Dancing on the Head of a Pin by Thomas E. Sniegoski
But soon he realized that it was not clouds at all.
A great army flew through the sky toward him.
An army of angels.
Heaven’s air was filled with the sound of pounding wings as they approached—swarming across the sky, descending on the other side of the Gate that separated them.
“Hail, Remiel,” an angel at the head of the flock cried, the first to touch down.
He was adorned from head to toe in intricate armor of gold, as if the rays of the sun had been used to create the ornate adornment for him, and for all the angelic soldiers that landed behind him.
As the leader strode closer to the Gate, he removed his helmet, and a sick feeling writhed in the pit of Remy’s belly as he recognized this angel.
“Greetings, Michael,” Remy said, bowing his head slightly in respect for the leader of the mighty Archangels.
The Gates parted, and the Archangel strode through them. “Heaven knows of your involvement in the most delicate and dire of matters,” the warrior angel stated, stopping before Remy. “Your arrival here before the Gates, stinking of the pit, implies that a great danger to Heaven, and all of creation, has not been averted.”
Remy studied the angel before him, and all those that had descended with him from the sky. They were clad in the armor of war, a telling sign that they were very much aware of what had transpired.
“The Thrones are no more,” Remy said, watching for some sign that this was a surprise. There was nothing; the sharp angular features of the angelic warrior remained passionless. “Destroyed by the newly awakened Lucifer Morningstar.”
A violent shudder ran through Michael’s brown-speckled wings, the only sign that he was affected by this news at all.
“I suspected no good would come from their scheme,” the angel stated, obviously referring to the Thrones’ plan to remove Lucifer from Tartarus. “They used forbidden magicks to make him forget who he was . . . what he was,” Michael continued with disdain. “And then they made him believe he was another . . . another of the lowly, absolution seekers that had sinned against the All-Father.”
The Archangel paused.
“What we feared most has occurred.” The angel turned to the army that stood beyond the Gate. “But we stand ready to deal with this impending threat.”
“So it’s war again?” Remy asked, an oppressive sense of sadness sweeping over him, replacing the euphoria of his return.
Michael turned, revealing the most disturbing of expressions. The Archangel wore a smile, and there was a glint of excitement in his piercing eyes.
“War,” he repeated as he reached down and drew the sword hanging from the scabbard at his side. “For the kingdom and the glory of Heaven.”
He raised the blade high, and all those behind him did the same.
Remy’s warrior nature was aroused by the sight before him, eager to join their number, to again wield a weapon in service to the Lord God Almighty.
But there was also a part troubled by the sight, by a nagging voice from somewhere deep in the recesses of his mind that warned the coming war would make the first pale in comparison.
“You haven’t learned a thing,” Remy said to the armored Archangel.
Michael scowled. “We’ve learned that the battle is never truly over until your enemies are utterly vanquished.”
“And the grace of mercy?” Remy asked.
“Mercy,” the Archangel scoffed. “You see now where mercy has brought us.”
And Remy saw exactly where it had brought them. There had been no healing since the conflict that altered the very nature of Heaven; in fact, he believed the wound caused by the war now festered with infection.
He hadn’t the slightest idea what could be done to cure this illness, and, to be honest, was unsure if it wasn’t already too late. Looking about, he saw what he had not noticed before, the patches of tarnish that stained the shiny surfaces of their armor, the gray haze that hung over the city in the distance like an abandoned spider’s web, a hint of something sickly sweet lingering in the breeze that could very well have been decay.
“Will you fight with us, brother?” Michael asked, holding out the blade of his sword toward Remy.
The pounding of flapping wings filled the air again, and two angels not of the warrior class flew down to land on either side of the Archangel. Each was holding a pitcher of fragrant water and watched Remy with wary eyes.
“Allow them to cleanse the stain of Hell from your person,” Michael said as the two angels slowly stepped forward. “Then you will once again be allowed to pass through the Gates of Heaven.”
Remy started to move away and the advancing angels looked nervously back to Michael.
“What is it?” the Archangel asked. “Is there something wrong?”
Remy slowly nodded. “There is,” he said. “And the sad thing is, there is nothing I can do to fix it.”
The Archangel sheathed his weapon. “You do understand that you are to be welcomed back into the fold,” he explained. “That your desertion of duty is to be overlooked as restitution for the services that you performed in the service of Heaven.”
Remy shook his head. “I don’t want to come back,” he told the warrior. “I was given a task by the Morningstar . . . to deliver the message that he was free, and the sad fact that the war isn’t over. I’ve done that now, and now I’m through here.”
