Jovah's Angel (39 page)

He gave a soft, almost breathless laugh. “I have to admit,” he said, “one of my lifelong goals has been to meet an angel I trusted enough to take me on a flight. I am dying to fly—you know that. And you're the first angel I'd want to ask to take me in her arms.” She felt herself reddening again; surely he had said that on purpose. “So you can imagine how chagrined I am that I can't leave with you tomorrow for the Corinnis.”

“Some other day,” she said lightly. “Perhaps I'll fly you back to Luminaux.”

“I'll have the horse,” he reminded her.

“Another time, then,” she said.

“Is it a promise?”

“I promise to do what I can,” she said, making no promises at all. “I would like to help you achieve your lifelong ambition. I'd like to take you on a flight. Maybe we'll have time while we're at Hagar's Tooth. Maybe it will be sometime in the future. Does that satisfy you?”

Now he was the one to draw a long breath, reconsider, and answer in a lighter tone than he might have used. “Yes, thank you, angela. I will look forward to the day.”

“Good. Then
that's
settled,” Alleya said briskly. “Are you hungry? Do you want to go for dinner?”

“Of course I do. What would you like? Someplace simple or someplace elegant? Do you want to eat at Seraph—or go there later?”

Alleya thought about it, then shook her head. “I don't think I can see Delilah right now,” she said. “I don't know what I'd say to her about this Ysral trip. When you see her again, tell her I asked about her and wished her well. Tell her I persuaded the merchants to give me more time. Don't tell her—” She touched her finger to the bruises on her face. “Don't tell her about my fall. I don't want her to compare it to hers.”

Caleb rose to his feet and held his hand out. Surprised, Alleya gave him her hand and let him pull her out of her chair. “Very well,” he said. “We will have the night just to ourselves. Don't bother telling me where you want to go. I think I know just the place.”

Late the next morning (later than she had planned), Alleya took off from Luminaux and headed almost straight west. The weather was cold but clear. Her course took her parallel to the coastline, so she flew low enough to enjoy the panorama of the ocean. Along the shore, the water was multicolored, layered patches of teal, indigo and violet edged with white where the breakers foamed and split. Farther out, the sea became darker, more monotonous, more mysterious. She could not imagine setting sail in that unmapped element, striking out for a place that might only exist in legend.

But then, like most creatures of the air, she was afraid of the water—always had been, despite the fact that the first ten years of her life had been spent near the sea. Her wings had made it impossible for her to learn to swim, and she had not even cared much for wading in the cold, salty shallows along the beach. Something about the eternal rise and fall of the tide, the endless pursuit and retreat of the waves along the sand, made her feel frail and at risk. She did not trust the shifting, hungry water; she was not seduced by the hiss and murmur of the waves. She never wanted to get close enough to allow the ocean to spirit her away.

How could Delilah have overcome that fear? Or was she merely running to it headlong, arms outstretched, as she had run to unlikely lovers in the past? Surely she must expect this to be the last embrace. Surely she must expect this one to betray her in the end.

Alleya stopped once to eat lunch and take a brief nap, though it annoyed her to need rest during what should be a fairly easy flight. She stretched out in the soft sand twenty yards from the
waterline, wrapping herself in her wings and pillowing her head on her backpack. Not the height of luxury, but it would do. She closed her eyes.

And instantly began dreaming of Caleb Augustus.

He had kissed her last night on the cool streets of Luminaux, under one of those blue lamplights that gave the night there such a haunting quality. She had been as shaken as a schoolgirl taken unaware by the cutest boy in class. Although she had not been surprised. At some point during the meal (which he had seemed to relish, though she could not remember a bite of what she ate), she had looked across the table at him and felt his momentarily unguarded rush of desire.

It had given her a dizzy sense of elation, an almost triumphant sensation; she had felt her laugh grow more languorous and her gestures more deliberate. He watched everything she did with a starved intentness, but at the same time, everything she did pleased him. She could sense his utter delight in her smallest
moue
, her most artless remark. It was as if she were the most alluring woman in the world, the most intelligent, the most insightful. He watched her, and she felt herself grow beautiful.

