing climbs and dives, sudden stops and hovers, before he felt prepared to activate his secret weapon. He finished a multi-level figure eight, with a few full body rolls thrown in just for giggles, and then came to a hover. Closing his eyes, he drew on the depth of energy within and around him, and then he opened the door behind which he hadn’t even looked since the day he’d kissed his feathered appendages good-bye. As soon as the door cracked open, he felt the force throughout his whole body, a kind of electricity humming through his veins. With a sort of mental muscle flex, he flipped the switch, and those heavy wings of his burst into flame.

He shot upward into the fastest climb he had executed this evening, feeling a surge of exhilaration inside him. Gods, this felt good. Sure, he was still aching all over, and every flame-feather twitch sent a twinge through some muscle or other, but he was flying again, shooting through the sky on wings of flame that carried him faster and farther than mere feathers ever could.