Our angels are feathered in black, and eat the carrion of men. They ferry us forth from the ground to live again, to walk and breathe and seek out what we must. For some this process takes but a moment, and for others it takes countless centuries of watching and waiting. But all of us will one day come to terms with their death, no matter how long it takes.
I'm one such man. The cawing drew me out from a terrible darkness with neither smell nor taste or touch. My flesh, tight and dry, squealed in protest like a hemp rope being wrung, but I moved. Inch by inch I moved myself closer to the sound of the angel, until finally I felt the movement of air over me. Inch by inch my fingers gripped at the dry soil and I pulled myself forward out of a pit strewn high with bodies. Rotting corpses bloated, bursting, and oozing made the air wet, and a red slurry of mud covered me as I made my journey away from them. They had yet to awaken. Their journeys had yet to begin.
As I dragged myself like a worm, the cawing voice was joined by another. The pair of them encouraged me onward, and while I couldn't see yet, I could now smell the fresh air and the rain. Drops of cold water splattered over my wretchedness as I came to rest at the mouth of the cave into which I'd been interred, and the smell of loam and decaying leaves seduced me into breathing again. A third angel joined the chorus, then a forth and a firth. They were perched above me, and as my eyes peeled open I saw their dark forms through the white cataracts. The dull twilight left them indistinct, but the red glowing of their eyes was soothing, like lanterns in a storm.
I don't know how long I laid there, but days and nights passed. There were no other animals save for the angels, and every so often they would come to the ground and check on me, removing twigs and filth from my hair and food to eat. In time I heard the cawing begin again closer to the mouth of the cave, and I heard the slow, agonized struggle of another Awakened deeper in the hollow. That one would need to be cared for, and I couldn't stay. With great effort I got to my feet, my sodden rags hanging from my body like scraps of seaweed, swaying as I took my first steps.
The land all around me was an undulating series of hills bristling with black, leafless trees and covered in blankets of fog. An angel guided me onward, my angel, and I followed the sound of its cawing for days and nights. When I needed to eat, which wasn't often, my angel would lead me a kill left behind by some savage beast. As the days went by I cared less and less about gnawing on bones and how gruesome it would leave me. My hunger grew and grew, and as I fed my flesh healed. No longer did I resemble dried meat, and each dawn saw me looking closer and closer to a man.
I learned soon that, as the flesh of my neck became supple and soft, I had to sew the slit across the base of it shut in order to successfully eat. At night I would caress the sutures made of sinew and feel how my flesh was healing around them. Speech never came to me, but I felt no need for it. My angel remained my faithful companion and reminded me how to be human again, and as we journeyed towards the sun each morning the land began to come alive again. Black trees began to pale to rich browns and sprout leaves. The soil budded with small plants and shrubs, and insects made a constant hum of life.
One day as I was eating from some hunter's left overs, I noticed that there were other items close by. Dead flowers and candles burned down to nothing. Closer inspection revealed small stones with writing, though I couldn't make out what they said. From then on, every leaving my angel found us had these other offerings with it. Trinkets fascinated me, and I'd sometimes sit for hours looking at a small doll, or marveling at a carving made of bone. At other sites in better repair I'd find clothing – boots, trousers, a tunic, a cloak, and a long scarf. My body had difficult with the sun then, and with our journey east I found wearing the clothing helped to protect my skin as it healed. The scarf I wore over my neck and the lower half of my face. For some reason the slit in my throat shamed me, but I didn't know why.
After several weeks the forest gave way to fields of grass and flowers. Occasional patches of woodland cropped up now and again, but most of the time I was wading up to my waist through weeds. Little mice and birds scurried away in my wake, and larger animals hunted them. My angel rode on my shoulder, the weight of it comforting. At night, beneath a sky alive with stars, I would lay deep within the grass and try to remember what had happened. In my dreams I flew high, seeing the world unfold beneath me. Mountains and dark forests lay to the west, and to the east there was a great river wending its way through the green, swaying grass like a serpent. And farther still I saw the orange glow of campfires. When I woke I knew we were heading there, towards the lights.
Soon we followed the river, and I saw watercraft serenely piloted by young children. Nothing seemed to trouble them, and nothing accosted them. Some of them fished, while others seemed to be carrying bundles of goods downstream. And each had an angel with them, and their angels were very old creatures with milky red eyes and scraggly feathers. Neither the children nor the angels made any sound as they drifted along, and when one turned to look the other would as well, as if child and angel were one.
