Uriel whispered, like he didn’t want their Father to hear: “If God is merciful, He will allow you to forget them.”
CHAPTER3
His father was dead.In a town bordering a nation like Babylon — they found the man hanging from an electrical cord, a cloth bag over his head, his wrists bound behind his back, his legs severed to end in a few ribbons of pink-red, tossed occasionally by the breeze.He wasn’t alone — five other bodies hung beside him on the overpass, dangling above a road of vehicles that either passed hurriedly or skidded with a screech of tires and swerved to halt right before daring to cross beneath corpses.His aunt had tried to cover his eyes when they all found him, but the boy had already been staring for several seconds, his blood cold in the scorch of summer.Tadeo was his name — the boy of eleven or twelve years — and he had been squinting, trying to read the words on the banner that was plastered right below the dead men.
Tadeo was his name, even when he came to realize that the screams of horror came not from his aunt but from himself, and his name didn’t change even when he doubled over with wet gasps scratching at his throat.Beat after beat, his heart punched the front of his chest, terror about to shatter him inside.Tadeo was the name of the body he felt himself wrenched away from when he collapsed against his family, their hands all coming over him, like thinking to bury him.Like they would lay him in the grave alongside his father.
He would never learn why they killed him — his father — not really.It may have been a confrontation, a case of mistaken identity.Tadeo’s father was not a criminal, and he had been so staunchly against them.He’d told Tadeo, in their language, “When I was younger, son, the streets weren’t like this.There used to be musicians downtown, and foreigners from right across the river used to visit.”
There had been no musicians downtown when Tadeo’s family walked past the boarded-up buildings, heading to report his father missing after service at church.During the mass, Tadeo had sat bored, praying only marginally for the father he adored because he couldn’t imagine a life without him yet.Three days with an empty chair at the dining table had bothered him, as well as the unfamiliar silence at breakfast, but he couldn’t believe that he’d been kidnapped, much less potentially killed.‘You’re going to live,’ his father always hummed beneath his dark mustache, ‘you’re going to suffer.’The lines to a song that Tadeo wasn’t sure he’d ever heard.
In Heaven, an angel set down his collection of fairytales and old scrolls about the beginning of time, dreaming of happily ever afters, then decided to leave paradise — heading for the stars.
Now, before the death of Tadeo’s father — life had not been so kind either.As stories of murders, kidnappings, and traffickers grew, turned deeper like a gash, gaping wider — foreigners came by less, the bustling economy began to trickle dry.Less food in the fridge, and then Tadeo’s family moved back into the house of his maternal grandparents, and he, a toddler, shared a room with both his parents.As the situation worsened, the state proclaimed that the rampant corruption of the police force was to blame — ‘criminal infiltration’ — then ordered an expulsion of all officers to be replaced with a temporary military operation.For a year, then another year, then around eight, the soldiers remained.But Tadeo cared little for any of this; he was a child.
None of this could matter to a child, and I’m certain it hardly matters to you.
So if anyone had asked Tadeo what his greatest problem was during the early years of military occupation, he’d say that his mother was constantly yelling at him.She said he didn’t dress right, didn’t wear his hair right, and that he didn’t cook right, nor did he rub a lime on his elbows and knees to fight the darkness there, as she insisted he do.Tadeo’s mother was now a hairstylist, working in a small place beside an office for currency conversion, and as Tadeo aged, the fury between them grew as large.His father was the calm eye to their storm, meeting them with gestures for them to sit and to laugh their arguments off.Two years before his death, he’d been in the room when his wife suffered a stroke, and he had carried her to a hospital, then wheeled her out, newly disabled, within a week.Tadeo’s father took on more hours in the restaurant he was a server in, to Tadeo’s great sadness.
Angel Dina climbed toward the cosmos with Uriel’s writings in his mind about what had occurred to the stars, though he remained confused about the details.Most particularly, he didn’t understand God’s behavior.‘I believe Uriel,’ he thought wholeheartedly — but God couldn’t be so cruel to disfigure angels into burning spheres of fire and leave them like corpses above.As he struck his wings, broke past the golden sky, he stumbled onto the cold abyss of the universe only to then swerve clumsily, trip and plunge toward the floor of the cold universe.He landed with an erratic flutter of his pale wings, and then lay over the wet ground, seeing all of space from its very edge.With every galaxy a speck in his silver gaze, he stood, then began walking along the void.
The story of Tadeo’s life is relevant; it had thus far been a moderately unfortunate one.His mother was now in a wheelchair, struggling severely with lifting either hand, never speaking, half her face in permanent stillness, the occasional dribble of saliva slipping from a corner of her mouth.Before his murder, Tadeo’s father asked his wife’s coworkers to teach him how to do cosmetics, and he would paint his wife’s face gently, patiently, knowing she wished she still could.Tadeo began to cry often, wishing he had loved his mother deeper when she could do more than groan at him, but how could he have known?In the same vein, he wailed in a deep, tortuous agony for the kind father after he lost him, having never thought of this, never imagined a life without parents.
