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There are winged creatures, like humans, but not. Their wings are white, and their hearts are (we suppose) pure and loving and light. We call them angels.
There are other winged creatures, like humans, but worse. Their wings are black, and their hearts are (we imagine) a roiling abyss of hatred and malevolence. We call them demons.
And then there are the others.
There is the road to Heaven (narrow and hard, we are told, beset with thorns and briars), and there is the road to Hell (broad and grassy, of course, and bedecked with lilies).
And then there is the other. The middle road, the bonny road.
It might lead to Faerie. It might lead to another way of looking at the Earth.
So, what do you call an angel who gives away his sword, or a demon who grieves for the victims of the Flood? The two who choose, when it comes to it, the Earth and all its creatures, above the armies of light and dark? The angel has not Fallen; the demon has not Risen. Heaven and Hell hate them both now, would destroy them if they could.
It is possible that there is One above both Heaven and Hell who wanted this outcome. Who loves these two impossible beings, if possible, even more than they love each other. But if there is, who would know? The Metatron’s voice is an empty echo, the true will of God for so long now not merely ineffable but unknown. Who knows which of the choices laid at Her door were Hers; who knows which calculations set in motion the day two opposites met on the wall above the gate of Eden.
Hilla lays one hand on the cattle trough to steady herself. “My barrenness will end? God will bless us at last with a child?”
“Yep,” says the stranger. “Blessed like anything. A girl. She’ll be born before Michaelmas.”
“Thank you,” says Godwin, taking his wife’s hand. They look into each other’s eyes, the love and joy they share pouring off them in shining waves. “This is the answer to all our prayers.”
“Good good,” says the stranger. “Very well deserved and all that. Lots of… feeding the poor and hungry and helping your neighbours and things. Great stuff. Glad to be of service.” His eyes are lost in the shadows of his hood, and his manner is awkward, but Hilla supposes that even angels can be shy. He looks so hungry too, she thinks. Poor lamb.
“Would you like some pottage, oh holy one?”
“What’s that?”
“Pottage. Barley and vegetables. It’s simple, I know, but… If… if you eat, I...” Her face falls.
“Not right now, thanks,” says the stranger, with a sudden smile like sunshine. “But if you could, you know. Leave some out for me the night your child is born. In the cow byre. I know you make it well. Best pottage in Wessex, I heard.”
Hilla beams at him. “Nothing should please me more.”
“It was a little unrealistic of you, Crowley,” says Aziraphale, nine months later. “Of course she forgot. She is somewhat busy.”
“One of them should still have left some out for you… me,” says Crowley, annoyed. “Rude and ungrateful, I call it.”
He kicks over a feeding trough, ignoring Aziraphale’s protests. Then he quietly turns the milk in one of the cows sour for a week. Only a week, and only one cow. They are villein farmers with a small baby, after all. If they suffered, it wouldn’t be fun.
“Well, we were going to call her Godgifu”, says Godwin to his sister. “But now...”
“Call her Ælfgifu,” says Hilla’s mother. “Gift of the Elves.”
“Yes,” says Hilla, stroking the baby’s cheek. “Gift of the Elves. I am sure that’s what he was. That will do very well.”
Heaven had intended Godgifu for the church. She was to have been a nun, an abbess, then a saint.
Ælfgifu does not become a nun. Obedience does not come naturally to her. She marries at twenty, is a childless widow at twenty-five. She brews the best ale for miles around, and makes pottage even better than her mother’s. Her eyes are sharp and her tongue is saucy, and her wit and kindness brighten the lives of all about her.
Every year on her birthday, mindful of her mother’s words, she leaves out a bowl of pottage for the tall, thin fairy who had claimed to be an angel. Sometimes it is eaten, sometimes it is not. Her milk never sours, and her ale is sweet, and her harvests always flourish, and no one she meets goes hungry.
“Let’s go through this again, Crowley,” says Aziraphale, having, well, far beyond second thoughts about this plan. Eighteenth and nineteenth thoughts, more like. “I am to tempt this young man to have sexual relations with this other young man, whom he desires.”
“That’s right.”
“But that is not a sin!” wails Aziraphale. “They are both unmarried and unfianced, and neither has taken a vow of celibacy. They will break no commitments, no one’s trust, and no one’s heart. And they love each other, they have since they were squires together! There is nothing here to which Heaven would object!”
“Yes, yes, I know. I know that and you know that. The point is that they don’t. They will think it’s a sin, and their guilt will make them more likely to do actual bad things further down the line. Look,” he adds, seeing the angel about to raise more objections. “I don’t choose the assignments, I’m just given them. I blessed that Saracen doctor for you last week; now it’s your turn.”
“I want him so much,” says the Chevalier Guillaume de Chalons, his plump, handsome face ruddy with blushes. “In my sleep, I trace the sharp lines of his cheekbones with my fingertips, and he purrs like a tomcat. I caress his slender chest, his muscular legs, his…” He clears his throat. “But it is not merely that, demon of temptation. I am as dedicated to him as I am to my lord. Every song I hear to some callow youth’s lady-love I wish to sing to him. I want to wear his favour in the lists and defeat every knight in Christendom in his name – save he himself. If he were captured by the English, as our King has been, I would storm the walls of the Tower of London to bring him home to me. It is not mere wanting that I have for Bertrand. It is love.
