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I hold myself tall, ignoring the aches and pains, the sweat on my brow. I don’t turn away from the lights growing brighter here in the church. The crowd around me begins to back up again, trying to get some distance from the air that starts to swirl around the five angels. Cal still has his head bowed, and he’s moving his lips. The archangels upturn their heads and close their eyes. “O, Lord,” the archangels say as one, “hear our prayer.”
Everything explodes in vibrant color, as if the church is in a kaleidoscope. Many fall to their knees in veneration. There
are tears on almost everyone’s faces, but they’re ones of joy, of rapture. They are witnessing a miracle, here, in our little town, and they cannot look away.
And here, at the end, I show you the humanizing of the guardian angel Calliel.
The roaring wind gets louder, the lights almost impossible to look at given their brightness. Cal drops his hands to his sides and his head falls back. When his eyes open, they’re glowing white, as if he’s alight from within. His wings extend completely and he rises from the ground, his toes dragging against the carpet and then lifting off completely. He continues to rise until he’s level with the stained-glass image of St. Jude Novena. His halo spins impossibly fast. His body is arched so far back it looks painful. His hands and feet fan out, each digit straining.
And then a soft light comes from St. Jude Novena, as if the window itself is emitting the glow. The colors of the stained glass refract and pour out onto Cal as he starts to spasm. The wind whips through my hair as I take a step forward toward the archangels, my eyes never leaving Calliel above me. Someone tries to stop me, tries to pull me back by my hand, but I shake loose and continue forward.
It starts with his wings.
The tips of his wings begin to fall away, like they’re crumbling and turning to a bright azure dust, pulled into the storm that rages inside the church. Cal’s mouth falls open in a silent scream as his wings dissolve further. His halo begins to expand, growing larger and larger until it’s wider around than he is. For a moment, I think the center of the halo will go black, and he’ll be sucked into the black for choosing this world over his Father. I think this whole thing has been God’s great joke upon us, one last punch in the gut before he sends my whole world crashing down.
But it doesn’t happen. Cal’s wings have dissolved completely, and blue light fills the church as the crumbled feathers are sucked up with the wind, catching a downdraft and falling toward me. I close my eyes as the dust hits my face and rolls down my body. All the pain in my body is soothed, and I feel him there, in me, in my head and heart. I feel the connection with his mind. He’s scared now, scared of what’s happening, scared he won’t be able to keep me happy. He has doubts, and they’re such a human thing that my breath catches in my throat. But the one thing he does not doubt is me. The one thing he does not regret is becoming human.
Even as I heal and feel him within me completely, I press back toward him and the dust rises again, caught in an updraft, flying up toward him. It travels around his body, wrapping around him front and back, rising up until it passes over his head. He spasms again as it leaves him, clenching his hands to fists at his sides, snapping his head back and forth. I cry out, but he doesn’t seem to hear me. What remains of his feathers spins above his head and shoots through the halo. Nothing appears out the other side. Once the blue dust is gone, the halo shrinks back in on itself, collapsing until it falls into nothing. The light of St. Jude Novena fades away. Cal is lowered from the ceiling, the winds beginning to die as he descends. Weak blue light circles him, and all I can think of is how he first came to me, a flash of fire falling from the sky.
His body relaxes as he floats toward the ground, spinning until he’s facedown. He lands on the floor on his knees in the middle of the archangels, and they sigh as one and step back. The wind is gone. The lights are gone. His wings are gone. His eyes are closed, and he takes short, shallow breaths, the only sound in the quiet church. He collapses on his hands, his head bent toward the floor of the church. He twists over and lies down on his back.
I take a hesitant step forward. “Cal?” I whisper. I reach him and drop to my knees, my hands shaking as I reach out to touch him. I let my fingers trail over his face. “Cal?”
He opens his eyes. “Benji,” he says, his dark eyes filling with wonder. “I feel… different.”
I worry. “Different good or different bad?”
“Different different.”
“Do you hurt?”
“No.”
“Are you sick?”
“No.”
“Then what’s wrong?”
“My heart,” he says, reaching up to touch my cheek. I nuzzle into the palm of his hand. “It’s never been like this. I never thought it could be like this. It aches, but it’s so good. It’s better than anything.”
I understand, I think. He’s not sick. He’s not in pain. He’s not wounded. His heart aches because he’s human. It aches because it’s full. “You’re home,” I tell him gently, leaning down to kiss him once. He wraps his arms around me and holds me down against him, my face in his neck.
“You still hurt?” he asks me hoarsely.
“No. Your feathers. They… helped me too.”
“I asked him for that.”
“Asked who?”
“My Father. Benji, I saw my Father. I spoke with him. I walked with him.”
Michael crouches down on his knees, staring down at us, a quizzical look on his face. “Father spoke to you?” he asks carefully. The other archangels look just as interested.
“Yes,” Cal said.
“What did he say?”
