Angela Jooste

The Beginning of Something Else

And then, one day, a boy met an angel.

novella

And so it begins…

1

It happened suddenly, irrevocably.

            There were three candles on the cake that day. They were for Colt. 

His mum baked it, his dad iced it, the two of them weaving in and out of each other in the kitchen, so that he wondered how, without speaking, they knew what to do.

            Colt was urged to play outside. He felt the build up, that something was happening and it centred on him. He was the pivot and outside of the event all at once. They wanted him away, yet later there was to be a party. This day, somewhere past, that counted as three turns around that distant light in the sky, Colt was born. It mattered to them. It didn’t matter much to Colt.

            But there were gifts. His brothers, older, one gave Colt a carved dragon made from the fallen limb of an oak in the farthest paddock of the farm. A corner he couldn’t reach unless carried or driven. The other gave him a straw hat just like the one Colt kept dragging off his brother’s head, first as a joke, then because he wanted it. There were books and Lego and a stuffed rabbit that was dense and soft as the rabbit that lived in the hutch on the back porch of the house. But that wasn’t what Colt remembered. Not now.

            Grabbing a small wooden plane coloured primary and new, he ran outside through the rear door of the house landing on the prickle grass that sloped and that Colt rolled down only to crawl back up. Flying with the plane, cutting zooms through the yard, the air was pillow soft and his arm arced to swish through it.

            Then he fell, butt on the grass, low on the rise, and lay on his back. The sky domed high and clear. There was the blue Colt could never call blue because it was always changing. He played a game of how much his eyes could hold it without blinking. Except that distant light in the sky that was almost white kept getting brighter and brighter, and the blue got smaller and smaller as the whiteness glowed so that he covered his eyes, blinking hard.

            And when he uncovered them, the light was still there, still everywhere and yet—and yet inside, there was something. A shape. A figure.

            Colt.

            His name was so clearly spoken. The figure’s mouth moved. The sound was almost like it was being sung, not said. It rung in Colt’s head, his eyes straining to hold the figure that bloomed inside the light that wasn’t the sun, but close to its diffuse brightness. Colt was sure they were smiling. And there was a depthless blue in the light, like the sky shining through.

            He smiled back.

            Colt. It is good to meet you.

            “Who are you?”

            And when they answered, everything changed.

 2

Beneath his hands, an angel’s wing.

            Zach wondered about flight.

            The equivalence of angels with birds. That they both had wings.

            Applying clay to the wire armature, the weight meant flight would be next to impossible.

            A grounded angel.

            How could it ascend?

            Who came up with the notion that angels had wings similar to birds— feathered and light?

            The list of questions was growing without answers, just speculation.

            The clay anchored him against airy thoughts. And he remembered: watching his mother throwing pots on a wheel. Being mesmerised by her shaping it. But it was the large pit-fired pots that had truly captured his imagination. How she’d bury the pots in the ground in a nest of wood and embers with his father’s help. How they’d be released from the earth streaked with cinders, ash and dirt. And the colours: the deepest reds to charcoal black. It was like a resurrection. A phoenix born.

            She’d been his greatest influence in the materials he used. He’d worked with others, but again and again Zach was drawn to the humblest clays. This earth. As he moulded the clay to the wings, scraping with a large spatula, but mostly, using his hands, he wondered if this being was just like those pots, if all his creations bore some resemblance—resurrected from the earth. A phoenix that could defy time and the supposed laws of life that creatures eventually died, except this one would rise, be given new life and breath and would soar from the flames and ash.

            Such thoughts edged him towards the pain he kept tight and folded in his mind’s shadows, as if willing it to fade, make it that much harder to find. Still, it was his preferred material, and perhaps one of the few anchors he had to this world.

            Stepping away, the form roughly covered and shaped, Zach scraped the excess clay from his hands into a tub. He washed off the rest at the sink. Towelling his hands he walked out into the studio’s courtyard; closed his eyes against a deepening blue sky.

            A phoenix was a bird of a kind, and perhaps most suited as a winged creature to associate with angels. And what he tried to skirt was this continual reference to fire. Out of the flames both could be said to be born.

            But fire—fire for him. It could only mean death.

            Not rebirth. Not immortality. Not divinity.

            It was chaos and pain.

            It was the ending of a world that he’d survived. Barely.

            Was his life that meaningless?

            So scarred and altered that he was more a functioning automaton that had found a reason to keep breathing, moving, but was hollowed out, attaching feeling and purpose to what was external to him, a path desired but so much unexperienced?

            He’d renounced country, family and any deeply committed partnership. He had friends, was capable of empathy. He was capable of nurturing. Creating. He had an inexplicable connection to the natural world that came from his beginnings. He was loyal to those who he was bound to by blood.

            Eyes open, he turned to see the being his hands could still feel. The body emerging from a low plinth of roughly moulded clay blocks

And those wings.

            There was a burn in his gut. It was rising to his throat.

            If his feet moved it would carry him inside and he’d rip those wings right off.

            Nothing came from death.

            Nothing.

Intimations of an end

1

They’re following, ever watchful, but Colt had things to do.

He let them, since they’d cloaked their light so he could focus. He found the boundary line easily enough. The blackberry had crawled into the paddocks steeped with dandelion, and he thwacked a stick to cut a path to the oldest redwood on the property. This was the starting point; where he’d used to begin his daily walk around the border.

            They’re silent, although this morning when he woke they kept telling him to GO. “Where?’ he’d asked. Your brother, was the only reply. They rarely gave long explanations, urging him to hurry. And while every muscle in his body protested, he’d asked Zach if he could go with him to the farm. Zach’s silence was uncomfortable, and he was about to renege when: Zachery needs you. Colt nearly turned to face them, except his aunt Jen was sitting at the breakfast table with him and Zach, and she’d only get upset, so he willed his muscles to stop trembling under the pressure of Zach’s stare.

            It was only when they got to the farm’s front gate, one of the few gates left standing, that he smelled it. Zach had gone preternaturally quiet, the quiet of a predator or prey. But the acid stink reeked of prey. It filled the car and coated his tongue and he fought to breathe past it. Sweat percolated Zach’s brow, his knuckles white to bone, fingers gripping the steering wheel hard enough to break. His eyes were fixed on the gate and he wasn’t moving. That’s when Colt got out of the car and went to open the gate, unlocking the rusted padlock, loosening the chain. He stood waiting by the gaping maw. Zach’s focus shifted to him and the car moved. Colt dragged the gate closed once Zach had gone through.

            His brother needed him. He’d never needed him. But today he did, and they were never wrong.   

2

The only reason Zach had come home was for this.

The greyish-brown coloured craggy clay, moistened by the recent rains to the texture of sludge. It was unnervingly perfect for what he might create.

            “Home” was neither here nor there. It was a word he’d emptied of all sentiment when he’d left. Here—there was so little to come back to. The long-ago charred earth fostering the teeming blackberry and gorse was embedded with the brick lines where walls—a house—once stood. A few hundred acres of weed choked land, once farmed for crops like barley and where dairy cows and goats used to graze. Someone had pinched some of the timber posts and wire that had fenced the paddocks. A ragged boundary fence remained that kept no one out. The only solid foundation left was the cement floor of the collapsed milking shed. The hay-bale shed and a water tank in the “pump” paddock were the only structures still standing.

            Zach called it home because he had none. No fixed address, just this relic from the past. He owned half, his brother, Colt, the rest. He stopped himself thinking about the third brother who’d never claim it, but had always been the most likely to farm it.

            The clay deposit was as ancient as the land, and his mother had been the only one to use it to craft pit-fired pots. For nearly as long as he’d been on this earth, he’d had a memory of it. It was this spark of memory that led him here, and the beginning of an idea for how to create the artwork he’d been privately commissioned.

            He was mystified that he was actually considering the proposal.

            To think he’d come back to the country he hadn’t resided in for nearly eight years, to this place that felt like the end of the earth—the last place he wanted to be—to begin.

            Zach plunged his hands into the deep well he’d dug to reach the loamy clay bed, pooling with moisture. The scent of iron and brackish water struck. Pulling out his hands, great gobs dripped from his fingers. Making fists, the clay squelched and the memory washed through him of digging his toes into it as a kid. How he’d covered himself in the muck to feel it flake and crack on his skin so that he was wearing two skins. How he’d lie in the sun to bake the crust, hard.

            “You can eat it,” said Colt. He wasn’t looking at Zach, his eyes grey and tumultuous as the sky above, far off seeing whatever it was he saw. He held a long stick he’d found and was banging a rhythm against his leg.

            “Why would I do that?”

            “’Cause it tastes good.”

            “Never tried. Don’t think I’ll start now.”

            Colt’s faraway eyes darted fast at Zach, then he was walking away. It was like catching butterflies, trying to keep his attention. Zach had given up years ago. He hadn’t wanted to bring his younger brother here, but once Colt knew where he was going, any attempt to sway him was futile.  

Zach stared at his hands and the already air-drying clay, could imagine shaping some unformed thing with the stuff: a golem, absent of sense, a dense matter waiting for life to be breathed into it. An aleph. A beginning. Dumb, but sentient enough to exist independent of its source. Instead he was considering this very matter to shape a being of the divine, not of the earth.

            It was beyond absurd.

            This whole endeavour had the makings of a massive fuck-up. To even contemplate a project that he’d never have dreamed of himself. To be back in a country that he’d willingly cut all ties with. And this material—matter—he’d only once used it to make a small figure that fit into his hand. The first he’d attempted without even knowing what he was doing. It was now dust in a grave, as if he’d only temporarily wrested his creation from the earth, that inevitably it would return. He wasn’t even sure he’d visit the gravesite. Although this very place was a grave and he’d had enough reminding for today.

            Zach stood up, hands hanging uselessly with the extra weight. The only way to clean off the clay was the lake. Nearly spring and the record rains of the past months had done nothing to flood it. Each breath was laced with its mouldering brine. His chest banded to restrict the air he reluctantly took in. The hire car tugged at him to head straight back and get out of here. Head tipping, the sky promised a deluge, his Blundstone boots subsided into the soil.

            Colt was walking the boundary line, marking the edge with his stick. Zach was about to follow him when, instinctually, he walked towards the one gate that accessed the lake.

            “Buddy,” he called out to Colt, falling into a language he’d thought lost, wanting his brother to know where he was headed. Colt glanced over his shoulder, waved the stick and kept marking his trail. He could do it for hours, used to obsessively outline the property by walking it as if staking his claim, his territory. Or warding off unwanted intruders. Zach halted, stumped by the throwback to that past life. 

            Time had no meaning here. It wound seamlessly between the now and then and a nameless panic to get beyond. To escape. An impossible feat with Colt a constant reminder of the ties they couldn’t seem to undo.

Some beginning—if all he could imagine was the end.

3

Colt’s hand moved across the page, rapid fire, tracing with a 6B pencil he preferred, the feeling of marking the boundary line of the place he still called home.

He was navigating a live wire, the electrical currents running beneath the earth. Ley lines. Water courses. Slinking creatures burrowing deep. Roots tapping nutrients. It had hummed beneath his feet, reverberating into the cells of his being. He drew it all. First in pencil, then he grabbed a fine blue ink Artline pen, a fresh page and the labyrinth of energy took on a different hue, the blue to his mind, celestial, skyborn, connecting the earth with air, the above.

He was inside the stream of energy; he was flying above it. Simultaneously. That persistent dream, an origin tale that he was born with wings—once. That his cellular memories were of flying. That he’d flown, once. And he yearned for it.

You will again, they reassured him. They were most quiet, most encouraging, when he drew. As if the act of creation was a shared endeavour, a willed event combining all their efforts.

Colt welcomed it. Felt a lulling peace amid the frenzied rendering. He was centred, anchored. That he had a place despite the out of sync sensation he lived with, every day.

Out of time. Out of mind.

He slipstreamed through the world, watching, feeling, sensing, but at a different speed, asynchronous.

A smidgen out of sync. Enough to see that different energies coexisted on this one plane. Or more than one plane. Multiple dimensions, butting up against each other, but vibrationally, energetically, phased differently. Such that he had to adjust his perception to sync in, be present in this time and space.

That’s how he could see them. Sense them. How they’d first reached out to him.

And how he’d reached out to them. 

4

Zach walked into the gallery and knew he’d made a mistake coming here.

            The exhibition opening was crowded enough he only caught glimpses of the works on paper hanging on the walls. The space was like so many others he’d been to it barely warranted consideration. Yet, they’d managed to get the lighting right. Diffuse and focused solely on the work.

            It was two of his pet hates rolled into one. Confined spaces and crowds. Make that three: exhibition openings. He loathed them, including his own.

            He grabbed a glass of champagne. He wasn’t particularly fond of the stuff, but it allowed him to blend. He’d flown to Sydney yesterday to meet with Marco Benedetto about the commission. He’d only arrived in Australia a few days before that. Marco had casually asked at the close of their meeting if he was free the following evening. In his jet-lagged stupor he’d answered affirmatively, only to be offered the invitation to this opening which he’d vaguely nodded at, feeling obliged to accept for no other reason than if he was going to turn down Marco’s project, he’d rather part on good terms with the man.

Zach was seriously beginning to wonder if he was heading for some kind of breakdown. He wasn’t burnt out. But while his instincts had guided him well until now, the fact he’d felt a slight frisson at reading the initial proposal outlined eloquently in an email from Marco, care of his daughter, a gallerist called Seraphina, that was it in terms of guidance. That was the only lead to why he’d got on a plane to come back to the country of his birth. Even Marielle, his dealer in New York, had been speechless at first that he’d agreed to at least meet with Marco.

            “What is this about?” Marielle rarely pried. She’d taken him on after she’d seen his work at a Biennale in South America. He’d been twenty three, travelling and living overseas for two years. Getting a grant from the Australia Council to make work in their Paris studio after graduating art school had been the beginning. He’d packed a backpack with his meagre belongings with no intention of returning.

            Zach’s characteristic bluntness did nothing to assuage her concern. “I don’t know. Not yet anyhow.” Marielle’s silence was doubtful. She told him to call her when he landed; seriously worried he was on some ill-fated pilgrimage.

            Perhaps he was.

            “Ah, you made it.” Zach swivelled to face Marco who stood almost a head taller. Maintaining that disarming and spare elegance like a sleek greyhound, Marco wore a dark grey suit without a tie and a blue shirt similar to what he’d worn at their meeting. Zach wore pretty much the same outfit as well: faded grey Converse sneakers, a reasonably new pair of jeans and a black T-shirt. With day-old stubble and a combed through version of his usual tousled shoulder-length brown hair, it almost seemed pointless to try and blend when he looked like he’d simply walked off the street and crashed the gig in the hope of some free booze and canapés.

            “Always good to see new work.” Which was true. He may hate these events, but he’d checked out the artist’s work beforehand on his phone and was genuinely interested to see it. A quick assessment of the crowd and he knew he’d be one of the few actually looking at the art.

            “Come, I’d like you to meet Seraphina.”

            Zach followed reluctantly. Marielle had exchanged emails with the gallerist, and he had never heard of this space, or the affiliate London gallery. Given his absence from the country, that wasn’t surprising. Sydney and Melbourne had the lion’s share of contemporary art galleries in Australia. This particular space was well located in Paddington, near Oxford Street. The real estate alone was worth a fortune.

            “Phina, I said he’d come.”

            Zach was sure he hadn’t been that upfront in his commitment, yet—

            “Mr. McKenna. It’s good to meet you.” Seraphina offered her hand, firmly holding his. Her greeting crisp and formal, while the tenor of her voice brushed against him. Absurdly he wondered if she could sing.

            “Just Zach. And thank you for the invite.”

            She quickly extricated her hand. It slipped against his, the skin as cool as her tone. “Thank my father. But you’re more than welcome. Would you like to meet the artist?”

            He looked across the room at the tall and broad figure, currently surrounded. The artist was smiling affably. At ease. Zach could only provide a jagged presence that might ruin the mood. He’d prefer not to interfere in this man’s justly deserved attention.

            “I’m happy to look at the work for a while.”

            Seraphina nodded, a noncommittal gesture. It irritated slightly with its implied distance, while he couldn’t help but appreciate how low-key she’d been at meeting him. Usually gallerists pounced, wanting something from him, wanting to believe they had some stake in him, as if he’d be grateful for their attention. A subtle—sometimes not so subtle—exchange that was mostly about power. And they, as well as buyers, always assumed they had it. Yet in his resistance to meet their expectations, if there was any power, it often lay in his simple refusal to play the game.

Fortunately Marielle and the select group of people who worked with him to bring his installations to fruition respected his need for privacy. Although Marielle insisted there was a balance, a give and take to making art that received the kind of attention that placed his work on the international stage, she never pushed for what he wasn’t prepared to give. The fact she’d taken him on so early in his career meant she’d nurtured his work, had invested energy that created a bond that despite efforts by other art dealers to poach him, had yet to break. It didn’t hurt that Marielle operated galleries in London and Paris, as well as New York.

            “Enjoy the show,” Seraphina said before stepping around him in the direction of the artist. Zach twisted his head to relieve the tension in his neck. He was uptight, fingers almost breaking the stem of the glass. He placed it on a server’s tray and angled his way through the crowd to stand closer to one of the artworks.

            He had an unnerving sense that Seraphina had brushed him off, which he couldn’t understand given her father’s eagerness.

            Instinct had him finding an anchor by turning away from the packed bodies to face one of the drawings. He was standing too close to appreciate the scale, but it afforded him a view of the intricate web of interlocking marks made in ink on paper. There was the whole of the abstract design that suggested a pool of water, and then there was this level of detail that required closer viewing. The noise dimmed and he barely registered someone bumping into his back without apologising.

The suspension of time.

It happened when he least expected it. He gave in, was captivated. The marks imbued the work with the mystery of precision, thought and dreaming, because how could the artist have created this and not have his mind swimming in layers from the mundane to the sublime? Maybe the artist had been thinking about all he had to do in a day, what he wanted to eat, the anxiety of too much going on in his life, about someone he loved, or reaching for an unknowable thought or feeling steeped in the spiritual. The very process of creating the work seemed a meditation.

            Unthinking, Zach stepped back to view the entire drawing only to find a wall of people behind him.

            The noise crashed in and that moment of immersion—too brief—was lost.

5

Colt waited outside the school gates. Alice said she needed books from her locker, but would only be a moment. He had the volume down on his earbuds. An electronic mix that kept a space between him and the world. Leaning against the fence, he watched the cars backed up down Punt Road. The fumes were annoying him.

