We didn’t sing the whole oratorio. Just that one word in its joyful refrain.
We’d sung it through a few times, when from Handel’s shadow a broken voice joined us, gently correcting melody and rhythm as we sang it softly together. We didn’t rush. And frankly, it sounded cracked and halting and a bit uncertain.
A few moments later, Handel glided toward me, slowly shaking his giant head, even as he continued to sing with us, ever so slightly modifying his song toward its best end.
Then, the notes began to repeat in the same pattern, our voices growing firmer, louder, and more confident. We let it grow and swell, singing with as much joy and purpose as any one of us might have wanted to hear in the song of our own souls.
Like a family, we sang that beautiful music. Our voices, from across history, across the world, across spiritual paths, shone back the Rupture inside Handel not as a repudiation of his music or the failure of an imperfect song, but as the confirmation of his path and the very legacy he’d thought had escaped him.
At last, we pulled together in one final powerful chorus that echoed out into the dark over the long, ancient plain.
When it had echoed its last, all fell to silence, and Handel again stood right in front of me.
“Even if this one song is all anyone ever remembers,” I said, “it’s enough. Almost three hundred years later, people still sing it. Maybe not the version we just did, but the spirit’s the same.”
Then like an overtone you barely hear, Handel softly cried, the sound rising from his Rupture. “I wish my father could have heard this,” he said.
I was in no position to offer advice about parents. Still. “For what it’s worth, I think your dad would have liked it.” Then I remembered my dad
driving me to the airport and what he’d said to me about being happy. “Actually, from what I’ve learned about you and your father . . . I think he’d be proud.”
“Perhaps,” said Handel. “And maybe, in his own way, he just wanted what was best for me.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
There are far more than three thanaturgic drycraefts, just as there are other modalities for the manipulation of light, energy, and sound.
—‘Thanaturgy and Other Esoterica,”paper given at the Forum for Art, Miracle, and Magic, 1803
Behind us onthe cracked ancient soil, the Ward still lay unmoving and barely aglow. I was about to tell Handel of our plans to renew her when the overtone inside his Rupture became more of a dirge and started to grow. Above the rising sound, he spoke:
“Dear Heaven above, I cannot count the souls I have harmed or slain.
How shall I ever make amends?”
I was no priest. “Your obsession got the best of you,” I said. “But it sounds like you’ve started to forgive your father. I’m sure with enough time you can forgive yourself, too.”
“There is no quarter for what I’ve done.” He looked away into the ancient dark. “I am damned.”
I still needed Handel and all the souls inside him to renew the ward. Everything depended on it. And maybe becoming the ward would help Handel find the redemption he clearly needed.
Gently I pulled the Orcus from my pack. It thrummed more than it ever had. I gave it a few soft words from my song, and it quieted a little.
But then it hit me that none of the other souls inside the wraith had asked to be there. And though Handel may now realize his father’s intention, he was far from forgiveness for the man. None of that seemed a winning formula for renewing the ward. In fact, it may just become a new prison for him, for all of them.
We’d all fought so long and hard to get to this moment. But it just didn’t feel right to secure our safety and London’s future at the expense of souls who hadn’t asked to do so or needed their own chance to heal.
I put the thread away. “Maybe you start making amends by freeing the souls you’ve taken.”
Handel was quiet a moment. Then the dirge inside his Rupture became a rising chorus of wails, and the wraith began to lose cohesion. The soul of a man in tailcoat and breeches tore away first, his dark form pulsing. Then a woman with a high wig, laughing hysterically. Then a man wearing beatnik spectacles. In a rush, one after the other, souls separated from Handel, until Angela erupted with a great metal scream of hope, and Jimmy pulled free, too, his frail shoulders trembling, but wearing that derby-winning smile on his face. I nodded to them both, before their souls disappeared like all the others, winking out with a small flash of light. Relief rushed through me like a pulse of warm blood. They’d all transitioned to the Meadows, as they might have naturally done.
All save Handel.
The great composer stood still, a long, blank stare in his eyes. I didn’t need to see his shadow to understand the shame he felt. Shame that would hold him hostage in the Strata forever.
I began to sing his “Sonata”-like gleam notes, but in a major key, focusing on his newfound understanding of his father’s concern. Note by note his pattern brightened as he slowly started to truly grasp the good of his songs, his influence, his legacy. I think he began to see the truer picture of who he was—deeply wounded and bitter, but also a bringer of hope and joy.
After a few moments, he looked back at me. “Perhaps I am not damned, after all.”
