comin' down the world turned over

and angels fall without you there

and i go on as you get colder

or are you someone's prayer

googoo dolls

Kingdom Come

In the Beginning there was the Word.

I always believed that. Always, in my mind's eye, I envisioned Nothing exploding into Everything-- Godhead speaking the Big Bang, till a universe unfolded from itself, galaxies like poured milk, and hot sweet stars. The power of fiat. Let it be so-- and it was so.

I have been told that I should have been a poet rather than a priest, seeking words as a beggar seeks the leavings of the Master's table. But I really never asked for anything more than my own small voice to breathe feeble echoes of the Word, to plant the seeds of tiny epiphanies in any listening mind. I loved Pentecost, although perhaps, with my Irish hair, I look foolish in red. But, ah, those tongues of fire flaming down... Not the evangelism, no, but the language-- the Holy Spirit beating its unearthly wings over thirsty human mouths and filling them with the speech of a hundred tongues.

Surely that was magic; that was the surest sort of miracle.

I'd gone to seminary to learn how to give that kind of fluttering fragile hope that could blossom into belief. Educated in India, with my Italian a fair bit better than my Gaelic, I know I was uncommon for a Northlander priest. But one didn't use Latin in the field much these days. My colleagues belittled my faith, saying I'd gotten distracted by the literature along the way. Accusing me of worshipping Milton, not his God. (Secretly I hated Milton. And Dante too, for that matter. I only envied them their poetry, their sure-handed pretention, and oh, their words--)

I watched the crackle of my rather pathetic fire, mind treading the familiar paths of my teaching, the cadence of all the words kept close to my heart. The rise and fall of my thought, from Scripture to Gregory to Shakespeare to Rushdie and back again, was losing some of its comforting savor in the growing uneasy pulse of the night, though. ~You'd better fall asleep before the fire dies,~ my subconscious prompted. I'm afraid ignored it.

I believed in the Word, trusting it when my own thin words failed. Which was often.

Or was I only thinking so hard about words, to try to fill the uncomfortable silence?

In the Beginning there was the Word.

In the Beginning--

I shoved my hands further into my pockets. Maybe it were better just to go to bed. Too much of thinking. St. Peter but I missed my little church back home, the vestry building cheery and warm, with red thick-piled carpet and walls of bookshelves.

They had warned me not to spend a night on the Island, especially not alone. Local superstition, it seemed to me, taboo for a stranger to dwell a night amidst the Islanders. The idea was slightly unpleasant, the way the midwife said it: spending a night unrooted on the sea-- unlucky. Unluckier even than lonely sailor nights, on the brine fishing under the stars, because any fisherman can tell you that a boat has its own fortune, good or ill.

But there had been a birth, a troubled one, and I could hardly say nay to the wild-eyed young father at my door. A newborn unnamed through a lengthening autumn night was an unlucky thing in itself, especially in these northern parts. So lucky me, good Father MacArdry and unable to say no, found myself baptizing a squalling girlbaby, with an October-touched wind worrying at my hair, and that infernal cassock. But my supplication seemed only half-heard, as I lifted pale hands splayed against the sky, as if to hold off the oncoming time.

By the time both mother and baby were sleeping sound and healthy, it was full sunset. No boatsman would take me back to the mainland. There were no inns on the Island; there were seldom visitors who stayed more than a trading-day.

As the midwife seemed to delight in reminding me.

"You're really going to stay?"

I raised a silvering eyebrow at her, wondering if I really looked so young and incredulous as she took me for. "Am I not welcome?"

"It's not that, forgive me. But... Don't spend a night on this Island, Father, not alone."

I shrugged easily, smiled with my eyes. "I'm not alone, thank you. Our Lord protects us wherever we go."

She looked skeptical. "There's a little church, then, Father, if you're intent to stay." Her eyes turned shy. "The husband and I don't have much, but you're welcome to breakfast with me in the morning."

I was honored, and he said so. Island generosity was not a thing to be received lightly.

It seemed rather feeble, though, watching the oncoming night through the slender windows of an unused church. The thirsty sky drank color from the landscape, till the fire and luster of the autumn trees was swallowed into brown-grey shifting shadows, and the cloud-laden sky was terribly vivid.

