Rebecca Lim - Fury

Ryan sleeps through a quick refuelling stop somewhere on the Gulf of Aden. We’re over the Bay of Bengal when I hear the Frenchwoman walking hesitantly down the central aisle towards us. Instantly, I’m mist. Just a pocket of energy, watching as she stands over him — short, pretty, blonde — wringing her hands a little before tapping him on the shoulder. She straightens immediately and steps back, and he rolls over and looks at her, startled, almost falling off the couch again onto the floor.

‘Monsieur Dal-ey?’ she says hesitantly, and I sense that weird anxiety coming from her again. It’s sky high. Right now, she’s just nerves held together by good grooming.

It’s not helping that Ryan’s looking around wildly for me rather than focusing his attention on the young woman standing before him. His eyes keep moving around the plane and her anxiety hits overdrive. She doesn’t want to be here, that’s plain.

‘The pilots,’ she ploughs on gamely, ‘they wish me to inform you that we cannot make the requested pass over SMfu-iwa — it is too far and too dangerous. The closest we can take you is a short pass over Izu-Lshima,’ she stumbles charmingly over the unfamiliar name, ‘the first and largest of the Izu Islands, before we land at Narita International.’

It takes Ryan a little while to focus on what she’s saying, and she has to repeat her entire message twice before he gets any of it.

‘Why?’ he replies finally, sitting up and placing both feet on the floor, looking around for his boots. ‘Don’t we have enough, uh, fuel?’

She shakes her head, already backing away. ‘There are current aircraft warnings in place for the entire NanpM Archipelago.’ Again she stumbles over the name. ‘Extreme levels of activity, the volcanoes, you understand. It’s too dangerous,’ she says again nervously, her English beginning to fray. ‘I’m sorry, monsieur . If you would please to return to your seat?’ She turns and hurries away.

Ryan runs his right hand over his scalp. ‘Did you get all that?’ he says quietly.

I materialise beside him in my usual human get-up, my curly black hair pulled back from my face in a low ponytail. We regard each other warily.

‘What we have — you’ll never find it again, anywhere. You know that don’t you?’ he whispers. ‘I’ll be waiting for you in the arrivals hall. You don’t get to leave without saying goodbye.’

In reply, I crawl into his arms. He holds me fiercely and we don’t speak.

We’re still entwined as the plane flies over the island of Hainan and up the Taiwan Strait before veering northeast, and I imagine — looking through the porthole window — I can see lights in the sea.

‘ Monsieur! ’ The stewardess calls down the length of the plane from the safety of her seat. ‘It passes, Izu-Lshima.’

Ryan places his hands on either side of my face, lays his forehead against mine, murmurs desperately against my mouth. ‘I’ll be waiting.’

‘I know,’ I whisper back against his lips. And we bind ourselves to each other until he can bear no more, gives a gasp against me of real anguish. And I tear myself away, letting my outline shred in his arms as he scrambles to hold onto empty air, almost sobbing.

Then I can no longer feel his sweet breath on my face because I’ve already left the Gulfstream behind. I’m just a pocket of energy riding the chill and turbulent air above the northwest edge of the vast Pacific Ocean. The jet is a faint gleam in the sky behind me, already turning towards the north having completed its promised pass.

I hadn’t imagined it before. There is light in the ocean. Fire. Under the water. Like a molten chain that points almost due south, lighting my way towards SMfu-iwa.

And I wonder who I’ll find waiting for me, when I get there.

The air is acrid with gas and steam, as if the earth is breathing out through those underwater wounds, as if it is a dragon beginning to wake beneath me.

It’s early morning, not yet dawn, but electric lights gleam on some of the islands that make up the Izu-shotM. I keep flying, keep eating up the miles, until there are no more lights; only treacherous outcroppings of rock, then one dizzying peak after another rising out of the water, inhabited only by birds and sparse vegetation. Until I come to the last isle of all: a striking pillar of basalt, sheer on all sides, rising out of the water like a knife blade.

No birds occupy that silent island, and the reason soon becomes clear as I descend through the sky, thousands of feet per second, to see a single, seated figure there, shining in the darkness. Pure energy comes off his skin in errant curls that blur and fade in the icy pre-dawn air. He doesn’t bother to hide it, because there’s no one and nothing to see what he so clearly is. It’s Uriel who awaits me upon the peak of that rock, over three hundred feet above sea level. Uriel alone, dressed in his customary robes of such brightness that he is like a shining beacon, a man made of fire.

He lifts his head, sensing something approaching, though I myself give out no light, make no sound, for I am still small, still human-sized, wearing my travelling face.

I feel the same small frisson of shock that I always feel when I first see him: for to see him is to see me . It’s like looking at myself sitting there upon the rock, if I were created male. We’re physically identical in almost every way, save that he’s a fraction taller, broader through the shoulders, his strong features shading towards the masculine where mine shade towards the feminine. He could be my brother, my twin, and there’s never been an explanation for it. We are what we are.

I’m about a thousand feet off landing on the peak when I realise that Uriel is no longer sitting there. All I get is a blur of movement below, the sound of a blazing broadsword igniting in the night, the sensation of giant wings displacing the air, and then I’m suddenly fixed in place by a powerful force-field, frozen mid-descent. He will not let me land, or even approach him.

It’s clear he doesn’t recognise me at all, for he roars into the space between my eyes: ‘ Appare! ’ Show yourself!

I have no time to fight the command. My human disguise shreds instantly, just melts away, and I am completely myself, as I was created.

Uriel moves into view below me, his right hand outstretched, his left grasping his fiery weapon. And he finds himself looking up into his own face, or so it must seem to him, for he gasps aloud, falling back in surprise, and the force-field is suddenly gone.

I land on my feet on an incline so treacherous that only a bird, or an angel, could keep their footing upon it.

‘Uri,’ I say, shaken, as he lowers his right hand, his sword and wings instantly disintegrating into motes of light.

‘You are the very last one I would have expected to come here,’ he murmurs, bewildered, looking into my eyes. ‘How did you even know to …’

There’s suddenly a living flame cupped in his left hand where before there was a weapon. He plays the light across my features, my form, his dark brows knitted together in consternation, seeking a trap, the hand of the Devil in this. Finally satisfied with what he sees, the flame in his palm goes out and he smiles. It transforms his stern countenance utterly.

‘You’re alive,’ he says, and I hear the praise and wonder in his voice.

I’m shocked into immobility when he reaches out and embraces me, murmuring, ‘You’re safe.’

I close my own arms around him almost awkwardly, seeing the same expression on his face as must be literally mirrored in mine: embarrassed affection, surprise, a softening, perhaps, of entrenched attitudes.