A girl walked down Mercy Road under a broiling sky too sullen to rain. She was older now than she had been when she fist came this way. She had a silver trumpet under her arm, a horn that shone with the pure, utter brightness of a new instrument that the dirty fingers of the air had never touched to smudge with tarnish. The wings behind her were getting more real, more solid, by the second. She was shining, throwing light on the sidewalks and showing any passers-by just how grimey it was. There were none, though, none but a tired figure standing in a doorway with dark circles under her eyes and a scar on each cheek. I had gotten up that morning and tried get my hair to lie flat and wash some of the wear from my face. It had its usual effect. I was no more presentable, but I felt like I had tried. I had pulled on my least-faded jeans and put a fresh coat of polish on my boots. I put on the long, black coat that was my armor when I lived in another, better, world. I startled her. I should hav taught her not to flinch, I thought.

"Gabriela!" I said "Come here!" She turned her head and looked at me. I wondered if that was how does look at hunters as they pull their triggers. It was like I had shocked her. "Let me get you a good meal before you go to your fate." She followed me to the diner still unsure why she was walking two steps behind a stranger. "I would have liked to give you more attention," I said, "but I have a novel going on. You had potential, but you were on the back burner from the start. Besides, I hate sharing stories with other writers. There are so many telling stories in this town that it has become a weird, polytheistic universe. When I build worlds, I like to rule themm alone. Watch this." I took a napkin from the dispenser and pulled out a pen.

'"Get whatever you want. It's on the house," the waitress said,' I wrote. The waitress got up and walked over to our table.

"Get whatever you want. It's on the house," she said. Gabriela had eggs, and I ordered pancakes.

"Eat up," I said. "Your fate awaits you."

"Whasit?" she asked through a mouthfull of food.

"You will run into a burning library trying to save that poor librarian. The archangel will fly off to wherever he is supposed to be and you will recover your memmory and identity. You will return home to your upper middle class family in your small, upper middle class town. Everyone there will seem so superficial that you will return to places like this. You will enjoy a successful career revitalizing blighted urban areas. I was going to drive you slowly insane and then kill you, but you caught me in a good mood. Good luck, Gabriela. Goodbye."

Burning

Gabriela saw the preacher from the corner, the amen man, she thought, and two women run out of the library with their arms full of books. She stayed out of sight, first behind a tree, then a trash can, then a dumpster. He saw her anyway.

"Little sister!" he said. Gabriela was afraid of something in his smile.

"Uh-hi," she said. She tried to smile back.

"How ya' doin', honey? We're gonna do God's work today. Hallelujah yes we are amen!" He laughed too loudly. She shuddered.

"Who's your friend," said one of the women who looked somewhere between forty-five and sixty.

"Oh, she's a street kid like I was," he said. He turned to Gabriela "A real musician, aren't you. You make a joyful noise every day, don't you? It does my tired heart good to hear it. It ain't easy preachin' in this neighborhood. Can I get a hallelujah? There's an old song says it's hard to be a saint in the city. Maybe that's true. Maybe you'll learn to play it one day, but you're more of a jazz girl, right? Wild, wicked, and pretty."

"Amen," said the other woman, "and we are doing God's work today."

"See these books, little sister?" said the preacher. "They've got some words in 'em we don't like." He held up a copy of The Origin of the Species. "Do you know what's in this book?"

"N-no," she said.

"Good for you, little sister. The stuff in this book makes me sick to my soul. Makes me want to cry, little sister. Can I get an amen?"

"Amen," said the women.

"Amen," said Gabriela.

"This one," he said and held up another. "This one's got soul sellin' and devil dealin' all through it, little sister, and it was written for kids just about your age. You know what we're going to do with these evil things, little sister?"

"N-no," she said.

"We're gonna burn them. You know, send them to Hell where they belong. Can I get an amen?"

"Amen," said the women. "Hallelujah, amen." Gabriela felt heat blossoming behind her eyes. An inferno was budding, soon to bloom. A wind was rising. When she spoke again, they could smell the incense on her breath.

"Not in His name," she said. "Not in his name."

"What, little sister?"

"Not in his name." The books were heavy in his hands. Gabriela shuddered. Fire, she thought. Burn it down. Burn it all down. I'll burn it-burn it-burn it-can't-no-wrong-not His orders. She shook her head hard and bought herself another half-minet of humanity.

"Little sister," said the preacher. "Your eyes are glowin' red. Do you need help, girl? Have you been sinnin'? We're all backsliders-" Gabriela could no longer hear him. She was slipping-slipping-drifting, and then-

"Not in His name," said Saint Gabriel the Archangel. The book burners saw something like wings, transluscent, but getting thicker, more real, by the second, shimmerning in the air behind Gabriela's shoulders.

