Amelia’s Consequences

Author’s note: this story is part of a series. Here you can read the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh stories.

Amelia flew through her little sister, who was sleeping soundly. Melanie stirred, but did not wake. Amelia flew through her again, hoping the chill of her ectoplasm would be enough to wake her up. This time, Melanie groaned and thrashed, but her eyes remained closed. Desperate, Amelia plunged her insubstantial hand into her sister’s head and kept it there. At last, after much more emphatic thrashing and groaning, Melanie woke up.

“Melanie — are you awake, my dear? — you need to take off your necklace. Now.”

Melanie sat up and rubbed her eyes.

“Why? You said I need to wear it.”

“Well,” said Amelia, shooting a glance over her shoulder, “Cedarwood has played a very mean trick on us. You need to take that off right now before he comes back. Here — ”

Amelia pulled off her own necklace, which was closer to silver in color but held an identical, lightless gem. She held it forth for Melanie to see, then flung it across the room with a sneer, as if she had only just realized it was made of reeking, fresh dung.

“Are you sure?” asked Melanie.

“Yes! You could be very badly hurt or…I don’t know, just do it!”

Melanie reached behind her neck to try to undo the small, dark chain that hung there. Failing that, she lifted the necklace over her head and threw it on the floor.

“Very good,” said Amelia. She then took a deep breath and prepared herself for the loudest shout of her life or, for that matter, the loudest shout after her life.

“ORIEL!”

Before she could even catch her breath, the blond, glowing, white-winged angel was there. She had hoped, improbably, to see him again with that heart-melting smile of his, but here he was instead with a heart-wrenching frown. Though she couldn’t exactly fall to her knees without falling straight through the floor, she lowered herself and clasped her hands together. She could not bring herself to look him in the eye as she spoke.

“Oriel, I’m so sorry, I should’ve listened to you, it was those awful necklaces, he gave them to us and — ”

She stopped, because she found herself wrapped in firm, glowing arms. Shimmering blond locks fought with her own green tears to see which could obscure her vision the most. The angel’s big fingers kneaded her back. She could feel the breath rising in his chest, deep and fast, and, without her meaning to, her breath did the same.

“I’m so glad you’re safe,” he whispered.

He pulled back and looked her in the eye.

“There’s a lot we need to talk about,” he said, “you’re not going to like most of it. But for now…”

He turned, and Amelia looked over to see Melanie climbing out of bed and watching their reunion. She waved her over, but Melanie didn’t move.

“Can we trust this angel?” she said.

“Yes, we can, just come here,” Amelia pleaded.

Melanie came, and Oriel wrapped an arm around each of them. He squeezed them tight, and for a moment Amelia entertained the thought that, through him, she hugging her sister for the first time ever. She sighed, and a few gentle sobs followed.

“We must go to the Silver Watchtower,” said Oriel. “All three of us.”

He turned and whispered in Amelia’s ear, so quietly that she could barely hear it and she knew for certain that Melanie couldn’t hear it all.

“I’m sorry.”

He stood and tucked little Melanie under his arm. He pulled Amelia close with his wing, and with his free hand he reached into his robes and activated his Gate Latch Ring. In an instant, they found themselves floating in the strange, purple sky that lay beyond the Firmament, which was not quite day and not quite night. Melanie gasped, then screamed, then giggled as Oriel laughed and tumbled through the air. Amelia recognized this as a show to calm her sister’s nerves and she appreciated it. At first, their flight to the Silver Watchtower was wordless and tense. Then, in yet another act of mercy, Oriel broke the silence.

“I got your letter,” he said. “Thank you.”

“Did it help?” she asked.

“Yes.”

Her mentor did not elaborate. She was hoping he would. She had questions by the dozen and only one half-formed answer. This, she offered aloud, hoping he would reflexively clarify it for her.

“Cedarwood, that other angel I was working with…he’s one of those ‘strange new demons’ you’ve been fighting, isn’t he?”

Oriel said nothing.

“Is it a disguise? Is that why he looked like an angel? It was weird that he didn’t glow.”

Oriel sighed and closed his eyes.

“Forget the orders,” he whispered.

He opened his eyes but kept them focused on the Silver Watchtower.

“They are angels. That’s the problem. That’s…that’s why we’ve all been so tight-lipped. It’s…they…Highest help us, I can’t find the words for it. Their mere existence is…shameful. Disturbing. Wrong.”

Amelia could see him wincing as he spoke. Though his answer wasn’t much help, she found she couldn’t fault him for it. She tried her best not to make her next comment sound petulant.