“Have you ever been in love?” he asked her once, abruptly, apropos of absolutely nothing. They had been talking, if she recalled correctly, of their regret that neither of them had ever learned to play a musical instrument.

“In love?” she repeated, wondering just what to say. In the angel holds, physical gratification was fairly easy to attain. Although angels were forbidden to marry each other (except by special dispensation), there were always plenty of mortals available to satisfy the hungriest desires. Alleya had had desperate crushes on a few of the human boys reared alongside the angels at the Eyrie; she'd had a short, unhappy affair with one of her instructors, and one or two brief and less agonizing relationships with mortals at the Eyrie and elsewhere. But in love? “Not the kind of love that really means anything,” she answered.

“You can't call it love at all if it's insignificant.”

She laughed. “I've had
affections
, if that pleases you better. How about you?”

He grinned. “‘Affections' covers it well enough. Nothing that changed my life. Nothing that changed me.”

“I suppose my handful of romances all changed me to some extent,” she said thoughtfully. “If love makes you sad, you acquire a little depth, a little compassion. If it makes you happy—
you learn how to be joyous. Every relationship should color your soul to a certain degree, don't you think? Every friendship, every love affair—each one should build up the chambers of your heart the way a sea creature builds the chambers of his shell.”

“Until you build the largest one of all, and there you live the rest of your life,” he said.

She held up a cautionary finger. “Be sure to make it large enough to last you that long.”

“Oh,” he said, “there's no doubt about that.”

And they had turned from the subject, and talked of other things. After dinner, they wandered the streets of Luminaux for hours, watching the jugglers, listening to the storytellers, standing alongside other strollers to judge impromptu singing contests held on the street corners. The night was very clear, tinged with enough chill to keep them moving. They were no longer hungry, but they had to sample the vendors' treats—flavored ices, chocolate-dipped fruits, fizzing wines. Total strangers stopped to recommend taverns and discuss the merits of various performers. The world seemed young and happy.

On one corner, under a turquoise street lamp, Caleb took her arm and pulled her to a halt. When she turned to face him, a questioning look in her eyes, he pointed at the sky. “See?” he said softly. “In Luminaux, even the moon is blue.”

She was sure it was not true—it must have something to do with the sapphire haze generated by the city lights—but indeed the creamy white cup of the quarter moon seemed to be spilling over with drops of azure liquid. “I think it's an illusion,” she said, turning back to him with a smile. But before she could say another word, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her.

She felt heat flash from her scalp to her spine; she felt her blood clamor its amazement. His hands had slid so easily under the feathered webs at her back, finding the smooth expanse of muscle below the tough ridges of her wing joints. He drew her closer, kissed her harder, covered her mouth and cheeks with kisses. Even in the blue light, her face must have been scarlet. She gave a single nervous laugh and pulled away.

He put a finger across her mouth before she could think of a word to say. “Don't,” he said, an injunction that seemed to cover everything. Then, taking her hand and looping her arm through his, he led her in silence back to her hotel. At the entrance, he paused, looked down at her and smiled.

“In five days, or maybe six,” he said. She had already drawn
him a map so he would know exactly where to meet her. “I'll see you at the Corinni Mountains.”

“All right,” she had replied, her voice almost a whisper. They were the first words she'd spoken since he kissed her.

He released her hand and took a step backward. “Dream of me,” he said, and turned to walk rapidly away. Stunned and a little unsteady on her feet, she had negotiated the marble lobby and the wide stairway, for the first time realizing that her ankle was throbbing painfully. Once she made it to her room, she could think of nothing useful to do, so she went to bed. It was only when one of the nearby clocks struck the hour that she realized it was three in the morning.