"A demon!" said the preacher. "Begone, you! We ain't scared of Satan!"

"Satan!" said the Angel, "You would not know him if you saw him." His voice was a wild tenor with singing undertones that ranged from impossible heights, the empty air above soprano, down to the blackest depths of contrabass. "I have seen Satan. I have known Satan. He stood where my brother Michael does before your galaxy began to coalesce." The air around the Angel was hot. He, or maybe she, floated three inches above the sidewalk.

The Flock

Gabriela had gone almost a week without any troubling visions. She made a loose routine of sleeping in the abandoned warehouse in a nook on the first floor, well away from the stairs. She was making enough money playing jazz on Mercy street to eat three meals a day and had even bought a couple of old blankets to sleep on. The weather was starting to warm up. She got up around sunrise and bought a cup of coffee from Mr. Yilmaz. She could almost hear him thinking she was too young to be drinking it. I think I did hear him say that, she thought, but his mouth was closed. You can't hear a thought though. That's—crazy. She shook her head and kept walking.
As she neared her favorite spot on the corner when she heard clucking. She turned around. A chicken was following her. Gabriela kept walking. She stopped. It stopped. She moved. It followed. The next time she turned around, there were three. As she reached her corner, a fourth came down the street and fell in line. I don't know much about chickens, Gabriela thought, but this can't be normal. She decided to ignore them.
As Gabriela played, two more came out of an alley and one came down from a roof. Seven large chickens were sitting at her feet and listening. The butcher, limping and bleary-eyed, peered out of his shop window and stared. Gabriela saw a lurching movement in the corner of her eye and spun, still playing, to face Dave the butcher who had come out of his shop with a cleaver. He grabbed a chicken. Gabriela stopped.
“Wha-?” she said. He slammed the bird against the side of a building, hacked off its head, and grabbed another. “No!” She pulled the horn to her lips and blew a high, sweet, fiery blast that rattled the window of Jorey Rae's and scared the pigeons in the trees. A piece of a cracked window on an upper story slid out of its frame and shattered on Dave's head. He fell, and Gabriela could see blood coming from the gash. She ran away.

Jory Rae's

Gabriela's head hurt. It had for days. She felt like there was a gap running down the middle of her brain getting wider all the time. She tread lightly in her own thoughts. She was afraid to play the trumpet and terrified to stop. Three days after her last meal, she was passing Jory Rae's. She was sick with hunger and exposure. She fell, catching herself on the front window of the diner. A waitress, also staggering and bleary-eyed, came out and pulled her in. Gabriela smelled booze and coffee on her breath and felt long-nailed hands too dirty to serve food haul her to her feet. The stranger led her inside, took her to a booth, and, without a word, put a hot plate of fries down on the table. Bottom lip quivering, Gabriela ate them, one by one.