“And yet,” he adds, tears rising in his eyes. “It is a sin for me to have such thoughts and such dreams, worse sin to act upon them.”
“No, it isn’t!” cries Aziraphale, who will wait another six hundred years to fully realise why the mention of sharp lines of his cheekbones has stirred the blood of his corporeal form so intensely. He flushes as red as the boy before him, and stammers. “I… I mean...” He prods awkwardly at the uncomfortable black clothes, then bursts out, “Matthew 7, Verses 17 and 18! Be told, quivering mortal!” and disappears in a cloud of confusion.
Hell intended Bertrand de Poissy for the Free Companies, pillaging Italy and France, and damning his soul with brutality and greed. It intended Guillaume for cunning and treason and the gallows. But to fall so far, they would each have had to believe their love for each other damned them already, and thanks to Aziraphale they do not. The fruits of their love are good, and so is the tree from which it comes. The two chevaliers grow old together, the only noblemen for miles around who treat their tenants and their servants with decency. They show mercy to their enemies; generosity to the poor. And Hell, content with Crowley’s paperwork, fails to notice them slip through its fingers.
“He can’t have been an angel,” says Bertrand, on what he now knows is his deathbed. He is over seventy, frail, ready to depart but for the grief he know that he will leave behind him. “But I don’t think he can have been a demon either, whatever he claimed. He quoted scripture, you say?”
“Not in words, but he gave me chapter and verse. Rest, mon chèr. Do not strain yourself.”
“Auberon,” breathes Bertrand, smiling up at him. “Not an angel, not a demon, but Auberon. I think we were led to each other by the King of the Faie.”
“Well, don’t tell Père Robert that,” says Guillaume, laughing through his tears.
“I shall only speak once more to Père Robert, Guillaume mon coeur. I shall tell him all of my sins – but you are not one of them.”
And so it goes on, for century after century, all over the world. The wise temptations, the mischievous blessings. Slights that are repaid with chaos but no harm; kindnesses redoubled upon the giver. The letter of Heaven’s writ left in tatters; the core of Hell’s malice stripped of its power. And in every place, mythologies wind and grow around them like vines.
The real Queen of the Fairies knows their ways and she knows their names, but she does not interfere. If they were sent by anyone, these false fairies, these strange ill-sorted beings whose longing for each other disturbs the grass on which they tread, it was by One whom even the Queen regards with caution. She quietly takes credit for their work, and watches. And waits.
My, my, says a voice in Aziraphale’s dreams, as he sleeps curled up next to the demon who at last is his. It is hot. The bedclothes are tumbled in a heap on the floor. Well done, you good and faithful servants. Aziraphale, Guardian of the Eastern Gate, who gave away the sword of fire. You who shall not Fall, nor saunter vaguely downwards. You who are My secret gift to humanity, you and your bedmate, your beloved, your other self. You who joined with humans and with the Devil’s own son to save the Earth from Heaven and Hell.
A wind where there is no wind strokes across Aziraphale’s cheek, and ruffles Crowley’s hair. Crowley stirs, reaching out. His face is wet. Aziraphale, still sleeping, takes him in his arms.
Oh, you have suffered much, says the voice. Six thousand years of pain, of confusion, without even My Light to guide you. And now all this. I wonder if you shall ever forgive Me, Crowley of Eden, star-maker, question-forger, chaotic of mind and tender of heart.
They dream together now. A dream they shall not remember, for who, even they, could survive the memory of this?
In a place that is not quite the world, but not quite somewhere else, two pairs of wings are touching. Black and white, like a double-winged magpie. But the black is changing, first into the iridescent rainbow of a starling, then brighter, brighter. There are greens and blues and yellows and pinks. The colours of the Spring Equinox, of sunlight on flowers, of new growth and new promises. Of a snake basking contentedly in the heat of summer.
The white is changing too, darkening, but not into black. Into the red and gold and brown and deep purple of Autumn leaves, and of cosy winter fires and a book for company.
They are not demons. They are not angels. At least not in the sense we mean. They are not Fae, but perhaps, having been mistaken for them for centuries, they have taken on a little of that nature. They are the Protectors: those charged with Quietly But Melodramatically Saving Humanity. Including from itself.
It will take weeks before they notice the change in their wings. And in any case, that does not matter now.
What matters now is the young woman who comes into the bookshop at around ten o’clock this Midsummer morning. Aziraphale sees her first, gestures to Crowley (currently working as his assistant) to greet her, show her what she wants, and if possible stop her from buying anything.
She is part-hippy, part-punk. Her dress is green and shimmers on the ground. Wherever she treads, there is a scent of meadow-flowers and oak leaves. Crowley finds himself watching to see if petals follow her in a train. Her hair is green, and has roses wound in it. Crowley regards her with deep suspicion. Her smile is charming and her eyes are guileless, but her teeth are sharp.
“Mr Antony J. Crowley? I’m Mabel.” Aziraphale approaches, and her smile encompasses them both. “But you can call me Mab. I’ve been sent a message from Mr Fell’s old boss. Apparently we’re supposed to work together. We need to talk.”