Earth/Sky (Earth/Sky Trilogy) (23 page)

“I take it they don’t hunt fallen angels.”

“Yes, they do. Not all fallen angels are like us. They’ll hunt anything of supernatural ability or origin that preys on humans, to kill what can be killed, and bind what can only be bound. The day we moved to Spooner, we drove down there to make it clear to them that our intentions were benign. To not have done so would look suspicious to their way of thinking.”

Why would a fallen angel prey on humans?
I was about to ask when Cadmon patted my shoulder sweetly and said, “Up?” I turned up the music.

The Point was part of a state park to the north of Spooner.
The state only kept open its more popular parks with budget cuts, and this was not on the list of the favored. It was a long drive to get there, our surroundings growing ever more remote. More cars were going back to civilization than were headed in our direction, which held nothing but trees and shafts of the setting sun piercing through them in blinding rays.

We turned at a sign and stopped at a
thick metal bar extended over the road. Taurin got out of the passenger side of the red car and pushed it open to let us through. Again we drove, now heading directly for the sun. I lowered the visor and eventually held my hand in front of my face. The road was shaggy from overgrown plants along the sides, eating away at it one leaf and twig at a time. Turning down the music a little, I said, “If you were to dump me off here, wherever we are, I would never find my way back.”

“I have no intention of dumping you off,” Adriel said
in all seriousness.

“It was a
joke
, Adriel. I meant that I have no sense of direction.”

“We’re going to fly,” Cadmon said breathily.
He squirmed around in the back and released his seatbelt to take off his shirt.

“Are you excited?” I asked.

“Kishi will carry me. She goes fastest.”

The Point was
a craggy cliff that pressed up right to the ocean’s edge. We stopped in the parking lot and climbed the steps carved into the cliff up to the top. It was a long drop to the waves bashing into the rock. The sun was almost below the horizon, only a fiery rind of it still cresting the blue. The sky to the east was deepening. A black pit was here for those who wished a fire, although it hadn’t been used in a long time. Drina and Taurin were unloading the trunk of their car, which had a cooler, lawn chairs, jackets, and a picnic blanket inside. Fixing Cadmon with the evil eye, Drina said, “No flying until a little later!”

“How safe is this?” I asked Adriel.

“Safe, especially as it gets dark. No one lives in this area.” He took the blanket from Taurin and snapped it out as Drina brought over the cooler. Kishi kicked a sparkling lavender ball over the ground to Cadmon. It bounced wildly, one of those two-dollar inflatable balls for kids that popped the second it hit something sharp. He kicked it back and I ducked as it rocketed to me. Bouncing off the bumper, it launched for the stairs with Kishi in pursuit.

“Sorry you came?” Drina asked, taking a seat on the blanket.

“Not at all,” I said. Her inquisitive look told me that she wanted to know whatever question I was withholding. “How old are you?”

Gathering up her hair as the breeze tossed it around, she twisted it twice and put it over her shoulder.
“Darling, I have no idea. It was ancient times when I fell, and for long centuries I lived a hermitic life. I never counted nor cared.”

As annoying as it was to have my emotional privacy intruded upon, it was nice to be able to voice what I was thinking and have my innocent intentions come across without awkward explanations necessary.
“I bet you’ve seen pretty much everything, whatever the number is.”

She chuckled and opened the cooler for a bottle of water.
“People still surprise me. Just when I think that I
have
seen it all, I’m proven wrong. It serves to keep one humble.”

“I’m two hundred and one, thank you very much,” Kishi volunteered, returning with the ball under her arm.
Pinching it between her legs, she peeled off her sweatshirt. Underneath, she wore a halter-top. “I only know because I almost fell on Taurin on my way down and he carted me home with him. So we know the exact year, even if I can’t remember much about it.”

“I didn’t realize the fall was literal,” I said.

“Temporal. A temporal shift that feels like falling.” She dropped the sweatshirt to the blanket and retrieved the ball. “It’s not like people actually see us falling out of the sky. I was just suddenly flat on my naked rear end and surrounded by a crowd. Freaked out, ran into the woods, freaked out more since some men were chasing me, and then Taurin swooped in and grabbed me up.”

