There is a small house down by the rocks with a single stairway made of eroding shale that leads down to a three-plank pier built on the wrong side of the reef so that the ocean constantly roars and tears at the single boat tied to the posts.
The people stay away from the house, their bells and iron and silver and crosses clutched tight to their chest while they whisper about the four strange boys who live there.
“They are strange,” they say, but that is redundant because everyone can see there is something wrong with them.
“They are unholy,” they say, but that is again redundant because whatever is strange to them must be the work of the devil.
“We must be rid of them,” they say, but there is nothing any of them can do because the sea and the wind-torn trees that struggle against the sharp shale cliffs seem to love the four boys who live there.
So instead, they all reason, “Surely they draw the bad luck away from us then,” and they will point to the pier on the wrong side of the reef as proof. “Better them than us,” they all nod sagely, as though each and every one of them were wise men who have never seen the sea beyond in their oil paintings and lyrical poetry.
Minhyung doesn’t mind. He knows they are strange and he knows they are hated, distrusted, but he and his brothers are allowed to live in their house down by the rocks, so he doesn’t mind.
But maybe it’s a lie because the words he doesn’t mind taste apple-sweet on his tongue in a way nothing else but sins do.
“It doesn’t matter,” Minseok says, in his voice that the people fear because it sings like the things trapped in conch shells.
“It doesn’t matter,” Wooje says, his ears just a little too sharp and eyes with just a little too much green for the people not to be wary.
“It doesn’t matter,” Hyeonjun says, that sheen of otherness clinging to his skin while his features seem to shift ever so slightly.
“It doesn’t matter,” Minhyung himself says, with his eyes that glow ever so slightly in the dark and with a shadow that doesn’t quite match.
They are the monsters in their circus of wind-weathered wood, their fence made of crosses of iron and ropes threaded with silver, but they are allowed to live there, so they don’t mind.
Minhyung still tastes the lie. It never fades, like the bitter tang of sea salt.
But then on the third night of the rain, something falls from the sky into the bailiff’s yard.
Minhyung thinks he might have heard this tale before, from either the wise neighborhood woman before she called him freak or from the choir of voices that sing to him in his dreams.
He almost expects an old man with nothing but ragged buzzard wings as paper-thin proof of his divinity because he thinks he knows how this will go.
He nearly doesn’t go because he doesn’t want to see what the people will do to him and because he doesn’t want the other three to see it either.
Then Minseok turns to him, something sad in his eyes and Minhyung remembers what the people are willing to do to monsters like them.
They go.
There are some of the fishermen standing by the too-small chicken coop with driftwood in their hands because the wise neighborhood woman doesn’t trust angels, especially not after Minhyung. But maybe it is unnecessarily because the thing shoved inside amongst the coop doesn’t move, just leans against the wooden wall of the coop, uncaring of how the feathers catch and break against the gaps of the wires.
The four of them walk up the little hill and the unkempt path strewn with sharp shale splinters and the crowd that had nearly crushed the coop parts before them.
Minseok does not open his mouth, but the sound of bells, tinny and sharp, ring after him frantically and the people cover their ears as he passes.
Wooje does not look up from the beaten path, but the mothers clutch their children and their crosses tighter, the fathers watching carefully with iron hooks in their hands.
Hyeonjun makes no sudden moves, but there is fire crackling in the crowd anyway regardless of the rain, torches held up in case some brave soul decides that the real Hyeonjun should be saved.
Minhyung does nothing, nothing at all, but there is holy water flung at him and into his eyes and he can only wonder if they’re hoping to blind him to all of their sins.
The fishermen shift at their approach, but they stand their ground and he almost laughs because they’ve never been this brave. They all fear the sea and its wrath, and rightfully so.
But it seems this time, they’re willing to stand in Minseok’s way. It’s ironic.
Minhyung hears him laugh softly, the sound too faint for anyone but them and he knows Hyeonjun’s mouth has accidentally split into a grin that has too many teeth because the fire blazes higher around them, murmuring rippling through the crowd.
They might be right to be afraid when Minseok laughs or Hyeonjun smiles because they call them siren and ghost, changeling and witch’s son. None of them know if they’re right or not. They just know they’re strange.
None of them care. They know each other too well to be afraid.
They stop before the chicken coop and the angel, because he has wings and the wise neighborhood woman has declared it so, trapped in it. The angel raises his eyes and Minhyung does not know why he’s shocked when they’re brown.
Maybe it’s because they seem so common. Just a dark brown, the color of the earth after rain, a color he’s used to seeing in the faces of the people around him. They seem so ordinary.
The longer he looks, the more human he seems. Yet, Minhyung does not know if he becomes convinced of his mundanity. The wise neighborhood woman has called him an angel. He does not know enough about divinity to disagree.
Those wings are wet and ragged, a far cry from the sleek seagulls and albatrosses whose feathers remained untouched by the waves and rain. His dark hair is in the midst of drying, edges curling up in random tufts, and he wears the mud-splattered clothes of a beggar. He seems almost too plain for the stories told of angels.
He does not speak.