“But, demons are just fallen angels, right? They’re awful, but we angels just mop them up and keep going.”

Oriel shook his head.

“You don’t understand. They didn’t…”

Amelia searched his face. She had never seen it twisted this way. Even his shoulders hunched forward ever so slightly, as if he were struck by a sudden cramp in the stomach. Whatever he was trying to say, it pained him to even think about it, much less discuss it. The closest possible experience she could think of was seeing the wrongness of the bandits in Calcorrem, the ruined, angelic city from her sister’s dreams. To see human beings reduced to animals…if she hadn’t been studying those dreams for her sister’s sake, she would’ve gone mad, or denied every part of them to keep herself sane. Thus, when Oriel once again fell back into silence, she did not force him to speak again.

As they landed in the entry hall of the Silver Watchtower, Amelia tried to picture Marmaroth’s impending fury. If she could picture it she could maybe, just maybe, prepare for it. In her mind’s eye, she saw the leader of the guardian angels standing behind his great desk, his wide wings displaying every color imaginable as his gold robes shone in the light of the braziers. On his dark-skinned face was a set brow and a heavy frown, without any hair or beard to hide the immense disappointment. Ah, but she couldn’t picture the eyes. Once they reached his office and entered therein, she discovered why.

Her mental picture had been mostly accurate. There stood Marmaroth, splendid and unmoving, and behind him the angelic librarian Harahel stood scribbling in a heavy, floating tome. Amelia had forgotten to include her, but then, she was an angel of mystery. Her eyes met Marmaroth’s, and there it was. All of it. First, a fury that could rip mountains out of the ground and hurl them as missiles. Next, a cool, detached calm. Last, but most devastatingly, love. Love that would not change Amelia’s punishment. Love that had, in fact, been crucial in shaping it. There was no preparing for that.

“Amelia Patenaude,” he said.

“Marmaroth,” she said, “I’m so sorry.”

“Spare your sorrow,” he said, “and understand that what follows is the best possible outcome of your actions. You are extraordinarily lucky. You must be under the protection of the Highest himself…”

His brow furrowed. His eyes shifted so that the fury came forward.

“…because you have invited so much danger into our order and into your family, that both should have been destroyed by now.”

Amelia hung her head. Next to her, Oriel set down Melanie and kept his hands on her shoulders. Marmaroth turned to the girl.

“Melanie Patenaude, you are now under my personal protection and, by my authority, the protection of all guardian angels. You are a very important girl, and you deserve only the best protection.”

Melanie looked over at Amelia. She looked back. Her sister’s eyes were wide and wondering in that way that only children’s eyes can be. Marmaroth continued.

“For that same reason, I hereby discharge Amelia Patenaude from our order.”

Amelia’s eyes shot up to his, which had shifted once again to bring forward that cool calm. Amelia, by contrast, suddenly felt as hot as steam and, as she lunged forward, two pairs of angelic arms pulled her back.

“No!” she shouted.

“Yes, Amelia,” said Marmaroth, “it is the only way to keep your sister safe.”

Amelia tried to wriggle free, tears of ectoplasm already streaming down her face. Another angel came and reached into the pocket where she kept her shrunken spear. The angel took the spear, returned it to full size, and flew off with it. Amelia looked up at Marmaroth and almost begged. Then, she realized she had no intention of begging. She had earned her place here not by begging, but by fighting.

“You said I would be a new kind of guardian for a new kind of threat, then you kept me in the dark no matter how many times I proved myself. I lost my trust in you because you never trusted me.”

Marmaroth raised his eyebrows.

“You threatened a fellow angel and colluded with a demon. Do not try to mount a defense. There is none for you.”

Amelia narrowed her eyes. She made herself perfectly still and paused to make sure everyone was listening. Then she whispered.

“I worked with an angel, because you were too embarrassed to arm me with the truth. How many souls do you think Cedarwood and his kind are deceiving right now with that same trick? Ralph Khomiakov is probably just one of thousands. And the few who still believe in us must make for the easiest victims…tell me, what exactly is your grand plan here? How can you justify all this?”

Amelia had not made a habit of visiting her grave site, save for when she went as an ambivalent accessory to her family. Thus, she did know exactly how silent the grave could be. Yet, if she had to guess, she would say it was about one-hundredth of the silence that now fell over Marmaroth’s office. Even the dutiful, arcane scribbling of Harahel’s pen had stopped. Marmaroth hovered up and over his desk and came to stand before Amelia. He did not stoop to a whisper like her, but he did not shout either.

