“You will enter a much larger family. You will be as one with all the creatures of this world and beyond it.”
Alice sank back on her pillows, looking satisfied but tired. Her eyelids fluttered.
“You should try to sleep now,” I said.
I closed my fingers around her frail hand, and Phantom laid his head against her arm. Together we watched over her until she slept.
On the drive home I was still thinking about Alice and what she’d said. Watching death from above was sad, but actually experiencing it on earth was heart wrenching. It was an intense pain for which there could be no remedy. I felt a sharp stab of guilt for letting myself become so fixated by my love for Xavier that I’d shirked my other responsibilities. Heaven had approved our relationship, for the time being, at least, and I must not allow it to be all consuming. At the same time, I wanted nothing more than to find him and breathe in his comforting scent. No other person I knew could make me feel so alive.
News reached us the next morning that Alice had passed away in her sleep. It didn’t come as a surprise to me. I’d woken in the night to the sound of rain lashing at my window and when I’d slipped out of bed to close the curtains, Alice’s spirit had been hovering outside. She was smiling and seemed utterly at peace. Alice had lived a full and enriching life and was ready to move on. The loss would be felt most by her family, who hadn’t made the best of the time they’d shared together. They didn’t know it yet, but one day they would be given a second chance.
I felt her spirit as it passed out of this world, buzzing with nervous anticipation. She was no longer afraid, only excited to see what lay beyond. I reached out to her in my mind in a final gesture of farewell.
24
Only Human
The day of Alice’s funeral was overcast. The sky was pewter, and the ground was damp from the light drizzle that had fallen overnight. There were only a handful of mourners, including staff members from Fairhaven and Father Mel who performed the service. Her gravesite was on a grassy knoll under an acorn tree, and I thought how she would have chuckled that her final resting place had a view.
Alice’s passing stirred something in me. It brought my attention back to the purpose of our mission, and I decided to up my hours of community service. It was a very small gesture in the grand scheme of things, and I felt almost silly suggesting it, seeing as our purpose was to save the earth from the fallen and their forces of darkness. But it made me feel more like I was contributing to our cause and focusing on what was important. Often Xavier came with me. His family had been doing volunteer work for the church for years, so it was nothing new to him.
“You don’t always have to come,” I said to him one night as we waited for the train that would take us down to the soup kitchens in Port Circe.
“I know,” he said. “But I want to come. I’ve been brought up to believe community’s important.”
“But you have so much more on your plate than I do. I don’t want to add pressure.”
“Quit worrying. I know how to manage my time.”
“Don’t you have a French oral tomorrow?”
“No,
I’d gradually become more comfortable with trains, and riding with Xavier certainly helped. We found seats on a car that was empty, save for a wizened old man who was nodding off and drooling onto his shirt. There was a bottle in a brown paper bag between his feet.
We opened the textbook and had only been reading a few minutes when Xavier looked up. “Heaven must be pretty big,” he said. He spoke softly, so I didn’t tell him off for bringing up the subject in public. “How much space would you need to fit all those souls? I guess it’s just the concept of infinity that throws me.”
“Actually there are seven realms of heaven,” I said suddenly, wanting to share my knowledge with Xavier even though I knew it was against our laws.
Xavier sighed and flopped back in his seat.
“Just when I thought I was getting my head around it. How can there be seven?”
“There’s only a throne in the First Heaven,” I said. “And angels that preach the word of the Lord. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit dwell in the Seventh Heaven — which is the ultimate realm.”
“But what’s the point?”
“Different realms have different functions. It’s like working your way up to meet the CEO of a company.”
Xavier massaged his temples.
“I’ve got a lot to learn, don’t I?”
“There are just lots of rules to remember,” I said. “The Second Heaven is the same distance as the First Heaven to earth, the angels on the right are always more glorious than the ones on the left; entry to the Sixth Heaven is quite complicated, and you have to travel into the air outside Heaven’s door, and I know that seems confusing but you’ll know which is which because the lower heavens are dark compared to the brilliance of the Seventh. ..”
“Stop,” Xavier said. “Stop before my brain explodes.”
“Sorry,” I said sheepishly. “I guess it is a lot to take in.”
Xavier grinned at me. “Try to remember that I’m only human.”
Xavier invited me to watch his team play in the end-of-season rugby game. I knew it was important to him, so I arranged to go with Molly and her friends, who usually acted as the Bryce Hamilton cheer squad at games. What they called school spirit was really more of a thin excuse to watch boys in shorts run around a field and work up a sweat. The girls always made sure they had a supply of cool drinks to pass around during breaks, in the hope of being rewarded with a compliment or, better yet, a date.
It was a home game, so I made my way down to the field with Molly and the girls. The rugby team was already there when we arrived, warming up in their black-and-red-striped jerseys. The opposition, Middleton Preparatory School, stood at the other end of the field in green and yellow. They were listening intently to their beet-faced coach, who looked on the verge of an aneurism. Xavier waved for a second when he saw me, then resumed the warm-up. Before the game began the Bryce Hamilton team huddled together and chanted some motivational mantra about the
“Typical,” Molly muttered. “Nothing like sports to drag some emotion out of them.”
As soon as the game began, I realized that I would never be a fan of rugby. It was too aggressive. The sport mainly consisted of players smashing into one another in an attempt to wrestle the ball from the opposition’s grasp. I watched one of Xavier’s teammates charge up the field, the ball securely lodged under his arm. He dodged two of the Middleton players, who pursued him ruthlessly. When he was a few yards away from the goal, he threw himself forward into the air and landed sprawled on the ground, his arms stretched over his head. His hands, clasping the ball, lay just over the line. One of the players from Middleton, who had attempted a tackle in the hope of blocking the goal, landed on top of him. The Bryce Hamilton team broke into whoops and cheers, helping their player up and thumping him on the back as he staggered back to the center of the field.
I was shielding my eyes to avoid witnessing two players collide when Molly nudged me. “Who’s that guy?” she said, pointing to a figure standing on the other side of the field. It was a young man in a long leather jacket. His identity was concealed by a fedora and a long scarf he’d wound around the lower half of his face.
“I’m not sure,” I replied. “A parent maybe?”
“Pretty weird-looking parent,” Molly said. “Why is he standing there by himself?”
We quickly forgot about the stranger and reverted to watching the game. I grew steadily more nervous as it progressed. The Middleton boys were merciless and most of them looked like tanks. I felt my heart rate increase and my breathing become more rapid whenever any of them went near Xavier. Given the nature of the game, this happened quite often and Xavier wasn’t one to stick to the perimeter. He wanted to be in the thick of things and