            A tap. “Hey.” Alice wiggled her fingers in front of his face. Not too close, just so he’d be aware she was next to him. He took out the earbuds so they hung around his neck. 

            “Got them?”

            “Yep. Let’s walk. Tram isn’t coming yet.”

            They headed in the direction of Chapel Street. They both lived in Prahran.

             He could feel the air pressure, the clouds massing above. “Rain.” He was sure it would come.

            Alice tilted her face to the sky. Her honey-brown hair was streaked with ultramarine blue highlights. He liked them. They clashed with their purple and grey school uniform. He hated how the purple made him conspicuous.

            “Not for a while. We’ve got time. I want to check out the wall and you promised me a milkshake.”

            Colt smiled, looking straight ahead. He liked to see where he was going. The milkshake was owed from a bet. They’d timed the last paste-up that Alice did. He lost by two seconds.

            “I’m going to ask even though I know the answer, but will you paste something with me? I loved those last drawings you did. It can be super small.”

            Some days, he was tempted. Alice asked once in a while thinking maybe she’d catch him off guard and he’d agree. He was hyper vigilant about nearly everything, so that was never going to happen. He liked her persistence though. She truly believed his work was good.

            “Not this time.”

            “Maybe next time?” She skipped in her excitement.

            “I don’t know.” He could never lie.

            “I’ll keep trying.”

            They waited at the next tram stop. Nothing, so they kept walking. Colt was happy it was delayed. He hated cramming in like squished sardines. Body contact stressed him. All the odours and sounds and jostling and heat. It was enough to be close to the wires and tram tracks. How the electrical hum sizzled against his skin, itched at his hearing.

            “You haven’t said much about your brother.”

            “He just got back from Sydney.”

            “An exhibition?”

            “No. He said he had to meet someone. They’ve commissioned him to make something.” Zach had been vague, especially after the visit to the farm last weekend.

             “Cool. Know what it is?”

            “Nope.”

            “Aren’t you curious?”

            He shrugged. Or tried with the weight of his backpack. Alice’s look was incredulous. She knew enough not to ask about Zach. Any mention of his brother from his aunt and uncle, or from Alice, and Colt went quiet. Closed off and in retreat.

            “I would be. I mean I really like his work. That whale thing you showed me from Venice? That was awesome. Beautiful. I’d love to have seen it.”

            Colt didn’t want to see it. Any of it. He’d ached to see the life-size prehistoric sea creature stranded like that. A cross between a giant squid and a whale made of clay from a local Venetian fluvial deposit, stranded and shockingly out of place in that event, that city. Splayed on the wooden docks of the Arsenale as if in preparation for some barbaric flencing, or beached, unable to find its way back into the depths of the ocean. The clay absorbed the moist air that saturated the city, a gradual decay. For all its hugeness, the surface appeared friable, as if the material would disintegrate at the touch. It was staggering. This majestic creature reduced to an armature that would eventually crumble to dust.

It spoke of unspeakable origins. Of fictitious beginnings. Of evolution’s unknowable brutality. The work held a profound sense of mystery, a deep melancholy.

Zach always sent images of his work. Colt had felt sick when he saw images from Zach’s most recent exhibition in Turin. There’d been a room filled with dirt and embedded with objects: decaying food, small creatures, like birds, dead. Odd mashings of trainers stuck with flowers, plastics embedded in ceramic shards, cell phones trapped in glass. An obscene poetics. There could be no “dust-to-dust”, not when so much of what humans created couldn’t disintegrate, go back to the earth.

Colt got that. It agitated and distressed. It frightened him. He imagined himself a lone traveller in that wasteland of his brother’s creation, at the end of some apocalyptic nightmare, the only witness to all that was left. Nature trying to reclaim what was no longer compatible to it. The odd beautiful artefact, busted and out of context. No longer recognisable and meaningful. Nothing could be in a world made into a dump of detritus.

He’d desperately texted Zac about the birds. Were they real? No, Zach had emphatically said when he called Colt. They were made of clay. But the mould had been made from a found dead bird. He could almost smell the soil and rotting food and earthy spoils.

            Death. Too much like death.

And truth. It was powerful and horrible because there was truth to what his brother had to say.     

            Alice touched his hand. She never lingered, knowing how sensitive he was.

            “I’d like a chocolate milkshake. Remember that.”

            Colt briefly grabbed for her fingers, squeezed. The surprised delight of Alice’s face quashed the stench of memories, images that he vigilantly kept locked away.

6

Walking into the warehouse space in North Melbourne, a text came through from Zach’s mates Carlos and Raph. They’d arrived in Baja, about to go surfing. Zach’s fingers clenched. The timing was impeccable.

            Not too late to come…

As if they knew it wouldn’t take much to push Zach to join them.

Situated in a narrow side street, the red brick façade of the former auto-mechanic garage was dominated by an extremely wide roller door and a smaller, separate entrance. The ceiling was high and hung with large industrial halogen lamps. Two huge glass doors at the back of the space led to a courtyard area featuring a couple of steel sculptures, some trees in pots and a few deck chairs. With the roller door opened as well as the glass doors, there would be a flood of light and air.

            He squatted on his haunches surveying the space. Polished yet scuffed concrete floor. Tools of every kind displayed on the wall and on shelving to one side of the studio. Stainless steel sinks. Freestanding lights. Industrial fans. Plinths. A couple of beaten up leather chairs and a sofa in one corner. A strip kitchen and sectioned off area, once an office and now a bathroom.

            He could crash here. The studio was on offer from one of his crew that had worked on his last show in London. Sam was still in the UK and his studio was free for the foreseeable months. It was Zach’s for the taking.

            It was too easy. The pieces falling into place despite his doubts. He didn’t believe in fate, that some cosmic force was guiding him; that things happened because they were meant to. Free will and effort had guided him so far. Weighing up pros and cons. Marielle taking him on could be seen as a lucky break, one of those once-in-a-lifetime kind of breaks. Or, it was simply because of his art that he’d sunk his life into, and she’d resonated with it enough to give him a chance. Luck? Maybe. But he’d also taken a chance with her, that she’d give him the support he needed, would respect his choices and art enough to not make unreasonable demands. Gut instinct, yes. He did believe in intuition. His gut wasn’t helping at the moment with the nausea.

            He checked the text again. Carlos was in Mexico to hang with his family, but a surf holiday was the main reason for the trip. If Zach had stayed in New York, he’d be making that journey with them. That pull to leave, to get on a plane and away from here was so strong he had to will himself not to walk out and make it happen.

            Waves of nausea kept hitting him. Like now. He breathed through it. Grabbed the water bottle he’d brought, still worried he was dehydrated. He wasn’t sleeping well.

            Stretching to stand he unlocked the glass doors, pushing them out, anchoring them open with bricks. It changed the feel of the space, and he took deep breaths, the nausea easing. Just that morning it had hit hard when Jen had asked how long he might be staying, the hope he’d seen in Colt’s eyes. He hid it quickly, but it had been there. Zach had nothing concrete to offer in terms of time, but the longer he stayed, made commitments like this—the weight of it and the work he would be doing, it was becoming all too real.

            He sat outside on one of the deck chairs. He should eat. Take care of the basics. The sky was a thin blue. Clouds occasionally blocked the sun. It shone now and his eyes shut against it.

            Marco had emailed asking how he was progressing. Whether he’d made a decision. As if it could be a simple yes or no.

            To make an angel.

            There was nothing simple about it.

            Zach had gleaned so little from his meeting with Marco. The shuttering glimpses he’d had of Marco’s house had put him on edge. The floor-to-ceiling book-lined study with the massive carved wooden desk at its centre. The twelve-seater formal dining room with a tiered chandelier. The supposedly casual sunroom they’d walked through to get to the patio. But what skated across his vision—art, everywhere. Tastefully hung and placed, some of it contemporary from his brief perusal, and quite substantial for a private home.

            Marco Benedetto was a collector, not just an academic. Zach avoided dealing with collectors, and since most of his work was site specific for major exhibitions, biennales and institutions, he’d left any financial arrangements to his dealer. He’d come to an understanding that once the work was made and the press junket done, he let it go. Just let it go. He walked away and had no sense of attachment whatsoever.

            And the questions Marco posed: Why did he make the art he did? What did he believe in?

            Zach wasn’t religious, thought of himself as an atheist, would never think of himself as a philosopher. But Marco seemed convinced he was, that his art indicated a belief in a living earth, in its fundamental importance to the sustaining of life. And that without balance, without an investment in nurturing it, humans would perish.

            How Zach’s art suggested a kind of transformation, even as it disintegrated, to become a more base form of itself. Or couldn’t break down at all.

            “Where are you going with this?” Zach asked. He hadn’t come all this way to play mind games. Marco’s approach was so at odds with his own. Zach needed to feel connected to the subject on multiple levels: instinct, emotion, ideas. None of what Marco was saying spoke of his own reasons for suggesting this project. Not at the level of emotion, which Zach had thought surely must have motivated this commission. Marco was yet to mention his wife. That didn’t sit well with Zach.

            He reminded himself he’d agreed to meet with Marco to discuss this project. He hadn’t agreed to take it on.

            “Well, I’m interested in the notion of belief as a matter of perception depending on the age we live, the time and place. How belief is connected and guides how art can be made.” He leaned over to grab some crisps. “Have you heard of the Baroque artist Bernini?”

“Yes. I’ve seen some of his work.”

“Good. There’s a particular work that I keep going back to see, his Ecstasy of St. Teresa in Rome.” He eyed Zach in question.

“I haven’t seen it.”

“The installation depicts St. Teresa’s experience of being pierced by heavenly fire through a lance wielded by an angel. A conflagration of divine love that’s almost grounded by an earthly dimension in how life-like it is. But to go beyond the physical to approach the spiritual dimension of the work, Bernini shaped matter—marble—to become a transformative substance in the portrayal of her ecstasy. Base matter is made real, made flesh, which is also rendered to imply a transcendence of the flesh and mere mortal reality, an experience of God’s divine love. The material he used and all aspects of composition and sculpting of the figures themselves, it melds to pull the viewer in to sense just how dramatic and transformative—ecstatic—it must have been. To be able to use such physical means to express an experience that goes beyond the physical is an act of transcendence in itself. Do you see what I’m saying?”

            Zach scrubbed roughened fingers across his forehead. If this was a test, Marco had no idea whom he was dealing with. Zach didn’t give a shit about jumping hoops to please people; was the first to walk away from any discussion that hinted at intellectual wank. In interviews, he’d keep silent if asked to go beyond what he was prepared to say about himself or his art. There were numerous critics and journalists who could recount their frustration at Zach’s resistance to vocalize his work. None of them understood the deeply lodged pragmatism that guided him. If his art wasn’t enough to sustain their interpretations, nothing else would. Certainly not anything he could say. 

            “I think so. Effectively, the idea of a transcendent experience was recreated through the material substance and its manipulation?”

            Marco smacked his hand on his thigh. “Yes! And yet you, you emphasise the materiality of your work. You don’t try and transcend the material, the work is subsumed by it. It is weighted and defined by its fragility, its impermanence. But in doing so, you similarly suggest a transformation.”

            “Not spiritual though.”

            “No. And that’s what I find fascinating. In this world of such impermanence we place emphasis on the material. There’s an inherent contradiction in doing so. We carve permanence it seems in accumulating or consuming, while having to exist within such dramatically changing environs. Whether social and political upheaval, technological advancement—less and less seems solid, dependable.”

            “Was it ever though?”

            “No. Perhaps you seem more astute in realising how time is a construct, we think we have time if we can define it. We think we have time on this earth by investing in the material, yet, it can all go like that.” Marco snapped his fingers. “How do we even begin to approach our mortality, our impermanence, if we no longer aspire to the kind of spiritual transcendence related to religion or belief in the divine? If all we do is invest in this world, this matter, how do we transcend it to face our death?”

            Zach drained his beer. Marco’s mind had a filleting precision. Zach was not familiar with such areas of knowledge, but he understood the gist of it.

            “My work is a contradiction to what you want? Is that it?”

            “It embodies so much of the dilemmas we collectively face, yet I sense mystery, something unanswered about your work. Something that is essentially about human frailty, but also the unknowability about our existence, our purpose that comes I think from not being able to go beyond a simple material existence.”

            “A kind of blindness?”

            “Yes. Wilful blindness, perhaps. I think our cutting ourselves off from a sense of a beyond, something greater, indefinable, has cut us off from the possibility of being more than what we believe ourselves to be.”

            “Just a body? Here then dead and buried and that’s it.”

            “In a nutshell.”

            “So, despite my work being contrary to having a spiritual dimension, you want me to create an inherently spiritual work.”

            Even that sounded oxymoronic to Zach.

            “No. I want you to explore creating a being we associate with the divine, but from your world view. How would an angel come to be represented in this world? A divine messenger and mediator. A symbol of the transcendent soul. Of an afterlife. Of an omnipotent force or creator. How would one even come into being?”

            “Apocalyptic and vengeful comes to mind.”

            Marco’s head tilted back to laugh. “Fire and brimstone. Damning. Perhaps.”

            They sat as they’d begun. Silently contemplating the garden. Zach’s mind was awhirl with words, images, splintered thoughts. It was a mess.

            Finally Zach found himself addressing what still seemed a spectral absence in their conversation. “This is for your wife?”

            Marco inclined his head. Not quite a nod. “Anna loved contemporary art. That’s what inspired our children along their paths. She would have approved, I believe, in you pursuing this. In creating something, but not to honour her. No. She hated religious sentimentality. Neither of us would be what you’d call practicing Catholics, although we were raised to be. She hated memorials and such. Anything that smacked of piousness. But I haven’t been able to rid myself of this feeling that, something, something, should exist in this world that connects her life with her absence from it.”

            Zach watched for any sign of Marco’s feelings for the wife who had died eighteen months ago and had inspired this quest. Challenge. Not simply a commission. Not now that he’d met the man. If there was any indication of emotion it was in his eyes. A dark brown that nearly subsumed the pupil. Sheened with light or moisture, they reflected as water, depthless and shallow. Contradictory. Veiled and forthcoming. Inviting and cautious. There was obviously much more to this story and Zach was unsure whether Marco would ever voice it, even if asked.

            Secrets.

That was actually something Zach understood.

Zach grabbed his backpack, rifled through it and found a protein bar. He chewed on it diligently, needing the fuel.

            Zach wondered if Marco’s daughter was like him. He didn’t have much to go on to make any assumptions. When he’d ducked out of the restaurant the other night after the opening, having been invited by Marco along with a group and the exhibiting artist, he’d spied Seraphina standing near the curb, cigarette in hand. She had the spare elegance of her father, but her face was more generous, curved and full. He hadn’t meant to speak to her. He was going to walk for a bit and then make some excuse to leave. Then she’d taken a drag on her cigarette and he’d stopped, watched: how her eyes closed with the inhale, on the exhale her face relaxed, eyes half open, a pleasurable calm unfolding, even in how she stood. She wore skinny jeans, a black T-shirt under a tailored black jacket, but she’d traded those spiked heels from the opening for white Converse sneakers.

Zach couldn’t resist smiling. They stuck out, even while they looked good. He wondered if she preferred wearing them to the heels.

            That’s when he dared to move into her space. As if she’d dropped the shield enough to create an opening for him to walk through, to feel he might be welcome.

“Didn’t pick you for a smoker.”

            Seraphina turned at his voice, took a deep drag. “Is that why you’re out here?”

            Zach stood downwind, hands jammed into his jean pockets. Goose bumps roughed his skin from the chill evening. He’d forgotten to bring a jacket. Seraphina’s eyes flicked to his arms, the thick black lines of a tattoo marked the length of his right forearm. Thinner concentric lines banded the bunched muscle of his upper arm, disappearing under a sleeve.

            “Not a smoker.”

            She angled her head at the restaurant. “The company?”

            “I don’t like talking about my work.”

            “What do you like talking about?”

            Zach moved to lean against the wall. A casual motion, all energy contained. “Not about art.”
            Not quite an answer. Seraphina waited. Zach’s words came almost reluctantly. “I like talking about books. Music.” He slid his eyes to her. “Depends on the person I’m talking to. I’m not interested in impressing people.”

            “I understand that.”

            “I surf.” Zach’s hasty admission slipped out without censure.

            She flicked ash onto the pavement. Zach tracked the movement. The dying cinders as they fell. Her dark brown hair was loosening and he imagined by the end of the night all she’d have to do was shake the mass of curls and it would unravel to spill around her. He would have liked to see that.

             “I like the water. I swim every day,” Seraphina admitted.

            “The ocean?”

            “Not lately. There’s a pool on the roof where I’m staying.”

            “I’ve never liked chlorine.”

            “It’s salt water.”

            “Still not the same.”

            “No.” Perhaps it was the low timbre of their voices, hushed despite being outside, in public, but there was a hint of having shared something that neither would have dared anywhere else. So ordinary. Inconsequential. But factual. Real. A simple admission that had no place at the gallery, or the restaurant. But this was neutral territory, foreign to both.

            “It helps me sleep.” Zach raised an eyebrow in question, but she didn’t elaborate.

            Seraphina went to the bin and stubbed out the cigarette. She wrapped her arms across her stomach.

            “It makes me feel connected. Surfing.”

“To what?’

            Zach’s eyes shifted. “Everything. Myself.” 

Seraphina opened her mouth to answer, then stopped. “I should go back inside.”

            “I’ll stay out here for a bit.” 

It had been brief, but he saw her hesitate before leaving, knew in that gut way that if it hadn’t been for the obligations to the people inside, she would have stayed and talked some more.

            He’d been disappointed that she hadn’t.

            For the first time since landing in this country, he hadn’t been so guarded. He’d liked standing there with her. Wanted to hear what she might say next because it wasn’t what he expected. What’s more, Seraphina seemed to expect nothing from him and the freedom that promised had been a reprieve that beckoned, days later.

             Too much about staying here was an unknown, he’d understood that getting on the plane. Yet he’d come. He wondered why he felt his choices were narrowing when he’d worked so hard to never feel tied down by anything other than what he believed to be his choice. As if choice and control were the same thing.

            To have neither, that didn’t sit well with him, had become almost alien to him. He could still answer Carlos and Raph, say he’d make the trip with them, meet them there.

            Eyeing his phone, he dared himself to do exactly that.

7

Wings zipped and fluttered in a blur of cobalt blue, viridian green, an iridescent web of lines.

            Colt sat transfixed while his hand moved to capture it, the 6B pencil striking, dashing, and arcing across the paper delineating the movement of a dragonfly.