Michael gripped the hilt of his sword tightly. “How does it feel to abandon everything that you are?” the Archangel asked, malice dripping from each and every word.
It couldn’t have hurt worse if the angel had driven his blade through Remy’s chest.
“I’ve changed,” Remy told him. “It isn’t what I am anymore.”
He couldn’t stay. The war in Heaven had nearly destroyed him once; he wasn’t about to give it the chance to do so again.
“What are you?” the Archangel Michael asked of him. “What are you if not of Heaven?”
He’d believed that it was dead—or at least close to being that way—but he had been mistaken. Remy felt his humanity, weak and buried so very deep, but still alive. It fluttered at the question, finding the strength to fight.
To survive.
And with the realization that it still lived, he turned away from the gathering of angels, from Heaven itself.
Feeling the pull of Earth upon him.
The pull of the world that had become his home.
The journey from Heaven to Earth was a long one.
Remy lost track of time as he drifted in the void between worlds, descending from on high, moving through one plane of reality to the next.
Some of these were dreadful worlds, full of dreadful creatures that would have liked nothing more than to feed upon the flesh of the divine. And through those fearsome worlds Remy traveled, avoiding conflict when he was able, and, if he needed to, vanquishing any challenger that dared try and prevent him from reaching his destination.
The journey was long and hard, but the promise of what awaited him at the end of this long journey was enough to sustain him.
In a vast sea of black, waiting for the gentle tug of the world he so longed for, Remy floated, wrapped within his wings of golden brown.
Fragments of memory that he believed lost rose to the surface of his resting mind. He hadn’t lost them. They were still there, just buried very deep. And as he floated in the darkness of the void, continuing the long journey home, he carefully stirred them to the surface.
Reacquainting himself with his humanity.
“So it wasn’t like . . . a hallucination, since I’d been gut shot and all,” Steven Mulvehill said as he raised his cup of coffee to his mouth, all the while watching him.
Remy gazed out over the city of Boston from the patio of Massachusetts General Hospital, where the homicide detective was still recovering from his gunshot wound. He almost hadn’t made it.
Almost.
“Would you believe me if I told you it was?” Remy asked him.
Mulvehill barely took a sip of his drink, the intensity of his stare showing that he was seriously thinking about the question, and its answer.
“No,” he said finally. “Even though I know it doesn’t make a lick of fucking sense, I know what I saw . . . what I experienced.”
“I could deny it,” Remy answered. He was watching the birds fly above the city, missing the glorious feel of wind beneath his wings. “Who’s going to believe that you actually saw an angel, other than the truly devout, and some others that have a tendency to skip their meds?”
Remy tore off a piece of bagel and placed it in his mouth.
“But you’re not going to?” the detective asked. “Deny it.”
“Not to you,” he answered, chewing his breakfast. Remy picked up his napkin and wiped stray crumbs from his mouth. “Nope, I made my bed and now I have to lie in it.”
Mulvehill’s face screwed up. “What the fuck’s that supposed to mean, Plato?”
Remy laughed.
“Means that I’ve got to deal with what I’ve done. I showed you what I am, and now we both have to live with it.”
“You thought I was gonna die, didn’t you?” Mulvehill asked. “You didn’t think you were gonna have to deal with this.”
Remy shrugged, having some more of his coffee.
“How many others know . . . you’re like that?” the detective asked.
“My wife, my dog, some business associates, but they’ve got some interesting qualities of their own,” Remy answered. He’d finished his coffee and didn’t want any more of the bagel.
“Do you want the rest of this?” he asked Mulvehill.
The detective shook his head, turning the wheelchair slightly to look out over the city. They were both quiet, wrapped up in their own thoughts.
“They say I’ll probably be going home Friday,” Mulvehill said.
“That’s good, right?” Remy asked him. “You’re ready to go home, aren’t you?”
The man nodded once, looking back to the angel sitting across from him at the patio table.
“Yeah,” he said, and paused. Remy could see him reviewing his next words carefully. “But what happens after that?”
Remy leaned back in the chair, folding his hands on his stomach. “I guess it all depends on how long it takes for you to get back on your feet. After that, you’ll go back to work . . . light duty at first, slowly working your way back to where you were.”
Mulvehill leaned in closer to the table so that others wouldn’t hear.
“You don’t get what I’m talking about,” he said to the angel. “Knowing what I know now . . . that something like you actually exists . . . it changes everything.”
“I guess it does,” Remy agreed. “And for that I’m sorry. I just didn’t want you to be afraid.”
