Birthright Post- "Where Are Your Wings?"
St. Hyacinth’s Cemetery
Portland, Maine
September 21, 2011

Once upon a time, Hannah saw only headstones in cemeteries.

In her tiny hometown, cemeteries were unremarkable places. At nine years old, she had stepped over a chain-strung fence to sneak inside one. Once she got up the nerve to explore, it was a terrible disappointment to discover that the superstitious charm of Hollywood wasn’t there. There were no elaborate mausoleums, no crumbling crypts or nocturnal creatures to haunt them, and certainly no well-tended family plots to give her romantic thoughts about life after death and love everlasting. What that cemetery had in abundance was red, white, and blue patriot flags with the star shapes fading into obscurity. There were also bunches of frumpy silk wreaths, probably purchased on discount.

In Searchlight, the situation had been no better. The cemetery was a barren piece of gravelly land, each grave an awkward mound anointed with an iron cross. It was ironic that a vampire-infested town had the most pitiful lawn of eternal rest she ever saw.

But oh, that wasn’t the case in St. Hyacinth’s. It was a gorgeous place to sleep, she thought. The oak trees were old and strong, their branches leafy green. Ancestors had bought up plots and gated them in with ironworks so that for generations to come, relatives could be laid to rest alongside them.

It was a nice gesture.

It was also a noisy cemetery. Here and there, spirits perched on headstones with their chins resting on their see-through hands, bemoaning doctored wills and scandalous weddings and life endings all too abrupt. Corpses might not move, but spirits could most certainly roll in their graves.

Hannah had a purpose for being there. His name was Oliver Jerzyck, and it just so happened that Oliver lived in Nevada. According to her otherworldly sources, Oliver was on a visit to his deceased father’s grave, and the experience wasn’t settling too well with him.

She begged a wardrobe change for the encounter. It was important to look like a human girl, after all, especially when Oliver wasn’t to know his visitor was a ghost or an agent of higher powers. Wearing a navy blue pea coat buttoned up tight, Hannah waited for him in the not-quite-silence, pretending to admire his grandmother’s choice of angelic statuary.

Oliver picked his way through the ornate headstones and the well-crafted marble cherubs, a cigarette in one hand as he fastened the top buttons of his coat with the other. September in Maine was cool, and the grass was damp from an early-afternoon rain. He hadn't been here in years, not since he'd flunked out of Northwestern and showed up drunk to do little more than sit on the well-tended turf and stare at the name carved into the headstone.

Nathe was buried here too, and he supposed that when Amelia died she'd be interred close to her husband and her son. Not him, though, he wanted to be cremated. Better to scatter whatever was left of him to the winds than to plant him in the earth like some obscene, ill-fated flower. There would be no huge marble marker for him. Random thoughts. Morbid thoughts, wondering if his bitch of a mother would even bother to attend if she outlived him. That'd be a nice final fuck you, to have his remains blow back in her face.

The tips of the angel wings came into sight, and the spell-caster paused, dragging on his smoke. He'd allowed himself one steadying drink before coming out here. He wished he'd had more. The day was cold, and on the inside, he felt colder.

He didn't even have to see the inscription to remember what it said;

Saul Wendell Jerzyck
October 24, 1960 - November 18, 1992
Devoted Father, Beloved Son

"Devoted," Oliver muttered, then finally closed the distance between himself and the headstone. "Hi, Dad," he said, his breath visible on the breeze. "You surprised?"

Behind the angel with its outreaching arms and sympathetic smile, Hannah winced. She hadn’t been given any empathic gifts upon her death and rebirth, but when working with the bereaved and bewildered, it didn’t take long to recognize pain and bitterness. It was an intensely private moment, one she’d never have interrupted when she was alive. These days, there was little choice in the matter.

Hannah waited for a solid minute to pass, counting the seconds off in one-one-thousands. The leaves underfoot were damp. She dug her shoes into them. The shoes were terribly formal, and so were her heavy skirt and hosiery. She felt like a feminine sailor.

