The Guardian

What gift does a Guardian give to a child trapped between two worlds? A child who belongs not the gentle hearth of Heaven or the cold gritty earth. A child that will be both revered and feared by angels and humans alike. A child that they will hunt. Do you give them wisdom to make peace with their fate? The canniness to carve their own path around it? The mirth to see past it in the darkest of times? The strength to survive it come what may? Or do you flip the coin and brush them with the ficklest of all the fates - Do you gift them luck?

*

The child had not been abandoned exactly, for children do not generally get abandoned in the middle of forest paths in the dead of night. Not in the holiest of hours, on the Eve of the First Dawn when the Guardians are recalled to heaven to bathe in the waters of the temple and be blessed by God.

No, this child was meant to be found.

The question was, by who?

Tirrus landed on the ground with a thud snagging his heavy grey cloak on a low branch. The moonlight scattered through the tree’s naked bows and shimmered off his pale green skin illuminating the forest floor below.

He would not be attending the bathing tonight. The terms of his banishment had been clear, forbidding him to return to the shores of Heaven for 60 years. It was too light a punishment many had argued. Yet whether it was too light, or excessively cruel it had always struck Tirrus as a rather odd sort of punishment, for one charged with the crime of changing fates.

It was, after all, the first rule of Guardianship. To watch over but to never intervene. The human’s fates were their own, and the Guardians were responsible not for their lives but their souls. A Guardian should protect the soul from the forces of evil that snaked through the world, unseen and unheard.

There was only two times in a person life when their Guardian was permitted to cross the Raud, the sacred barrier between the worlds that protected the humans Freewill. Once in the gifting ceremony on a child’s first birthday when they were bonded with their Guardian, and once at the end of their life, when the Guardian would slip across the curtain and separate the soul from the body, to carry it to its final resting place.

It was odd therefore that in breaking this most sacred law, that the council had banished Tirrus to the very place that he was tempted most. Away from the brilliance of heaven the harsh reality of the human world bore down on Tirrus, pulling and taunting at him. Watch but do not intervene. What a terrible fate. How many horrors had he watched unfold before his eyes under the promise of Freewill? Able, yet forbidden to help his charges. How many of them had wept and begged and pleaded with a God who was helpless, blind to their suffering beyond the Raud?

It was the ultimate test. The ultimate temptation and Tirrus had already failed once.

Yet someone wanted him to fail again. A someone that had known that on the Eve of the First Dawn when the world was empty of its Guardians, that Tirrus would wander through the forest to the small graveyard on the hill, and sit with the pretty young woman marked with gift of mirth. Someone knew that they would sit together, in silence, worlds apart, waiting for dawn to come.

Or at least they had known that that was what he had intended to do.

The forest floor was covered in brambles and Tirrus picked his way carefully down the slope to the woodland path that ran along the edge of the tree canopy up to graveyard. His leather sandals and thin cloak were impractical in this terrain, and he tugged the woven fabric close around him. His feathers pricked and bristled shielding the worst of the bitter wind from the nape of his neck. In fact, he was so busy concentrating on the ground that he nearly didn’t notice the small bundle of squirming blankets on the path below him. As if sensing that it was no longer alone, the child squealed, it’s fat fist breaking free of the bindings and thrashing around in the bitter night air as if it were reaching out for someone to hold it.

Tirrus froze, instantly dropping to a crouch, his eyes scanning the shadows. How had he been so foolish? He had walked these woods year after year and each time only the briefest of the bitter winds had breached their way past the curtain. Never before had he watched his own breath curdle in the night air or felt the dull ache in his feet as the chill sunk into his bones.

The chill could mean only one thing. The Raud had been compromised.

His eyes returned to the bundle of squirming blankets. A shiver ran down his spine and he felt a bristle of unease. It was strange place to leave a child, yet Tirrus knew even in that moment that it was no accident. He remained in the crouched position, glancing hesitantly over his shoulder. Were they alone?

