Thief Read online

  Neat, simple, almost diabolical, and actually relatively safe compared to going against the crime bosses. It would also net a much greater profit in terms of human well being. He could see more and more hospitals and schools being set up, less pollution and misery being spread far and wide, a new age of mass employment and untold happy people.

  Of late those dreams had been lurking constantly in his thoughts, and the business part of his mind had been mulling them over carefully. For while he didn’t yet have all the answers, he had some possibilities he was working on.

  Then on the eighth day, out of the blue two more angels arrived, and his world fell apart. Half of everything he had assumed turned out to be completely false. The other half was worse.

  The new angels were as different from Sherial as winter from summer. For where she was joy and love they were purity and worship. Where she was soft and yielding they were hard and certain. Where she laughed they prayed. She was young and innocent, while they were old and wise. In short they were complete puritans, diamond hard in their belief and intolerant of anything or anyone else. But Donnell and Simony too were angels like her. They too had glorious wings and expansive halos. They too wore white and spoke with their souls, while cooing with their mouths. They too were impossibly beautiful.

  Mikel didn’t like them. It was a strange and disturbing thing not to like an angel, but it was true. He didn’t dislike them either. He simply felt no kinship with them. They were somehow alien in every way, as though they had just arrived from another galaxy.

  In turn he felt their disapproval of him and tried not to whither under it. It wasn’t completely personal he knew, they disapproved of humans in general. Mankind was foolish and unprincipled; in a word childish. But they also didn’t like what he was, what he did, and what he still intended to do. His entire life was quite simply, wrong. Unlike Sherial these angels gave him no credit for his good deeds, no benefit of the doubt. He suspected they didn’t even understand the concept. For these angels Mikel knew, there were no shades of grey, and he was as grey as they came.

  With Sherial, while she too was strictly honest, he could share a joke, laugh at some falsehoods and generally almost tease her. For while she could not let him lie, if the intent behind the false words was both clear and honest, the words themselves were less important, and she would allow him that much. For these two there could be no such thing. The letter of the law was as critical as the intent.

  Donnell and Simony also scared him. With them, as he’d never felt with Sherial, he somehow knew the meaning of the word ‘awe’, and it was as inexplicable as the yearnings he felt for her. In some way he felt both insignificant before an almighty force and also utterly unworthy, and that was the root of his fear. But equally, although they could smite him down with the greatest of ease, logically he knew for certain that they wouldn’t as it would be wrong. On another still deeper level he somehow believed Sherial would have protected him had they tried.

  The newcomers also didn’t hold out much chance of success either, and that too scared him. For while he might not like them, nor they him, he intuited enough of their power, their holiness - if that was the right word, to respect their ability. If Sherial was a basic grade angel, then these two were surely from one of the higher choirs. If they didn’t hold out much hope was there really any to begin with? Sherial too was in the same bind, wondering too if the mission should go ahead, her doubts leaving him in a limbo.

  What troubled him more was that he felt no attraction to them. Sure they scared him and true one was a guy, but even so the other was a woman. And Simony like Sherial was stunningly beautiful. Her face, her body were perfection. She could easily have been Sherial’s elder sister. Perhaps even her good-looking sister, though never to his jaundiced eyes. Her halo shone brighter than the sun and twice as white. Her robes too were of the purest white gossamer thin silk, like Sherial’s showing off her feminine nature to perfection. Her face would have graced the cover of any magazine, totally unadorned by makeup, - which was lucky as she probably wouldn’t approve of make up. If she’d been human she would have had men lining up for miles, but of course she wouldn’t have been happy about it.

  But Mikel felt absolutely nothing towards her. Not even what he would normally feel towards a good-looking woman or the bond he’d feel towards an earthly animal. Simony was identical to Sherial and she was totally alien. That worried him.

  He had assumed that his attraction to Sherial was born out of her exquisite face and form, her glorious wings and sensual dress, and the aura of goodness and love that just radiated from her. But for Simony he felt nothing of the sort, and she was every bit as beautiful and womanly, with an aura just as bright and filled with goodness. Sure she didn’t radiate love, at least not of the type between human beings, but since when had lust had anything to do with love? And then again, why did Sherial radiate such love anyway?

  His paranoia kicked in immediately telling him anew, that after all Sherial was in some way manipulating him, deliberately attracting him to her so he’d help. It was the only explanation that made any sense, and it made none at all. Sherial didn’t manipulate. He knew it as he knew the sun would rise every morning. It simply wasn’t her. Yet it was also the only possible explanation. All her goodness, her love, was a sham, a trap set for him. He couldn’t bring himself to believe it, but logically knew it had to be. Sherial was using him. Playing him like a fiddle.

  But by far the deepest hurt was caused by his pitiful human nature, for as he gazed at them speaking together, on a level so far above him, a raft of emotions ran through him, none of them pleasant. But one was far worse than all the others. For as he saw Sherial with them, talking easily in that language of spirit, he was forced to accept what he had not ever admitted to himself. Sherial too was one of the heavenly threesome. She was an angel.

