Thief (17 page)

Looking back Mikel kept wondering how he could have been so naïve, or so blind. He had thought it would be a simple trip there and back, and never even considered where ‘there’ was. Instead he’d somehow travelled so far from home he knew he could never get back by himself. He needed Sherial to get him home; worse still he needed her help simply to survive here, wherever here was. And it ran counter to every fibre of his being to need help from anyone, angel or otherwise.

Yet then again, had he truly been so blind? Or had he simply known and not accepted the truth? If he’d really thought it would be only a day trip, why had he packed a sleeping bag? Toothbrush? Spare clothes? It was as if he knew things he didn’t know he knew. Yet another set of thoughts he didn’t want to dwell on.

Looking back on that first day, and the longer night that followed, he kept wondering how he could have been so dense. It was a day he didn’t want to remember, and one he was never likely to forget. One of many. Yet much of what he hated to recall was his own idiocy. The hundred and one things he’d never thought to ask about. Little things like where they were going.

He remembered asking as they set out, whether he should take the plane, a car, or a boat. But instead they just went walking into the hills behind his home. That had surprised him, but not as much as finding the gentle bush track that ran through them to the next valley, no longer finishing up at the lake. A short twenty minute walk had somehow become hours as he tried to work out where they were, and where they weren’t.

He’d guessed, almost from the start that wherever they were, they weren’t on Earth, at least not the Earth he had ever known. But how, or where and when they had crossed into this strange other world he had no idea. There had been no transition, nothing to tell him they were swapping worlds. It was more as though they had simply walked along a forest path, which gently meandered between worlds. An impossibility that he didn’t want to think about. It like everything else these last few days, gave him a  headache.

In truth he’d finally had to admit that he didn’t understand how Sherial could do any of what she did. It was usually impossible by all the laws of science he’d ever heard of. However, he had no choice but to believe she did. It was either that, or he was living a delusional fantasy, probably in a loony bin somewhere, and all this was simply a bizarre dream. He chose not to believe that, tempting as it sometimes was.

The world, at least the forest itself was strange, which was hard to explain, though perhaps not unexpected. It was different though not outlandish. Instead of simply alien, it was more as though an artist had taken all the plants and animals of the world, the land, sea and sky, and somehow decided to create impressions of them. To redesign them according to some other set of principles. They were different, sometimes a lot, sometimes less so, but never so wildly that he couldn’t recognize them as similar to others on Earth.

The artist however, was a genius, for every creature no matter how odd or unexpected, still seemed somehow totally in place. The artist of course was evolution, though Sherial laughed at the idea the only time he’d suggested it. As if he was missing the point somehow.

Most animals here still wandered around on four legs, looking for all the world like bush land creatures on any TV documentary. It was only in the overall impression of strangeness and the small details that things seemed changed. The possums had longer legs than they should have and their eyes were further apart. Small forest deer had three tone camouflage coats and their faces were too wide. The birds had a distinct livery as though Picasso had painted them, and they hooted instead of whistling. The greens of the trees and their shapes were odd. Not being an outdoorsman he still found this forest different.

The air too was changed. It had an aroma that was simply indescribable. Not bad, nor particularly good, simply something he had never encountered. The sky when it appeared between the treetops, was blue, but not the same blue as he was used to. It was a stronger blue, one perhaps associated with a thicker, heavier air, which he somehow thought this one was. He was far enough away from his own world that he felt out of place, but never alien.

Despite being in another world, an almost mystical world filled with odd plants and creatures, strange smells and stranger sounds he’d never felt any fear since being here. Deep down Mikel knew that he was safe, that he was in the company of an angel who would not let any harm befall him. Even when the growls and snarls of creatures unknown and unknowable made themselves heard, he knew no real fear.

Then had come the nights. Especially that first one.

Without a word being uttered they had stopped that night in a small clearing, beside a large set of boulders, and he’d begun looking for firewood. Sherial’s communication system, he’d reflected, was weird. The more he became familiar with it, the stranger it became. Instead of voicing her thoughts aloud it was as though she spoke directly to his subconscious, so that often he knew what she wanted without ever knowing how he knew.

It was a troubling system, and one that perhaps a mere human would never master. But even so his distressingly coarse voice and painfully limited words seemed like the most primitive grunts in response. Sherial and he were two people with a chasm so vast between them that they could barely communicate. Still they did, and it was enough. It had to be.

Besides, what he didn’t learn from her was perhaps insignificant compared to what he did. Things he hadn’t asked about, he knew the answers to.  From the start it had been so. That first time she’d communicated, he’d learnt more about her than he’d known about any other human being in his entire life. He knew - no he felt - her goodness, her purity, and while it unnerved him, while it made him feel as a cockroach in the presence of a queen, it still told him enough to know that he could trust her, no matter how much his paranoia railed against it. Of course it, like the rest made no sense.

Sherial wouldn’t, no she couldn’t lie to him, and she didn’t mean him any harm. She couldn’t intend him any harm. She simply could not intend harm to anyone. It was not who or what she was. There was danger ahead, yes, but it was danger she believed he had to face, and risk she believed he could overcome. That was why she had chosen him. But neither did that mean he would succeed, and neither would she lie to him about that. If this mission scared him, it scared her at least as badly. But for different reasons.

