Anthology Two Presents
Lonely Stranger:
"VII."
By Aaron Baugh

VII.

Blue light surrounded me again, and I stepped through the portal.

Urban areas are all the same, basically. I can't tell you from direct experience, but I'm certain that any one large city is similar to any other large city. Sure, you have different vehicles, be they horseless carriages or the ones pulled by some beast of burden. If you have vehicles overhead and below the surface, the same film of crowdedness and stench sticks to everything, mitigated only by the unmistakeable vibrancy of the city dweller's lives.

After sitting in a pleasant park during late fall, watching joggers and nannies push prams, I got up from my bench and started walking towards a nondescript brick building some twelve blocks away, my mission firmly embedded in my temporary memory.

The Eight Street Orphanage wasn't a dismal, ramshackle place like so many orphanages are thought to be. It wasn't run by tyrannical nuns or spendthrift city employees who squirreled money meant for the kids to their own accounts. No.

This orphanage was clean and run by a near-sighted, gray-haired woman who looked like everyone's favorite grandmother. Inside this orphanage was a little girl named Megan, and she had a major future ahead of her, one that entailed her leaving this orphanage very, very soon.

So, I did what anyone wanting to get an orphan out of an orphanage would do. I went in and pretended to be from State Social Services. Duh.

Mrs. Lincoln smiled at me in her maternal way once I'd made my way past the receptionist and was properly outfitted with a huge earthenware mug of coffee. The papers I'd just handed her had come from my inner coat pocket. Don't ask me how.

But they basically entailed a legitimate transfer of the young girl to my care as I took her to her new foster parents out west. These people didn't know their own good fortune quite yet.

"Mister Harris," she began, "everything is in perfect order here. I must confess that this is the first time I've seen a Form 1077 filled out in quite so much detail and with no mistakes."

I smiled. "Thank you Beatrice," she'd asked me to call her that, "and please call me Ben. I've always taken pride in my paperwork. The last refuge of the bureaucrat inside me."

She laughed gently. "Well, you have a schedule to keep, I'd imagine. Wouldn't want Megan's new parents to wait longer than they should." She paused. "Megan is a special child, you know."

I nodded, impressed that she hadn't paused before using the ubiquitous word 'special' like so many did when describing a child of diminished capacity. Beatrice continued.

"She's been with us since the age of three months, and hasn't uttered a word. Ever. But she understands perfectly, and I see more intelligence behind her eyes than in any five-year-old I've ever seen. I *have* seen quite a few, you know."

Again, I nodded. "I've been studying her case for quite some time," I lied. It had all come to me while I sat in the park and watched the squirrels quarrel with each other.

Megan wasn't born on Earth. She was placed there by the same authority and power that fueled my powers and sent me skipping hither and yon to intercept the tides that threaten creation's continuity. Megan didn't speak because she hadn't learn to control her angelic voice yet.

She could have talked to me, since I'm part of the same basic family, but she didn't know how to do it. Forget the idiosyncracies of language itself, but she knew that she couldn't do it or she'd do something horrible like flatten city blocks or deafen a few hundred people.

See, angels can talk to humans, but for them it's akin to whispering through your hand. True angelic choruses can shatter universes, and are only heard in Heaven where they can be adequately confined. Just a single one of those untrained voices would spell disaster, even from the lungs of an angel in the form of a five-year-old.

"Quite some time," I repeated. "I think I'll be more than equal to the task of communicating with her. Body language is very expressive."

Mrs. Lincoln smiled and led me to a room where dozens of children were contentedly finger-painting or scribbling at low, child-sized tables. All looked up at me and Mrs. Lincoln and smiled.

Several got up to go say hi, one even hugged her despite fingerpaint on his hands, and she didn't seem to mind.

I, on the other hand, had automatically zeroed in on the doe-eyed little girl sitting in the exact center of the room. She was the hub about which the room turned, a phenomenon that had been with her and would continue to be with her for the forseeable future.

And as I crossed the threshold, she looked up at me, her eyes studious in what was the first inkling of kinship she'd experienced since her inception.

"Megan," said Beatrice, "I need you to get your things and bring them to my office. Miss Hargrove will help you."

A mousey brunette that I had failed to notice in the room moved out from behind a corner desk so cluttered with the riff-raff of arts and crafts that it wasn't identifiable as a piece of furniture. Still, she smiled and she followed Megan out of the room while it dissolved in a cacophany of children's voices asking where she was going and what she was doing and who was that man?

I strode out of the room and immediately felt and knew of another presence in the building. Ducking behind a corner out of sight, I faded from view and spaced myself to flow through walls and hurried to the large common room where the children slept.

I saw her, I mean it, there waiting for me. It had taken a female form, a gentle faced, long white-haired woman in flowing robes. Right out of literature. No wings, though, but she was in the same non-corporeal invisible state as I was.

As I flowed through the wall, Megan came through the door and went to her bed, a small white dresser beside it. Ms. Hargrove carried a small suitcase, somewhat travelworn but serviceable.

"Greetings, traveler," the angel said softly, as if she could be heard by the normal folk below, which was impossible.

"Hi. She can still sense you, you know." Megan glanced in our direction, like one does when seeing fleeting shadows in the corners of their eyes. She blinked those large brown eyes and went back to packing.

The angel nodded. "I do know. I have observed her often while she sleeps. She has much potential."