Eventually she cleared her throat, a soft noise that ushered in her arrival. She stepped round the angel and smiled at him, nothing too cheery. “Hi. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to--” A weak gesture at the grave. A fine mist hung in the air and muted her skin, which was helpful because it glowed too brightly to be normal.

She rambled on awkwardly. “I heard you talking. I didn’t mean to listen in. I just... didn’t know how to make my exit after that... so I waited...” She nibbled her lip. “Did I do it wrong?”

He twitched a little under the coat, then relaxed again. It was just some girl. Possibly from a college nearby, come to look at where the Great Man was buried. People still did that, made random appearances at Saul's grave. His name didn't garner as much recognition as it once had, but there were those who still remembered.

"Art history?" he asked her with a faint, sardonic smile. The cigarette was used as a pointer, indicating the carving on the front of the grave marker. "I didn't know they were still talking about Saul Jerzyck in college classrooms. Just when you think everyone's forgotten you..."

He let the sentence trail off, placed his free hand on the cool marble. He had never forgotten, even if everyone else had. Creak, creak, creak... Oliver's fingers tightened, then let go abruptly, as if he'd touched something contaminated. He should have worn gloves.

"Terrible day for visiting," he continued. "It's cold here, even for this time of year."

Hannah nodded and applied some chapstick. “Yeah. I wasn’t expecting that.” She rubbed her lips together. Awkward seconds fell and she could hear the sound of raindrops sliding off the leaves and pattering on the ground below. “It’s neat that you thought I was an Art student. I don’t know much about art. I mean, I have opinions. Like this statue.”

She looked up at the smiling face carved out of stone. “It’s sort-of weird, the hug she’s offering. It’s not like you can actually take it. It’s kinda like... bowls of plastic fruit on your coffee table. They make you hungry, but you can‘t eat ‘em.”

Hannah rocked on the outside of her shoes. “I’m visiting cousins,” she revealed. “My grandpa’s around here somewhere but I can’t find it.” She craned her neck and gave a helpless shrug. “He’s nobody famous. I think he’s got one of those plaques on the ground.”

She peeked at Oliver. There were dewdrops landing on his black, black hair. “Was he a good man?” In case it was confusing, Hannah took her hand out of her pocket and pointed at the headstone Oliver couldn’t touch.

No, Oliver thought. Would a good man leave an eight-year-old son behind? He looked up at the angel's vapid smile, left the cigarette in his mouth to jam his hands into the pockets of his coat.

"I don't remember," he said instead. "It was a very long time ago." He was such a liar. What else was new? When you spent your entire life protecting yourself with falsehoods, the truth became as elusive as mist.

"He was...intelligent. And driven. And very, very unhappy."

“Oh.” She nodded and looked at the grass that grew where Saul slept. “I think that happens a lot. Being smart and being sad on top of it. I guess it’s too hard to know a lot of things. Maybe you can‘t stop thinking about life, about all the bad parts of it.”

The question Hannah asked next was a risky one, only to be asked in the mildest of curious tones, innocently. “How come you came?” The simplest questions could bring about lies, and all that Hannah knew about Oliver could fill a thimble and not much more. But watching him confirmed that she wasn’t here for old Saul. It was for his son.

The wind blew and a drop splattered Hannah’s nose. It hung there, suspended, proof that she was still real. She smudged it away with a wet sleeve.

"Because he was my father." The answer was given absently, and he was still looking at the features of the marble angel that watched over Saul and Nathe where they rested in the earth. Father, son, father, son. He was the last male Jerzyck left above ground. What would they think of him if they could see him now?

"His father is buried there," the spellcaster added, indicating his grandfather's headstone. "He and Grandmother had this plot for years, but there'd been no need to use it until Dad died." A long sigh, more visible breath.

"It's good to see they're keeping the place up," he said, noting the grass and the fact that there were no weeds. He was paying for that too, the way he was paying for Amelia's care. The very least he could do. Even a bastard like him knew what family meant.

Hannah faced his profile. While he pondered grass and weeds and secret things, she studied the misanthropic presentation of Oliver. Was there anyone in the world that got to see him underneath? Every person had a soft underbelly. The fact that he was angry meant that was part of him could be hurt and had been. He was human, after all, and the womb didn’t give birth to anger. That was the whole point.