Naturally what she did tell him was, as always, stranger than what he imagined.

First up, how long would it take? Sherial herself didn’t know, though she told him it would take exactly as long as it needed to. How far was it? Precisely the same answer. What exactly it meant he had no idea, but equally he had no choice other than to go with it.

Then there were the risks. They were travelling to hell to fight with demons, yet the dangers she seemed to fear most were the risks inherent in him. In his very nature. Sherial feared more for his soul than his flesh, and she was also fearful of his mind and where it might lead him. At the same time he gathered, the body and soul were also very nearly the same thing to her. It made no sense to him, yet it was the only way he could interpret her thoughts, and he had enough grey cells left to know she saw and knew so many things far more clearly than he did.

His life, his spirit, his beliefs and his attitudes were she explained to him, everything that made this venture possible, and at the same time, everything that made it perilous. If that confused him he suspected that it also confused her.

At the heart of her concern was that Sherial didn’t approve of his life, of his actions, and yet neither did she totally disapprove of them either. It was more as though she believed he could do better. He perhaps disappointed her, and that hurt. But she was also pleased with him in other ways.

He was a mixed bag. His skills, his abilities, those things she had surely come for, she was at least satisfied with, while his godless life was a deep disappointment. But his self discipline techniques and martial arts training she admired, and his dedication to helping others and seeking justice was by far his greatest virtue. That more than anything, she believed or hoped would get him through.

His curiosity was something of a two edged sword. She was pleased with him always being determined to see new things, to go new places, to learn and to understand the unknown. But equally she was scared for him. Curiosity would lead him to places that he might not be able to return from, and she didn’t mean physical places. Curiosity taken too far and too rashly, could lead him straight to Hell. Which when he thought about it was slightly ironic, considering where they were going. He didn’t share that thought with her.

If he’d been a tree, he guessed, Sherial would have been disappointed that he hadn’t grown quite straight, but pleased with how strong he’d become, regardless. A passing grade anyway, but he could do better.

Of greater concern to him was the feeling he had developed that she wanted to straighten him, and more troubling still, the suspicion that she could perhaps do it. Crooked or otherwise, Mikel felt quite comfortable as he was. He wasn’t always proud of what he did, but nor did he live in shame. His life might not be perfect, but it was his life.

Mikel understood from Sherial at least a little of what straight was for her, and it was something he knew he could never be. For a start there was the vegetarianism, not because of dietary or health considerations, nor even for environmental reasons, but simply because living feeling creatures should not suffer for the greed of those able to know and do better. Perhaps he could endure that, certainly he wasn’t suffering too much so far after the first few days of rumbling guts. But for the rest of his life? He didn’t think he had that much strength. At least she allowed dairy, though only because she knew the animals didn’t suffer for it. If they had he guessed, it would have tainted the food and she would have known.

Then there was honesty, something he couldn’t afford, and something he’d never really known. His entire life was a tissue of lies, beginning with his thousand and one names, and ending with his latest burglary. He simply could not afford the truth. Angels on the other hand couldn’t lie. But it went further than that. They not only couldn’t lie they couldn’t give half-truths, or evade direct questions. The most they could do was refuse to answer.

However, the truth that Sherial sought from him, wasn’t the precision of his words. Words were as nothing to her. What she ached for was the total openness of the soul. As time had passed he’d discovered he could even joke with her, almost as though she were human. He could tease her, even try and fool her, as long as his heart and soul were true.

Honesty, he guessed, had its plusses, for as Sherial told him it was both the reason that angels spoke with their hearts and minds instead of words, and also the necessary condition for them to be able to do so. Humans couldn’t communicate that way. If people one day learned total honesty, perhaps they too would learn to speak in the language of angels. Of course then they wouldn’t need him around. The world would be a perfect place, and he would have been dead for many centuries.

One thing Mikel knew above all else, for him that day would never arrive.

His theft too was a sin, but not quite in the same way as his lying. For if angels didn’t steal, they also didn’t have much of a concept of money or property. The entire act therefore became more than a little cryptic to Sherial. What she did see was that when he stole, he stole not so much for himself as he did for justice, and that gave him a little leeway. In giving for the needs of others, he redeemed himself further in her eyes, a long way further. But the part of the stealing he did for himself, that he did for profit, or for the challenge and excitement, or for revenge was wrong, completely wrong. It undermined the rest of the act in her eyes. Yet still he argued, he had to eat, and he was only human after all.

His disbelief in God was also a terrible failing, perhaps his greatest. It was something Sherial could not and would not understand in him. Something she could never accept. Her thoughts continually seemed to run along the lines of ‘Are you completely brain dead?’ At least that was his interpretation.

It was also a belief he himself was having a hard time maintaining in the face of a living angel. But if God existed, it left Mikel with some serious questions. Ones like if he was all seeing and all knowing and good, why was there evil in the world? Why were the strong and greedy able to trample all over everyone else? Where was the justice? The fairness? The love?

Sherial had tried to explain it to him, but on some horribly deep level he found himself unable to understand her. Was he so fundamentally different that he couldn’t even understand her? He suspected he might well be, and it scared him. Not so much because he thought he might be too much a sinner to see the truth, as because he thought she might finally realize his limitations and leave him alone. Already he knew that life without Sherial would be hard. If she left him because she had no hope for him, that would be torture.