“I hadn’t been expecting that,” Taurin said mildly.
“Good timing though, Drina and I were in desperate need of a distraction from each other. It had been just the two of us for too long.”

“Go enjoy eternity with yourself,” Drina said.
She leaned back into him in the companionable way of long intimates. Kishi dropkicked the ball, which flew high and far toward the end of the cliff. Cadmon dashed after it, but with a bounce on the edge, it flew over the side. Drina sighed to see him jump off the cliff. “I give up.” I swallowed on a yell at seeing a child leap off into nothing but air.

“
You
did
say a little later, and it
is
a little later than when you said it,” Kishi said with a grin. “I was never that bad.”

“You?
You were awful,” Drina exclaimed. Taurin just chuckled. “How many hundreds of shirts did you rip in two? I’d shout
no wings
and you’d shout
no wings
back in my face while your wings were right out there for everyone to see! I had to tell people you were wearing a costume.”

“I’d better make sure he’s okay,” Kishi said innocently
when Cadmon did not return. A streak of blue raced over the cliff and disappeared. I stared, not even having seen her wings blossom to life.

“She’s fast,” Adriel said to my
amazement.

“Adriel was the good one,” Drina concluded.
“Of all the newly fallen angels we’ve cared for, not just of these three. Never defiant. Just sad.”

I squeezed Adriel’s leg, wishing there was something to say and knowing there wasn’t anything.
The ball bounced back and rolled to the blanket. I picked it up before it could keep on rolling and settled it in my lap as blue and silver streaks spiraled up to the sky. They were entwined so closely together that I thought Kishi might have been carrying him.

“They should darken-” Drina was saying just as the brilliant lights muted.
If I hadn’t known they were there, I wouldn’t have seen them. It was like a smudge of cloud or smoke being whisked along fast by wind, except that it was going up rather than over. Shielding my eyes, I watched until it disappeared into the heavens. The first part of the trail had already dissipated, and the rest rapidly dispersed.

“This wasn’t what you were expecting from a year in Spooner,” Taurin said.

“Not at all,” I replied.

“And they’re back,” Drina said
a minute later. The smudge of smoke was shooting down so fast that I could hardly see it. Suddenly they were in full color, a dazzling blue and silver light catching the last gasp of sunlight and heading straight for the sea. I passed the ball to Adriel and got up swiftly to watch what they would do once they passed the crest of the cliff.

Down they went to the very tip of a wave, where they ricocheted
off the surface and separated in spins over the water. The silver raced back to the blue and they climbed again into the sky, darkening and soaring ever upwards. A strange bluish-yellow fire was blazing in the pit when I turned back and I looked at Adriel curiously since there hadn’t been nearly enough time for a fire of this size to get started. Nor was there any wood in the pit, yet a fire was still burning there undaunted.

“
Archus,” Adriel said. “It’s angel fire.”

We toasted marshmallows and ate them while the evening grew.
The fire was so hot that I learned quickly to not hold the marshmallows too close. Blue and silver dropped down to the ocean over and over. Then Kishi reappeared on the cliff with Cadmon in her arms. He looked almost asleep as she walked him over to the fire. Lying down on the blanket, he curled up with his eyes closed.

“Looks like you wore him out,” I said.

“Just for now,” Kishi said. I handed her a tine with a marshmallow speared upon it. As she roasted it with the angel fire, she added, “He’ll be up in half an hour for more.”

We talked about Los Angeles, all of them knowing it well from trips.
I checked my cell phone since it was getting late and was surprised to have service. Stepping away from the fire, I called Grandpa Jack at home. After four rings, he picked up and I said, “Did you get my note?”

“Sure did.”

“I just wanted to tell you that I’m out with the Graystone family and won’t be back for a few hours, so don’t wait on dinner for me.”

“Okay, will do.
Thanks for letting me know,” said Grandpa Jack. “I’m having dinner right now, as a matter of fact.”

“Does it include a vegetable?”
I teased.

A chip was crunched on the other end.
“Does that answer your question?”

I laughed.
This man was impossible. “See you later.”

