Joana crossed her arms and leaned back on the bench, shutting her eyes, as if that would be enough to will away the pounds in her head and the spinning of the park around her.“Why did you bring me here?You should have brought me home.”After they’d met, Michael had asked where her parents were, and he had flown her there.‘When my mother saw me, she screamed at my father.My father said they’d threatened to hurt the entire family if he didn’t hand over a daughter.He cried to my mother, apologizing.He cried to me, too.’
“I don’t know,” Michael said.“You never liked it when I took you home when you were younger.”
Chuckling, Joana decided to ask, “You know, I always wondered why you came back for me.”‘Why you listened to my prayers.’
Michael readjusting, appearing almost sheepish.“I hadn’t meant to,” he answered honestly.“I’m not supposed to step in to save humans, especially not from each other, not often.But when I can, when only the victim will know, I try to save.On another day that I was looking for Tadeo — I saw you crying in this park.”
“I wasn’t crying,” Joana grumbled.
“You were.”Michael hesitated again, then he said, “You told me that your father had become involved with bad men and that was why he tried to sell you.”Furrowing her brow, Joana tried not to feel any shame for having spilled her misery to the ghost that’d reappeared to her that day; she’d been so young, after all.“You said it wasn’t his fault.”
Joana sighed.“I had no one else to talk to.”
Michael could relate to that, couldn’t he?Swallowing, the prince replied, “I regret it often, having told you so much.Forgive me.”
For some time, she hadn’t even known he was an angel.She sought him out some nights, always found Michael in the parks, sometimes ran to him with two corns on sticks, and they’d eat together before Joana spoke to the chief prince rather casually.‘You must’ve loved it.To me, you weren’t some divine creature that was supposed to hold up the sky.I wasn’t scared of you anymore, and I didn’t pray to you.Why would I be scared of you?Any man on the street was much scarier than a ghost.That’s what I was sure you were — a ghost.’
Joana said, “I don’t know if I can.”
She could still remember that day they’d been sitting on a bench and the prince began to tell her of the end times.‘I stared at you with big eyes, I asked what you meant, and you told me about an anti-Christ and a Beast.You would kill them one day, but until then, the false messiah will create suffering for all of the Earth.You spoke to me of God’s promise to rise us good people to Heaven.Whenever I complained about the horrible things that happened in my home, in my town, in my own heart, you reassured me that all would be better in Heaven.I used to want that.’
Tadeo, eventually, decided to rest, carrying the angel Dina down with him and setting up the tent, and leaving water for the mare.Once he settled down, he realized how raw his face felt with all the crying he’d done as he rode along.The misery, now, was putting him to sleep.And, in his dreams, Tadeo remembered the days he’d started petty theft for food, for drinks.No one was capable of stopping him, and he almost prayed that they’d try it.He would chuckle to himself, imagining soldiers being directed toward him and how they’d be torn apart in his claws.
“Every time,” Joana began, “that you left me, I went back home and the apocalypse shit just didn’t matter anymore.”Though she swore, it was detached, not angry or even upset.“I went back to a family that needed money with a father who’d traded all his freedom for a gun and the salary of a criminal.I realized that you were asking me to let all of the world collapse for Heaven.How could you ask that of me?Fuck you.Fuck you.”Again, it was distant, like she was reciting a script with no emotion, like she’d planned to say this once but had forgotten why.“I wanted to save my family.I wanted to save my town.”‘But I was only thirteen or so when I decided.’Three years of Michael in her life.‘I didn’t understand how the world worked.’
“I never should have told you.”
“I would have found Tadeo, even if you hadn’t told me about him or what he was capable of.”Joana answered; she doubted that, but the thought might make the both of them feel better.“When I told you I never wanted to see you again, if you were going to let the world end, I meant it.”She chuckled.“But, hey, maybe you were right in the end.Look at how bad everything’s gotten.It’s all so fucked.I fucked up.I failed.Are you happy?”The sun was beginning to rise, to drown them in light.
“No, Joana.I don’t— I don’t understand what you’ve done.”