  It was more than just the similarity of their forms, of their beauty, and their manner of dress. It was in the way they spoke so easily, so intimately. Their body language as they greeted one another, the way they stood so close. The way she smiled when she saw them, and the way they returned her smile, all three obviously glad to see each other. Sherial was an angel. She was not human. She was not even from the same world as him.

  Somewhere in the depths of his mind Mikel had been building this fantasy of Sherial. An impossible imaginary dream of her as his friend, his companion, and in his most hidden thoughts, his lover.

  Until that very second when he saw them together, he would have denied that even to himself. But now seeing them communicating as one, knowing she was not who he had thought, not what he had believed, he understood that he had been dreaming that very dream. In an instant he finally knew that she was not for him. She was an angel. She belonged with others of her own kind. Angels belonged with angels. It was like a rusty knife pushed right through his heart.

  Sherial would be with others like Donnell. An inferno of blackness descended upon him. How did he even know that she didn’t love another angel? He knew nothing about her. She could even be married with kids, for all he knew. Beautiful kids and a heavenly husband. In fact looking at her he suddenly realized, she surely must be. No male, whatever species, could ever have passed her by.

  A giant sword of jealousy followed the knife, savagely tearing him in half. And the worst of it was that he knew he had no claim. He was and always had been completely out of her world. He was a human, a sinner, a thief and a mortal. There could never have been anything between them. He had known that from the very beginning, it being as clear as the nose on his face. But somehow he had always dared to dream even if he hadn’t admitted it even to himself. Now, seeing them together, he knew the dream was dead, ashes in his soul.

  In despair he sat down and watched as the three of them conversed, a conversation of song and spirit that was as always as far beyond him as nuclear physics to an ant. But he didn’t really listen anyway, too lost in his own misery to care. And to add to his misery was the fact that while
these three were here in front of him, he couldn’t concentrate enough even to control his pain. Once he had thought controlling his male lusts was tough. His heartache made them a picnic by comparison.

  In time they left, taking his plans and understanding with them, and leaving behind a Sherial who was uncertain. If she had been human, he would have called her frightened by what had been said. In her uncertainty she didn’t notice his distress, and grateful for her distraction, he used it to slowly pull himself back together. Or perhaps he later guessed, she simply said nothing, knowing there was nothing she could say that would make it any easier.

  In time he managed to win a semblance of order from the chaos of his mind, and he clung to it, desperately, pushing the pain to some dark pit to deal with later, much later. There might never come a time when that hurt would be bearable, but now was not the time to fall apart he knew. There was never a good time to fall apart.

  It was perhaps lucky he did, since the day wasn’t over then. No sooner had Donnell and Simony departed the Sherial began summoning another. He’d known immediately that she was calling for someone else, even understood that it would be someone more powerful still. In essence she was after a second opinion, preferably one from a higher court of appeal. He had worried how much stronger and stricter this next one might be. How much more disapproving of him. But he had at least thought that the someone else would be an angel.

  When the creature she called appeared, he found he was totally unready for him. In fact he might never have been ready for him. For he was nothing like an angel, in fact if anything he resembled an ogre in shape, a massive ogre made of living stone. And that was just the part he could see, for the creature had risen directly out of the ground, indeed was still part of it. He had no feet, rather the very ground under him was his feet. He was of the world in a very physical sense.

  Mikel knew instinctively that like an iceberg, the piece, which had surfaced, was only the tiniest part of the whole. In size he surely was at least that of a mountain, maybe a mountain range. Perhaps even, he was the entire planet, Mikel would put nothing past him. Mikel was told his name was Atal yet he couldn’t help but feel he had once been known as Atlas, the holder of the world upon his shoulders. Mikel didn’t ask, he was scared of the answer.

  Atal too spoke in the angel’s tongue, and he too like Sherial had an aura, but an aura that was very different. For instead of the golden love that was Sherial’s halo, this being had a brilliant white halo, a halo made of the substance of life itself and as vast as the world. In some way Mikel understood, this creature was intimately associated with the workings of all life on this world. And that life was not necessarily organic. Atal was part mother nature, part earth and volcano, and largely elemental spirit.

  The creature was also powerful, Mikel could feel that as clearly as he could feel the heat of the sun. Something about him suggested strength greater than that of all the nuclear weapons of mankind. If he so much as twitched his little finger worlds might end, stars go nova. Of course he wouldn’t twitch that finger.

  The creature; from deep within his childhood teachings he decided to give it the name of a titan, was intimately responsible for the regulation of all life on the planet. Atal used evolution and ecology to its own ends, as well as plate tectonics. It thought in terms of aeons rather than hours. It was ancient. Mikel felt its age as a physical thing, and even if through Sherial he hadn’t learned that this creature and his kind were created with the very worlds they served, he would probably have guessed.

