“Still nothing for me?” the angel asks. John looks especially tired today, but she can summon nothing more than irritation for his frailty. “What can I say, He will not be pleased.”
“You all say that. It is like one unending echo down here.”
“I don’t even know where to start.”
“Start with yourself,” she says. “That works for most of you.”
The silence accumulates around them. Her patience is wearing thin. Sometimes she wishes he would simply die, and thereby secure her release.
“Have you always been a muse?” John says.
The angel sits up straighter. “I was a soldier,” she says. “I fought in the Great War. Then I guarded the gates of Heaven. But eventually it was decided I should have some other occupation.”
“It’s only…You don’t seem to like people. We must be very tiresome for you. Or perhaps it is just me.”
“I pity people,” she says. “Your lives are so filled with misery. Even for one such as you it is inescapable. Sometimes this world appears to be designed for suffering. Sometimes—” She stops, draws a sharp breath. Her words shift within her like nervous birds. They long to go winging, and one loud noise will send the whole flock exploding outward, past the paltry gate of her tongue, into the world from whence they cannot be reclaimed. Her silence is all that stands between her and disobedience, and whatever punishment that entails. John is looking at her now with a keenness she has not seen in him before. Instead of a broken old man, he looks like a dog who has scented prey.
“I asked for you especially,” she says. “I heard a rumor about you. That you wrote a pamphlet saying rulers must be measured by their deeds, and prosecuted if they are found lacking.”
“I did. I said that it was right to kill the king.”
“Do you believe that still? That those who rule must give way if they are not just?”
Even she can hear the febrile edge that has crept into her voice, but John does not seem alarmed. For the first time, he looks at her as though he understands her. “I do still believe it,” he says. “How glorious to be an angel, and know you serve the only truly just ruler to be found in all of creation.”
The angel presses her lips together until they blanch, nods tersely, and looks away. “Hosanna,” she says.
-”Killer of Kings”, All the Names They Used For God, Anjali Sachdeva
