Chapter Text
“Seems like they’ve made a lot of changes around here,” observed Crowley, looking at the river (new) and the fireflies (new) and the general serenity (arguably old, but it had been in a state of severe disruption the last time Crowley had been in Heaven). “You’d think eternity would be more eternal.”
“There’s a good deal more of it, isn’t there?” asked Aziraphale, trying to sort out how you could have more of infinite Being when it had already been infinite in the first place.
“Imagine it comes of all the humans. Weren’t any, back in the day. Even if you account for the ones who aren’t here, there’s got to be billions of them hanging about by now.”
“Guardian angels, as well. There weren’t any of them at the Beginning, either.”
They both looked ahead at their companions: eleven humans and one transformed guardian angel. Everyone was walking along the side of the river, broad and softly sinuous, glittering with the reflected light of stars and fireflies. Ground-level lamps illuminated the riverside path and the surrounding plants. Here and there, sprays of white lilies were touched with the colors of the stars.
Sue was humming a half-audible melody to herself that might have been “Moon River.” Dottie regarded her with an oddly enchanted look that made Crowley think of Galen. He supposed, in a sense, Dottie and Galen were now the same being, except that they also weren’t.
“Fish!” exclaimed Mina, leaning excitedly over the waterside. Lishan and Ben leaned over next to her.
There were koi swimming near the surface, orange and white, luminescent in the clear water.
“Oh, they’re beautiful,” said Rosa.
“I’ve really missed animals,” said Lishan. “There must be so many of them here, if all animals go to Heaven.”
“Every animal that ever lived…” mused Henry.
“There’d have to be trillions,” said Armen, looking down at the koi, of which there were perhaps ten or twelve.
Mina looked up at the stars. “Heaven must be enormous. Except it doesn’t really have a size at all, does it? It’s just… everything. Infinity.”
“With fish,” grinned Lishan.
“Infinity with fish,” said Ben. “Yeah, that about sums it up, as far as I ever saw it.”
“I thought there’d be Old Angels all over the place,” said Hannah, with an inquisitive look at Aziraphale. “Singing hymns and congratulating each other on how right they are about everything.”
“Yes, well…” Aziraphale glanced at Crowley. “They appear to have barricaded themselves inside their office.” As he said it, he felt another great wash of relief. He hadn’t realized, until arriving in Heaven and not having the Hierarchy descend immediately to throw him out (or worse), how anxious he’d been about that possibility.
Hannah brightened. “All of them?”
“I’ve no idea. I’ve never been consulted on policy decisions, and only rarely informed of them.”
“Then you might be the only Old Angel in all of Heaven,” smiled Hannah. “I’d be very much okay with that.”
Lishan looked pointedly at Crowley and said, “Not the only one. Especially if we’re outside of Time, right?”
Ben nodded. “We’re all everything good we’ve ever been, all at once.”
“Erm…” said Crowley. “Yes and no?”
“Infinity with fish,” said Ben.
⁂
“Hello there,” said Sue to someone who appeared to be an old woman, walking in their midst as if she’d been there all along.
“Welcome,” said the old woman kindly. Her white hair shone in the light of the lamps and stars. “I’m here to walk everyone in.”
They all kept moving. “I’m Sue,” said Sue.
“I know,” said the woman. “And you know my name, too.”
Sue thought about it. “Antaia,” she said.
“That’s one of them,” nodded Antaia. “I like that one. It’s for when I’m bringing dreams.”
Ben looked as if he were going to say something, and then didn’t.
“They’re not always good dreams, on earth,” she said in his direction. “And things from Heaven can seem evil to earthly perception, or do harm to perception itself, on earth. But there’s no evil here.”
“You’re not human, are you?” Sohrab asked her. He and Sue were holding hands, although neither of them seemed to be fully aware of it.
Antaia shook her head, stern and soft at the same time.
“But you’re not an angel, either,” said Hannah.
“I’m a symbol.”
Crowley muttered, “Didn’t use to have those round here, either.”
“Does that mean you’re not real?” Lishan asked Antaia.
Her skin crinkled as she smiled. “Everything in Heaven is real.”
“Including the improbably fast sunrise?” asked Dottie. She gestured ahead of them, to where the horizon was turning orange-pink, and a sliver of sun was beginning to illuminate red and gold leaves on the trees.
“Especially the sunrise,” said Antaia. “It’s one of the most universal symbols, after all.”
The sun ascended fully above the horizon, and the landscape turned to autumn: browns and oranges, falling leaves, and a deliciously cool air over the silvery river.
“We’re just on the other side of time, here,” said Antaia. “So this part of Heaven is where time and change are most celebrated.”
In the morning light, they could see pairs and little groups of people lounging on the far side of the river, watching the water go by. On their own side, they passed three men sitting in deck chairs, smoking and talking earnestly about architecture.
A few seconds later, Aziraphale did a double-take over his shoulder. “Good lord, was that Emperor Constantine?”