Dina adjusted his hair and veil, then turned his face to a great, humming star so massive it appeared closer than it was.Blinking a few times, the angel approached, interlocking his own hands, tilting his head.Is this what Uriel had wanted him to see?The star was little more than a ball of yellow-red, but its consistency was not like fire — rather, it was thick as blood.It could have been a sphere of gore, burning and screaming in forever torment.At the same time, it was beautiful, warming Dina inside as he was heating on the outside.“You’re beautiful,” he told the star, each step making him smaller and smaller in its massive presence.“The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
Tadeo grieved; he grieved so greatly that he wailed to his relatives: “The world is over.The world is ending.”How can all these awful things be happening?“God, why did you do this to me?”His grandparents ran their hands along his back, even the paternal ones who’d traveled from their hometown much further south.“Please give me my father back.My mother and I need him.Please.I’ll do anything.God, please don’t leave me without my parents.”Some relatives suggested migrating to that nation they bordered, but it was so expensive, so difficult, and they were a large family.Who should escape?Who should be left behind in this war?
Before Dina could speak another word, he bore witness to the star before him suddenly twitching, limbs curling out from its sides, the arms reaching upward in a towering stretch as its legs unfolded beneath.Its silhouette lost some of its roundness to morph into the vague shape of an angel with a face.On it, there was a pair of enormous eyes like flaming coals and several mouths that were each magma teeth and magma tongue.Its yawn was loud, harrowing, rattling nearby moons and skipping comets.Then, before the little angel, the star lowered itself to an animal pounce, bringing its face just some breaths away from Dina.“Oh,” Dina breathed, wonder filling his heart.“Like this, you’re even more beautiful.”
The star spoke in a saccharine voice like honeyed dates: “Angel.”And Dina felt a shiver creep up his body.“What are you doing here?”
Dina stared with wide eyes, parted lips.“Me…?”His voice drifted, though naturally; he noticed that whenever the star spoke, it did so with a certain distance to each syllable, something that trailed further and further away like smoke from a cigar.“Well,” he began, then echoed himself.“Well.I’m here because the archangel Uriel ordered me to come.”The sun seemed to tilt its head, light flares falling onto its shoulders like waves of hair.“But he told me that all the stars were sleeping.You seem wide awake, or are you talking in your sleep?”There was warmth on the cheeks of the youngest angel, and he realized he felt embarrassment without explanation.But angels are made of shame, can hardly feel anything else.
“Sleep?Oh, I suppose I was asleep once.I dreamt for billions of years, but now I’m awake.”With one appendage like a hand, the star waved dismissively.“In all the time since, no angel has come to visit me.You said Uriel sent you?”
“Yes,” Dina answered, hesitant.“What do you mean no angel has come to see you?Hasn’t Uriel?And—” He knew that he ought to ask now before the star might reply with another question.“You should give me your name.I’ll give you mine in return.It’s Dina.”
Slow, languid, like a needing moan — “Dina?”The star grinned impossibly wide.“What a gorgeous name.It suits you, your face and your body.That’s quite the body you have.It’s the first angel flesh that I see so close.Is it comfortable?Are you comfortable?”
Dina placed his hands on his own chest, his ribs, then his forearms.“I think I am, or that I could be.Uriel says that body discomfort is expected for an angel.Don’t you feel some discomfort as well?”
“None at all.I don’t have a body.”Like a predator, the star stalked closer, bringing its fiery face dangerously close before Dina’s figure.“I was asleep for a long time, but last I was awake, I was watching all you angels in Heaven, and I was watching the Earth too.It’s so far.I could hardly see anything of you all.I was always curious if angels were happy.Are you happy?”
Swallowing, Dina glanced behind him, saw darkness, then looked forward once more.“You’ve been awake before?But Uriel said that all of the stars have been asleep since before Heaven was built.”
“Oh, but what does Uriel know?”Snickering, shaking shoulders.“Why would we want to talk to him?”
“He cares about you,” Dina replied.“He’s filled his library with stories dedicated to you.”
“No more talk of Uriel,” went the long, irritated sigh that responded.“I want to hear of you.”Dina parted his lips, wanted to ask why.“I asked if you’re happy, but you didn’t answer me.That must mean you’re not.If you’re not, then why would that be?”
Instantly frowning, shaking his head, the youngest angel argued, “That’s not true.In Heaven, all of us angels are happy.”They had no choice.“But…” He tilted his head, walked his gaze toward the dark of the void embracing them, staring at a dot of pale blue in the distance; it may have been the Earth but it could have easily been anything else.There was nothing special about it from here, and from this distance, one might understand how God could live with the blood on His hands.He may not even notice it, walking along the nebulas, crushed life beneath His feet, stuck to His sandals.Surely, there were other Earths, too; did they also carry Heavens on their crowns?Dina wondered if there were other angels, somewhere far away.Another Dina, another Dina in every direction.A universe, a labyrinth of mirrors.
“What bothers you, angel?”
Dina could forget his troubles here, but he also could not, noticing now a quiet buzz from the abyss — God’s chest rumbling as He slept, perhaps.“I’ve sinned.I can’t be happy if I’ve sinned.”
“Sin?You disobeyed your Creator?”