The crowd mutters and seethes and the angel looks away, curling in on himself further. He ignores the curious pecking and preening from the chickens crowding him, even when the jealous rooster lunges forward, ripping out a beakful of feathers that drifts into the mob.
The people surge forward, scrabbling frantically, hands grasping and reaching and not even the threat of the fishermen with their makeshift clubs can make them back away until the feathers are torn to splinters.
Wooje, voice quiet and nearly lost to the crash of waves against the breaking shale, asks, “Who are the animals here?”
Minhyung looks at the chicken coop, the angel silent and still and the crowd only quiets because the priest is here.
He has a name, but Minhyung cannot speak it, cannot even keep it in his mind because it simply turns to ash that leaves the lie-sweet taste of apples on his tongue.
Freak, the wise neighborhood woman had called him.
But the priest with an unholy name had simply called him demon.
He turns away and with Minseok’s hand brushing his own, a distant reassurance until they’re back in their safe house-cage of wood and useless iron crosses, and he walks back down the steep path to the sea and the jagged rocks that protect their home.
The next day, there’s a rickety fence around the chicken coop and a line of visitors that stretches out into the horizon, pilgrims littering the rocky slopes as they wait for their chance to see the angel.
None of them come down the path to the rocks and the house standing there.
So Minhyung ignores them.
He and Hyeonjun take the steps down to the three-plank pier and they don’t bother to check where their footsteps land because the sea loves Minseok and he loves them so the waves only lap harmlessly against their shins, even as shale cracks and slides into the roaring water.
They take their boat out onto the sea and Minhyung doesn’t know what their nets are made of and he doesn’t know if Wooje does either, but the vines are strong and the thorns that bristle never bite him so he doesn’t ask.
He can hear Minseok humming a song he’s never learned but knows anyway.
The fishermen along their own calm piers with hemp nets already have beeswax in their ears and the pilgrims on the hill scatter, hands cradling their heads as if they will be led astray by that dangerous song. Minhyung just thinks it’s beautiful.
Minseok is still singing when Minhyung and Hyeonjun come back. Many of the fishermen are still at their piers.
He looks down at his hands, smooth and unharmed even by years of weathering the sea’s moods and the ropes and the creatures that leap into their boat. A far cry from the worn cracked leather of everyone else in this small sea-side town.
Then Hyeonjun nudges him, smile wide and unrestrained in the way he’s afraid to be when there are strangers around, and he looks back up.
They drag their net, full of fish and maybe-fish and old whale bones too white to never have been sun-bleached, back up the shale steps.
Wooje does not wave to them as they pass by and Minhyung does not mind. His attention is only on the stubborn growth that cracks up through the stones.
There are some plants that do not like to listen, though they will suffer through the indignity of growing in the hidden soil Wooje claims lies between the gaps in the sharp rocks if pleaded to.
Hyeonjun stops though, demanding where their good morning is even though the sun is already at the zenith.
And like every day this happened, Wooje will roll his eyes, the green slivers in his eyes glowing strangely in the sunlight like the sea glass suncatchers Minseok has hung up, but he will obediently repeat a greeting to both of them.
This time though, instead of heckling Hyeonjun like every other day this has happened, he reaches into their net and tugs out a gnarled stick of driftwood, turning it over in his hands. “Rowan,” he says, and Minhyung does not ask how he knows.
Hyeonjun ruffles his hair and Wooje tries to hit him with the driftwood, even despite the wise neighborhood woman’s tales of rowan’s sanctity to creatures like Wooje.
But Minhyung would not be surprised if she was wrong.
Beyond the sea, there is very little the four of them consider sacred.
Angels do not descend from heaven willingly anymore, and they only have to look at the chicken coop hidden behind the rickety wooden fence to know why.
Demons like Minhyung, if he is one, are allowed to walk the earth, though his touch does not wither flowers nor poison wells.
Minseok calls him inside and like every day this has happened, he says, “The sea was kind to you today.”
Minhyung will reply, every time, because he knows how this will go, “You always are.”
He will shake his head a little, taking the net of thorns from him. “I am not the sea.”
“No,” and that will be the end of it, even if neither are sure if he is agreeing or not.
Up the hill, the liar-priest has declared the stranger no angel, just like Minhyung, but the people ignore him. He has wings and the wise neighborhood woman has said he is, and so that is what he must be.
Beyond the sea, there is very little the four of them consider sacred.
Strange people from places none of them have ever seen come to see the angel, and some of them are far stranger than they four.
The people don’t seem to mind, and Minhyung can’t help but wonder why.
People with curling horns and bat-like wings and teeth that drip venom all pass without scrutiny, some to simply see another freak like them and others to seek a miracle cure.
Maybe it is because they are willing to speak their tales of woe to all who are willing to listen. But then again, there are scars stamped around Wooje’s wrists and on his palms just as there are burns and whip marks that cover Hyeonjun’s back and the people have all seen them before, so he doesn’t know why they treat them so differently.
After all, they’d been children too.
The people flick holy water into his eyes and the priest preaches at him with words that crumble to a gust of wind with the scent of apples and Minhyung thinks again that maybe they are trying to blind him to their sins.
