The Angel

There are times in a life where everything changes all at once, and not in the way you were expecting, and it just takes a little while to settle into it. The next few days were settling days for Bri. She spent them arranging her yurt as she liked, struggling with round architecture for the first time, and trying to figure out how to function without electricity and water. The yurt had a small woodstove that she had to be taught how to light. Water had to be carried from a small stone well behind the house. When she asked about the bathroom Sylvan explained that that’s what woods were for, and tossed her a shovel and some toilet paper. “Make sure it’s at least six inches down!” he advised, to her withering glare.

After the first few days she got restless and started exploring the road. It was a long winding creature, with dozens of driveways snaking off, houses hidden behind the trees, as if inviting her to come visit, but warning her off at the same time. She’d hear dogs barking from one, the hum of a generator from another, a shout from an unknown child echoing off in the trees. These were solitary folks, happy to be in their own isolated world.

Without daring to go down any driveways she was left to seek out the woods, an endless blanket of logging land. Sylvan showed her some of the edible berries and plants, and if she brought them back, he would help her prepare them, and they’d eat together with Ferrious either uncomfortably joining, or lurking in the background. Sylvan had warned her his father would be angry if he knew that the secret was out, so they agreed not to tell him. The older satyr continued to look like a fat balding man with hair on either side that curved up like horns, baggy sweatpants, and an older paint splattered t-shirt. The clothes never seemed to change, her brain’s fault, in reality she knew he wasn’t wearing anything at all, and she was grateful for the disguise. She didn’t know if she could deal with two naked satyrs. One was bad enough.

After the shock of magic and satyrs and her life exploding, she had to adjust to the shock of the calm quiet world she had been plunged into. At night it was eery, complete silence until she’d hear a twig snap, or a wolf howl, or an owl scream and she’d start up in bed. Her dreams were intense vibrant things, full of the sounds around her. She’d be wandering an empty place, silent until a thump would make her aware of Sylvan, large and virile clumping towards her on huge hooves, his scent thick in her nose, and she’d be scrambling back from him and the ground would creak beneath her, and then he’d change into a bull, black and powerful, who would trample over her until she would awake covered in sweat with the sense that she was lying on a huge snake and the bull was trying to trample that instead.

Then she would lie awake in the silence, broken occasionally by the skitter of a mouse, and think, unable to get back to sleep. She’d run her fingers across every inch of her body, just in case there were some glamour, some part of herself she couldn’t see, and there never was. The inside of the yurt was pitch black, darker than anywhere she had ever been before, and she would wait hours, unable to get out of bed until the sky started to light up.

There was never wind on Old Landes lane except from the north. Dawn would break cold, and she’d bundle herself up and sit on her front porch drinking hot water with some cedar leaves dipped in, that she called ‘tea’ with her cat winding around her ankles, and watched Sylvan go by with his herd of goats, a good twenty of them. The first time she heard him talk to them, a rich deep bleat coming out of his human seeming mouth, it had startled her so much she had yelped, and he’d laughed and bleated something - at her this time. Now she took it for granted that he talked fluent goat. They all seemed to understand each other.

“What are you saying to them?” She asked one morning as he paused out of breath. “I think the best translation would be repeated iterations of ‘get back in line you god forsaken w***e!’ and ‘move or I’ll tan your backside bloody!’”
“Oh.” She hadn’t expected that. “What do they say back?”
“I wouldn’t want to offend your feminine ears.” He cast his eyes down demurely. “See you!” And he was off, bleating at them, and them bleating who knows what, back.