A child alone in the middle of the woods at night was one thing. It would raise the eyebrows of even the most devout of the Guardians, but it was a strictly human matter. The Guardians would stand in vigil until the child was found by one of its own, or until it was time to retrieve the soul.

But a helpless soul abandoned when the Raud had been breached was a different thing entirely. His hand dropped to his waist to the small wooden horn that hung from his belt. He needed to raise the alarm. But then what? Even on the Eve of the First Dawn the Guardians would flock to sound of the alarm and the heavens would quite literally descend. The breach would be found. The cause would be determined. The guilty spirits would be hunted. And the child - what would happen to the child then?

Something was wrong.

A snapping of twigs underfoot snatched Tirrus from his thoughts. He stared into the tree’s beyond the child waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Another snap was followed by a low snarling growl. A spirit was coming, though still out of sight. Tirrus’s hand moved from the horn to the hilt of his dagger. He had killed spirits before, but only as young angel serving at the edge of worlds and never on earth itself. The beasts had been driven from earth long before Tirrus had been born, and now, their only remnants in the human world were in the fairy stories they told their young.

Yet the dragon emerging from the shadows was no fairy tale creature. Its skin was a mosaic of tiny, armoured scales that rippled over a tort muscular frame. It moved close the ground, rocking from side to side, as a black tongue darted outwards tasting for its prey. Two large leathery wings tipped with a menacing hook loomed over the creature, poised and ready. A large scar marked the place a blade had once slashed across its face, leaving the beast disfigured and an empty socket where an intelligent pupil should have been. The fact that the creature was blind was no blessing though, and Tirrus felt panic rising up inside him as he realised that the beast, mere metres from the child, had already crossed the barrier. This was no wandering spirit that had slipped through the net. A blinded beast stalking the earth undetected was sure to be a powerful creature.

The child lay equidistance between them, and though Tirrus had the advantage of the bank’s height, the Raud still hung between them, separating them. Unless he found away to cross it quickly, he would have watch the child’s soul be devoured by this ungodly thing.

Tirrus glanced from the beast to the child and back again. He could approach the beast from behind, cut the Raud and attack, but the beasts hunched wings meant that it would sense the Raud being crossed before Tirrus could get close enough to its throat to attack. Without the element of surprise a beast of this size would overpower Tirrus easily. The face of the girl on the nearby hill appeared in Tirrus’s mind but he batted it away with a forceful insistence. He couldn’t think about her now.

Rising from the crouched position, Tirrus took a step towards the child. It was the beasts turn to freeze now, and Tirrus watched in horror as it tilted its head towards him, a slow roll of its tongue taking him in. A low growl erupted from its throat and the dragon tensed on its front claws. Could it smell Tirrus through the tear? A glint above the child immediately told Tirrus what he had been missing.

The child was not separated from him by the Raud at all, instead the bundle of blankets was holding the thing open and the child was quite literally, tucked between the two worlds.

“What the -?” He swatted away the surge of questions that threatened to overwhelm him and stared into the gap between the Raud where the dragon, still tensed, took another step towards the child. If it was a race to the child then the dragon would easily beat him.

Gripping the hilt, Tirrus slowly drew the knife up from the leather pouch, his other hand rising up to meet it. But instead of wrapping his left fist around the pommel a move they had been taught to ensure a firm grip, he wrapped his fist around the blade and then in one swift movement he pulled upwards, letting the blade slice through his flesh and rise high above his head, pulling it backward and then suddenly hurling it in a low arch over the child, through the gap where the torn curtain flailed in the wind, and towards the dragon.

