"Grandfather!"
The old man chuckled, opening his arms wide for the girl to leap into them. She was big for six years old, looking more around the age of ten, but still thin enough to be light. He sat back in his favorite chair and let the child curl up against his chest, tail wrapped tightly around his waist and her head nestled under his chin. She was doing her best to avoid damaging his neck with her small, white horns.
"It's good to see you again, my dear. How are you doing in your studies?"
"They're talking about jumping me up to third grade and Caye found me a couple books on Latin that look pretty easy to understand. I wish I had someone to teach me, though."
He beamed proudly, then his face fell, "I wish I could, darling, I wish I could help you more. I wish you weren't stuck in this place."
"It's okay, grandfather, I'm managing. Now that Caye's here, I'm happy." she tilted her head up to study her grandfather's weathered face, "You look sad. What's the matter?" as she said it, she reached up and touched the edge of the elder's sorrowful eyes, "Grandfather?"
He smiled gently, "It's nothing, my dear. Just... this date has always been filled with sad memories for me."
The sat in silence for a while, the girl quietly curled up in her grandfather's lap, watching him, studying him, never once bothering to look at the beautiful study that they were seated in. This was where she always came when she saw her grandfather, to this beautifully decorated room with the gigantic empty fish tank taking up one wall. It was the only feature she could ever remember when she woke up.
A thoughtful look suddenly crossed the aged man's face and he gently tapped his granddaughter's nose, "Perhaps there is a way that I can help you." He wrapped his hand around the small pendant hanging from the child's neck, a piece of obsidian engraved with a white fist holding the hilt of a sword. "This afternoon the back gate of the orphanage will be unlocked after lunch. Just... go for a walk. It might prove enlightening."
"Rise 'n shine, Faye-Faye!"
"I believe that's Cale calling you, my dear Faith."
"Don't call me that!" she hated the name Faith. The nuns had given it to her, before her horns and her tail had grown it as a baby. She hated anything to do with the absurd thing that the nuns and the other orphanage women called their "faith" in the Lord, especially her name.
"Faaaaye!"
"Time to wake up, my dear."
"Grandfather!"
November 1, 2014
Faith unwillingly opened her eyes, then immediately shut them and tried to shield her eyes with one thin white arm against the blazing sun, "Too bright..."
A small, quiet giggle came from her left side. She barely cracked an eye open long enough to make sure it really was her favorite, blue-eyed, golden-haired angel boy before closing it again and trying to feign sleep just a little while longer. "C'mon, Faye-Faye! Wake up! It's almost noon!"
Faith gave a small groan, having no intention of getting up till well after noon. Then, suddenly, a sharp, agonizing pain shot through her had, like being struck with an old man's cane, making her sit up and face the day.
"Go take a walk, Faith."
"Okay, okay, I get it," Faith grumbled to soft, familiar voice of her ghostly grandfather, "I'm going."
"You said 'grandfather'."
"He says to go for a walk after lunch," Faith replied, swinging her legs over the edge of her small bed and jumping the last few inches to the ground. She barely glanced at the boy next to her, small, angel-faced, complete with a tuft of golden hair and bright blue eyes. Cale and Faith had met only a week ago, but they were already the best of friends, despite a three year age gap and her being an orphan. Cale's father owned the St. Mary's orphanage; Faith was an orphan living on his money. Faith was unruly and disrespectful on the best of days; Cale was obedient and calm. Faith had no family; Cale had a family that loved him. Faith was six, and ten times smarter than anyone her age; Cale was three, and ten times smarter than Faith.
"Um, Faye-Faye?" Cale asked uncertainly, running to keep up with Faith's longer strides as she moved about the small room in an effort to find a set of half-way decent clothes and her favorite horn-hiding baseball cap. "Not to be mean or anything, but you don't have a grandpa."
Faith got down on her hands and knees and began groping around under the bed next to hers for her hat, "He's not here." Cale didn't need to ask to know that "here" meant not alive anymore. For some reason Faith never talked about death or anything associated with it. "At least, I don't think he is," she began tossing things out from under the bed, "kinda like a guardian angel, I guess. I can only see him when I'm asleep."
"You know how crazy that sounds, right?" he ducked to avoid getting hit in the head with a fairly large algebra book.