“My plan is to guard humanity as they grow into their spiritual maturity and make my order unnecessary. I hold no delusions of grandeur. I consider it my duty to scrub the throne of His creation until they are ready to take their seat. I believe in humanity. I love humanity. So much so that I do not presume to control their destiny. Do you want to see the angels charging down to earth, flaming swords in hand, vanquishing evil-doers by our own limited judgment? Do you want to see the angels themselves warring to see who is most faithful, measuring each other and cutting by the smallest of degrees? The balance of the heavens and the earth is fragile, Amelia. I have seen what happens when it is broken, and I will not see it break again.”

He stopped then turned to look into the purple sky filling the tall window behind his desk.

“Yes…our enemies are angels. Yes, they are patient and clever. I am more patient. I am wise enough not to lean on my own understanding. I am a faithful servant. That should have been enough for you.”

He turned back to Amelia.

“But your spirit is weak, and your mind and heart are weaker still. They turn to the self so readily and so thoroughly that you do not even notice. You act out of petty self-interest and use your sister as the pen to write yourself a more favorable story. There is nothing angelic about you. It was a mistake to ever bring you into my order, and I consider this decision, more than anything, a correction. It will not change.”

He nodded to Oriel, who nodded back then lowered his head, squeezing Melanie’s shoulders. Marmaroth continued.

“We will keep Melanie here for as long as it takes to study her dreams, then we will return her to her family.”

Amelia looked down at Melanie, who was looking back and forth between the angel and her sister. She was keeping herself quiet the way she was taught to do when the adults were talking, but there was a rising panic in her eyes. Amelia addressed Marmaroth in a voice as dry as bone.

“How…um…how long will that take?”

Marmaroth didn’t answer, didn’t even move. If he hadn’t been staring her down, Amelia might’ve guessed he hadn’t heard the question. Oriel spoke up.

“It won’t feel as long, down there. You know…time works differently here.”

“This has gone on long enough,” said Marmaroth. “Take her away.”

Amelia screamed. Melanie screamed. Neither sister could’ve told you what they were saying, either in that moment or in recollection later on. Their screams both spoke to one primal demand: don’t take away my sister!

Yet, the angels did not honor that demand. Oriel stood holding Melanie and watching guiltily as two other angels dragged Amelia away. She screamed and kicked the whole way out of the Silver Watchtower. Her rage and sorrow tore through her ectoplasm distorted her features, making her look like ghoul drawn in a penny dreadful. The angels dragged her across the purple sky, opened a small Guardian Gate, and dropped her off in the park outside her home.

It was still night. Though mere seconds had passed since she and her sister cast off their necklaces, this was now an entirely different night. It was the loneliest, scariest, bleakest night Amelia had ever experienced, even including the night of her death.

###

For Amelia, every second felt like a day, even though she was no longer in the Silver Watchtower. She was, instead, hovering around Melanie’s bedroom, calculating just how long her sister was spending away from the love and comfort of her family. Her family, of course, was sleeping soundly, and they would never suspect that their beloved daughter had disappeared for a full hour in the middle of the night.

At the end of that hour, Oriel returned and tucked a very sleepy Melanie back into her bed, exactly as she had been before. Amelia flew to him and grabbed him by the shoulders, shaking him as her wild eyes and ragged voice betrayed a spirit on the verge of collapse.

“How long was she up there?!”

Oriel lowered her arms and clasped her hands.

“Long enough to confirm the good news: her dreams have stopped. We aren’t sure why, but since there’s nothing for us to study we decided to keep her here with the family.”

Amelia shook her hands free and went to stare at Melanie. She hovered just a breath away from her face, careful not to touch her and cause a chill.

“Someday,” Oriel added, “she’ll just look back on the whole thing as another dream.”

Amelia turned back to Oriel. Now she was the one who couldn’t bring herself to say anything. Oriel glided over and wrapped her in another hug.

“You’re still my sister,” he said, “and even though Marmaroth did what he had to do, I’m still going to make sure you can take care of yourself. And her.”

“That’s not breaking the rules?”

“No, because what I’m about to teach you is something any mortal soul can do.”

“Then why not teach me earlier?”

Oriel pulled back then. He used a bit of his robe to wipe the tears from Amelia’s face, then smiled.

“Because most souls won’t. It’s extremely difficult to muster. In fact, the successes are so rare you could rightfully call them miracles.”

Amelia nodded then brushed away some of her black curls which now stuck where the tears had been.

“All right,” she said, “show me.”

Oriel reached back and plucked a speckled white feather from his wing. He shook it as if it were a damp cloth and he needed it dry. As it shook, the feather lost its glow.

“Here,” he said, “try to catch it.”

