I returned to the human world immediately to find Anna. Her family lived several kilometers away from the town centre. I passed a few farmlands; the houses became few and far between, until finally I found the one to which the girl had returned after her trip to the hospital.

The house was modest, but it had a vast yard that gave on a forest at the back. Luckily for me, the rain had stopped. I waited, sitting on a high branch in a tree, as the household grew quieter and quieter. The Messenger joined me soon after the last window became dark.

“You’re going to meet her tonight?” he asked.

“That’s the plan.”

I hated being monitored in this way. However, with angels being suspicious freaks of nature, it couldn’t be helped.

“How are you going to do that?”

“There’s a hidden room in this house. The attic.”

“What attic?”

In the human world, some places are “hidden.” They slip away from attention and aren’t noticed unless we know they are there. It is said that they were created by humans to escape the persecution of angels.

In this case, I noticed that the attic was completely neglected, but I couldn’t find any traces of mice or spiders. It wasn’t used as storage, yet the garage overflowed with clutter. This room was ignored, unnoticed. Living beings looked at it without seeing it.

I had no idea why there was a hidden attic in such a place. It was possible that the house had been constructed on an old hidden site and that part of it had become hidden in turn.

“I can’t see it,” the Messenger said.

“If you focus on the space just above the bedroom windows, you’ll start noticing a weird gap under the roof. Then, you’ll see a third window, a bit higher than the others.”

He finally clicked, “I see it now. You’re lucky you found it.”

“I've been here for a couple of hours and I thought something was off. That's where I'll meet the successor. No one will find us there.”

I just needed to wait a little longer to make sure everyone would be asleep.

“You don’t have to stay,” I muttered.

“It’s fine. I enjoy being in the human world.”

Despite the circumstances, I agreed it was a nice time of the year to be here. The leaves had turned to red recently but the nights weren’t too cold yet.

“It’s already autumn. Are you going to migrate soon?”

“Migrate?”

“Yeah, with the herons.”

The Messenger was half-human, half-heron. Every autumn, he migrated south with his flock.

He chuckled awkwardly. “I haven’t migrated ever since I became the Messenger.”

“That was… fifteen years ago… How come I didn’t notice?”

He let a moment elapse. I’m sure we both thought the same thing. He decided to have a go at saying it out loud. “I guess we grew apart.”

An uncomfortable silence passed. He cleared his throat. “I guess I’ll go… The Light Stag wants me to report before he retires for the night.”

“Yeah. Better go.”

“See you.”

He turned into a heron and flew off.

You may have noticed some tension between the Messenger and myself. It wasn’t that I hated his guts, but I didn’t trust him either. It’s a long story and I don’t feel like telling you about it.

I really don’t think you want to hear it anyway.

Ah, ok. Whatever. But be careful: I’m kind of a taboo subject around here, so you’ll have to keep it all to yourself.

Because travelling between worlds is problematic for most individuals, relationships between angels, demons and humans are rarely an option. However, angels are so anxious to preserve the purity of their soul that they consider such relationships a crime. Funnily enough, since these narcissistic assholes also believe they can do no wrong, it’s actually more common than you might think.

Anyway. My mother was human, whereas my father was one of the higher-ups in Heaven at the time. When I was born, this illicit relationship suddenly became too troublesome for my father's taste. Indeed, had it been discovered, it would have automatically ruined his ambitions.

Therefore, he started sending assassins after us. My mother ran away with me and we ended up in a shack by a river. You now know about “hidden places.” Well, it turns out that a small area of the forest in which we escaped was hidden. I still have no idea how my mother found it. If anyone helped us, she never told me.

We spent years there, isolated, surviving on whatever we picked from the forest, caught in the river, and grew on such a limited plot of land. My mother sometimes had to leave our hidden place to make up for what we lacked, such as medications. One day when I was ten, she left to go get something in the nearest village, and she never came back.

My mother had always insisted that, whatever happened, I should absolutely never leave our hidden place. For that reason, I remained in the forest and just hoped that she would come back.

My favourite fishing spot was a huge rock that hung like a platform overlooking the river. For several days after my mother’s disappearance, all I could do was sit there, thinking that I should go look for her despite her warning. I had to at least try. The alternative was to spend the rest of my life alone in the forest.

One morning, while I waited for my first catch of the day, I kept a wary eye on a tall bird wading in the river near the opposite banks. Birds were rare around here. Fish naturally followed the course of the river, but other animals tended to ignore our hidden place.

I was gradually getting frustrated by my lack of success. I glared at the bird and said, “Hey! I was here first. Stop eating all the fish!”

The blue and silver bird had been here for about a week and seemed to have chosen this spot as its new home. I decided I might be better off picking mushroom instead, when I detected something shiny in the bush not too far behind the bird.

I had heard about hunters and guns before, even though I had never seen any. I took a rock and threw it in the river, right next to the bird, to make it move out of the way. It flinched, and just at that moment, a gunshot resounded.

I came down from the rock and ran in the river as fast as I could on the slippery rocks. “Go away! You can’t hunt here!” I yelled at whoever had fired.

There was a moment during which I thought I heard someone or something running in the forest. Then, everything grew quiet again.

The bird stood there without moving. It held one of its legs above water and I realised the bullet must have grazed it.

“Are you ok?” I asked.

The heron flew away and I didn’t see it for a few days after that. I thought that it had been scared away for good. It made me feel strangely sad.

Then, one morning several days later, while I was fishing on my big rock, I heard a flutter behind me, just before a voice said, “Hey, what are you doing?”

In one movement, I sprung up and smacked the intruder with my fishing rod. He hit the ground and I kept my weapon pointed at him. “Who are you?”

He must have been about my age. His skin and hair were darker than mine. If I had been more observant, I might have noticed the scratch on his ankle that was just like the heron’s. Back then, however, I focused on the two big brown eyes that seemed to wonder why I was so unfriendly.

“I… I… I live close by. I just came for a walk.”

“What’s your name?”

“I’m Karim… and you?”

“L… Luca.”

He pushed away my fishing rod and sat up. I took a few careful steps back to keep a safe distance.

“Are you alone, Luca?”

He smiled as though this was just a normal encounter. My guard slowly fell. My mother had warned me about angels and assassins, not about kids my age. He had nothing on him besides a pair of worn-out pants and a shirt. He wasn't even wearing shoes.

“I’m not alone. My mom will be back any second now.”

“Really? Where did she go?”

I shrugged. It wasn’t the right moment, but my eyes started stinging.

“How long have you been alone here?”

I shrugged again. “You should go away.”

Karim got up and looked around him, ignoring my order. “You’re alone, then?”

“Not completely, there was a heron hanging around.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, it ate all the fish for a while.”

“Oh.”

I wiped my eyes with my hand. You know you’re lonely when the birds count as company. “It got scared away by some hunters. I hope it comes back.”

“Oh?”

“I mean, it’s the only company I’ve had since my mom’s been gone… and it’s not like it can help having to eat.”

Karim found this very reasonable. He beamed at me and said, “You know what? What if I come back every once in a while? We could play together!”

This went against everything my mother had instructed me. These kinds of decisions are hard to make though when you’re a kid and you’re afraid you might spend your whole life all alone.

“Do you like fishing?” Karim asked, “I’m good at fishing!”

A fishing partner would be nice. My resolve collapsed. “Ok, but if you tell anyone about me, I’ll have to kill you.”

He gulped. “Oh…”

His shocked expression triggered something in me that started out as a chortle and evolved into a full-blown burst of laughter. “You should see your face!”

His smile made a relieved comeback. “So, I can come back tomorrow?”

It’s funny how complicated things often begin in such a simple manner.