How ironic.
They ignore the pilgrims that come to see the angel, but in return, there are the few brave souls who fancy themselves heroes of some sort. Minhyung has to chase them off and they all start to mutter about how their fire doesn’t burn.
He nearly has to laugh at that. They cannot seem to decide whether it is angelic or demonic. Besides, the sea loves Minseok and he loves them. Their torches were never going to burn. There is a reason their house sits down by the rocks and their pier on the wrong side of the reef.
For the most part though, they leave them alone. The new set of rumors are that the four of them simply cannot be killed. Oh, they can be hurt, they know this because they have evidence in their memories and blood on their hands.
But they cannot die. That is a human thing. And they are not human.
Minhyung tells the other three and they shrug. “It doesn’t matter,” they all repeat like a mantra.
Maybe it doesn’t. As long as Wooje has his forest that tries to reach down and over the shale cliffs, as long as Minseok can sing to the sea without ropes and halters trying to silence him, and as long as Hyeonjun and Minhyung have them, maybe nothing else matters.
They are allowed to live, and that is enough.
Then seemingly overnight, the line before the fenced off chicken coop disappears and Minhyung is suddenly curious again.
Perhaps it has something to do with the new circus nearby, where the price to see the freaks is one cent instead of five and where the display is not an apathetic angel curled up in a cage with the chickens.
He is not the only one who is curious again.
Both Wooje and Minseok seem to turn away from the forest and the sea more often and he catches Hyeonjun looking up the hill.
Suddenly, the words it doesn’t matter don’t seem like the flimsy reassurance or the fragile promise they’d pretended they’d been. They’re just a lie.
The four of them don’t say it aloud, but they agree anyway.
The moon is thin as a fish’s scale and the tide is high when they silently move up the hill.
The town, and Minhyung doesn’t know if he can call it theirs, does not go out after sunset. The sea is too fickle, there is no lighthouse for lost boats but an abundance of shale spears, and the will-o’-wisps hover above the water to distract from the grasping hands and iridescent scales below.
The town does not go out after sunset, and when Minhyung turns to look at his three brothers, he knows why.
The lock on the bailiff’s fence is iron, but even after their hammers and nails and cross, Wooje does not mind it.
He picks up a thin branch, and it is already in the shape he needs.
Iron and metal cannot be persuaded, not by gentle hands and soft words, but wood can.
The rickety gate swings open and the angel still trapped in his coop does not stir, kneeling and slumped against the sharp chicken wire as though dead.
Minhyung steps carefully over the things still strewn in the yard; the rotting flowers and the trampled prayers, the long-dead candles and the cracked oil lamps, the jagged stones and the splintered feathers.
He did not look quite as whole as before, and certainly nowhere near the majesty Minhyung could imagine him bearing. What few feathers he has remaining are crusted with days-old blood, remnants of the frenetic way pilgrims had torn them out for luck or for memory, bruises and scratches littering his skin from the rocks thrown to rouse him or out of cruel boredom.
Somehow, Minhyung is not surprised to see that he bleeds red.
Hyeonjun makes a soft noise in the back of his throat, and the angel’s eyes flick open.
They are still brown. He does not move.
Minseok kicks away a bouquet of lilies, their petals gray like ash, and he kneels down. He puts a hand on the beaten door and he offers, “We can get you out?”
The angel still does not respond, just stares at them with glass-sharp eyes.
They leave when the winds begin to blow toward the sea again at the rising sun’s glow.
If the bailiff notices the fresh new footprints in the mud, he mentions nothing.
They are back the next night. And the next. And the next.
Maybe it is guilt that makes them go back. There are only so many freaks like them here in this village-town hidden beside the shale cliffs and yet they had chosen to leave him there. Minhyung cannot claim ignorance either. Not while the ghost of a collar still hovered around Minseok’s neck, not while the voices in his dreams whisper strange half-understood stories in his ears.
Or maybe it is empathy. Maybe both. It doesn’t matter anymore though, and this time, the words don’t taste like a lie.
The only real sign that there is change in that yard with the chicken coop is the fading and blooming of bruises over the angel’s skin. Hyeonjun has started clearing out the stones he finds there, but they all know it will change nothing.
There is no scarcity of rocks for the children to find, not with the crumbling sandstone down by the beach and the shale cliffs that crack and break with a press of a hand.
These nights become part of their routine, and it is not long before they trust themselves to speak in the angel’s presence, voices hushed to not disturb the bailiff and his wife and baby. He says nothing, but none of them mind.
If the angel doesn’t expect these unexpected nights of maybe-company, he makes no sign. Minhyung has heard whispers from the people about the angel, but he meets those sharp eyes and he can’t find the dull apathy or dismissal they say he has.
They say he does not move even when children or old men with shaking hands tear out handfuls of feathers, nor when their stones cut his skin, but Minhyung cautiously reaches toward those ragged wings through the gaps in the chicken wire one night and the angel closes his eyes.
It is the closest he has seen to a flinch.
