Guardian Angel
by Noam Rabinovitch
And it was said that the Blessed Ones walked into the Light and out of Darkness, all of them carrying a heavy burden upon their shoulders, for theirs was the duty of spiritual redemption of our People; and upon the completion of each act of historical purification, our People would rise a little more and rejoice at their Transcendence, for they could perceive the unassailable coming of the Third Golden Age. And when their Holy Task was done, the Blessed Ones would go and lie down in the Sleep of the Righteous.— excerpt from The Tomes of Xacion
Ivan Ivanov could hardly contain the sense of chilling dread that quickly spread inside his breast like a drink of ice-cold water on a hot summer’s day. “Dear Lord, what does he want at such an early hour?” he muttered under his breath as he gazed through his filthy window at the approaching figure.
Pavel Vasilyev was making his way down the muddy dirt road that led from the big house at the top of the hill, and it was generally a bad sign when the Master came out of his house this early in the morning. Ivan Ivanov used his sleeve to wipe some grime from the window in a frantic effort to get a better look and gauge if the Master was in a good mood or not but, try as he might, all that Ivan Ivanov could ascertain was that the Master was in a hurry, for he seemed to be moving with an urgency one might call abnormal for a man of his impressive girth.
Ivan Ivanov could feel his pulse rising higher and higher as the Master got nearer and nearer. He motioned to his wife to look busy — which she dutifully did by re-sweeping the already swept floor — before pre-emptively opening the door just as Pavel Vasilyev was set to knock upon it.
“Master! How nice of you to grace us with your presence!” Ivan Ivanov gushed, flashing the toothiest smile he could muster with the remaining teeth he had in his mouth. “You caught me just as I was about to go tend the fields—”
“Yes, I’m sure!” Pavel Vasilyev retorted sarcastically, furrowing his brow at his laborer and giving him the proverbial stink-eye.
Ivan Ivanov shrank like a scolded dog. “M-M-Master... please forgive my tardiness! I’ve been fighting a nasty cough lately, and wished to wait until the sun melted some of the morning frost before heading out.” Ivan Ivanov demonstrated this by letting loose a short burst of dry hacks. “See? There it goes again! But worry not, for it is getting better. Tomorrow I’ll be right as rain once more and out as usual!”
“That boy of yours: where is he?”
Ivan Ivanov became instantly pale. “What has he done this time?” he inquired, making sure to emphasize his dismay in the tone of his voice.
“No, no... nothing like that. I just want to talk to him.”
Ivan Ivanov blinked a couple of times in genuine perplexity. “Talk to... Alexander?”
“Could you fetch him, please?”
Ivan Ivanov motioned to his wife to go get the boy. “Fine morning today, isn’t it?” he said in a desperate attempt to change the subject.
“Indeed. The spring thaw is in full force.”
Ivan Ivanov was relieved the conversation had seemed to shift elsewhere. “I believe we will have a strong harvest this year. Don’t you agree, Master?”
Pavel Vasilyev seemed not to have heard his interlocutor’s last comment. Instead, he cleared his throat before beginning a strange tale about a strange experience he had had the other day while riding his horse out in his pasture. He had come across a strange-looking fellow who seemed somewhat out of sorts, especially in his manner of clothing, which to Pavel Vasilyev’s mind resembled that of Oriental silken garbs he had once seen pictures of in a book.
This stranger had spoken to him in perfect Russian but with a rather unusual dialect whose regional characteristics Pavel Vasilyev could not easily identify; his best guess was somewhere in the Far East. The stranger had proceeded to probe Pavel Vasilyev with unusual questions and seemed to know quite a bit about Pavel Vasilyev’s personal history, which left the latter both fascinated and unsettled. The conversation would go back and forth a few times before the stranger shifted it to a new topic: a person whose name Pavel Vasilyev had not initially recognized — one Alexander Ivanov.
It was at this point that Ivan Ivanov did something so uncharacteristic for him that even days later he scarcely believed it had happened: he grabbed hold of his Master’s arm, pulling on the sleeve in a way that caused the fabric to stretch and the stitching to fray until an unmistakable tearing sound could be heard. A moment later, he realized with horror what he had done.
“I’m sorry, Master, please forgive me!” Ivan Ivanov said in a trembling voice, trying desperately to undo the damage he had created to the garment by smoothing out the fabric with a back-and-forth motion of his hand.
Pavel Vasilyev was visibly shocked at his laborer’s uncharacteristic impudence.
“What in the devil has gotten into you, Ivanov!” he exclaimed, smacking the latter’s hand away and lifting his own to strike the impudent villain with a tightly clenched fist. Ivan Ivanov raised his hands to absorb the incoming blow but, oddly, it never came.
