I’m not sure how long I remain clutching wet earth in fisted hands, staring up at the sky, hoping they weren’t a dream.

Wishing they would return.

Scared that I want them to.

There are no stars, just endless black sky. They could be floating high above me and I would never know. They could be watching me staring blankly up at them. They could be soaring somewhere far, far away.

I remain like this long enough to feel the muscles in my shoulders and neck lock painfully, long enough to risk my health with the freezing rain. I am a statue carved in stone. My body feels heavy, sluggish, slow. My heart, though beating, feels burdened. My fingers still burn from Ether’s brief touch, my arm still zings under the warmth of Mihr’s hand, and my cheek is still numb from Gabe’s palm. They’ve all touched me and yet it feels like so much more than just skin brushing against skin. I feel sick, I feel alive. I feel inordinately different.

What is happening to me?

Next door’s security light turns on in their back garden, snapping me back into focus and into the here and now where angels shouldn’t exist. What am I thinking?

Angels don’t exist.

In this world they’re a myth dreamt up by people who wish for the impossible, who hope that there is something more than the life they lead. Guardian angels, fallen angels, messengers from heaven. Belief, hope, fiction, fantasy, all wrapped up into the consciousness of this society we live in.

But I know angels, I’ve met them.

The real kind, the kind that are selfless, that save lives daily, that fight to keep people alive. My colleagues, the doctors and nurses, the midwives and obstetricians, the registrars and surgeons, the men and women at the hospital where I work. They are the kind of angels I know. The ones who should be revered.

And yet, the feathered angels of stories had stood in front of me not moments ago. They are real.

Where had they come from?

Out of the corner of my eye I see a flash of white. It’s Maggie, my next-door neighbour’s cat. She leaps up onto my garden wall, pausing briefly to look at me. Her eyes are wide, reflecting the light. Had she seen the angels too? Had her animal sense understood something about those creatures my human brain had not? I wish Dani were here, she has such a way with animals, all animals. She would be able to interpret what Maggie is thinking.

With a flick of her tail, Maggie turns her back to me and jumps into her garden. Her action forces me to move.

Pushing up onto concrete feet, I walk slowly back indoors, reluctant to move back towards reality but grateful for my neighbour’s cat for snapping me out of whatever weird state of mind and body I found myself in.

Once inside, I lock the back door with trembling fingers, take a few steps then find myself grasping the wall for support. Great shudders wrack my body from the cold, from the adrenaline that rushed through my veins with prickly heat, from the shock, from something else that feels much more sinister than that.

Angels of Death.

I had thought the same a year ago. Gabe had said it just now.

Gabe, Mihr, Ether.

They have names, these strange creatures that scare me, that intrigue me.

Am I going mad?

As my body begins to deal with the aftermath of the encounter, I remember the ring and what I’m still holding clutched in my hand. Opening my palm, I stare wide-eyed at it. I have been holding it so tightly that the uneven edges have marked my palm and fingers with deep grooves. It’s a dark blue, dull not shiny, and heavy too. I hold it up to the light and the stone brightens, changing appearance from dull to bright, dark to light. My skin burns once more under the ring on my finger. I drop the stone, not wishing to hold onto it any longer. It rolls across the floor, stopping when it hits the leg of the side-table. I don’t bother to pick it up.

Instead, I grab at the ring and attempt to pull it off my finger. It’s stuck fast. I don’t mean that it’s just a little tight but will come off with a bit of effort. No, this isn’t moving a fraction of a millimetre. It won’t come off.

My teeth chatter so much my jaw begins to ache. My hands shake so much I can barely grip the ring. My leg muscles tremble with the effort of standing upright.

What have they done to me?

This ring is to do with those angels, the stone on the floor, and the singing I’ve heard all my life despite my deafness. It’s all connected. I have so many questions, but the answers lie with three Angels of Death who have left me to my thoughts for reasons I cannot fathom, given their sudden arrival.

Sudden debilitating panic washes over me. What is happening to me? Why do I feel so conflicted? Why do I feel so terribly afraid, so completely bereft, so utterly shattered, so completely alive? With a heavy heart and confused mind, I make my way to my bedroom, peel off my clothes and climb into bed. Sleep takes an eternity to come, and only when dawn begins to rise do I finally fall into a deep, dreamless sleep.