He hurriedly draws his hand back, but the angel does not reopen his eyes for the rest of the night and Minseok glares at him until they return.
The first time the angel truly acknowledges their presence beyond his eyes that track them steadily until they move behind him, it is because Minseok sits down beside him in his chicken coop, humming a song borne from the ocean’s depths, and sets a piece of dark red sea glass down.
The angel has surely gotten hundreds of offerings before, hundreds of gifts worth more than Minseok’s, but slowly, he turns his head toward him and down to the glass resting by his hand. He does not move to take it, does not raise his head again, and when they come back the next night, he has returned to his original position. One hand is curled in his lap.
The sea glass is gone.
It is then Wooje’s turn, and he offers a bead of rowan, the driftwood having been convinced to smooth itself down.
And again, the angel turns his head slowly, meeting Wooje’s wide eyes before looking down at the bead.
And again, the next night, it is as if nothing has changed. The gift is gone and the angel cradles something in his palm.
Minhyung has nothing to give to the angel but apple-sweet lies or truths that he knows will claw at his throat. The angel doesn’t seem to mind, nothing but a slow blink in response when he uses this confession as his offering.
For once, Minhyung might understand the purpose of a church. If only their priest and his confessional were more than a ghoul and its barrow.
The angel does nothing but listen and he is fine with that.
When Hyeonjun’s turn, he has a rose of whale bone, petals a light yellow where the sun-bleached exterior had been carved away. It is no bigger than the pebble of sea glass or the rowan bead. He places it down in the muddy straw, and the angel, for the third time, turns his head.
But this time, he picks it up, cradling it in his palm.
Hyeonjun holds this over their heads for the next week and his grin lasts even longer. Men clutch their wives close and mothers clutch their children closer, but Minhyung ignores them. He does not care how they interpret Hyeonjun’s happiness.
He is made fun of a little for having nothing to give, but simply rolls his eyes at them. He has nothing to give, never mind something worth giving.
Then one night, the angel stirs, hand reaching into the crook of his wing and drawing out a single glossy feather. He presses it into Minhyung’s hands and returns to his original position as though nothing has happened.
Somehow, Minhyung gets the sense this is a joke he simply can’t understand.
Minseok takes the feather from him and ties it to the bottom of a suncatcher. The rain and sea never touch it, and he can’t help but wonder why the storms don’t spare the angel like they do the feather.
He puts more effort into finding something after that.
The answer comes, as most things do, from the sea. The creatures within do not care for him, a strange thing that does not know whether he is born of the sky above or the fires below, but the sea does. He does not recognize the pale cocoons that wash into his hands and when he asks Wooje, he says a name in a language like the murmuring of leaves that Minhyung can’t understand.
Still, he helps him soak the cocoons in water, gathering the fine strands that float free. He understands where to go from there. He simply thinks he does not deserve the teasing and somewhat condescending nod he gets.
Minseok is kinder, showing him how to loop the thin cord he weaves around sea glass with the patience of true saints.
Hyeonjun simply laughs at him when he remembers the angel’s typical stillness. He does not think the angel will return the three gifts, even for this short time.
After all, the wise neighborhood woman has said that angels are selfish creatures, and he has never bestowed upon anyone a miracle, no matter how pitiful and deserving.
The angel surprises him though when he kneels down at his side with the cord in his hands. The movements are small; a fractional tilt of the head, a tiny frown, but it is better than cold distance and they are used to it.
He has not yet smiled nor spoken, but he no longer seems quite so hollow.
Minhyung moves to set his gift down, but the angel moves first.
Bone, glass, and rowan click together softly in Minhyung’s palm and the angel looks at him expectantly through the half-crumpled wires.
When he hands them back, they are tangled up with the cord, his knots not quite so perfect in the light of the half-moon, but the angel does not seem to mind, taking the string. He does not smile, but the corners of his eyes crinkle and it is a very near thing.
The string is tied around his wrist the next night and he gives them all that not-quite-smile again.
Minhyung doesn’t know what strange necessarily means. He thinks he is strange, and so are Minseok and Hyeonjun and Wooje, but he only thinks this because the people call them so. They are not strange to him, if strange simply means unsettling. Then again, do words need such set definitions?
There is a feeling in his chest that calls the angel strange. He doesn’t think he has a real definition for it. But the wise neighborhood woman and the liar-priest and the feeling in his chest all agree. So it is settled.
The angel has slowly begun regaining life, eyes still sharp and bright but no longer in the way a knife is. At their approach, he straightens and he no longer only watches. But it is not the slow trusting of a skittish animal, no.
He has simply begun caring again.
No one cares for the angel trapped in the chicken coop anymore, no one but the children who come by every morning with their five cents and demanding hands. Minhyung doesn’t think that it’s really care though. Not with the casual way they will rip out feathers to wear like the Indians overseas or for the occasional moment of casual cruelty.
Minhyung has not seen this happen, not with these eyes, but he knows they will grow to be like their fathers and mothers and when the angel finally dies, there will be nothing sacred left in this town built beside the shale cliffs.