When I returned, everyone was getting up in preparation to fly.
Shirts and sweatshirts were tossed onto the blanket, Cadmon standing at the edge of the cliff with his arms outspread. Perhaps he was hearing some small strain of the music in the beating of the waves, because his face was rapturous. I closed my eyes to listen to the steady thudding, the roar and the wash of it myself. Adriel stepped up beside me and said, “Don’t go too close to the edge.”

“I won’t,” I said.

The five of them formed a line along the ridge, their wings beating, and they lifted into the air. Though there was no light to make them shine so much, their wings blazed as brightly as the fire. Taurin’s were crimson. He was the first to lift higher than the rest, and then he was racing up with Kishi’s sapphire surpassing him. Gold shot up in their wake, my heart rushing even though I was not flying with Adriel this time.

Still hovering at
the edge were Drina and Cadmon. Her green wings burned with emerald points. She extended her hands to him with a smile, and he took them. They looked up, the other three winking out of sight by darkening their wings, and raced after them in a spiral of emerald and silver.

Once they were all gone, I looked out to the water.
This would be one of those memories I had to carry always, every sound and sight and sensation of it, so I memorized the beating of the waves, the chill of the wind, the taste of salt on my tongue.

Then they were shooting back to earth
in full color, weaving around one another as they dropped and Kishi spiraling about all of them. At the ocean surface they split apart, flying in five different directions and coming together to soar up the cliff and over my head. Racing away into the night, they darkened at great heights and let their colors show at lower ones.

As they dipped and weaved and zigzagged across the sky, I thoug
ht the world had more ugliness than anyone could bear, yet the same could be said for the beautiful.

Chapter Ten: The Bridges

“I can’t stand it,” London said abruptly at lunch on Friday. Spoken in a tone of absolute exasperation, everyone around the table looked up to see what was wrong. Slamming shut a textbook, which was on top of another textbook since both her fifth and sixth periods were having exams on the same day, she glared at all of us like we had done something truly appalling. “I can’t stand one more minute of it. We’re driving up to Seataw tomorrow, and I don’t care what your excuses are for not coming. You’re coming. Shopping, the park to walk the bridges, movies, the arcade, anything! We don’t have to stay together in one huge group; we just need to see something beyond
Spooner
.”

“Totally there,” Savannah agreed.

“I was going to-” Diego started, and snapped his mouth shut as London glared at him. She turned to another table and shouted an invitation to Kitts, who also had a textbook open since she and London shared the same sixth period American Literature class.

Once her attention was back on our table, she delivered an icy stare to Adriel and me.
“And I don’t care what you lovebirds have planned, but I’m telling you now that it involves Seataw.”

“I guess we’re going to
Seataw,” I said to Adriel. We hadn’t talked yet about the weekend. Nailed with two exams myself the day before, I hadn’t even gotten to it. My brain was so fried by the time I got to sixth period that I’d forgotten to wipe down my hand with anti-bacterial cream after Mr. Rogers shook it. This morning I’d been lucky not to wake up with a sore throat and the sniffles.

“Seataw
it is,” Adriel said. I wished I could be as blasé about exams as he was, but if that meant I had to attend high schools until infinity, then I didn’t. Once through was enough.

“Wh
at
is
Seataw?” I asked, and everyone cracked up.

“It’s where you go for
a little culture when you don’t feel like driving all the way down to San Francisco,” London explained. “Just a twenty-five minute drive north. Small but darling, especially all of the bridges, and there’s fantastic shopping. I want to get some new shirts. My clothes have been boring me all week.”

“You could just stop wearing clothes,” Nash suggested.
“That’s what I do when my clothes bore me. Do your clothes bore you, Diego? Easton?”

Easton stuck a hand up his shirt to scratch at his stomach.
“Dude, I have the worst clothes allergy. It gives me a rash all over. If it gets any worse, I’ll have to transfer to Nudie High. It’s on the coast.”

“Shut up,” London said to both of them.

“Can we invite other people?” Kitts hollered over the noise of the cafeteria.

“Invite anyone and everyone,” London said.
Juniors at Kitts’ table cheered and London added, “Except Billy!”

“He’s out s
ick with food poisoning,” someone called.

“Probably trapped a raccoon and ate it,” London grumbled.

