Mysterious Ways

R. Austin Carver

Dedicated to Erika Nordby, Les Hynek, and the Angels that protected them…

“Mommy?” Charity whined as her chubby little feet slip-slapped on the hardwood floor of the darkened hallway.

Though Charity’s eyes were open wide, her mind was closed to her surroundings. Instead she saw what Amoth wanted her to see, a dreamscape created especially for her.

Down the hallway she padded in her two year old’s meandering gait, beneath pictures of her loving mother and father, her grandparents, and her siblings. Her cherub body listed first left, then right, as she sleepwalked her way to the oak door and the bitter winter night.

"Mommy is here,” Amoth whispered. "Come to Mommy."

A sleepy smile touched Charity’s angelic face, making her dimples shine through the gloom. Her little feet churned faster upon hearing her Mommy’s voice, moving her inexorably towards the door and the dead of winter.

Myron sighed at Amoth’s side.

“Don’t do this Amoth,” Myron told her, but if Amoth heard him, she gave no indication.

Amoth’s unwavering attention remained fixed on the child, and the tender dream she wove for her like a fine tapestry.

Charity reached the door and grasped the brass knob with her small hand; turning it to the right. Just like in the dream.

Amoth’s scowl of concentration intensified as she carefully threaded her instructions to the child.

Charity pulled the door inwards, revealing a stunningly cold landscape of snow and ice that now lay open before her.

“Amoth!” Myron warned her in a commanding but unconcerned voice. “Stop this foolishness. It is not her time. You overstep your bounds.”

Amoth turned on Myron. Her dark eyes, dead and cold as the Canadian landscape that awaited young Charity. Her once beautiful face, twisted and dark with pain eons old.

There was something black in Amoth’s heart. A rotting cancer that infected the very marrow of her bones. She knew what few Angels of Grace had ever known, raw hatred. Looking at her, Myron sighed again; almost wishing he could share in her emotions, no matter how black they were. All he knew these days was indifference.

“Overstep my bounds?” Amoth chided. “I am within my rights Guardian. Dreams are my domain. Only the Malakim can speak with the mortals. I am the Muse. It is you who overstep’s your bounds.”

“So much hatred in you Amoth,” Myron observed whimsically. “So much wrath. Did he treat you so roughly? Did he really hurt you badly enough to take it out on an innocent?”

The child stepped out onto the icy concrete of the porch, her tiny face grimacing at the cold. Amoth felt her hold on the dream slip, but only momentarily.

“Come to Mommy,” Amoth hissed. “Mommy loves her baby.”

Myron watched, powerless to wake the child, or warn the parents, but not totally impotent. Myron was Mal’akh, a Guardian of the Third Choir, and while he did not have the power of contact like the Muse of the Second Choir, or the mighty power of vision like the Chariot of the First Choir, he would do what he could. Young Charity was his charge this February night.

“This is a travesty Amoth,” Myron said, his voice almost melancholy. “It will not be allowed to stand.”

Charity padded out into the crunchy snow, a delusional smile stretched across her rosy cheeks.

“What do you know Mal’akh?” Amoth hissed. “Tell me what you know of pain and betrayal, then perhaps I will stop my song.”

“Why ask me Amoth?" Myron said stepping onto the porch behind little Charity. "Ask this child. You pay betrayal with betrayal, you forsake her and your trust in the name of some crusty old grudge. Do you even remember what made you like this?”

“I remember Mal’Akh,” Amoth assured him.

Myron listened to her song of pain and betrayal floating on the arctic breeze; a song that sounded like a wounded animal, a mother in mourning, or…a whimpering child. Perhaps she remembered after all.

Charity walked away from the safety of her warm house to the sure death of a tree line some hundred yards out. Myron looked down at her small bare feet, then into her watery blue eyes. Eyes vacant of thought. Trusting eyes, asleep and lost within the song of the Muse.

The night was bitterly cold, and even though Myron could not feel it, he knew what it meant for the child. Already she was shivering, and her cheeks were apple red, like a cast off Kewpie-doll.

“This is not right Amoth,” Myron told her in his sternest voice as he stepped in front of the child, stopping the little girl in her tracks. “It is not her time.”

“It was not my time either,” Amoth said lowering her black eyes. “If it is so wrong, let Him stop me.”

“That is not how He works Amoth,” Myron told her as he placed his hand on the child’s head. “You know that.”

The child’s chubby hands came up to her fluttering eyes in tightly balled fists and rubbed them. A whimper of confusion and fear trickled over her blue lips. Myron noticed Amoth's song had faded away into the night.

“Mommy?” Charity cried weakly through her chattering teeth.

Myron sat down in the snow before her and waited. He was powerless to move her back to the house. He was only Mal’Akh, Third Choir; all he could do was hope beyond hope that she somehow remembered the way back to the house.

“Be at peace child,” he found himself saying to her over and over as she sat down in the snow next to him and began to weep.

Myron looked up to see Amoth standing on the porch of the house, staring down at them.

“Help her find her way back Amoth,” Myron ordered.

Amoth hugged her chest and turned away from them, walking back into the house, fading into transparency as she went.

“She is free of me,” Amoth said. “This is all I will do.”

