“Uri,” Kimah said again.
CHAPTER29
To humiliate the devil, the saint Michael paraded him through the gilded streets of Heaven.The angels did not recognize their fallen brother without his angelic jewels or flowers in his golden hair, or without a timbrel and pipes at his hip.He seemed something they couldn’t decipher, a thing — not a human, for he was too beautiful, nor an angel, for he was too beautiful, nor a God because there was only one God.Stoic, Satan remained in the coils of golden chains, his back so pressed to the one of a silver crusader that the devil could very well tilt his head back to lean a cheek against one armored shoulder, breeze of hair cascading onto the saint.Except Satan maintained his poise, chin high, lips pressed fine together, eyes pensive, elegant.Hearing the cavalcade, angels opened the windows in their kitchen and bedrooms, some stepped out of their doorways; and they began to rush the streets, crowding around the procession of a hundred steeds and all the angels mounted on them.
Phanuel saw the parade: his friend Michael at the front, recognizable only by his hefty sword, prince Raphael at his right but many steps behind, prince Gabriel at his left.From the top of the fountain of life with a few others, crouched, wings flared behind to maintain balance — Phanuel listened to someone call out, “Devil!It’s the devil!”And then a symphony of hate.Angel after angel shouted as loud as the day the newborn angel Lucifer had been revealed to the city he would destroy: “Serpent!Liar!Sinner!Devil!”One took the goods he’d been carrying down a path, hurried toward God’s soldiers, then flung some at Satan’s face.A fruit struck at his jaw, burst, stained down to his throat, then tumbled to the ground.Soon, the host of Heaven took all that they had, throwing it with each one of their insults.
“The Lord is good!”one jeered, flinging a stone that hit Satan hard enough to rattle him but to not change his expression.“The Lord is great!He has given us the Beast to burn!”
Phanuel stared at Michael for a few seconds more, then once he felt the chief prince’s gaze far from him, he slipped away.
And though Michael either didn’t notice or pretended not to, Satan had been staring directly at the fountain’s highest peak, at Phanuel, ignoring the others standing on the lower sections, their bare feet damp on the porcelain work.‘It’s not how I remember it.’In the war, they had destroyed the fountain.‘They rebuilt it.’He’d thought this of the roads too.‘They had once sprawled like the arteries of an angel, in every direction, curling and clashing with one another, leading where they wanted — some to God, some to Earth, many to nowhere.But they’ve straightened.’His eyes followed the angel of forgiveness, who’d flapped himself to two buildings, then pulled his wings in to fall sharply in between.‘Do you find something too perfect about your rebuilt face too, Phanuel?’
Finally, Michael guided his winged horse to halt, and Satan instantly felt claws — the nails of the angels’ hands — go for his dress shoes, tear them away, go for his ankles, yank on his cassock so harsh that the buttons over his abdomen strained, then popped off.Another stone hit at his head, enough to shove him in the opposite direction, and Satan felt another barrage of rocks thrown to beat his body, followed by food to stain his ripped clothes.
“Michael,” Raphael called.“Enough with this!Aren’t we to take him to God?”
“Can’t the angels,” Michael replied, voice cold, brittle, “have Satan pay the penance that he is due?”
Gabriel answered, uncharacteristically tense: “Only God officiates penance, Michael.Let us… bring him to our Father.”The chief prince hesitated.“Now, or we will go on without you.Don’t you see how Uriel has already abandoned us?”Raphael breathed in sharply, but Michael didn’t react.
Instead, Michael took a tighter grip of the reins, and Satan had to bite down a laugh.What was this place?Nostalgia should have torn him open, revealed a memory of walking the streets with a basket of fruit and a dear friend at his side — but this was not the paradise he’d fallen from.The city of Heaven was unrecognizable, its buildings sharper, its people colder, its eternal sun hotter.Where remembrance should lie within him, there was a gaping hollowness instead.They had done away with the Heaven he knew, done away with the place that reared Lucifer.To never rear another rebel angel, they had done it.
The parade climbed.The chief prince led his horse upwards into flight, and all those behind him followed, until they were riding into the dome of light cradling the city, tearing through it to move into darkness.Too absent, the twinkles of stars provided even less guidance than they ever had, as if they’d sensed He was preoccupied and all fled the house of God in the few seconds they had.But Satan knew very well where all the stars were; he had read the prophecies.He’d read all the apocalyptic texts, and collected them, rid of the senseless ones and organized the Bibles for the believers.He remembered that all the stars would fall, one day, just as the devil had.
He remembered, too, the feeling of the pages when he read that old apocalyptic text from John in Patmos, nothing particularly divine about it, and yet his heart had sunk deeper into Hell than the rest of him ever had; he’d whispered to himself, ‘It means nothing.Like Christ, it is mere delusion,’ as his hands trembled.
All the army of the Lord appeared before the Throne without flesh as He had made them, so that they, in turn, could also see Him as He was — as nothing, as jade, as power.Michael, six-winged and aflame, removed Satan from the horse by taking him by the chains, then beating his wings.The steed bowed its head and trotted back, away from God, like other horses left behind.In Michael’s hold, Satan’s face was lowered, but not out of submission.He was enfleshed, in the reconstructed ruins of the body that’d burnt up to near ash in the fall.There was no soul beneath his skin that he could expose now, or maybe there was but he couldn’t retrieve it — his other faces hollowed out, his wings torn out.He was mere meat, stitched back together, in torn clothing, stained and bloodied; he couldn’t meet the face of God without suffering agony worse than the inferno.