She would talk to him in the evening, when he would bring her offerings of ingredients and she would turn it into food for them both, the agreement they seemed to have silently come to. She’d pepper him with questions she’d thought of during the day.
“Do you, y’know, with your goats?” She asked one day, blushing furiously.
“Have sex?”
“Yeah.”
“No.” He frowned. “I’ve never had sex with a female anything.”
“Isn’t that kinda what you’re - all about?” She asked puzzled.
“We’re about fertility. Satyr sperm will instantly get you pregnant with a litter of maybe five satyr babies, and they don’t make satyr sized condoms,” he said, gesturing. It makes sex a little more daunting when you know that kind of responsibility waits on the other side.”
“So - um - how big is your family?”
“We go out for a full family reunion every couple years or so, there are around two hundred of us. There’s a commune about three hours drive south of here where we raise most of the babies.”
“two hundred,” She repeated.
“Yeah, we have three times that many born of course, but the die offs are pretty high too. Few satyrs make it past adolescence.”
“Why?”
“Because they try to sleep with human girls and that would definitely reveal the secret when they get pregnant with five goat babies and see it on the ultrasound. So bad things happen to stop them.”
“Are all satyrs male?”
“All of them. A giant mega-super race of baby making goat men.”
“So the moms are all . . . ?”
“Goats, mostly, but I’ve known a few who won’t pass up a sheep or a horse either. Rumor has it we can make anything female pregnant. The ones who survive learn to appreciate other things.”
“What about . . . ?”
“Yes, giant gay satyr orgies are pretty much all we do at family reunions.”

Ferrious went into town once a week for reasons he wasn’t clear on, and offered to take her in and back if she liked.
“You’d better find some work soon dear,” he suggested in his gravelly voice, “I don’t rent for free you know.”
“Thanks.” She told him icily. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Don’t frown like that. You’re prettier when you smile,” he snarled. Then cranked the volume all the way up on the stereo and sped along the winding curves of El Sol all the way into town. She didn’t mind the lack of conversation. He dropped her off at the library, promising to be back three hours.

She confidently strode into the bank, waited until it was different teller than before, and asked to withdraw some cash. She was wearing clothes and her eyes were less bloodshot. The teller gave her the forty dollars without question.

Then she got some groceries, and retreated to the library to check her email. That done, she did some research, minotaurs, satyrs, angels - there was nothing resembling what she’d learned from Sylvan. She checked out some books, mythology and fairytales, just in case, and was ready when Farrious came to pick her up. He looked tired. Just to make conversation she asked where he’d been.
“At the fertility clinic watching pretty women,” he leered. She shut her mouth. He turned up the music again.

“Why is he so mean to me?” She asked Sylvan that evening.
“He’s like that with all women,” Sylvan told her, “It’s how he’s survived so long. I think it’s that if he treats women poorly they’ll treat him poorly and neither will ever be attracted to each other.”
“Does he really go sit in the fertility ward and look at pretty women?”
He laughed, “Is that what he told you? It’s true! - not for the reason you think though.”
“Why?”
“It’s his community service. Just being around a satyr makes women more fertile. By sitting in that ward he’s doing more good than any of their drugs are. Same reason I sleep in the goat pen during rutting season.”
“If he hates women so much why did he let me come?”
“Because we need the money. We make goat cheese and sell it at the farmer’s market, but it’s never enough. You were the only person to answer our ad.”

She nodded, finally understanding. They were not so different from the people she was accustomed to. Everything had a reason, if only she could find it.

When she mentioned she wanted to try and find the angel, Sylvan dug in his hooves and refused to go. “We don’t even know what Helga is, or what she knows. Are we really going to trust her?”
“We’ll be careful.”

“If you want to risk your life . . . “

He told her the address and let her go reluctantly. She walked down the pothole filled muddy road, wondering as she often did, about the old telephone poles that occasionally branched out from the forest. As she walked down Theresa’s driveway she saw another, hidden among the trees.

Theresesa’s house was a small cabin with big sliding glass walls on every side, and a deck that stretched all the way around. She saw a solar array mounted on the upper story, and a big satellite dish on top. The wood was grey and chipped, the garden looked like it had been weeded once this summer but surely not since. There was a small blue car parked in front under an awning that also held stack upon stack of firewood. She knocked, on the front door, waited, yelled hello, knocked again - and finally heard someone coming down the stairs. A thin blond woman opened the door.