Just some hours of sleep, then Tadeo was finally riding back to town at dawn.He was careful to keep off the main roads, passing through the quiet streets, even quieter recently due to the gasoline shortage.It was good since the exhaustion was wearing on Tadeo and his horse, though not enough to prevent Tadeo from perking up when Dina shifted and said, “Oh, Tadeo, there’s a crying woman over there.”So lost in his fatigue, the anti-Christ hadn’t noticed, but he yanked on his mare to encourage her to stop, then he turned his head.As the angel had said, there was a woman sobbing, but she was by a man slumped over the ground.“He’s bleeding.”From both legs, gashes so deep that there were glimmers of white bone in between the flooding red at his thighs.
Joana’s fingers twitched, craving a cigarette, as she thought, ‘I asked my dad to teach me how to use a gun.He didn’t want to at first — I was a girl, he said — but he gave in, one day.He brought me to the outskirts, he handed me a pistol.We shot at bottles.In the distance, I saw a bird plunge, and I wondered if I’d just killed for the first time or if that was my angel sending me a message.I didn’t care.If Michael wouldn’t save me again, then I’d have to do it myself.’“I thought I could just kill the right people.”
Tadeo crouched by the strangers, realizing the injured man was only quiet because the light was fading from his eyes.Quick, he told Dina to get some of their water and asked if the angel could heal the man, but the angel frowned and said, “We finished the last of the water earlier, Tadeo.”
“There should be some up ahead at a store,” Tadeo tried to say, putting his palm over the gashes, then turning to see the woman who was eyeing the angel with wide, frozen eyes.“Please don’t worry.With God’s blessing, he will be okay.”
“It was the criminals,” she was stammering.“He was trying to post online about what’s happening here?I don’t know.I don’t know.”
Joana was quiet for a moment.“My plan was to use him like a weapon.I would get Tadeo to kill the criminals, the ones at the top.I thought we could all free the town that way.We.I thought the soldiers wanted us safe from crime and so did the politicians.I believed what they said.I used to think it was simple.Good people versus bad people.”
‘I went out hunting for Tadeo.It’s not difficult to find him if you know what you’re looking for — a teen boy without an eye.In an alleyway, I found him.Like how I’d seen my dad do, I covered my face — though all I had was an oldluchadormask — and crept in behind a boy hurrying through with bandages over half his face, and I called out, “Tadeo!”He stopped immediately, tensed, didn’t turn.Quietly, I approached, pulling a pistol out of my jacket, and I said, “Your hands are already bloody.You think that no one can see it, but I can.You killed soldiers in cold blood.You died, and you came back from the dead.”He demanded my name.I didn’t answer.Finally, he growled, and he turned around, and I watched as his body morphed into something enormous, something horrible.’Intangibly many-eyed, many-winged.‘But I kept my gun pointed at you, Tadeo.I will not be afraid, I told myself.Michael told me not to be afraid, even if he chose to be.’
Just as Dina was about to fly off for water, Tadeo drew in a breath harshly.“Wait,” he told the angel, and he heard the woman before him gasp louder than he had.With a swipe of his thumb over the wound, the blood smeared along what was, suddenly, perfectly healed skin.“Lord,” Tadeo whispered.“Lord, my God.”
“Tadeo,” Dina breathed, fingers rising to go over his mouth.He’d never seen this, not even from angels, not even Raphael.
“You healed him,” said the woman.“Like Christ— Like Christ!”
Joana thought about smoking again.‘Tadeo and I — in a stand-off.He asked how I knew all of this.I said an angel sent me.Then, I told him that he had a duty.Duty?Yes, duty.You can kill like no one else.You can turn into a beast, but you can do good.Don’t let the power blind you, stupid.What killed you was the evil that’s destroying us all.Stupid, you can save this place.You can save us.You have a responsibility.A loyalty to your own people.’
Tadeo grappled his healing hand with the other, and he saw as the man twitched, blinking his eyes, returning from half-dead.Immediately after, he shot up, and he clutched the woman’s shirt and wrist, shaking, as she embraced him.The woman called, “Thank you, thank you, boy.You’re a saint!You’re a saint!”He stood, stepped back, and whispered some words in thanks, but his heart was beginning to pound against his ribs and lungs.
One of Dina’s hands came over Tadeo’s arm, squeezing in perhaps the same amount of confusion as the anti-Christ.“Tadeo,” the angel whispered, “how have you done this?”
“I don’t know,” Tadeo replied, hushed and hasty.“I didn’t eventry.”He felt his cellphone vibrate in his pocket, and he wanted to reach into it, hoping it was Joana.His friend.Joana.“Come, come.Let’s go.”