            The wings were sun catchers, sparkling.       

            He barely looked at the page as he drew, and the repetitive strokes marking the white of the page seemed to flutter and strobe.

            Zach sat beside him, back against the brick wall of the house. It was a small courtyard, but it was hemmed by the green of climbing clematis, jasmine and ivy. Apple and lemon trees. A couple of John Sterlings creating a small oasis nurtured by his aunt. The dragonfly hovered amid pots of lavender and rosemary.

            “Dynamic,” Zach spoke in the buzzing hush.

            “What?” Colt kept drawing.

            “The wings.”

            The dragonfly flitted high and then flew away. The sun blotted Colt’s sight so he couldn’t track the motion. He squinted and closed his eyes, absorbing the heat. His eyelids filtered red. He felt it in his bones.

            Looking down at the page his finger traced the lines as if the energy of the dragonfly had transferred.

            But how could he ever capture a living being through drawing? Why did he try?

            “Have you ever seen Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings?” asked Zach. “His horses?”

            Colt nodded. “Some. In a book.”

            His eyes darted to see Zach staring ahead. Knees bent and arms circling them. His eyes were bloodshot, as if he’d been rubbing them. In the light, he looked drained. He’d come home late last night. Colt had only heard him from his bedroom, speaking quietly to his aunt and uncle. He was crashing in his cousin’s room. Leila was currently studying at some big university in America. She liked purple and her room was awash with it. Colt sometimes reeled with the colour’s intensity, mostly averting his eyes when passing. It felt like a wall, other times it dragged him in like it would swallow him up.

            Zach didn’t seem bothered by it at all.

            “Remember when I sent you a photo of that drawing he did that’s in the National Gallery in London? The big one with Mary, Anne, John the Baptist and the infant Jesus?”

            He did. The image had been smoky, partly because of the lighting. But the lines, he remembered those. How it was all movement. Even the drapery. The woman holding the child; the other woman and the young boy leaning in to close the composition. It wasn’t simply a suspension of time or movement; it felt like they could step outside of the space with the infant Jesus about to wriggle out of his mother’s arms.

            It felt alive.

            “It felt immediate. Like he’d just lifted the charcoal or chalk from the paper.”

            Zach smiled and nodded. “Yep. That’s it.” Then he looked at the sketchbook propped on Colt’s lap. “Like that.”

            It’s what Colt wanted. To sense the living in what was essentially stilled and abstracted through his drawing. It was suspended and it wasn’t, because how he viewed it animated it. Like he was connecting to the very being he’d been studying through the image he created and somehow this leap happened where he could see it again in his mind, sense it from the movement rendered on the page.

            It enlivened him. Sent shivers across his skin if he got it right.

            Zach’s eyes were shut. His brother smelled of soap and cloves. He felt heavy and warm beside him. Like a bulk of stone. Heavy, yet reassuring.

            “Are you staying?” He hadn’t asked Jen. Hadn’t wanted to think that after so long, Zach might actually want to stay. To be here. To be with him.

            “I’m thinking about it.” His voice sunk with drowsiness. Colt turned the page. Brushed his hand over the whiteness. If he half closed his eyes the air glimmered with dust and pollen and small things not always visible.

How to capture light and air?            

            There were shapes and glints and a feeling that he sensed. Shafts and bubbles of light. Swirling currents. And he was inside it all. Maybe in colour he could do it with the white of the page beaming through. His coloured pencils were in his room. He’d have to get up and everything would shift. He wouldn’t feel the heat and his brother and his eyes would be wide again, the moment, fragmented.

            Like his very movement could splinter everything apart.

            He chose to stay and the dragonfly returned.

8

Seraphina texted him a week after the exhibition opening.

            Zach stared at his phone, at first unsure who had contacted him, except her name was there and he blinked, reading it again. Then again.

            She was in Melbourne and wanted to catch up over a coffee, mentioning a bar in the city at the top of Bourke Street, near Parliament. He didn’t know it, but that wasn’t a problem. He had no idea why she was seeking him out, unless it was about the angel.

            Sure. Coffee sounds good. When?

            She texted immediately: Tomorrow, you suggest a time

            A couple of perfunctory texts later and it was set.

The next day Zach entered the bar, noting the tired and kitsch décor, a surprising choice by Seraphina. Despite the packed crowd suggesting it had something going for it, Zach had been expecting her to choose a more stylish location. Then he saw her and stood, for just a second, a pause—

Her face averted, hand holding a glass, light surrounding her. Isolating her. So singular, alone, in that moment a mirroring of himself, so that it could have been him in that seat, waiting. Too familiar, and yet utterly unknown. 

And he was caught by a pull so inexplicable, magnetic, he had little resistance or understanding.

Still, he hesitated.

Wanting to move closer. Wanting to leave.

            Then everything crashed into place as he walked to sit down on a barstool, close but not too close.

            “Hey,” he said, nodding at the coffee. “What do you recommend?”

            “Just the coffee. Any kind will be great.”

            He eyed the barista. “Café latte, thanks.”

            The noise of the machine filled the space between them, made it easier to begin.

            “Thanks for coming.”

            “No problem. What brings you to Melbourne?”

            His coffee came and he slurped a sip. “Good,” he said placing the glass down.

            She dove in. “I came to see you. I wanted to discuss my father’s commission.”

            His eyes, in the light such a glassy blue, stared into the dark of hers. She wore similar clothes to the last time he’d seen her, mostly black, jeans and the Converses instead of the heels. Lips slashed with a vivid red that underscored the bruised purple beneath her eyes. Her hair was bound tight in a chignon, coiled as her tense body.  The light from the vast window and overhead fluorescents blanched her skin, setting her features in stark contrast.

“Why not call?”

            “I also needed to get away for a few days. It’s been hectic.” Zach was sure there was more to it. He sipped his coffee, waiting. There was nothing of the unscripted intimacy of the other night. This meeting felt deliberate and staged.

            “I was hoping to persuade you not to do it.”

            Well, she’d definitely surprised him. “Does your father know how you feel?”

            “I haven’t told him outright. No. But he knows I’m not entirely on board.” At least she was direct.

            “Why?”

            “I don’t want this for my mother.”

            “He believes she’d approve.”

            “She’d approve of you. She loved contemporary art. The gallery I work at was started by her and a co-director, Michael Cohen. But this—what he’s asked you to create, I’m not sure what she’d make of it.”

            Zach’s gaze slipped to his coffee, his fingers deftly spinning the half empty glass. “So this is more about your feelings. About not wanting this to be about your mother.”

            “Yes.”

            “It’s not a memorial.”

            “I know that’s what he thinks. I can’t help thinking because of the subject, it feels like it is and will be seen that way as well.”

            “I understand.”

            She rushed on. “I love her. I miss her every day. But my feelings are my own. They’re private. I don’t see any need to display them in public. She was also intensely private. That doesn’t mean I know what she’d make of it. But to me, this is a statement that’s attempting to fix some kind of sentiment to her death.” She halted and he sensed she rarely exposed herself this way, or spoke so blatantly about her feelings. “Nothing,” her voice deepened, “nothing will be able to represent her and what she means to me and how I will probably never get over her not being here.”

            Seraphina leaned into him to say this, obviously not wanting anyone else to overhear, her breath fanning his face. She sat back, but the space around her—around them—was charged with emotion.

            Zach kept still. Lips pressed tight as if holding back an answer. His eyes narrowed, his focus more intense. There was a flush to Seraphina’s cheeks that hadn’t been there before. He could imagine the heat radiating if he brought his hand close enough.

            “I haven’t decided yet,” he said, his tone almost tender to soften the indecision. “But I will take what you’ve said into consideration.”

            “Why? Why would you even want to do this?” It came out harsh. Zach knew his words were far from reassuring. Only a sliver of possibility he’d change his mind. It didn’t seem enough.

            “Truth? I’ve never had to consider such a proposal, to think of such ideas or how to manifest them. I don’t know if it’s a challenge or simply impossible. All I can say is I feel like I need to explore it and see where it goes.”

            “And the fact it has consequences for others, not just my father?”

            He drank the remaining coffee. “You’re more honest than your father. At least emotionally. He hasn’t let on much about your mother or what’s driving him. This is the first I’m really getting a sense of how deeply someone feels about the project. I have to take it on board and weigh it up with my own thoughts.” He now leaned towards her, his expression earnest. “I’m not doing this blindly, Seraphina. I’m also dealing expressly with your father, so unless you can resolve this with him, not just me, I’m not sure I can say no simply because of your opposition. But what you say cuts to the bone because I agree. Nothing can express that kind of loss. You can only arc towards it. If it helps at all, I can keep you informed of my approach if I accept. I hope you can trust given my work that I do have a measure of sensitivity and respect towards my subject. Always.”

            Seraphina was holding her breath as she listened, weighing his words. Slowly she nodded. Her clenched hands relaxed.

            And like that, the static shifted into a hollow distance.

            “Thank you. That would be good.”

Zach nodded and reached in his pocket for his wallet, sensing this discussion was finished.

            “No, this is on me,” she said hastily.

            Seraphina paid and they left together, but they were very much apart in that moment, both ready to go their separate ways.

            “Thanks for coming.” Standing on the pavement, it was simply a formality now.

            Zach paused, his eyes trained on her as when he arrived. “That wasn’t easy for you. I appreciate you being open like that. I’m glad we talked.” With a brief smile Zach walked in the direction he’d come from.

            Leaving Seraphina standing there.

Zach looked back once, almost wishing it didn’t have to end like this, while not knowing why he’d want anything different.

9 

“He wasn’t what I expected.”

            “Who?” asked Colt. He stood as Alice deftly pasted up her recent work. Variations on a theme: a girl in jeans, a hoodie and sneakers, planting flowers. The girl was always the same, the outline and detail in thick black, a wash of colours—a palette of greens, grey and blues, with splashes of red—detailing features and clothes. The flowers were always present, either being held, planted, scattered or surrounding her. Among them there was always one white rose.

            Colt never asked what it meant. The girl looked like Alice, and Alice loved flowers. She grew them in tubs on the roof of the repurposed hat factory where she lived, not far from where they were now. Colt was meant to be on lookout while she did the paste-up, except he was too distracted by all the movement. The sounds, colours and smells. The looming council flats cast shadows over the side streets off Chapel Street. He didn’t like how they blocked out the sun. How the windows were so small. He wondered how the people got enough air and light.

            Alice quickly closed the tub of wheat-paste glue and bagged the brush to be soaked later. She dumped it all in her backpack and stood, hoisting it over her shoulder. Taking out her phone, she backed up to the curb and angled it to take a shot.

            “Can you move a little to the left?”

            Colt moved. His hands were shoved in the pockets of his jeans. The wind seemed to tunnel through these streets. Bricked up backs of shops. Auto-repair garages. Storage warehouses. The occasional residence and office space. No trees. It bothered Colt.

            “Hey.” Alice was beside him, head tilting and smiling. “I’m done. Let’s walk.”

            Happily. He needed to keep moving. All that concrete, tar and metal chipped into his bones. Alice’s paste-up seemed a muted splash of colour, hopeful and small, the wall already tagged heavily.

            Colt’s mind snagged on what she’d said before. “Who were you talking about?” He didn’t like loose ends in conversations.

            “Your brother.”

            “Oh. What did you expect?”

            Alice bit her lip. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s the scale of his work, or just what I’ve seen, but I thought he’d be larger, or more imposing. Maybe with this really amazing energy that kind of emitted all this creativity or something.” Colt grinned at Alice grappling with her impressions. “But he seemed ordinary. And tired.”

            Colt laughed. Alice’s head jerked to hear it. He rarely laughed so loudly. But the thought of his brother being just “ordinary” was crazy to him. He didn’t see anyone as ordinary. Mostly because he could see what was around people, like before with Alice, how her guardian angel let their light shine while she was pasting up her art, a beautiful, ethereal azure-blue light. Rarely did they let him see it—mostly so he wouldn’t be overwhelmed by their energy—and he felt at once privileged but also shy, like he was being given a glimpse into the light of Alice’s soul.

            If only people could see what he did, they’d never see themselves as simply ordinary or insignificant. They’d be amazed, would see themselves as miracles, unique. But he’d been instructed never to let anyone know he could see them: these extraordinary beings that were as real to him as Alice. Unless people could also see what he did, they wouldn’t believe him and it ached knowing that was true. Although he was sure Alice would. If there was anyone in this world he wanted to share them with, it was her.

            One day, his own guardian had once said and he held onto that promise, hoping it was soon. Because he trusted Alice would never think he was making it all up. That there was something wrong about him. But time meant nothing to them. Not human-made time. Time just wasn’t something measured and a life wasn’t measured by it. He didn’t even think from their perspective that time actually existed, which would make being around humans interesting. As if you had to squeeze all these feelings, experiences and sensations into a clock.

Huh! He liked the imagery of that.

            “He is tired,” Colt said, sidestepping his thoughts. “I think you’d need to hang around him more to get a sense of him.”

“I know. I guess he’s just been this imaginary person for so long it’s kind of hard to deal with him being real.”

Colt nodded. He got that. Zach left to go overseas when Colt was nine. He didn’t like to think about it. It was one of those memories he’d boxed up and put away. He knew it was there and he’d never labelled it, but the sense of abandonment had been suffocating.        

He’d never spoken about it. Not to Jen or his cousin who’d assumed this big sister role, even when he hadn’t wanted her to be. Not to the counsellors that Jen had encouraged him to see. Talking didn’t make the feelings go away. Drawing helped though. That’s when he began to draw as if it was an extension of his voice.

They walked along Chapel Street, heading towards Toorak Road to catch a tram to go to the Botanical Gardens. In the gardens Colt could be among the trees and green and there were flowers for Alice. It was a special place for both of them.

“Are you happy he’s here?” Alice had put on a beanie with cat ears. It was striped and soft. Colt preferred her without it. He liked seeing the indigo streaks of her hair, darker than the electric blue. No one had asked him whether he was happy to have Zach home. But Alice always asked how he was feeling.

“I don’t know.” She glanced at him, her green eyes as soft as the beanie. He didn’t have to explain that it was confusing. He could sense she understood just with that look. It was a quiet connection. A reassurance that it was okay to be confused. He didn’t have the words to bring to light the relief at having Zach near him, that he was solid and real. That he felt grounded by him, and tight in his gut with uncertainty as well. That his brother could leave again and there would be no way to know when he’d come back.

            Zach was his blood. He was a stranger, too. Strange in not having been a physical presence in his life for so long. Phone calls, texts, emails and FaceTime rendered him distant and close. A push and pull kind of presence. He was there and he wasn’t. Colt also ached being in proximity to Zach, a distant heartbreak wanting to burst through. His brother was the link to those who had left his life and would never return. And in his absence, Zach had become more like them. With Zach now in his orbit, Colt couldn’t keep them boxed away. He couldn’t keep from thinking or feeling about them. 

            And all this love was pooled with pain and he wanted it to drain away. He wanted to keep it bound within him, close. Without it he would fade to nothing. He was sure of it.

Alice brushed the back of his hand with hers. Brief and warm and feather-light.

It made Colt smile.

10

The glass doors to the studio were wide open. Zach sat cross-legged on the concrete floor in the centre of the space.

            His arse was icing from the cold seeping through the floor, but he didn’t care. He hadn’t known where else to be alone.

            Seraphina bothered him. The angel bothered him.

            He’d unwittingly stumbled into a minefield, both in terms of the subject of what he was challenged to create, and in the people invested in the project. He’d studiously avoided such complexities for most of his career. The occasional obnoxious curator or collector, but he managed to avoid projects that didn’t resonate and that he’d struggle to complete. Yet he also thrived on a challenge through his work. Figuring out the logistics and ways of expressing what he needed to. Finding a language through the materials. Working with an exhibition space or natural environment. Responding to all the elements as a project evolved and took shape. Getting the right people together to make it happen. Yet the scale of this project and the fact he instinctively knew he’d be making it alone, it felt more like a contraction of his way of working, like he was being dragged into a vortex—pulled into the past, feelings buried, subjects best avoided, and direct involvement with people he’d usually keep at arms length.

            It was too personal, too raw, too much.

            Staring vacantly, he thought of Colt. Being in his life again brought the unwelcome reality of how absent he’d been for most of his brother’s life. Seeing Colt go about his day, from eating breakfast, preferably oatmeal; going to school in that hideous purple blazer with the tie skewed from pulling it away from his neck; coming home with his friend Alice whom Zach had heard about and seen photographs of, but whose presence shocked him, at the closeness between the two of them as if they existed in their own universe, yet were completely unaware of how their presence affected anyone else. Seeing him sitting on his bed immersed in drawing or studying, his precocious black cat ever present, a small shadow.

This brief time of being in such proximity to Colt, feeling as if he was seeing it all from the outside, had awakened urges he’d thought he’d exorcised years ago.

And the drawings. That first sight when he spied them from the door of Colt’s bedroom, pinned or Blu-tacked to the walls of his white-walled room. At first, Zach had been unable to move. Stepping closer, he’d been unable to look away. His brother’s talent was exceptional. Almost otherworldy in his ability to capture what seemed elusive, to convey what was merely fleeting, abstract or barely perceptible unless you were absorbed in the experience. He sensed emotion, movement, energy, the elements. Colt drew from life, but also what Zach could only describe as what was unseen to most, but was beneath the skin of everyday existence: the sensation of electricity going through power lines and grids; the air gusting falling leaves, guiding birds. And light, such a sense of light—how it revealed expression in faces; how it was absorbed in the fur of his cat; how it glittered in the wings of a dragonfly. Then he spied the numerous sketchbooks and folios around the room.

So much work. Colt had created a world.

            He’d stood there missing his brother more than he had in all the years he’d physically been gone.

            They weren’t strangers, but he didn’t know him. Yet he wanted to and felt an all too familiar tug that made him want to dig roots while wondering when they’d begin to strangle him.                

And Seraphina. At once unknown yet she’d burrowed uncomfortably into his psyche with her words. Pleading. This woman he’d only just met, whose eyes and voice he recalled too quick. He couldn’t simply walk away, yet he’d tried. They’d parted awkwardly. He didn’t linger. He’d walked for ages before getting a taxi to the studio, needing the blankness of the space and the potential for it to be more, simply by beginning to work here. A mirror for where he found himself, on the cusp of a project and change.