They will turn to the sea with prayers on their lips and crosses in their hands, thinking of God and asking for His divinity. Only the sea will answer. Only the sea has been answering.
One day, the waves beating against the rocks will no longer heed Minseok’s songs, or perhaps he will no longer be here to calm the water, and the town will slide into the sea as the shale and sandstone crumble. Their prayers will be answered.
But not by Heaven.
Or maybe Minhyung has this backward. But he looks at the angel, dressed in ragged scraps of clothing, mud staining his hands, and with brown eyes and human blood, and he thinks he was Heaven’s test for them.
Why else would he stay? Why else would he have fallen?
The liar-priest in his tomb of a church interprets divinity and calls it truth. Why can’t Minhyung do the same?
His shadow, a strange twisting thing, does not answer when he asks it.
He gets what might be a response on the third day of the storm.
Minhyung and Hyeonjun return at noon, always at noon, their small wooden boat floating through the raging waves unharmed, Minseok’s voice rising and falling with the sea’s thrashing.
Theirs is the only boat that has dared to leave and it will be the only boat to return. The sea does not love the people like it loves Minseok. They will not survive out on the water.
It is Wooje who calls for them and they all look up to see another man with feathered wings descend from the cold iron clouds.
He hovers above the bailiff’s house and as Minhyung steps up off of the steps, he can see the crowd of people huddled beneath eaves and the shallow walls of the bailiff’s new home.
It takes a single flap of those wings for the rickety fence to splinter, and Minhyung would call him an angel too, come to take his divine brother back up away from the sins committed here, if not for the rams horns curling around his head.
None of the people flinch when Minhyung hurries up the hill, Hyeonjun, Wooje, and Minseok on his heels.
He is not surprised by this.
What danger is a maybe-demon when the Devil is there before you?
The Devil lands in the mud, and once again, like the angel, he seems unexpectedly human.
The rain creates small rivers through his pale feathers and his clean hands are a far cry from the angel’s, dirtied and bloodied, and yet, the Devil holds them with a kind of care Minhyung has only seen from his brothers to each other.
He opens his mouth and Minhyung somehow understands the lyrics that flow from his tongue.
“Come back,” he cries to the angel. “It’s a lie, it’s a lie. Come back, Sa—” The name distorts and Minhyung has to cover his ears as a choir of voices scream.
The angel reaches out. He rests it in the center of the Devil’s chest—and maybe he isn’t the Devil because surely He would not care for an angel this dearly.
Or maybe the angel has never been an angel. Perhaps the liar-priest was right, a bitter seed of truth buried beneath the apple-sweet lies he creates with each breath.
The angel rests his hand in the center of the Devil’s chest, and he shakes his head.
“The gates are closing,” the demon says, falling to his knees before the chicken coop. “The gates are closing,” he says again, but the music is a lament now. “The gates are closing,” he says a third time.
The maybe-demon closes his eyes.
“I will stay—” he begins to vow, and there is none of the power a promise from an angel or demon should have and so Minhyung is simply confused, but a single quiet word stops him.
“Devil.” The word falls like a hammer from the liar-priest and his dead book of words that he clutches to his chest. Something cracks in the glass-heavy air.
“Devil,” the wise neighborhood woman repeats, spitting the title onto the dying grass. The cracks widen.
“Devil.” The murmurs and whispers ripple through the crowd. Something splinters. “Devil.” Torches flare with hellish light, hissing and cracking in the rain. The thing in the air shatters. “Devil.” The mob moves forward.
The angel shakes his head and for the first time, Minhyung sees him afraid. He pushes the maybe-angel to his feet and the maybe-angel spreads those wings.
But whether to shield or to flee, Minhyung does not know.
He does not get to know.
A harpoon, the head rusted from decades of lying on a dusty mantle, bursts through a wing, right below the wrist.
He does not cry out, and it is all the more eerie for it.
The moment the maybe-angel begins to bleed, the storm stops, but the mob does not notice.
For once, Minhyung is invisible in the crowd. The people rushing past them, branches and planks and stones and hooks in hand, pay them no attention.
Minseok’s mouth is open, horror in his eyes, but no bells ring to try and eat his voice, mothers bundle their curious children toward Wooje instead of away, and no one flinches at Hyeonjun.
Minhyung finds himself standing still, knee-tall grass wound around his legs and holding him down.
Bones snap, trampled beneath feet and stones. He bleeds no ichor, just a human scarlet. Minhyung does not know if that makes it better.
It is not until a wooden stake is driven into the muddy ground, the broken body of the maybe-angel tied to it that he realizes the four of them are still standing there on the crest of the hill, watching humanity kill one of the last sacred things left in this crumbling town.
Minseok is pressed to his side and Minhyung can feel him shaking.
He still cannot move. He should. But he cannot.
The liar-priest shouts and Minhyung can barely hear him about the crackle of torches and the roar of the furious sea, but he tastes apples, sweet as the original sin committed in a paradise that will stay lost to humanity.
The tinder piled at the maybe-angel’s feet do not catch.
But his feathers do.
They take the flames and within a heartbeat, the angel is nothing more than a burning man hung on a cross.