The goods and fish from these boats were dropped off at a small village some miles ahead, and when I got there I saw a small enclave of people in various states of health. Some were capable of working and hauling goods further up the bank, while others sat, emaciated and dressed in rags, staring with furious eyes at us as we approached. They never moved nor spoke, but I could feel their hatred and I wondered at it. Curiously, the healthiest people were the youngest ones, and there were even children no older than four assisting with complicated tasks like mending nets, writing, and bartering. The decrepit adults mingled and watched but never interfered, looking on with nervous curiosity as life was carried on in front of them.
As I watched, I felt a warm, soft hand slip into mine. When I looked down, a little girl with skin the color of the earth and hair and eyes the color of the midnight sky was smiling up at me. My own hand, tanned but withered and stiff, curled around hers trustingly, and I followed where she led. Her angel was elderly, its scalp bald of feathers, and it chirped and purred happily as we walked and the girl hummed. I was provided with shelter and food to eat and I accepted both, content to watch these children take care of the rest of us.
My time in the fishing village was pleasant, and I felt myself start to remember things slowly. Anger and pain and hopelessness. I felt those emotions rise up in my chest and leave again, and my tight, narrow fingers would curl when it became intolerable. In those moments my angel would sit on my shoulder, kneading me with its clawed feet. Unable to speak, I couldn't express how upset I was. Why was I feeling these things? Who was I? Where was I?
Each day my flesh would heal and become softer. My slender hands resumed their skill, and I found myself assisting the young fletchers with their arrows, and then I began to craft myself a bow. None of the children could advise me how to do it, but I remembered more as I woke every day. I had been an archer... before. Before this life. My hands had been skilled and my aim had been good. The arrows I helped to make flew straight and true, and soon I was riding on the ferries, shooting game at the river banks with a line attached to my ammunition. We ate well, dining on rabbits and birds and sometimes fish that would stray too close to the surface.
At night I began to dream of myself as a man again, recalling images from before. There had been a woman, and she was always weeping, begging me for something. Then she would scream and the dream would end. Every night it was the same, until I feared falling asleep because it would mean seeing her gray eyes again, shining with tears. One day I left the fishing village, too afraid to stay there anymore. I didn't want to recall anymore. Not if that was what awaited me.
My angel and I followed the river north, and the land became more hostile. I hunted well, but the animals in these woods were dangerous. Shadowy beasts waited in the trees, while others swarmed along the ground, destroying everything in their path. Living here hardened me and made me forget things. The dreams faded and I began flying again at night, and during the day I would use my knife, stolen from an offering site, more often than my bow. I killed with my hands, learning that even grievous wounds wouldn't harm me for long.
One day another person and their angel came into the north, and I watched them from one of the taller trees. My left hand dug its talons into the dark, my black skin tensing in the snow fall, the white flakes not melting on my chilly flesh. From behind my mask my eyes had a red hue, and in my right hand I clutched the knife. For the first time I hungered for the flesh of another person. My head tilted, cocking to the right as I considered how to kill them, and how soft their flesh would be. Their angel hadn't seen us, and my eyes narrowed. They couldn't see the shadows yet. Not like I could. They hadn't feasted on them long enough.
That night I descended from the trees to their miserable camp. They tried to talk with me, to beg for pity, but it seemed like such a pointless waste of breath. Yet as I held him to the tree by his throat, he looked into my eyes, and then looked at my angel, and then his own. And quite beyond my understanding, he said “I'm so sorry.”
The knife stilled in my hand, and long moments passed by as I tried to make sense of what he'd said. The two angels, mine and his, simply waited in the trees, unwilling to interfere. Why didn't they care? And then I looked at my hand. It was black, with curved talons and the beginnings of black scales growing over the tops of my knuckles and fingers. When my eyes lifted back to his, I startled to find that I was holding a teenager against the tree rather than a man. He was the same person, but suddenly younger, and he only smiled at me as if he knew something.
I was angry and confused and frustrated, and I pushed away from him. The handle of the knife felt heavy in my hand, and I had a sudden vision of the cold metal sliding across my throat and splitting it. But it wasn't my hand that held it. With a thud the heavy blade landed on the ground and I stumbled back, pulling my scarf away. In the teenager's eyes I could see myself – my skin was the color of pitch and my eyes were glowing red. I sobbed hoarsely, the sound no more than a croak. My angel cawed in sympathy and flew away from the campsite, taking me away.