            The desperation of loss had driven her words. Of protecting not just herself but the connection to her mother. Of it being far too precious and painful to ever be made public, it speared at him and struck deep. Like nothing Marco had said or intimated. What’s worse, it revealed to him a way to relate to the project as nothing Marco had suggested.            

            Zach stood and walked into the yard. Rain would come tonight. He could almost taste it as he breathed.

            Drawn in and pulled apart simultaneously. Fighting years of being on the move and just doing. Accustomed to the distance from his closest living family and those who were no longer here. Relationships that never became partnerships, fleetingly intimate, an echo of love. He’d never imagined much changing in his life despite it being embedded in his very practice.

            It seemed he didn’t know what he was capable of, and whether he wanted his life to be any different, except here, in this place and time, he was presented with all that could be possible.

            A life remade, but equally impossible to grasp.

Wrestling with angels 

1

Sylvie dashed out a paw, touching his arm. It was a gentle dab and she repeated it to get his attention. Green-yellow eyes pleaded with Colt to stroke her. He did. Behind her ears so she purred loud enough he felt it through his skin. It was one of the most calming sounds in the world. Her head burrowed into his palm, fur feather soft, skin warm. She was black and lithe and a little crazy, how she’d unexpectedly race around the house full-tilt like she was being chased. Then she’d curl up like she was doing now, in his lap, head resting against his knee.

            A few months into living here his aunt surprised him by taking him to the Lort Smith Animal Shelter. Colt had been brought up on a farm. He’d always had pets, often strays. He stopped himself thinking about what happened to them after the fire. The Border Collie, Max, survived. He’d been sleeping in the hay shed. There were two cats. Both had run away. Colt couldn’t bring Max to the city. He’d been numb to feel much, but he’d cried seeing Max rehomed with the local vet. Knowing he had a good home wasn’t enough. It was knowing he was alive and no longer a part of Colt’s life that hacked through the brittle shell he was encased in. It laid bare a pain he wasn’t sure he could ever set free.

            His aunt somehow intuited that too many changes had happened too quickly. Too much had been lost. So she’d driven him to the shelter, and without saying why, led him into the building where they were shown the cats waiting to be adopted. He’d stood in the doorway, trembling. He wasn’t cold. It was the smell and lights and all these bodies, so alive and kept enclosed. His chest swelled and he wanted to run. He wanted to unlock the cages and free them all. Jen placed her hand on his shoulder. She’d learned he didn’t like to be touched for too long, but she was steadying him and he welcomed it. Ducking so her face was level with his, she’d said, “Choose one. Or two. We’ve been meaning to have a cat in the house for so long, but Leila wanted a dog after our last cat passed away. But we were also too sad to make it happen.”

            He was breathing through his mouth to stay calm. “Are you sure?”

            She squeezed his shoulder. “Yes. But the little one will be yours. We’ll just benefit from having it around.”

            Overwhelmed, he stepped towards the cages. One of the vet nurses let him hold them, pat them. He had no idea how long they stayed. He sat on the floor and watched them play. He was lost in the feel of their fur and bodies, the stinging smell of disinfectant and pee. Colt had no idea how to choose. But he didn’t have to in the end because Sylvie found him. She’d escaped and they brought her back in and the glossy dark of her coat, the glow of her eyes and how she scrambled across his shoulder when he held her, like she was trying to leave—it made him want to hold on.

            And whenever that part of him that was so raw, so exposed that it could never be truly brought out into the open, whenever he felt it cracking wide, he’d search for Sylvie—so-named for being sylph-like, quicksilver—holding her, stroking her. He didn’t have to voice it or wait for it to consume him, because he wasn’t alone. He had Sylvie and she let him hold her, brushing his fingers through the plush silk of her coat for however long, sensing his need as if it were her own.

            He was sitting cross-legged on his bed, reading. A sheath of printed pages in his hand. He’d spied them on the purple duvet of his cousin’s bed. Now Zach’s. A familiar tingling sensation slipped along his spine. Read it, one of them said. There were two angels standing in the room near the bed as if directing him. He hesitated, always mindful of privacy and space. Yet the papers almost glowed from their light. He stepped inside the room, bending to pick up the top page.

            The writing was in German.

            “I can’t read this,” he said, placing it back.

            Next page.

            Colt rifled to pick up the second page. An English translation. At the top was written, The First Elegy, and in the top left hand corner was the title, Duino Elegies.

            And he read:

            Who, if I cried, would hear me among the angels’

            hierarchies? And even if one of them pressed me

            suddenly against his heart: I would be consumed

            in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing

            but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure,

            to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.

            He read it again. And again.

            “Buddy?” Zach was leaning against the doorjamb. Colt startled at seeing him. It surprised him how suddenly Zach was just there. Colt stared and then he placed the page on the bed.

            “Sorry. I just read a little.”

            “That’s okay. You can read it all if you want.” There was no censure in Zach’s tone for Colt being in the room. But this was more Colt’s home than his.

            “What is it?”

            Zach strode to the bed and sat then lay down. Too often Colt sensed he was on the edge of exhaustion. He wondered if just being here tired him out.

            “The man who wants me to make a sculpture for him gave it to me. It’s a poem by a German writer, Rainer Maria Rilke.”

            “It’s about angels,” Colt whispered and just saying the word felt illicit, like breaking a taboo, but they didn’t stop him. They were watching, as if they were invested in what might unfold.

            Zach sat up, hands on his thighs. “Partly. It’s his idea of research material I think. But that’s what he wants me to make.”

            “No,” Colt whispered. And, “Why?”

            “His wife passed away. He has this crazy idea I might be able to make something that would…” He hesitated as if unsure how to frame what exactly he was being asked to do.

            “Can you?” Colt asked, not “Will you?” because there was something so unfathomable about his brother being asked to create this. Colt was well aware of how angels were often depicted in art. He’d searched for them. Searched because he wondered how, if ever, he could somehow transform what he knew and felt and saw into art. He always held back, as if their insistence he not speak about them translated to not trying to represent them in any other way as well. As if he was bringing them into a realm of existence where they could never be truly perceived. Except he did and the desire to make what seemed intangible real was a struggle he wanted to resolve.

            And here his brother was being asked to do exactly that.  

            Zach was quiet, staring at the wall where Leila had pinned prints of photos of friends, family. Of Colt. Often with Sylvie, with Alice, or alone. Often drawing or reading. He’d asked her not to take photos of him so many times, but she still snuck around him, believing he didn’t know, but he always did.

            There were no photos of Zach.

            “I don’t know,” Zach said. The raw honesty arrested Colt. It was too much to take in.

            So now he sat with the pages. He only read the first two elegies. The language painted pictures that were desperately alive. The emotion a breathing, writhing torment. It was not easy to read. The fear in it. The awe. He lived with these beings every day, had for years now. It was like reading the words of a man feeling towards an unknown in a vast darkness. Speaking of beings beyond this life, remote and frightening. Colt found it hard to reconcile with what he did know.

            They had been comfort to him when he needed it most. A voice when he lay alone in the nights wrestling with sleeplessness and memories that couldn’t be contained and put away. With breath-stealing loss. They were an anchor, reassuring. A balm. It felt like being embraced in the loneliest, hardest moments. Physically, he could feel it.

            It was how he knew it was real.

            They also shared his quiet joys, especially when he was creating. Were witness to frustrations and triumphs. Would offer council and support.

            He was sure Zach had never had any experience of this.

            Colt laid the pages neatly on the bed. He stroked Sylvie who was sleeping, curled and twitching, sometimes mewling. He liked to think she was dreaming.

            And he felt trepidation, a yawning ache born in his chest at what Zach might bring into this world.

2

There was sticking point about where Marco intended to place the sculpture.

            Zach had spoken briefly with him on receiving an email elaborating on the possible placement once finished in the sculpture grounds of the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

            “This wasn’t in the original brief,” said Zach abruptly. He’d called Marco immediately.

            “It’s only a recent development.”

            “I haven’t agreed yet.”

            “I know. And it only came about because I mentioned this to a friend of mine on the board.”

            “This changes things, Marco. I believed this was for you, not for an institution.”

            “I understand. Nothing has been confirmed, I assure you. That’s why I mentioned it to you. My own dilemma is this. If anything happens to me, what will become of the sculpture?”

            Well, fuck.

            Since he’d never dealt directly with a collector or made anything for a private commission, what happened to his work once sold had never come to mind. One caveat he had made was if the work was degrading beyond being able to be conserved because of the material he used, then let it. He didn’t make art for museums to keep in perpetuity. As for private collectors, he had no control if they sold it or passed it on or—anything.            

This was a new development and he simply told Marco he had to consider it. Just one more complication.

            He’d called Marielle, needing her council. Her immediate response was expected. “Don’t do it. Stay, have a break, but forget it. There’s the project commissioned for the Met to work on in six months. Focus on that.”

            Not helpful. And there were shades of Seraphina in her advice. He had no doubt she’d say the same, but for entirely different reasons.

             What nagged at him was the issue of control. Marco had ultimate say. Seraphina had a vested interest for obvious reasons. Now it was being vetted as a donation to a public institution. It was suddenly both a private commission and yet a public work.

            It was screwing with his brain.

            He had to somehow take back a measure of control or he would bail. He had to be absolutely clear about why he was making it and for whom. Because this wasn’t a site-specific work, it would be placed within the collection and positioned where the curators believed it was best displayed. He could argue to have a say, but he wouldn’t be in the country by then and he had no intention of having an ongoing association with the gallery, and possibly Marco.

            One of his closest friends who worked on most of his installations usually provided a sounding board. They’d first met in Paris, both there on residencies. He called Raph.

            “Can’t believe you passed up on this trip, man,” said Raph sounding way too chilled out.

            “Don’t rub it in. I’ve got something I need to run by you.”

            Raph listened in focused silence. Not interrupting until Zach had outlined the whole project, including Seraphina’s protests, there was a pause at the end—

            “Don’t take the money.”

            “What?”

            “You want control, don’t do it for the money, Z. If you want to take it on for the challenge or whatever has made you get on a plane to a country you swore to me you would never call home again, then take the money out of the equation. It always becomes a point of control. If you’re doing it only because you want to, then you can also stipulate that if you decide at any time you don’t want to do it, well, no foul.”

            Zach couldn’t think for a minute. Raph was right.

            “Never thought of that.”

            “Because you’ve never had to! Not only does Marielle usually handle all the negotiations, you always manage to have stipulations added to the contract that people agree to simply because they want you to do it. Think of it like that, except you have to be more direct with the negotiating. Just make it clear that he can’t keep changing his mind about the terms of the brief. No surprises. And get it in writing.”

            “Shit.”

            “Yeah, well, Marielle’s right, Z. Ditch it if it’s too much. Also, you don’t need this. Not the stress anyhow.”

            “Thanks, Raph. And keep the gloating to a minimum.”

            “Your loss, Z! Waves every fricking day here.”

            “You’ve ben photo bombing my email, Raph. I get it. I’m jealous. I’m going now.”

            “Huh! Let me know what you decide. Always here, Z.”

            “Yeah, I know.”

            Lying in bed later that night, sleep a no-show, Zach could only imagine Marielle having a conniption about not being paid. The more he thought about it, it made sense. He didn’t need the money. He would have been taking time-out anyhow. Given the scale of the piece, he’d be the only one working on it. And there was the added complication with Seraphina. To profit from such a fraught situation wasn’t how he operated.

            Zach trusted his instincts, and he trusted Raph. Taking the money out meant the exchange was more about a gift: of his time and effort and talent. Of his desire to do it. If he never completed it, well, as Raph said, no foul. Marco could find someone else and it wouldn’t cost him. There was also a time constraint since he needed to be back in New York before six months was up. He didn’t intend to stay that long. Never had.

            And all of this was distracting him from the sole reason he was here. To create something. If he didn’t get back to the art itself, he would ditch it.

3 

The bookshop was a labyrinth. To Colt, it was a treasure trove.

            When he’d first walked into it he’d stood in a pool of light on the sandstone tiled floor from the open front double doors and breathed in the air dense with paper, leather, wood and an odd scent of smoke. Not quite incense.

            Located in a side street off Chapel Street, the antiquarian bookstore, featuring new and used books, was owned and run by Alice’s grandfather, Abe. He’d insisted Colt not call him Abraham. It was a former hat factory and warehouse and Abe had converted the ground floor’s massive space into what was at once a cavernous yet welcoming environment. Upstairs was an apartment where Alice’s family now lived.

Carved wood shelving lined the walls, as well as freestanding shelves positioned back-to-back creating aisles. There were glass-enclosed cases for rare books, often displayed as if in a museum. A wunderkammer of odd, magical and beautiful discoveries. Worn leather chairs and sofas were strategically placed. Lamps as well as overhead lighting shone intimate, yet bright. The stone flooring laid over concrete was deliberate—better for foot traffic, maintenance and to carry the weight of so many shelves and books. Wood would eventually warp. Faded Persian and Kilim rugs added to the Aladdin quality that riches were to be found here.

            At least for Colt.

            It had become a second home.

            When he walked in Sunday morning, Abe was already seated at the front table, reading. He’d never struck Colt as being of a particular age. Other than the silver streaks in his closely cropped dark hair, his face had a solid contentment to it. Like very little bothered him. Alice had taken Colt once to see Abe and his wife doing Tai Chi in the park with a changing group of people of all ages at the base of the housing commission flats near the bookstore. The movements had quieted Colt’s mind. And like today, Abe had been wearing his ubiquitous jeans, worn adidas sneakers and an untucked button-up checked shirt.

            Hearing Colt, Abe stopped reading. “She’s in the kitchen. Bagels and coffee.” They wouldn’t be open for another hour.

            Alice was engrossed in her novel. An urban fantasy. Boxes of books were on the floor, recently picked up from an estate sale.

            “Hey,” she smiled.

            “Is this from yesterday?” Colt nodded at the boxes.

            “Yep. There’s a box of art books there. Abe thought you could sort them.”

            He spied the box marked “ART” and the day settled before him. He’d begin by sorting. Abe had the final say what to sell and how to price them. Colt and Alice would eventually put them on the shelves, while taking turns to sit at the front desk. Colt had to make an effort to deal with customers. Tried to keep the interactions simple because he didn’t want to open himself to their energy. He was polite, helpful, but he could never relax.

            Colt placed a raison bagel in the toaster. He liked the smell. It was—cinnamon and comfort. He put the kettle on for tea. He wasn’t a coffee drinker. Alice had her strong latte in a travel cup. Her bagel was plain, toasted and was spread thick with cream cheese. He hated the stuff. The texture was gooey, felt like glue in his mouth.

            Bagel spread with butter, he sat with Alice at the table. They didn’t talk while he ate. The silences shared never pressed on him, as if he had to fill them to make the other person feel comfortable. He knew Alice wasn’t a morning person. She woke up gradually, and by late morning she’d be fully alert. Usually he’d bring out his sketchbook and pencils and draw while she read. He noted the book cover. It was a series about magic with a sword-wielding heroine. He’d tried reading it. Sometimes those books seemed more real than fantasy. Especially the dystopian fiction. He imagined too well that this could be their future. Maybe it was because of what he knew. What he could sense and see. But nothing felt improbable to him. Not if you could imagine it.

            Finishing his bagel, he washed his hands then crouched by the box of art books. When Alice first brought him to the bookshop, he’d gravitated to the arts section. He’d found a book on Giotto’s frescoes in the Arena Chapel in Padua and settled into one of the leather chairs. Alice sat on the floor nearby and read. He’d been so utterly content, so absorbed, Abe had to remind them the store was about to close. Time had streamed like water. Then Abe took them both out for Chinese.

            At the top of the pile was a massive book on Fra Angelico. Colt loved the Italian Renaissance painters. Abe knew this and most probably strategically placed it for Colt to find. He picked up the book, arms tense with the weight. He placed it on the scrubbed oak table that Alice’s dad had made. Alice rarely spoke of the reasons why she and her family now lived upstairs. Her dad had once been a lawyer and now made custom timber furniture. He seemed happy to Colt who often helped him sand and varnish. It was satisfying work.

            Carefully opening the book he noticed its almost pristine condition. A monograph with essays, but it was the pictures he wanted to see. The angels had human forms with halos and wings. They possessed a luminous quality that came from the colours Fra Angelico used, blues and pinks and golds that felt like they were made of light and air. The figures seemed at once solid and delicate. The compositions were simple. He liked the strange angles of the buildings, at once flat, with some perspective implied. The limited depth made the figures and the buildings and the landscape appear connected.   

            He slowly paged through the book. He wondered about showing Zach. Wondered if Zach had seen some of these works in his travels. Colt could only dream of seeing such things for real. Yet when his fingers slid across the pages, when the light caught the colours of the images, unexpectedly highlighting details—this felt just as real and intimate to Colt.

It was just him and the world in a book, opening in his hands.

4

Zach loaded the ute with large plastic tubs of clay. It was the best for storage, although the clay would eventually dry out. He’d sourced them second hand from a place specialising in recycled packaging. He’d also installed shelving with wire racks in the studio, lined with white cotton fabric to dry out the purified clay. A time-consuming process that involved a stainless-steel vat and a rejigged power drill with a stainless-steel paddle attached, and a large sieve. It had been one of his paid chores to help his mother mix and clean the clay.

            Zach’s mother had taught him how to dig for it. How to keep it ready for use. Despite not wanting to come back to the farm, he resisted taking too much. She’d also taught him that balance was required to take from the land. To only take what was needed, and help it by feeding the land, letting it restore itself with time.

            Fixing a tarp over the tray loaded with the tubs, he huffed at the exertion. He’d almost asked Colt to accompany him, except he was at school. He’d dared himself to come alone. Driving through the town he noted new shops, new buildings, but the feel of the place hadn’t changed: the slower pace, open sky, older vehicles, the casually dressed people. He’d erased much of this place from memory along with the people who’d brought it to life.

Taking a turn near the outskirts towards the cemetery, Zach willed himself to stop, idling the ute. The sky a clear high blue. The air tangy with moist grasses, with scents he’d used to be able to identify—eucalyptus, tea tree, lucerne. Sweeter and easier to breathe. He gulped it like water. He tried not to drown. If anything the air kept him in the ute, a force field of memory. His parents and Jack were gone. The graves placeholders of absence. It meant nothing to Zach, except as a reminder.

             Heading back to the city, his thoughts carried him through the long, monotonous drive. No music, the window down, the rush of wind its own song. As the miles accrued he breathed more freely. The dense loam of the clay was etched into his skin, clothes smeared with it, dried and stiff to the touch. He could almost taste it, had even been tempted as Colt had suggested.

