COLM

Colm liked cooking.

There was a satisfaction in growing your own fruit and vegetables, that much was true, and there was a satisfaction, too, in catching your own fish or rearing your own animals. He’d kept chickens from time to time, but Jean-Pierre was fussy about the noise they made, and also got very upset once they were too old to lay – Colm liked the idea of keeping a goat, but they didn’t have the space to keep one in the comfort it deserved, not here.

He missed fishing.

He missed fishing in Kerry, under the heavy rain with the saltwater sloshing over deck, threatening to punch the netting out of his hands, but he missed fishing with a rod, too, or collecting mussels, walking along the coast with Heidemarie tucked in under his arm or held up against his hip, showing her the fish, the shells, as he picked them up.

He’d thought about that as he’d been gutting the fish earlier, bought whole from the fishmonger’s – Asmodeus would eat meat if it was put in front of him, but most meat made Jean-Pierre very ill, and fish, at least, he could manage from time to time – had kept thinking about how much he’d used to enjoy the work, hard work, long work…

But times were different, now, and fishing was different, too.

Cooking remained the same.

With the three salmon descaled and laid whole on the bed of vegetables and cut potato, he put the whole mix in the oven, and busied himself with throwing a salad together as he heard the motorcycle draw up outside. It surprised him – a motorcycle wasn’t really old Pádraic’s style, such a shy, quiet man as he was, no matter that he was such a giant.

He could still remember the first time he had met Pádraic, passing through a village in Kildare on their way to Dublin. There had been an outbreak of some awful flu, and this giant of a man had come from nowhere, picked his way through them travelling together and grabbed Colm by the shoulder.

“You,” he had said, in his heavy, deep voice, squeezing so tight that Colm had actually wheezed out a nose. “Your friends can have that barn to stay the night in. You, you will help me.”

But for Asmodeus, he’d never met another angel before. Asmodeus, to the touch, had felt cold and empty and so, so distant, like someone was touching him whilst standing a hundred thousand miles away from him, but touching Pádraic had been like experiencing home.

He’d felt like any human did, had a beating heart, feelings, but there was some deeper feeling, some shared connection, and Pádraic’s great hand on his shoulder had felt like a sliver of connection he’d forgotten he’d lost.

He’d fallen just a few years before the Black Plague had hit Ireland, Colm knew that – he’d been a monk at the time, had worked on the grounds of the abbey in the Boyne Valley, and had moved to the city when people began to get sick. Angels mostly didn’t get sick, after all, not like humans did, and he was immune to it – Pádraic Mac Giolla Chríost radiated a sense of quiet melancholy, and why shouldn’t he?

He didn’t talk much.

He didn’t talk at all, really, unless he really had to – Colm well-remembered the hours they’d spent alongside one another, where Pádraic would just point to the cool cloth or a particular poultice, or say quietly, “Water,” or “Blanket,” rather than a real sentence. After a while, he wouldn’t even need to say that.

Colm first felt the wave of engaged interest, a familiar one – he was used to people being attracted to him, used to feeling that electric thrum of excitement some people got when their eyes roamed down his body, took in his muscle—

Then, he felt disapproval from a more familiar source, and turned his head.

He looked between Bedelia, a lovely-looking girl with skin the colour of rosewood and freckles scattered on her cheeks, and the familiar figure of Pádraic, who was glowering in Colm’s direction. The family resemblance between Pádraic and Bedelia was a surprise – despite the fact that Pádraic was square and old and grim, where Bedelia seemed all but ready to radiate sunshine, beyond the colour of their skin and eyes, he could see the similarities in the shapes of their shoulders, their chins, their eyebrows.

Jean-Pierre was beaming, evidently delighted, and Colm did his best to ignore him, concentrating on Bedelia as he pulled off his oven gloves, holding them under one arm as he put out his hand to shake.

“You must be Pádraic’s daughter,” he said with a polite smile, not smiling as widely as he could, though what good it would do him when Pádraic had an expression like that on his face, he didn’t know. “I’m Colm. I’ve known your father for years.”

“Everybody has,” Bedelia said, undeterred, and shook his hand hard.

Colm looked to Asmodeus for help.