The rest of the lunch period was taken over in deciding on a time to leave and figuring out carpools. I leaned on Adriel, who dug his fingers into my scalp since I’d been complaining about how the exams drained me of the power to think. That aside, it had been a lovely week. As my mail truck was in the shop for a tune-up, Adriel had been my ride for the last two days. Both mornings, there was hot coffee in a sealed mug waiting in the cup holder as I slid into his car. It made me sorry that the truck was going to be ready for pick up this afternoon.

“You’ll like the bridges, Jessa,” Nash said.
“There’s a big park in the center of the town square, a man-made river and ornamental bridges going over it.”

He was still trying to catch my eye, and coincidentally turning up outside one class a day.
Adriel pulled me back a little closer and said, “I’ll have to show those to her.”

“And take her to the ice cream place!” Easton
suggested. “I love Pirri’s.”

“M
ake sure you love it before noon or after two,” London retorted. “The last time I was there at lunch, the line was all the way out the door and around the side. It took me forty-five minutes to get to the counter.”

“I don’t even know what your favorite flavor is,” Adriel said.

“Chocolate,” I replied. The bell rang. We separated to fifth period, where Kitts and I moaned at the pop quiz. Who gave a pop quiz for
typing
? Keyboards rattled all over the room as we chugged out the timed test on our screens. Ms. Crane shouted, “Correct
hand positions, people!” on two occasions.

“The computer
doesn’t know,” Kitts whispered, and I snickered.

After the test ended, we moved
on to our regular exercises. I raced through them and stared out the window for a while. Kitts pushed over a magazine, which I hid on my lap to read. Clothes, music albums, and pictures of the BBG triplets occupied me for a while. The group had teamed up with an indie band called The Becker Girls for a music video. Although it looked great from the still shots on set, I couldn’t watch it at home with the shoddy Internet, and I couldn’t watch it here with Ms. Crane.

Then I remembered the poem that was due for sixth period.
God, my brain wasn’t working at all this week! I returned the magazine to Kitts. Opening a blank file, I wrote through the end of the period and was printing it when the bell rang. “Good luck on your literature test.”

“Seataw cannot come fast enough,” Kitts said
while we put on our backpacks. “Sorry I’ll be a little late to join up with you guys. I don’t get off work until noon.”

I snagged my poem from the printer.
“How will you find us without a cell phone?”

She pushed her glasses higher on her nose.
“It’s Seataw, Jessa. I’ll just stroll around until I find you.”

Mr. Rogers had us black out our names, put our poems on the table in the front, and pick up another one at random to read and review.
We did this for the period, getting up and down and up and down again to read such masterpieces as
first period’s too early, sixth period’s too late, I want to go home, but must graduate
. Oh, for God’s sake. Most of the reviews had complimented the poet on his rhyming skills. Adriel and I switched poems to save on the times we had to get up and go to the front of the room for more. He shook his head over the poem that I had given him and I looked down to my new one. It just had the heading POEM over a blank page, and lots of positive reviews scribbled around the margins. I hated this class. The only thing that kept me from dropping was Adriel.

No one was happier than myself when the bell rang to conclude sixth.
School was done for the week and I had two days to recover. Friday afternoon was always the best part, in my opinion, since it was the longest point until I had to come back. Adriel and I went to our lockers. On a rampage of bossiness, London was getting verbal confirmation from everyone that they were coming to Seataw. I nodded with exaggeration and said, “Yes! Of course we are.”

“Good!” she roared, and mo
ved on to harass someone else.

Grandpa Jack was waiting in his work truck at the curb, since his route was in this area and he could drop me off at the shop.
Everyone was waving to him, a boy yelling, “Hey, Mr. Mailman!” I walked to the truck in a group of friends and climbed inside. We joined the queue of cars eager to quit the campus. Light sparkled above as we pulled out into the road. It was just a reflection coming off something, but my heart jumped in memory of the angels flying.

“You’re popular,” Grandpa Jack grunted.

“There are nice people here,” I replied. “We’re going to Seataw tomorrow.”

“That’s good.
You’ll have fun.”

“Any cliffs on the way there
I should know about?”

“Not a one.
Nothing but nice level roads the whole way,” Grandpa Jack said. “I’m having a little get-together for some guys at the house tomorrow afternoon to watch the game. Order some pizzas for delivery.”