            The dreams had come back. Rolling through him like the flash fire that had consumed the house, the remnants of which he’d just left. Flames, but no heat. He could never feel it, only sense it, see it, and always from a distance. He was running towards it, then away from it. He was yelling—holding Colt as he screamed—but the dream was silent. A quiet born of his world being consumed to ash. Gone to earth, never to be resurrected.

            If angels had been born of fire as he’d been reading—and he imagined it as an outburst of energy so great it would be like witnessing the birth of a star—he wondered what could have been loosed the night his parents and brother had died. Could anything but brutal pain and suffocation and endless darkness be born of such a conflagration?

            In his dreams, nothing survived. And what was birthed was a hollowness in the world that could never be filled.

5

Colt sat on his bed, Sylvie curled into the duvet. His hand was rapid, chest tight with anxiety, drawing with his 6B, indistinguishable squiggles and lines that formed a pattern, an arcing pattern, threatening to cover the page.

            Alice had shown him a short video on Instagram. He didn’t have the app, wasn’t interested. But Alice posted her street art on it, said she loved that she could see art from around the world by specific artists she admired. That she felt she belonged to a community, however loosely associated, but with a shared passion for what they did. She also followed several environmental groups. The video was from 4Ocean, and they cleaned up garbage in waterways, beaches and the sea. If you purchased one of their bracelets made from recycled materials, the money went to cleaning up one pound of trash. He couldn’t imagine just how many pounds of trash they needed to collect to make the world free of it. Maybe it would cover the world’s surface in truth.

            The images were haunting. Trash strewn beaches. Whole areas of sand and dunes covered so that you didn’t even know the land existed. Islands of floating trash in the sea and rivers. Clogging waterways. The fact all that garbage was being ingested by the creatures in the ocean. And the birds.

            The images flashed like a speeded up film in Colt’s mind. His hand moved at the speed of his thoughts. Frantic. Desperate.

            Then he stopped.

            His breath was ragged. His eyes were blurring and moist. His hands were sweating. He’d drawn an expanse of trash, so many plastic bottles, that replaced the earth meeting the sea. 

            He wiped the tears from his eyes. He dropped the pencil on the bed and stroked Sylvie who growled a little at her sleep being disturbed. Then purred. The light in the room brightened. He raised his eyes to the angel before him, whom he’d always considered a friend. Who always showed as a young male, recognisable with human features, a shape that had allowed Colt as a young boy to not be afraid, to feel safe.

            His voice was a whisper when he spoke. Pleaded.

            “Why?”

            Since the angel who had asked to be called Ezriel could sense all his turmoil, the rage of his thoughts and the pain in his heart, he answered simply—

            It can be changed. But there are many possible futures. People need to awaken to the possibility they can turn this around with effort.

            “But they aren’t!” Colt threw the pencil across the room. He could barely look at the sympathy of Ezriel’s face. An endless well of it. So not a part of this world, and yet very much a part of his life. The contradiction had never bothered him.

            There are people trying every day.

            He did know that. Ezriel usually came to him simply to offer support. Especially when he was drawing. He often just sat and watched. Made Colt feel less alone.

Alice had only wanted Colt to see that there were people doing something about it. She knew how much he worried. How careful he was in his own life to recycle and re-use. He and Alice had researched every way they could do things more in tune with the environment, going so far to organise a community garden at the school because neither could grow vegetables effectively in their own homes. Colt even tried finding sketchbooks with recycled paper, although he was mindful of the quality and feel and texture. He’d found pens made from recyclable materials. His pencils he used down to stubs.

            So many small ways, yet he wondered, was it enough?

Was any of it enough?

            Every small effort builds to something greater.

He knew that, too. He gave Ezriel a wan smile. Ezriel smiled mostly to calm him. Often around Ezriel, he felt a slumbering joy, like a tranquil pool nesting in his chest. He could breathe easier. Fall asleep more relaxed. As if Ezriel was syphoning the fear and anxiety he’d been living with since a boy. When he’d had trouble sleeping not long after moving here, Ezriel would stay with him for most of the night, dimming his light enough that he could see him, feel him, so that he could rest.

Colt tried to keep things simple. If he let the world come crashing in with all it’s wants, demands, desires and needs it was like a terrifying wave rearing, threatening to engulf him and drag him into the deep. He knew he was erecting barriers between himself and the overload of what was out there. He worried if he’d ever feel rooted in this world if he had to keep doing that, simply to protect himself, to survive. That there were only a handful of people tethering him, that made him feel like he might belong when so often he felt that he didn’t.

When he got that out-of-sync feeling—a floating aloneness—he held on to advice Abe once gave that finding a few people who made you feel safe and accepted could be enough. And to value and respect them for having his back. 

            He got up from the bed and retrieved his pencil.

            Sylvie protested and stretched as he sat cross-legged, resting his sketchbook on his lap. He turned the page and began anew.

            This time he drew a beach, but one that was alive: how Colt envisioned it would be once all that garbage had been removed.

            Ezriel’s light radiated understanding, but Colt wasn’t easily soothed.

6

Never one to be guided by regular meals, Zach surprised himself by daily turning up at the semi-detached Victorian cottage in Prahran for dinner.

            In the kitchen, overlooking the back courtyard, he deftly peeled carrots, years of shaping and using tools with his hands having a surprising culinary application.

            “Here, dice the potatoes, thanks.” 

            Jen’s matter-of-fact request was grounding, giving him direction. His gaze was fixed on Colt outside, seated with his feet propped up on the timber table, sketching while Alice read.

            He’d never had a sense of the details of Colt’s life. He watched, listened and catalogued his observations as if for future reference, knowing these memories would have to fuel him in his absence. Zach was too honest to lie that he’d be here long enough for this to be ordinary.

            “Are they—?” He wasn’t sure how to name the relationship between his brother and his friend.

            A hoot of laughter beside him, and his eyes swung to the right. Jen was too much like his mother. What she would have become. There were times he could barely look at her. Like now. How his mum would go into fits of laughter. The auburn hair, streaked by rich red glints, long and wavy. The dark eyes. Lightly freckled skin. The creasing, wide smile.

            “I don’t think even they know what they are.”

            “What do you mean?”

            A smile ghosted her mouth. She was making vegetable samosas, dahl, and a spiced vegetable biryani.

            “They’re so close and have been friends for years. I don’t know what you’d call that kind of meshing. It’s a kind of love. But I couldn’t say how it will evolve, or how they truly think of each other. All I can say, I’m so grateful he has her in his life.”

            “So not girlfriend/boyfriend?”

            She placed a hand on his shoulder, small familiar gestures he didn’t resist. “That almost seems too trite to call what they have, Zach. I think it’s just about accepting them as they seem to accept each other.”

            Jen rifled in the fridge while he progressed to the potatoes. He’d become proficient at making quick meals for himself, or finding places to eat. But the ritual of a meal shared was new and confronting. Echoes of a distant past—another time—and of a future absent of this ritual. The least he could do was help to prepare, and with Jen’s teaching schedule, she appreciated it.

            “I’ve never seen anything like it,” he admitted. Eyes flickering to the window, to the scene outside. He was tempted to grab his phone from his jeans pocket and take a photo. He had none of Colt that he’d personally taken. They were so at ease, so absorbed, and yet he could imagine the slightest movement or expression would be noted by the other.         

            “I know. How is your work going?”

            So casually asked. As if she wasn’t aware of his hesitancy to answer that question with pretty much anyone. His world was unknown to Jen and her husband, Ian. She’d gradually moved from teaching primary school kids to specialising in autistic kids. Ian was a building contractor who’d begun his career as a plumber. The art world was another planet. Distant as a star. It wasn’t necessary for them to know, except Colt seemed edging towards his own place in it. Perhaps.

            “I’ve begun making the piece. It’s too early to say much about it.”

            Jen touched his arm as she passed and left it at that. He vaguely remembered this kitchen from eight years ago. The oven had been replaced but not much else. Some of the cabinetry. He couldn’t say. Nothing in the house seemed excessive. Comfortable, functional. A few of Colt’s drawings, framed. Each room had a purpose. The house at the farm had been similar, and he wondered, not for the first time, at the similarities between Jen and his mother. Caitlin. Caitlin McKenna. Her husband—Zach and Colt’s father—Neil. Their older brother, Jack. Names had become signifiers for faces fading, for memories too long buried to be recalled immediately. Was he smothering an aspect of himself by smothering any recall of those he’d loved most?

            The question hung, as so many did.

            Finishing the potatoes, he rinsed his hands. Jen was absorbed with cooking and unless there was something for him to do, Zach didn’t want to stand about. He grabbed a glass, filling it with water from the ceramic filter. He felt uneasy at how quickly he’d become comfortable here. His haphazard travel and brief to lengthy stays in various cities and countries meant he’d thought little about his base. Despite his itinerant lifestyle Zach eventually applied for a long-term residency in the US with Marielle’s support. She’d also found an apartment for him in New York that he rented. It made sense given her representation and his frequent stays in the city between projects. Still, it wasn’t a place he called “home”, neither was the country. But it also cemented the resistance to come back to the country of his birth, made it less likely every year he’d ever return for good.

            So he was in no doubt that he’d be leaving. It was confirming Colt’s suspicions that he was avoiding.

            Retreating to his bedroom, he heaped pillows against the wall to prop himself up to sit. He pulled out a sketchbook from his backpack. Like Colt, he drew incessantly. Mostly relating to the project he was focused on. He’d only loosely drawn ideas for the sculpture he’d just begun.

            He’d moulded the wire armature. That’s as far as he’d got. He’d focused on the wings. They were massive, each spanning at least two metres and supported by steel struts embedded in clay blocks either side of a body, crouched, hunched, head bent. A form distinctly human yet misshapen and moulded, as if the body was still in the process of transformation. He had no idea as to the features of the face. Whether there would be any. But the posture was one of emergence and supplication. The wings, a massive weight, anchoring the piece to the earth as they rested, slightly arched, the impression of wing beats, the possibility of flight.

            Earthbound. Airborne. Stardust remade as fleshy dirt.

            A sloughing of the weight of being drawn to this earthly realm, seeking a truer home, one unseen, the source of whatever spark fuelled and breathed life into this angel’s becoming.

            Only once before he’d had a sense of wresting from the very earth a creation that he temporarily gave life to, knowing its eventual end would be to return to its raw form. And he’d shaped a bird. Wings tucked tight. It had fit in the palm of his hand.

            So where could such a being as he was wresting from his imagination, from fiction, poetry, history, prayers and countless depictions through time—where could his creation find release?

            Where could it eventually return to if not back to the earth?

            Or would it become dust to be carried by the wind?

            It didn’t feel right.

            It didn’t feel like a problem he’d be able to resolve.

            Maybe that was the point; that he never would.

            He’d doubted himself from the beginning, and yet he’d come. His ability to create this. He questioned his choice of materials, wanting—wanting a material that was incandescent, holding an inner light, resilient and resistant. Like marble. He’d never carved it, never found a use for it. And yet—

            He had a clear memory of his experience at the Accademia in Florence. Like so many, he made the pilgrimage to see Michelangelo’s David. But while crowds flocked to see the magnificence of a form that could never be done justice through images and photos, its presence rearing more as a god pulled from Olympia to Earth, not entirely human, it had been the slaves that had captured him. Those figures struggling to be freed from the marble blocks. That writhed and arched. The rough of the chipped marble, the smooth of the emerging flesh and form. Their sensuality had pulsed against his skin. His breath had quickened. The air heavy as if the act of seeing and sensing was a condensing weight. He’d wanted to touch them, to feel the gradation of where Michelangelo had chipped and scored the marble to reveal the form he claimed he could see inside the block.

            Those slaves had been a gift to his senses. A testament to the very act of creation. What a mere human had been capable of—shaping matter into a sublime body. David had been exultant, seemingly of another world: a world of giants and myth. But the slaves. Matter made flesh made breath. Zach could almost feel them about to take their first breath. 

            What was Zach liberating?

            He built things to break down. He created with the inherent understanding that most of the elements of his work would disintegrate. 

            Michelangelo created as if to honour that which inspired him. That his work would endure.

            Zach was caught in no-man’s-land where the very subject of his work would implode the material and its conception before he’d even begun.

            An act of hubris? Or hypocrisy?

            He had no idea.

7

“Let me draw you.”

            Colt didn’t look up from his own drawing. “You know I hate posing for stuff.”

He sat propped up against the wall on his bed, Sylvie nested beside him. Alice was swivelling on the desk chair, homework spread out on the desk.

“It won’t be posing. You won’t even know I’ll be doing it. Except you will now that I’ve told you.”

Colt smiled at that. “If you want.”

He so rarely relented, Alice gave a shout, “Yes!”

A strange victory. He couldn’t make sense why she’d want to. But Alice didn’t make sense, she just did stuff because she wanted to.

The sound of Alice’s pen marking the paper was in concord with his own. A small concert of scratching, hatches and strikes. He only used lamp light in the room, anything brighter was too harsh, inhibiting how he could see.

“Sometimes I get this strange sense around you.”

Alice had stopped sketching, so did Colt.

“What?”

“Like there’s this warmth around you, like a light or something. Yeah. A light. A really soft kind of glow.”

Colt focused on breathing. Not sure where Alice was going, but sure she was edging into territory that no one else had dared broach.

Because they couldn’t see. Or sense. Not the way he did.

“It sounds weird, but I guess it’s like an aura.”

He let out a breath. “You always speak about people’s auras.”

“Yeah, but with you it’s different.”

“How so?”

“Like it’s bigger. Sometimes I sense an energy or colour about people. I get that from Gran. She can sense things like that. But with you, it’s like it’s almost—”

He waited. Wanting to know. Not wanting to know.

The air around them warmed. An inward rush, the pressing of bodies in a room. His eyes widened. So many.

So many angels in that small room of his. Crowding in, their light almost blinding.

Waiting like he was, intent, even hopeful.

“Like there’s something, even someone around you.”

“Like a spirit?”

Alice squinted. He wondered if she could perceive them.

“More than that. It always feels more substantial. And that doesn’t make sense. But it always feels good. Really warm and glowy.”

Colt laughed. “Glowy?”

“Yeah, stupid word, but it fits.”

They did glow. It was a really good word.

Alice fanned herself. “Wow, did Jen turn the heating up?”

Colt struggled to take his next breath. Collectively, they all looked at him, their light dimming a little, the pressure in the room less intense.                  

Ezriel was standing at the end of his bed.

He smiled. It was beautiful in the way it made Colt feel, like that warmth suffused his skin, crept inside and filled him. It wasn’t about proportions and appearance, it was the buoyancy and energy, a sense of being held, encompassed by a feeling so good, he could only call it love.

Only because he’d felt it before with people he’d known from birth.          

One day. One day she will know.                                                                               

He so rarely allowed himself to cry. There was a time when he started and couldn’t find a way to stop.                                                                   

            Yet hearing those words. Watching Alice intent over her sketchbook. Seeing them all bent towards her, protecting her as much as guiding her. Tears welled, but they didn’t fall.

            Maybe there was hope.

Hope that someone would see him, in truth, and not turn away.

8

She had a way of slipping into his life without warning. This time is was a call he’d never expected, like the text, and even as he accepted it, hearing Seraphina’s voice quieted all his thoughts just listening to the sound.

            “Zach?”

“Yes?”

            “Hi, sorry, it’s Seraphina.” She qualified it unnecessarily. He’d programmed her number in his phone. “Seraphina Benedetto.”

            He placed the book he’d been reading on the bed. “Unexpected.”

            “I know.”

            “Is this about the sculpture? We haven’t talked since I accepted.”

            “No. Surprising as that might seem.”

             “I’ve been meaning to call, just to let you know it’s progressing.”

            “Thank you. But you were right. It’s ultimately between you and my father.”

            “You’re still not happy about it.”

            She spoke honestly, her voice deepening. “I’ll never be happy about it.”

            “I’m sorry.”

            Her silence wasn’t uncomfortable. He wondered where she was. Whether Seraphina was alone. Zach didn’t get a sense she was in a relationship, but he wasn’t great at making those kinds of assessments. Yet the spontaneous nature of this call, so late, there was obviously something bothering her. Enough to reach out to someone she barely knew.

            “What’s wrong, Seraphina?”

            “It’s crazy. To call you. I’m sorry if you’re doing something—”

            “No, I wouldn’t have answered otherwise.”

            “I’ve had a really weird day, and I admit, I have been wondering about what you’ve been doing with the sculpture. But it wasn’t why I called.”

            And because they were strangers despite the unexpected intensity of the last two encounters, Zach threw out a line for her to hold onto in this late hour—

            “Tell me about your day.”

            So she did. 

            He didn’t interrupt, her voice close, made more so by the cocooning of the dark-walled room. Her rambling account, edged with a panic she didn’t outright admit to that she was seriously questioning her career, brought on he could only imagine by her mother’s passing. Although there was more to it—the brief mention of her relationship breakdown—this quiet desperation, a sense she was teetering too close to an abyss, it kept him silent.

            Zach listened, discovering he wanted to figure out beneath her obvious need to make a connection, what had brought Seraphina to this point—what her life had been before he’d unintentionally found her. 

            It took a moment for him to realise she’d stopped talking.

            “Phina?”

            “Sorry—I mean, I’ve just dumped all this on you, and we hardly know each other.”

            “Maybe that’s why it’s easy.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “Makes you less self-conscious. Less invested. You don’t have much idea what the other person will make of what you say.”

            “Like a therapist?”

Zach laughed. “Kinda.” 

“Perhaps.” She sounded doubtful. “I should let you go.”

            “Try to get some sleep.”

            “You too. And thank you.”

            “Did it help?”

            “A bit.” The lightness of her tone made him wonder if she was smiling.

            Then without thinking, “Are you coming to Melbourne again?”

            “Actually I am. Soon.”

            “Maybe we could get a bite to eat, if you’re free.”

            “I’d like that.”            

            The softest sound of her breath exhaling. He almost felt it. 

            “Try to sleep, Phina.”

            “I will. Night, Zach.”

            “Night.”         

            Strange, he wondered later, lying in the dark, how her name was so close to the highest order of angels: seraphim. Had that been deliberate? Was it her mother’s choice, or Marco’s?

            He’d surprised himself, wanting to see her again.

