Fourteen

They told the minister mostly everything, even going so far as to show him that the man with wings could turn invisible. After that, the preacher took everything much more seriously and listened with rapt attention to their story. He agreed not to go to the police with such a story; no one would believe him, first of all, but more importantly, he believed that they had come to his church for a reason.

That was the good thing about going to religious people with serious problems: they always believed things happened for a reason, and tended to look at the spiritual solutions more than the practical ones.

The minister believed that Ruth (the name still did not feel like her real name, but the sentiment behind it was the realest thing she knew) and her husband were special. He believed that her husband, especially, could use his gifts for good, to help the world. She didn't know how the ability to turn invisible could really help anyone—she couldn't see her husband becoming a spy for the government—but the preacher insisted that he might have other "gifts," ones that neither of them had yet discovered.

What the preacher knew: He did not eat or sleep (he had stayed awake all night on the steps of the church); he could turn invisible; he had a strangely deep connection with Ruth; he had lost his memories upon waking up at the bottom of the reservoir (he did not need to breathe).

What the preacher did not know: He was a man made of light; he held the vastness of a universe inside his body; he was telepathic and empathic, at least with Ruth; he had wings that could phase through objects without disturbing them, and they looked like no wings that Ruth had ever seen on any bird.

Their conversation had lasted about twenty minutes, but then other people had begun to trickle into the church to get there before the nine a.m. sermon. The minister had left them alone to go and greet the other members of the congregation. Ruth and her husband sat in the pew and tried not to make eye contact with anyone else, for what would they say? They had lost their memories, and only one among them had a name, which was not even the correct name.

On a whim, Ruth handed the Bible to her husband. Open it to a random page and find a name, she said. As long as it's not something weird, like Enoch, that's what we'll call you.

He stared at her. Enoch, he repeated, and then squeezed his eyes shut as pain flared in his head. Enochian… After a moment, the pain went away, and he shook his head.

Did you remember something?

No… It slipped away before I could grasp it. He sighed, and then looked down at the Bible in his hands. Taking a breath, he opened it to a random page and began to read it, his fingers trailing down in a straight line as he read the verses. He paused.

She leaned closer to him in the pew, reading over his shoulder: "Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, / Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us." Matthew 1:22-23.

She smiled, chuckled, shook her head. "Guess we're naming you Jesus," she muttered. "Or a version of his name." In her head, she muttered, What are the odds? Seems fitting, somehow. What with you having special powers, and all.

He grimaced. I don't necessarily feel comfortable naming myself after the son of God.

She smiled. I wouldn't feel comfortable with it, either. We can change it, if you want—

"Hi, there," said a friendly voice.

They looked up to see a woman smiling at them.

"Pastor Kenny told me we'd have two new faces in the pews today. I'm Daphne. It's nice to meet you two." Her voice was warm and inviting, and she held out her hand to them, to shake.

Ruth took it first, a little afraid of what might happen to Daphne if her husband even touched her. The preacher—Pastor Kenny—had not noticed anything strange about him, but Ruth had to assume she couldn't be the only one on the planet who could see or feel the strange things about her husband.

"I'm… Ruth," she said, forcing a smile. "This is my husband…" She did not say a name, for she was not sure whether he had decided on the name Emmanuel or not, and didn't want to force him into it if it made him truly uncomfortable.

Daphne nodded encouragingly at her, and then held out her hand for him.

Taking a very noticeable breath—Try to be less conspicuous, Ruth warned—he reached out and gently grasped her hand.

The world did not explode. They'd gotten through one possible problem, at least.

But Daphne was looking expectantly at him, waiting for a name.

"I'm…" His brain scrambled for a moment, and finally resigned itself to what he had read out of the Book of Matthew. "I'm Emmanuel."

"Two Biblical names," Daphne noted, with interest. "Were your parents religious?"

More lies, Ruth thought.

I don't like this, Emmanuel muttered.

Neither do I. But are we supposed to tell the whole world about your crazy powers and your wings? Aloud, she said, "Yes, our parents were religious. I guess that's how we… found each other." She squeezed his hand. "At church."

Daphne was about to answer, when Pastor Kenny spoke up and said that the sermon was about to begin.

###

Ruth, who was still getting used to her new name, did not pay much attention to the sermon. She had been lucky to sleep so well the night before, which she knew was directly related to Emmanuel's powers, but she was hungry and needed a shower, and she hadn't had any water since the water bottle she'd drunk last night. She sat beside the man she called her husband, and was a little jealous of his ability to sit so still, to be so content with nothing because he had no apparent human needs. Still, his mind was just as much of a mess as hers was.

He was much more reluctant to lie, compared to her, and she knew that the only reason he had lied at all was because he was following along with what she said.

Look, we can't tell everyone about your powers, she told him, gently. It would make problems for us; there'd be a lot of questions we couldn't answer. We could get taken away somewhere, to be studied by the government, or something. It's bad enough that we told the preacher some of it.

Emmanuel sighed, closing his eyes, but there was silent acknowledgement in his mind. He was not arguing with her logic; he simply didn't like being put into this situation. There was something in him, something tied to a memory that refused to come loose, that told him that lying was bad. Especially lying to those who were kind to you, those who were your friends. No one here was, exactly, a friend, but the minister had been kind to them, and so had Daphne. As the sermon went on, Emmanuel bowed his head and prayed for forgiveness for lies told earlier, and all the lies he would tell in the future, hiding his true self from the world.