“Why don’t we sit down?” Asmodeus asked in his easy, rumbling voice, and pulled out the chair at the dining table facing away from the kitchen for Bedelia, probably so it would be difficult for her to watch Colm move back and forth without actually turning her head.

“Thanks for inviting us,” Bedelia said brightly, and sat at the end of the table instead.

Asmodeus’ smile widened, and Colm put his attention back to the salad he’d been making.

“You have wings too, don’t you?” Bedelia asked Jean-Pierre as he sat down beside Pádraic, and Jean beamed as he passed her the bread – bread which Jean-Pierre himself could only eat a little of at a time, although white bread was worse for him. “Did you used to find it difficult to find things you could eat?”

“Not particularly,” Jean said idly, one cheek pouching as he chewed slowly on a mouthful of bread that was more nut and grain than anything else, and Colm smiled to himself as he took up the salad bowl and put it on the table, letting Asmodeus begin serving it as he set the fish to rest. “I Fell to a wheat farm – we ate mostly vegetables, grains. We had a goat – the milk made me very sick, but we thought it was an allergy until later. Once Asmodeus found me, he gave me a, um, a pamphlet? With information about dietary needs.”

“A pamphlet? Did you have one of those, Daddy?”

Pádraic shook his head.

Colm watched Jean’s face, the confusion and slight frown twisting at his mouth when Pádraic didn’t say a word, and Asmodeus said softly, “They were Pádraic’s idea. When he Fell, monks took him in – he learned to read and write watching them copy out manuscripts. He started to do the same in the late sixteen-hundreds, I believe it was – pamphlets on wing-grooming, dietary requirements, common injuries and how to set them. They formed the basis for the literature the Embassy hands out even today.”

Jean beamed, and he reached out, touching Pádraic’s shoulder. “I should thank you, then,” he said brightly, and Pádraic, who had stiffened at the unexpected touch, hesitated, but then gave a small, tight smile.

“Was important,” Pádraic rumbled, and Asmodeus’ smile surprised Colm in his warmth.

Asmodeus was like this with every angel Colm had ever met – knowledgeable about them and their lives, fond, easy. It made sense, Colm supposed. Asmodeus knew every angel that had ever Fallen.

“Daddy says winged angels are fairly common,” Bedelia said, in the form of a leading statement, and as she said it, she looked between Jean-Pierre and Asmodeus.

“There are many different kinds of angels,” Jean-Pierre said quietly. “There are theories as to why – that the kind of power, or biology, an angel possesses when they Fall, is as a result of what, ah… What is the word? Asmodeus?”

“Garrison,” Asmodeus supplied between one mouthful of his salad and the next, and Jean nodded.

“Garrison,” he went on, “that they fell from. We were once all of one heavenly army, when we were each a part of the Host. There are discussions as to the spheres of the angels, or the precise separations, in different literature – theory is different between Catholics, Jews, Muslims… But none of us remembers the Host. No one recollects how once it was organised.”

Jean exhaled, picking a cherry tomato from his plate and feeling its weight between his thumb and forefinger. Colm looked at the expression of pensive consideration on his face, as he always did, when getting into the subject of angelic philosophy. “So people have posited that those of us who Fall with a pair of wings were once, ah, whatever would be called foot soldiers; some angels have two pairs, so they came from somewhere else. There are other biological differences in some angels, of course – peculiarities in the eyes, the bones, the other organs of the body; powers of transformation, elemental control, healing, empathy…”

“Not everyone believes it’s because of the rank we used to hold in the Host,” Colm said. Bedelia was listening intently, fascinated – Colm was aware of how many angels distrusted people like her, how isolated her and Pádraic probably were from the rest of the family, even if they were still in the Embassy’s record. She probably hadn’t learned much of this before, hadn’t heard this kind of thing explained – or, more often, argued – a thousand times over. “Some people think it’s from the way our souls combined with human aspects when we came over from the Host. It’s kind of hard to nail these things down.”

Bedelia looked between Colm, Jean, and her father, and then looked to her left.

“Can I ask a question?” Bedelia asked. “Asmodeus?”

Asmodeus’ lips curved into a small, slow smile. He didn’t flinch away, didn’t look nervous or concerned. He never did, when people wanted to ask him questions, even if he thought they’d be difficult – especially if he thought they’d be difficult. “Of course,” Asmodeus said. “Always.”