            Perhaps on some level Seraphina did know he’d understand, without knowing exactly why. How her words pricked at the buried thoughts of too much loss that being here resurrected. How he understood the absence of people that could never be replaced. How some nights, despite all he’d achieved and living a life he’d barely dreamed was possible, he’d lie awake, thinking of Colt and the people he couldn’t stop loving, but who he found hard to recollect. An aloneness would hit, and that vulnerability had him wishing there was someone he was so close to, he’d simply turn to them in bed and touch them, knowing they’d understand that just being there soothed when nothing else could.

As he closed his eyes, picturing fiery wings splayed from Seraphina’s back, he could only see her falling, not flying, setting alight a night sky absent of stars. 

The divine made manifest

1

“Are you sure about this?”

            Alice had been asking Colt this question repeatedly since the previous evening when she’d come over so they could make signs for the climate march.

            Colt wished he could lie so she’d stop. “I’m not entirely sure. But you asked me to go and I said yes.”

            Alice vaguely nodded an assent. She wouldn’t stop worrying. Colt hated crowds and this was going to be massive. To mitigate the time he had to spend among so many people, they’d got a tram into the city and another to Treasury Gardens just when the speeches were ending and people were beginning to group and walk.

            Alice’s grin beamed like her hair streaked with acid green. Colt almost smiled back. “This is awesome,” she chimed.

            It was definitely something. As they joined the groundswell of people—Alice manoeuvred them so they were at the edge of the crowd in case Colt needed to make a quick exit—Colt felt a part of him closing off. Like an internal door shutting. It gave some relief from the sheer number of bodies, the heat bordering on muggy, the chants and voices, the pressure he could feel mounting of so many so close.

            Alice reached and squeezed his hand. She’d been touching him constantly simply to ground him. Small reassurances that she was there. And he needed it. He focused on her. The hair was a standout, influenced by her current fave muso, Billie Eilish. Colt kept calling her Billie Eyelash just to annoy Alice, who liked to brag how she’d been following Billie since her first EP came out and she only had a ten thousand following on Instagram that was now in the millions. Colt liked Billie’s hair and her voice. But some of her music had an edge and darkness and emotion he found too difficult to listen to. It’s why he loved electronic; he didn’t have to get tangled in other people’s words and voices.            

            Holding their placards, they marched. Colt focused on the feel of the cardboard in his hands. Alice’s sign featured one of her signature girls from her paste-ups planting flowers, except in this image the girl was on top of the globe of the earth. Colt had drawn in black texta a sea of plastic and garbage with a lone boat steered by a boy, trying to make a way through the impenetrable patch. Alice had traced the lines with her fingers. She’d asked if she could have it after they were done. He said yes.

            “Want some?” Alice had pulled a water flask from her backpack. He’d already guzzled most of his.

            “I’m okay,” he said, hoping to sound better than he felt.

            His breath was shallow and he was sweating. His eyes darted to take in the backs of people. The heads. The placards. The hats. The array of colours and clothing. He felt a lot like that boy in a boat, except the sea was people. 

            Colt kept looking at Alice. She was chanting to someone else’s prompt, clearly in her element. He tried not to think too far ahead, but right then he wondered after this final school year, where would they be after this? His throat tightened. He breathed into the choking anxiety, looked at the person in front of him.

            Where would they be after this?

            Thinking too far ahead brought on that wave of uncertainty he tried to surf instead of drown in. Like wondering how long Zach would be staying. Last night, Zach had come home late from the studio, had made tea while Alice and Colt made their signs. He’d asked what they were for.

            “You don’t know about the global climate march?” Alice had asked incredulously.

            Zach had stilled, the teabag dangling in his hand. “I read about it, I think.” But Colt could tell he was living in a parallel world to them. It was the first time he was truly seeing Zach while he worked, and the level of absorption was difficult to take in. Zach had retreated to his room. Colt had noticed the piles of books accumulating on the floor. Had tentatively looked at the spines and the titles. Mostly about angels. About esoteric subjects. Spirituality. Philosophy. Art. Even alchemy.

            He’d spied a book on William Blake. He recognised it, having seen it at Abe’s bookstore. He’d read it. Read Blake’s poems. Liked the strange flattened perspective of Blake’s watercolours. Intense colours and linear outlines like illuminated manuscripts. The strange elongation and musculature of his bodies. Powerful. Otherworldly.

            His brother was delving into another world.

            What do you fear? Ezriel had asked him as Colt backed away from the book-pile, not wanting to disturb them. What did he fear?

            “I don’t know what he’s looking for.”

            Are you scared what he’ll discover?

            “Perhaps.”

            Yes, perhaps.

            That’s why he hadn’t asked to see what he was working on. Why he stepped lightly around Zach as if skirting the truth of what he was actually doing all those hours he was away.

            Or perhaps he was scared of what Zach might find about what Colt really knew. What he lived with every day.

            “Hey, tell me when you need to leave,” Alice yelled over a particularly rowdy group nearby.

            Colt nodded, torn between wanting to stay close to Alice, to be a part of this mass, this moment, and wanting to simply be apart, somewhere far away.

            It was a constant state of his life. Straddling the existence he could reveal to others, and the one he could only acknowledge to himself.

            He so wanted someone to be able to cross over into the world he kept secret, kept safe. He’d always wanted that person to be Alice, but the longer Zach stayed, he wondered if his brother might cross the divide that time and distance had marked between them. That through the very being he was trying to create, they could come to an understanding of each other Colt had always believed would be impossible.

            Not that he hadn’t yearned for it. Always had, even as he denied it. 

 2

Zach wondered about the head.

            Whether he should have given the angel such a distinctive, human head. There were legs, arms and a torso, crouched and almost foetal, no determinable sex, simply a form to support the enormous wingspan. He could have left it as armature, but he’d shaped the form with clay. Could have implied absence, abstracting the support for the wings.

            He’d gone through all the possibilities, but he kept coming back to this melding of human and divine. That the angel would appear as recognisable to humans if they manifested on earth.

            Or would they?

            Sitting squat on the concrete floor in the shadow of the wings in the waning light, yet another day and his progress felt incremental. Zach hesitated to give more weight to the form, to apply more clay. He hesitated to shape it further, to make it more real, less an idea. More matter. More flesh.

            How could a being so evolved; a being of consciousness and light, that could most likely shape itself at will, be whatever it desired to be, appear in whatever guise was appropriate; how could such a being even desire to come to this planet? Perhaps to protect and guide humans in possession of the divine spark of their Creator, according to scripture Zach had read.

            He kept tilling it like soil, the idea of such a being existing in this dimension, this place. Zach had combed through the writings of mystics, poets, philosophers and theologians. The Bible. The Books of Enoch. He tried to remove angels from the dogma of religion, to try and place them within the lives of people. But it was often people who had extra sensibilities—call it clairsentience or clairvoyance—as well as a belief or a desire to believe, that acknowledged the possibility that such beings could even exist. Through time, humans had become more closed, more weighted in their perception of a divine realm, a sense of the spiritual. To many, it simply didn’t exist. There was no spiritual dimension to life. Most people’s lives—including his own—was far removed from such thinking.

            His mother had placed her belief in nature. It was alive to her. Should be nurtured and cared for, so that it could support life. He’d grown up with that respect. Similarly animals needed to be treated well if they were to supply humans with products, such as milk. It’s what prompted his parents to invest in a certified biodynamic dairy farm. His father had come from generations of farmers. Zach never had the disconnect he found in city folk, between knowing where their food came from and how it got on their plate. His mother had been vegetarian, like Colt. Zach, his brother Jack and their father, hadn’t been, although they’d come close. They’d grown their own vegetables, herbs and fruit. They’d fish, but what they caught they ate. His father had been the cook in their family and would source any meat from a neighbouring local organic farm. Fundamentally, there’d been the respect and care for the animals, and an understanding that cruelty, or any disregard for animal welfare in what they offered humans, was untenable.

            Zach believed in nature. In the natural world and the care of all creatures in it. Without them, humans wouldn’t survive. That was a basic tenant he’d grown up with and lived by. Perhaps if there was one thing he wanted people to sense through his work, was that through their destruction, humans were destroying themselves. It was also why he tried to place his work in more public spaces, so that a range of people might experience it, beyond the confines of museums and galleries.

Not for the first time he wondered whether the inherent pessimism in focusing on nature’s destruction had begun to weigh him down. To infuse his own worldview with a tainted and hopeless agenda, a kind of nihilism.

            Navigating such dark thoughts, there were bleak moments when he wondered whether humans were worth saving at all. Yet in the darkness of his wonderings a light flared: a burning night where everything in his being had wished he could have saved his parents and brother, where he wished he’d had the power to resurrect them from the ashes of their home.

            Each of their lives had been worth saving.

            And for all his grief, he’d never called out to a higher being for help. His belief seemed to extend to the world he perceived around him and nothing more. To Zach there was no Creator, no supreme intelligence that manifested into existence all that was life and alive, that was energy and light, that was the potential for life itself. Before this commission, he’d rarely considered anything pertaining to such a universal Creator, such as angels, spirits, or what some would term consciousness, pure potentiality, that imbued everything. That spirit made matter. He had an inkling his own mother had believed in such a thing. Even his father. He’d never asked.

Recently he’d read of the realm of angels being a mere parallel to the realm of earth. Of people using mind-altering substances to achieve states of perception beyond the physical, to see into the spiritual realms. That the divine was within the human and that the human was encompassed by the divine. The idea reminded him of the Taoist symbol: the black encompassing the white, the white the black, and all was encircled. But preceding these conceptions was the fundamental belief—that such realms, such beings actually existed. Could be as real as the material world.

How could he make such a leap?

            Zach had thought of broaching Marco to discuss these concepts further. Yet after attempting to read a couple of Marco’s articles on Bernini, he’d barely read a few pages of each before tossing them aside. Marco was erudite, his command of the material was obvious, yet the language was like a wall that Zach had to climb to even begin to grasp what Marco was saying. That sense of exclusivity grated against Zac, exposed the limitations of his own learning, and perhaps an ingrained resistance to writing about art that was intended for only a rarefied audience. Whatever Marco truly believed about the existence of such entities—that in truth, they did exist—he revealed nothing personal in his writing. The artist and the time Bernini worked were studied in the abstract, and through a lens of time and theory. And perhaps it was also Seraphina’s objections and the hint at a deeper issue with Marco himself that stopped Zach delving further into their familial struggles. It would be insincere not to value their privacy given the lengths he went to protect his own.

            Each day he was left with the angel.

            Each day he felt more alone with the deepening struggle to understand what was unfolding before him.

            And still, this question:

            Why would such a being that didn’t need to inhabit earth to survive want to come here at all?

3 

I knew a boy who was swallowed by the sky.

            Alice had given her phone to Colt so he could listen to the song with that line in it, saying it reminded her of him.

            Colt wondered at the words.

            A boy who was swallowed by the sky.

            “Why does it remind you of me?”

            “Because sometimes I imagine your mind isn’t simply in the clouds, it’s made up of air and light and the blue of the sky. I never told you how when I first saw you, you were surrounded by the most beautiful cerulean-blue aura. Like the sky. That’s why those words make me think of you.”

            Colt tried to draw it. His head disappearing into the sky. And that’s when Alice showed him a French artist called Seth, who primarily made work on the street. He painted children, abstracted, almost cartoonish, but often their heads and bodies were subsumed by these portals, as if they were immersed half in this world and half in another realm. Heads in clouds, skies, coloured rings, stepping into a brighter natural world, immersed in books, merging with someone else…

It resonated, the innocence, the brilliant colours, the imagination, the need to believe there was something better, more beautiful, more than the every day reality that could drain the world of fun, joy, love and life.

He gave up on drawing the words from the song, and without thought, he drew something else. His face, his body, no ground beneath, wisps of clouds smudged to suggest the above, because he wasn’t on solid ground, no, he wasn’t on earth because he had wings. The kind of wings he’d always imagined, could sometimes even feel spreading across his back.

He had wings.

Immense, light infused, glorious wings.

Imagining it felt more right than the reality of the ground beneath his feet.

How could he feel at peace in this world if he felt so ungrounded while living in it?

4

“You brought wine.”

            Opening the studio door, Zach gestured for Seraphina to enter. At least she’d found the place without problem.

            “I wasn’t sure what you had planned.”

            “I thought we’d go to a Thai restaurant not far from here.”

            Seraphina stopped, the bottle almost too limply held. Zach grabbed for it. Her gaze was fixed on the angel.

            From this angle, the wings dominated. Slowly, she walked around it, taking it all in.

            “Phina?”

            “Take away works for me.”

            It was as if she wasn’t truly with him. Zach went to the kitchen and fished for a bottle opener from one of the drawers, found two glasses he’d cleaned. Not wine glasses, but that didn’t bother him. Spying the label, it was a French red from Languedoc. Luckily he preferred red.

            Pouring the wine, he took the glasses outside and placed them on a timber outdoor table. He’d been sketching out here not long before she’d arrived. Seraphina had called that morning and they’d arranged for her to meet him here. Only after they’d hung up did he wonder if she’d offered to come here so she could see the sculpture.

            Seeing her now, that was probably an accurate assumption.

            He sat in one of the folding chairs and scrolled through his phone for the Japanese take-out he was most familiar with.

            “Japanese okay?” His voice projected across the courtyard.

            Seraphina looked over her shoulder, eyes unfocused. “I love sushi.”

            “Not so great with red.”

            She grinned. “Order some green tea. And some green tea ice cream if they have it.”

            That settled he placed the order and slumped in the chair, wine in hand. Sipping it he was pleased at its lightness, no sediment on his tongue. It reminded him of dusk, the heat of the sun dimming, a slight sweet poignancy to the coming end of a day. The food would actually work well with it.

            The lights in the studio glared. Seraphina crossed her legs and then sat facing the angel.

            Zach enjoyed the wine, the fall of Seraphina’s hair down her back. The deepening blue of the sky. Somehow it all fit seamlessly together.   

            Often he’d sit just like this as the day closed, letting the work he’d done or failed to do, sink in. As if it saturated his being, leaving him parched or satisfied. Wanting more, too tired to care, or resolute that it was enough. At least for the day.

            Sketching helped to ease him from the headspace that shut everything else out. Putting down the glass, he reached for the sketchbook, pencil marking the page he’d been working on. Turning to another page, he smoothed it before quickly outlining the shape of Seraphina’s back. She had exceptional posture, a supple grace. Perhaps she did yoga. Her attention was absolute, and he had no desire to disturb her. The more he watched her, the more he wanted to do so much more than simply watch. He’d smelled a hint of jasmine, white night-blooming flowers, emanating from the heat of her skin as she’d walked by him. It was fitting, because here, close to nightfall, he felt her more relaxed and alive, more like that night he’d watched her drag on the cigarette, stepping into her space wanting only to get closer.

            A text signalled the delivery was near. He got up giving Seraphina a wide berth and opened the door just as the delivery guy was about to knock.

            “Thanks,” Zach said during the quick exchange.

            Shutting the door, he lifted the bags so Seraphina could see. Her eyes briefly met his. And slowly, she uncoiled to stand.

            Grabbing a couple of plates they went to sit outside.

            What struck Zach as they opened the containers and spread the meal on the table, was how routine this felt. As if they’d done it before. How so few words needed to be said.

            Just as he was about to tuck into the vegetable gyoza, Seraphina lifted her glass.  “Santé.”

            Zach followed. “Santé. I’m happy you’re here.”

            “Same.”

            It was a pleasure watching Seraphina eat. He’d wondered the last time he’d seen her if she was a little too thin, her cheeks gaunt. But now, seeing the flush of her skin and how eagerly she hoed in, he put it down to the stress of what she’d had to say.

            At one point he got up and transferred the green tea into cups. Bringing it outside, Seraphina had paused eating, head thrown back, looking at the sky. Her skin, almost sallow in the fluorescent light at the bar, was now softly luminous.

            “Tea.” Zach placed the cup next to her plate.

            “Thanks.”

            Sipping tea, Seraphina was in no hurry to eat, the edge of hunger sated.

            “I’m still not sure how I feel about it. But I’m also glad you’re doing it.”

            “How so?”

            “It’s nothing I could have imagined. And maybe that’s it. Somehow, the reality divorces it from what inspired it.”

            “Your father or mother?”

            “Both.”

            He’d come to a similar perspective. Despite his confusion, Marco’s ideas and association seemed a distant source. Which made him question why he was doing it at all.

            “It surpasses everything just by being what it is. And I’m grateful it exists since you created it, and that I got to see it here with you.”

            “Have you seen any of my other work?” Zach assumed she had, but it seemed arrogant to think just because she was in the art world that she’d be interested in his work.

“Actually, yes. In Berlin. I’d just participated in the art fair in Cologne. It was the installation in a cavernous room with what appeared to be a sunken crater-like hole in the centre. It was clever, how the surrounding floor had been elevated to create an illusion of collapse with all the rubble, like the foundation of the museum had crumbled with all the contents falling into a chasm. I remember being hit by the smell first, earthy and musty and suffocating. And the plant matter creeping through cracks in the walls, spearing through the detritus, like it was threatening to take over the space.”

“Sounds like it made an impression.”

“It did. It made me think that with the erosion of the natural world through human-made efforts, nature was jacking up with its own disasters threatening to destroy all these creations and ways of living that structured existence. That nature was always seeking balance and a way to heal. That maybe humans could learn something from that.”

            Zach had often had lovers visit his studio spaces. Some more vocal than others about what he was creating, but none had the intuitive intelligence of Seraphina. Her words were sparse, but unexpectedly insightful. Her sensuality in how she engaged was so casual, so unforced, Zach found he wanted to know what she was thinking about his work, never having wanted that before.

            Seraphina’s face was flushed, probably from the wine, but he wondered if admitting how well she did know his work made her uncomfortable. “I also saw the Venice Biennale installation. With my father.”

            “Oh.”

            “I think he mentioned in his first email that’s how he knew your work.”

            “Yeah, he did. Although I’d forgotten.”

            “Well, you made a significant impression on him. He went back after the initial visit. And he’s never been one to engage with contemporary art.”

            “Surprising since your mother and you are so involved.”

            “Let’s say it’s always been a point of tension.”

            And not one Zach wanted to delve too much into. He let it hang. Picking up her chopsticks, Seraphina ate the remaining sashimi. At some point they moved to the ice cream, and Zach went inside and turned the overhead halogen lights off, turning on a few standing lamps and lighting a hurricane lamp, placing it on the table.

            Seraphina reclined like a slumbering cat. Boneless, effortlessly elegant.

            Whatever they’d spoken about, however relaxed it seemed, had woven above a current that became more palpable with the close of night. Hours stretched before them. Zach desired time to stream infinitely. To not think of it at all. To forestall whatever the day ahead might bring for both of them.

