Earth/Sky (Earth/Sky Trilogy) (25 page)

“I don’t know. Something . . . alarmed them.”

We looked back the way they had come.
No one was there, so I said, “This isn’t your unilateral decision to make.”

“I am going to hurt you,”
Adriel said dismally. “Maybe not today, maybe not in a year, but one day I’ll hurt you.
This
will hurt you. I can’t stand to be a part of it and I can’t stand to stay away.”

“I can’t stand to be away from you,” I whispered.

Children yelled at a distance, gathered on the first bridge and starting to come in our direction. We finished crossing the stone bridge and pressed on down the path. I took Adriel’s arm, wishing we could have just kept kissing. He said, “When I’m with you, I’m
glad
I fell. That I’m not just in the wind that rushes through your hair, thinking only of where I want to go and what I want to do next. That’s what being an angel is when you’re not guarding your charge. It’s empty. And the person you’re helping . . . you do it because you’re ordered, and that’s usually the only reason. You never
grow
as an angel. Outside of your orders, all of your decisions are for yourself. People think of angels as these perfect, loving, altruistic beings and they’re not. It’s the most selfish, mindless existence imaginable, and it lasts for all of eternity. You’re static.”

The third bridge was tiled, but I did
n’t take the time to dwell upon its features. Before I could speak, he continued. “Pulling the girl from the water was the first kind act of my own volition that I’d ever made in the millennia of my life. It was a revelation, one that I was forbidden to experience. So I wasn’t sorry for helping her, not for her sake and not for mine. Then meeting you . . . I’ve gone from not being sorry to
happy
that I did it. You make me happy, but being with me will one day destroy you.”

It was going to destroy me even more to
not
be with him. “You can’t see into the future. And if you really can see into my soul, then you know I’m not going to turn away.” I stopped at the midpoint of the bridge, the children’s voices having faded away. The tiles were blue and white, and whoever tended the grounds here had color-coordinated the plants. White flowers blossomed on both sides of the stream, and the trees hung low with bluish-green leaves.

“What I see in your soul is a gentle and sensitive person, and I don’t want to be the reason that light dulls,” Adriel said.
At the moment, my soul must have been blazing since he winced and looked down to the flowers. “That would make me feel worse than anything, even than how it feels to know I’ve lived since the dawn of humanity doing essentially nothing except what served myself.”

“Well, then serve me chocolate to make up for it,” I said tiredly.
My body was still racing with that electric sensation from our kissing, but the moment for it had passed. I didn’t know how else to ease his torment save sugar.

He glanced at
me. “You’re sick of this whole conversation.”

“You didn’t need to peep at my soul for that,” I said.

“Pirri’s, then. And I’m buying.”

We still had the rest of the path to walk, since the ice cream shop was on the other side of the park.
Every bridge was different, the tile succeeded by a winding one of wood that split in the center around a tree growing straight out of the water. The graduating classes of Seataw High School had signed the next one, so names and years and drawings were all over it going back fifty years. As we passed over it, I said, “You walk around with the world weighing on your shoulders, Adriel.”

“It is.
I changed the world, for better or ill. We all did. It’s a lot to live with.”

In gaps of
the foliage we could see out to a lawn where people were throwing balls and sitting on blankets to have a picnic. A group of Spooner guys hustled through the grass, not noticing us on the bridge as they imitated blasting things with guns. Everyone was so happy, and I was torn between the joy of being with Adriel and the sadness, too. I didn’t consider him selfish for being what all angels were, and he had fallen due to the most beautiful act anyone could perform.

The path wound away through one more glorious burst of flowers to a final bridge with the end of the park beyond.
It was a long bridge, dipping down instead of arched or horizontal to the ground, and I held to the chain railings as it swayed and creaked under my feet. Definitely made for children, a path almost obscured by bushes wound down and underneath it through a ravine so one did not have to rock on the bridge. Seeing how slowly I was going, Adriel skirted to the path and said, “I’ll meet you on the other side.”