And the chief prince took the devil by the back of his throat and forced him to kneel before the Lord’s Throne before he said, “Worship.”Below, Satan’s breath audibly spilled from between clenched teeth — almost a hiss.“How you promised you would,” Michael spat, “when the covenant of Hell was granted to you.”
“The world has not ended,” Satan snarled, jerking his body, but the prince’s iron grip kept him in place.“Not a human soul stands in Heaven.No one is saved.The son of God is nowhere to save them—” He cut himself off with a guttural noise like a growl, another harsh struggle.“Get your hand off of me, coward, stupid, fucking idiot.”
“Worship,” Michael commanded once more.
“Fuck you,” Satan said.“Suck His cock if you so need Him worshiped.”
At this, all the angels observing shouted out, calling him a sinner, a whore, a damned thing that they pleaded for the silent Lord to punish.“Burn him!”they said.“Kill him, God!Destroy what remains of him!Tear off the flesh that you dressed him in!Look at how he’s remade it in mockery of you!Strike him!Burn him!Kill him!”It became a chant.“Father, throw him in the lake of fire!Kill the devil!Kill the devil!Punish him!”
Satan breathed out harshly, eyes screwed shut as tight as he could to not risk meeting the eyes of his Creator.‘God.Father.’But it was tempting, it was tempting, to reveal a gaze, to lift it to the Lord.When was the last time that he saw Him?Was it during the war for Heaven?In the second before the fall, settled in His hand, the size of the universe itself, cradled as a speck of light, a pretty angel, then slipping through the fingers, plunging down.‘God.’God.‘god.’
‘or it was in the garden of paradise, with a man and a woman, and i standing in between them.you too, among them.we were standing over the flowers.i thought i could hear singing, somewhere.a psalm.when I was young, when i wrote them.Worship songs.I did worship you.With my heart in my mouth, I sang for you.Your hand in my mouth, when you pulled out my voice, did you strum the chords of worship in my throat.The chords you made.i wanted to know what you made me for.for they all loved me.the angels.But you?never enough.your love did not satisfy me lord so i sought another.I became a serpent in eden.i heard worship songs off the leaves, the echoes of my voice.do you sit and listen to the memory of me, lord?for how long?I listened with you my feet in the flowers, waiting for adoring angel lucifer to step out from between some trees, hurry to you, rise to the tips of his toes, to kiss his father on the cheek.’
Satan twitched, his jaw so clenched that it ached at its hinges.
‘I told the demons that there was no Son of God.He was a demented man who thought himself greater than aging flesh.He is not the first, and he won’t be the last.There is no Messiah.There is no salvation.And maybe there is no God.There is only me.I.’
God’s voice said: “Once I said — that because of your detestable pride — I would bring on you blood vengeance of my wrath and anger.I said I shall deliver you to the hands of the angels, so that they strip you of your clothes, jewelry, and leave you without flesh.I said that I would command a mob against you of all your lovers so that they stone the body that I fit for you.With their swords, I said, they would hack you to pieces.”And an ancient tightness built in Satan’s own skull, beating down into his core, his hands.“And look how all that I promised has come to pass.The anointed cherub will ask himself why this is happening to him, I said, and it is because of his disobedience.”
“You,” Satan addressed, refusing Him a title, a relation, “will never cease this war.Almighty, if you’re almighty and true, I would not have been given the soul of the wicked to tend, nor the Earth to roam.You have all done it for me to maintain this.For the sake of war, you will never do away with me.”
“The feet of the Throne burn you.You were made for the feet of the Throne, but you made its touch burn.Your sin is the fire that destroys you.The spectacle of blood and ash is your own creation.You craved to create, but you have only destroyed.Yourself above all.A rebellion for nothing; a war only for you to begin again, groveling.You were Jerusalem once, my morning star.I adorned you in every precious stone.I covered your nakedness in the finest drapery.From the ground, I groomed a flower, and I picked you and made you sing.And you spread violence.You betrayed me.You betrayed what you were created for.And you have found your death where you began.”
“You will never cease,” said Satan, careful, like he didn’t feel a quivering, submissive fear awaken in him like the other faces he used to carry; God resurrecting the dead.
“The devil will burn in the lakes of fire, and Lucifer will be reborn, the new Jerusalem.And the new Jerusalem will present itself as a bride to God.Are you the Lamb or the Lamb’s wife?On the day you were made, you were one, and you will return to what you were created for.Jerusalem will be dressed for her husband, I once said, and God will live among His people.A marriage in a New Eden.The end will bear a new beginning.”
‘Bride.’Now, Satan opened his eyes, and they tore themselves open.Blood tore out from his golden gaze to flood his cheeks, and he remembered how angel Lucifer had cried flower petals once.Long ago.‘Over a bed of flowers.’It had been so long ago.‘I thought you’d already married me, God, and that I had slit my own throat on the wedding bed.You will do it all again.It will never cease.’Baring his teeth, drinking his own pain, Satan refused to look anywhere but forward.He met God, the Father, with crimson eyes, in hungry agony that broke a body he refused to bow.‘Look at me,’ he wanted to snarl, ‘and see how I’ve always looked at you.’
