Free Wildcat Fireflies by Amber Kizer

the window itself. If I did my job correctly, according to Auntie, I was the conduit, the window to heaven, to good. The dying saw me not as a teenage girl, but as the bright light enveloping them and guiding them past the physical death into the spiritual energy of the After. I provided the window in a room of my choosing and stood back while the soul transitioned across like a kid sneaking out of the house through his bedroom window. I stayed on this side of the exchange, but what the soul, the dying person, saw, and who greeted them, was entirely up to them, or theCreators. I didn’t know how that worked; I simply knew the dying recognized the scenery and the people coming toward them. I didn’t usually, until Auntie appeared.
    One, two, three …
    But it wasn’t working the way she’d taught me. The windows changed, rapidly, as each soul used me. They changed with the souls, everything different each time. Auntie made me believe I picked the window and the soul picked the scenery and the people. It wasn’t quite working that way.
Maybe it’s a learned skill
.
    Like I was watching a travelogue slide show on fast-forward, my brain couldn’t keep up with the changing frames and scenes and people. Modern architecture with lots of glass and light and chrome gave way to stone arches, then bamboo with rice paper. Each soul threw me into its own tableau.
Four, five …
    I knew enough, barely, to simply breathe through the changes. Not to try to make sense of the flashes. It was disorienting if I tried to follow it like a movie, so instead I let it flow around me like a busy avenue full of sights and sounds, without focusing on any of the details. Since these were souls whose bodies were in the hospital they blinked from injured in hospital gowns and bandages to whole and strong like hitting the refresh button on an Internet browser window.
    Six …
    A seventh window, the one Auntie had practiced with me, segued into my vision. Its billowing white lace curtains and sunny weather felt like coming home. The scentof fresh-mown grass and apple blossoms drifted over the breeze and stirred my hair. “Meridian.”
Auntie!
    I ran closer to the window, and Chrystal Stans, breast cancer victim, crawled through, oblivious to me. I braced against the sill and leaned in, over, toward my name. “Auntie!” I called.
    There in the meadow below was Auntie with the injured woman from before lying at her feet. “Look for Father Anthony … help … Custos … knows … four … three …” The static between her words was like a bad cell-phone connection with other conversations breaking through.
    The injured woman lay on the ground, almost in a trance, her waxy melted skin flickering from solid to a milky, transparent shadow. She appealed to me with her eyes. For what, I wasn’t sure. Auntie continued to gesticulate and mouth words, but I couldn’t hear her.
    Back on the hospital bench, in Tens’s arms, I must have lost consciousness. When my eyes blinked open, we were in the truck. I groaned.
    “Damn it, Merry, I knew this was a bad idea.” Tens drove like he was being chased. “You never listen to me.” Frustration and anger vibrated through his words.
    I licked my lips and tried to swallow around the metallic taste in my mouth. I leaned against the passenger-side door, praying for my strength to return. I waited. I let him rant because I deserved it. Being a Fenestra was a destiny, a genetic predisposition toward being part human and part angel. But it was also a skill set that took time andpractice to master. I’d learned reading from Auntie’s journal that centuries ago there were more of us, as well as special convents that started teaching little girls how to do God’s work. I had a crash course over two weeks with Auntie while she died. I was still a novice, and without a Master, like Auntie, to teach me what my limits were, too often I forced my fledging abilities off the ledge to fly.
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