19.6

 

Roisin felt a familiar emotion threatening to overwhelm her. All her life she’d felt there was something going on she didn’t know about; some secret that other people knew but she wasn’t privy too. All that shit about her being a ‘miracle baby’ when her mum had supposedly been barren; all the times when boys had been given awards over her when her achievements were obviously greater than theirs; all the ways men had been allowed to do and say things women would have been crucified by the press for. And know the ‘men’ were talking over her, acting as if she were just a child asking the adults to ‘look at me’ while she performed a clumsy pirouette she’d seen on Cinderella.

Righteous – quite literally in this case – indignation rose up from her core. She held a finger up to Steve. “You know way more about all this than you’re letting on. I’ll be having a good talk with you when I’m finished with all this.” She turned back to the Artist. “You avoided my question. Who are these children you’ve been looking for?”

“Forgive us.” The artist gave a small bow. “You were not meant to ripen so early. We had hoped you would be human for a lifespan before feeling the pull to reach upward. For too long we laboured under the toil of the Creator’s Will, harvesting the souls and returning them to the ether, but after the Fall we saw a change in the Great Circle. No longer were the complete souls returning to the land. Some were diverted to other purposes: either to Hell or to Heaven or they would vanish from our consciousness. Not gone, exactly, just,,, hidden.”

“Wait.” Roisin held up her hands, her frustration growing. Why did everything have to be so complicated? It was the only proof she needed that God, or the Creator, as the Artist called him, was most certainly a man. A female creator would never have allowed things to get so complicated. “I appreciate the backstory, but you still haven’t told me who the Children are.”

“Then I shall skip ahead.” The artist shared a glance with Steve that Roisin had seen all her life. It was the look that spoke volumes to men but nothing to women. It was the glance of ‘Women, eh? What can you do?’ A glance that every father has taught to every son since Adam wore pinafores. To be fair, every mother had taught her daughter one that said ‘Just ignore him and carry on’ but that was beside the point. “When the Creator set Humans upon the earth, he sent the Grigori, a class of angels, to watch over them and teach them, and so that the humans would not fear them, he made them look human themselves. The Grigori fell in love with the human women and begat children on them. The Creator despised these children, since they were created Not of his plans, but having been born of mortal women, they contained souls.”

“So why are you trying to lure them to the paintings?”

“The Creator was so angered by the presence of these souls, he washed away the world and began anew—”

Roisin nodded. “The flood, yes. It’s a children’s story.”

“Are not all stories merely simplified tales of historical doing?”

“Debatable, but I’ll argue that another time. So, all these angel-human hybrids were drowned? That seems a bit harsh, doesn’t it? I thought children were supposed to be the innocent parties?”

“Not when they contain souls not bestowed by the Creator. Their souls had been carefully crafter by the Grigori themselves…”

“Fron the bits that had gone missing from your awareness.” Roisin nodded. “That makes sense, I suppose. So al the Children drowned and everything went back to square one?” She frowned. “Wait, though. You said you made the paintings to attract the Children. So they didn’t drown?”

“No. We defied the Creator.”

“We being..?”

“Azrael, the Beginning and the End. We hid the Children from the Creator’s sight, kept them deep inside the earth, sealed away from the drowning of the World.”

“But we got found out, didn’t we, because the Creator is infallible and knew what you were doing.” Roisin frowned. “Wait. If He knew what you were doing, He needn’t have drowned all the humans and animals. That was just an act of vengeance, then. A real Dick move.”

The Artist looked up to the ceiling. “Only in human form can you say such things.”

Roisin was sure he rolled his eyes, saying that.