"She's being groomed to take over a big job."

"Indeed. Reinstating proper governance of a timeline after a rebellion is a difficult task."

Then she knew. "Do you approve? Often two such as yourself in the same dimension proves...difficult."

She smiled and looked at me. "To know so much and retain so little. I do not envy you."

I nodded, and she continued. "But your question is valid. I realize, of course, the need for her to be brought up here, and to go through this method of maturation. She will have to adopt a more direct role when she assumes the guardian role that Akathriel has willfully abandoned. Her life among humans will make that easier."

"We hope."

She nodded again, a sad smile on her lips. "We can always hope, traveler. That is something that both our kinds can share. Farewell." And with that, she simply floated back through the ceiling, and I felt her presence fade into nothing a short time later.

Megan again looked towards the place where the angel had been, then turned and looked so that our eyes met. And she smiled.

* * *

Hours later, we sat in the regional airport of Butte, Montana, a rented four by four in the parking lot under my assumed name and paid for by money that happened to be in my pocket when I needed it.

Megan was sitting across from me, happily feeding herself a hot fudge sundae and seeming to enjoy every bite. I'd felt the first pokes of mental probes from her, but it was a consequence of my station that I was both immune to the effects of such and unable to send any myself. But I spoke to her as I'd speak to any adult, and did find her physical language to be nearly as expressive as that of the spoken word.

From there, it was a long drive through rough mountains interspersed with hardy evergreen scrub. I drove on pure knowledge, avoiding loose gravel roads and picking my way across boulders and rubble-strewn canyons with ease.

Eventually, we crested a rise and I got my first eyes-on view of the Sioux River Valley. It all belonged to one man and one woman, who watched over it on behalf of the National Park Service. It was a National Park, though any campers would always be noticed and those without proper regard or manners would be shown the way out.

The road was well-marked and maintained, and I smiled as I beheld the sprawling log cabin with the two mud-spattered all-terrain vehicles parked outside.

"Welcome home, Megan," I said simply, then moved to get her suitcase as she freed herself from the seatbelts and hopped out of the open door.

She beheld the house with hands on her hips, then nodded once, decisively. "I like it too," I agreed, then we walked to the door and I knocked.

An elderly Native American man opened it, skin brown, eyes dark, full head of black hair gone silver at the roots braided so that it reached the center of his back. His jeans were faded, red shirt of the kind worn often for outdoor work.

But those eyes, and that presence...he could only be one man.

"Kid Thunderbird," I said, holding out my hand. "A pleasure to meet you, sir. I'm Ben, and this is Megan."

His expression didn't change. "You may have me confused with someone else, I'm afraid. Kid Thunderbird isn't my name."

"You mean, it isn't your name anymore," I countered. "Arthur Two-Crows of the Bent Stick Lakota Sioux, born September 10, 1922, inheritor of the Thunderbird mantle from Joseph Red Hands in 1944. You've worn it ever since, though you retired from the public eye in 1986 after courting and marrying the heroine known as Ladyhawk." I paused. "So, it isn't your name anymore, right?"

For a full two seconds, he stood there with the door open, then stepped aside. "You should come in," he said seriously, "because I have to know who the hell you are."

* * *

Maureen Higgins, nae Ladyhawk, joined us at the table with a full pot of strong coffee, cookies, and a mug of milk for Megan.

A couple of hours later, the pot was empty and Megan was curled up on the couch, a shaggy white dog named Zeke doing the same at her feet.

Maureen was a stately looking woman in her advanced years, though anyone looking at those vivid green eyes and the network of smile lines could easily see the heart-breaking vixen of the forties and fifties. "She spoke to me, you know," she said, following the explanation of who and what Megan and I were. "I was amazed at the strength of it, from such a small person."

"She's not a child," I told them. "You'll have to get used to that if you're going to teach her how to live among men."

"I still don't know why you chose us," said Arthur. "We've been out of the game for so long..."

"But you haven't passed on the mantle, Arthur. That either means you still use it, or you haven't found a suitable heir yet. Besides, I know that this cabin was built in just four days. Obviously a superhuman effort when done by just one man."

He smiled. "You must have a great deal to teach, yourself."

"No," I disagreed, "I can't pass on experience, which is the most important thing. My experience is so terribly short that it would do little good to pass it on. I don't even think I'm capable."

"So you pass her into our hands?"

"Yes." I could already feel the pull, knew that they would accept the burden, and raise this child-angel until she ascended in her own right and received full access to the vast power at her disposal.

"Alright," said Maureen, looking not at me but at her husband. "We'll do it."

"Good." I smiled and stood, both of my hosts slightly surprised before they came to their feet as well.

"You're leaving?"

"Oh yes. I have many demands upon my time, Maureen. This world is one thread among trillions much less organized and well-managed. I have to go."

And I left. Of course I said polite goodbyes before doing so and had to decline offers to stay. There was nothing left for me here. My duty was done.

Almost.

For whatever reason, I looked back at the house even though I could see the portal before me. Megan stood there, the shaggy dog at her side. She was smiling a small, somewhat sad smile, and I knew exactly how she felt.

I raised a hand to wave, a gesture that she returned before turning and heading back into the house. I can't recollect how many moments I squandered standing there looking after her.

I just may see Megan again.

As for me, I went on my way.