"Yep," she finally emerged, dusting off a beaten up NASCAR racing cap. She shoved it on over the two small horns poking out of the top of her head and walked over to the huge mirror that stood next to the window. Faith, for the obvious malnutrition she had from living in the over-populated and under-funded orphanage, really was big for her age. Tall, pale, and unhealthily thin, that was Faith. But, all things considered, that was the least of her worries. More worrisome, however, were the two horns growing out of her short black hair and the long white tail wrapped several times around her thin waist. "C'mon, let's go have lunch, I'm starving."
For Faith, lunch was an unbearably long and painful ordeal on the worst of days, only made worse by the small promise given by her grandfather in the dream that morning. While the other children her age giggled and watched the rerun of Barney playing on the TV; she and Cale sat in perfect, nervous silence, neither daring to speak of what they were about to do. It wasn't as though Faith had never snuck out before, but somehow, today, it felt different, frightening. Somehow, even at the tender ages of six and three, they knew everything was about to change.
As soon as they'd cleaned their plates of the horrible gunk the nuns tried to pass for food and given their dishes to the cook, Cale and Faith quietly exited the dining hall and made their way, as stealthily as they could, out to the back yard. "See anyone?" Faith asked, peering around the corner. Cale shook his head. "Alright, let's go." It would not occur to them until years later that it was the only time in all the years that the orphanage was open that not a soul was outside in the middle of the day.
As promised, the back gate stood wide open for them. Smiling at each other, Faith and Cale made a mad dash out the gate and into the woods beyond. It was just another adventure for Faith, and a whole new one for Cale. For hours the duo were content simply wandering around, doing their best to quiz each other on the small, broken Latin that they had managed to memorize in the two days since Cale discovery of his father's old Latin books.
Finally, Faith's attention began to drift from their makeshift Latin lesson. She was famous for having a short attention span that made her seem quite dumb and that only Cale seemed able to hold, but now even that was beginning to wane. Faith wanted to know what it was that her grandfather had been talking about. Her nerves were on edge to the point that her tail had begin to erratically twitch behind her, nearly knocking Cale's feet out from under him more than once. She had done that once, when they first met. Cale had cried and cried till she offered him half of the candy bar she was eating then promptly spit it out because it tasted nasty.
She tried reaching out to the old man with her mind. Sometimes it worked, but this time he was nowhere to be found. Faith gave a disgruntled growl and hit the tree next to her with her fist. The tree shuddered, groaned, and finally dropped a large pile of leaves on the children. "Worried much?" Cale asked airily. Faith sent him a withering six-year-old death glare.
Another hour's uneventful wandering in total silence brought them to the road that ran in front of the orphanage just in time for the sun to start setting. Faith smiled, "Think they miss us yet?" Cale gave a small giggle. The nuns were so used to Faith sneaking out that they probably hadn't even noticed her absence. Cale on the other hand... "Well, we'd better get back. It's creepy out here at night."
Cale didn't miss the bitterness in his friend's voice. He gently took the older girl's hand, "You didn't really think anything was gonna happen, did you?" Faith closed her eyes and turned away. How to do explain to a three year old, even one as mature and wise as Cale, who has always had everything handed to them on a silver platter what it's like to have to deal with a lifetime of broken promises? This was why she hated her name. How could she put her faith in something that never seemed to come through for her, especially not the "God" that the nuns told them about? The one thing in the world that Faith had always trusted, always put faith in, was what her grandfather told her, the promises and prophecies he made. She fingered the pendant hanging around her neck, the one thing she had owned from the beginning, the gift that, her grandfather had once promised, would some day guide her home.
"Let's get back," Faith muttered, pulling Cale along. A moment later, a cold gust of wind lifted Faith's hat off her head and sent it skittering across the road. "Crap!" Faith let go of Cale's hand without a second thought and went chasing after it. She was forced to dive out of the way of a car and went tumbling the rest of the way across the road. "Get back here!" She dove after the hat and hit the cold cement face-first. When she scrambled back to her feet there was a long gash cutting through her eyebrow, but she didn't care. She wanted her hat back.
Cale watched, torn between concern and total amusement at the sight of his best friend. He noticed the man before she did. He tried to yell, to get her to stop, but he couldn't get the words out. Faith's hat struck the man's legs and so did she, just moments later, and effectively knocked the very stunned man to the ground. "Crap!" Faith scrambled to her feet, grabbing frantically for her hat. The last thing she needed was a human seeing her horns. Too late.