“I’m not that bad!” I exclaimed
while inching along. To prove I wasn’t a coward, I forced myself to keep going with small steps.

Children came my direction at a sprint, ten of them engaged in a race.
Hastily, I pressed myself to the side when they stormed it. We rocked up and down and swung from side to side violently while they charged past to the end of the bridge. Touching the posts, the kids spun around to run back. Coming in last place, a girl of four or five in a red dress bypassed the bridge for the path. It sounded like she collided into something down there, because a crash sounded.

I couldn’t see Adriel, but I heard him say,
“Are you okay?”

The
bridge creaked and swung while the kids darted by me. I clutched to the chain until the last child stepped off. Below, the girl was sniffling and talking to Adriel.

“Go!
Go! Go!” the kids shouted. Now they were dashing away down the trail. I called to them, not wanting the girl to get left behind. They didn’t hear me and vanished around the curving path.

“Are you all right, Jessa?”
Adriel called.

I caught a glimpse
of Adriel down there, kneeling on the path to look at the girl’s extended legs. She had fallen. “I’m okay. They didn’t flatten me.”

“Where are your friends going, Abby?” Adriel asked.

“They’re running the last three bridges, back and forth,” the girl said. “My mom is over there. Look, there’s blood on my legs. Ow.”

“Do you want me to come down there
to help?” I offered.

“No, don’t,” said Adriel.
“Broken glass and garbage is all over the path. Wait for me up there, okay? I’ll carry her back to her mom. The glass cut up her knees pretty badly.”

“And a broken sprinkler
is making big slippery puddles,” added the girl about what lay in wait below. She was a tough little kid. I would have been screaming my head off to see blood all over my legs at her age. Bracing myself, I let go of the chain. If the kids could run it without tipping over, I certainly could walk it.

“All right, I’m lifting you up,” Adriel said.
“One, two, three, whoosh.”

“Whoosh!”
Abby exclaimed. Grateful to reach the end of the bridge, I looked back the way we had come. Long black braids swung over Adriel’s arm as he ferried the girl away.

The ice cream store was across the street. Quite a line was inside, but it didn’t extend out the door. There was a pair of picnic tables here by the sidewalk, one unoccupied.
Two men and two women were sitting at the other one. Adriel’s voice echoed back. “Abby’s mom? We’re looking for Abby’s mom!”

“Mom, I fell on some glass!” the girl yelled.

All four people burst out in raucous laughter as I sat down at the second picnic table to wait. Beer bottles were all over the table between them. A bare-chested man picked up an empty one and chucked it over the foliage to shatter on the path below. When he resettled on the bench, he glanced over to me. I looked down to the graffiti carved into the wood of my table, thinking I should recross the bridge and catch up with Adriel. These people were drunk.

The guy was still looking
when I checked. He was a few years older than me, with narrow yet handsome features and black hair. His eyes were strange, the color of charcoal with a bright blue ring around them. He nudged a woman at his side. She was older, and had long sepia-colored hair and dark green eyes. Something about her was bitter, a pinch to her lips, the way she had her arms crossed in front of her on the table more in defense than relaxation.

“Look at that,” the guy whispered.
Then the four of them were staring at me, every one attractive and with expressions that set off alarm bells in my brain. I looked down the path and figured Adriel would come back any second. The girl’s mother couldn’t be that far away.

“You can’t be right, Japheem,” the older
woman said.

“I’m never wrong,”
said the guy. He raised his voice. “How long ago was it?”

“How long ago was what?” I said, deciding to go after Adriel and standing up.

“How long ago was death cheated of you?”

Startled, I stared at them.
The oldest was in his mid-forties, a muscular and grim-featured man with a beer bottle in his fist. The youngest was a girl of my age, honey blonde and stunning. I said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, I think she does,” said the woman with a sharp laugh.
Turning around, I walked back to the swaying bridge.

“Hey,
girl, where are you going?” she called.

