Jovah's Angel (31 page)

“You speak as if he is dead,” Alleya said.

Thomas nodded. “Yes, but Marian of the Cholitas is still alive. She's not here—I believe she stays in the sanctuary near the Heldora Mountains—but her daughters joined us a few days ago.”

“Her daughters? What about her son—Cyrus's son?”

Thomas shook his head. “I never heard of any son they had together. I only know of their daughters. Their eldest, Sheba, is a fine, strong woman with a good heart. She plans to join us on the journey to Ysral.”

Alleya could not hide her dismay. “But—are you sure? No son?”

“You could ask Sheba, of course. But my memory is usually accurate.” He smiled briefly, as if at a private joke; no doubt he was the recordkeeper for the whole race of Edori. “Who gave you your information?”

Alleya made a small gesture with her hands. “Jovah, I thought,” she said ruefully. “Perhaps someone gave the wrong information to him.”

If Thomas was curious about her search, he did not ask questions. “Sheba will help you,” he said comfortingly. “I will take you to her tent, and then you can come back and join Martha and me for dinner. It's very good—a rabbit stew. We will have other friends joining us, and they'd all be happy to meet you.”

There seemed to be no possible way to refuse; besides, the idea of a solitary meal at one of the grim Breven restaurants did not seem remotely appealing at this moment. “Thank you—you're very kind,” Alleya said. “I don't want to be any trouble—”

Thomas waved his hand. “You honor us.”

He came nimbly enough to his feet and led her on a winding journey through the camp. The bunched clouds seemed to gather more tightly overhead, which Alleya took as a sign that nightfall was nearing. It was hard to tell. The rain, for the moment, had stopped.

Thomas halted outside a large, noisy tent that seemed to bulge outward from the force of uproarious merrymaking within. “Sheba!” he called. “Sheba sia a Cholita! Stop chasing your man around and come out and greet your visitors!”

There was a shout of laughter from perhaps a dozen people inside—men and women, from the sound of the voices, adults and children—and within moments a tall, well-built young woman emerged. She was somewhat ostentatiously smoothing her hands down her skirt and across her hair, as if to cover up traces of lovemaking, but in fact she looked quite neat and trim.

“Why, Thomas, if I had known you wanted some fun with me, I would have waited till you arrived,” she said with mock innocence. “You know that Laban only satisfies me when I can't have you.”

Thomas turned to Alleya. “This is how an old man is teased,” he complained. “Age is a sad thing, because youth is so cruel.”

Alleya was peering through the open tent flap at the jumble of faces and limbs inside. “How many people are in there?” she asked.

“Ten. Well, nine now that I'm outside,” Sheba amended. “Laban, and my two sisters and their lovers, and Laban's brother, and three children. And my sister is expecting a child this spring.”

“Do they all have tents nearby?”

Sheba and Thomas both laughed. “Oh, no! We all share one tent. We are never there, of course, except to eat and sleep, so we enjoy the times when we are all together.”

“But you—isn't it crowded, ten people in that little tent?”

Sheba glanced back at the tent as if she'd forgotten its dimensions. “It's a
big
tent,” she said happily. “Laban wove it for me the first summer we shared a blanket. The others gave away their small tents so we could all stay together.”

At Alleya's sustained look of astonishment, Thomas added, “We Edori cannot stand to be apart. A solitary Edori is a wretched man. The more of us that are together, the happier we are.”

Alleya laughed and shook her head. “And I find the angel holds to be crowded,” she remarked. “And I have a room to myself. No doubt you Edori would find that a lonely place.”

Thomas shuddered. “Intolerably,” he said.

Sheba gestured back toward the tent. “Have you come to join
us for dinner?” she asked. “I assure you, angela, there is plenty of room. Come inside. You'll see.”

“No, you can't steal her. She is dining with me,” Thomas said. “But she did come here looking for you.”

Sheba smiled at the angel with complete unselfconsciousness. “For me? I will be glad to help in any way I can.”

“Thank you, but now I'm not sure you can,” Alleya said. “I was looking for a man who would have been your brother, a man about my age. But Thomas says there is no such man.”

“There was a boy born to my parents three years before my birth,” Sheba said readily. “But he died when I was two years old. He ate some poisonous flowers that bloomed on the northern slopes of the Verde Divide. I have never seen those flowers anywhere else.”

“No, that is the only place they grow,” Thomas said thoughtfully. “A sad tale, though I have heard it before.” He turned to Alleya and made a little nod of apology. “I'm sorry, Alleya, I was wrong. There was a son. I am embarrassed that I did not know of him.”

“My parents missed the Gatherings for many of those first years they were together,” Sheba explained. “My father spent that time working for the Manadavvi. He wanted to be a landowner, my mother said, and he thought he might earn enough money to buy a farm in Gaza.”

“From the Manadavvi?” Alleya said, and she could not keep the edge from her voice. “They give up land to no one.”

Sheba smiled at her. “That's what my father eventually learned, and so my mother finally persuaded him to return to the Edori way. I remember none of this, of course, but my mother told me the stories many times.”

“And you have no other brothers?” Alleya asked. “Your father—Cyrus—he had no other sons?”

Sheba shook her head. “None that were ever mentioned to me. I don't think there could have been any. My father was a very loving man who could not stand to be away from his daughters for more than a day. I don't think he could have left any child behind.”

“Well, then…” Alleya said, and let her voice trail off. She knew she should be deeply disappointed, even anxious, because she had nowhere else to look for the mysterious son of Jeremiah. But instead she felt relieved, almost exuberant, freed from a sentence of drudgery. It was hard to understand. She did not pause
to analyze. “Thank you, anyway. I'm sorry to have kept you from your family for nothing.”

