They Who from the Heavens Came (The Wisdom, #1)

Itzy had dreamt of Aidan so many times before, but being pressed so close against him that night, the dream was more vivid than ever. They were on the hill again, and strangely, between kisses, he kept asking her questions:

Where do I come from?

Who was my father?

Who made me?

Why am I here?

She wished he would stop, because she wanted so badly to be able to answer him, to tell him all she knew he needed to hear; but she knew she never could. It was painful to realise there were some things she just couldn’t give him.

As he leaned over her, a claw appeared just over his head. It looked like it belonged to a hawk. Without warning, it dug itself into his back.

His grey eyes went pink in the light and widened, frozen with shock, before he dropped ungracefully onto her.

She screamed and screamed, as the creature who had killed him loomed into her view. He was a shimmering gold and his eyes burned like fire.

‘Quetzal,’ she whispered.

She was so shocked, she couldn’t even throw the body off her own.

The body.

She’d already begun to think of it as something other than Aidan. But Aidan could not be dead. She would not allow it.

‘No,’ she said, a new firmness in her voice. ‘I won’t let you take him. You don’t want him. You don’t need him.’

Quetzal cocked his head sideways, studying her. ‘What would you give me instead?’ he asked.

She knew what she had to do, what she had to give.

‘Me,’ she said.

Then the dream rewound. Aidan rolled her onto her back, so he was leaning over her. His eyes gleamed in the light. Everything about him spoke of beauty. He was a precious stone that had taken so long to find, and she would not let him die.

She flung him out of the way just as the claw appeared, and the talon pierced her heart. It hurt less than she thought it would, but the end result would be the same.

Aidan’s face morphed with horror. She saw her own death reflected in his eyes. She watched herself drop to the bed, the blood rushing out of her.

Then she felt herself being folded up into a pair of enormous golden wings. Their feathers caressed her dying body.

‘Shh,’ Quetzal whispered to her. ‘Everything will be alright now. I’m going to take you back.’

She wanted to ask what he meant, but the life was swiftly vanishing from her body. Her breath threw short and her limbs no longer worked.

‘Itzy,’ a voice called. Then, louder, ‘Itzy!’

She jolted awake and realised she was being pinned down. Her old claustrophobia kicked in, and she panicked. She lashed out and screamed. Her knees met with something soft, like skin, and she heard a yelp of pain.

That was when she realised it was Aidan holding her down. He recovered from her kick and looked down at her in the dark of the room with large surprised eyes.

‘Itzy,’ he said urgently, ‘it’s a dream, wake up.’

He made as if to shake her, but she pressed her hand on his arm to let him know she was with him, at last. Slowly, she felt him release her, but his eyes were fixed on hers and he wouldn’t lie down.

‘What were ye dreaming?’ he whispered. She tried to read the feeling in his voice. Was he afraid?

Itzy hated to put her dream into words. In some stupid way, she was worried verbalising it might make it somehow come true. But Aidan looked at her with such undeniable intensity, she knew she couldn’t keep it from him.

‘I – I dreamt you were going to be killed,’ she told him. ‘The only way to save you was to let myself be killed in your place.’ She pressed her hands all over his face, his arms, his chest, to prove to herself that he was real, that he was still alive. ‘Thank God it was only a nightmare,’ she said before hurling herself up at him.

It was frightening how quickly their relationship was moving. She couldn’t bear the thought of anyone taking him from her.

Aidan pulled her down on the bed and held her against his chest. For a long time, they lay together in silence. Itzy tried to concentrate on nothing but the steady beat of Aidan’s heart.

After some time, Aidan spoke. ‘Ya said something strange, like, when ye were sleeping.’

She stiffened in his arms. The darkness in the room no longer felt peaceful. It was as if someone were watching them from the shadows.

‘What…what did I say?’ she asked.

‘Quetzal has the answers. Ya said it a few times. So I wondered…who’s Quetzal?’

She didn’t answer, preferring to let the silence wash over them.

‘Itzy,’ he urged. He squeezed her with his arm.

Again, silence reigned in the room. Then Itzy sighed and pressed herself closer against him. ‘The quetzal,’ she said at last, ‘is the national bird of Guatemala.’

Aidan rubbed her hair. ‘Ya have the strangest titbits of information stored away in that wee head of yers.’