“Will you be buried here?” she asked. “With your father?”

Oliver shook his head, and water trickled down the back of his neck and under the collar of his shirt. "I'm going to be cremated," he said in a low voice. He touched the marble again, found it slick with leftover rain. Wet. Cold. It left his unprotected fingers chilled. He removed his hand after a minute.

"I should like to have my ashes scattered over the sea somewhere. Maybe off the coast of Greece. I spent a summer there once, with my grandmother. The Parthenon was beautiful and desolate." Random thoughts again, snapshots from the past.

He frowned, took the cigarette out of his mouth. Listened to the silence, the pattering of water drip-drip-dripping off the leaves of a nearby tree. Glowered at the insipid fucking angel over his head. No, he would not be here when he was dead.

"He wouldn't want me here, anyway. Not beside him in the ground for eternity." His jaw tightened around the bitterness of the admission. It tasted like vomit. "He never wanted me. Neither of them did."

Hannah bit her lip. She looked at the ground, its feet upon feet of dirt separating Oliver from the shells of family he didn’t trust. She considered carefully how to respond to him, a dark-haired man who shook with resentment. He made the air vibrate. Did he know that? She realized she would’ve been scared of Oliver in life, afraid he might be volatile enough to lash out at a stranger.

“Death is beautiful, too, but it’s not as desolate as people think,” she hedged and pulled back the veil of her identity a little more. “It’s crawling with souls that regret their short-sightedness in life. How they couldn’t see the forest for the trees.”

She kept her fists tucked in her pockets. “They cry so loudly. You wouldn’t believe. Imagine you had all of eternity to spend reflecting on your mortal choices.” She drew a breath to collect her thoughts and held it. “Death has an unforgivably honest rearview mirror.”

"Why shouldn't he cry? He killed himself." Oliver spoke with all the resentment of a child who'd been abandoned, and his mouth was a narrow line, held so tightly closed that it was white around the edges. He looked at the blonde, this girl, this child, and something trembled inside his gut, under the knot of rage he walked around with every day of his life.

He'd never seen such a kind face. Most people looked kind on the surface, but she glowed with it. Radiated it at him in warm waves, like the sun. Beneath his coat, under his shirt, his skin prickled. His shoulders knotted with tension, and he dropped his gaze to the damp earth.

"Unforgivable," he said, and he pointed viciously at his father's gravestone. Unloved, unwanted, unnecessary. Everyone said they loved you. Everyone lied. Jill had said it too; 'I love you, Oliver.' And where was she now? Probably back sleeping with her vampire. Hadn't he tried? Everything he'd done had been for her. Not good enough. Not ever good enough.

Just like dear old fucking Dad.

“Yes. Unforgivable that you were left by yourself,” Hannah agreed. “Unforgivable that he took his life? Maybe.” She almost hiccupped upon blurting that out. No wonder her bosses were hesitant to let her off the leash just yet. She was impetuous. Apparently certain characteristics would cling to her always. Hannah gathered her thoughts and reminded herself that his father’s passing was infamous in Portland, a familiar conversational topic, and that everyone had their unwelcome opinions.

Hannah plunged ahead. “Probably. But it’s hard to imagine being in so much pain that you’d rather feel nothing. Do you know why it happened?” She didn’t. Somewhere in the Other Place, the answer existed, but it wasn’t for her to know.

Oliver shuddered, a man caught in a feverish state. "I was eight years old," he told the woman in a whisper, as though speaking too loudly would cause the dead to rise from their slumber, or perhaps for the angel that was witnessing this conversation to step down off of its perch and wreak havoc on him. "Nobody ever tells children anything. I just knew something was wrong.”

He tried to breathe, realizing that where he'd been cold before, he was now too warm. He undid the top button of his heavy coat, then two more. He wanted to scream, to scream for the sake of screaming. Another button. He finally let the coat fall open, taking in great gulps of cold Maine air.

"Who are you?" he asked, his mouth twitching between a smile and a scowl. "You've got the sweetest face. Like... like an angel. Who are you?"

“Hannah,” she said delicately, as though words were to be treated like footsteps on a minefield.

