gave to you, as Leigh Ann Elfman: the grey areas of fuzzy thinking before blinding clarity of all aspects. But the final words asked of you were: Do you understand? That question only you can answer.”
Another smaller, almost insignificant question nags me. “Quatama, I know this is going to sound trivial, but the names of the angelfolk—Lucifer, Affaeteres, Michael, Eve, Ashtoreth and so on, they seem to originate from different Earth cultures much more historically recent than these ancient events in Eliom. How is it that the angelfolk had these names beforehand?”
Again, Quatama smiles patiently. “The Eliomese language was rich and varied. It contained many nuances that later translated into different Earth languages as the angelfolk incarnated. As mankind developed writing and other cultural tools, the linguistic trace memories of the Eliomese became homogenized within human languages, religions and myths, as did many other Eliomese traits.”
I nod. His explanation makes sense, although I haven’t the foggiest idea as to how trace memories continue between incarnations, despite my own doing exactly that.
“Time to return to Earth and sleep now, Leianna, for your mind, as much as your mortal body, now requires rest. I will prevent Bael from disturbing it.”
“He . . . he’s asked that we be allowed to heal the rift.”
Quatama studies me intensely. His eyes seem to bore into my heart, to painlessly dissect it and restore it to wholeness again. “Such healing lies not in your and Bael’s hands alone. You and he were victims of the rift, not its authors. But you, Leianna, may provide a light to guide him in his darkness. Tell him he will be monitored. Now you must return to Earth. The mortal dawn in your hemisphere is not far away.”
I hesitate, a final question on my lips too embarrassing to ask a spirit master.
Quatama’s own thin lips slowly stretch into a tolerant grin. “If he proves himself sincere, we will relax our vigilance . . . at times.”
I am about to explain, to tell him that my love for Bael has survived the centuries. But Quatama’s fluted laughter fills my ears, and I float on each note, homeward bound.
Descending, descending, until my mind floats in a peaceful void, and I am whole again, all of me stacked neatly within my mortal flesh, sprawled in slumber upon my Earthly bed.
CHAPTER 11
An image of Terence, anxiously staring at me, awoke me.
—You’re back,— I thought. His disappearance had markedly paralleled Bael’s arrival in my life.
—You’ve got the devil himself shadowing your steps.—
—Bael?—
—Baelzebub. —
—No, not the same,— I shot back. —A fantasy god created hundreds of years ago by uneducated mortals. By human ignorance.—
Daniel whimpered. I stretched, loosening my muscles.
Ginnie’s alarm clock buzzed. My sister moaned, tightened the covers about her, and tried to ignore the clock’s whine.
I got out of bed, bracing myself against the chill in the room. I walked over to Ginnie’s dresser and pushed in the alarm switch. “You’d better get up, Gin. School day.”
Daniel was also awake. I picked him up and carried him back to my bed, slipping my legs back under the covers and pulling the edge of the blanket around him.
“What time is it?” Ginnie mumbled.
“Seven.”
“Mmn.” In one continuous motion, Ginnie flung off her blankets and scurried to the bathroom down the hall, making chilly noises on the way. Daniel had begun to nod off again, lulled by the extra warmth of my blanket and my body heat.
I didn’t disturb him. I savored the quiet, the renewed warmth.
Terence approached me again. In my mind’s eye, I could see him clearly: moderate height, shoulder-length dark blond hair, watery blue eyes, stolid proletarian curves in his Anglo-Saxon face. A solid Englishman . . . yet not quite as proper a Brit as he’d wish to appear.
I had “met” him in New York’s Central Park in January, 1969, about two months after his death. He had played a trick on me when we met, but I caught him at it. He hadn’t expected me to, as he bent down to softly kiss my lips and lightly brush his hand across my shoulder and breast. He was new to the afterlife and, up till then, no other mortal had paid the slightest attention to his ethereal presence. He hadn’t known I was psychic. His curiosity made him follow me home to my Manhattan apartment where I lived in 1968 and 1969, enjoying my first taste of adult freedom, working as a typist and dating Richard. Terence promptly made himself at home in my apartment and kept humming a haunting strain of classical music, piquing my own curiosity when he claimed the musical passage was from his own composition. I finally tracked down the debut album of Terence’s work, which also became his only recorded work. His music had been beautiful, produced by a major label. The album blurb praised him as an emerging talent. But he, as a classical composer, while he welcomed the money, felt his success was a fluke. The critics had been scathing, and opportunities to perform his work live, the proper venue for classical music, evaporated. His compositions had contained descriptive fantasy elements, a sort of program music made popular in the 19th Century. He later found out that the record company had classified his compositions as instrumental pop music, which horrified him. He knew his work was not well-regarded by the classical community.
The scant articles I found on him agreed. Terence Dearborn’s brilliance, properly nurtured, might have developed into genius. But due to “a romantic temperament,” Terence had floundered on his first steps to success, insisting that the style of the 19th Century romantic composers was equally valid as a modern compositional form, but turning down other modern opportunities to prove it. A film company approached him with an offer to compose the background music for an upcoming fantasy movie. He refused the offer, again believing that the world trivialized his musical vision. He soon wore out the help and compassion of colleagues and friends trying to save him from himself.
One blustery night, late in the Autumn of 1968, having wandered away from a friend’s party and drunk on booze, pills and self-indulgence, he drowned in the sea off Blackpool. The authorities ruled his death a suicide. Terence said that it wasn’t.
He didn’t seem to regret dying at the tender age of twenty-nine. The afterlife suited him, no more worries over material sustenance and shelter. He continued composing on the upper planes and shared his love of music with me by helping me when I played my guitar, developing my talent.
But lately his constant advice on my personal life had become irksome. He was, after all, only my secondary guide, and inexperienced. My major guide was an older man named Emmett, tall and thin, always clothed in a brown robe.
Brown robe! The reenactment of my immortal Naming Day flooded back into my mind. A brown robe! Both Quatama and Gabriel had worn such robes. Michael—the man I now knew to be my immortal father—had been dressed in simple white. His face now came strongly to mind. Although identical to his brother Gabriel, both with cropped brown hair and quiet brown eyes, both with thin but strong jawed faces, I knew that Michael was also the major spirit guide who called himself Emmett. Like Michael, Emmett was quiet, shy, and wise enough to point me, not push me, as a guide.
But why the deception? Why the false name?
—Because