Asmodeus described in three words.

“There are angels described in the Bible,” Bedelia said. “Gabriel, Michael, Raphael – other angels, too. But they weren’t Fallen.”

“You don’t think Jean or Colm could answer?”

“Not like you could,” Bedelia said, and Colm could see the hesitation, the slight uncertainty in her face as she said it, as if she wasn’t sure if she should be scared. “You’re old enough to have— to have met those angels. Right?”

Asmodeus, pleased, gave a small nod of his head.  “I am. You are familiar with different timestreams between magical dimensions, aren’t you? You know if you step into some of the fae lands, for example, time passes much more quickly, or much more slowly – someone might spend sixty years in a fae kingdom, when on Earth, only months have passed; you have heard stories, I expect, of someone spending days with the fae, and when they go back over the boundary they crossed, decades have gone by. You might think of the Earthly movement of time, compared to the movement of time in the different fae dimensions, or the infernal ones, as like rings around a pole. They each turn, but at different speeds, sometimes in different directions.”

Bedelia gave a small nod of her head, her lips pressed together, her brow furrowed in thought. She made the expression the same way her father did, Colm thought – he’d seen that expression a thousand times, watching Pádraic combine ingredients under his pestle and mortar, or watching him sew closed a wound.

“The Host is different again. All of time occurs there at once, and simultaneously, no time passes whatsoever. It is a place both timeless and timeful. It is completely unlike that of Earth.”

“When I first Fell, I was disoriented,” Jean said softly, “because I remembered human events, but could not make sense of their order. It was difficult for me to digest, that events happened one after the other, and not all at once. I had only ever experienced linear time from the outside: to experience it as a participant was a large adjustment.”

“Many angels experience the same thing,” Asmodeus said. “No angel remembers what came before their Fall. It is an undeniable possibility that some of the angels named in such Biblical accounts had Fallen long before they could commit the actions they were named for. It is strange, you know – no one alive at that time could truly behold an angel. Angels were not contained in the way that humans are, that fae are, demons, even. They were pure energy – to look at one without some sort of lens or shade would be to not just burn out one’s eyes but to burn out one’s mind.

“You’re struggling now to comprehend a place, a dimension, where time does not pass. Imagine how it might feel to look upon a creature who is native to, and made up of, such a place. Much smaller things have sent people mad. Many of those who had looked upon or spoken to an angel could not entirely recollect, in the aftermath, precisely how their interaction occurred, or when, for how long. And no Fallen angel ever beheld a brother still a part of the Host.”

Bedelia looked down at her plate, her frown twisting her mouth. “So that’s— I don’t get it. When exactly did the Great Fall happen?”

“The Great Fall happened as one instance,” Asmodeus said. “But that event occurred in another dimension – the dimension from which angels come: the Host. Every angel Fell at once, but they Fell from that dimension to another, to Earth – Earth, where time is not a constant, but a linear stream. Thus, angels seem to Fall, from our perspective, one-by-one, time passing between each Fall and the next.

“Between two and four angels Fall per year, from our perspective – but really, every angel has already Fallen, and simultaneously, will not Fall for millennia.”

“This is hurting my head,” Bedelia said.

“Thinking about it has that effect,” Colm said, with a short laugh. “At the Celestial Museum in Harare they actually have diagrams, and you’d think they’d help, but honestly, it just makes it worse.”

“You’ve greeted every angel that’s Fallen?” Bedelia asked.

“Yes,” Asmodeus said. “Every single one, whether late or early.”

“And you delivered me.”

Asmodeus laughed, looking at Pádraic. “Is that the word you use for it? Delivered?” As he spoke, he gestured with his hands, and Colm vaguely recognised it as some form of sign language, because the movements were too precise to just be general gestures.

Pádraic laughed, and signed something back.

“He said he doesn’t know a better one,” Bedelia supplied, when Colm and Jean both looked confused.

“Yes,” Asmodeus said quietly. “I brought you home to Pádraic, after you Fell – I’ve done the same with some other angelic children.”

“So, you Fell first?”