“Come back!”
the guy with strange eyes yelled.

The swaying made me nauseous.
I went across it as fast as I could and hurried down the path. Then something dropped in front of me, a blur of dirty gray and murky yellow, coarseness brushing along my skin and the park swept from view. A strange, jangling music filled my ears, sinking into my body to pull it apart piece by piece. I screamed in panic, “
Adriel!
” before succumbing to it.

Chapter Eleven: The Rippers

Colors.

They were an assault of ugliness, sweeping and twisting over one another, folding me in and pulling away.
My eyes hurt merely from looking upon them, the swathe of dingy green flecked with brown, the lifeless maroon smudge with dead black points. A murky yellow overcame them. Buried deep within it were jarring blues, and then those were brushed away by a drained lilac being stormed by burnt orange. I put up my hands to force the colors away, not wanting to see them and not having the sense just to close my eyes. It was the music doing that, the chords disconnecting my body from my mind, reaching deep into my brain and severing the synapses.

Coarseness
licked over my arms and the sensation was just as repugnant as the colors and music. Catching and pulling at my skin, though I couldn’t hear the rasp of it over the music, I
felt
it. This was a living sensation, a thrumming darkness on my flesh, and I couldn’t bear it nor could I pull back.

Jessa.
The name didn’t belong to me. It was just one that I had borrowed for a while, and was being forced to return. That dream rose up in my mind, the rightness of my fall, my death and my grave. The rightness of me gone while the world turned on without Jessa Bright.

That was my name.
I clung to it desperately and demanded to remember more. I had gone over the cliff . . . and I had
not
stopped there. Right or wrong, I’d walked away. My story still had pages to turn. Colors raced overhead, beautiful ones in another time and upon another cliff, and I turned to watch them go.

The sensation fell away from my
arms. I blinked hard and the colors retreated to wings. The people from the picnic table were surrounding me on the path. Although it felt like some time had passed, that couldn’t have been true. The older woman was telling the man with strange eyes to back off, and as he did, more and more sense returned to me. It was not my own wrongness in existing that I sensed; it was his. He was the one with the ugly yellow wings; the woman had the dull, dusty green. The beautiful blonde girl was inches above the trail, the only one still hovering with her hideous lilac and burnt orange wings beating slowly.

“Maybe she doesn’t know,” the older woman said.
“What was it, girl? A car accident? An illness when you were small? Japheem, what do you see?”

“This is recent, very recent,” said the
guy with yellow wings. The woman touched the fabric of my clothes. I jerked away and bumped into the second man, who was standing behind me. Even as I looked back in fright, his maroon wings vanished.

“Trenton will be coming back soon, Makala,” the blon
de said in a querulous voice.

“Then go and greet him at the tables,” the woman answered.
She jerked the shopping bag out of my hand to inspect the contents. The blonde set a foot to the ground with reluctance and walked around us to the swaying bridge, her wings snapping out of sight.

“She fell,” Japheem said, coming a little closer.
The jangling music increased and I winced from it.
Jessa.
I was not going to lose myself again.

“Leave me alone!” I exclaimed, and tried to run
between them. A hand locked painfully over my shoulder and then a golden light blasted out around us.

“Release her!” Adriel commanded, suddenly there upon the
path. The sunlight on the points of his wings was almost blinding. I had never seen such fury on his lovely face, and while I wanted to shrink in response to it, the angels around me laughed in mockery.

“Oh, someone’s been naughty,” said Makala in a singsong.
“But his wings haven’t dimmed, have they, Barasho? What does that mean to you?”

“He caught the girl for her sake, not
only for his own,” said the man behind me in a deep baritone.

I wanted to get to Adriel, but Makala and Japheem were still blocking my way.
Going closer to that terrible music was going to rip me up inside. “Adriel, what are they?”

“Rippers,” Adriel said in disgust.

“
We’re
Rippers?” Makala said. “And here you are with your makeshift charge, angelus cadus. You know that’s not allowed.”

