Five

Would you mind looking something up for me in that lovely angel dictionary of yours? I need a name for a book I'm writing, and I'm stumped. I know there was an angel named something like Thel or Thiel or something like that. I'm sure I have the spelling wrong, but his province was "getting the girl," i.e., you prayed to him when you wanted someone who didn't want you, and supposedly he came through quite a lot of the time. Frankly, it sounds more like voodoo than angels, but who am I to argue?

I'd be forever grateful if you could come up with the name for me. And yes, I know they probably have that book in the library in Baton Rouge, but then I wouldn't have an excuse to write to you, would I?

She ended, "Hugs, Esme."

Sarah pulled the angel book off the shelf behind her desk, where she kept her reference books, and turned to the T's. Nothing.

She turned her chair around and pressed the power button on the computer on the credenza. She'd do a quick internet search and see if she could find anything. If Esme would just move into the current century and get a computer, she could look these things up herself, and millions of other things besides. It was very exasperating. The computer booted up, and she dialed into her internet service provider, then opened a browser.

A few minutes' searching yielded a page of angel names, and she pulled a scratchpad toward her and jotted down a few notes from the screen. She opened a drawer and pulled out a piece of notepaper, and wrote:

Esme:

There is indeed a "Thiel" among the angels--he has something to do with the planet Venus (so possibly what you're looking for) and is "the ruling prince of Wednesday."

However, I think who you're looking for is "Theliel." A website I found says he is, and I quote, "An angelic prince of love invoked in ceremonial magic to procure the woman desired by the invocant."

Does that sound like what you're looking for? And when are you going to get your own computer? Don't mind me, I'm not really grouchy at you. There's something else going on . . . no time to go into it now, though. I'll try to call you over the weekend. And maybe I'll send you an angel dictionary for your birthday.

Can't wait to hear about this book!

Love,

Sarah

She turned away from the computer to put the book away, then opened it up again. She wasn't sure what she wanted to look up, so just flipped idly through it. Angels were showing up with odd frequency in her life lately. Maybe it was just the case of thinking about something, and, being more sensitive to it, beginning to see it everywhere. The dream was certainly odd--she didn't see anything about angels with black wings in the book, or the kind of gruff, stern angels that she had seen in her dream. They almost seemed like they should be smoking cigars. Angels with cigars. That one made her laugh. "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar . . ."

Thoughtfully, she put the book back on the shelf.

She didn't notice the feather on the windowsill.

* * *

She was flipping through the angel book again when Jason stuck his head around the door. "I thought I'd run down to Joe's for a sandwich if that's okay. Can you watch the front for a few minutes?"

She glanced at her watch--1:30. "Sure, no problem. I didn't realize it was lunch time."

"Want me to bring you something?"

"Do you mind?"

"Nope."

She reached into her bag for her wallet, then remembered it was still in her pocket from the second grocery store trip. But her journal was in the bag, and when her hand touched it, she pulled it out. It was a medium-sized hardback book covered in patterned Chinese silk; on the cover, a young woman hurried across a humpbacked bridge to reach a young man who waited on the other side. The silk was in colors of red and turquoise and gold, and the spine was turquoise leather, with a red silk cord to mark the pages. She opened the journal to the marked page--the next blank page, about halfway through the book--and ran her hand down the smooth paper.

Each page was faintly lined, and printed with a shadowy image of the same bridge that appeared on the front of the book. She reached for a pen from the mug on her desk, and bent over the book, thinking about her dream.

Jason cleared his throat. "Sarah?"

"Hm?"

"Lunch?"

She looked up, and slowly her eyes came back into focus. "Sorry," she said, and reached into her pocket for her wallet. She opened it and peered in. "I've only got three dollars," she said. "I had to write a check for the cat food. I forgot to go by the bank this morning . . . will that be enough?"

"Well, probably, but you know, you could take a few bucks out of the cash register. It is your store, after all." He grinned at her. "Is there something bugging you? You seem . . . I don't know. A little flakier than usual." He smiled again to let her know he was just teasing.

"No, everything's okay. You know that guy I told you about that showed up here so late last night? I saw him in the grocery store this morning."

"And?"

"He was buying orange juice."

"Yeah?"

"And still wearing the overcoat."

"Ah. Want me to beat him up for you?"

She looked up sharply, then realized that he was still teasing. She heaved a dramatic sigh. "No one takes me seriously. Go get your sandwich." She shooed him away. "Go. Go."

