Devout: An Anthology of Angels

ALSO BY

Also by Tyler Battaglia

The Sixth Tree in Crow & Cross Keys What the Sea Provides in The Cozy Cosmic Your Heart Stops in Greater Than His Nature

Also by Morgan Dante

A Flame in the Night

Witch Soul

King of Hell

Unholy with Eyes Like Wolves

Also by Ian Haramaki

Mercy

Also by Daniel Marie James Respectfully Yours

Also by Rafael Nicolás

Angels Before Man

Angels And Man

Also by Quinton Li

Tell Me How It Ends

Chrysalis & Requiem

Also by Angela Sun

Love Letter at the Cusp of Exorcism in The Summer Gothic

Sea Song and Downtown in The Squawk Back

"FIRST ACT OF A MOVIE WHERE I LOVED YOU

THE ENTIRE TIME" in Heavy Feather Review

Also by Cass Trudeau

(Hetero)trophic Love in The Summer Gothic

Also by Dorian Yosef Weber

Mizmor L’David in Changelings: An Autistic Trans Anthology

DEVOUT

Dorian Yosef Weber

Angela Sun

Ian Haramaki

Tyler Battaglia

Daniel Marie James

Morgan Dante

Cass Trudeau

Aurélio Loren

Rae Novotny

Rafael Nicolás

Emily Hoffman

Curated and edited by Quinton Li

DEVOUT: AN ANTHOLOGY OF ANGELS Second Edition

Copyright © 2023 Quinton Li

First Edition Released August 29th 2023 by Quinton Li Editorial.

All rights reserved. No part of this anthology may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places, events and incidents are either the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Contact: Quinton Li (www.quintonli.com)More information: https://devoutlogy.carrd.co/

Cover Artist and Layout Designer: Alex Patrascu Front Cover: Angel with a Banderole by Claude Mellan; The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The text in Devout is typeset in EB Garamond, and headers are set in Orpheus Pro.

ISBN: 978-0-6456815-7-4

Editor’s Letter

Quinton Li

When there’s ringing in my ears, I know there are angels around. Just as when I’m working away at a novel or any writing project, there’s an angel behind me then, too.

I believe I was surrounded by a number of angels during the creation of Devout: An Anthology of Angels, from the angels in each story, to the angels watching over my shoulder, to every author who may or may not be an angel themselves.

Angels have always played an important part in my life, whether it’s an image of safety and unconditional love, or the twisting, what we call, biblical depictions that make me feel things. Maybe I’ve seen an angel before, when I was too young to remember, or maybe I was an angel in a previous lifetime.

In any case, in this reality, I’m Quinton Li, the curator and editor of this anthology. I’m incredibly pleased to present this heart- and horror-felt collection by a group of writers and artists who love angels just as much as I do, maybe more!

Dorian, Angela, Ian, Tyler, Daniel, Morgan, Cass, Aurélio, Rae, Rafael and Emily, you were all so wonderful to work with. You were passionate and excited, and that just motivated me even more to do my best for you. I’m grateful to have had this opportunity to curate my first anthology with you and I wish for many more cool projects between us.

Alex, there’s no one else I’d rather work with to design this anthology. I might say this in every publication that we work together on, but I knew I wanted you to design and format this anthology from the start. Thank you for your hard work!

To every ARC reader who expressed interest in Devout, thank you! Your dedication to the authors in this anthology is inspiring and I’m so thankful for it!

And, of course, to every angel and angel lover reading this anthology. This is for you and I hope you find something familiar to curl up to, and something new to love.

Enjoy the Devout Anthology!

Table of Contents

Editor’s Letter ⋅ Quinton Li

I Know My Father ⋅ Dorian Yosef Weber

Seasons of God ⋅ Angela Sun

Resta Con Me ⋅ Ian Haramaki

Seraphim ⋅ Ian Haramaki

With Wings Like Madeleines ⋅ Dorian Yosef Weber

And the Mountains Melt Like Wax ⋅ Tyler Battaglia

The Mountains, the Mountains, the Mountains ⋅ Tyler Battaglia

We Suffer in Fire ⋅ Tyler Battaglia

Divine Body ⋅ Daniel Marie James

Fade to Black ⋅ Morgan Dante

Misery in Company ⋅ Morgan Dante

Enfleshed ⋅ Cass Trudeau

Swarm Behavior ⋅ Aurélio Loren

Recovered Contents From an Angel’s Stomach ⋅ Rae Novotny

An angel song from the ether ⋅ Rafael Nicolás

Hashem Yireh ⋅ Dorian Yosef Weber

Pieces ⋅ Emily Hoffman

Paradises ⋅ Rafael Nicolás

Contributors

I Know My Father

Dorian Yosef Weber

Jacob sends his progeny across a stream.

He is alone

and then there is the flesh of a man beneath his hands.

smooth, supple arms try to push him to the ground and

Jacob, grabbing the terrifyingly beautiful stranger,

plants his feet and pushes back.

they are sweating and grunting,

the sound drowned out by the babbling of running water.

when our father doesn’t let himself fall back onto the dirt,

there is a gentle touch on his hip,

fingertips skimming flesh

pale and stretched tight as a drum skin,

and, beneath the tickle of callouses,

the violent wrench of bone out of socket.

Jacob cries out, but he does not let go of the man

whose touch has broken his body.

the sages say our father knew an angel,

but here in the light of the dawn, there is only a man.

Bless me, Jacob demands,

unyielding.

Bless me.

Bless me.

Bless me the way you bless your Father.

the man softly touches his lips to Jacob’s,

as they writhe against the iron bonds

of each other’s grips.

the man’s mouth dribbles lower, and lower

still. Your name is now Israel, he breathes

against sweat-slick skin,

for you have conquered both man

and divine.