Alleya slept on the beach for an hour and woke feeling much refreshed. Two more hours of easy flying took her to her destination: a small community on the very southwestern corner of Bethel. Maybe a hundred and fifty people lived there in a haphazard collection of houses and dormitories. But there were two roads: the fairly well-traveled coastal highway, and the smaller track that led to the nearest farms and villages a few miles to the northwest. The roads were important, because the place lived on trade. Most of the residents were master craftspeople who wove the finest lace outside of Luminaux. Even the children learned the art at a very early age.

The community had grown since Alleya had been there last. There were two new houses and what looked like a small store. Life appeared to be thriving here in Chahiela, an Edori word meaning “silence.” Never had a place been so appropriately named.

Alleya landed a few yards away from the farthest outbuilding and walked slowly toward the center of the tiny town. It was late afternoon and the inhabitants were milling about, this being their liveliest time of day, as they left their classrooms and workrooms and returned to their dormitories or dwellings. Most of them lived in the four communal houses, divided by age and sex (girls, boys, men, women). A few of the instructors had private quarters which they shared with their families. And of course, Hope Wellin lived in a small house all by herself.

Alleya had not advanced very far before someone spotted her, and soon she was at the center of a small, animated group of men and women all trying to communicate with her at once. She
laughed and attempted to keep track of every question, every exclamation, but it was a hard group to converse with. Maybe three-quarters of the inhabitants were deaf; most of the others were blind; some were both. All of them had learned an intricate hand language of Hope Wellin's devising, although some were more fluent than others. Most of the blind children could verbalize as well, although—living here in this isolated, mostly silent community—their speech was halting and oddly accented, hard to understand. The flailing arms and high-pitched cries of astonishment were difficult to follow.

“Yes, it is true, I am Archangel… Oh, no, they treat me just as they did before… A crown? No. A tiara? No, I just wear my regular clothes and my bracelets… Yes, it has been storming all over Bethel. In the other provinces, too. Well, I am doing what I can… The crop prices? I don't know anything about the crop prices. How about the price of lace? Are you selling what you make?… And traffic has been busy? That's good, I'm glad to hear that…”

Someone tapped her boldly on the back, and she turned. These people had known her since she was a child; they thought nothing of tugging on her wing feathers or spinning her around to face them when they wanted her attention. Thus she did not have the angel's customary sensitivity about her wings; it did not enrage or upset her to have her feathers stroked. Here, she had always been public property.

“Yes, Mara? You're looking well,” she said to the older woman who had addressed her. Mara was one of the first inhabitants of Chahiela, a lacemaker without peer, and born stone deaf. She was one of the few residents who had never been able to hear Alleya's voice.

“Your mother?” Mara asked, weaving her fingers quickly into the question. None of her impatient sentences were complete; Alleya always had to interpret what she meant to say.

“Does my mother know I'm coming? No. I just happened to be flying this way. Is she here?”

“Yes.”

“In the house? I'll go to her.”

“House.”

“Thank you.” She waved generally at the small crowd and began to edge gently through their ranks. Some of them followed, still bombarding her with questions. “We'll talk tomorrow. I'll be here a day or two. Yes, lovely to see you, too!”

Finally, she made it to the stone walkway that led to the small gray house where her mother lived. Where she herself had been born. Even though her mother, neither blind nor deaf, could speak as well as any woman, this was the quietest house Alleya had ever been in. As quiet as the oracles' retreats—quieter, when her mother was angry and using silence as her weapon. Alleya remembered entire weeks in which they did not exchange a word.

Before she had gone two steps up the walkway, the front door opened and a small bundle of red hair and wide smile came scrambling down the path. “Alloo! Alloo!” the little girl cried out before flinging herself into Alleya's arms. “Alloo! Here!”

“Deb-o-rah,” Alleya chanted into her ear, hugging the small, squirming body to her heart. “How's my silly girl?”

Deborah pulled back to watch Alleya's face as she spoke, but she kept her small hands wrapped tightly around the angel's. “Come to stay?” she asked wistfully. Like many of the other children, Deborah was only partially deaf; she could speak clearly enough to be understood, though her sentences were often incomplete and idiosyncratic. It didn't stop her from chattering continuously and unselfconsciously.