“And Ashoka, and Akhenaten,” said Antaia. “They’re all in other parts of Heaven as well, but they’ve been sitting there talking together ever since they met each other here. They were all agents of enormous change, both good and bad.”
“What’s that they’re smoking?” asked Hannah.
Antaia smiled. “Whatever they like.”
Whatever it was, they appeared to be enjoying it a great deal.
Adelaide, walking hand in hand with Elana, turned to look back at the erstwhile emperors and pharaoh. “It’s strange... each of those men was responsible for a great many deaths. I think, were I still on earth, I should feel discomfited at the thought of them being in Heaven. And yet… I feel no such thing.”
The trees were now nearly bare. Sparkling frost edged the fallen leaves as the sun rose higher. The air was even colder, but pleasantly so.
“There’s no evil here,” repeated Antaia. “On earth, good and evil are so intertwined that neither can ever be entirely free of the other.”
“Problematic,” supplied Henry. “Everything on earth was problematic.”
Antaia nodded. “But Heaven rejoices in even a single moment of kindness from a person who otherwise lived a life of destruction. It doesn’t mean we pretend that evil isn’t evil; it simply means that nothing here has any power to do harm. Not even me.”
Three women came walking along the path from the opposite direction, one laughing at something the other had said. The third had a white python around her neck and a leopard at her side. They all noticed Antaia and nodded respectfully.
Henry squinted at one of them and whispered, “Is that Marie Laveau?”
Aziraphale had recognized the second woman, and couldn’t help himself from rushing in her direction, everything else forgotten as words tumbled out. “Oh, forgive me, my good lady, but I’m a great admirer of yours. Your book… there never was anything else like it. Oh! And we met your descendant, such a bright young woman; you must be terribly proud. And… well, it’s an enormous honor to meet you.”
“The angel with the cocoa,” observed Agnes with cryptic serenity. “Thou’rt welcome.”
Aziraphale stuttered a bit, uncertain of what else to say.
Crowley intervened. “Probably ought to thank you for saving our lives, and all.”
Agnes’s eyebrows lifted. “Well, there’s a marvel. A demon who offers thanks. Who could have foreseen such a thing as that?”
“We don’t, anymore, do we?” Ben asked her quietly. “I mean, we do, but we also don’t.”
She nodded. “‘Tis the way of Heaven, little brother. All of everything, and the gift of nothing to know it by.”
Ben seemed to understand what she meant, even if no one else did.
Lishan asked the third witch, “Can I pet your snake?”
She nodded, and Lishan smoothed a gentle hand over the python.
Sue whispered to Antaia, “She’s Circe, isn’t she?” Antaia answered with a soft smile.
Henry said to Marie, “Is it okay to ask you if that’s your real tomb in New Orleans?”
Marie shared a look of amused patience with Agnes. “Thousands of people go there to honor my memory. Of course it’s my real tomb.”
“But is your body really buried there?”
“My real body is here.” She smiled. “I do understand what you’re asking, but that kind of knowledge belongs to a different Sphere. The truth of the Moon is symbols.”
⁂
They bid farewell to the three witches, and kept walking. Antaia was still with them.
“You’re older than you were,” observed Sue.
It was true. Antaia’s hair had thinned and her skin had relaxed even more. She stooped lower as she walked.
“Betcha it’s symbolic,” said Dottie.
“It’s symbolic,” said Antaia.
Snow was falling, soft and clean, lining the graceful curves of the tree-limbs, and blanketing the path until their feet made prints. The sun shone pure and bright overhead. Rosa delightedly spotted a couple of rabbits among the trees.
Crowley brushed snowflakes off his clothes and said quietly to Aziraphale, “All this symbolism’s a bit on the nose, don’t you think?”
“I think it’s lovely,” said Aziraphale, holding out a hand to let a heavy flake settle on his palm. “We didn’t have any of this, back in the day.”
“You two really sound like old people,” laughed Mina.
Antaia disappeared for a moment, and then she was a little girl, walking barefoot in the snow. She smiled up at Mina. “They do, don’t they?” She turned toward Crowley and added, “And you’re the one with the snake eyes.”
“I was a literal, actual snake.” Crowley glanced back at the white python, which was, as far as he could tell, just a snake and nothing else. “I mean… physically, anyway.”
“And you became quite a symbol, didn’t you? A symbol of evil to some, and freedom to others.”
Crowley exhaled and muttered, “Not intentionally.”
Hannah asked, “Why do demons look like reptiles and fish and insects and stuff?”
Crocus-leaves poked out of the snow here and there.
“Because,” said Crowley, “Creation was still a work in progress when we got pitched down into the World. Humans didn’t exist yet. Mammals didn’t exist yet. And demons aren’t exactly innovative. They didn’t have physical forms of their own, so they copied the most complex life forms there were at the time. And then the humans turned up, all upright and smooth, and then a half-second later you’ve got angels popping in all over the place looking like humans, more or less, and most demons either couldn’t manage to catch up completely, or didn’t want to.”