“Hello?” She asked, clearly bewildered to have a visitor.
“Hi, I’m Briana” Bri said
“Hi I’m Theresa,” said the woman, and then waited.
“I - just moved here. I’m renting from Farrius?”
“Oh, Farrius, yes, I run into him on the road sometimes.” A pause. “Are you doing alright with him? That  sexist pig.”
“I - yes, but that’s part of why I’ve come,” Bri lied. “I want to get to know other people on the lane just so I’m not stuck there if I feel unsafe,  you know?”
“That’s smart thinking,” said Theresa, “You come my way if he ever gets those grimy paws near you - or his sleazy son either- I don’t have much space here mind, but it’s better than having to put up with him. You know if I were you, I’d talk to Hilda out by the front of the road because she’s got that big barn, and she’d understand, and she just had her husband die, and I think she could use the company really - I see her when she comes by for vibrational medicine from time to time, and she always seems lonely despite . . .” she paused for a breath.
“What’s vibrational medicine?”
“Oh you know, like for chakra realignment, when your energetic lines get tangled on a quantum level, and we have to affect the energetic body with energy tones to alter the somatic qualities of your brain waves?”
“I’m still not sure?” Interjected Bri
“There’s a tonal quality to the astral body that projects alpha waves into the universe, which are echoed by the digressional reassessment of vibrational medicine. Your chakras get muddled up by negative energy states and have to be reset by one of the four color levels, white, yellow, green, and red which correspond to . . . “
“Maybe it would be easier if you showed me?” Bri interrupted.
“Hmm, yes, I’m sensing a lot of red in your aura right now.” Theresa said. She pulled out a bell and rang it. “How does that make you feel?”
“Nothing?” said Bri, she was starting to feel like leaving.
“Hmm, and this?”
“Kinda annoyed, honestly.” said Bri
“Good. Good. How about this one?”
“Strangely tired?”

She woke up in an armchair, in Theresa’s house, feeling more refreshed than she had in years. Theresa was in the kitchen. She realized the sound that had woken her was a tea kettle whistling. Theresa poured the water into an old china teapot that smelled of Licorice and and brought it over with some sugar cookies. “Sometimes that happens when there are strong traumatic blocks.” She explained and sat down.

“I actually had another reason why I came,” said Bri after she’d taken a bite of sugar cookie.
“You want to know if I’m human because Hilda told you I was an angel. You were out for a couple hours and I had a chance to do an IChing reading for you. I know I shouldn’t have, terribly invasive really, but I was so curious after you showed up like that, I couldn’t help myself - and after arriving on the road in a car crash, I do believe you’re here to bring the whole road to a new frequency.”
“I- you know,” stammered Bri.
“Yes, I am what Hilda calls an angel. Really I’m just a vibrational sub mutation of an angel, but that doesn’t matter so much.”
“Can I see you?” Bri asked.
“I usually don’t let anybody see my true form unless it’s absolutely necessary. Most people find it a little unnerving.”
“I can take it.” Bri assured her.
“If you’re sure. You can never unsee me.”
Bri steeled herself. “I’m sure.”
“Ready?” asked Theresa
“Ready,” said Bri
“BE NOT AFRAID,” boomed/whispered/vibrated the thing before her. Bri slammed over in her chair, breaking an armrest and barely catching herself on a still bruised arm before hitting the floor with the chair on top of her. She had to stop reacting like this.

In front of her was a million wings, arms, eyes, tentacles, stretching into infinity. Her eyes couldn’t quite grasp the geometry of the thing, she was somehow simultaneously able to see every side of it. An infinite object, illuminated in blinding white light that should have lit her on fire, backdropped by the perfectly ordinary kitchen counter, illuminated by the perfectly ordinary early summer sun. She couldn’t peel her eyes from the thing, the rip in the universe that was Theresa. There were colors in it that she had never seen before, tones rang in her ears she had never heard, her brain immediately began to ache, burdened by the task of trying to interpret the finite infinity before her.

She watched as the infinity cycled itself towards her, spinning until a chair shaped bit was closest to her, broke off that bit of itself, and shoved it into reality. Then it extended a tentacle to grab the broken pieces around Bri, pulling them into itself where they turned back into - music? Then it had shuffled itself - that was the best way her brain could manage to describe it -  so that a Theresa shaped bit was forward and reality closed in around her, until it was just her, smiling down at Bri, an older blond haired woman who was actually just a bit of eldritch monster wiggling like a finger puppet.
Bri’s ears still rang, afterimages kept flickering in the air, her brain not quite convinced it was really gone, or still processing what it had seen. She sat up. Tested out her limbs. Then remembered to breathe.
“You’re an elder god.” she finally croaked. A lovecraftian elder god.
Theresa laughed, “Oh no no, I’m nothing compared to them. I can just occasionally see a fate, they can actually weave them. Compared to them I’m a dust speck, even still.” It pushed the (chair?) over to Bri, who remained sitting on the floor.
“If they’re so powerful, why is everybody hiding?” She finally asked.