“No,” Asmodeus said quietly. “There was one other angel, who Fell before I did – or, at the same time. Whichever way you want to look at it.”

Colm stared at Asmodeus, surprised, but Asmodeus didn’t look as though he was joking. He looked completely serious, but Colm had never heard him say that before, he didn’t think, and judging by Jean’s pouted lips and furrowed brow, he hadn’t, either.

He hadn’t asked, he didn’t think. That was the thing about Asmodeus – answers were usually forthcoming, but only after you asked.

“What happened to them? The other angel?”

Asmodeus sighed softly. “They died. I think perhaps it was to do with being the first angel to Fall – the first to break the barrier between Host and Earth, to be crammed into a corporeal body. The stress was too much.”

There was a pained regret in Asmodeus’ face, the way there almost always was, when thinking about an angel that had died. Death wasn’t common to angels – most of them could heal from any injury they sustained, and they rarely became sick. Angels that died usually made a choice to – it was a peaceful thing, as far as Colm had heard it told, angels dying on the same night their human spouses did, or growing old with human children they’d adopted. It wasn’t common, but it wasn’t unheard of. Colm wondered if he should feel guilty for not being among them.

“I’m sorry,” Bedelia said in a quiet voice.

“Me too,” Asmodeus murmured.

Colm wished he could reach out and really feel what he was feeling, wished he could skim whatever it was Asmodeus was thinking off the top of his thoughts, to know exactly what… But he couldn’t. He never could, could he?

“I’ll get the main course, shall I?” Colm asked, standing to his feet and moving back toward the kitchen.

 “Did he have a name?” Jean asked.

“Jean,” Colm said.

“I’m just asking,” Jean said. “Some of the angels have names when they Fall, they remember their names. The first angel, the one that died, did they have a name?”

“Yes,” Asmodeus said.

“Did you?” Bedelia asked.

“I have a name,” Asmodeus said softly.

“Asmodeus is a demon’s name. Not an angel’s.”

“It’s my name,” Asmodeus corrected her in little more than a whisper, with an uncharacteristic gravity. He always got like this, when people asked him about his name. “No one else’s.”

Pádraic signed something across the table, his expression stern, and a quick conversation Colm couldn’t follow passed between him and Bedelia, before Bedelia spread her hands, and then looked at Asmodeus, rubbing her hand in a circle on her chest.

“You needn’t be sorry,” Asmodeus said. “Angels can always ask me questions: I cannot promise I’ll always answer them.”

“You never lie?” Bedelia asked.

“Not to you,” Asmodeus said. “Not to angels.”

“Do you remember?” Bedelia asked. “Before the Fall?”

“Yes.”

“What was it like?”

“It’s over,” Asmodeus said softly. “It doesn’t matter what came before. Thank you, Colm,” he said as Colm put some fish on his plate, and they each put themselves to their meals.

*     *     *

JEAN-PIERRE

After dinner, disappointed with the fact that Bedelia in general had seemed more interested in asking questions about angelic history and philosophy than in attempting to flirt with Colm, Jean-Pierre had rather given up on encouraging the latter. Now, where Pádraic and Colm sat in their own armchairs, and Bedelia sat on the other sofa, Jean-Pierre sprawled over Colm’s lap, his head mashed against a cushion.

He felt very tired, having eaten as much as he had, and Colm was drawing idle circles on the back of his neck, making him droop even further down against the cushions. He listened to the conversation over his head, but – much like Pádraic, who it turned out was virtually mute, unless really leaned on – he didn’t much participate.

“Soon?” Colm was asking.

“Quite soon,” Asmodeus said quietly.

“Do you know what sort of angel they’ll be?” Bedelia asked.

“A winged angel,” Asmodeus said.

“And after they Fall, you’ll move on?”

“That’s right,” Asmodeus said. “I’ll come home at Christmas-time, and I do take breaks. I do assist other angels with one project or other, as I move one way and that.”

“And you?”

“Me?” Colm asked.

“What do you do? Jean-Pierre is going to university – will you?”

“No,” Colm said, curling his fingers through Jean-Pierre’s hair. “I’ll volunteer in the community. And Jean and I have our own work to do, as needed.”

“Your own work?” Bedelia repeated.