            There was just this, now, between them.

            Seraphina stood. Her eyes depthless in the light. Zach’s heart raced, knowing what was to come, having no idea what to expect.

            Leaning down, touching his face, her mouth close to his so that he breathed her breath, Zach’s eyes shut as her lips kissed his. His hands threaded into the hair he’d imagined countless times. He kissed her as he’d dreamed of doing, while each morning trying to deny he’d dreamed of her at all.

5

The triggers were often simple.

            The night before Colt woke to the sound of sirens nearby and couldn’t sleep wondering what they meant. Alice told him the next day a shop had been on fire in Chapel Street. Colt imagined he could smell the stench of smoke.

            Enough it felt like being choked.

The association speared deep for Colt. Alice had no idea that Colt had spent much of his life avoiding anything that he associated with the night where fire turned his life to ashes.

            At first even the gas-stove flames had made him flinch and step away. He’d had to train himself to withstand the sight and the heat, just so he could boil water for tea. There were no open fireplaces in Jen and Ian’s home and he’d been grateful. Only once Alice had sensed his distress when they’d gone to a school friend’s party at a farm in Gippsland. There’d been a bonfire later that night and Colt’s body had locked rigid, and he’d begun to shake. No one had noticed as he’d stood at the far edges of the crowd. But Alice had. She’d taken his hand and pulled him away, forcing him to move. When he couldn’t speak, she’d organised a ride into town where they took a train back to Melbourne.

            Alice never pushed to know more than he could say.

            He’d briefly alluded to that night; that the house no longer existed. He’d never spoken of why he hadn’t been at the farm, or Zach. It seemed innocuous to the actual event. A before-life that no longer existed. Yet it had saved them both. So ordinary: Colt staying overnight with a friend at a neighbouring farm, while Zach was out with friends in town.

It saved them, but not from the destruction of being left behind.

Colt didn’t feel he’d been saved.         

             So yes, he knew too well the consequences of fire.

            It terrified him.

            Jen said he was incredibly resilient. A counsellor had once called him a survivor. Colt didn’t like the word. Surviving didn’t seem like living. It felt like getting by on the basics, the most meagre resources to stay alive. Surely living was more than that?

            Only once he’d drawn the flames that could wake him up as if reliving a nightmare. He’d thought if he could draw it, he could exorcise himself of the fear. But when his palms sweated so much the pencil slipped from his fingers and smudged the heavy marks he’d made, he tore the page from his sketchbook, shredding it with his hands.

            Nothing could change the outcome. Nothing would make him forget.

            Ezriel had sat close to calm him. But little else did.

            So he buried it, walled the memories, shut them out if they flared into his mind.    

            Too easily the life you knew could change beyond being able to recognise or relate to it. Easy wasn’t the right word, no, because it was far from that: suddenly, irrevocably, shockingly. Without warning.

            And while Colt knew this, he fervently wished he didn’t.

            There’d been a time when he wanted death to end. He hated death. Wanted life to exist without it.

            He’d block it from his thoughts; box it away, like all the memories and people he’d lost that night. Deny it as a reality that had taken so much from him.

            A life without death.

            Having an expiration date didn’t make sense to Colt when you were here to live. It was counterintuitive. Why be here if you were going to die? Why call it life when it was embedded in death? He tried to imagine not having that unforeseen end waiting for him. He tried thinking of just existing, being, so far into the future it just faded from view because he was there, always.

            Here always. Or as long as he wanted to be. That life and living was a choice. That death or leaving this existence was a choice, not a given.

            Would he be happier? Lighter? Less burdened? 

            “Would you be happy if you couldn’t die?” he’d asked Alice once.

They’d been in the Botanical Gardens, surrounded by nature, by all that was good in life. Nature didn’t just die; it regenerated cyclically. It’s what he’d observed on the farm. A continual seasonal renewal. So why couldn’t humans be like that?

            Alice took his question seriously. “I’d be happy if I could keep making art. If I found people I could truly relate to and love them as my tribe. And if I could create a HUGE garden. Something I could share with other people, especially all the food I’d grow. I’m not sure I’d be thinking too far ahead of that. It probably would make me focus more on what was happening now if I wasn’t thinking it could just end.”

            It lightened his heavy thoughts. He could so clearly see the life Alice imagined. Yet the truth of it was he could see her doing that regardless of how long she’d live. It was simply an expression of Alice’s being. In an upside down, inside out way of seeing, the life Alice spoke of didn’t depend on how long she lived, it was simply how she’d want to be ongoing and now. It reminded him of a poem by Emily Dickenson that forever was a series of nows. Not some projection into the future, or living weighted by the past and all that was behind you. To live as if you were immortal, to get to the essence as Alice had of what made her happy, instead of needing death to define how much you appreciated and valued life.

            But would he want to live ongoing after so much was gone? How could he ever be happy with that kind of existence? He was stuck in time, the past; his life was so horridly defined by death he couldn’t escape it. It was with him every single day.

            To love being alive by living whatever truth gave it meaning, here and now. Where endings were simply beginnings, and cycles ongoing. Where change was constant and energy simply flowing, transforming.

            It seemed fiction for him, even as he wanted it to be true.

 6

“I don’t think I’ll ever tell Sam what we did on his sofa.”

            Seraphina’s laughter rippled through him. Zach’s face nuzzled the nape of her neck. He’d only noticed how uncomfortable it was. Sleep had eventually come, and it had been dreamless and deeper than he could remember.

            “Probably not if you want to work here again.”

            Zach grunted, arms tightening as if they weren’t close enough as he spooned her body with his.

            “It’s so strange lying here and seeing it like this.”

            She didn’t have to say what. Zach didn’t open his eyes. He could sense the sky lightening, not wanting the day to come. 

            Seraphina held his hand, pulled it to her lips.

            “Why strange?”

            “It’s been so abstract, more of an idea in my head, the physicality is overwhelming.”

            The skin Zach kissed at her nape was as soft as it was everywhere. He’d been fascinated as his hands, so coarse from his work, could still feel what was so opposite to itself.

            “And us? Any regrets?”

            That laugh. “None.”

            Again, it was too easy. This. Even here under a wool blanket that had seen better days. The cracked leather sofa. It really didn’t matter.

“I wish you’d met her.”

Zach stilled. Knew exactly whom she meant. Seraphina twisted her neck briefly to look at him before facing away. There really wasn’t much room to move.

“Sorry. Probably not something to bring up.”

“I get why you’d be thinking about her. You can talk about anything.”

Zach felt the evenness of her breathing and wondered if her eyes had closed. Her lips touched his fingers again. “She died of breast cancer.”

Automatic platitudes tipped his tongue until he felt her breath hitch, wetness touching his skin. Kissing her neck he kept quiet.

“My father ended his affair the day he learned of her diagnosis.”

Zach wasn’t sure he heard right. He wanted to lean over and see her face. Wanted to shake his head because it was eerily blank.

“Come again?”

“He’d been having an affair with a PhD student he’d been supervising. He ended it when he heard Mama’s diagnosis.”

“Christ.”

“She knew. I’d guessed. But I wasn’t living at home and I was too wrapped up in my own life. Roberto, my brother, found out when he caught up with Dad when he was in London. She was there with him. On a research trip.”

What the hell could he say to this?

“Roberto told me. It was only when Mama got sick that she admitted to me that she’d always known.”

“And she stayed with him?”

“Yes. By then it all felt so horribly late. Even though he’d ended it, it just felt like nothing would be the same again. For anyone.”

Zach laid a hand on her stomach, wriggling back to get her to turn towards him.

Awkwardly twisting they lay facing each other, limbs like puzzle pieces. Zach adjusted the blanket. He wanted to see all of her. Even with his eyes closed he could see her body, so lithe and strong.

“This is why, isn’t it? That you didn’t want this to happen.”

She nodded. Her arms loosely held him, despite there being so little room, their bodies pressed and wonderfully familiar. “He loved her. My mother. And she loved him. I still don’t understand how they got to that place where he did what he did. She wouldn’t talk about it, and I’ve been so angry at him for so long, I still haven’t asked.”

Zach stroked her back, but nothing could truly soothe what pained her. Nothing he could say.

And yet—“Your opposition makes sense knowing this.”

“Yes. Maybe a part of me wants to punish him for even trying to show remorse or pain. I didn’t understand why he wanted to do this. As if it would change anything.”

“It won’t.” Zach knew that as fact.

“But I’m so tired of fighting him and keeping everything bottled up. I saw him the other day and I was ready to finally have it out. I stopped myself doing it, because it’s like he doesn’t know how to move forward now she’s gone. Hurting him or hating him isn’t going to help either of us. And if I couldn’t let it go I’d be just the same. Not really living at all.”

If not for the details, those words could have been about him.                                 

Seraphina’s eyes pooled with too much emotion. He’d sensed that all along, that her body was fighting to contain too much of what she felt. It sucked him in, even as he pulled away.

“I’m sorry. Does this affect the project for you?”

It seemed selfish to insert his very brief association into their relations. But he was here with Seraphina and that was entangled in a way he was no longer sure he could extricate himself, or wanted to.

            Zach smudged the wet trace of tears from her cheek. “I don’t know.”

7

“Do you still want me to come?”

            “I asked, so yes,” said Colt.

            Alice fiddled with the straps of her backpack. They’d been at the State Library, had a free day for study. Colt only agreed to sit in such a crowded space because Alice needed reference material. He liked the domed reading room. It made him think of being inside a white, tiered wedding cake. He liked the smell of the books in the stacks. It was familiar, reminding him of the bookshop where he felt sure and safe. But larger rooms with rows of desks and people crammed in, that made him want to run. Studying proved futile. His mind focused on being somewhere else. He’d found an art book on Leonardo da Vinci, mindful of Zach’s comment about his drawing. Losing himself in the images helped.

            Now they were about to catch a tram near the Victoria Market, heading for North Melbourne. Zach’s studio address was on his phone. He’d tried calling, but Zach’s phone went straight to voicemail. Jen had mentioned he’d stayed overnight at the studio. Colt didn’t want to admit how much it had bothered him that Zach didn’t come home.

That maybe he wouldn’t be coming home at all.

            The sudden urgency to see the angel came thinking Zach must be close to finishing it. The nudge to act had come from Ezriel that morning.

            “Well, I’m super curious and I’d love to see this mysterious sculpture you don’t want to talk about.”

            “It’s not mine to talk about.”

            Alice rolled her eyes. “Duh! He’s your brother. What he does is something you can talk about.”

            Colt wasn’t so sure.

            “Okay. But before we visit, I need food. So lets walk and find something to eat.”

            Colt always respected Alice’s requests for food. He was also sorely tempted to press on and skip the food for later.

            Alice stopped walking, people bumping then swerving around her.
            “Food first.”

            “Fine.”

            They resumed walking.

            “Why the urgency?”

            As much as he’d like to say it was a gut feeling, or truthfully, an angel had prodded him, he couldn’t describe the trepidation he felt. He’d resisted asking about the angel or requesting Zach take photos for him. He hadn’t wanted to know. Didn’t want evidence of Zach’s creation, which Colt had such a vested interest in.

            “I’m not sure.” It wasn’t entirely a lie.

            Alice sighed, dragging her Doc Marten boots against the cement pavement. “He better be there to let us in. That’s all I’m saying.”

            Colt grinned. Alice got awfully cranky when she was hungry.

8

Seated cross-legged in front of the angel as Seraphina had the night before, Zach wondered, as he had countless times, what the angel meant to him.

            Had the angel evolved beyond what Marco had originally wanted, or Zach had envisaged? Had it taken on a life independent despite Zach’s wrangling with its creation?

            In the light of Seraphina’s confession, he felt he was seeing it with fresh eyes, yet as conflicted as before.

            His gaze dragged to the sofa. The blanket bunched at one end. If he turned he’d see the glasses and lamp still on the table outside. He’d ditched the food cartons, the plates stacked in the sink.

            Zach couldn’t stop hearing her voice, smell her lingering scent. The light and the day blunted the whispers and caresses, the mutual desperation and need. But he couldn’t stop reliving the kisses he hadn’t wanted to end; how she touched him like she was shaping his flesh as clay, bringing him to life.

Seraphina had left early with meetings to attend and a late afternoon flight back to Sydney to catch. Neither spoke of how they’d see each other again. As if they’d carved from time what little they could offer each other.

            It didn’t seem enough.

Leaving Zach barely able to muster the energy to make sense of his thoughts. He’d opened the roller door needing air and light as if it could clear his head.

The angel was a part of this world, yet not completely of this world.

And what of Marco and his motivations? Guilt? Or unspeakable heartache. Zach could only surmise. But it had become moot as he delved into the process, the why of Marco’s request no longer important to the outcome. Remembering Marco’s words, that he was spurred by some impulse, belief, that something in this world should exist that connected his wife’s life with her absence from it, Zach puzzled at how he’d held that proof in his arms only hours ago. How could Marco believe anything that Zach created could supplant the life of his child?

Nothing he created could intimate how much his family had meant to him. His love and their absence from his life. It’s why he’d never spoken of it outside of family, never created anything that came close to referencing their deaths.         

Zach couldn’t fathom Marco’s thinking at all. He found it difficult to judge a man he didn’t know. He’d never been unfaithful. It had never been a choice he’d wanted to make. Out of respect for himself or his lover. But he’d never been so in love or involved with someone for such a length of time where such an act would devastate the partner and have such dire consequences for others. Witnessing Seraphina’s pain, her anger, Zach felt a righteous protectiveness he’d never experienced before. Yet to judge from a place of being so flawed, so incapable of sustaining a deep, long-term relationship—it didn’t feel right, wasn’t justified.

Frustration had him curling his fingers into impotent fists. What was he doing? Coming back to a country with no intention to stay permanently, tied by memories he’d prefer to bury and forget. Seeing Colt had been a gift, but the flipside was Zach would leave and only disappoint and hurt the one person he wished never to cause pain. Colt had suffered more than enough, and Zach was well aware he’d caused some of it by leaving all those years ago. Was being in Colt’s life, taking this short time to be physically close, more a curse? Was he selfish in wanting what little he could get?

And Seraphina…

That had been so unplanned, so inexplicable. She’d also asked nothing more from him than he’d been willing to give.

Trying to move forward was impossible when he was warring with himself. The angel was impossible. He was constantly battling doubt with possibility, and in this material world he’d cultivated his life from, he couldn’t seem to let go of what felt tangible, that he knew was real, for what could only be a supposition. It felt like going against everything he thought he was, how he lived his life.

“Enough!” Zach roared into the air.

He got up, pacing, wanting to yell and knowing it was futile. Perhaps this was it. The point he’d been heading to all along. Despite all the obstacles, the doubts, he’d persisted as if it would become clear, resolve itself. Yet how could he resolve a challenge of creating such a being when it seemed too incredible that they could exist at all? Be as real to him in his life as Colt or Seraphina was? How could he fit the pieces of such a conundrum together? It felt like weaving fiction, sculpting smoke.

That was it. He felt in his pocket for his phone. He’d call Marco and end it now. He was done. He couldn’t complete it. Perhaps he could finally accept it.

His phone wasn’t where it usually was.

“Shit!” he exploded.

Zach strode to the workbenches, stared and then reached for the axe hanging on the wall. It had heft.

Narrowing the distance, Zach swung it over his shoulder, could feel the point when it was ready to descend.

His actions were beyond thought. Mindless. He instinctually knew the place of impact, knew the damage he’d cause.

“Enough!”      

Zach let the axe fall.     

9

The first thing Colt noticed were the wings.

            He and Alice had walked right in, the roller door open to the massive studio.

            Alice gasped seeing it, standing at Colt’s side. Neither moved. Zach was outside his back to them, head tilted looking at the sky. Colt wanted to call out, wanted Zach to see them before he stepped closer. As if this was a sacred space and Colt was intruding.

            He’d seen photos of Zach’s various studio spaces but being inside one, seeing the tools, the racks and tubs of clay, the mess of making, he was a little in awe.

            Alice moved first, lightly touching one of the wings. She was smiling. To finally see what she, like Colt, had only gazed at in photos, videos and catalogues.

            Colt took a step, willing his feet to move. Then another.

            Closer and the sheer size hit him, then the smells: of earth, of home.

            He wanted to touch it, to feel it.

            Walking the length of a wing, he rounded to see the figure supporting it, not simply the blocks and the struts.

            The weight seemed immense. It puzzled him. Why create wings that couldn’t be uplifted by air, that weren’t ethereal and light?
            Where was the energy and vibrancy, the sense of almost disappearing in this reality?

            But this was Zach, and it made sense for him. Colt knew that, and his knees almost buckled beneath him just thinking of those wings on his back.

            “Colt?” Zach spun around and the surprise was real. Colt hadn’t left a voicemail, hadn’t thought it necessary. He’d secretly hoped that Zach might not be here and he and Alice could find something else to do. This was such unfamiliar territory and even now, the sense of trespassing made him awkward.

            Zach walked inside. “You came.”

            He didn’t seem to mind, Colt relaxed a little.

            “This is incredible!” Alice was genuinely enjoying herself. She loved being around creative people, in creative spaces.

            “Thanks,” Zach murmured, his eyes on Colt.

            Colt’s eyes flickered and stilled when he realised what was so unsettling. He thought it was the weight. The scale. But then he took in the figure, shaped as human, sex unidentified, but there was an absence, a stump where the head should have been.

            The head.

            Colt looked at Zach, back at the angel, his hands squeezed tight, he wasn’t sure what he was seeing—

            Then he saw it. Lying on the floor. He saw an axe nearby.

            “Colt…” Zach reached for him as Colt lunged, his knees scraping the ground as he grabbed for the head, cradling it.

             His eyes darted to the severed stump. The head had weight, was real. His thoughts skittered at why Zach had taken an axe to the head of the angel.

            Why?

            “What have you done?” Colt cried out, could feel his eyes hot and full. The head pressed against his chest. Cold, heavy.

            What have you done?

            “Buddy, I didn’t…” Zach knelt beside him, a hand pressed on his shoulder.

            “Why?” Colt yelled and he was rocking now, his grip tightening around what felt more real than it was. He’d given it a human form.

He’d beheaded it.

            Angels were eternal, light, energy, capable of anything, beyond the traumas of this world—deathless.

Mind static, Colt couldn’t make sense of the act.

            “Buddy, I didn’t intend to. It—I never intended to do it, it was impulsive.” Zach was unable to communicate the why. Colt vaguely sensed his confusion, at Colt, at himself.