Now Sheba's smile was radiant. “It was not nothing to meet you!” she exclaimed. “I wish you would stay for dinner. I think you would like Laban and my sisters. And I am an excellent cook.”

“Thank you again, but I promised Thomas—”

“Tomorrow night, then,” Sheba urged. “We will have venison cooked in wine—”

“I don't plan to stay through tomorrow,” Alleya said. “But perhaps some other time—and I do thank you.”

It took a few more exchanges along these lines before Sheba finally let them go, and Alleya followed Thomas back through the narrow alleys to his own tent. It was now full dark and the damp air was thoroughly chilly. Alleya was pleased to see that the large communal campfire a few feet from Thomas's tent was strong enough to beat back both the cold and the dark. A few shadowy shapes moved around its edges, setting up logs to be used as seats and arranging food in convenient sites.

“I hope you don't mind,” Thomas said. “I misled you when I invited you to dinner, for Martha and I share our fire with the Canbellas and the Malotas and any strays who care to join us, and there are always several of those. I'll have to introduce you to everyone. And this week we have had three more visitors join our campfire, and I'll introduce you to them as well. Although something tells me that you may already know one or two of them.”

For Alleya was staring at a graceful, improbable shape outlined by the leaping firelight—the pristine arch of an angel's folded wings, and the unlikeliest of all angels at that. Delilah stood between two men, her hands stretched out to touch each man lightly on the elbow, her head thrown back in a laugh of genuine delight. Alleya was dumbstruck.

A fresh shock was to follow instantly. For, “Noah!” Thomas called, and the angel and both her escorts turned to face him. One was an Edori man Alleya had not met before, and the other was Caleb Augustus.

If someone had told him Jovah would be joining the Edori campfire that night, Caleb could not have been more surprised to see a visitor appear. For a moment, he truly thought he had conjured the angel by sheer force of longing, for he had been thinking of her a great deal the past few days. That, or he was hallucinating on the strong wine someone had pressed on him a few minutes before. It could not possibly be the Archangel come to join them at the Edori campsite in Breven.

But then he heard Delilah's musical, sarcastic voice say, “Why, Alleya! You do show up in the oddest places,” and the dark-haired woman stepped forward to greet the blond one. “Can it be just coincidence, this second time, or have you been searching for me?”

“Coincidence, this time,” Alleya said, her voice a little muffled. She, too, appeared to be wrestling with disbelief. “It had not occurred to me that you would have any business here.”

“No business—merely pleasure,” Delilah said lightly. “I take it you came on some grave mission?”

“I was looking—it's not important,” the Archangel replied, and Caleb thought he saw a flutter of embarrassment briefly decorate her face. “I came on an errand and plan to stay only for the meal. What about you? Are you staying long?”

“I don't quite know,” Delilah said, and now she affected a languid tone. “My friends came to—do something mechanical, I think—and I have no idea how long they're staying. I, as you might imagine, am purely ornamental. But I'm dependent on their transport.”

“Transport?” Alleya repeated neutrally.

“It's the most amazing vehicle! I'm sure they'd give you a ride in it if you asked them, although it's not as much fun as you might think. Noah invented it—by the way, do you know Noah? I believe you've met Caleb.”

Alleya's eyes flickered to Caleb, then back to Delilah. “No, I haven't met Noah. But I've heard of him.” She stepped forward as Delilah made the introductions, offering her hand. Caleb watched as the Edori reluctantly took it. “You have a friend in Velora who mentioned your name to me,” Alleya said, smiling. “His name is Daniel, but his clan escapes me.”

Noah managed to return a small smile. “Oh, yes! Daniel and I go way back. We were always inventing wheels and tools and odd gadgets to make camp life a little easier.”

Thomas bustled forward, clapping one hand on Noah's shoulder, offering the other to the Archangel. “Time enough to visit when your plate's full,” he said, urging them back into the circle of firelight. “Can't you see everyone else is eating? All the food will be gone if you just stand here talking!”

Once more Alleya's eyes found Caleb's, once more she looked away. “Yes, I'm quite hungry now,” she said with her usual courtesy. “Everything smells so good.”

There was a general jostling at the food tables as the five of them joined the other latecomers and those returning to the big pots and cauldrons to take their second helpings. Unobtrusively, Caleb maneuvered himself behind Alleya at the serving table, and he was hard on her heels as she moved over to the campfire, looking for a place to sit.

“Here,” he said, touching her on the arm. She started so violently, she almost dropped her plate. He responded with a crooked grin. “I didn't mean to frighten you,” he said.

Now she smiled. “Not frightened,” she murmured, “taken unaware. Is this where you think we should sit?”

It was a half-sawn log draped with a ragged quilt, and it looked a little more comfortable than some of the other perches; more than that, it was separated by a few feet from the other makeshift seating, offering what passed in the Edori camp for privacy. Alleya settled herself carefully, balancing her plate in one hand and spreading her wings behind her. Caleb flopped less gracefully beside her.

“
Tell
me,” he said, before she had a chance to speak a word, “what can you possibly be doing here?”

She had taken a bite of food. Maybe he imagined the mischief
in her eyes as she took her time about chewing and swallowing. “But I was following you, of course,” she said at last.

So he had read the mischief right. “As glad as I would be to hear that,” he said dryly, “I cannot believe it's true. But if you don't want to tell me—”

“Oh, it's not a secret,” she said. “I was looking for a man whom Jovah had identified—had not, as it turns out, identified very
well
—but he isn't here. Apparently he died as a child.”

Caleb shook his head. “That is not a lucid explanation. Why did Jovah single him out? And how did he? And if he's dead—well, what was the point?”