this.
Mom bows her head and steps into the center of the circle. Everybody summons their wings. Stephen puts his hand on the snowy feathers at Mom’s shoulder.
“You have been a faithful servant and an inspiration to us all,” he says. “We give our love to you, Maggie.”
“Love to you,” murmurs the rest of the congregation, and we all close in, the other members of the inner circle each laying one hand on her wings and one hand on the person next to them, the rest doing the same to the person in front of them, back and back until we make a great web of angel-bloods with my mother at the center. The sun breaches the mountain, casting her in a pool of radiance, a combination of sun and glory that almost hurts my eyes to behold.
The meadow fills with an angelic hum, and then the hum becomes a word in Angelic, the word
I realize I’m crying, tears sliding down my face and off my chin and falling down into the grass at my feet. And I’m smiling. I have a sense that no matter what, no matter what darkness lies ahead, there is nothing that can overcome this power.
All it takes to punch a big old hole in that joy is seeing Mom struggle as we hike back to the car, Jeffrey, Billy, and I flanking her so we can catch her if she starts to fall. It’d be easier to fly, but we all have gear to carry, which is cumbersome, and Mom’s not safe to fly alone. She keeps saying she’s fine. She’s not. She’s sweating, and twice we have to stop to rest.
“What’s the point?” Jeffrey spits out when we’re stopped the second time.
“The point?”
“The point of the whole congregation. It’s not like they really do anything. It’s not like they could heal her.”
“Of course not,” I say, although the thought did cross my mind, what with all the light and power spilling everywhere and the fact that glory heals people, maybe somewhere deep down I’d hoped that Mom would be miraculously saved, at least strengthened for a few days or something.
But eventually that spectacular light faded into regular sunshine, and the congregation dropped their hands, and Mom went back to dying. “Don’t be a jerk, Jeffrey. The congregation cares about us, or weren’t you there when they all said they were coming to Mom’s funeral?”
“We’ll see,” he replies like he couldn’t care less. “We’ll see who actually shows up.”
“They do come.”
“Why, because you saw them in your dream?”
“Yes. I saw them.”
“And what if your dream doesn’t mean anything?” he asks with sudden bitterness. “What if it’s only a dream?”
“It’s a dream, yes, but it’s also a vision,” I say irritably. “Of course it means something.”
“You think it’s part of your purpose?”
I stare at him. I wish I knew the answer to that question.
“It’s the future,” I say.
Jeffrey’s eyes are a blaze of silver fire. “What if it’s not? What if it’s a practical joke somebody’s playing on you? Maybe we don’t even have a purpose, Clara. Just because someone told you that you were put on this earth to do something, to be something, doesn’t make it true.” I don’t know what’s gotten under his skin, but I do know that he’s questioning everything we’ve ever been taught, and it bothers me. “You don’t believe Mom?”
“Right, because she’s been so upfront with us so far.”
“Hey, what are you two arguing about over here?” Billy interrupts, jogging over to us from where she left Mom sitting at a picnic table at a campground under the trees. “Do I need to break this up?”
“Nothing,” says Jeffrey, turning away from her. “Are we ready to go yet? I have homework I have to do before tomorrow.”
“Yeah, we can go. I think she’ll make it the rest of the way,” Billy says, looking at me. I study the laces of my hiking boots. I wonder if Mom heard any of that. I wonder if what Jeffrey said hurt her, each bad thought, each doubt like a dart striking her. I swallow painfully.
“Everything okay?” Billy asks.
I lift my head and try to smile and nod. “Yeah. I’m good. I just want to go home.”
“Okay then, let’s go,” she says, but as Jeffrey moves away from us, she grabs my arm.
“Keep your chin up, okay?”
“I know.”
“Storm’s coming, kid,” she says, smiling in a way that reminds me of how she looks at my mother’s graveside. “I can feel it. Things are going to be rough. But we’ll make it.”
“Okay.”
“You believe me, right?”
“Right,” I answer, nodding.
Even though the truth is, not all of us are going to make it, and I don’t know what to believe.
