EIGHT
If you’d asked me a few days ago to guess what it would be like to hang out with an angel, I probably would have said warm. Cosy. I mean, I wouldn’t have expected harps and halos or anything, but I’d figure it would be a bit ethereal. All pastel colours and soft filters and kooky camaraderie, like a dream sequence in a Michel Gondry movie. Wise words and kindly smiles, that sort of thing.
As it turns out, it’s actually kind of stressful. To start with, when I hurry downstairs at 6 a.m., I find the Being trying to jump through the window. Not out of, through. She takes a run-up towards the window, like an athlete about to perform a long-jump, and slams her arm against the double glazing. There’s a loud thud and she staggers back, clutching her bicep and groaning. Perry runs around her ankles, delighted at this strange new game. I drop the bag of food I’ve brought with me and race towards them.
‘Stop it!’ I grab the Being’s wrist and pull her back. ‘You’ll hurt yourself!’
The Being wrenches my hand off her arm, and I let out a scream. She’s much stronger than she looks – it feels like my hand is about to be ripped clean off my wrist. She spins on her heels, her teeth bared, and hisses something in that weird musical language of hers. Any trace of cherubic innocence is gone; right now, she’s more wolf than angel.
‘It’s OK!’ My hand is throbbing. When I pull it back, there are half-moon marks where her fingernails have dug into my skin. I hold my palms out towards her, like I did last night. My heart is pounding. The shock of yesterday’s Fall has worn off: she is bared teeth, claws poised, garnet eyes blazing.
‘It’s me – Jaya . . . I found you, remember? I hid you. I’m trying to help you.’
She snarls something in reply. Beneath the scowl, I can see she’s trying not to wince with pain. The skin of her upper arms and shoulders is already bruised deep purple from trying to break through the glass, and her right wing is bent back so far it looks like it might rip right off. As she tries to beat them together, her face wrinkles in agony. Golden blood is smeared across the walls and on the sofa, and there are pinkish feathers scattered across the carpet. I feel a sudden stab of guilt. I should have wrapped it up for her last night.
‘Let me find a bandage,’ I say. ‘Just sit down, OK?’
I go to the bathroom, moving slowly so the Being doesn’t freak out again. There’s a box of first-aid supplies under the sink, including two rolls of bandages. I find three packets of painkillers in there, presumably for the days when Shona’s crystals just won’t cut it, but I decide against giving them to her. It’d be just my luck to find the world’s only living angel and kill her with a couple of ibuprofen.
The damage is worse than I realized. There’s a huge gap in the wing where loads of the smaller middle and outer feathers have fallen out, and the tissue around the edges is all bloody and inflamed.
‘Jeez.’ I wince. ‘OK, this might sting a bit . . .’
Her moans are so loud that I have to turn up the radio, just in case Dad and Rani hear through the ceiling. The blood seeps through the bandage, turning it a dull gold. The Being picks at the corners, sniffing at it in distaste. Still, it does seem to help. The pained expression on her face relaxes a little, and she stops snarling every time I try to come near her. It’ll take a while for me to build any trust, I know, but it feels like a first step.
The morning passes in a blur. Everything is foreign to her. She tries to eat Shona’s incense, cuddles the bonsai tree like a baby, keeps peeking inside the radio to see where the voices are coming from. Even furniture is a confusing concept. At half past nine, I go to the shop to fetch some breakfast and come back to find a stack of kitchen chairs piled like the makings of a bonfire on the table. She tries to climb to the top of the stack, but they slip off and she tumbles to the floor, landing on her bum with a thump.
She looks so bewildered that I burst out laughing. The Being stares at me for a moment. Her head drops into her hands, and she starts to cry. My heart swells with guilt and worry.
‘Sorry, sorry.’ I kneel beside her and try to take her hand in mine, but she pulls it away. ‘It’s OK. You’re OK.’
But she’s not. Of course she’s not. Since the Falls began, there have been hundreds of articles written about what the angels’ arrival might mean for us: the rapture, an apocalypse, the crumbling of heaven . . . but I haven’t heard many people wonder what it means for the Being themselves. Perhaps their countries are falling apart. Maybe they’re being cast out from their homes, or killed in some sort of mass genocide. It could be that the Falls are actually leaps of faith, that the risk is better than what awaits them up in the sky.
‘Please don’t cry,’ I say, though I know it’s like using a cloth to soak up a flood. ‘You’re safe here, I promise.’
I don’t try to take her hand again. Instead, I gingerly pat her head. This close, the thing that leaves me breathless isn’t the glittery sheen of her skin, or the enormous wings sprouting from her shoulder blades; it’s how human she looks. Her face stretches and crumples with the same expressions, her hands shake like ours do and her eyes fill with the same confusion or fear.
There are differences, though. Her skin is so much softer, impossibly soft, and her hair feels different to mine – kind of waxy, like fake flower petals. I can sense her shoulders stiffen as I touch it, but she doesn’t pull away. Her strange musical moans fill the room, almost drowning out the radio. It’s a good thing there’s a bagpiper playing an ear-splitting version of Bryan Adams’s ‘Heaven’ outside, because otherwise I’m pretty sure half the street would be able to hear her, never mind Rani and Dad.
‘Come on,’ I say. ‘Let’s get you something to eat.’
She doesn’t like the croissants or the instant porridge pots I brought back for breakfast, so I raid Shona’s cupboard and find some more biscuits: party rings, digestives and half a pack of ginger nuts. I help her unwrap the party rings and pick out two pink-and-yellow ones. For the first time that day, a tiny smile spreads across her face.
‘Good, right?’
I make myself a cup of tea and sit in what I’m guessing is Shona’s favourite seat: an ancient, sagging armchair covered in worn purple paisley. The Being leans back against the sofa, wincing as her bad wing rubs against the fabric. The clothes that I dressed her in last night are now scattered across the floor. My leggings are ripped in two, and the neck of Mum’s jumper has been stretched so wide it’d fall right over my shoulders.
I’m pretty sure if I were hanging out with a naked girl who I’d only just met under any other circumstances I’d be a) mortified b) probably confused and c) possibly turned on, if she was hot (OK, more than possibly). With the Being, it’s like . . . nothing. I mean, I definitely don’t feel the urge to tug my own clothes off or anything, but it’s also not weird or embarrassing. If anything, my skinny jeans and Years & Years T-shirt start to feel a bit ridiculous.
‘Where did you come from?’ I keep asking her. She doesn’t reply, of course, but images float into my mind. I picture places with clouds for ground, houses spinning in orbit like satellites, entire towns floating across the blue. Invisible cities, impossible worlds. It’s like trying to imagine a colour that doesn’t exist, but it still sends thrilled shivers across my skin – knowing there could be a whole other universe waiting for us to discover.
Unless she really did fall from the afterlife. Golden gates and fluffy clouds, angels playing harps, and salted caramel H?agen-Dazs for dinner. I mean, angels come from heaven – any four-year-old could tell you that. In a way, it’s the most obvious answer.