Unfriendly.

The slim path that led from the church door to the town was mottled in moving shadow, fallen leaves skittering across the path like things possessed. Dim strange fruit hung heavy in the trees, just above my line of vision, trembling in the stillness. The world was welcoming the darkness, and I had to shiver at the muted violence of the colorless landscape.

Something about the twitching scenery gave me the impression I was being watched, so I quickly put out the candles in the musty church and found the door to the adjoining vestry building.

Equally inhospitable, and with wider windows, letting in great sweeping draughts of cold outside air. And a view of the moon--

The moon looked like an eye, gold and swollen, opening on the cloud-heavy horizon. Opening just because I had stepped into the room and was looking on it, and likely to wink closed if I dared to look away. Night falling, with the island unsleeping beneath me... Walls thinning to nothing, just myself, unmoored, as if I were drifting endlessly toward the rising of the moon, more east than east--

I scrambled to make a fire in the small fireplace, something to warm my chilled fingers, a brightness to stave off the closing shadows.

Or perhaps an anchor, some centerpoint to reorient myself.

The midwife had been right; there was a bundle of blankets in the vestry cupboard, something of warmth to create an impromptu bed.

About then I realized I was fumbling in the dark, trying to wrestle a wool coverlet from the press by the flickering light of the fire across the room.

Hadn't I lit a candle?

Ah, it was out, smoking dimly in its sconce. I sighed. Easy enough for a candle to blow out, on a sweet chill windy October night.

~Finite,~ I found myself thinking as I touched a lit match to the candlewick, proud of how my hands did not shake. ~The night is finite.~ But then I chided myself for a fool, wondering why it should matter.

And so there I sat, thinking over and over again, ~In the Beginning there was the Word,~ but I never could get any further than that.

I curled myself small under the blankets, feeling younger than I had for a very long time. Younger in the sense that the world seemed a baffling place, full of unsteady shadows, lit only by one guttering fire, on the hospitality of one taciturn midwife.

~Fall asleep before the fire dies,~ my mind was telling me in no uncertain terms. I sought to argue with it, rather than listen. ~Morbid tonight, aren't you, MacArdry? Is that any way to think, after a girlbaby was born so well this evening? "The fire dies?" What kind of word is that?~ The feeble flame jumped, making the shadows scatter and dance. I jumped, too, stubbornly resisting the urge to pull the blanket up to my eyebrows and whisper Hail Marys to the wool against my face. ~Why not say, fall asleep before the fire--~

The fire died.

And the organ in the church adjoining began to play.

I was standing, rough covers in a sprawl at my stockinged feet, before the third chord could sound. I dragged a hand through my hair, started rummaging in the dark for my shoes. Nervous laughter sat uncomfortably, somewhere beneath my heart.

Like when the organist changed keys, and the descanting series of minor chords keened into the island night.

"Island full of lunatics." I didn't fully realize I was talking aloud. "It's not even a full moon. Who on earth would play the organ at a time like--"

I couldn't quite bring myself to say it though, through a wobbly laugh; couldn't quite say what was so unsettling about a midnight organist, here in the Hinterlands and on a forgotten autumn night. I shrugged into my coat, snugging the collar close about my neck. Ridiculous. I was getting myself all frightened, and for no good reason. I would just walk through the door, ask whoever it was to kindly keep the noise down, would he, some folk were trying to sleep, and creep back into my makeshift bed.

Right.

The doorknob was ice cold, but I wrapped his fingers valiantly around it and shoved open the adjoining church door. I steadfastly ignored my heartbeat as the doorhinges squealed, took three steps into the church. It was hard to see through the murky dark, the light from my candle reflecting dimly from the polished pews, the musty metal torch-sconces. The vacant organ bench.

Oh, come now.

There was someone in the church. Wasn't there?

"Good evening." My voice sounded inane. The quiet was so intense that I felt silly asking the church to keep the noise down. My own shoes barely made whisper-scratches against the quarried marble of the floor. Somewhere inside, the nervous laughter shifted and became almost a word. "Hello?" That wasn't it-- the pressure against my chest was making me light-headed, almost as if I were supposed to be speaking something. Something other than the Queen's English, certainly.