Pavel Vasilyev slowly unclenched his hand and lowered it to his side. “Really, Ivanov,” he said in an uncharacteristically calm voice, as if he had forced himself to self-compose after losing his temper with his laborer, “why did you grab my arm like that?”
“I... I became flustered when you mentioned my son’s name in connection with this stranger. I just pray that Alexander isn’t involved in any illegal activity! Please tell me it isn’t so, Master!”
“Ah!” Pavel Vasilyev cried out excitedly just as the boy and his mother could be seen approaching from a nearby field. “Speak of the devil!”
Ivan Ivanov could feel the cold dread building up inside of him again and waited until Pavel Vasilyev’s gaze was momentarily averted before sneaking a quick sign of the cross with his hand. The boy looked sweaty and dirty — with the smell to match, no doubt! — from spending the morning toiling in the fields with his two older brothers. To Ivan Ivanov’s mind, this was surely not going to help them plead their case to the Master!
Ivan Ivanov began to prepare himself for the worst, and contemplated where he might be able to recruit an affordable lawyer to defend Alexander in a court of law, should the current proceedings degenerate to such a dreadful outcome. As the boy got nearer and nearer, Ivan Ivanov could feel himself becoming proportionally smaller and smaller until he felt as if he was no bigger than an ant.
“So you are the famous Alexander Ivanov, yes?” said Pavel Vasilyev.
The boy looked from his father to the Master, and back again. “Famous, sir?” he asked in a trembling voice.
To Ivan Ivanov’s astonishment, Pavel Vasilyev put his hand on the boy’s head, looked into his eyes, and asked him if he liked music. The boy merely gave a weak nod of his head, as if in shame. Pavel Vasilyev smiled and asked the boy to go get his musical instrument. A few moments later, the boy stood before them with his violin, tuning it briefly.
“Well, well...” Pavel Vasilyev said with a nod at the musical instrument in the boy’s hands, “and how did you manage to get your hands on such a fine piece as this?”
Ivan Ivanov interjected before the boy could respond: “I got it for him, Master!”
“You?” said Pavel Vasilyev in amazement.
“Yes... I—”
Pavel Vasilyev frowned severely at his laborer, who understood he had better be quick with the explanation before the Master called the police on suspicion the violin had been stolen.
“Well, Master... I know you won’t believe me when I tell you this, but I found this violin a few years ago while trapping rabbits in the woods over yonder!”
Pavel Vasilyev gazed in the direction his laborer was pointing and his frown changed to an expression of puzzlement as he contemplated how a violin — of all things — had found its way to a forest on his property.
“I figured it was finders-keepers,” Ivan Ivanov added, “and therefore took it home.”
“That is rather strange... wouldn’t you say so, Ivanov?” asked Pavel Vasilyev, and before his laborer could respond, he completed his train of thought: “And yet, Ivanov... for some reason, I believe it!”
“You do, Master?” Ivan Ivanov said with profound relief.
Pavel Vasilyev ignored his laborer’s comment and turned to face the latter’s son. “Play something, won’t you?” Pavel Vasilyev beckoned, and the boy proceeded to play a musical piece.
It sounded familiar to Pavel Vasilyev’s ear, although he could not with certainty identify its composer. The boy played entirely from memory, and not once did his hand falter as he expertly strummed the joyous melody.
So moving was the music that Pavel Vasilyev could feel the corners of his eyes becoming moist. When the impromptu performance was finished, Pavel Vasilyev broke out in loud applause, bringing his hands together repeatedly, seemingly to no end. He finally had to stop clapping so he could use his meaty fingers to fish for his handkerchief out of his breast pocket, which he promptly used to dab the corners of his eyes. “Bravo!” he said in a choked voice, to which the boy bowed his head.
Pavel Vasilyev blew his nose a couple of times into the handkerchief before replacing it in its pocket. He then cleared his throat and continued his story about the stranger he had met the other day. He told them that the stranger had said that Alexander was a great musical prodigy who would go on to achieve great success but only if he were allowed to.
“But he and the rest of his family belong to me,” Pavel Vasilyev retorted to this stranger, noting that the Ivanovs were indentured laborers who still had many years of service ahead of them before their debt bondage to him was paid in full. The stranger then pressed the issue by offering to buy the Ivanov family’s freedom for a price of Pavel Vasilyev’s choosing.
After some careful deliberation and consideration, Pavel Vasilyev then named a price so ridiculous that it would cause the stranger to give up and flee immediately in shame and humiliation to wherever it was he had come from. But to Pavel Vasilyev’s amazement, the stranger agreed on the spot to the price quoted, not even bothering to haggle over it. And he would even increase the amount to include an annual stipend for the young Ivanov to pursue his musical career at the top school available in the region!
Ivan Ivanov stood with his mouth agape, unable to utter a sound. It was his son who broke the silence after Pavel Vasilyev had finished speaking. “Pray, good Master, who is this stranger, and why does he take such an interest in me?”
