Thief (22 page)

As each of the creatures approached for their daily blessing, he saw them in an entirely new way. He saw their beings, their structure and function, the way they fitted into this world’s ecology and their entire evolutionary history. It was like instead of being given a name, he was given an entire encyclopaedia at every glance.

How he wondered, could the world have been so flat before?

Then he looked at Sherial again, and gaped, his so-called logic only catching up with him much later. For when he looked at Sherial, he saw Sherial. There was no history attached to her, no place in the world’s ecology, no evolution, not even a trace of knowledge about her functioning. There was only one answer. Sherial was completely outside of this world. She was completely outside of every world.

Everyone had always said that angels were not of the Earth, but it was only at that moment, looking at her through the titan’s gift, that he understood the full depth of the difference between her and terra firma. Yet she was still beautiful, still a being built of pure love. She was still a flesh and blood woman and a winged beauty he would trust with his life. How could any of this be?

In time he was sure, the wonder of his gift would pass, as would his human failings return, and Sherial’s charms would dominate him again, but for the moment something larger and closer possessed him.

For that as well he was grateful.

Mikel was sitting on a small moss covered rock overlooking the valley below when he heard the sound, so close behind him. The most dangerous sound in his entire known universe. His very soul recognised it instantly. An exquisite temptation that simply ripped right through him. A bolt of fear lanced through him straight after as he fought desperately for control.

Not again! Not so soon.

It was only the splash of the water as she bathed, the mesmerizing sound rising above the gentle babble of the trickling brook, surely the most innocent sound possible, but he knew absolute terror. It was the sound of his doom. He knew he shouldn’t look, that he couldn’t afford to look. On the most fundamental level he understood that if he did, if he ever saw, he was lost. His mind, his body, his soul would be lost to her, - forever.

It terrified him, - almost as much as it tempted him. Mainly because it tempted him.

‘Why did she do this?’ He asked himself the question once more, as perhaps he had asked a thousand times before over the past few weeks. Why?

Sherial knew, - she had to know, how he felt. How little self-control he had when she did things like this. When she did exactly this thing. He was only a man, and she was female perfection. How could he feel otherwise? He tried to console himself with that and knew dismal failure. It didn’t matter what she was, only what he wasn’t, - in control.

Time and time again he’d tried to explain, not having the foggiest how to, and terrified that he might drive her away with his pathetic human lust. But he’d never quite managed to choke the words out. How do you tell an angel you lust for her as a woman? The very thought was sacrilege. And whenever he tried she just smiled at him, a smile that told him she loved him unconditionally. The most wonderful and desperately sad smile in existence.

It wasn’t in the way a man and a woman love, he knew. He would have given everything for it to be so, if he couldn’t kill himself first. It was as a priest or a saint loves all men, regardless of age or sex or anything else so prosaic. It was as a mother loves a child, or as a teacher loves her students. Sherial also loved the animals, as they in turn worshipped her. She loved the trees, the forests, the world and God. Sherial loved.

It was his own fault he supposed. He was a man, just a man, but least ways not a mindless beast in rutting season. He knew what he longed for, and he could resist it. Or rather he should be able to. In reality his resistance was becoming more and more desperate by the day. Who really ruled this body anyway, he kept asking himself, him or his hormones. But each time he mastered himself, he rediscovered just how incredibly strong his base desires were.

It was embarrassing, humiliating, and degrading. He should have had far more control. At the very least he should have had some. Instead he was like an adolescent schoolboy with his tongue hanging out, and he hated himself for it. Decades of training in mind over body and yet still he was unable to control the wild animal dwelling within. Hatred simply didn’t go far enough to describe his self-loathing. He tried to hide it from her, cursing himself for his stupidity as he did so. Sherial knew. She surely had to know. But she said nothing, and he said nothing. And so the stupidity continued.

But this time it was different. Harder. Even worse than the last time. Where had his rage gone? For so long it had held him, not secure perhaps, but still at least shielding him from the true devastating power of her charms. At first he had tried to tell himself it was simply his control protecting him. But now the truth was becoming more bitterly clear by the day. That anger, that rage had been all that had protected him.

But somewhere, somehow, bit by bit it had vanished. Sherial had worn it down with her love and infinite understanding until now there was so little left it was next to useless against her charms. Without his rage to power his will, his mantras, all his self-control was failing. And there wasn’t a thing he could do. He was completely powerless before her. And still he knew that even the concept of power was false when thinking of her.

Her beauty had entranced him from the start. Her grace, her gentleness, her love had affected him so deeply he knew now he would never be able to love another. He would never be able to feel lust for a mere human woman. Humans, people were so clumsy, so loud, so imperfect, so full of hate and anger, darkness. Even though he was one himself, how could he ever return to them, live among them, love them again? Sometimes he couldn’t even stand to look at himself in his own small shaving mirror, appalled at his own clumsy form.

Yet he knew he desperately wanted to keep what little was left of his humanity. It was all he was, all that remained to him. To gaze upon her even for an instant would destroy that. It would finally remove him permanently from his own humanity. What he would be afterwards, how he could live, how he could even endure he didn’t know. But for all that he ached to gaze upon her with a longing forged of case-hardened titanium.