I muffled a completely inappropriate chuckle. Floating on a tiny island in the Northlands, how had I forgotten? Of course I wasn't supposed to speak English. ~Christ preserve me.~ I lifted the candle a fraction higher. ~My Gaelic isn't what it used to be.~

"Hello," I tried again, mustering the best simple Gaelic I could. "Gey cold night to be sitting in a church--"

"Where better to sit?" So matter-of-factly the voice spoke, a quiet eruption in the perfect stillness of the building, that I forgot to be startled. A slow shiver walked up my spine. There was bitterness in the words, buried under a weight of--

I'd been a priest for years, and couldn't quite name the pain in that voice.

"I've a fire," I heard myself offering. "It could use a little stoking, that is, but you-- You needn't sit in here alone."

Silence.

Subtly moving the candle around my face, I tried to cast light around the little church, to find whoever had spoken. The shadows were sitting oddly, though, and the darkness seemed determined not to yield to my one small flame.

In the Beginning there was the Word.

~Well, not here.~ I tried to keep the nervousness from my tone, to remember the Gaelic word for 'organ.' "Was that you, just now? Playing the music? On the--" I gave up, used English. "Organ?"

That provoked a response, at least, a low uneasy noise that could almost have been a derisive laugh. "What organ?"

I swung my light about and realized that what I had taken for an organ bench was just another pew. There was no organ-- not even a piano. ~St. Peter preserve me,~ I thought shakily. ~Am I losing my mind?~

The voice continued, and the odd light seemed to shift around the altar. "You're not losing your mind. Father. I was..." The voice seemed to falter for a word. "Singing."

My blood ran cold. Something about the person's accent was not quite right, lilting oddly into the ill-lit interior. I tried English again. "Who are you?"

"You would share your fire with me?"

I swallowed, nodded meekly. I hoped whoever it was could see me, for suddenly I could not bring myself to talk. It was not the accent that was wrong; it was the words themselves. Not wrong, but too right. Not any human language. I could understand him, but as soon as the words passed those lips they folded closed on themselves again, taunting, as if to say I would only break my puny heart attempting to reproduce them.

Agonizing-- such perfect syllables, with sounds matched in perfect chords with their meaning. Such magic that I had only ever dreamed of imagining, much less standing in a room with someone actually speaking it.

Only God and his angels should speak the Language of creation.

And there was far too much of anger and-- regret?-- in that voice for it to be an angel.

~My God,~ I thought desperately, and meant it. ~And I invited him to spend the night in my company. What have I done?~

"I ask again, will you share your fire with me?" This time it sounded like a challenge.

I found my voice. "I said I would. Whoever you are. I--"

As it turned out, there were old-fashioned electric lightbulbs mounted in the ceiling of the little church, for they all flickered on at that instant. I started, but by the eerie whitish light they cast I could finally see-- him.

Beautiful. I blinked, but it was not a false impression. Skin so pale it was translucent, and dark dark eyes. A long sweep of hair so black it seemed to absorb whatever luminescence the lightbulbs shone. He stood, long-limbed and proud, by the lightswitch.

"I forget that humans have poor night vision," he said, as if that explained everything.

I could not stop staring. Not the skin, or the eyes, or the hair, though they were by far the most exquisite I'd ever seen. The wings. My mind did childish cartwheels, dizzied and frantic. Wings. Colorless and huge, lifting lightly from his shoulders, feathered and dull-- but with such detail I felt I could cut a finger on the razor edge of them.

"You," I said, rather stupidly. I was more afraid than I had ever been in my life, but it was a rush like adrenaline or ecstasy, so intense as to be devoid of feeling.

He raised a sweetly slanted eyebrow. "I'm not an angel, if that's what you're thinking, human."

I spoke against his better judgment, because it was truth. "But you were one."

The fallen angel laughed, lilting and musical like the creation of the world. "Oh, before your Gospels were even written, man. Long long time gone." The angel looked scornful, but all I could think was that he was lovely, St. Peter but he was lovely, standing like thunder by the dusty unused altar and with such tragedy on that perfect face.

My hands must have been shaking.

Those eyes rested on me, sharp with hatred. His voice was raw. "Do not think to save me, Father." There was no respect on that last word, only venomous sarcasm.