The knife hit its mark, glancing off the dragon’s shoulder and spinning away to the ground. The dragon hissed, its head dipping low and preparing itself to engage, but Tirrus was already on the move, leaping off the steep bank towards the child. Grabbing the blankets with his bloody hand, he hauled the child across the barrier and swung the bundle over his right shoulder into the space where his wing met his shoulder blade. With his right hand he reached out and caught the Raud, rippling and fluttering like silk sheets on the line. Though the knife had not pierced the dragons’ scales, the blood he'd smeared on the blade was like poison to the spirits and Tirrus knew the burning sensation on the dragon’s skin would offer only the most fleeting of distractions. Already the snarling dragon was moving towards him, hissing and spitting. Grasping the sacred fabric together in his right fist, Tirrus smeared the bloody wound against the length of rip. It was a large clean tear, expertly made, and one that had been cut with the intention not to leave a trace. This was not the work of a beast at all. But Tirrus had no time to wonder who or what had made this hole, or to bind and weave the fabric seamlessly together, and so he watched as his silver blood seeped into the mottled and bunched threads and mended the frayed strands back together. The dragon was advancing but the smell of blood on the knife was strong and dragons tongue flicked between it and the sound of the wailing child tucked in Tirrus’s wings. The gap in the Raud was shrinking now as Tirrus furiously worked his way down the fabric, but the barrier was weak and the beast would reopen it without much effort. The blood from his wound was stemming too and in a moment of desperation he bit hard into the wound to draw out more blood. The work was crude and Raud’s strands pulled and wrinkled as they knotted themselves whole again.

The beast inched closer, and it took every fibre of being within Tirrus not to flee. As he pressed the last of the fabric together the beasts tongue flicked inches from his face. Like a one way mirror it would no longer be able to hear the child across the barrier but Tirrus knew it would sense the weakness in the Raud and the fresh blood that held it together. He prayed that it would hold, for if the dragon managed to rip it apart again, then Tirrus’s only choice would be to flee with the child. He stood slowly letting go of the fabric and allowing it to dissolve into the air again. It was by no means a perfect fix. The frayed threads that hadn’t been worked properly into the fabric shimmered in the air and had the beast still had use of it eyes, it too, would have seen the scar from the other side.

He let out a slow shaky breath and backed away slowly up the path to a place where the bank was low, and he could easily scramble up into the undergrowth. With the immediate danger passed Tirrus reached over his shoulder where the child, still wailing was tucked away. He crouched and releasing the sac of blankets onto the floor, and letting them fall so the child could wriggle free.

She was bigger than Tirrus had expected, maybe a year or two in age, and when she struggled out, she grabbed at Tirrus’s cloak, pulling herself unsteadily to her feet. Under a mop dark hair, curious eyes peered up at him and Tirrus gasped. Her dark brown irises were flecked with silver, painted like a moon around the black pupils. Angel eyes – they were unmistakable. Yet otherwise, the child looked perfectly human, and even in the moonlight Tirrus could see the shadow of blue veins running beneath her skin.

A smile broke out over the child’s face and it babbled “Grapa” tugging at Tirrus’s sleeve. The pain was subsiding but the deep sense of unease in the pit of his stomach grew and Tirrus glanced up to check that they were still alone. On the path below the dragon was still tasting the air around the mended fabric. He turned his attention back to the child. Only in the oldest of legends from the time of the Battle of the Beasts, when the Angels had roamed the earth freely, had the stories told of the half human half angels.

And yet here one was.

The child grinned up at Tirrus, completely unaware that metres behind it a dragon stalked, hungry for a soul.

“You’ve met one of us before haven’t you.” He whispered kindly. “Shall we see what blessing they gave you.” He took the child’s hand and opened up the palm to study the child’s blessing for some further clue. But the skin was perfect and unmarked.

He let out a sigh beginning to peace together the confusing fragments. A child that been left abandoned in the wood. A child that was half angel half human. A child with no Guardian, no mark. And him, a Guardian, banished from Heaven, unable to watch in silence.

“I can forget sixty years, can’t I,” he mused to the child softly, running his thumb over her palm and wondering at the powers she possessed. He should have a known that she was no ordinary child when he saw the dragon. A beast like that would not be interested in feeding on the mere soul of a human child. She giggled and leaned in stretching her arms upwards towards Tirrus’s neck. Obligingly he scooped her up and lifted her onto his shoulder, allowing the child to nestle into the soft downy feathers of his wing.

With one last look at the skulking dragon, Tirrus stood, and turned back towards the slope and grassy clearing. He would gift her luck, he decided. For whatever came next, they were going to need it.