to the roots of his shining wings.
In the Matter of Fallen Angels
BY JACQUELINE CAREY
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Jacqueline Carey is the best-selling author of the critically acclaimed Kushielâs Legacy trilogy of fantasy novels ( Kushielâs Dart , Kushielâs Choice , and Kushielâs Avatar ) and The Sundering epic fantasy duology ( Banewreaker and Godslayer ). Her short stories have appeared in the anthologies Emerald Magic: Great Tales of Irish Fantasy and I-94: A Collection of Southwest Michigan Writers . She has also written a nonfiction coffee-table book on Angels entitled Angels: Celestial Spirits in Art & Legend .
Over the course of writing Angels and developing the theology woven into the setting of the Kushielâs Legacy series, Carey did a fair bit of research into angelology. âIn the Matter of Fallen Angelsâ has absolutely nothing to do with any of it. Rather, it was inspired by the distant memory of reading a short story by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, âA Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,â a piece of magic realism that uses the manifestation of the miraculous to explore unattractive aspects of human nature. âIn the Matter of Fallen Angelsâ utilizes a similar device in an inverse manner. Itâs a much lighter and more modest piece, surreal and absurd. And although itâs centered on the extraordinary, in the end, itâs the ordinary, simple joys and rhythms of small-town life that it celebrates.
Jacqueline Carey lives in Michigan. You can find out more about Jacqueline Carey and her work at www.jacquelinecarey.com .
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No one could ever say for sure when it happened, that is, whether it happened before midnight or after or on the stroke. Even religion was no help in the matter, because if you read the event one way it was likely that it happened on the Sabbath, but if you read it the other then it was likely that it happened after, and who knew what it meant if it happened on the crux?
And thereâs always heat lightning at night in the summer in these parts. Sometimes it flickers all night long and maybe that night it was an omen of great portent, but it seemed just like any old summer night in Utopia. If you had walked around town that evening and asked if anyone thought that an angel would fall to earth behind Garrett Ainsworthâs
general store, everyone would have laughed. Utopia may be a two-horse town in the middle of nowhere, but the people who live there arenât crazy and most of them even have satellite dishes.
It was one of those mornings when it seems like the atmosphere has cleared its throat overnight and awakened to sing the sun up into a robinâs-egg blue sky, fine and bright and promising that all things are possible, which is exactly what Quinn Parnell was thinking on his way to the Generalâwhat everyone in Utopia called the general storeâfor a cup of coffee and a quick catch-up on the weekendâs news before his office hours started. Because he was an atheist as well as the town lawyer, the parameters in which the anything Quinn felt was possible might occur did not extend to include the supernatural. What he thought was that it was the sort of morning on which you might buy a winning lottery ticket or suddenly fall in love with a woman youâve seen every day for ten years. And because this is the sort of morning it was, when Quinn first saw that no one was sitting on the Generalâs porch drinking coffee and exchanging gossip, he thought that Garrett Ainsworth had woken up with fly-fishing fever and closed shop for the day.
This was something that happened without warning three or four times a year, a sort of Norman Rockwell syndrome. Utopia was prone to sudden attacks of rural quaintness. It was that small a town.
But today this was not the case, and when Quinn reached the porch he saw that the General was open, and when he went inside he found that the General was deserted. A fresh pot of coffee sat full and
In the Matter of Fallen Angels
BY JACQUELINE CAREY
Â
Jacqueline Carey is the best-selling author of the critically acclaimed Kushielâs Legacy trilogy of fantasy novels ( Kushielâs Dart , Kushielâs Choice , and Kushielâs Avatar ) and The Sundering epic fantasy duology ( Banewreaker and Godslayer ). Her short stories have appeared in the anthologies Emerald Magic: Great Tales of Irish Fantasy and I-94: A Collection of Southwest Michigan Writers . She has also written a nonfiction coffee-table book on Angels entitled Angels: Celestial Spirits in Art & Legend .
Over the course of writing Angels and developing the theology woven into the setting of the Kushielâs Legacy series, Carey did a fair bit of research into angelology. âIn the Matter of Fallen Angelsâ has absolutely nothing to do with any of it. Rather, it was inspired by the distant memory of reading a short story by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, âA Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,â a piece of magic realism that uses the manifestation of the miraculous to explore unattractive aspects of human nature. âIn the Matter of Fallen Angelsâ utilizes a similar device in an inverse manner. Itâs a much lighter and more modest piece, surreal and absurd. And although itâs centered on the extraordinary, in the end, itâs the ordinary, simple joys and rhythms of small-town life that it celebrates.
Jacqueline Carey lives in Michigan. You can find out more about Jacqueline Carey and her work at www.jacquelinecarey.com .
Â
Â
No one could ever say for sure when it happened, that is, whether it happened before midnight or after or on the stroke. Even religion was no help in the matter, because if you read the event one way it was likely that it happened on the Sabbath, but if you read it the other then it was likely that it happened after, and who knew what it meant if it happened on the crux?
And thereâs always heat lightning at night in the summer in these parts. Sometimes it flickers all night long and maybe that night it was an omen of great portent, but it seemed just like any old summer night in Utopia. If you had walked around town that evening and asked if anyone thought that an angel would fall to earth behind Garrett Ainsworthâs
general store, everyone would have laughed. Utopia may be a two-horse town in the middle of nowhere, but the people who live there arenât crazy and most of them even have satellite dishes.
It was one of those mornings when it seems like the atmosphere has cleared its throat overnight and awakened to sing the sun up into a robinâs-egg blue sky, fine and bright and promising that all things are possible, which is exactly what Quinn Parnell was thinking on his way to the Generalâwhat everyone in Utopia called the general storeâfor a cup of coffee and a quick catch-up on the weekendâs news before his office hours started. Because he was an atheist as well as the town lawyer, the parameters in which the anything Quinn felt was possible might occur did not extend to include the supernatural. What he thought was that it was the sort of morning on which you might buy a winning lottery ticket or suddenly fall in love with a woman youâve seen every day for ten years. And because this is the sort of morning it was, when Quinn first saw that no one was sitting on the Generalâs porch drinking coffee and exchanging gossip, he thought that Garrett Ainsworth had woken up with fly-fishing fever and closed shop for the day.
This was something that happened without warning three or four times a year, a sort of Norman Rockwell syndrome. Utopia was prone to sudden attacks of rural quaintness. It was that small a town.
But today this was not the case, and when Quinn reached the porch he saw that the General was open, and when he went inside he found that the General was deserted. A fresh pot of coffee sat full and
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