An unbidden smile came to her mouth. Once there it surpassed his and tried to coax him along with her. Happy was too far-reaching a dream for Oliver, but she believed she could help him find a moment of peace. Later the powers would scold her for it; they said that what he needed was encouragement to be outraged right there in the cemetery, loud enough for Saul Jerzyck to hear it.

Maybe they were right, but as Hannah watched the metamorphosis of a fleeting smile on his face, she was too selfish to let go. “You’re Oliver,” she said. She put her fingers on the knuckles of his fist, cautiously. Her touch was warm. “I have a confession. I’m not quite alive.”

Hannah let her brown eyes go to his face. “But neither are you. When people make awful choices, it kills a little of anyone who loves them.”

"Hannah." He stared at her hard, as though he were trying to memorize her features in order to capture them on paper later. "It means merciful." Something that sounded perilously like a giggle escaped from his throat, and he scrubbed one hand down the side of his face. Merciful. Was there such a thing? God, he was burning up.

"I'm years long dead," he told her, and the top button of his shirt came undone after he worked at it impatiently. As cold as it was, it felt fabulous. "Beating heart and all. But if I'm dead it's because he killed me. I didn't do it to myself. I'm not like him, I'm not weak."

He sat down, bringing his weight to rest on Nathe's gravestone. The seat of his pants was immediately soaked through, but he ignored it. He lit a cigarette off of the one already in his mouth, then extinguished the first and tucked it into the pack with the rest. No dropping his used butts here, he wasn't going to use this place as an ashtray.

"You feel alive," he remarked, looking at the blonde through narrowed eyes. "Did you die here? Is your name among these cathedrals of stone, Hannah?"

“Nuh-uh.” Hannah shook her head. For the first time she showed him a touch of melancholy in the slight pinch at the corners of her mouth. “I died in the desert. I don’t have a grave. I always wanted one, but not some big casket with buckles and layers of satin inside. When I was alive, I didn’t even own satin underwear.” She lifted her hands helplessly, as unphased by the over-share as she would‘ve been in life. “It wouldn‘t be authentic. I just wanted a wooden box in the dirt, and if the worms got in, it’d be okay. I thought maybe I’d turn into a field of dandelions and be part of the earth again.”

She laced her fingers in front of her coat. The wind picked up and a lock of her hair danced with it. “But here I am, in the same body, talking to you. And your grandfather and your father aren‘t so far away as you think. Souls have ears and eyes and mouths. You can say anything you want and they’ll listen... and then you can let it go or keep holding onto it, just to say it again next year.”

Hannah wet her lips. They tasted of chapstick. The clarity of the newly-recovered sense startled her, but she tried not to let it show.

He considered it, looking at each marble slab in silence. The fingers of his free hand began to trace the letters of his grandfather's epitaph. Nathe's middle name had been Thaddeus. From the father to the son, from the river to the sea.

"I remember how tall you were," he said, addressing Saul's gravestone in a voice so low he could barely hear it. "I knew there was no way I'd ever be able to get you down by myself. Is that why you waited until we were alone? Because you knew I wouldn't be able to do anything? So I couldn't stop you? Selfish. You selfish, selfish fuck..."

He smoked, the cigarette's burning ember very much like the fiery knot of fury that swelled underneath his breastbone. "You selfish fuck!" he yelled suddenly, standing up so fast that he stumbled. His voice echoed off of the marble, reverberated into the silence beyond him until it dissipated, and he glared at nothing as he shoved the hair out of his face.

"That's why you waited, isn't it? Because you wanted to die so much that you couldn't see anything else? Not even me." The coat was suddenly an unbearable burden, and Oliver stripped it off, hanging it on one of the angel's marble wings. It looked ludicrous there, but the chill in the air felt good. His hands balled into fists, the knuckles whitening.

"I was your son," he told the silent piece of carved rock, and his molars ground together. "You could have waited until I wasn't there. You owed me that much, even if you didn't love me. Why didn't you wait?" It was raining again. He could feel the drizzle start, wetting his face. He tipped his head backwards, up to the overcast sky, but when moisture trickled past his lips, he realized that it was salty. Not rain. Tears.