Slowly, the man took the hat from the ground and stood up, brushing it off. He looked down at the child sitting on her knees before him, staring helplessly at his hands. He studied her, taking in the pale skin, the small, sharp white horns poking out from short black hair, the long, stiffly curled tail, huge, yellow-amber eyes, finally coming to rest on the small charm hanging around her neck. Slowly, Faith stood up and bowed her head in shame. She knew what was about to happen. Shouting and screaming and running, or worse yet an "exorcism," she hated those. As Cale began running towards them, the man gave a small smile, "What's your name?"
"Faith," she answered quietly.
He smiled and held out the hat to her, "My name's John." Faith cautiously put her hat back on in complete disbelief. Who the heck was this guy? "What are you doing out here, Faith? It's getting late; you and your brother should be home."
"I should be asking you the same thing," Faith muttered, stunned at her own defiance towards a complete stranger, "And he ain't my brother, he's my best friend."
John chuckled, "Well, is there really a difference?" Faith looked back at Cale, standing petrified in the middle of the road, and slowly shook her head. She'd never thought about it before, but maybe Cale was like what a brother should be. There was a brother and sister in the orphanage, but the sister gave her the creeps and the brother smelled bad. She didn't spend much time around them, but she kinda saw what they acted like. The brother looked after the sister, same as Faith did Cale. The sister helped her brother with his homework, same as Cale did for Faith. Slowly, she turned back to John and nodded.
"I guess, yeah."
John reached down and touched the pendant hanging from Faith's neck, "And where did you get this, Faith? A present from your best friend?"
"I've always had it," Faith muttered. She studied her pendant, a smooth black disk with a white fist clutching a sword hilt carved into it. Heck if she knew what it was or what it meant, but it was always comforting to have on. Like something, someone, was there with her. John quietly held out his hand to Faith. For a moment, Faith stood, completely uncertain.
"Go on."
Faith hesitantly took the offered hand and, casting a reassuring smile back at Cale, who still stood petrified in the middle of the road, "See ya later, Caye." And with that she and John turned and walked away from the orphanage, away from the only home, the only people, Faith had ever known. Most of all, she was walking away from her new best friend, the golden-haloed angel boy who had become a brother and best friend in only a week.
"Don't worry. You'll see him again before you think, dear granddaughter."
Cale Manning watched his best friend walk away, somehow unable to stop smiling. Somehow, he just knew Faith was going to be happy where she was going, and he knew that he'd always be with her, too. It might take a year, maybe two, maybe ten, but once they found each other again, he knew that he and Faith would always be together. They were meant to be friends, brother and sister. He knew it from the moment he saw her sitting on the wall behind the orphanage feeding the last of her dinner to a white kitten she dubbed 'Lucky,' even before he saw her pendant.
After all, he never told Faith, never told anyone, he'd seen that little mark on Faith's pendant before. Twice, now. It was carved into the small handgun his dad always carried with him and proudly showed to his young son one night and now, as he watched, he could barely see a familiar looking clutched fist poking out from under John's jacket when the wind blew it up.
This same gust picked up Faith's hat and blew it across the road again. She barely paused and continued to walk, hand-in-hand, with John T. Myers, the man who would one day become brother, uncle, godfather, and "nanny" to the young demon.
May 8, 2024
"White here."
'Long time no see, White. Who's there with you?'
"Just me and Gold. We... we lost the others a while back. How long's it been?"
'Three hundred and eighty-eight days, six hours, twenty-four minutes and eight seconds... I'm sorry, kid. They were good men."
"It's okay, boss. It was a long time ago by now."
'Are you coming home?'
"Yes, I think it is time you finally went home."
"Yeah, I guess we are. It'll be good to be home. It'll be a week or two, we're hitchhiking up from the Amazon and no, I don't feel like explaining how we got here, and don't you dare tell Gold's dad where we are. He'll fry me up for dinner."
'Come home soon. We've missed you two.'
"Same here. Look, just tell Blue I love him and give Angel and Gazzy a hug for me. We'll be home soon."
"Sure thing, White. Blue says to say hi to your guardian angel for him, whatever that means."
A small laugh, distant and sad and amazingly warm, "He says hi back."
