The Valkyries

who spoke her own language. It was only a matter of time.

Chapter 51
     
    T HE ALARM ON P AULO’S WATCH SOUNDED. Twenty minutes had passed. The channeling was over.
    She looked at him, knowing what was going to happen now. He would sit there without saying a word, sad and disappointed. His angel hadn’t appeared. They would return to the small motel in Ajo, and he would take a walk while she tried to sleep.
    She waited until he stood, and then stood up, as well. But there was a strange gleam in his eye.
    “I will see my angel,” he said. “I know I will. I made the bet.”
    “The bet, you will have to make with your angel,” Valhalla had said. She had never said, “The bet, you will have to make with your angel,
when he appears.”
Yet, that’s what Paulo had understood her to mean. He had waited for an entire week for his angel to appear. He was ready to make any bet, because the angel was the light, and the light was what justified human existence. He trusted in that light, in the same way that, fourteen years earlier, he had doubted the darkness. In contrast with the traitorous experience with the darkness, the light established its rules beforehand—so that whoever accepted them was knowingly committing to love and compassion.
    He had already met two of the three conditions, and almost failed with regard to the third—the simplest of them! But his angel’s protection had prevailed, and, during the channeling … ah, how good it was to have learned to converse with the angels! Now he knew that he would be able to see his angel, because he had met the third condition.
    “I broke a pact. I accepted forgiveness. And, today, I made a bet. I have faith, and I believe,” he said. “I believe that Valhalla knows the method for seeing one’s angel.”
    Paulo’s eyes were shining. There would be no nocturnal walks, no insomnia tonight. He was absolutely certain that he was going to see his angel. Half an hour ago, he had asked for a miracle—but that was no longer important.
    So that night it would be Chris’s turn to be sleepless, and to walk the deserted streets of Ajo, imploring God to make a miracle, because the man she loved needed to see his angel. Her heart was squeezed more tightly than ever. Perhaps she preferred a Paulo who was in doubt. A Paulo who needed a miracle. A Paulo who appeared to have lost his faith. If his angel appeared, fine; if not, he could always blame Valhalla for having erred in her teaching. That way, he would not have to learn themost bitter lesson that God taught, when he closed the gates to paradise: the lesson of disappointment.
    But instead, here was a man who seemed to have bet his life against the certainty that angels could be seen. And his only guarantee was the word of a woman who rode the desert, speaking of new worlds to come.
    Perhaps Valhalla had never even seen an angel. Or maybe what worked for her didn’t work for others—hadn’t Paulo said that? Maybe he hadn’t heeded his own words.
    Chris’s heart grew smaller and smaller as she saw the light in Paulo’s eyes.
    And at that moment, his entire face began to glow.
    “Light!” he screamed. “Light!”
    She turned. On the horizon, near where the first star had appeared, three lights shone in the sky.
    “Light!” he said again. “The angel!”
    Chris had a strong desire to kneel down and give thanks, because her prayer had been answered, and God had sent his army of angels.
    Paulo’s eyes filled with tears. The miracle had happened. He had made the right bet.
    They heard a roar to their left, and another overtheir heads. Now there were five, six lights gleaming in the sky; the desert was alight.
    For a moment she lost her voice. She, too, was seeing his angel! The bursts of sound were becoming stronger and stronger, passing to the left, passing to the right, over their heads, wild thunder-bursts that didn’t come from the sky, but from behind, from the side—and moved toward where the lights were.
    The Valkyries! The true Valkyries, daughters of Wotan, galloping across the sky, carrying their warriors! She blocked her ears in fear.
    She saw that Paulo was doing the same—but his eyes appeared to have lost their brilliance.
    Immense balls of fire grew on the desert horizon, and they felt the ground shake under their feet. Thunder in the sky and on the Earth.
    “Let’s go,” she said.
    “There’s no danger,” he answered. “They’re military planes. Far from here.”
    But the supersonic