"Daddy...”

Hannah was so thankful that he couldn’t see her anymore, not up where his eyes had turned. She covered her mouth with overlapping fingers, keenly aware that Oliver was in agony, and so desperate to help and yet completely unaware of how to do it. Why, she wondered, the tune in her heart changing, why had the powers sent her to him?

She wasn’t ready. She was too clumsy with speech, too bright with the old joy of her life, not someone filled up with sadness that Oliver would trust to understand him. There had been loss when she was young -- only three -- and she was left to her grandmother’s care. But there was so much love in soft, wrinkled hands, so much tenderness when Hannah became sickly and small, and there was her grandmother’s faith that she would get better, held close to the heart until it came true.

Hannah didn’t know how to salve a wound so deep. She was a girl tending a mortal wound and she’d only brought a band-aid.

Would he shove her if she touched him? Hannah didn’t think Oliver could stand it if she begged the powers to let her bring Saul up to say his piece. Maybe Saul didn’t deserve it.

“Oliver?” she whispered. In her innocent way she loved him, not because Hannah knew who he was, but because he needed it.

“Your father was an artist, wasn’t he?” She felt unsteady but kept going. “I read somewhere once that the most beautiful works of art are unintentional. Just... impulsive mistakes, or experiments, that somehow turn into masterpieces. You’re a creation. I think you’re beautiful and desolate, just like the Parthenon, and strong, too. So much more than you might’ve been.”

Oliver made an animal noise, wrapping his arms around his midsection as though he could squeeze the grief out of himself. His head shook back and forth, tears burning his eyes and his cheeks. Beautiful? No. Desolate? Absolutely.

"I'm not weak, not like him," he grated, and that was also true. There was something in him that was like trying to eat tinfoil, something that refused to die or be crushed no matter how bleak things became. He would not be buried in a cathedral of stone before his time. He was not a weakling.

The spellcaster turned towards Hannah, his expression a little befuddled. Why was she here? Was she an angel, as he had facetiously suggested? There was such compassion in her face, such care and concern. Why? He'd done nothing to merit it. He was not a good person. His mouth trembled uncertainly.

"Why?" His hands reached for her shoulders, found them solid enough beneath her coat. A trick of the imagination? Perhaps he was drunk after all and just hadn't realized it. Maybe he was hallucinating. Going crazy. It wouldn't have surprised him.

"Why me?" Her eyes were brown. He was almost a foot taller than she was. He couldn't decide if he wanted to laugh or scream. When one usually sounded so much like the other, it became difficult to tell the difference.

She shrugged beneath his hands. Because they grabbed onto her instead of reaching through, they felt wonderful. “Because you needed me,” Hannah said.

The honesty was hard for her. It felt like being full of herself, imagining she could help a stranger. Oliver was her first attempt at serving her Fate in the real world, and she had no concept of whether or not it should happen this way.

Hannah‘s eyes had an open quality. “It’s why I still exist... to help dead souls, the forgiven and the damned, and the people who go on without them. See, you haven‘t gone on at all. But you‘re not meant to carry the burden of your father’s failure your whole life. You’re meant for greatness. You can be extraordinary.”

Sensing he was the type to deny compliments, she hurried to add, “And hey, don’t question me. I’m dead, remember? I’m wise. And if you don‘t believe me, you can look me up when you go home. I was real.”

Oliver put his face very close to Hannah's, as though he intended to kiss her. Would she feel it if he did? One pair of dark eyes looked into another as he chewed over her words. Greatness. He supposed it was true, or that it could be. A chill slithered up his back, but he ignored it.

"Where are your wings, little angel?" he asked her rhetorically, and then he did kiss her, very lightly on the cheek. Bordering on reverent. Because no one had ever noticed what he needed before, not really. His fingers worked against the heavy material of her coat as he pulled back enough to see her eyes again

"I'm sorry that you're stuck," he told her, the ridiculousness of the apology as obvious as the drying tears on his cheeks. But he couldn't imagine anything worse than being trapped between the physical and the ethereal. "If there was anything I could do..." He let the sentence trail off. "Is it very bad, where you are?"