Lying: it was the price of protection. But to do it well, one had to walk a fine line.

###

Emmanuel sat at Daphne's kitchen table with Ruth, as well as a bunch of other people who had come to the after-church brunch. Ruth, despite having lost many of her memories, somehow knew that this was a common practice among church-going folk. Perhaps her parents really had been religious. She had recited an entire psalm by memory, after all.

Ruth glanced at Emmanuel, and then down to his empty plate. He had not eaten anything during the brunch, since all food, apparently, tasted like molecules. People noticed, eyeing his empty plate just as Ruth was doing now, but no one said anything. At the very least, Emmanuel drank half of his glass of water, keeping his face neutral even as, mentally, he was grimacing. Even water didn't taste right.

He was clutching his hands into fists under the table, so Ruth reached down and squeezed one of his hands. He did not like being around so many people at once—not in this friendly, chatty environment. Church had been one thing. No one had bothered him once the sermon had started, and he had taken comfort from the pastor's message. But now, he was at a loss for what to do. Meek as he was, Ruth could feel the power surging in his body, roiling and vibrating in his veins with more and more turbulence the longer he was forced to sit here in this chair and smile awkwardly at anyone who looked at him.

Ruth was grateful to the woman, Daphne, for inviting her and Emmanuel to have brunch. She was feeling much better with a full stomach and enough water. But with her own needs now met, she was mostly worried about her husband. She was afraid he might literally explode if she didn't get him away from all these people that he did not know.

Hold on, she told him.

He looked at her, quizzically, but nodded.

She stood up from the table and went over to where Daphne was sitting. She leaned over and said, quietly, "We're very grateful for the meal, but we may leave early. My husband isn't feeling well."

Daphne turned and smiled at Ruth with such understanding that she was a little taken aback. "Pastor Kenny tells me that you and your husband recently lost your house?"

Ruth shook her head slowly, not wanting to get into this with someone else. "We're fine," she said, and began to move away.

"Please," said Daphne.

Ruth paused.

The woman touched her arm compassionately. "Why don't you and your husband take a walk around the block a few times, and come back when the others have left. We're just finishing up, here."

"Come back…?" Ruth repeated, dumbly.

"Yes," said Daphne, with another smile. "You can help me clear the dishes, and we can discuss your… housing situation."

Ruth stared at her. This woman she hardly knew was offering her and Emmanuel a place to live. To live in her house. She wanted to argue, but there were still people laughing and talking around the table. Now was not the time. "I'll… I'll discuss it with Emmanuel," she muttered, and then made her way back to him.

They left the house probably a little too quickly than was necessary, but between his need to get away from all those people and her need to think about what Daphne had offered them, they did not much care about manners right then. The moment they were out of the house and down the front steps, Emmanuel took a big, deep breath, as if he'd been holding it the whole time they had been in there.

Ruth almost laughed at him, and took his hand, walking down the sidewalk with him. "Not much of a people person, are you?"

"It's… not that," he mused. "I just didn't want to have to lie if someone talked to me."

She shook her head. "Man, whatever you lied about in your past life, it musta fucked somethin' up, real bad."

Emmanuel stopped walking and stared at her.

"What?" she asked.

"Your speech—it changed, just now." He was staring at her with an expression somewhere between horror and fascination.

Ruth hadn't even noticed the change. She didn't feel any different. "Must be the old me sneaking in," she said. "Maybe I'll remember more of who I am."

He was still staring at her strangely.

She gave him a look. "What, you don't want to be my husband now that I've said a naughty word?"

Emmanuel blinked, his face softening. "I don't mind it," he murmured.

"Good," she said.

And they walked.

"Daphne offered to let us stay in her home," Ruth told him.

"I know," Emmanuel replied.

She glanced at him, wondering, for a moment, how he could have heard her quiet conversation over the sounds of all the other people.

Here, he said, his voice in her mind.

Ah, she said, with a smile. So you eavesdropped.

He looked away, uncomfortably.

She laughed softly. I'm joking, you dork. I don't care.

He silently acknowledged what she had said, but still felt uncomfortable. He walked along, quietly, for a while, and then asked, aloud, "Does it bother you… our mental connection?"

Immediately, she said, "No," and knew it to be true. "It should, maybe. But it doesn't. Ever since… ever since I woke up, in your arms, at the reservoir… I mean, it was just…" She stopped, and he stopped with her, gazing at her patiently as she put together the right words. "It just felt right, didn't it? Haven't we talked about this?" She touched his face. "Normal people would be freaking out right now, trying to remember who they were, going to a hospital—or a psych ward—to check themselves in. Or going to the police." She shook her head. "I woke up, yesterday, in the arms of a strange, wet, naked man with superpowers, who had crawled out of the reservoir like some sci-fi monster. I should have been terrified, but all I saw when I woke up was… light." She smiled gently at him. "Beautiful, heavenly light—

Heavenly.

Both of them winced at the same time as pain bloomed in their heads. It was a strange word to contain a memory of their past selves. They waited for the inevitable images to come flashing into their minds, but the headache dissipated immediately.

"Strange," Emmanuel murmured.

Ruth nodded in silent agreement.

They continued their walk for a little while, and then returned to Daphne's home. A home that would become theirs for the next six months.