“He never told me his name or his reasons for taking an interest in you. To be honest, I believed him to be nothing more than a con man, in the best of circumstances. But when he gave me half the money that very day — in fine gold pieces, no less — with the proviso that the other half will be paid upon your arrival at your new destination, I ceased to care one way or the other.”
Pavel Vasilyev then raised a finger, before adding: “I suggest, young man, that you accept this stranger’s offer. It will likely be the only such offer you will ever receive!”
“Listen to the Master — he knows best!” Ivan Ivanov exclaimed, grabbing his son by both shoulders in a desperate attempt to shake some sense into him. Even the normally demure Mrs. Ivanov attempted to contribute to the discussion by crossing herself into a frenzy while repeating words of praise to the Holy Trinity.
Pavel Vasilyev smiled and once more put his hand on the boy’s head. “Come, let us all go to the house and discuss these matters further over some tea and cakes.”
As Alexander Ivanov climbed the hill to the big house with his parents and former Master — his brothers joining later after being dispatched from the work fields — he could not help but marvel at the providence that had brought this bizarre and unexpected turn of fortune upon him. For the rest of his life, he would remain certain that the mysterious stranger who had helped him was no less than an Angel of God.
* * *
The afternoon horizon was colored a deep shade of orange, with some crimson and lavender and even the faintest hint of copper thrown into the mix, as if the sky had been painted by some divine hand. The sun, slowly descending beyond the Ural mountains, was sending forth its last red-shifted rays of the day; soon, its celestial sister would take her place of honor — albeit in crescent form — in the dimming sky. Shadows stretched out from the bases of trees like rubber bands, blotting out any hint of life that might have existed in the vast boreal forests that blanketed the foothills of the towering mountains. No one would have ever guessed that a person might be walking there among the trees: a Traveller.
Wearing a semi-translucent space suit and helmet, this Traveller would be nearly invisible in the best lighting conditions, much less at the onset of dusk. Nevertheless, his near-silent footsteps still managed to alert several small denizens of the forest who quickly retreated to safety as he walked past them. Using a Gravity Field Displacement device to ease his way down, he descended a stretch of treacherous and slippery terrain down to a little opening in the thicket, which was so overgrown that he had to turn on his helmet lights to see his way through.
As he marched along the moss-covered path, the Traveller could tell he was nearing his quarry because, with every step, the trees in front of him seemed to bend more and more towards the horizon until they became stretched out like strands of spaghetti: a visual distortion which, even after his many travels, never ceased to amaze him.
He would soon arrive at the location where his journey ended, which was an exciting prospect because it meant a new journey would soon begin. It was a journey through immense distances of space and time, and it always began and ended at the same place: the Leviathrax, a spacetime portal created from the remnants of a long-dead star. Since each journey took many years of a Traveller’s life to complete, he would soon go into hibernation, waking up again only when he arrived at his new destination.
The Traveller’s current journey was the twenty-first he had completed, and he was probably looking at another dozen or so before his traveling days ended. Being an older and more experienced Traveller soon to be entering his fourth century of life, he had become accustomed to being frequently sent on challenging and even, on occasion, life-threatening journeys. So long and far had he traveled in solitude that he no longer bothered to reflect on who he had been and where he had come from, even losing touch with his birthname, and the friends and family he had left behind had become faceless ghosts to him.
The ravages of time had eaten away at his own history until he himself had become a kind of living ghost: tasked with guiding history’s interweaving threads to some predetermined outcome but forced to exist on the margins of history while watching it unfold from a careful distance. Never was he allowed to break this most sacrosanct of rules!
Thus, after living many centuries as an outcast of history, he no longer placed special significance on the fact that he was an emissary of a spacetime-faring civilization that came into being shortly after the ushering-in of the second Kardashev Age. It had become a mundane footnote in the back of his mind that he was one of many Travellers sent on journeys across time and space in pursuit of that which their sacred texts called Transcendence.
History was his playground, and he was like a wild-eyed child in it. All that he cared about was his next journey. At this point in his travels, he had acquired the necessary wisdom and proficiency as a Manipulator of History to be able to pick his remaining journeys, and so he chose for his next one a trip to sixth-century Mesoamerica where a young girl was to become an astronomer who would go on to accomplish important scientific work — if she were only allowed to.
He entered the new coordinates into a device on his space suit, the buttons briefly flashing in multi-colored patterns as the system recalibrated for his next journey into the Leviathrax.
And then he was gone!
Little did the Traveller realize at the time that, despite his best efforts at avoiding participation in the history he sought to manipulate, he would nevertheless get mentioned in the historical record when world-famous musician Alexander Ivanovich Ivanov dedicated a violin concerto to an unnamed person referred to by the former only as “my Guardian Angel.”
Copyright © 2024 by Noam Rabinovitch