The fire crowns his horns and his eyes, still dark as a human’s, snap open.
There is a laugh that rolls across the crowd, full of smoke and ash. “The gate is closed,” the maybe-angel says in their ugly mortal tongue, music choked by fire in his throat, voice as rusty as the harpoon barbs that had pierced him. Those tired human eyes fall shut. “The gate is closed,” he repeats, but he does not sound gleeful nor vindicated.
Only sad.
He tips his head to the sky and burns, burns, burns.
He does not once cry out.
It is nearly lost in the cinders, but there is a pale bird that leaps up out of the heart of the blaze, the stain of smoke sliding off of its white feathers. The people do not notice it fly toward the hidden sun.
But they notice them.
They turn and stare, as though challenging their silence, their stillness. The dove glides up toward a Heaven closed to humanity. The fire still roars behind the crowd, but that fanatical blaze is reflected in their eyes. They are not welcome here.
If an angel can burn and die, then so can they.
Minhyung turns his back, pushing Wooje and Minseok before him. His skin crawls with the weight of burning eyes, but he looks forward to the sea, tugging Hyeonjun with him and pretends he can’t feel himself shaking.
He tries not to run, but he can’t help but look over his shoulder past the dying blaze, nothing but a charred shadow and ash-stained horns left on the pyre, to the angel, kneeling in the mud.
Those eyes are dull now and even as he descends the hill, he can see the chicken wire cut into the angel’s hands. But he doesn’t let go. Just watches the fire burn down before he flicks his gaze up to the smoke-gray sky.
Minhyung wants to go back for him.
But the torches still burn, a wall of flames and eyes and they dare him to face them.
He can’t let anyone else get burnt today. He turns back.
He almost expects the sky to rage, to split itself apart in retribution for the maybe-angel’s death. Instead, the clouds melt away when the night falls, leaving only the cold eye of the moon in the sky. It is the sea that screams.
The waves race over the barrier reef to rip at the fishermen’s boats and piers. The high tide sweeps in, things that used to live in the deep diving into the bay to call for the people in their houses above. This is why they are afraid of Minseok, Minhyung thinks.
The forest behind them joins the sea, staining the silence of the night with the howling of creatures that makes Wooje tug them back inside when they open their door.
Minhyung risks a glance up the hill and spots shadows with limbs that are too long and have too many joints passing from house to house.
They all leave them alone though. The sea is not angry with them, and its waters shroud their home in mist like a promise.
Fire will not touch you here, it seems to vow, and it does not seem angry with them, but even Hyeonjun, who still flinches when flames get too close, seems to agree that maybe it should be angry.
Heaven has never rewarded apathy and Odysseus only returned home because he cared enough.
In the morning, the barrier reef has been broken open and there is a beached whale lying down at the water’s edge.
The seaward eye has long been scarred shut, the barbed head of an old harpoon pointed out of the corner of the eye like an iron tear.
The other stares sightlessly up the hill to where the angel still kneels in his chicken coop.
There is a gaping hole torn into its side, dripping blood in the water of the bay.
For once, the wise neighborhood woman’s warnings of this omen are ignored as the people appear on the beach with their knives and hooks, looking for oil, flesh, and bone.
But it falls apart in their hands, withered and rotten, and they are chased away by blinding clouds of flies.
The body has crushed the piers, and so the people cannot get rid of it by taking it back to the sea.
It rots too fast and somehow, the single accusing eye is the only thing left alone by the birds and flies and the things that come in with the high tide.
But for now, its body lies on the beach, a dead sea god that no one prays to anymore.
None of them visit the angel in the following nights. The stake driven into the ground stays there. Some time by the second day, someone has hacked the soot-stained wings off, leaving nothing but the charred corpse behind.
Humanity must have killed the Fates and taken the loom unto themselves for Minhyung doesn’t think They would have been this cruel to an angel.
He kneels there, unmoving, fingers entangled in the sharp wire and hollow eyes fixed on the body before him.
It takes some time before the whispering begins again. They talk about that strange love between the angel-they-call-devil and the chicken coop’s captive. They talk about how creatures like them, like Minhyung and his brothers, can burn. They talk about the wings now blessing their church.
That is what draws Minhyung up the hill and into the town.
Mothers once again shy away from him, their children hidden behind their skirts. The fishermen watch him with their filet knives and iron hooks and narrowed eyes. Minhyung pays them no mind.
The church’s doors are closed to him.
He stops and a small white bird flutters down from the sky to land on his shoulder, too-bright eyes pinning him with a stare that burns more than anything shot his way so far.
The dove coos and it flaps its wings once. Smoke stirs in the wind it creates.
“The gates are closed,” Minhyung repeats to it.
It coos again, taking to the air.
The church doors creak open and he walks up the granite-painted-marble steps.
The liar-priest clutches a rosary to his chest, and Minhyung thinks he is the only one who can see the way that it burns his skin. But the dove screams in a high-pitched whistle, darting forward to hover above the pair of wings nailed above the altar, and he thinks that maybe he’s not the only one.