My angel led me through the trees all night until at last we came to an abandoned village. With a cold rain beginning to fall, I chose a shelter with a functional roof and made camp there, starting a fire to keep us warm. That night I wasn't hungry, and as I sat on the warped floor boards with my back to the wall, my angel perched on my knee and cawed softly. Very gently I caressed the feathers of its throat, and looking closely I saw a scar in its skin, covered by its plumage and healed over long ago.
I didn't know what it meant, but the tension I'd been carrying for months was easing. My hand paled again slowly to tan, the skin even more supple than before. I'd remembered seeing a water trough in the center of the village, so I walked out to it and looked at my reflection, only to see a much younger man staring back at me. My fingers, still tipped with black nails, touched at the image in the water, already distorted with the splashes of rain drops, and I tried to remember. Cold water trickled into my coverings and I shivered, but I wanted to know what had happened to me.
Visions swam before my eyes. A village on fire and people running, screaming in panic. I felt pain in my knees, but realized that this was remembered from long ago, when someone had forced me to kneel on stone. My wrists burned, my skin chaffed from the robe binding my hands together behind my back. I grit my teeth as the muscles of my back spasmed and my scalped burned, and I realized that someone, my captor, was forcing me to tilt my head back while gripping my hair. There was so much sound, so much screaming, the roar of flames and the shouting of cruel voices. Tears slid down my cheeks but I said nothing, and then she screamed.
Somehow I crawled back to the hut and the campfire from the storm outside, and I collapsed into a dreamless sleep. The sky raged above us, my angel and I, but I didn't understand. For some reason I thought I heard a voice in the thunder, words that demanded to know why I had been so stupid. A voice, a woman's voice, angry and bereft and so tired, demanding to know why I'd abandoned her.
I didn't want to abandon you, but I was loyal, and there were things I couldn't say. Not even threatened with death.
Even as my angel and I walked southward once again I couldn't recall just what I couldn't reveal. It was in loyalty to my king that I had remained silent, but the details were gone. Perhaps I'd never known anything anyway, and I thought dying bravely would mean more than living as a traitorous coward. In my dreams on my way south, I began to feel the hot gush of blood seep from the slit in my throat just after my captor had cut it, and her scream trembled and wavered because she was flinching away from it.
Who was she? I couldn't see her face, only her gray eyes. Had she been old or young? What had her name been? Those memories were gone. But I cared for her, and I believe that I loved her. She was the only reason I felt any ounce of honor in the first place, and I had died trying to show her how much she'd made a difference. But it had been the wrong way. Rather than live for her however I could, I chose to die for her and left her alone.
My trek back through the grasses that time was different. I knew the land, and though the weeds in the fields seemed much taller to me know, I had no fears of getting lost. My angel looked worse for wear, but I treated it kindly, offering it scraps and helping it preen itself in places it couldn't reach. When I got back to the village, the girl who'd sheltered me was the same height as me, but in answer to my silent question she led me to the water's edge and had me look at my reflection.
I was a child too. Somehow this pleased me, and while I still couldn't speak, I made it a point to help the other lost souls heal and rest as they wandered in. Some were angry and refused to be helped, their angels lost or, worse, consumed. Those were the truly Lost, and in time each one of them wandered north to the shadowed woods, like as not turning into angels themselves to seek out answers that way and pay their penance.
As the weeks passed and I grew younger and younger, I remembered her face. During rain storms I could hear her voice, soft, lonely, and angry that I had left her. More than anything I wanted to reach out to her and tell her that she wasn't alone, but what could I do now? My hands could barely hold anything anymore, little and soft as they were. The children, now older than I was, tended to me and communed with me, gaining comfort from my increasing serenity as I finally found a way to let go of my feelings. I had done what I'd thought was right, and I'd done it out of love. But I had been wrong and had caused pain, and I accepted responsibility for it. I loved her, my wife, dearly, but after a particularly lucid dream of kissing her on the forehead and expressing my love and comfort to her, I felt that I had done something right. During the storms I no longer heard her weeping and berating my grave stone, and at night, in my dreams when I looked in on her, I saw that she had finally found peace and new love.
I opened my eyes for the last time one gentle morning, and I felt the cool body of my angel cuddled beside me. It was time for me to go back, to try again and do things better than I had before. And perhaps this time, if I am lucky enough to find true love and be a better man, I will come back to this place in comfort and enlightenment, ready to guide the next poor soul away from the cave. Maybe my angel was proof that I'd managed it, and that gives me comfort as I fall asleep at last.