“Oh, but they never notice, do they?” Japheem said, looking at me hungrily.
“Not with these little ones of no importance. So we’ll just be taking this one for ourselves, and thanking you kindly, Adriel.” He stepped closer and I flinched as that jangling grew in volume. It was the complete opposite of the celestial chords I heard while flying. This was the shriek of metal and the screech of tires, voices lifted in screams and the deafening cracks of thunder all sewn together.

“You won’t be
taking her,” Adriel said dangerously, and then a sword of flame was in his hand. The fire was blue and yellow, the hilt gold, and even at the distance between us, I felt the heat coming off that blade. In answer, a sword came to Japheem’s hand. Like his wings, the blue and yellow colors were muddied and ugly, and the hilt was brown. Heat did not pulse from his blade but a freezing cold. As the souls of humans were laid bare to angels, so were their souls bare before me in the color and sensation of their wings and swords.

Just as Japheem
moved to Adriel, Barasho looked over his shoulder and said, “Later! People are coming.”

“I want to take her with us,” Japheem said.

The wings vanished from Makala and Barasho, the latter of whom commanded, “Japheem! Now!”

The swaying bridge began to creak.
Japheem didn’t look like he was going to obey, but then he slowly backed off. I moaned, unable to help myself at the awful pull of that music. His wings and sword disappeared a split second before a cheery voice called, “Jessa! We’re going for ice cream. Do you and Adriel want to come?”

The three around me startled and then recoiled at Zakia.
A low growl came from Makala’s throat. “
Zombie
.”

The smile fell from Zakia’s lips, both at the word and at the sight of Adriel’s fiercely blazing wings and sword.
He looked me up and down, making sure that I was all right. Back in the picnic table area, girls were shouting, “Zakia? Zakia!”

“Let’s go,” Barasho ordered, his brows drawn down in warning
upon Japheem. “We can pick her up any time.”

Looking at Zakia in
revulsion, Makala forced her way through the thickets of flowers along the path. The others followed, crushing teacup roses under their shoes. Adriel came to my side, his wings and sword vanishing. Tilting my face to his, he said, “Did they hurt you?”

“No,” I said.

“What’s going on?” Zakia asked darkly.

Adriel took my hand in a hard grip.
His shirt was torn in the back from his wings. “We don’t have time to explain everything, and it doesn’t concern you. I have to get her out of here and warn the Kreelings.” He scanned around us and then looked up. “The bunker.”

“I can pass along a warning,” Zakia
said. “Tell me what they were. Were those-”

“Rippers?” I meant to voice it as a statement, but it came out a question.

“Three Rippers,” Zakia said. “I’ll find a pay phone and call them now.”

“F
ive,” I corrected. “There’s a fourth you didn’t see, a blonde girl. She was going to meet a fifth named Trenton.”

“I don’t need your help,” Adriel said.

“I’d say you do,” Zakia retorted. “You get her home; I’ll get in touch with the hunters.”

Q
uickly, Adriel walked me back through the park, over the bridges and to the car. His eyes never stopped moving over our surroundings, even though the Rippers had gone to the west side of the square and we were going east. Once we were inside the car, he checked for traffic and pulled out into the road. “I have to drive. Watch the skies for them. It will look like smoke.”

“I know what they look like d
arkened,” I said. The sky was blue and full of puffy white clouds, nothing up there that shouldn’t have been. With a start, I realized that Makala had taken my shopping bag with her. I was lucky that that was all she stole. If she had helped herself to my purse, she could have opened my wallet and . . . no, I hadn’t changed my driver’s license to Spooner since I’d only be here until graduation. It didn’t make sense to do that. Still, it was better that she didn’t have my Bellangame address.

“Tell me everything they said to you,” Adri
el said as we raced through Seataw to the road that would carry us back to Spooner.

“They were sitting at the picnic tables, and
looked at me funny while I was waiting for you,” I said. “The one with the sword, Japheem, he was really interested. He asked how long it had been since I cheated death.”