She smiled. ‘It’s because of my dad. The name comes from Quetzalcoatl, the pre-Colombian god. They worshipped him in ancient Mexico.’

A longer silence ensued. Itzy heard the grating hum of the television on stand-by in the next room, and thought perhaps they could go camping together in some quiet field, one day. There was something romantic about the image in her head. In her mind, there would be a clear sky and it wouldn’t rain.

‘Alright,’ Aidan finally said. ‘But the question is: why’re ye dreaming of him – and what might he have the answers to?’

* * *

When Itzy awoke the following morning, the sun had begun to stream through the curtains, giving the room a low glow. For a second, she felt confused; she couldn’t place where she was.

Then she felt Aidan’s arm dangling loosely around her waist. She felt the reassuring rise and fall of his chest against her face. She was surprised at how natural it felt, like she belonged there in his arms. Now, she was going to find it hard not to wake up with him every morning.

Her arm was asleep, so she turned onto her other side. Aidan made a murmuring noise and turned with her. He folded himself around her from behind, his chest pressed against her back. She drew his arm around her under the duvet and held it there.

‘Morning,’ he whispered sleepily into her ear, tickling her.

‘Morning,’ she said back, enjoying the sound of him only half-awake. ‘How did you sleep?’

‘Smashingly.’ He dropped a string of kisses on her neck. ‘For the first time in years, aye.’ He ran his hand down her arm and she shivered pleasantly. ‘Are ye hungry?’

‘Famished, actually.’

‘Then prepare yerself,’ he told her, ‘because I’m making breakfast.’

She felt him slide away. The duvet rustled as he climbed out of the bed and stretched. In the light, she could see he wore a long pair of black and white tartan pyjama trousers, and nothing else. Every part of him was toned and refined. He walked barefoot out of the room and she heard noises start up in the kitchen.

Aidan’s bed was cosy and warm. Itzy could have remained in it all day. Except it was a weekend and her mother would be off work, wondering where she was. The thought forced her out of bed and on her feet.

She sleepily wrote a few mental sentences and found herself back in her clothing from the day before. Aidan had no mirror in his room, but she could feel what a mess her hair was. A few more mental sentences, and she’d fixed that, too.

She went into the kitchen and leaned against the counter. ‘What’re you making?’ she asked.

‘Porridge.’

He stirred a wooden spoon in a large steel pot. The movements of his arm made his muscles flex, something Itzy decided she could probably watch all day.

‘Huh,’ she said. ‘I hadn’t pictured you as the homemaker type.’

‘Well, I have to take care of myself. Of course I cook.’

‘Haven’t your parents rung to ask where you are?’ Itzy wondered.

Aidan grew quiet and stared into the porridge as if it might provide him with some answer. ‘Aye,’ he finally said. ‘My da has rung me lots of times.’

When he didn’t add to this, she couldn’t help saying, ‘And?’

‘And nothing.’ He shrugged off whatever emotion he’d been feeling and stirred their breakfast again. ‘They’re not my real parents, anyway.’

‘I know,’ she said, unable to stop herself, ‘but they’re the only parents you’ve ever known. Doesn’t it mean something to you that they want you to come home?’

He looked up at her sharply. ‘Who said they want me to come home?’

She grew flustered. ‘I – I guess I just assumed…why wouldn’t they?’

Aidan shook his head sadly and gave the porridge one last stir before turning off the heat on the gas cooker. ‘My da was just cross I nucked the Jag. He wanted to put out a search for the number plate and have me hauled all the way back to Carrickfergus, but my ma wouldn’t let him, like.’

Itzy gave him a knowing look. ‘Because she cares about you.’

He laughed darkly. ‘Because she’s scared of me. There’s a difference. They know what I can do.’ He paused, before adding, ‘I don’t think she wants me to be found.’

Itzy didn’t know what to say to that.

Aidan spooned out the porridge into two white ceramic bowls he’d pulled from one of the glass-doored cupboards. When he was finished, he brought them into the zebra-coloured lounge.

Itzy followed him in and they sat together on the black sofa, each with a bowl on their lap. She tasted hers and was stunned at how good it was. It didn’t taste like normal porridge at all. It was creamy, sweet and spicy. It was….

‘Did you do something to this?’ she asked him. ‘Something magical, I mean.’

Aidan gave her a guilty look and shrugged, as he dug in with his own spoon.