“We’re soldiers,” Jean-Pierre supplied idly. “Sometimes, our services are asked for.”

“Soldiers?” Bedelia asked. “Like— mercenaries? What about your Hippocratic oath?”

“We don’t usually kill people,” Jean-Pierre lied pleasantly. “And in the case that we do, it is not unlike cutting out a cancer.”

Bedelia twisted her mouth, glancing between Pádraic, whose expression was unreadable, and Colm and Jean. Shifting in her seat, smoothing out the floral surface of her dress, she said, “Other angels… approve of that?”

“Some,” Jean-Pierre said softly. “Angels do not share a uniform agreement of one thing and another. But you do not really care if angels dislike that I carry a carabine – you care that other angels might hate you.”

Bedelia pressed her lips together, looking wounded, and Colm slapped Jean-Pierre upside the head. Frowning, Jean-Pierre sat up, giving his brother a glare, and he watched as Pádraic signed something to his daughter, watched the conversation pass between them. He had a few words of ASL, but it seemed quite separate to the Irish sign language, and he couldn’t follow it, although Asmodeus could, he thought.

Pádraic was uncomfortable speaking aloud – he didn’t seem so hesitant, speaking with his hands.

“Other angels are uncertain of the likes of yourself,” Asmodeus broke in, as Bedelia’s signing got more frantic, “because they believe you to be Nephilim. You are not. You are an adult, now – you could walk amidst angels and no one would ever know you were a babe in arms when first you Fell.”

“Growing up,” Jean-Pierre said, “experiencing a childhood, a maturity – you have a privilege most angels never had. Much of their hostility toward you is jealousy, and nothing more.”

“Are you jealous?” Bedelia asked.

“Oh, yes,” Jean-Pierre said softly. “Desperately. But even if I Fell as you did, who is to say I would have had a father so devoted, and so loving?”

To Jean-Pierre’s delighted surprise, Pádraic’s dark cheeks darkened further, and he bowed his head slightly, plainly bashful at such praise upon his parenting abilities, and Bedelia smiled slightly.

This statement had the added benefit of making Colm’s expression freeze, and although it was catty of him, Jean-Pierre enjoyed very much the momentary way his brother looked at him, his lip curling just slightly, before he softened once more and looked to Bedelia and Pádraic.

“You can always come over to us,” Colm said. “If you want to learn more about angels – if you want to ask questions, or just watch television. You’ve grown up apart from other angels before now, but we’re open to you.”

“And you must teach us some of the Irish sign language,” Jean-Pierre said. “You learned it as a nurse?” He looked to Pádraic as he asked the question, and Pádraic shook his head. Jean-Pierre saw his lips move, twisting slightly, and said quickly, “You needn’t speak, if you do not wish to. If Asmodeus or Bedelia do not mind, you might sign, and they could interpret.”

Pádraic huffed out a low, pleased sound, smiling in his strange, square way, and he signed very fluidly, fluently. He had strong, handsome hands.

“He learned it when he nursed in a convalescent home in the late 1800s,” Asmodeus said softly. “It was developed by Deaf Irish, but it feels natural to him in a way speaking never did. It is not uncomfortable, as speaking is. His hands make a better voice than his tongue. Now that he works with many children who rely on sign language, his fluency is an additional benefit.”

“He taught me sign language when I was a baby,” Bedelia said softly. “But now I use it every day. I’m very grateful.”

Pádraic signed something, standing to his feet.

“He says it’s time to go,” Bedelia murmured, and then added, in a conspiratorial tone, “He doesn’t like to be complimented.”

“Please,” Pádraic said hoarsely, and Bedelia laughed, standing to her feet.

“You must visit us again,” Jean-Pierre said, standing on top of the sofa to reach to kiss Pádraic’s cheeks, making the old man laugh. “I want to compare wing spans.”

Pádraic signed something, and Asmodeus said, “Mine are bigger.”

“I suspect almost everything of yours is bigger,” Jean-Pierre said.

One more sign, and a sardonically raised eyebrow. “Almost?” Asmodeus said.

Jean-Pierre giggled, and leaned back to let Colm shake Pádraic’s hand.

Outside, Bedelia’s motorcycle rumbled back to life.