He held the feather up in the air and Amelia stuck out her green, translucent hands. He released the feather. It drifted down and passed right through her grasping fingers. The best she could do with all her waving and clawing was alter its direction by degrees.

“You turned it into a normal feather,” she said. “Is that what you’re going to show me?”

Oriel shook his head, then plucked another feather. He shook it until it was just as dull as the previous one.

“We’re going to try that again, only this time I need you to do something different. This time, I need you to concentrate purely on your love for your sister. In fact, don’t even look at the feather. Close your eyes.”

He brought the feather down closer to her hands. Amelia closed her eyes and thought about Melanie. She thought about how she had spent every second after life worrying over her, looking after her, and yearning to be closer to her. She was her little sister, after all. The most perfect little girl in the world. Her reason for being. Of course she loved her!

Yet, when she opened her eyes, she found her hands empty. She looked down and saw that the second feather had joined the first on the floor. She looked back up at Oriel, who was smiling and shaking his head.

“For this to work,” he said, “you need to get out of your head. You need to let the love flood you and overtake you. This time, forget about the story you tell yourself about her. Focus on the memories. Relive them as best you can.”

Oriel prepared another feather, and once again Amelia closed her eyes. This time, she started with a sound. It was a sharp, loud cry. It was the first sound Melanie had ever made, as the midwife presented her to their mother. Amelia could feel the relief again, see the tears running freely down her father’s face as he knelt by his wife’s side and marveled at their beautiful, baby girl. They were so happy then. So whole. They did not yet know that their firstborn had drowned only hours before.

With that thought, Amelia could feel herself sinking. She imagined it as a deep, dark pool of water — all her sadness, all her regret, all her shame.

“Oh well,” she thought to herself, “It’ll all be there tomorrow. Tonight, I need to finish this lesson.”

So, to keep herself focused on the love, she jumped forward to a related but sweeter memory: her father delivering her eulogy. Strangely, she had not seen fit to revisit this memory often. Thus, it still felt fresh. The polished wood of the church and the bright flowers arrayed all around her casket fought against the gloomy grey light of the high windows, and only partially succeeded. Once again, her father let the tears flow freely. He was not a man who feared feeling. His tears carried all the anger and hurt and yearning that are a grieving father’s right. Yet, what surprised Amelia most about his speech now was how kind it was. How gentle. He did not blame her for dying. He celebrated her life. He told stories of how clever and bold he was. He clutched his chest as he said how badly he missed her. He spoke purely in love and he glowed through the tears.

That glow. Whatever that glow was, Melanie had it too on the day she first saw Amelia, when she pointed over their mother’s shoulder and shouted her name with triumph. Her mother, of course, had that glow any time she looked at any of her children. Amelia, in life. Melanie, even when she woke up crying in the middle of the night. Delrick, whenever she tied his little tie for him and straightened his collar. And didn’t he himself have that same glow, just this year, when he brought his own note to read for Amelia at the family visit to her grave site? Didn’t he glow through the tears for a sister he could hardly remember, a sister he only got to know through stories?

Now the glow was flooding Amelia’s mind, bringing forth faces and moments from all over her life and after. There was her father, conspiratorially letting her splash through the mud on a rainy afternoon. There was her mother, her hands dancing through the air as they discussed their favorite novel together. There was Delrick, baby Delrick, foiling her teenaged attempt to remain aloof by burping and giggling in her arms, and making her giggle too. There was Byron Henderson, beaming as he showed his father his tinkling music box of his own design. There was Eugene, his father, looking down with that easy smile, his eyes hardly revealing the mountains he’d moved already to give his son a chance. There was the ghost of Mathias, his face missing its usual pinched quality, telling her that Eugene was a good man and that she should protect him. There was even Marmaroth, his dark face glowing in equal measure whether it laughed, or pitied, or delivered punishment. There was Oriel, just moments ago, opening his arms for a hug Amelia knew she did not deserve, but needed.

And then there was Melanie, again, always Melanie. Because her eyes, wondering and still too big for her little head, did not see Amelia as an angel, or a ghost, or anything else that others might see. She saw only her, with a heart yet unclouded by the struggles of life. Under her black curls, which were just like her sister’s, shone a face as bright as the sun.

Amelia opened her eyes. The dull feather sat in the palm of her hand, which was glowing. It was the same clear, golden glow that had just flooded her mind, and it almost returned her palms to the pink they had in life. Yet, as soon as she noticed this glow, the murky green haze of her ectoplasm seeped back in and the feather fell through her hand. She gasped and looked up at Oriel. He nodded.

“You’ll need a lot more practice, but that’s a good start.”