As Myron calmly tried to think of a way to coax the little girl back into her house, Charity’s weeping turned to hitching sobs, and she lay over onto her side in the snow. Her slow tears froze instantly on her face. Her chattering whimpers grew softer and softer. For a moment, right before she slipped into unconsciousness, she looked up, and their eyes locked. Myron thought for a moment that she saw him, but that was impossible.

Yet there had been something in her eyes, something…

Myron stayed with her for an hour and a half until Charity’s mother exploded from the house screaming her daughter’s name into the frigid night.

In that time he did all he was capable of, all that was required of him. He packed her small hands and feet in snow and ice to insulate them. coated her wind burned face in frozen tears to protect her smooth cheeks from the ravages of frostbite. It took all his power to moderate her body temperature into a slow steady fall. He monitored her tiny heart as it slowed to a limping irregular pace, sometimes even pausing for long moments between beats. But he was there, he made sure, and beat it did.

He protected her, a child all alone in the Arctic night, because it was his job, it was what he did. But while he fought for this child’s life, he remembered how their eyes had met, and Myron began to feel things he hadn’t felt in eons: Anger, empathy, and even fear. Time so long since he’d felt a litany of emotions like this that he scarcely recognized them.

In the ambulance or at the hospital, when a paramedic, doctor, or nurse wanted to give up the fight, it was Myron that gave them the signs of hope they so desperately needed to continue. A groan, a random breath, or heartbeat, was all they needed to keep up the fight. Myron felt gratitude for their dedication. How long had it been since he’d felt real gratitude?

Once, as he stood at the foot of her bed, with doctors swarming about like bees, order heating blankets, warm saline, and epinephrine seemingly at random, Myron saw Nefferess. Nefferess was Chariot, Ophanim of the First Choir, one who comforted and carried the dead on their final journey. The Ophanim were his superiors, beings of mighty power, still Myron found himself enraged that a Chariot would approach while a Guardian was still present.

For hours Myron stood over Charity, slowly warming her, aiding her stout little body in anyway he could. Even when the doctors pronounced her stable, Myron refused to leave, though he could feel the call. He had to see for himself. He wanted to see her open those crystalline blue eyes to the land of the living. What would she see, he wondered?

“What about brain damage,” one of the younger doctors asked another as they stepped out of the room.

The older doctor shrugged. “We’ll just have to wait and see. It’s a miracle she’s even alive.”

Charity’s mother entered the room late the next night. She looked worried, worn, and haggard. Myron understood, he felt the same way.

With tears streaming down her tired face, Charity’s mother knelt at the foot of her daughter’s bed to pray.

“Dear God,” her mother whispered. “I don’t know why this happened, but I beg of you to hold her in your hands. She is so dear to us, all of us.”

Myron stood next to her, his head bowed with hers, coming as near to praying as he could.

“Come Myron,” Amoth’s voice said from behind him. “It is time for us to return.”

“How dare you come here?” he asked incredulously. “After all you have done.”

Amoth looked down at the mother praying at her daughter’s bedside and bowed her head in respect.

“Your charge?” Myron raved. “You lie! You, a Muse, how could it have been your charge to take a soul not on the list?”

“Our Lord works in mysterious ways his wonders to perform,” Amoth said, looking deeply into Myron’s dark eyes.

Myron looked at Amoth as if seeing her for the first time. For she was changed, renewed, her beautiful features no longer twisted into something pitiful and loathsome by bitter hatred.

Charity’s mother continued to kneel, no longer praying, only weeping softly into her clasped hands.

Amoth smiled. It had been so long since Myron had seen Amoth smile that it almost startled him.

“Perhaps this little girl was put here to teach us a lesson Myron. I have learned, have you not?” Amoth told him, looking tenderly down at the mother.

Myron remembered the gratitude, relief, anger, and even fear. He looked at Charity and his lip trembled. Now he felt love, the greatest and most elusive of emotions, love that swelled his ancient heart like a child’s balloon. Feelings that drove the apathy out, leaving him filled with life, as renewed as Amoth.

“Yes I have learned,” Myron said softly, tears filling his dark eyes to the brim.

“I learned shame,” Amoth said smiling tenderly at Charity’s still form. “I was taught the taste of gall, and it was my own wrath.”

Myron heard the sound of bells and trumpets as if coming from beyond the horizon, music like a spring breeze over a field of wild flowers.

Myron heard Amoth’s song intertwine with the trumpets. Together they wove a beautiful song of life and the promise of spring.

In the bed, Charity stirred, and her mother lifted her head out of her hands hopefully. Tears overflowed his lids and began to stream down Myron’s grizzled cheeks as Charity opened her crystalline blue eyes to the mortal world.

Charity’s mother was rendered speechless, so choked with joy that all she could do was lean over and hug her daughter tightly.

Amoth opened her eyes and smiled contently. She clasped Myron’s hand, and they had begun to fade into transparency, when for a moment, the child’s eyes met his. And for the barest instant there was acknowledgement.

“I know,” Amoth told him smiling. “Hail Ophanim, Chariot of the First Choir. May you always walk within his light.”

“Mommy, Mommy!” Charity pronounced as she tried to wriggle out of her Mother’s tight sobbing grasp. “I had a dream Mommy.”

Mysterious Ways

The End