“Tell me why you are here.” He tightened his grip. Drops of blood bubbled from the corners of her mouth.
“Because she wanted me to come. Margaret Quinn.” She was losing her breath. “She called me into being.”
“And yet you have told the boy. Why have you broken the first rule of safety?”
“Sean needs to be saved too, but he does not know how to ask. None of them do. They no longer truly believe.”
“You're not very smart, Norah Quinn. I could crush you right now and nobody would know. You cannot stay here, do you understand? You cannot become an angel for those who do not ask.”
She could not answer. Blood streamed from her nostrils, and her eyes rolled white. An anguished moan rose from deep within.
His skin reddened, and he began to shake as he lost his strength and stability. Through clenched teeth, he asked again. “What makes you think that anyone needs to believe in angels?”
“All need some reason to hope, to believe.” Twisting her shoulders, she escaped him and stepped back from the fence.
The man appeared powerless and beaten. Trapped by the bars that separated them, he could not reach her and was frozen in place. The ground beneath him rumbled, and around his form a brilliance gathered and intensified with each word. “You are a fool. They will not believe you without some sacrifice from you. You cannot stay with her. You cannot stay with the boy. You must destroy your world to save theirs.”
There was a flash as brief and brilliant as a thousand suns bursting at once, and then too quickly he was gone, before she could speak another word. Vanished into a fog of snow. When she could no longer perceive his form, it seemed to her that he had never been there, as if he had been a snowman she had rolled and patted and molded in her mind, a shape that melted away quickly when she forgot him for just that one moment. Soon even the impression he made in the snow would be gone.
With the back of her sleeve she wiped the blood from her nose and lips, and then she rolled the scarf over her mouth to begin the walk home. As she left the schoolyard, she was humming tunes Mrs. Quinn had sung around the house, songs from her daughter's childhood, when she would bathe Erica in the tub or gently push her on a swing. Lost to the music of her imagination, she almost failed to notice that someone had built a snowman in the middle of nowhere. Wound round his collar was a silk scarf, and on his head was a rakish brown fedora. A few children apparently had braved the storm to create it, and at the sight, she burst with laughter.
He was giving her a final chance, and she knew what must be done. The time was at hand. The stranger had been one of them—a destroyer of worlds. Angel of destruction.
30
Each student cut a slit into the top of a decorated shoebox to ready for valentines. Mrs. Patterson relished the mayhem and enjoyed picking one or two children to spy upon as they navigated the crowded aisles in search of best friends or private crushes, tokens of affection in hand. She loved to see the smiles of the giver and the recipient, and even cherished the disdain on certain faces, particularly the boys, reminding her that they were growing up and would soon be beyond such innocent gestures.
Caught between the nostalgia for their youth and the desire to put such childish things behind them, the third graders moved like sheep in search of the shepherd. Some secretly loved the ceremony and saw the cards as tokens of genuine affection, but the more cynical or shy signed the cheapest store-bought cards—emblazoned with cartoon characters making gentle puns—with just their name or desultory or ironic greetings. An occasional oath toward an enemy. Two of the more notorious claimed to have forgotten completely the special day, which drew the silent approbation of the class. When Mrs. Patterson signaled the exchange, Norah stood first, hefted the lid to her desk, and started the rite with such joy that nearly everyone forgot their trepidation. Red hearts beat a tattoo on box after box.