You were always good at adapting, though, commented Aziraphale silently through their held hands. You were the first demon to take anything like a human form, weren’t you?
You made it look good, answered Crowley.
Hannah was thinking out loud. “Demons got thrown out of Heaven because they lost the first war… And the first war happened because demons changed themselves so that they couldn’t sense love or join their essences with anyone. Which they did because Lucifer told them that the Archangels were going to try to change their essences to stop them from questioning the Hierarchy.”
Crowley nodded vaguely. All of their human friends knew the story by now.
Tulips and daffodils were blooming all around them, and buds were forming on the trees.
“You are still Fallen, right?” Hannah asked Crowley. “Still can’t sense love or merge essences with ethereal beings?”
He nodded again. “Can’t; wouldn’t want to.” And then he sent Aziraphale a bit of a silent amendment, because while it was true that he still, even here, didn’t want to be forced to sense divine love, and that he didn’t want to share essences with ethereal beings in general (the very thought was unsettling), there was one ethereal being he wouldn’t say no to, if he were still able.
Aziraphale silently and sincerely reassured him that it was quite all right, because connecting through their bodies (or whatever semblance of bodies they were managing to hold together in Heaven) was more like them anyway, wasn’t it?
The sun settled into clouds of pink and lavender. All of the snow had melted.
“But you’re definitely not evil anymore,” said Hannah.
“Went through the waterfall, same as the rest of you,” shrugged Crowley.
“Then I was right!” she exclaimed, triumphant. “Way back when I said I didn’t think being evil and being a demon were the same thing.”
“Yes, fine. Gold star.” She was right, although Crowley had been thinking that calling himself a demon felt a little off (considering all the not-evilness), even if he still was one by definition and had no desire to un-Fall himself. Aziraphale’s mild suggestion, just after the waterfall, came back to him.
Antaia had become a willowy young teenager. Everything was softening into spring twilight as the first flowers began to bloom on the trees, white and pink in the lamplight.
“It’s important, though,” insisted Hannah. “Because you got to be who you wanted to be, and now you’re back in Heaven as yourself. I mean, obviously I wasn’t around at the Beginning, but you’ve changed a lot just in the time I’ve known you, and yet, you’re still you, and here you are.”
She has a point, said Aziraphale.
Antaia said to Hannah, “You’re a very good angel.”
“I’ve changed a lot, too,” said Hannah.
Henry, holding her hand, said, “You were always a good angel.”
⁂
Crickets began to chirp among the trees. Stars shone overhead again, in a myriad of colors, and midsummer flowers lined the path. A paper lantern, glowing soft yellow, floated past on the river.
“Where are we going?” Armen asked, after a while.
“Wherever you like,” answered Antaia, now a fully grown woman with flowers in her hair. “Your experiences of existing in time and matter on earth, along with your guardian angels’ love for your earthly selves, make it possible for you to perceive the Spheres of Heaven in terms of time and matter. Which means that you’ll discover infinite different things to see and understand and celebrate.”
“How else would we perceive the Spheres of Heaven?”
“You wouldn’t.”
More paper lanterns glided by, making little pools of warm light on the river.
“We’re already in the first Sphere, aren’t we?” said Rosa.
Antaia nodded. “Or you could call it the last one. The one closest to earth. The Sphere of the Moon is the boundary-connection between Heaven and earth. Home of dreams, symbols, imagination, altered consciousness, and transformation.”
Aziraphale searched his pockets and came up with his old notebook, the one he’d filled with information from human accounts of the afterlife. He turned pages until he found his hastily-copied map of Heaven. “There weren’t any Spheres, back in the Beginning. I always wondered if they were something humans made up.”
“Each Sphere honors some part of earthly existence,” explained Antaia.
“Ah. Well, that explains it. Back when there was no earth, there was no earthly existence to honor, I suppose.”
“If you put it that way,” said Elana, “The Spheres are something humans made up.”
“Like all symbols,” agreed Antaia.
Mina was leaning over Aziraphale’s shoulder to look at the map: eight concentric circles embracing a dot in the center. She pointed to the dot. “That’s earth, right? It looks so tiny in the… the grand scheme of things.”
“But you couldn’t have the grand scheme of things without it, could you?” said Lishan.
“You two really want to go back there?” Hannah asked Mina and Lishan. “Or… you three?” she added toward Ben, who still, as far as anyone knew, hadn’t said anything about his own preference.
“Yeah,” smiled Mina, her eyes meeting Lishan’s in perfect understanding.
Ben looked up at the stars.
After returning the notebook to his pocket, Aziraphale took Crowley’s hand to ask, You haven’t forgot the temptation agreement, have you? You tempt them to stay in Heaven and I tempt them to go back to earth?
Course not. Just working out the lay of things, is all.
I’m afraid you’ve got your work cut out for you, my dear. They seem terribly certain about what they want.
Heaven’s a big place, angel. A lot can happen when you’re outside of Time.