“Oh my goodness,” says the mother in a high, soft voice, bending her face close to her baby’s. “What was that?”

The baby blinks confusedly. Then sneezes again.

Everybody laughs: the mother, the father, the orderly, and me, for good measure. But I’m watching the way the father puts his hand gently on the back of his wife’s shoulder, and how she reaches up briefly to touch his hand, love passing between them as simply as that, and I think, Angela won’t get this. She won’t leave the hospital this way.

It makes me remember a quote from today’s exam. From Dante. Midway upon the journey of life, I found myself in dark woods, the right road lost.

I know what he means.

13

A SUNDAY SCHOOL LESSON

“A glory sword is more than a simple weapon,” Dad’s saying. “I have talked about a sword being an extension of your arm, imagining that it’s part of you, but a glory sword is more than a metaphor. The glory is part of you; it grows from the light inside you, that energy, that connectedness to the power that governs all life.”

We’re on the deserted beach again, because he decided that place is less distracting for us to train than my backyard in Jackson. It’s dusk. Christian and I are sitting near the waterline, our toes buried in the sand, while Dad gives us a mini lecture on the composition of glory and its many uses.

And here I thought I was on spring break. We’ve been training every day since we got back to Jackson. At least today we’re hitting the beach.

Dad continues. “There is nothing, not on earth, or in heaven, or even in hell, that can overcome that light. If you believe this, then the glory will shape itself into anything that you need.”

“Like a lantern,” I say.

“Yes. Or an arrow, as you’ve also seen. But the most effective form is a sword. It’s quick, and powerful, sharper than any two-edged blade, piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”

Now he’s gone all poetic on us.

I remember how Jeffrey reacted to the idea of a glory sword. “What about a glory gun?” I ask. “I mean, this is the twenty-first century. Maybe what we should really be trying to shape is a glory semiautomatic.”

“Which would require you to create what, a glory stock and barrel, a firing mechanism, glory gunpowder, glory shells and bullets?” Dad questions, his eyes amused.

“Well, it sounds dumb when you put it that way. I guess a sword is good.”

Dad makes a face. “I think you’ll find the sword more useful than anything else. And tasteful.”

“An elegant weapon, for a more civilized age,” I joke.

He doesn’t get it, but my geekiness makes Christian smile, which counts for something.

“Why?” Christian asks suddenly. “Why would a sword be more useful, I mean?”

“Because the enemy uses a blade as well,” Dad says, his eyes serious. “Fashioned from their sorrow.”

I sit up straighter. “A sword made of sorrow?” I try not to think about Christian’s vision, about the blood on my shirt, about how scared I am, like every minute, that what he’s seeing is my death. But I haven’t worked up the courage yet to ask Dad for his interpretation of the future.

“Typically it’s shorter, more like a dagger. But sharp. Penetrating. And painful. It injures the soul as well as the body. It’s difficult to heal,” Dad says.

“Well that’s … great,” I manage. “We have a glory sword. They have a sorrow dagger. Yay.”

“So you see why it’s so important that you learn,” he says.

I get up, brush sand off my shorts. “Enough talk,” I say. “Let’s try it.”

About an hour later I drop back down to the sand, panting. Christian is standing next to me with the most beautiful blade of glory in his hand, perfect and shining. I, on the other hand, have made a glory lantern a few times, a glory arrow of sorts (more like a glory javelin, but it’d do the trick in a pinch, I think, which is not nothing, I point out), but not a glory sword.

Dad is frowning, big time. “You’re not concentrating on the right things,” he says. “You must think of the sword as more than something physical that you can hold in your hand. You must think of it as truth.”

“I thought you said it wasn’t a metaphor.”

“I said it was more than a metaphor. Let’s try something else,” he suggests. The sun is fully down now, shadows stretching across the ground. “Think of something you know, absolutely, to be true.”

I say the first thing that comes to mind. “I know I’m your daughter.”

He looks pleased. “Good. Let’s start there. Think about the part of you that knows that fact. That feels it, in your gut. Do you feel it?”

I nod. “Yes. I gut-feel it.”

“Close your eyes.”

I do. He steps up beside me and takes my wrist in his hand, stretches my arm out in front of me. I feel him draw glory around us. Without being asked, I bring my own to meet it, and his glory and my glory combine, his light and mine making something greater, something brighter. Something powerful and good.

“You are my daughter,” he says.

“I know.”

“But how do you know you’re my daughter? Because your mother told you so?”

“No, because … because I feel a connection between us that’s like …” I don’t have the right word for it. “Something inside me, like in my blood or whatever.”

“Flesh of my flesh,” he says. “Blood of my blood.”

“Now you’re getting weird.”

He chuckles. “Focus on that feeling. Believe that simple truth. You are my daughter.”

I focus. I believe. I know it to be true.

“Open your eyes,” Dad says.

I do, and gasp.

Right before my eyes is a vertical bar of light. It’s definitely glory, that light, a rippling mix of golden warmth and cool silver, the sun and moon combined. I can feel its power moving through me. I glance down at my outstretched arm, watch the glory curl around my elbow, down my forearm, to where I’m grasping the light like it has a kind of handle; then I sweep my gaze up the length again, to the tip, and it seems to have an edge to it. A point.

Yep. It’s a sword.

I look over at Christian, who grins and gives me a mental thumbs-up. Dad lets go of my wrist and steps back, admiring our handiwork.