Carnival

Gabriela walked until she had pushed the smell of smoke to the back of her mind. She realized that she was hungry. I can play now, she thought. I can play and get money to eat instead of picking up trash, but I have to find people. The dusty sidewalk was deserted, but there was a poster on a telephone pole. Gabriela's head ached. She was dizzy, and the letters swirled before her eyes. The big, red word “CARNIVAL,” though, was clear. She squinted, tilted her head, and made out where it was. She made her way there, stood by the entrance, and played.
Within a couple of hours, she had more than enough for lunch and dinner. She was bored, and she had enough money for some tickets. She tucked her trumpet under her arm and headed for the rusty ticket booth. A man with rotting teeth leered down at her.
“H-h-honey,” he said. “I-I'd g-g-g-give y-you a roll for f-free if I could s-s-see under that s-shirt.” He smiled. Gabriela took a step backwards.
“I d-didn't m-mean to s-scare you h-h-honey. I t-thought y-you was one of the g-g-girls f-from over th' antique sh-shop. L-lotta them h-have b-b-b-been through h-here t-today. L-l-listen. I'l g-give y-you t-ten tickets free.” He did. She bought ten more and headed for the tilt-a-whirl. It was noon, and the lines were short. She guessed that it was a week day and most people were at school or work. Why aren't I? She asked herself. No answer was forthcoming, so she decided to ignore the question, at least for a while.
A young man with wavy, chestnut hair in fashionable diseray let her on along with an old lady who held the hands of two grandchildren. He offered to watch her trumpet, but she shook her head and carried it with her. The metal arms, spotted with brown rust, creaked as the machinery clanked to life. As they rose, Gabriela saw
Fire. Fire, fire in the sky and wings, great white wings-so white-big enough to block the-No, she thought. I'm not going to think about it. I'm not going to think about the-
She saw it. She saw wings, her wings, seven feet long from top to bottom, more than three feet across. Each feather shone like a thin sheet of brass as she flew through a bleeding sunset. There were cries and moans below, but they seemed so far away, distant. The people down there were insects, butterflies, their lives beautiful, iridescent, and brief. As she raised her trumpet to lips like fire with hands that had turned to molten gold, she saw the universe reflected in her bell, rising, falling, singing. Wars and plagues played out before her eyes. Atoms split. She could hear it, too. The voice of a woman wailed in ruins. A man cried out in the wilderness, and she could see the hairs of his garment and smell the locusts and honey he had eaten on his breath. She saw a billion or ten billion births and watched Chicago burn, heard steel grind and clash on steel and glass, half-molten, crazed with heat, hit pavement as two towers slid into the street. She was flying high, but a dove had somehow swooped down from above her. It cried out as it passed, and its voice was more like the battle scream of an eagle than a gentle coo. Its voice bent somehow, and a sound that was not quite a sound, a voice that was not quite a voice, rang in her mind.
It was less a noise than two thunderheads clashing over a battlefield covered with heavy artillery. It was an atomic bomb, a red tsunami that she felt was taking curious pains to be gentle. Anything but its most gentle touch would have torn her mind apart. She could not hear it. She could not translate it, but she did understand it.
SOUND YOUR TRUMPET, ARCHANGEL!!! it said. She did. The sky cracked. The earth shook. Gabriela threw up. The ride stopped.
Gabriela staggered away and ordered a Sprite to settle her stomach.

Fire

Gabriela woke in the parking deck with her backpack beside her and her trumpet in her hand. A man in a baseball cap that read “Howard's Garage” was standing over her.


“Are you, um, okay?” he asked. She blinked.


“I don't know. Yeah, I guess. Sure,” she said.

“I'm just happy you woke up.” She nodded, trying to make sense of what she heard. She sat up. He stuck out his right hand quickly, as if it was something he had been admonished to remember and almost overlooked.

“I'm Pokey Swain.”


“Oh,” said Gabriela.

“I'm Gabriela, I think.” She shook his hand and stood.


“You mean you don't know?”


“Not really. I've only been Gabriela since, well, I don't know. What's today?”

“Is today something? I guess I thought it was just today.” He stared at his feet.

“No, what's the date?” She had lost a day and a night, and now it was evening again. She left Pokey and walked down Mercy Road.

The trumpet, she remembered. The man gave me the trumpet and he died and there was- she shook her head. Fire, she thought. There was fire. There was fire and- she moaned. There was fire, and it came through my hands like spears and there was light, so much light. She staggered towards the diner. She needed to sit down. Gabriela's memory returned in flashes and fragments. She saw the morning sun on the flesh of a corpse, heard a bird sing outside, and then a flash, a shift, a change.

There was heat behind her temples, heat in her fingertips, on her lips, hot coals in her eyes, and then there was light. There was a curtain, a veil, a nebulous-halo, she thought, of gold. Gabriel, Gabriel. I was Gabriel, archangel, I was, there was fire. There was light on my bell, silver trumpet, light in my hands in my eyes in my, in my-hot silver, light on my bell. It was warm and golden but not nice not tame not human. Judgment. The seals are cracked and the bowls of Heaven's wrath poured out on the heads of the unrighteous. It was a silver trumpet in my hands, Selene, and there was a bluesy, Spanish fanfare, and there was fire.

She could see it in her mind's eye. A glow like hot metal emenated from her bell. It focused on the dead man's forehead like a laser. And there was fire, she thought. She saw it glowing like amber, like a ruby, on his brow. She smelled burning flesh, saw bone blacken and disintegrate. She saw skin melt and eyes boil beneath their lids. Fire, she thought. There was fire.

Silver Trumpet

Gabriela ran past rows of dusty tables, barely seeing shopping carts that lay against the distant walls and shimmered in the gloom. A woman, gaunt and leering, rose out of the darkness to scream at her like a monster from a haunted house. Gabriela ran faster, past old machines that lay like the scattered bones of industry on the dusty floor. Rats scurried in the darkness. She saw a broad stairway looming above her like the tongue of a malevolent giant and sped up. The boards creaked and groaned beneath her feet. She climbed higher, through a second floor and a third. It was only when she stood above the broad expanse of the fourth story and stared down on ranks of rotting desks, still covered in mouldering papers, that she realized no one was behind her. It was only then that she saw the double doors at the top of the stairs and heard a voice come through them.