“I live. I strive. I win.”

The mantra helped, but it wasn’t enough, as it had been thus far. What was different? He knew what had changed, but he didn’t want to accept it. All that mattered was that somehow all his meditations, all his control, every last scrap of his iron will he had held out for so long   against Sherial were now nearly gone. The power, the rage was missing. It had been running down for a while as she exhausted it simply with her presence. But now he was suddenly running on empty, and his will power simply wasn’t strong enough without it. Yet even that wasn’t enough to explain his weakness, surely. He was a strong man, not a weakling. All his strength, all his power surely couldn’t have been based on rage. But no matter how many times he told himself that, he was still kitten weak before her.

In desperation he fell back on an adolescent ploy and tried to imagine the scene. Himself coming upon her, and being rejected, as he knew he would be. He tried to experience the pain and the humiliation in his thoughts, and even though she would hopefully do it with the greatest kindness as she did everything else, knew it would be worse than anything else he would ever experience in his life. To be rejected by Sherial would truly be hell, and it was the only possible outcome.

Stronger still as a weapon was the fear, which he drew on for support. The fear of what his punishment would be, for he knew absolutely that angels had not been placed on Earth by god, for mankind’s pleasure. Least of all for his. What punishment would be meted out to him for such desecration? For desecration was the very word for what he was imagining. The only word. The despoiling of innocence. And what guilt would he know for his debasement of this angel so pure? Even to allow himself to think of her in such a way was corruption. He couldn’t allow it.  

“I live. I strive. I win.”

And then there was her husband, for he was sure she must love another. How could she not? What would her man do to him? An angel would make a powerful enemy. An angel like Donnell would be truly devastating. And despite what he knew from Sherial about her own nature, the other angels were nothing like her. They were terrifying. Powerful, majestic, and deadly, like a tornado. He couldn’t hope to survive against one.

“I live. I strive. I win.”

There was a war raging in his head, as he struggled to retain control. Muscles locked rigid as he forced himself to gaze only upon the tree in front of him, concentrating on its thick, knotted bark, studying the whirls and lines of it as a policeman would a fingerprint. And for the longest time he thought he was going to win the battle once again, as his sense of self-preservation fought his hormones to a standstill. 

“I live. I strive. I win.”

Then she laughed. The sound golden and musical, tinkling like the most impossibly beautiful music and birdsong all rolled into one glorious concert. The beating of his heart responded instantly. His head started turning automatically and in a last desperate effort he squeezed his eyes shut and prayed. Ironic for someone who’d never believed in God, but the only thing that came to mind as her laughter echoed around him, enticing him like heroin to a junkie.

“I live. I strive. I win.” The words had more than a hint of desperation in them now.

The sweat poured off his brow as he struggled to keep them closed against the onslaught of his desires. With a supreme effort he managed to turn back around, questions finally beginning to pepper him. Didn’t she know he was here? She must, surely. She was an angel. She knew everything else. Then why was she doing this? Was she testing him? Tempting him? Seeing if he had the discipline to carry out the job? The strength? The self-control?

“I live. I strive. I win.”

Or was she teasing him? The question nagged at him endlessly, teasing him, even though he knew there could be nothing between them. Never could be. Sherial would never tease. It was a human thing. But the thought would not leave him.

Over and over he reminded himself that she was an angel. She belonged in heaven with other angels. He kept trying to remember the way she had been with the others of her people, as she was meant to be. He was a human: imperfect, clumsy, and ugly. He lied, stole, cheated, swindled. Sure he could always tell himself it was for a good cause. That he did it only to help the poor. That he harmed only the evil. That he never killed or hurt anyone. But it was wrong. For a human, for him it might be relatively right, but for an angel it was totally wrong. For an angel there were no shades of grey.

“I am a thief.”

The new mantra suddenly occurred to him, and its utterance suddenly gave him greater self-control than before. Much greater. He repeated those four words silently to himself, over and over again, holding them to him like a shield, - a shield and a sense of identity. And as the laughter and the splashing continued they protected him, as his rage once had. He was a thief, a taker of things that weren’t his, a criminal. A thief, someone completely unworthy of an angel. Unworthy of Sherial.

The words hurt, but they were true, and they could hold him. All his glorious dreams of charity and justice, they were window dressing. At his heart he was a thief, no matter how he wrapped it up in high ideals. It hurt, it belittled him, it made him feel lower than an earthworm, but it was true. And that reality, that identity, could protect him where nothing else could. The price was worth it.

He used the mantra, with everything he had, welcoming the self control that returned to him. Finally he had found something that could hold her at bay, and his relief was immense. As was his disappointment. He concentrated ever more strongly on them, knowing they were his salvation.

Eventually the words even allowed him the luxury of moving away. First with his thoughts, then finally his feet. A shambling gait that carried him unsteadily back towards their camp, in truth his camp for she surely had no need of one. One foot in front of the other he placed each like a piece in a jigsaw, painstakingly and slowly, with infinite caution. It was a struggle just to move away from her, he didn’t have enough mind left for co-ordination as well.