“Damn,” Adriel whispered.
“He’s a seer.”

“A what?”

“An angel with extra sensitivity to fluctuations in the tapestry. He could tell that you were supposed to have died-”

“He knew that it was a fall.
Makala couldn’t see it, but he could.”

“Yes.
Very few fallen angels have that ability. He could sense . . . it’s not a cut, not like with Zakia. Japheem saw more of a knot. That’s what happened to your thread when I caught you. Instead of being severed as it should have been, your thread hit a knot and then continued.”

I leaned forward in my seat to check the sky.
“He isn’t so sensitive that he could see my name, is he?”

“No, seers can’t do that.
I’ve never met one until now, but Taurin did. That was long, long ago.”

“They’re fallen angels like you, but their wings a
re so ugly.” I glanced out the back. The only living thing besides us was a cat in a window of a house that we were passing.

“I told you that not all fallen angels are benign.
Rippers are when they go bad.”

“What are they ripping?
Or is that just a name?”

“They rip everything, living by thieving and deceit, collecting humans who shouldn’t be here like you.
Jessa, watch!”

I had turned to look at him out of reflex.
Returning to the windows, I said, “Collecting?”

“If you had fallen in front of them, they might have caught you like I did.
Except not to take you home. You would be presumed dead, your body lost in the woods, and really they would have you.”

My heart chilled.
“For what purpose?”

“
For whatever purpose they want. Dye your hair, change your name, frighten or abuse you into submission . . . they could kill you tomorrow or keep you as their servant for the rest of your natural life. Everyone else would be impacted by your supposed death, just as the tapestry is supposed to go . . .” He rolled through a stop sign and drove out of Seataw. Trees rose up high all around us, blocking my view of the sky save what little was visible over the road. “Rippers happen when the bitterness of having fallen gets the best of you. The anger and the pain of being cast out can do it. They take it out on the world. Do you see anything?”

“No.”

“Did they have any creatures with them?”

“Creatures?
Like what?”

“Lukos anemoi.
Wind wolves. Just call them anemoi. Those are the most common result of a splitter, like what happened to Kishi. It creates a small tear in the living fabric of the tapestry, when of its own accord, not angelic error, the world that is woven suddenly weaves itself into the wrong one. It breaks down barriers between what is real and what is not. I don’t know how to explain. The Thronos patch up those tears as fast as they can.”

Anxiously, I
said, “You guys don’t have wolves.”

“We don’t want to; they aren’t friendly creatures.
This isn’t where they are supposed to be. They’re drawn to wrongness, so they gravitate to Rippers.”

The speed limit
on this road was forty-five, but he was going much faster. “Adriel, what’s going to happen?”

“I’m taking you to the Kreelings in case we’re being followed.
They can hide you. And then I’ve got to call home and warn the others. Fallen angels can’t be killed, but they can be bound. If these ones give chase, we’ll have to go after them. But first you have to be out of the way.”

When we got to Sutter, h
e drove so fast around the curves that my stomach roiled. I stared steadily into the distance to quell it. This wasn’t the time to get carsick.

A streak of dark gray smoke shot throug
h the sky. Adriel and I saw it at the same moment. Yanking over into the next rest area as the smoke veered in our direction, he slammed on the brakes. The car spun in a half circle, with gravel flying everywhere and the brakes screaming. Then we were facing back the way we had come. Throwing open his door, Adriel said, “Get out!”

“What?”

“Get out!” he yelled. I got out of the car.

F
ire burst over the road. It was the same muddy blue and yellow of Japheem’s sword, crackling up to filthy tips and evanescing. I jumped back at the second streak of it, which hit the gravel and flared out into a wall reaching six feet high. Adriel grabbed my hand and we ran right for the edge of the cliff. A third fireball shot for the car. The last thing I wanted to do was jump off into the nothingness below, but I did as the car exploded.