Hannah caught her breath.

She had a memory of a Halloween past. She was dressed like an angel in Hell’s Bouquet, an angel with gauntlets on her wrists and a whip in her hand. It had been so funny at the time, so seemingly out of place, and yet here she was. Not quite an angel, not quite a ghost, and alive no more. But she smiled, remembering, and giggled until her eyes glistened with happy tears. What a gorgeous, short life she had lived. Bacon and toast on blue plates, wild adventures with her girl friends, nights bickering over Bingo with old ladies, awkward attempts at flirting with boys, and driving fast, fast, fast down the highway with the sun on her arm.

“No, it’s not bad there,” she said and touched the spot where Oliver kissed her. “And it’s wonderful here.” The smile that Hannah wore was radiant, some of it natural, some of it not, but all of it hers.

She went up on her toes and put her mouth on his uninvited. Hannah wanted to kiss him because he was handsome and cold and strange and yet still, he had made her so happy without even trying. Oh, this was what she was meant to do. The certainty of it astounded her. It flooded her senses into wakefulness.

Hannah kissed him softly, her lips like the flutter of wings.

“I’m sorry,” she sighed, “That was rude, me taking advantage of you in a vulnerable moment. I forgot all my manners.”

Oliver shook his head, negating Hannah's words even as he swayed slightly on his feet. The purity of it, of her, was a balm on his scarred, aching soul. "No," he said, still holding onto her narrow shoulders. Ghost-flesh. But she felt so solid, so real.

"I'm sorry. I'm not... always like this. Not so loud." He tried to smile, but it was a piss-poor effort. He let go of her coat, touched her face instead. How typical of him to become enchanted by a dead girl, no matter how temporarily.

"You're so beautiful." Tears ran down his cheeks in a salty rain, mixing with the drizzle that had begun to fall. No one was here to see him cry except for Hannah. He kissed her forehead. His hands were freezing. Could she tell the difference?

"It's raining again." The height of inanity, for him to notice that now. "I guess I should have brought an umbrella."

Hannah looked up and the fat droplets struck her face. She actually did feel beautiful, just this once. “I know another trick,” she said, letting the water run down her neck and into her wool coat. “It’s something I learned while I was alive. No one can take it from me.”

The blonde took a great breath and blew it overhead. The water and the air still listened to her, and the bubble she blew formed an invisible shield over their heads. That pocket of air protected them. It made the rain bend its path mid-air and fall in a circle all around them.

“You better get inside before you catch your death,” she said, laughing because it was corny. Hannah stepped out of the makeshift umbrella and left him standing underneath its protection. “Go on. It’ll follow you.”

He laughed, a rusty, unused sound. He wanted to ask her to stay with him, to break his heart a thousand times, just as long as he never lost sight of her smile. He wondered if Saul could see him now, if he was hovering somewhere nearby.

But he let her slip free, his hands dropping to his sides as she moved out of reach. She was no more for him than he was for her. It had been a brief respite, albeit a glorious one. He bowed to her, the gesture formal and respectful.

"Thank you," he said. Ghost, spirit, angel, all three at once. Hannah. Merciful Hannah. In that moment, he loved her utterly.

“You’re so welcome,” she said. Hannah began to walk away from him through the gravestones. She bit her thumb to stem the blossoming smile on her face, but it wouldn’t go away. Oh his lips. His kiss. Things that were impossible now and never would’ve happened before.

At the last moment, she turned around and called, “I’m from Searchlight.”

She wasn’t sure that it mattered, or when she’d begun to think of the town that took her life as home, but she did now. It always would be.

He watched her go, touching his mouth. His shirt was stuck to his back and shoulders. Amelia was going to wonder why he'd been standing out in the rain. And he'd never be able to explain it to her.

Greatness. He was destined for greatness. Hannah had told him so. If the dead could lie, he'd still have believed her.

"Goodbye, little angel," he said, turning to head back the way he'd come. He swiped up his coat as an afterthought, draping it over him without putting his arms through the sleeves. Searchlight. She'd been from Searchlight. He wondered if he'd ever see her again.

He hoped so.