‘You could start your own bed and breakfast,’ Itzy said. She took another bite, savouring the taste as it went down. She felt like she was in an Enid Blyton novel.

When they had eaten, Itzy put her bowl on the floor and asked, ‘How can you afford all this?’ She indicated the flat.

‘I have a trust fund,’ he told her. ‘I plan on living off the interest as long as I can.’

‘And then?’

He shrugged.

‘Don’t you ever get worried about the future?’

Aidan frowned. ‘Of course. But things have a way of turning out as they should, and I believe in trusting in that. Ya learn to think that way when yer like us.’

‘Like us?’

‘Sure. Life has never exactly been normal for me. Inside, I’ve always known something strange, like, was lurking around the corner, waiting to spring at me. At first, it put me on edge. Then I thought, why not just surrender to the unknown? Stop planning and live each day as it comes. Because, really, how can ye plan for anything when one day, ye go to sleep a normal kid, and then ye wake up with the ability to turn someone to stone?’

‘Huh,’ said Itzy. It made her reflect on her own position.

When Aidan saw the look on her face, he said, ‘Eventually, though, I imagine I’ll go to university. I just need some time off, like, to rest.’

‘Did you go to college?’ she asked.

‘I did. I read History, Philosophy and English. Got As in all of them. I was a year ahead, even. Finished when I was seventeen.’

Itzy’s mouth fell open. When she’d recovered, she asked, ‘And after university?’

He grew serious. ‘I’m unsure. I’ve always been a good student, but I’ve never felt like I had much purpose. Even now, like. Living alone with no responsibilities gets old fast.’

Itzy could relate to that. For seven years, Myra had let Itzy do pretty much anything she wanted. It hadn’t taken long for that freedom to feel like another form of imprisonment.

‘What could you do?’ she asked. ‘What would make you happy?’

He smiled and exhaled heavily. ‘What a huge question,’ he said. ‘I’m going to be brutally honest, here, but ye have to promise ye won’t laugh or hold it against me.’

She narrowed her eyes, wondering what he could possibly mean. ‘Of course I won’t judge you,’ she said, thinking maybe he was about to reveal his childhood dream of running away with a circus and becoming a clown. He would have made a strange clown, she decided. Then again, wasn’t that the old cliché about clowns? They wore painted smiles to hide the pain underneath.

Ooh, or maybe he could be a magician and Itzy could be his assistant. He could chain her up in a glass box filled with water and amaze the audience by dissolving the glass so she –

When Aidan interrupted her tangential thoughts, his answer was very much not about joining the circus.

‘Some day, I want a family,’ he said. ‘I want to get married – but have a real marriage, not the one my parents had. I want kids, and I want to give them what I never had. I want that connection. And I want to do something that makes them proud of me. Not just them, like, but my wife, too. I want to do something worthwhile, something that means something. I’m just not sure where to start.’ He smiled and added, ‘And I want you.’

Itzy swallowed. He meant what he said, she was sure of it. What was most startling was how similar they were. She may not yet have known every book he’d read, or who his childhood friends were, or whether he liked sports, or whatever superficial thing there was to know about a person. But that would come in time. She already felt she knew who he was inside. And within, he was her in some way. They had been made for each other.

For once, there wasn’t a tiny voice in her head saying she was getting carried away.

‘Aidan,’ she said slowly. ‘I…meant to tell you…I sort of…wrote you something.’

Aidan’s eyes widened. ‘D’ye have it with ye?’

She nodded. ‘I did it last night, when you were asleep. I wrote it on my phone.’

‘May I read it?’ he asked.

His eagerness was touching. It was clear he knew she was giving him much more than a few pages of hastily written prose. A story by Itzel Loveguard meant something.

‘I’ll go fetch it,’ she said.

She left the room and found her bag on the kitchen counter. She rummaged through it and rescued her phone, bringing it back into the living room, where Aidan waited with the eagerness of a child. She sat beside him, opened the file on her phone and handed it to him. His story.

It was about a boy who lived in a world without love. All around him was the bitter cold – literally, for he dwelt in the north, where the sky was filled with electricity and colour and he could see the stars for what they were: balls of flame hurtling improbably through endless space.

The boy was far beyond the reach of mere mortals. He was alone, and for a long time he managed to convince himself that was okay. However, he was mysteriously surrounded by a vast library, the original owner of which had vanished long before the boy had come into being. So in his solitude, the boy studied.