Israel throws back his head,

the violent, powerful ecstasy of holiness

shaping what will touch the lips of generations.

They will not eat of the hip

and future children will look to their father

as they grapple and change and ache, as

they tear apart their bodies

in self-shattering bliss.

Seasons of God

Angela Sun

Content Warnings: suicide, graphic violence, body horror, undertones of sexual harassment and grooming, mentions of rape, misogyny

Francis was fifteen when Rui was born on the other side of the world, pushed out between bedsore ridden thighs and blood-soaked rags, held by midwives who knew a doomed labour when they saw one. By then, he held the poise of a religious man, and wasted long, sun-drenched days shadowing the monks, who consumed their mornings with farming and afternoons transcribing the scriptures. His family had hoped to instill some acumen and piety in their eldest and heir, sending him off too young. Neither Francis nor Rui knew their mother.

The juncture in Francis’s life arrived some ten years later. The plague wandered its way into their town and made a martyr of Father Guillaume, who Francis secretly wished was his father. Grief struck him like lightning, jaundiced him; hollowed him out like a river through the bedrock. There was no return to nobility after that, only the clergy: the fixture of his idyllic childhood.

He was on the cusp of thirty-three when he arrived in the Far East, legs jellied from the endless journeys at sea. Alongside him was Father Phillip, a man who preferred the language of the locals and reduced himself to wordlessness around Francis. The men, brown-skinned and quick-witted, pointed somewhere inland at the great expanse of pale earth locked between grey skies. The priests rode on black donkeys and carried their bibles in cloth bags that slung over both sides of the saddles, gently thumping against the donkeys’ backs with every step. Some weeks later they arrived at a village. News travelled fast: the village chief, having gotten the letter days ahead of time, saw them and bellowed out a welcoming. He shook their hands, shifting his eyes between them like a nesting bird.

The villagers gathered in the square. Most oversaw their presence with casual curiosity, the arrival only a facsimile of what they had heard all over the trade routes, what seemed almost overdue. By mere afternoon, the news relayed its way to the bedridden uncles and small children.

By night, it reached Rui, who had avoided the crowd in favour of sitting in the field all day. She had been half-contemplating killing herself. Two meters of rope tucked in the mice-chipped corner of their barnyard, no date in mind – a tangible promise, nonetheless. If not dead, her father would sell her soon. Her age planted the mark, and the winter made sure of it when the frost choked out half their crops overnight and stunted the rest. In the yellow light of dinners, the lamp emanating so weakly with only a lick of oil left in the font, she could see her daddy growing tired, had thought he only needed to tolerate her until the men or the fever took her. She already held the reputation of a spinster, but was a woman nonetheless, and could fetch a price higher than the neighbor’s stud pig. The thought closed around her neck like a fist, and uprooted her from the smoke of the village, far into the blusterous open air of the fields.

In the field, the sweet earth smell eased her throat open; let her breathe again. Dusk was carving across the sky, sifting through streaks of white cloud. She turned and headed home, slipped past Auntie Huang who clicked her tongue then gestured to the newcomers. The two small figures were right across the river, still talking to the chief. In the reddening light of sunset, they looked like canine teeth jutting out of the ground, a mouth closing around the whole bloodied sky.

—

The first real business for the priests to undertake turned out to be grisly. An early morning in late spring, Liu Ping unlocked their barn door to the sight of her son’s feet swaying above their bed of straw. She collapsed on the ground and howled until her husband came, who held her and shuddered, wretching himself into a belly ache. Francis pushed his way through the simmering crowd and gripped their hands.

You will see him again, he began. We’ll pray for him. We’ll pray for your family, too.

The husband looked up; his eyes soldered shut with tears. Francis’s pale, foreign face pressed close enough to anger him. You’re not needed here, he said.

Francis nodded. You can always come to me, he whispered. I’ll be there.

A day later, after the weeping, the mother came and knocked on the priests’ door. I want you to explain what you meant by what you said.

He opened his leather-bound bible and read a passage to her, then another. By the time they finished talking, the sun was dipping past the burnt bronze sky, a gentle chill weaving its way across the room.

She wanted to believe it. The force of wanting intoxicated her, had her light-headed the whole walk home. By the end of the week the couple convinced each other of a Christian burial. Both priests read at the service: Phillip in Mandarin, Francis in their native French. The parents, transfixed, left footprints so deep that the dusty soil pressed into something clay-like, yellow tiles split at the edges. Both would be baptized by in a month’s time.

In Rui’s dreams, she’d see the son’s sweet breathless face, a ripple of bruises hooked around his neck like a collar. Then he’d pull her under. My wife, he’d say, you’ve come for me. She opened her mouth and swallowed earth, the soil and maggots, her father working the shovel. The boy smiled up at her, teeth bloody. I love you, he said. I love you; I love you—

Rui blinked awake. Her limbs were calescent and leaden, the sweat on her back flashing cold as she rolled under the open air. Her father would not marry her to a dead man, she thought. Too little money, too little pride. She thought of the wildflowers nestling at the edge of their crops, the white bursts of stardust, and the leathery leaves with veins running deep from the stem. The image put air into her lungs, and she drifted into sleep again, easier this time.

It was an uncharacteristically hot day, body heat clinging to her like gauze. At dinner her father leaned in close and peered into her face. Did you know the Lius converted? I wonder if they still want a bride. The poor son, he shook his head, he would have wanted to be married.

He killed himself, Rui said.

Don’t you think his parents would have wanted to see him married?

Maybe.

In the night, sleepless, she watched the moths quiver around the dying oil