I have been quiet with Freya for the past few days, still recovering myself after our ordeal with the Cynic. She’s been quiet too—for the first time since she knew I was here, she hasn’t had any questions for me. Instead she spends our nightly hour together meditating, speaking her mantra for me—may he be happy. May he be well. May he have peace.
It may be my imagination, but I felt stronger and better today after this than I have in a while. Maybe that is why it happened today.
I had been with Freya most of the day, and it was past time for me to return to heaven and rest. I did not want to go, but I knew if I didn’t rest I wouldn’t be able to stay with her through the night, and she sleeps better when I am there.
She was hard at work on a report, typing quickly—I have always been impressed with the way she can make her fingers race across the keyboard, the way the cursor flies across the screen—and so I did not want to interrupt. I simply brushed a wing across her back and whispered, “I will see you tonight, Freya.”
Her fingers froze on the keyboard. In the sudden absence of clattered keys, her own whisper cut clearly. “Ace?”
I was instantly on alert, wary that she had heard or seen something to frighten her.
What is it? What’s wrong?
But then I turned to her and saw that it was wonder and not fear that widened her eyes. She swallowed and whispered, “Say something else.”
And then the wonder swept through me, too. “Did you hear me speak, Freya?”
She jumped a little. “There, I heard it again!” she said. She pressed her hand against her head. “Only my name was clear, but I heard other words, too.”
In the hallway, Sarah called out to Alysse, startling us both. Freya jumped to her feet and closed the office door, exhaling. “Do you think any of them heard me?” she whispered.
I checked, just to be safe. “I don’t think so,” I said. I spoke clearly, hoping that Freya would hear.
She shook her head hard, frowning. “I’m hearing you, I know I am, but it’s like you’re talking through a cloth.” She paced across the room. “Keep talking.”
“Of course,” I said eagerly. “I’d like nothing better than for you to be able to hear me.”
She sighed and sank into her chair. “I can’t tell if I’m understanding your emotions or your words. It’s all so nebulous.”
I thought back to the days before I was revealed to her, when we used to have something like conversations. “Don’t think about it too much,” I said, putting my wings around her and sending calmness to her. “It’s not really your ears that are hearing me. Your heart has always understood my words; let it happen.”
She closed her eyes and began a box breathing sequence—inhale for a count of four, hold for four, exhale for four, hold for four. “Talk to me, Ace,” she said when she had completed one sequence.
Of course, I didn’t have the first idea what to say. “Oh, well—it seems that Asoharith put a great deal of faith in her plan with the Cynic. Kasfe says that she was very angry when she learned that it hadn’t worked—many of the Fallen spoke of her rage. We were hoping that this might be a way we could trace the rumors back to her, but it seems that she killed any of those who were direct witnesses, or else any that escaped are now in deep hiding, so that is not helpful at all.”
The frown on Freya’s brow was getting deeper, and I realized that she didn’t understand. Something different, then.
“I was just coming to tell you that I had to return to heaven to rest,” I said. “I know that I should, but to say truth I don’t feel as weary as I should, having been on the hunt most of the night. I think that I can credit that to you, Freya.”
Her breathing faltered for a moment. I paused, but she took it up again and made a motion with one hand that I should continue.
“I think the meditation is working for you,” I said. “It has made you much stronger, more able to direct your energy. And I’m so grateful for the way you have used it to help me.”
“Of course I helped you,” Freya answered, opening her eyes. “You’re doing all this for me.”
“But it’s not usually a reciprocal relationship. I never expected—” And then I stopped short as something became very clear to me.
“Ace?” Freya asked, but then we were both startled when Alysse knocked on the door.
She poked her head in to invite Freya to lunch, and in the bustle afterward Freya couldn’t get a moment out of earshot. As she was leaving her office, she hissed at me, “We’ll talk about this tonight!”
I admit here, I was glad to have a moment to think. I went straight to Brid to tell her what had happened, and what I had realized.
“It’s the uniqueness of our connection, Brid,” I told her. “The majority of the relationships angels have with humans are one-way—our charges may sense our presence and come to trust us, but they aren’t aware of us on a conscious level.”
“But Freya is now,” Brid said.
“And that opens a passageway for me into her mind,” I said. “The more she trusts me, the more I become real to her. As she comes to know me better, her mind will respond to me as it would to physical stimuli. That is why she hears me as if I were speaking through the air. In time she might even come to see me.”
What a thought! I wonder what I would look like to Freya’s eyes.