The liar-priest does not move, just chants something that melts to apple-ash before it reaches his ears and Minhyung nearly laughs.
The charred bones have been replaced by the dead whale’s, whittled down into a mockery of the original, and the feathers are patchy, the common spotted gray-black peeking through peeling white paint. The few real feathers are the angel’s, ripped carelessly from his wings.
They crown the altar, stretched out behind the liar-priest as though he could pretend to have sainthood if he desecrated the few divine creatures left.
Minhyung steps into the church and the painted glass windows shatter.
The dove nestles on his shoulder the entire way back and the others seem to know who it is. Minhyung is not surprised.
Hyeonjun takes it from his shoulder and he whispers, “I’m sorry we did nothing.” The dove coos softly at him and he is certain that he was not meant to hear that.
They find the courage to head back up the hill that night and the angel does not stir at their approach, dead eyes fixed on the body still tied up before him.
It is not until Hyeonjun kneels down, the dove nestled into his hair, that the angel finally moves, but by then, life returning to him was no longer the focus.
There are a pair of horns, just like the dead angel’s, growing from his head, the skin around the base raised and red, new bone dark with dried blood.
They are clearly new for if the people saw it, he would be dead by dawn.
The angel seems oblivious, unwinding his shredded fingers from the wire to cup the dove. He startles, blinking up at Wooje when he forces the chicken coop door open. The original inhabitants, awake and irritable, flock out, milling through the trampled dirt in search of seeds not buried by mud.
“You need to go,” Wooje says, pointing to the sky. He shakes his head.
“You will die,” Minseok pleads.
But it is not until the dove makes a soft noise, beating its wings against the angel’s fingers, smoke rising from its feathers, that he moves.
He stands on shaking legs and it is Hyeonjun who steps over the mangled wires to help him up.
In the meantime, Minhyung cuts the burned angel down, but he hesitates with what to do with it. Does he bury the body, returning it to the earth despite the divinity that had once lived in this skin? Does he let the sea have it, because if the sea cannot reclaim the dead god stranded on that beach, then an angel is the next best thing?
Something lands on the body in Minhyung’s arms, the dove looking up at him with those too-intelligent eyes. It warbles and leaps into the air, circling around him before dashing down to the beach.
He follows.
The whale is scarcely more than rotting skin stretched around bone, the heart long since carved out of its chest. The dove flies in through the hole ripped through its side, perching on the exposed spine.
Minhyung holds his breath, pushing through the fog of carrion flies and he sets the dead angel down where the whale’s heart should have been, backing away quickly.
It’s a prudent gesture, especially as flame explodes from the body. Within moments, the beach is bathed in firelight, the dark shadow of the ribs stretching up to the sky.
When it dies down, the dove is still hovering where the heart should be, pale feathers untouched by the inferno that had stripped everything from the dead god’s bones.
“The gates are closed,” Minseok says quietly. It is acceptance.
The dove only cries out, a mournful song that no natural bird could sing rolling across the water.
Minhyung turns away from the burned bones and the dead angel-heart. In the dim moonlight, he can see the shape of someone climbing up the shale cliffs. Below, Hyeonjun is stepping carefully toward them, the angel in his arms.
“They will think him Daedalus,” Minseok explains. Wooje climbs higher and Minhyung is a little afraid he will fall.
“Not Icarus?”
“Does it matter?”
No, it doesn’t. The people will think their angel gone, and they will dismiss it because the bailiff has a room full of coins and the church has their mocking wings and the only ones who will miss him will be the children and their stones.
He has really only ever mattered to them.
They take him inside and Minseok takes over while Hyeonjun steps outside to wait for Wooje, now slowly picking his way down the cliff, his shadow a small thing beneath the sky.
The angel does not speak, but none of them expect him to, not by now.
There is some talk in the morning of broken chicken wire and footsteps that disappear off the cliffs. The children pout a little, having lost their best source of feathers and once again forced to catch chickens, but the bailiff’s wife no longer has another apathetic thing to toss food to and no annoyance dressed in an angel’s skin.
The attention is on the dead god’s bones, blackened by fire.
It is agreed that it is a sign, for how could a creature of the sea burn like this?
They do not seem to agree what kind of sign this is.
Fingers start to point anyway, and it is a little amusing that the people, with blood still on their hands and soot-stained skin, think Minhyung and his brothers, freaks of the sea and forest, are the ones who wrought this fire.
It does not stay amusing for long.
Minhyung has always been grateful that their pier is on the wrong side of the reef.
There is no fisherman brave and foolish enough to challenge the angry waves that only spare Hyeonjun and him because of Minseok.
But the sea’s love for them does not stop the whispers and Minhyung does not know how much longer they will be allowed to stay.
Still, there is no movement, no aggression, not yet, and the angel slowly heals in the hidden safety of their home down by the rocks.
The bruises fade and do not bloom again, the cuts from thrown stones and the chicken wire begin to fade to thin scars the little white dove seems to mourn over, and pin feathers begin to cover those ragged wings.
