Fury

that again!’

‘Mercy,’ Uriel says warningly, and my anger dissolves into a tight feeling inside me, like unshed tears. I back away from both of them, crossing my arms tightly against my chest to protect myself from any more hurt.

Uriel walks over to Ryan and they eye each other warily, of a similar height and build, their body language indicating each is unprepared to be cowed by the other.

‘I’m Uriel,’ he says, putting out one hand awkwardly, in the human way, to be shaken.

‘You’ve never met before,’ I interject acidly, ‘but he’s been inside your house, Ryan. He has a habit of just turning up and giving people orders. Like how he wants us to go our separate ways, from here, now, today.’

‘In my house?’ Ryan looks down at Uri’s hand almost in horror, as if it might turn into a snake and bite him. He makes no move to take it.

‘Penalty time is over, Ryan,’ I say, trying to keep my voice light, though I’m gripped by that aching grief. ‘Because Uriel says so. I never did tell you, did I, about how much we resemble each other? About how, like you, I’m curiously twinned. Uriel tries to deny it, but our resemblance is proof to me that God exists, and has a sense of humour.’

Uriel glares at me, unamused, and lets his hand fall back down to his side. ‘Say what you have to say to each other,’ he snaps, ‘then get out of the way and let the real work begin.’

Ryan crosses his arms belligerently. ‘What happened to the right to choose?’ he snarls. ‘It’s not something reserved for you high and mighty elohim. I don’t choose to leave, and neither does Mercy. Not yet, not now, not when the world is literally going to hell. She can still do good down here. She can help you in ways you can’t begin to imagine. She can help you get Luc —’

Uriel moves so quickly, bunching one of his fists into the front of Ryan’s jacket and hauling him close, that Ryan turns pale with shock. The breath freezes in his throat at something dangerous he sees in Uri’s face, only inches from his, but he keeps speaking anyway. ‘The only beings that can contain Luc are you Eight and Mercy. She can still play a part. She’s already killed some of them, you know, some of Luc’s people.’

Uriel’s eyes snap to mine, though he doesn’t relax his grip on Ryan. ‘How many? What order?’ he barks.

‘Ananel, Remiel, Neqael and Turael,’ I say, seeing recognition and then astonishment in his gaze. ‘All first order. All once elohim, as you well know. Turns out I’m a natural at this killing thing.’ My voice dies away.

Uriel’s eyes flick back to Ryan’s as Ryan adds quietly, ‘And I’m still useful. Look at you, look at her, then look at me, and tell me you don’t need the kind of help I can give you …’

Uriel looks down at himself sharply, then across at me, and I think I get it a second before he does. Ryan is soaking wet; he looks like he fell in the Pacific Ocean on his way over. But Uriel and I are both bone dry. There’s not a mark on us. Before the rain can even touch our hair, our skin, our fake human gear, it burns off, vanishing completely.

Uriel suddenly releases Ryan’s jacket front, and Ryan rocks back on his heels in obvious relief.

That’s when I hear the children.

They come out of the stone archway by the church and head for Uriel, chanting, ‘Ayar Awqa! Ayar Awqa!’

There are six of them in all, four girls and two boys, wearing colourful coats and knitted jackets and hats, their pretty skirts and patched trousers festooned with hand-embroidered flowers, leaves and animals. They crowd around Uriel, still chanting, and he looks down at them as if he has woken from a dream. He actually smiles; a smile of such radiant beauty that the children seem to sigh and smile back as one.

They lead him back towards the archway, out of the rain, holding onto his hands, onto the hem of his navy sweater with its incongruous preppy logo. He goes with them without a word.

Ryan and I look at each other in confusion. Then he fetches our backpack from where it was torn off during our rough landing and hoists it up by its broken straps. I hook one of my arms through his and we turn and follow the children.

‘Why do they keep saying that?’ he asks under his breath as we draw beneath the archway where the children are clustered around Uriel, still chanting, ‘Ayar Awqa! Ayar Awqa!’

‘It’s a name,’ Uriel says, looking away from the adoring faces of the children for a second. ‘In Quechua, the local language. They believe that Ayar Awqa was a winged man who flew down from the sky and transformed into a foundation stone of this place, Qosqo, Cusco.’

The oldest child, a girl of probably no more than seven, picks up a small basket filled with knitted finger puppets from where it was tucked against the archway, out of the rain. She takes Uriel by the hand and indicates he should follow her. The remaining children crowd around us shyly, taking our hands, tugging at the hems of our jackets, calling me ‘Sister of Ayar Awqa’ and calling Ryan ‘Maki Sapa’.

The name makes me laugh out loud, and Ryan says curiously, ‘What’s so funny?’

I exchange conspiratorial looks with the bright-eyed, dusky-skinned children and try to keep my face straight as I reply, ‘Oh, they’re calling you Monkey Features — I think your grooming could use a little work.’

Ryan’s mouth falls open in surprise, then he screws up his face and lets his arms dangle down. He starts chasing the smaller children up and down the arcade, making monkey noises.

Uriel and I and the older girl look on, smiling. But then she claps her hands together, and we all stride out into the rain.

It beats down as if it will never stop. But the children pull us eagerly by the hands through the deserted streets, pointing out things they think we’d like to see, like special stones and good places to eat. The further we go past rain-soaked squares and quiet barrios, past glistening stone churches and the narrow, chaotic workshops of local craftspeople, the poorer and more crowded the neighbourhoods become. Finally, we reach a two-storey shophouse, where the baskets of local wares have been shoved in deep under the dripping awnings to keep their contents dry.

There’s no one inside the store, which smells of wool and tobacco and spices, soap and incense, bodies, dust and earth. The children take us up a narrow set of stairs at the back to an apartment with its front door thrown open. Beside me, Ryan’s breathing heavily and his face is streaming with sweat. With so many of us here, the tiny place — three, maybe four rooms in all — feels unbelievably crowded.

Ryan suddenly sags over at the waist, dropping the broken backpack on the floor at his feet. He stands there bent over and shivering, wheezing and wet through, his head hanging down, his elbows braced above his knees, oblivious to everything around him. I put a soothing hand on his back, but he doesn’t respond, almost gagging for air.

Uriel and I exchange glances. Then, together, we take in the people in the room the same way they’re studying us.

There are a couple of elderly women seated on a low, sagging velvet settee beside a radio that’s prattling loudly in Spanish. They wear the same colourfully embroidered skirts and short woollen jackets as the little girls do, and have skin like gleaming mahogany and grey hair wound into long, tight plaits. Their seamed fingers fly as they work at intricate pieces of knitting, their black eyes never leaving us.

Two men sit across the room either side of a round, wooden table, small glasses of a cloudy green liquid in front of them, a deck of cards laid out between them. By the similarity of their looks and the degree of grey in the older man’s hair, I guess they must be father and son.

I get a glimpse of a woman — maybe the younger man’s wife — momentarily framed in the doorway to what must be a kitchen, her eyes wide with surprise, before she moves out of sight, her long, full, red skirt, bordered in gold, twitching out of view.

Nobody speaks, until Uriel says quietly and politely in Quechua, ‘We are honoured to be among you.’

Then, suddenly, all the children are talking at once in their high, clear voices.

‘They fell from the sky!’

‘Upon the Plaza de Armas!’

‘Like Ayar Awqa!’

‘The woman is his sister!’

‘The sister of Ayar Awqa!’