             Alice stood quietly, distressed at Colt, his unrelenting hold and the tears streaming. Colt’s shock at Zach’s unknowing violence.

            And the angels. They surrounded them. Some with heads bowed as if in prayer. A lament for the fall of grace for violating what could have animated, honoured them in this world, giving form where none was before.

10

“Where do you want to go?”

            Alice held his hand as they walked. Colt couldn’t think.

            “I don’t know.”

            His vice sounded hollow. Like he was wringing the words from an internal echo chamber.

            “Okay. We’ll take a tram and walk to the gardens.”

            He couldn’t remember getting up off the floor and leaving. He’d felt the pressure of Alice’s hand and how she’d pulled him towards the light. Then they were on the narrow street, the studio behind them.

            He’d looked back to see Zach standing, his face unreadable.

            Colt had said nothing as Alice pried the head from his grasp. But he sensed her desperation.

            The tram ride blurred. It was mostly empty and he registered the space around him. A force field. Maybe he was keeping people away just by how he was feeling.

            The air was different closer to the trees, shrubs and flowers as they arrived at one of the garden’s gates. Walking through had always felt magical. As if they were entering another realm like stumbling through the wardrobe into another world. He’d loved those books. Strange how he read less fantasy now, believing it was more than possible. The angels had told him of other realms. At first it had sounded like the stories he read, but once Ezriel had shown him, and what he’d seen shifted the very earth he stood on. There was no disbelieving after that.

            It was too much to know. Created more of a gap between his reality and those around him.

            How could Zach ever understand? After seeing the angel, Colt was convinced he never would.

            Alice was quiet. Anything she said would bounce right off the bubble around him. He tried to make words and thoughts match, but they refused.

            They came to a slope of grass that overlooked the lake. Alice tugged his jacket sleeve, and they found a spot to sit.

            Only when Colt stopped did he let his breath come out in an audible sigh.

            He stared at the water and the ducks. He hadn’t brought anything to feed them. Usually he did.

            Alice opened her backpack, rifled through it and produced a packet of plain crackers. She always carried snacks. She handed them over and he took them. Felt the slight weight in his hand. Rising he strode to the edge of the lake, even while his body moved robotically, disconnected from his head.

            Crumbling a cracker in his hand, he carefully tossed it on the water near the ducks. They swarmed for the crumbs.

            He stood there, feeding them, while Alice watched close by.

11

Zach knelt before the angel.

            Colt was gone, but his anguish had grafted on Zach, even as he couldn’t understand it.

            Alice had carefully placed the head under one of the wings. Zach couldn’t ignore what he’d done seeing it there.

            Emptied of his frustration and fury, drained at seeing Colt holding the head as if it was real, Zach bent forward, his body folding on itself as if it had no substance.

            If he could have spoken, found the energy to make sense with words, for the first time in his life he might have prayed.

The beginning of something else            

1

Colt couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t draw.

            The bedside lamp was on and Sylvie was curled against his body. Ezriel was a brighter light in the room.

            “Why?” Colt didn’t specify because Ezriel had been there. He’d seen what Colt had.

            He does not understand. It’s not real to him. It was something he made, not something he lives.

            “He still damaged it. Wouldn’t he care for something he created enough to care what he did to it?”

            Perhaps if he valued it or felt connected to it.

            Colt grasped for the understanding in Ezriel’s words, as if it would ease the hurt, incomprehension and nausea that Zach had done more than simply desecrate his own work. That it had reverberated into the heavens; so many angels had been witness. It sickened Colt, at what that might mean without having any idea if it mattered if Zach didn’t care about what he’d done.

            He felt the warmth and weight of a hand resting on his head. Ezriel leaned over his curled body on the bed. Felt his eyes grow heavy.

            Rest, my friend.

            Sleep was so much more welcome than the waking world.

            And he dreamed. Of his brother, Jack, always so ready to smile, his warmth like long, hazy days where Colt would lie in the fields of lucerne, sun high overhead. His mum, who seemed more at home in her studio than the house, because here she seemed to come alive, but felt so far away from Colt, inhabiting a world he couldn’t enter. And his dad, standing on the veranda, eyes fixed on the horizon over the lake, as if trying to see into the future, the days and seasons ahead that shaped the land and their lives.

            Colt dreamed of all he’d once lived for, that kept him grounded, held him aloft.

            And when he woke, his eyes were dry. He shut them, for the longest time, holding the images in his mind he didn’t want to fade.

2 

“Can I come in?”

            Colt looked up from petting Sylvie. Sprawled on his lap as he sat cross-legged on the bed. Such a familiar sight now, Zach’s heart ached, already missing him.

            “Okay.”

            Zach closed the door. He’d stayed at the studio the past few days, but worry for Colt who wasn’t answering his phone, had him coming back to Jen and Ian’s house. He sat awkwardly on the desk chair. The room felt smaller, or Zach was having trouble breathing past too much feeling.

            How to begin?

            “I’m sorry. For what you think I did, even though I’m not sure I understand why you were so distressed.”

            The anguish had been so real Zach was thrown back to that night, holding Colt so he wouldn’t run towards the house going up in flames. By anchoring Colt, he’d anchored himself. If it had just been him, he would have done exactly the same, uncaring of his own life.

            Colt’s eyes focused on Zach but he said nothing. His silence felt deliberate.

Zach knew how sensitive Colt was to the work he made. But this was something else and he was lost to what it could be or how to speak about it. So he opted to address what he’d been waiting for the right time, knowing there never would be one.

            “I’ve been meaning to talk to you, but I never seem to find the words, or the moment that’s best.”

            “You’re leaving.”

            Blunt, but there was no accusation. Colt’s voice was emptied of emotion and that scared Zac.

            “Yes. I never intended staying too long. I’ve a commission at the Met early next year.”

            “So why not stay until then?”

            “I can’t be here and not be doing something. I need to begin preparing for the project in New York. I’m sorry.” He didn’t mention he’d also organised to meet up with Raph and Carlos in Baja. The guilt just kept racking up.

            Colt continued petting Sylvie, who was blissfully unaware of Zach or the tension.

            “I know when I left all those years ago it was the worst thing for you. You were settled at school and it had been a few years since we came to live here. But I know you still needed me near you.”

            What could he say to express how much he’d regretted it, but also hadn’t really been thinking about Colt as well? He’d had such a driving need to leave that he blocked everything that might keep him stranded. Nothing he could say seemed adequate in the face of Colt’s hurt. Then or now.

            “I get you needed to go overseas. Especially for your work.”

            Zach wiped his palms across his thighs. It seemed warmer than when he walked in. “I went with Jen to see the lawyer that handled Mum and Dad’s affairs. I signed over my share of the farm to you.”

            Colt’s head jerked up. “Why?”

            “Because it’s not mine anymore. My life isn’t here. You may choose to stay or leave, I don’t know, except you still see it as home, and I never will.”

            “But we’re family.”

            And that place connected them both more strongly because of who they’d been when they lived there. Who they’d loved.

            “Always. You must know that. But I want you to be free to do whatever you want with it. I want you to have all the options open to you. I’ve been fortunate in finding the way I want to live and be in this world. I want that for you. It’s why I also set up a trust for you.”

            “What?”

            “A trust. When I started earning good money I set up a trust with Jen and the lawyers help. The money from what was settled after Mum and Dad died went mostly towards your education. But I wanted you to never have to worry about your choices after you left school. So, if you want to travel or go to art school—whatever—the money is there. I think it will get to a point where you could probably live off the interest alone. Jen will help you to manage it.”

            Colt just stared, his confusion evident.

            “It will never make up for me leaving. It will never make up for the years I’ve been away. But you know I’ve always wanted you to visit me in New York, or even come and hang with me or help while I was working on a project, no expense spared. That offer will always be open, Colt. Maybe when you’re free from school you’d consider it. And if you do want to be an artist, I’ll do whatever I can to help. I have connections, can help you find the best people to make it happen.”

            The furrowed brow indicated Colt was thinking it all through. It was a lot. Even when it didn’t seem enough. He knew the money meant nothing to Colt, but what he was truly offering was the freedom to choose and the means to have options, especially if he wanted to make art. Zach knew how valuable that truly was.

Zach couldn’t help thinking of Colt’s response at the studio. He’d had flashes of images since it happened. How Colt had hugged the head until Alice pried it away, kneeling before him, holding his hands and making soothing noises as if calming a distressed animal.

            She managed to reach him when Zach floundered.

            Guilt had kicked hard. The fact he felt he’d done something terribly wrong. As if he’d desecrated more than just his own creation.

            What’s worse, it also hadn’t felt wrong. Only Colt’s reaction made him think differently.

            Bringing it up with Colt went against all his instincts, so he focused on trying to build a bridge before it seemed too hopeless to try. 

            “I just want you to have the freedom to live the life you want.”

            Colt finally looked at Zach. “You really want me to help with one your projects?”

            “Why wouldn’t I? You’re a brilliant artist, even if you choose to do something else. I’d just be happy for you to be there, Buddy.”  

Even as he talked, Zach’s mind kept stumbling over all the conflicting thoughts, his own very human inadequacies with Colt. How they collided with creating the angel.

            Zach had come to see how fitting an end to the sculpture it was.

            Where human met the divine, an impasse at confronting the gap in knowing, not simply believing blindly, or not believing at all.

            A schism, which was exactly where Zach found himself.

            He could barely understand it, let alone try and explain it to Colt. So he kept silent.

            Colt shifted while Sylvie meowed in protest, snuggling deeper in his lap.

            All the time he’d been here he’d been wondering how he could meet Colt halfway. Find common ground to begin forging a relationship that went beyond their past. Share new experiences to build something that wasn’t mired in loss.

            Wanting more because how they’d related until now hadn’t been enough for either of them.

            Maybe coming back had never been about anything else other than finding his brother again; rediscovering just how much he loved him. That love was still vital to Zach’s life, and moving forward without Colt knowing how much he meant to him was no longer tenable.

            “Okay. I think I’d like that.”

            Zach felt like he could breathe again; it was more than he’d expected, so much closer to what he’d hoped.

3 

Colt couldn’t help drawing the wings.

            He couldn’t stop thinking about them. He didn’t want to remember them.

            They were too heavy. The clay was an improbable material to convey all that Colt had seen and knew of the wings that were so integral to the light and energy that shaped the angels.

            Ezriel sat near him, sensing his frustration. Had been ever present since that day he’d come home chilled and numb and silent. He’d been there listening to Zach, and the love and compassion Colt sensed wasn’t simply for him, it had been for Zach as well.

            Why had Zach chosen to create the angel this way? What had he been thinking?

            He could barely look at his brother lately, so asking seemed impossible.

            The weight of the head in his arms.

            It wasn’t real. Yet, if they were more human, the feel of it could have been.

            And that had hurt. Knowing his brother had given the angel such a human form. As if he could bring it in to this reality as close to their own physiology that these ethereal beings would be earthbound, grounded as they were, unable to ascend or move between this plane and any other.

            Why?

            There was no answer. Only the silence in his head he couldn’t outwalk, outwork, or draw away.

            The wings on the page were pinned by those steel struts. Not a support, not a part he could ignore.

            Zach’s words could only heal so much. Seeing him leave hadn’t left Colt with the inexplicable rip in his life that he’d believed only Zach’s presence would mend. He’d become a whole other person beyond his brother’s comprehension.

            Colt could only wonder at the future, how there might come a time when his truth could be known to his brother.

            Nothing fixed or certain.

            Just this knowing of who he was, who he might become.

            That Colt loved his brother, even now.

            Staring at the wings, the shading and moulding, Colt imagined it was his brother holding those wings up.

Struggling yet trying to fly beyond everything he’d ever imagined himself capable of.

Maybe then he’d be able to meet Colt where he truly lived.

4

Odd how seeing Seraphina’s apartment reminded him of his own. Sparsely furnished, muted colours, the bare minimum. Seeing the expanse of windows and doors leading to a terrace differed, and stepping up to the glass Zach could see the appeal. The view across the bay was spectacular.

            “Nothing about you is ever what I expect.”

            Seraphina’s lips curved. “I could say the same about you.” And then. “I didn’t expect to see you again.”

            “I did call.”

            “You said you would.”

            “Because I wanted to.”

            Serpahina grasped for his hand. Nothing tentative about her touch. He held tight.

            “Come,” she said softly.

            He’d worried it would be awkward, seeing her before he left. He only had the night. He didn’t want her to think he was stopping by for sex. It had never been simply that. Not before. He didn’t know what to make of it, but being near her calmed and electrified him, made him consider staying when only Colt could ever pull him so strongly.

            Seraphina’s hair was down. His fingers played with a long curl. Seated on the sofa, the only light came from the uncovered windows and dusk was settling. Her skin was awash with red-gold.

            “Whatever you’re thinking, I’m glad you stopped by.”

            “I didn’t want to leave without seeing you. I can be pretty selfish.”

            Seraphina laughed. No wonder he’d thought of her singing when they first met, her voice, throaty and deep.

            “I can be the same.”

            She hadn’t let go of his hand. They sat, eyes resting on the other, something settling between them in the fall of light.

            “I saw the photos you sent my father. Of the angel.”

            “Ah.”

            Those lips curved again. “To say it was nothing he expected would be an understatement.”

            “Good or bad?”

            “Both.”

            “Sounds difficult.” He’d received the answering email from Marco. He accepted the finished work without comment. Zach hadn’t explained the work, the head absent. He’d taken one last trip back to the farm, depositing the remaining clay back into the earth and the angel’s head along with it. The act resonated more, said more of the struggles Zach had with the angel and its existence, than the sculpture he sent to Marco.

Zach had arranged its transport. It would arrive as he was in Baja. Another world away.

            Another life away.

            “And you?” All the time he’d been making it, he’d never once wondered at Seraphina’s response. Only when she’d seen it last had he realised the depth of her sensitivity, how art for her mattered greatly. Enough that he could finally see why him making it at all had troubled her so much.

            Her eyes lowered. He wasn’t surprised to see the glint of water as they opened. “It was nothing like I could have imagined, either. I felt this overwhelming anguish and awe. And that was through images. I feel uncertain how I’ll truly respond in seeing it once installed. But as I said before, you’ve created something that actually goes beyond what he’d asked of you. It has nothing to do with my mother. It’s something greater and more unknown than that.”

            Zach rarely bothered with people’s responses to his work. Although seeing the general public engage gave him a sense of completion. That his art could matter beyond the small sphere of himself and his co-creators. Seraphina touched on what both troubled him about the angel, but had given him the sense he was finished with it. That it was done.

            It was inherently about the unknown. What he could barely comprehend. And he was certain he was not alone in that mystery or sensation when looking on what seemed improbable, but immensely possible.

            Stroking his fingers, she inched closer. “It’s what keeps me in the art world I think. Even while I question it. That art can offer me a glimpse into what I can’t comprehend, that life is so much more than I experience every day, that there’s more to being who we are.”

            “So you’ll stay at the gallery? You sounded like you wanted to leave.”

            “Actually, I’ve decided to relocate to London. My brother and his partner are expecting a baby. I’ll take over running the gallery, maybe stay on.”

            “That’s a significant change.”

            “It is, and it feels right.”

            Zac pulled her closer, Seraphina’s head tucked into his shoulder. Holding her grounded him. Even while his mind was readying him to take flight.

            He wasn’t sure how to leave her, knowing he still wanted to leave this country. But he’d left Colt even while it didn’t feel like the last time eight years ago. That had felt final. As if he’d shut the door on his life and there was no question of him returning.

            “London isn’t far from New York.”

            “I was thinking that.” She tilted her head. “Do you want this? For us to see each other again?”

            Zach smiled. “I did ask to see you again, Phina.”

            She jabbed his ribs. “You know what I mean.”

            “Yes. That’s what I want. Very much.”
            “I can come over in the spring if that works for you.”

            Zach’s pulled her closer, lips against her hair. Her warmth saturated his very being. “In the spring then.”

5

Alice stood at the half-open door of his bedroom. She’d knocked softly. Since the day at the studio she’d kept her distance despite seeing each other at school. Colt had almost asked her to come to the airport, but Alice’s anger at Zach was still palpable.

            Colt couldn’t speak about the quiet inside his head. How the only thing that helped was drawing or reading. Not thinking. School was just hours of preparation for their final exams. He only truly cared about his art folio, and maybe the English exam. Somewhere in the silence and Zach leaving he’d made the decision he’d put off, he applied to the art school Zach had gone to. Zach’s encouragement when he told him had been pleasing and surprising. To be able to feel the warmth of his response without him being physically close.

            “Hey,” Alice said softly.

            “Hey.”

            Sylvie raised her sleek head at Alice’s voice. Then she went back to sleep.

            “Are you up for a walk?”

            “Sure.”

            While her voice was light he could sense the stiffness in her body. He didn’t blame her. She handled his distance better than most, knowing it wasn’t personal.

            The air was light, or the light felt like air. He wasn’t sure, just that he was breathing easier and getting out of his room was a good thing. He wouldn’t be surprised if Alice telepathically knew he needed a break. Sometimes she’d text or call out of the blue, even before Colt knew he needed her to do just that.

            Wending their way through the people along Chapel Street, Alice led him in the direction of the bookshop. He hadn’t asked where they were going. Ducking down a side street, two streets down from the bookstore, they walked to near the end of the street before Alice stopped and for the first time in days, she touched his hand.

            Facing the wall he could see one of Alice’s signature paste-ups.

            Adjusting his eyes to the image, he noticed it was different.

“I know it’s probably too soon to talk about what happened at the studio or about Zach. But I made this because I never want to see you look like you did that day.”

“How?” Colt could barely speak.

“Like it was the end of everything good. So I made this.”

Colt stared. The girl was tending a riotous garden, the signature white rose at its centre. It was larger than usual, and took up most of the bottom of the wall.

The girl was also larger. And she had wings.             

“Maybe it was seeing those wings. I can’t forget them actually. But for me, wings always make me think that anything is possible, because you know, who doesn’t want to be able to fly?”

            Not able to find the words, too caught up in the girl whose wings feathered and splayed across her back, as if she was ready to take flight, Colt reached for Alice’s hand and held on.

            Alice’s grin was startling. For days now he’d missed it.

            How could she know? He stopped the question leaving his lips. Because this was Alice, so of course she would.

            “Thank you.”

            Thankful for more than he could say.

            She was right, as usual.

Who didn’t want to fly free?

© Angela Jooste 2021