I kept my voice neutral and prayed it would stay steady. "I can do nothing. Our Lord may yet--"

"Don't." One word spoken and all of my comfortable defenses were stripped away.

But I remembered I was a priest, and stood up straighter. "You are still welcome at my fire, for I said I would have you. Though tomorrow morning I cannot promise--"

The once-angel cut me short. "Man, tomorrow morning is so very far away for you that you needn't worry about it. At all. You think you're in some kind of story?" His mouth became a hard, thin line. "I was sent here for the soul of a still-born child, MacArdry. But there was no stillborn child."

Brief, short-winged elation fluttered on my pulse. The baby girl.

"And I seek compensation." He moved away from the wall, and his wings spread out behind him as he advanced. "You, man, are not safe."

Just the word for "safe" alone was enough to make me weep, such a promise of warmth and love balanced all on the one syllable-- and so negated by the threat that I felt I was farther away from God than I had ever ever been.

In the Beginning there was the Word. Oh, God.

Trembling, I raised my eyes to the creature that walked lightly towards me. "No, I am not safe." Something like hope cringed in my chest, that I should agree. "The way I walk has always been a dangerous one."

"Ah, the walk of tribulations. Is this merely another test? You expect repayment." He asked, so that it did not seem a question. I swallowed.

"I can give you anything you want," he said, close enough that I could feel his breath. He paused, running a long-fingered hand along my chin. "Anything."

~Ah, temptation.~ I actually laughed, the awkward noise rushing out of me all at once, and he moved his hand away. ~How very surreal.~ I waved a hand. "Russian."

His eyes narrowed, within their dark depths, a lick of bright blue flame. "Russian?"

"I want to speak Russian," I explained patiently. "You can't simply--" But here I stopped, for my tongue was moving oddly, and sounds were spilling out that I did not know I'd known. "But--" It was as if I'd been born in Moscow, always spoken Russian, thought in it, read all of Dostoevsky. Everything. Vocabularies blossomed in my brain, and I moaned involuntarily.

He who had once knelt at the Throne and lived a prayer's breath from Godhead, smiled.

"How can you--" I started to say, but it was in perfect oldlands Gaelic and I could feel my knees weakening.

"I told you I could give you anything, man," he said, his smugness making him sound oddly human. "Did you doubt me?"

"You can?" And I tried to put it in the language the once-angel had spoken, but the closest my human brain could do was the poor thin language I'd been taught since birth. The Queen's English tasted like ashes compared to the fine sweet savor of his words... "Shouldn't it be closer to Greek or Babylonian or Aramaic or something?" I said, only dimly realizing that it was, in fact, Babylonian I was speaking. "The Language of Beginnings..."

"It is the language closest to your heart," he said, moving still closer to breathe cold down my neck. "So your brain translates it to the language you know best. Someone trying too hard to be clever might respond in Latin." He sighed. "The expensive schools you put yourselves through, to speak dead languages."

"It is useful," I countered, feeling ridiculous and angry, arguing with a fallen angel on the night I'd been thinking too much of words, "to know the origins of things. Latin is--"

"Hush," he said, angelfeathers dancing on the word, and I had to be silent, whether I truly wished to or no. I felt the angry tears welling somewhere close to my heart, where the muffled laughter had just been. "For a human you've got a lot of bits rattling around in there. Fragments. You can count to six in Tagalog? Oh, are you special?"

I didn't even realize that the back of my throat was aching, eyes stinging with the bitterness lancing along the words. In my own language. It sliced through my fear, raised something high and bright in my heart. "You speak the only language I have ever wanted," I began, "and yet you--"

"Do you think humans are allowed the power of fiat?" he spat. "Can you imagine the disaster?"

I was not deterred, advanced on the not-angel till he backed away, till our hands were almost touching. "And yet you, who have this Gift, choose to taunt me in my native tongue," I said, very slowly. "What kind of cruelty is this?"

The fallen angel's eyes lengthened, brightening, silverblue now, and considering. "Hardly cruelty, human. Do you think if I taunted you in my native Tongue that you would live to retort?"

I wanted to laugh. "...Do you think there is any other way I wish to die?"