The horns on his head grow rapidly, curling over his ears and down to his jaw and the first time Minhyung sees him open his mouth, there is nothing but the hissing of snakes. He has gone too far to have his faith shaken now though.
No devil would be so patient and no devil would reveal such a curse to the harmless question of “Can you speak?”
That is not the only first they see. The angel stumbles upright on the second day, walking on his own power as the dove coos softly in his ear. He follows Minhyung and Hyeonjun onto their boat, seemingly light as the feathers growing on his wings.
He does not sing like Minseok does, does not coax the sea to settle, but he dips his hands beneath the waves. The half-healed marks reopen for just a moment, red blooming beneath the water and when he straightens, he is holding a branch of fire-red coral.
They’re not quite sure what to do with it, but they accept the gift anyway.
It’s Wooje that earns the first real smile, distracted from his task of helping the angel preen the mass of feathers by Hyeonjun. They’re bickering again, but the angel doesn’t seem to mind, sitting there quietly, eyes crinkled with silent laughter.
None of them point it out, for fear of it disappearing.
Their fears are unfounded though.
Minhyung can’t quite remember why everyone had thought the angel cold and distant before. There is a moment where he wishes they could stay like this, the five of them and their spirit-dove who cannot pass because Heaven has forsaken them.
But the wise neighborhood woman’s garden falters as cold winds blow in from the north and the church refuses to be repaired.
Someone must be to blame.
Yet they do nothing but whisper. Minhyung is not so foolish to think that their four names are not on those wagging tongues and he is not so foolish as to hope this uneasy peace will last.
There is a child that goes missing, their body found beside the dead whale’s bones when the tides recede and fingers point.
“Taken from the forest,” they say to Wooje, who has never taken a life beyond those of woodland creatures ready to die.
“Lured to the sea,” they say to Minseok, who has only ever sung to calm the sea or for the simple human want of joy.
“A failed abduction,” they say to Hyeonjun, who still cannot smile, lest they take it as the snarl of a mindless beast.
“A sacrifice to the Devil,” they say to him, who still does not know what he is and whose closest brush with the unholy was with these very people.
Their whispers begin to turn to fire, to halters and whips, to silver and iron, to crosses and holy water and now Minhyung knows they are running out of time.
He had already known about this.
His dreams come to him now with the hissing of snakes and he nearly mistakes the visions as memories.
A figure nailed by the hands to a cross as a twisted offering to the roiling forest.
Whips lashing out, fire roaring as people nearby call for the original human to be returned.
Breath choked by a collar because they were afraid of a benign song and fishermen are nothing if not superstitious.
His own head, forced beneath apple-sweet waters that fill his lungs as they chant for the demon to leave him.
But in those dreams, they are no longer children. No, these are warnings and he wakes from each to see the angel sitting against the open door.
He watches the town sleep, rubbing the small bracelet of gifts around his wrist, and this is the only time Minhyung sees him almost angry, almost dangerous.
On the seventh night, when he startles awake, the angel is staring at him, dark eyes sad.
Quietly, he whispers, trying not to disturb the three sleepers clinging to him. “Is this the last warning?”
The angel nods and the dove nestled in the hollow of his collarbone stirs.
Torches flare above, pinpricks of light dancing on the hill.
Minhyung knows they will not survive the dawn.
The angel must read his thoughts, because he stands, shaking his head. Gently, he tugs him away and points up to the shale cliff. Moonlight sparks through the bead of sea glass on his wrist and he opens his wings.
“We can't fly.”
But he looks out the door at the flickering firelight and hesitates.
The angel tugs on his hand again and the dove coos at him. Snakes hiss when he opens his mouth, but his message is clear.
Minhyung turns away from the gathering mob. He makes his choice.
The tides are at their lowest and there is the smallest path along the water’s edge, behind Wooje’s small patches of shale-crushed earth. Still, none of them bother to check where they step.
The sea will not harm them.
The path is not utterly hidden, but they are sheltered until they begin to climb the cliff. Shouts ring and the church bells tolls, the sound rolling across the earth, but Minhyung pays them no attention.
They will be gone before those torches ever get close again.
Atop the cliff, rock crumbling to the wailing sea below, Minseok turns to him and asks, “Icarus or Daedalus?”
“The gates are closed,” Hyeonjun mutters, eyes cast skyward worriedly.
Wooje slips his hand into his. “Isn’t it a lie?”
Minhyung doesn’t have an answer for any of it.
The angel, dove already flying out into the stormy winds with impossibly steady wings despite the howling gales, stands at the edge and tips backward.
He has not flown yet, but though he wobbles, he rises back up the cliff, and he beckons them with a smile.
Minhyung has already had his moment of doubt. “I trust you.”
He jumps. He thinks the other three follow.
The angel dives after him, feathers spiraling from those enormous wings and he thinks the very last thing he sees as the angel reaches him are the three small beads, one of rowan, one of glass, and one of bone, tied to his wrist in that pale cord. He focuses on those in lieu of the bristling rocks below.
A strange laugh that rips itself free from his throat, and there is a sharp pain between his shoulder blades. Feathers cover his vision and he—