* * * *

She gathered her journal and pen and carried them out into the main part of the store, and sat behind the counter on the stool, then got up again and went over to the corner where they kept the coffee urn, and one of plain hot water, and made herself a cup of tea with one of the new teabags she had bought that morning. She used her favorite mug, a tea-with-milk-colored one with a string of elephants around the bottom, trunk-to-tail, trunk-to-tail. She had bought it for herself at a specialty tea shop on one of her book buying trips out of town.

Settled once again behind the counter, she opened the journal to the page marked by the red silk ribbon, and picked up the pen. She wrote the date at the top of the page, then paused. "A very vivid dream," she wrote.

I was an observer, not a participant. I was watching a group of what appeared in some ways to be old men sitting around a table, but they had wings, so I knew they were angels.

But they weren't the usual kind of angels, i.e., they weren't cute and sweet, they were almost frightening. Or perhaps, not frightening, but obviously strong and powerful. Well, maybe a little bit frightening. They were huge--I don't know what I base this on, because there really wasn't anything to compare them to, but I had the impression that they were huge--and their wings, unlike angel wings are generally portrayed, were black. Huge, black, glossy wings . . . well cared for, in most cases, like the shiny black coat of a well-fed cat, but dusty and dull in the case of a couple of them. Sere.

They were talking, discussing something, but I couldn't understand what they were saying. It was sort of like having the television on in the other room, loud enough that you can hear that it's on, but so low that you can't understand the words. But even though I couldn't understand the words, I picked up an impression that they were angry, worried about something. They were discussing what to do about whatever it was that was worrying them.

There was one (angel?) who, while still sitting at the table, seemed to be setting himself apart from the rest of the group. He was playing with a penknife, plunging it over and over again into the table, until one of the other beings clamped a huge paw over his and made him stop, looking at him quite sternly. He didn't speak, but the censure was obvious in his eyes. He (the one with the knife) sort of figuratively rolled his eyes and looked away.

Someone cleared their throat, and Sarah reluctantly pulled herself away from the world that was being recreated in her journal. She looked up to see a small white haired woman standing in front of the counter.

"I'm sorry, dear," the elderly woman said. "I didn't mean to interrupt you, but I'd like to buy this book." She held out a volumn of short stories by Florida writers, no doubt picked up from the "Local Interest" table.

Sarah smiled and closed the journal. "I'm so sorry. I sort of lost track there for a moment."

"You were concentrating very hard," the woman agreed. "What are you writing?"

"Oh, just writing down a dream I had last night," Sarah said. "About angels. Or at least I think they were angels . . ." she trailed off.

"Angels! How lovely! That reminds me--do you have any Christmas cards? I might as well get them while I'm out."

Sarah guided her to a table where stacks of boxed Christmas cards were arranged, and left her picking up one after the other. She would study them, then put them back down, as she tried to decide between Christmas trees, Santa and the elves, or angels She eventually decided, As Sarah knew she would, on the angels.

At least she didn't get the cherubs, Sarah thought, as she rang up the short story book and the box of cards--fairly plain white cards with a print of Abbott Handerson Thayer's "Angel" painting on the front. A very ordinary-looking angel: Thayer's eleven-year-old daughter Mary, Sarah knew. But who was to say that angels weren't ordinary looking? Surely they weren't all little chubby-cheeked, gilt-winged cherubs. Sarah was sick of those angels already, and it was only November. But Thayer's angel looked like the kind of angel you could sit down and have a normal conversation with.

A few minutes later, she waited on a teenage girl looking for a Christmas gift for her boyfriend. Sarah helped her pick out a volume of Rilke poetry, which seemed sort of deep for a teenager until Sarah remembered her own teenage, angst-filled years and realized it was perfect. As she pulled the book from the shelf to hand it to the girl, she opened it to the Second Elegy:

Every angel is terrifying. And yet, alas,
I invoke you, almost deadly birds of the soul,
knowing about you.¹

Deadly birds of the soul.

She slipped one of the store's bookmarks into the page and told the girl to wish her boyfriend "Happy Birthday" for her. The girl assured her she would, and thanked her for helping her with the book. "He'll love it," she said, and Sarah thought, but did not say, "He'll love it because he loves you."

-----

¹Ahead of All Parting, 1995, Stephen Mitchell, Translator

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© 2002 Willa G. Cline