  The titan was also a good being, in much the same way as Simone and Donnell, pure and worshipful, but if anything Atal was far stricter in his devotion, and accordingly, far more powerful. For looking upon him Mikel finally understood the orders of the supernatural. Sherial was an angel who dealt with mortals. As such she could love and communicate with humans, show compassion for sinners, and do miraculous things. But she wasn’t the most powerful. She was the least. She had too much freedom.

  Simone and Donnell were higher order angels, more powerful and therefore more restricted in their duties and freedoms. They didn’t associate with humans, - that might lead into temptation. Moreover, with their greater religious love and purity, they found humans and their sinful ways harder to abide. Harder perhaps, even to understand, as he in turn found them. This creature was stronger again, much stronger, how much more restricted would he be? How much less tolerant of humans?

  But either way the titan paid him no mind as he spoke with Sherial. For a mere human was surely too insignificant for one as powerful as he to notice. He didn’t look down upon him, Mikel realized with concern. The titan barely even knew he existed. He probably barely knew mankind existed.

  As the two of them spoke, Mikel finally started paying attention again. His turmoil unable to be dealt with, somehow he had found the strength of will to accept it and move on. Now was the perfect time to find out more about what was going on here. He doubted Sherial had guessed how much he could learn, given the time to sort through the snippets she gave him. Then again maybe that was an over confidence. She understood an awful lot, and forgave even more.

  Listening with every sense he possessed, he picked up fragments, much as he would have had he tried to read a newspaper being blown in the wind. But still he understood a little of what passed. Only a fraction, but enough to give him serious chills.

  For a start the titan too believed their mission was doomed to failure. The demons were too powerful for mortals to overcome, and the angels too pure to go near them. Any others not close enough to the Lord to be banned from going near the demons were likely to end up with the other unfortunate wretches in the pit. The victims he believed were destined to rot until the Lord decided to intervene, any millennia now. A millennium, Mikel realized, to Atal was nothing.

  But the titan went further in his thoughts, showing a coolness that was simply terrifying to the thief. He believed that the angels had only themselves to blame. They had been shown the light; they had been given their path, had even been guided along it, yet they had chosen to stray. While perhaps they were not evil and they had not rejected the lord, they had still chosen to enjoy his gifts above his service.

  This period of pain would perhaps be a good object lesson for them. In time they would emerge, cleaner and clearer, the hardship tempering the excesses of their youth. As for the humans themselves trapped within, they too were victims of their own weakness. While all perhaps did not fully deserve their fates, it was not forever. The lord would act in time to right all the wrongs. He believed that it was the Lord’s will that this had been permitted. That after all, was the purpose of free will. In time all would be set to right, and all would understand the purpose.

  In doing what she was, Sherial and the others who had supported her, while not actually going against the Lord’s will, were perhaps not completely obeying him either. He wasn’t sure of it, and told her so, but his doubt was enough to scare Sherial as perhaps nothing else could. Atal wondered if perhaps the younger angel had been too long with the humans. If perhaps some of their ways had rubbed off.

  But he didn’t try to stop her, if only because he wasn’t sure. Instead he told her to examine her thoughts closely, to make sure there was no deviance in them, as he would examine his. He told her to ask their Father for his wisdom, and to listen clearly. It was, Mikel gathered, a question more of faith than anything else, of trust in the Lord to do what was right. Bad things happened because the Lord allowed them to. He allowed them for a reason, and always his reason was right. Was Sherial going against him, not trusting him, or was she doing what was always intended by him? That was the titan’s question and Sherial’s dilemma.

  Listening to them as best he could, Mikel for the first time discovered how the humans had been caught up in this mess. They were the dabblers. The people who’d experimented with black magic and demonology, usually for a laugh. Until something went wrong, and the joke they thought they’d been having, turned up for din
ner. For if they’d been truly evil they would have been no use to the demons, and like the dark man’s disciples would be porridge by now. It was only because they had both good and evil in them that the demons wanted them. Being partly white, they could provide food for the demons while being partly dark meant they could enter the lair and be trapped.

  It was a scary thought. A party trick, a joke, a curiosity, and suddenly a man could go directly to hell. He wondered how many had ever realized that. He wondered if those who sold black magic paraphernalia had ever written a warning on their products. ‘Caution – This product could send you straight to Hell!’ He wondered how many had thought that a simple chalk marking on a floor could prevent the demons from crossing. It would almost have been funny, if it wasn’t so tragic.

  The titan told them he would make no attempt to prevent the mission. He understood Sherial’s love and forgiveness, and though he felt it was not her place to forgive the angels their errant ways, nor to contest with the fallen, given her compassionate nature it was perhaps acceptable that she try to rescue them. When she was older and wiser, perhaps she’d see things differently.

  And then he turned to Mikel, and the temperature rose a million degrees in a split second. Sweat literally streamed off the thief as his eyes made contact. For he suddenly realized that he too was involved in this insanity and that he too might be going against the Lord’s wishes. More immediately he might be going against Atal’s. But Atal’s questions were different to those he had asked Sherial. For if Sherial was but a child, then he was at best an infant. He couldn’t have understood what she did. It would have been insulting if he hadn’t been so relieved.