Angel Time (The Songs of the Seraphim 1)

I never close the balcony doors to my apartment and I walked out now onto the concrete terrace and looked down at the blue jacarandas.

I was breathing rapidly, my body carrying the weight of all this, but my mind felt wondrously clear.

When I turned around and looked at him, he was as vivid and solid as the jacarandas and their tumbling blue blossoms. He was standing in the doorway merely regarding me, and again there was that promise in his face, that promise of comprehending, and of love. I felt the urge to cry, to dissolve into a state of weakness, a state of being charmed.

"Why? Why have you come here forme?" I asked. "I know I asked you before, but you have to tell me, tell me completely, why me and not someone else? I don't know if you're real. I'm banking on it that you are now. But how can someone like me be redeemed?"

He came up to the concrete railing beside me. He looked down on the blue-blossomed trees. He whispered, "So perfect, so lovely."

"They're why I live here," I answered, "because every year when they come into bloom--." My voice broke. I turned my back on the trees because I would start crying if I kept looking at them. I looked into my living room and saw its three walls covered with books from floor to ceiling. I saw the bit of hallway visible to me with its bookcases stacked just as high.

"Redemption is something one has to ask for," he said in my ear. "You know that."

"I can't ask!" I said. "I can't."

"Why? Simply because you don't believe?"

"That's an excellent reason," I said.

"Give me a chance to make you believe."

"Then you have to begin by explaining, why me?"

"I've come for you because I've been sent," he said in an even voice, "and because of who you are and what you've done and what you can do. It's no random choice, coming for you. It's for you, and you alone, that I've come. Every decision made by Heaven is like that.It's particular. That's how vast Heaven is, and you know how vast is the earth, and you must think of it, for just a moment, as a place existing with all of its centuries, all of its epochs, all of its many times.

"There isn't a soul in the world whom Heaven doesn't regard in particular fashion. There isn't a sigh or a word that Heaven fails to hear."

I heard him. I knew what he meant. I looked down at the spectacle of the trees. I wondered what it was like for a tree to lose its blossoms to the wind, when its blossoms were all that it had. The peculiarity of the thought startled me. I shuddered. The urge to weep was almost overwhelming me. But I fought it. I made myself look at him again.

"I know your whole life," he said. "If you like I'll show it to you. In fact, it seems that's exactly what I'll have to do before you really trust in me. I don't mind. You have to understand. You can't decide if you don't."

"Decide what? What are you talking about?" "I'm talking about an assignment, I told you." He paused, then continued very kindly. "It's a way to use you and who you are. It's a way to use every detail of who you are. It's an assignment to save life instead of taking it, to answer prayers instead of cutting them off. It's a chance to do something that matters terribly to others while doing only good for yourself. That's what it's like to do good, you know. It's like working for The Right Man except that you believe in it with your whole heart and your whole soul, so much so that it becomes your will and your purpose with love."

"I have a soul, that's what you want me to believe?" I asked.

"Of course you do. You have an immortal soul. You know that. You're twenty-eight years old and that is very young by anyone's count, and you feel immortal, for all your dark thoughts and desires to end your life, but you don't grasp that the immortal part of you is the true part of you, and that all the rest in time will fall away."

"I know these things," I whispered. "I know them." I didn't mean to sound impatient. I was telling the truth and I was dazed.

I turned, only half realizing what I was about, and went into the living room of my small home. I looked again at the walls lined in books. I looked at the desk where I often read. I looked at the book open on the green blotter. Something obscure, something theological, and the irony of this struck me with full force.

"Oh, yes, you're well prepared," he said beside me. It was as if we'd never moved apart from each other at all.

"And I'm supposed to believe you're The Right Man now?" I asked.

He smiled at that. I saw that much out of the corner of my eye. "The Right Man," he repeated softly. "No. I'm not The Right Man. I'm Malchiah and I'm a Seraph, I told you, and I'm here to give you your choice. It's the answer to your prayer, Lucky, but if you can't accept that, let's say it is the answer to your wildest dreams."

"What dreams?"

"All these years you've always prayed The Right Man was Interpol. He was with the FBI. He was with the good men and everything he told you to do was for the good. That's what you've always dreamed."

"Doesn't matter, and you know it. I killed them. I made the whole thing into a game."

"I know you did, but that was still your dream. You come with me and there will be no doubts, Lucky. You will be on the side of the angels, with me."

We looked at each other. I was trembling. My voice wasn't steady:

"If that were only true," I said, "I would do anything, anything you ask of me, for you, and for God in Heaven. I would suffer anything you demand." He smiled, but very slowly as if he was looking deep inside me to find the reservation, and then perhaps he found that there was none. Perhaps I realized there was none.

I sank down into the leather chair beside the couch. He sat opposite me.

"I'm going to show you your life now," he said, "not because I need to do it, but because you need to see it. And only after you see it, will you believe in me."

I nodded. "If you can do that," I said miserably, "well, I'll believe in anything that you say."

"Prepare yourself," he said. "You'll hear my voice and see what I mean to describe, more vividly perhaps than you've ever seen anything, but the order and organization will be mine, and often more difficult for you to bear than a simple chronology. It's the soul of Toby O'Dare we're examining here, not merely a young man's history. And remember, no matter what you see and what you feel, I'm truly here with you. I'll never abandon you."

Chapter Four - Malchiah Reveals My Life to Me

WHEN ANGELS CHOOSE A HELPER, THEY DON'T ALWAYSstart at the beginning. In scanning a human being's life, they might begin with the warm present, then move a good third of the way in, and work towards the earliest beginning and back towards the moment at hand, as they collect the data of their emotional attachment and strengthen it. And don't ever believe anyone who tells you that we have no such emotional attachment.