“That sounds like fun, too.”
I sensed that he was glad I had somewhere else to be for the day.

The phone rang a half-dozen times that evening so that London, Savannah, and I could continue to sort out carpools.
As more people agreed to come, we shuffled and reshuffled the rides to ensure everyone had a seat. In the morning when I came downstairs, Grandpa Jack was cleaning up the living room. He gave me a twenty, saying rather gruffly that it was for some spending money.

When I got into Adriel’s car, coffee was
again waiting for me. Gratefully, I said, “You are a godsend.”

“
Literally, in some cases,” he said dryly.

“I never got a chance to ask what your favorite
flavor of ice cream was.” I waved to Grandpa Jack, who waved back and flapped the welcome mat to make a cloud of dust over the lawn.

“Is he getting ready for something?” Adriel asked.

“An old people party.”

“I’m older than they are.”

As he pulled into the road, I said, “But you don’t look a day over eighteen.”

We drove around Spooner to pick up two of Kitts’ friends, junior girls named Marcy and Rachael who squealed
with excitement in the back seat and returned to some previous conversation about bands. Their gabble flowed on the way up to Seataw without more than a handful of words necessary from either Adriel or myself. Neither was going back with us since Marcy’s older cousin lived in nearby Gillerman. She would meet up with the girls this afternoon in the square and they were spending the night at her house. Once the two of them had squashed their heads together to share earphones and judge a new Lady Whoha song on an ancient DVD player, the car received a breath of silence. Adriel said, “Vanilla.”

“No one picks vanilla,” I said.

“I like it.”

“Ooh, are you talking about ice cream?
I like strawberry,” Marcy announced, her voice carrying too loudly since she had music blasting into her ear.

“Let’s go to Pirri’s!” Rachael
cheered.

We arrived at Seataw, which was as
small as a postage stamp and cute as a button with lanes full of sweet cottage-style houses. No sagging sheds and yards full of rusting cars and heaps of junk, here the lawns were clipped and homes upkept. Our meet-up point was the entrance to the park at the center of town, where a dozen people from school were waiting. Adriel drove around the square twice to find an open place at the curb.

Although there were a lot of trees, great swathes of the park were left open to let the light shine through.
Diego and Easton seized Adriel for a game of Frisbee in the park with some other guys; I was claimed by the girls and pulled along to a clothing shop across the street. Marcy and Rachael joined up with another friend and dashed down the sidewalk to get to the ice cream store before its infamous rush at lunch started.

Kitts had been right: there
was no way one could miss friends in tiny Seataw. A careful loop around the square and a jog through the park would remedy it in short order. But the clothing store we walked into had things as fashionable as any being worn at Bellangame High, for a good price made better with a sale. London gave me a sheepish look and said, “You’re used to better.”

“Are you kidding?
This is
great
,” I said. Wanting to offload the last of their summer stock, everything on the three racks in back was sixty percent off. We loaded ourselves down with prospective purchases and revolved through the single dressing room in turn.

In the mirror, I looked at my reflection in a crochet sweater tank.
It was ivory-colored, which went well with my tanned skin. This would be perfect for a pool party in June when I got back home, not to mention that it was a steal at ten dollars. Already I could feel the heat of the sun beating down on my shoulders. The only problem was that I didn’t want to go back to Bellangame, not since it meant leaving Adriel behind. But the Graystones moved every few years, and if they moved south I could still have them near me.

“Does it look that bad?
Come out and let us see!” London called through the curtain. I pushed it aside, stepped out, and turned around so they could judge it. Meeting with everyone’s approval, I went back in and changed to my own shirt. I didn’t know what the solution was to this problem. Yet it was one I had to find.

Kitts found us
there half an hour later, and she was not alone. Girls cried out to welcome Zakia, who loomed over the racks of dainty things and smiled. Everything that Adriel had told me about him was racing through my mind, and I tried to smile back without looking nervous. He had never hurt me. How much of a temperature change did it take for him to lose control? The air conditioning in the shop was turned up high. He plopped down in a chair to wait for us to finish.

Savannah called that we’d left the boys in the park, half playing Frisbee and the other half charging off to a video game store.
Shaking her head, Kitts said, “They’re not over there any longer in either place. You’re the first ones we’ve come across.”