He smiled, dangerous. "MacArdry. Son of the High King. Hm. Fine blood you have, then, human, thick and rich like wine?"

A slurry of falling leaves sang against the roof, the wind outside muttering and moaning to itself. I closed my eyes. ~This is my blood, shed for the deliverance from sin. Whenever you drink it, do this for the remembrance of me. ...Oh, God.~ I heard myself speaking. "Perhaps I do."

When I opened my eyes, he was there, great wings floating around me like silent thunder. "What frightens you?" he whispered against my ear, echoes of my priesthood cowering just beyond the sound of his voice. The fine hairs at the nape of my neck stood on end. "What disturbs you? What... makes you wish to die?"

I swallowed convulsively. "I-- I don't know," I managed to say.

He raised a hand, and flame shot up into the air, whirling terrible balls of fire. I couldn't move, transfixed. Afraid. The once-angel arched his brow, the faded luminescence of his face. "Not fire, then." Icicles grew from his fingertips and twined around my face, never touching, just a death's whisper away from vulnerable skin. So cold, so cold; I didn't dare move lest it brush my face and freeze my life away. ~Watch his eyes,~ I told myself. ~Keep focused.~

"Not ice, then." And then the eyes that I was watching so carefully disappeared-- color and iris and all swallowed into black nothingness, empty. Black holes, to take me in and crush me, weightless and impossibly heavy. I had known the creature was not human, but this made my blood shrink in my veins.

I was too afraid to scream. And I could not look away.

He touched my cheek with one chill fingertip, and the contact burned oddly. "Not me? Not even afraid of me?" He smiled slowly, worse than the awful vacancy of his eyes. "Then you shall fear yourself." And he kissed me, breathing such unspeakable something into human lungs that I felt that I was being eaten from the inside out.

And I liked it.

~Whenever you drink it, do this for the remembrance of me.~ I think I said, "Please."

And then I felt nothing at all, only a dull sweet vacant sort of pain. My eyelids fluttered closed, and I was gifted with visions of flying doves and wet tendrils of hot red blood.

And words exploded in my skull, a universe unfolding from itself, galaxies like poured milk, and words like hot sweet stars.

*epilogue*

The midwife had a lightness to her step that she hadn't felt in ages. It was one of those dawnings with light so clear one felt one could see all the way to heaven, air so sharp and November-blue that every breeze felt to be feathered from unseen angel wings. And on such a morning when even the hardest of hearts could believe in angels.

The basket on her arm was full of warm-baked bread, cheese and fruit-- breakfast for the priest, as she had promised. On her way, though, she was waylaid by the mother from the night before, her house tucked into the hillside hard by the little church. She could tell the young woman was frightened, just by the way she fidgeted with her hair. The baby girl was squirming against her chest, pucker-faced from crying, but red and healthy.

"What is it, mum?," the midwife asked, feeling too peaceful at her core to be much disturbed. "Did you send for me?"

"It's my girl," the woman said, shakily. "Not even a day old, my girl-- she--"

At that moment, the little one turned her face toward her, and her eyes were bluer by far than that Island sky. Then she settled down to sleep on her mother's breast.

The midwife smiled indulgently. Newborn nervousness. She'd seen it a hundred times. Abstractedly, she felt the weight of a basket in her hands. It confounded her for a moment. A bundled breakfast? Oh yes, she had come to comfort the new parents. They'd had a hard night, after all.

The mother's face had softened, playing absently with the tiny fingers clutching hers. "Never mind, thank you. I didn't get much sleep, it may have been my imagination."

"Of course it was, dearie. Here, here's some fresh fruit and my cow's best cheese for ye, and the husband and I baked you some bread--"

The younger woman took the basket, a grateful smile on her lips. Her eyebrow twitched, belying just the thinnest sliver of confusion. "Oh, *thank* you, thank you. Sorry to bother you, thank you. I just thought-- well. 'Tis silly. Let us have breakfast in the sun, shall we? Oh, thank you! It was surely my mind run mad for a second, for I though for certain that my babe just spoke my name."

comin' down the years turn over

and angels fall without you there

and I'll go on to bring you home

and I'll become

what you became to me

~fin~