“Used to be they didn’t hide,” said Theresa in a voice that promised a long story. Bri reached out and took another bite of sugar cookie and wondered if she was eating another piece of Theresa. “I think the trouble started when Trickster stole a piece of eternity and hid it inside an ape, or that’s how I heard it - soon we had humankind with all their gifts. Before it had only been the gods with that kind of eternity in their blood, but mankind soon outpaced them in ingenuity. Mostly the difference between having a population of a thousand or so, and the millions humans sported. Some gods tried to destroy them, others decided to rule them, still others interbred with them.

“It was a demigod, he was named Yeshua, you probably know him as ‘Jesus’ who, betrayed by his father, worked some kind of blood magic and cried out - and the Blind eternities turned and looked . . .”
Bri interrupted, “If they were blind, how did they look?”
“I’m telling the story as I heard it. Now the gods all felt it, and felt its pull. Everything with a spark of eternity in them started fading back into the great void. The humans with their tiny lifetimes hardly noticed, but the gods certainly did. They started to lose their creativity and their passion. It also became obvious that eternity pulled more strongly when it saw itself. The gods who humans looked at, prayed to, those faded fastest. The gods who spent time together, they faded too. It was the lone gods, the unknown gods, who kept their brilliance.”

“So they hired us, the angels - we took a small mystery cult around Jesus and strengthened it into the Catholic church. We created Islam a few hundred years later, and didn’t really manage to get to the Americas until we convinced the Europeans to colonize. Our job was to make sure humans stopped worshiping the gods. Jehovah’s punishment was to take all the prayers and worship the other gods fled from. He’s barely a shadow now.

“It was on our recommendation that the gods shaped fate so that the magical beasts would be hidden from humans. The fewer reminders of the old pagan times the easier our job. They couldn’t touch humans with fates of course, since that would bring their deaths, but no such problems with our kind.

“We angels served them faithfully until the gods decided we weren’t doing well enough. The technologists convinced them that if humans had machines they would think the world less magical, and it has worked after a fashion, although with the weakening of the church there are pagan revivalists we would have stamped out long ago.” Theresa sighed. “The Techs took my job, and so here I am selling crystal healing to humans to pass my time. The gods continue to hide from humans and each other. And as long as they persist, we must hide with them.”

The pause lasted for a moment, before Bri realized the story was done.
“So it’s the ‘fates’ the gods put on us that make bad things happen when we try and reveal ourselves?”
“Not all bad, but yes - we are fated to never reveal our magical existence to a human.”

“Why don’t we rebel? Break fate?”
“There is no breaking a fate that the gods have placed on you - sometimes you can wiggle around it, but that usually ends up quite poorly. You’ve just got to live with it dear.” Theresa sighed again. “Besides, it’s hard to have a revolution by yourself. Even the gods combined their power to overturn their forefathers.”
“We have you, and me, and Hilda and S-” she began before realizing she had promised not to reveal Sylvan. “- some others,” she finished lamely.
“Most of us old creatures once served them. Nevermind that they currently prefer the scientists as their means of working in the world - I believe that eventually science will reveal itself as a form of magic. Mankind will start believing in the old gods again - they have already begun - and they will turn to angels to preserve them once again.”

There was so much to take in. Now she had gods in  the picture, and she still couldn’t get the image of Theresa as a tentacle filled sock puppet out of her head.

“I should go,” she finally said, “but before I do - I’m not human am I?”
“No, when I did my tarot reading, it said you definitely weren’t.”

Bri could have sworn it was an IChing reading before, but she let it pass. “What am I?”
“I don’t know dear. All I know is that humans have free will, the gods cannot touch them, but you are wrapped powerfully in a fate that pulls you in a dozen directions, so that even I do not know where it ends.”