“I’m glad that you can speak to her more directly now,” Brid said. “But that isn’t why you are so excited.”
“No,” I agreed, “the reason I’m excited is I finally understand how I might reveal myself to her fully. Now that I’ve seen the way that her mind does this, I could influence it to make her see me all the sooner. She wouldn’t be able to see me without my help, of course, but I could do it.”
Brid frowned at me. “You could influence her? The way you influence her computer?”
It was a cold comparison, and it stopped me short. I laughed a little. “Yes, I suppose so. I wouldn’t be able to do it, of course, if she didn’t trust me. But yes. She’s opened the way.”
Brid shook her head. “No wonder the seniors forbid you from doing it.” Then, when I was silent, she scowled at me. “You won’t do it, will you?”
I sighed and settled down next to her. “I might have if you hadn’t made me realize the cheapness of it,” I said. “And I suppose that Freya will learn the way of it herself. But it would be so nice if she could see me.”
Brid put her arm and her wing around me. “How greedy you are,” she scolded me gently. “Just think of how happy you were that she could hear your voice at all.”
“I am greedy,” I admitted. “But I cannot help it. All I want is to be closer to her, to understand her better and for her to understand me.”
“It will come,” Brid assured me, “and be more real and therefore sweeter for the waiting.”
We sat together in silence for quite some time, just enjoying the quiet. Then she felt me twitch. “She’s calling you, isn’t she?”
“She must be impatient,” I said, a wide grin crossing my face. “She can’t be home from work yet.”
“She’s not the only one who’s impatient,” Brid laughed. I was already on the wing, returning to Freya’s side.
She was in the car, having just started it up for the drive home. “There you are,” she said, switching off the radio. “Talk to me.”
“What would you like me to say?”
She angled her head in my direction and turned on her turn signal. “Still fuzzy, but getting better. Keep talking. I don’t really care about what. No, scratch that,” she said before I said anything. “Tell me what you thought of earlier, before I got pulled away.”
I sighed. “I know how I might be able to show myself to you.”
Her eyes widened. “You mean I might be able to hear and see you? You figured it out?”
“I did.”
“Well, then, let’s see it, angel,” she said eagerly.
“I remind you that I am expressly forbidden to do so by my seniors.”
“Oh, right.” She fell back against the drivers’ seat with a scowl, switching on the cruise control. “What would they do to you if you disobeyed them?” she asked after a moment. “You’ve told me about the kind of punishments you had to deal with as a Cupid—would it be different as a Guardian?”
“Likely the consequences would be harsher, as obedience is greatly valued among the Guardians, and rightly so.” I looked at her face to see if she was understanding me. “What I fear most,” I said, speaking slowly and clearly, “is that I might be separated from you.”
“They would take you away from me?”
“You would not be left unguarded, of course,” I assured her.
“That’s not what I’m worried about!” Her voice was rising, and she stomped on the brake in front of a stop sign. “Where do they get off? You’re my Guardian, and I already know everything, so why shouldn’t I be able to see you? It would make things so much easier, and anyway I want to see you.”
Though her words were disrespectful in tone, I couldn’t help but feel a little pleased at them. “You will learn to, in time,” I told her, “and it will be more genuine for the learning. And I think that my seniors were thinking of your well-being. It is much better that you step gradually into our understanding of the cosmos than be pulled in before you are ready.”
She grumbled at this, but her indignation was subsiding. By the time she’d pulled to a stop in her driveway and switched off the car, she was calm again.
“So you’re saying that I’ll get better at hearing you?” she asked, looking in my direction. “And maybe I’ll eventually start seeing you?”
“Yes, and the better for having learned it yourself.”
She sighed. “Okay. But are you at least allowed to help me learn how? Not by doing it for me, but by letting me know if I’m on the right track.”
“I think I can manage that, Freya.”
At that she smiled. “Every time you say my name, it rings as clear as a bell.”
“The most important words come first, it seems.”
“Stop it, you’ll make me blush,” she said, her smile stretching to a grin. She gathered up her things and got out of the car.
“Freya,” I called her, and she stopped on the step and looked back at me.
“Yes?”
I had only called her because I could, because of the joy it brought me that she could hear. But then I thought of a question. “What does my voice sound like to you?”
She considered. “Warm,” she said. “And deep. The kind of voice you could just curl up in and fall asleep.” Then she winked at me. “But you mumble, boy. Better work on that.”
I certainly will. We both will.