Last Plane to Heaven

Angels ii: Scent of the Green Cathedral

You thought you knew the way. There was a path, broad and brightly lit at the first, seducing you through tangled thickets and along narrowing alleys between the boles until there was nothing left but the ache of your feet and a cathedral-green darkness all around you. The forest had become thick and treacherous, wolves in every shadow, brigands hidden in each tree.

Behind? You saw nothing. No evidence of your passage. No backward path. It was as if you had been born in this place, child of leaf and branch.

Before? Everything, leading nowhere. Just the forest’s endless sheltering shadow. It was as if you had come to die in this place, a rough beast who would slouch no further.

Then you saw the light, flickering among the branches, a star descending. Stories came to your mind, fairies of old, time stretched to taffy Under the Hill. You had never believed in them.

The light had wings, making a promise of the spark. It sailed toward you, path as smooth and sure as any river’s, to spin round your head until the very gleaming made you dizzy and you fell to the leafy loam.

“I am lost,” you croaked. “My way is gone.”

The wings spread wide then, golden pinions glowing with dawn’s rich light. Her face was beauty, a brilliant scarab frozen in the bubbling amber of God’s handiwork. Her body was a temple, desirable beyond lust. “There is always a way,” she said. “You only need ask.”

Your mouth opened, words on your tongue, breath caught in your throat, but the words would not come. Your lungs worked like bellows, creaking in your chest, but no air would move. The amber flowed from her to you, an examination by the lidless green eye of God.

Only those without sin could be saved. Only those with sin would desire salvation. To ask was error, silence a worse failing.

“I…” You finally choked the word from your lips, the sound a fishbone gone wrong, but she had already departed.

You were left with only memories of golden light and her ivory-skinned glory. Newfound beads of amber in your fist, you stumbled around a corner into sunlight and traffic. The scent of the green cathedral has never left you.