“I’m afraid now,” Mulvehill said, his gruffness suddenly pulled away like a curtain to reveal a man confronted with the reality of something so much bigger than himself.
“And here I was thinking I was doing you a favor. The next time you get mortally shot, remind me to look the other way.”
The detective at first appeared stunned, but as the smile began to form on the angel’s face, the two of them began to laugh.
The pull on Remy was stronger now, the current that he traveled through the void bringing him closer to his destination. He had no idea how much longer he still had on his journey, or even how long it had been thus far. All he knew was that it was a distance that must be traversed in order to return home.
Still swaddled within his wings, Remy floated through the void, the memories that continued to rise to the surface making him all the more hungry for the existence he had left behind.
Somewhere in the darkness the puppy whimpered.
Not really asleep, but in that weird resting state that he’d eventually learned to put himself in while Madeline slept, Remy rose from bed, careful not to wake his wife, and went in search of the animal.
It had been only a few days since Marlowe had come to live with them, and the young canine seemed to be adjusting quite well to his new environment.
Or at least that was what Remy believed.
He found the pup downstairs, in the corner of the shadowed living room, sitting in a patch of moonlight beneath the open window.
“What’s wrong?” Remy asked the animal, keeping his voice soft so that he did not awaken his wife.
“Miss them,” the puppy said, staring at him briefly with large, seemingly bottomless dark eyes, before he turned his snout back up to the breeze wafting in through the window.
“Who do you miss?” Remy asked him, sitting in the chair not too far from where the Labrador puppy sat. “Your pack brothers and sisters?”
“Yes.”
“As you have done, your brothers and sisters have gone to live in new places, Marlowe. With new families,” Remy started to explain. “We are your pack now.”
The dog looked at him with sad eyes, ears flat against his small, square head. “Not same. Miss them.”
Remy moved from the chair, and sat beside the animal on the floor beneath the window. “Yes, it’s sad,” he told the puppy. “But that’s the way it works. First there is the pack, and then the pack is broken up, each of you going off to find a new pack.”
Marlowe crawled up into Remy’s lap, plopping down with a heavy sigh.
“The way it works?” the Labrador pup asked.
“Afraid so,” Remy said, beginning to stroke the dog’s short, silky-soft fur.
“You leave pack?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Find new pack? Happy now . . . not sad?”
“No, not sad,” Remy told him, as he gently patted the young dog until he drifted off to sleep.
“Happy now.”
He was nearly there.
Remy could feel it in the sea of dark, just beyond his reach. It was the tug of the familiar, a promise of the warmth and love of companions.
They were not his kind, but still they had recognized and accepted what he was, and in turn he had made them his own.
Rousing himself from a sleeplike stasis, Remy spread his wings and listened to his senses, homing in on the place that called out to him.
The world that was his home.
They climbed the stairs to the rooftop.
Madeline carefully pushed the door at the top of the stairway open and stepped out onto what would soon become their rooftop patio.
She held his hand in hers, drawing him out onto the tar-paper surface for a view of the city beyond Beacon Hill.
“This will be fantastic,” she said, looking around at the space. A stack of empty and broken clay flowerpots sat in the corner, along with a punctured bag of potting soil. “We can put the table just about there, with the chairs around it. . . . This is going to be great.”
She spun around and hugged him tightly.
“Are you happy?” she asked, her faced pressed to his chest.
This would be the first night in their new home on Pinckney Street. They had spent the entire day—since early that morning—painting and doing some fixing about the brownstone. The phone man had been there, as had the gas man.
Remy wrapped his arms around his wife and hugged her close.
Am I happy?
Since making this world his home, he’d slowly acclimated himself to the concept. He was a creature of Heaven; there was no time for happiness or the opposite. His existence had been to serve the Almighty.
He guessed there had been happiness in that, but now he couldn’t truly be sure. The war had taken so much from him, bleached away the colors of what had once been such a glorious rainbow.
But this world, this earth, had given him back some of the color.
In retrospect, he saw the happiness had grown. The more acclimated he became, the more human, his joy had increased.
And it had reached its zenith with the love of his wife.
“I’m happy,” he said, kissing the top of her head.
“Really? Are you really?”
He smiled at her. “What are you getting at?” he asked. “I can hear that sound in your voice. You’re fishing for something.”
She laughed as she broke away from his embrace, going to the edge of the roof. “I don’t know,” she said, leaning on the brick edging that bordered the roof space. “Sometimes I get to thinking about the reality of what you are, and where you came from.”