“There is genocide in Darfur,” one of them stated suddenly, his voice like the rumble of thunder at a distance. The angel turned its hooded head to stare at Remy, and he recognized Suroth.
Suroth’s eyes were distant, still seeing the atrocites perpetrated by supposedly civilized cultures in the western Sudan. Tears of sorrow streamed down his face, the manifestation of the sadness he witnessed.
Remy remained silent, allowing the angel’s eyes to focus upon him.
“Hello, brother,” Suroth stated, a hint of a smile teasing the corners of his mouth. “I sensed that someone of an angelic persuasion was visiting us, and I’m pleasantly surprised to see that it is you.”
“Hello, Suroth.” Remy bowed his head slightly.
“It has been too long,” the Nomad leader stated, moving toward Remy, away from the others, who continued to stand in quiet observation.
Suroth was huge. Even covered in robes, the Nomad leader couldn’t hide what he had once been, an Archangel commander in service to God. But he had abandoned his weapons of war, shed his armor, and replaced them with the robes of the wandering Nomadic order.
An order in search of answers to the questions birthed by the savagery of war.
“It’s horrible,” Remy said, looking out over the world. “Horrible what they do to one another.”
Suroth’s large hands disappeared within the sleeves of his robe. “It has gone on since the beginning, and will continue until they are no more.”
“I like to think that eventually they’ll learn.”
“As we learned?” Suroth asked. “Beings that once stood within the radiance of our Lord and Creator?”
Remy remained silent. There was truth to the angel’s words. The Great War had shown how far from perfection they actually were.
“To what do I owe this visit?” Suroth then asked. “Have you come at last to join us, brother Remiel?” the Nomad leader continued, using Remy’s formal name. “Adding your mysteries to our own, awaiting a day when we will have our solution, and a new beginning will dawn.”
“It would be nice,” Remy said, returning his focus to the rooftop and the powerful angelic being towering before him. “No, I’m afraid I’ve come with some bad news.”
Suroth tilted his head inquisitively. “Bad news, brother?”
Remy nodded. “One of your own has died,” he said. “We found him in a Denizen hiding place. He’d given himself to them.”
The Nomad leader said nothing, his eyes again going frosty as he searched the world.
“He was called Amael,” Suroth stated. “I feared something like this.”
“I spoke with him before he ended his life,” Remy explained. “He said that he deserved what was happening to him.”
“Amael never truly adjusted to our Nomadic ways,” the leader of the order said. “The pull of Heaven was great upon him, but the guilt over what he had done in God’s name… he felt that it robbed him of his place there, that there was no way he could ever return.”
Remy recalled the look of torment on the angel’s face. “He said that he bore a secret sin; that was why he had to suffer.”
Suroth leaned his head back, his features lost within the shadow of his hood. “We all have our secrets, Remiel.”
Remy glanced toward the building’s edge, and found that the others had all turned and were staring. He could feel the intensity of their eyes upon him.
“For some, the weight becomes too much to bear.”
It was silent on the rooftop, and Remy began to wonder if they had gone back to observing the world again, when Suroth spoke.
“His material form?”
“Destroyed,” Remy said. “I couldn’t leave it for the scavengers.”
“We owe you a great thanks, Remiel,” the leader said, and all bowed in unison.
“No problem,” Remy told them. “I thought you should know.”
He glanced at his watch. He’d had pretty much all he could take of the mysterious Nomads, and besides, he was supposed to meet Francis for lunch.
“Your time with us is at an end?” Suroth asked.
Remy put his hands into his coat pockets. “Other responsibilities,” he stated. He backed up toward the door. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he said, immediately feeling like an idiot.
“Are you certain that you must leave?” Suroth asked. The other hooded Nomads had come to stand around him. “Our number is deficient by one,” he stated, holding up a long finger. “Do you not seek the same answers as we?” the Nomad asked. “Join with us, brother, and we shall find the solutions together.”
“Join with us, brother,” the other Nomads repeated in unison, their hands reaching out, beckoning to him.
“I’m sorry,” he told them. “The answers I need I’ll find on my own.”
Suroth’s hands disappeared inside his robes again.
“Know that there will always be a place for you,” the leader said.
The others had already left him, returning to the building’s edge, looking out beyond the city, singing their strange song, searching for the answers to the questions of their existence.
Francis was sitting outside at a table in the far corner of the little Piazza café on Newbury Street.
Remy was about to call out to his friend when he realized that the former Guardian angel had hidden himself from the lunch crowd that was taking full advantage of the first springlike day. Remy did the same, anyone who had taken notice thinking that he had been nothing more than a trick of sunlight and shadow on their eyes.
“Why are you sitting here invisible?” he asked, joining his friend.
Francis craned his neck to see around him. “I don’t want to be obvious.”
“Obvious about what?” Remy asked, turning to follow Francis’ gaze.
He could see a waitress taking an order from a table of two women, multiple shopping bags at their feet. “The two women?” he asked.
Francis shook his head. “The waitress.”
“The waitress?” Remy turned in his seat again.
She was cute—tiny—no taller than five-two, shoulder-length dark hair, athletic build. She danced on the line of beautiful but clearly didn’t take herself too seriously, a nice quality to have.
“Very nice,” Remy said as he turned back to Francis. “Now, why are you sitting here, invisible, watching a waitress?”
Francis shrugged, his eyes behind dark-framed glasses following the woman as she walked across the patio and into the restaurant.
“Y’know, that’s a good question,” he said. “One that I’ve been trying to put my finger on for the last few weeks.”
“You’ve been watching her for a few weeks?”
Francis nodded. “Think it has something to do with the whole Guardian angel thing. In the old days she would’ve had a legion of us fighting over the right, but now she’s got nothing.”
The waitress returned with a tray of drinks for the ladies: a Corona for one and some kind of fancy cocktail for the other.
“Her name’s Linda Somerset: age thirty-five, was married, but now divorced, takes night classes in childhood development at Northeastern, lives in Brighton.”
Remy looked back at his friend. “What, no astrological sign? No dress size?”
“She’s a Leo, and her dress size is—”
“Enough,” Remy said, holding up his hand. “It’s very nice that you’ve found a hobby in stalking this poor woman.”
“Not stalking,” Francis said indignantly. “I’m looking out for her well-being.”
Linda left the waiter’s station to check on one of her other tables.
“Why don’t you just introduce yourself?” Remy asked. “Talk to her.”
“I couldn’t do that,” Francis said bluntly. “That’s not how it works.”
“How what works? You’re not a Guardian anymore, so why are you acting like one?”
“Old habits die hard, I guess,” Francis said.
“I guess,” Remy agreed. He crossed his legs, watching the crowds pass on the busy Boston street.