He taught himself nineteen languages, for no reason aside from boredom, bearing in mind he had never come across anyone to speak those languages to. He became fluent in all the ancient philosophies, and all the modern ones, too; accustomed with astronomy and the workings of time and space; and learned the history of the world. By the time he’d reached adulthood, he was already the most brilliant man who had ever lived. But no one knew it, for he lived alone.

There were only two things the boy – now a man – did not know in life. One was where he’d come from; he had seemingly sprung into existence out of nothing, and was unsure who he really was. The other was love, something he’d only ever read about. And because these two things escaped him, they became the focus of his life. He would not rest until he found a solution to these mysteries.

One day, he thought to create a companion for himself. Inspired by a great book he’d once read, he reached into his own heart, plucked a piece of it from his chest and flung it onto the icy earth before him. From that piece grew a woman.

He knew no other women, so he had no one to compare this one to, but he was convinced no one more beautiful had ever graced the planet. He loved her immediately. She was made from him, she was part of him, and nothing could separate them.

‘Wherever you go, I will be with you,’ the woman told him one night, as they melted the ice with the heat of their love. ‘Your quest is mine. We’re part of each other. I wouldn’t exist if your heart didn’t beat for me.’

When they came together, as they would so many times over the course of their life together, he looked in her eyes and saw himself reflected back. He saw who he was to her, and because her love for him was real, he knew she saw his true nature.

At last, he knew who he was, who he had always been. He might not have learned where he’d come from, but he knew where he was going – and that was wrapped in that precious word love.

It wasn’t a very long story, and Itzy thought perhaps it wasn’t her best. But she could see it affected Aidan – Aidan who wasn’t touched by anyone’s magic but her own. She liked to think perhaps that was an example of the connection they shared. Just as she’d written in the story, in some way she really did believe she and Aidan were part of the same thing, whatever it might be.

‘It’s beautiful,’ he finally said. He looked up at her. ‘Like you. Ya have a beautiful mind, Itzel Loveguard.’

Itzy smiled, overwhelmed by his simple compliment. Then she grew serious and said, ‘It’s to protect you.’

Aidan tilted his head in concern. ‘To protect me?’

Itzy fiddled with her fingers in her lap. ‘My nightmare, last night? That’s not the first time I’ve had it.’

Aidan’s brow lifted slightly.

‘I’ve been scared,’ she continued. ‘My dreams…I told you I dreamt of you before we met. What if these new dreams I’ve been having about you dying…what if they’re real, too? What if this Quetzal business means something?’

‘Itzy –’

‘No, really,’ she went on. ‘I couldn’t stand it. Whatever happens…I’m going to be with you, yeah? You can’t leave me. Part of me will always be with you, and that part of me will not let you die.’ She gently hammered each of these last words into his chest with her hand.

‘Itzy,’ he said again. His voice was heavy. ‘No one is going to kill me. Alright?’

‘How can you be so sure?’ she asked. ‘My father’s journals – and the mummy said –’

Aidan shook his head. ‘How many times do I have to tell you: I don’t have the Wisdom. I don’t know where it is – I don’t even know what it is. Otherwise, why would I have been searching for it myself?’

Itzy hung her head. She knew he spoke sense, but she couldn’t bring herself to accept it.

Aidan caught her hand and put it to his chest so she could feel his heartbeat. ‘Ya made one mistake in the story,’ he told her in a low voice.

She looked up at him. ‘Oh?’

He nodded. ‘It’s my heart that beats for you. If ye left me, I don’t know how I’d go on.’ He shook his head at himself and laughed silently. ‘It sounds pathetic, like, when I say it out loud, and I’m probably not helping my sex appeal here by falling all over myself, but I can’t seem to help it. I don’t know what it is ye’ve done to me. It’s like ye’ve put me under some spell or something.’

Itzy stared at him in perplexity. ‘I haven’t…I haven’t written anything, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Then what?’ Aidan bit out with more force than she thought he intended. He threw her a haunted smile and lowered his voice. ‘I’m sorry. I told ye, ye make me crazy. I just…I love ye. I shouldn’t, but I do, and –’

Itzy cut him off with a fierce kiss, full of hunger, like she thought it might be the last they ever shared.

Somehow, they found their way back to his room.