“Nothin' up here worth stealing.” It was a hard, cracked croak. Gabriela's eyes widened.


“I'm not a thief.” It was the only thing she could think to say.

The author wants to take the opportunity to credit and thank the late Mr. Donne.

“Then come on up here. I don't own this place. Who am I to keep you out?” Gabriela walked up the last three steps and pushed open a door. A figure lay in a nest of blankets that reeked of piss and sweat. The smell of blood hung in the air, thick and heavy and sad.


“Sorry 'bout everything,” the figure said. He coughed. “I ain't a dirty bum, ain't on drugs and never drank in years. Can't afford to. I'm a musician, a trumpet man got old and out of work. I'm sorry 'bout the smell. I ain't had a real place to live since before a young girl like you was born, but I hung onto my self respect. This is what I have, and I used to keep it clean. This mess only happened after I got too sick to get up, too sick to clean it up anymore. I can't stand up. Haven't even had water in three days.” At the dinner, Gabriela had found a half-filled water bottle in an out of the way pocket of her book bag. She pulled it out.


“I have some,” she said. His sunken eyes widened.


“Bless you, Miss” he said. After he had drained the bottle, he spoke again. “I ain't never gonna forget this. I believe in Heaven, miss, and I'm gonna go there soon. Once I do, you'll have an angel watching over you every day of your life. I'll do whatever for you an angel can. Now, I don't have much to pay you with in this world, but there is one thing. I wasn't entirely truthful when I said there wasn't nothing here for a thief. He raised one broad, leathery hand. It shook as he pointed to the far corner of the room “Go dig under those rags, miss. I've got something I can give you.”


“You don't have to-”


“Yes, I do,” he said. “I have been on this earth more than eighty years, and I ain't taken charity in all that time. I know you mean well, Miss, but let a man die with his pride.” Gabriela nodded and walked to the corner of the room. Buried under the rags was an old, black case. “Open it.” She did. A silver trumpet glittered in the rays of the waning moon that came through the dirty pane of the big window. “Her name is Selene,” he said, “And she was new in 1924. I played out on street corners until last week. I never begged, miss. Until the end I earned my bread.” As she fingered the horn, she saw a hand holding a baton in her mind's eye, a crowd, sheet music, a small bottle of clear oil. She tensed.


“I think I've held one of these before,” she said.


“You play, honey?”


“I-I guess I do.” She raised it to her lips. A note as sweet and cool as chai rolled out of the end of the bell. The old man looked up and raised one eyebrow.


“You guess you do?” She played faster, sixty-fourth notes streaming out of the bell and cascading down the stairs like molten gold. “You afraid of death, miss?” She stopped.


“I don't know.”


“I like your music. That's a song I could die to. If you're scared, though, you'd best get out of here. Death's about to walk into this room. If you don't want to see him, you'd better head back down those stairs before he comes.”
“Death?” she asked.


“Old Mr. Death,” he said and coughed. “Let me tell you something about death. You got my Selene, but you've been so kind to me, playing me pretty music. I'll give you something else, and it's all I have left. It's what I know, and I know something about death.” He closed his eyes. “Death ain't proud. Play your trumpet, miss,” he said.



“If you would, play for me while I tell you. I ain't got much time left.”


“Okay,” she said. She played.


“Death ain't proud, though he'd like us to think he is. Death can't have me yet, not for a few minutes, anyway, and he ain't gonna have you for a long time. He can't touch the best that's in us. All death can do to a man is make him sleep. Don't know about you, but I sleep every night. Always wake up feeling better than I did before. 'Sides, I've seen songs and drugs and good, hard work get people tired. Hell, the setting sun makes people sleep, miss! Sleep don't scare me. About the only thing Mr. Death's got going is taste. He takes the best men first. You know, death ain't even free to work when he wants to. He's got to wait around for sickness, age, war, or some poor, desperate sonofabitch with a gun who needs a fix. The Bible says that, for a Christian man, death ain't had any teeth these last two thousand years. I ain't seen you 'round here, before, miss, and I saw all kinds of people. You're gonna see some things if you stay here, miss. I suggest you go elsewhere if you've got an elsewhere to go. Every alleyway's a shortcut to some earthly Hell. If you're gonna stay, though, remember what I said. Death ain't proud, and, around here, it ain't the worst that can happen,” he said, “but don't be too scared of the people you see. Most of them, that's the worst they can do to you.” Gabriela lowered her horn.


“I'll remember that,” she said.