If I ever do get to meet God, the way Mom used to talk about, then He’s going to have some serious explaining to do, is all I’m saying. Because this just feels mean.
In the dream, we reach a place near the top of the hill where everybody stops. I walk like I’m underwater, one slow foot in front of the other. As the crowd parts to let me pass, something starts to freeze up inside of me. I stop breathing as I take the final steps. I think, I don’t want to see.
But I do see, and nothing could have prepared me for the sight of my mother’s coffin, a rich and gleaming mahogany-colored coffin, topped with a mass of white roses.
I have the weirdest thought at this moment. I can’t tell if it’s me or future-Clara, but I think, Did Mom pick the coffin herself? It’s so her. I imagine her coffin shopping, strolling around a showroom eyeballing coffins the way she does antique furniture, sizing them up, finally glancing over at the salesman and pointing to one and saying, “I’ll take this one.” This one.
My vision blurs. I sway on my feet. Christian’s hand abruptly leaves mine. He steps closer to me, encircling my waist with his arm, steadies me. Then his other hand, his right hand this time, returns to mine. He squeezes briefly.
Do you need to sit down? he asks gently in my mind.
No, I reply. My sight clears. I stare at Jeffrey, who’s gazing at the coffin so intently I think it could burst into flames, fists clenched at his sides. At first I want to look everywhere but at the coffin, and then when I do, when I cast around it, all I get are people’s faces, searching eyes, sympathetic expressions. I force myself to focus on a single white rose. The light is filtering through the trees at an angle, which strikes this one small rosebud, just beginning to open its petals, a perfect glowing white.
Then the sorrow comes, a wave of grief so fierce I struggle to suppress the choking sound in the back of my throat. I feel strangely detached, floating away. Someone moves to the other side of the coffin, clears his throat. It’s a red-haired man with solemn hazel eyes. It takes me a second to place him. Stephen. A priest or something. He meets my eyes.
He wants to know if you’re ready, says Christian in my mind.
Ready?
For him to start.
Please. Yes.
Stephen nods solemnly.
“Dearly beloved,” he says.
That’s when I check out. I don’t hear what he says as he goes on in his slight Irish brogue.
I’m sure he’s saying good things about my mother. About her wit. Her kindness. Her strength.
Words that couldn’t even begin to describe her.
I focus on the rose.
The sorrow grows, expanding like a frozen lake inside me. Soon they will lower the coffin into the ground. They will cover it with earth. My beautiful, spirited, sweet Meg will be gone forever. . . .
My heart leaps. This isn’t like the sorrow attacks I had before. These are words, and they’re not my words. Not my sorrow, or my feelings.
There is a Black Wing here, after all.
Samjeeza.
I’m suddenly über-aware of everything. I feel the breeze against my bare arms. Birds sing distantly in the trees. I smell pine, roses, wildflowers. I search all the faces around me, some of which are gazing back mournfully, but I don’t see Samjeeza. His feelings are coming through loud and clear now. It’s him. I’m sure of it. He is watching us from a distance and can’t stand how we can gather so near her grave to say good-bye in her last moments above earth. He loved her, he thinks. He loved her and he’s furious that he lost her, after all these years of waiting for her. He hates us. If his hate were the sun, it would burn us all to ash.
“Okay, everybody, let’s calm down,” says Billy, looking around the circle of angel-bloods who are gathered in the meadow around the campfire. “This is really no big deal.”
“No big deal?” exclaims a woman from across the circle. “She told us that a Black Wing will be at Maggie’s graveside.”
“Maybe she’s wrong. Black Wings can’t enter cemeteries. They’re hallowed ground,” says someone else.
“Is Aspen Hill hallowed, though? It’s not a traditional cemetery. There’s no churchyard.”
“It is hallowed. Others of our kind are buried there,” Walter Prescott says.
Christian meets my eyes across the flickering flames.
I’m not making this up, I send to him as practically the entire congregation starts arguing again. He was there.
I believe you.
“People, please.” Billy raises her hand, and amazingly everybody begins to quiet down.
She smiles with the confidence of a warrior princess. “This is one Black Wing we’re talking about, and it’s Samjeeza, who’s probably there to grieve for Maggie, not to fight. We’re all going to be there. We can handle this.”
“I have children to think about,” says a woman stiffly. “I won’t put them in unnecessary danger.”
Billy sighs. I know she’s this close to rolling her eyes. “So don’t bring them, Julia.”
“And there could be more of them,” someone else announces loudly. “It’s dangerous.”
“It’s always dangerous,” rings out an authoritative voice. Walter Prescott, again. “Black Wings could come for any one of us at any time. Let’s not pretend otherwise.” Mom casts a knowing look at Walter.
“How long has it been?” asks Julia, the woman with the kids. “Since you’ve had contact with Samjeeza?”
“We’ve been over this. I hadn’t seen him in fifty years, until this past summer,” Mom says.
“When he happened upon your daughter at Static Peak,” someone else supplies. “And you defended yourself using glory.”
“That’s correct.”
So they all know about it. It’s like there’s an angel tabloid, and I’ve been on the front page. It makes me feel guilty, somehow, like if it hadn’t been for my purpose and my flying over the mountains that day, scouting for the fire, we wouldn’t all be caught up in this unpleasant conversation about fallen angels and where it’s safe for us to be.
“You told us that you didn’t think he’d be back anytime soon,” Julia accuses. “You said he was injured.”
So much for them all treating my mom with reverence, I think. But it makes sense now. It wasn’t reverence, before. It was pity. They all knew that she was going to die, and they treated her like she was delicate, breakable. They weren’t treating her like their leader. They were treating her like an elderly woman. Which now, since her death might turn out to be dangerous or inconvenient for them, is apparently yesterday’s news.