Jovah's Angel (44 page)

“Couldn't you take off from here? Isn't that easier than landing?”

“If I climbed to the roof, maybe.” She was joking.

He took her seriously. “We should try that. Figure out a way to get you up there.”

“Caleb, I'll be fine.”

“Well, we'll think about it in the morning.”

Dinner this night was much more subdued than the meal the night before, though Alleya made no demur about finishing up the wine Caleb had brought. Neither did she protest when he suggested moving to a more comfortable place in the main room, where he had also built a fire. He settled her on a pile of clean blankets before the hearth, placing a large cushion at her back and a small pillow under her foot. He sat cross-legged a few feet away from her, turned toward her, watching her face. She looked into the fire.

“Tell me something,” he said softly, after neither of them had spoken for a couple of minutes. “What alarmed you so much up there on the mountain? You stared at me as if I were a ghost.”

The wine had mellowed her a little; she gave a faint smile. “Did I? I was surprised. I thought you had said the Kiss in your arm was dead.”

“I thought it was. But it hurt like fire today.”

“Do you know what caused it to burn like that?” she asked.

The question sounded idle, but he had seen her tense; this, then, was the cause of her uneasiness. “No,” he said. “But it burned like that once before, too.”

“Did it? When?”

“When you sang before the Edori fire outside of Breven.”

She nodded once and did not reply. When he was sure she
would volunteer no more, Caleb asked, “Do you know why? I've never heard of such a thing before.”

She made an indecisive gesture. “There are legends… I suppose you don't know them? I suppose your mother never told you about how each Kiss is supposed to light when true lovers meet for the first time?”

“Stories,” he said, and now his own voice was a whisper. “But I never believed them… And I had met you several times before that.”

She nodded again. She still had all her attention on the balletic antics of the leaping flames. “They say,” she murmured, “that the Archangel Gabriel and his angelica, Rachel, felt their Kisses light with fire when they heard the other sing. All through their lives, when one sang, the other burned. So go the legends. I don't know if there's any truth to them.”

“The Kiss on my arm was dead,” Caleb said, “until I heard you sing. And what do you think that means?”

She was silent a long time, then sighed and shifted position. “I don't know,” she said. “Perhaps that, when you hear me sing, you believe again in the god.”

Caleb shook his head. “That's not true,” he said. “When I hear you sing, you are all I can think about. I can't even clear my head long enough to remember to breathe. No god could make me feel like that.”

“But it is Jovah who controls each Kiss, Jovah who chooses lovers,” she reminded him. “It is Jovah who makes you react as you do.”

“I could dig this Kiss from my arm—I could crush it underfoot,” he said deliberately. “I could destroy it completely, and still I would turn into a fool every time I heard your voice. Don't you understand, Alleya? You have struck me to the soul. My heart lights with its own bright fire when I hear your name. If I could show you that, then you might believe how much I love you.”

Now, finally, she turned her eyes his way. Her own were wide and wondering, almost childlike in their directness. “How can you love someone you know so little?” she asked. “How can you think of him by day and dream of him by night—and yet have only a few dozen words to remember that he has ever spoken to you? I have schemed to find ways to see you again. I have imagined so many things you might say to me. And yet I have met you—what?—three or four times in my life. Love cannot grow that quickly. Nothing can, that is to last.”

“Love grows as it will,” Caleb said. Taking her hand, he moved closer to her, settling by her side. He reached out his free hand to feel the smooth contours of her face. “And I do not believe it can be either altered or turned aside.”

He leaned in to kiss her, but she drew back, her eyes wide. “You can't be afraid of me,” he protested.

“I am afraid of everything,” she whispered. “The world grows perilous around us and the god turns his back on the angels. If I allow myself to love you, I will forget the other things I am supposed to do. I cannot concentrate when you are near. I cannot think.”

“Don't think,” he said, and kissed her. He felt the world shake loose of its moorings; he felt the air around him dance. No, it was the intimate wind created by the flutter of her wings, lifting, folding around them both. The world spun into a whorl of whiteness; she was the only solid thing to cling to. He felt her hands grip his shoulders, he felt her feathers wrapping around his back. Every inch of his body blazed with fever.

“Are you still afraid?” he asked her once, lifting his head just so he could look down at her. Her face was flushed, her eyes tilted languorously. She laughed up at him.

“No,” she whispered. “But I cannot think.”

“You don't need to think,” he whispered back, and kissed her once more.

They did not speak again for a long time; they had no need for any language as clumsy as words. But their fingers and mouths communicated everything they needed to know. They undressed each other slowly, lingering over buttons, laughing over knots, murmuring delight at each new beauty of the flesh revealed. Alleya cupped her palms over Caleb's cheeks then brought her fingertips to his lips, then placed her hands flat on the muscles of his chest. A second time, the same motions, repeated with a luxurious slowness.

“What was that?” he asked in her ear. “With your hands?”

“The language of the deaf and blind, who cannot hear or see,” she replied in a voice so low he could barely catch her words. “We touch their faces and their bodies to speak to them.”

“What did you just say to me?”

For a reply, she lifted his hand and placed it first along her cheekbone, then across her mouth, then against her breast. “See? You have just replied.”

“And what have we said?”

“I told you I loved you. And you replied in kind.”

“That was not a secret,” he said.

“But it is always good to be told.”

“I love you,” he whispered. “And I will tell you often.”

She placed her hands against his face again, spelling out some complicated reply, but this time he did not bother to ask for a translation. What she wanted was clear enough, and it was what he wanted; and it was a long time before they spoke aloud again.

But in the morning, everything was changed. Sometime in the night, they had moved together to the bedroom Alleya had taken as hers, and there they had lain together under the cedar-scented blanket and the angel's palely glowing wings. Caleb had run the flat of his hand slowly, sensuously, over the plaited mesh of feathers, feeling them flex and give and spring back under his fingers, until Alleya had turned to him with a muffled protest.

“What? I'm sorry. Does that bother you?” he asked, instantly contrite.

Her laugh was breathless. “No, I like it. But it makes it very hard to fall asleep.”

He smiled in the dark. “Ah. It is not soothing, in other words.”

By reply, she lifted her hands and drew them in a light, tickling motion up the side of his ribcage. “Is that soothing?” she asked.

“Not exactly. But I like it.”

And that led to another wordless discussion of what calmed their bodies and what roused them, and that, finally, led to exhaustion and sleep. Caleb woke late, a smile already on his lips and his hands reaching for the woman beside him; but she was gone, and only the morning sunshine laid its golden head on the pillow next to his.

So that was a bad sign, but there was worse to come. Dressing quickly, he hurried through the small house till he came across the angel in the kitchen, sorting through their provisions and making herself a small packet. Her hair was still damp from washing, and everything about her looked clean, newly made; she was as fresh as the morning itself. But the set of her shoulders bespoke strain, and her movements were rushed and purposeful.

“I have farther to go, but it will take you longer to get where you're going,” she said, glancing up briefly, then returning her attention to her task. “So I'm leaving you most of the food.”

“Not the greeting I had hoped for,” he said, moving forward
very slowly. “Something more romantic, perhaps. Even a simple ‘I hope you slept well, my love' would have pleased me.”

Her hands stilled and she was motionless for a moment, before looking over at him with a rueful smile. “I enjoyed sleeping beside you, Caleb,” she said, “but I have to leave within the hour.”

“Can you tell me why?”

“It's complicated.”

“Can you at least kiss me farewell?”

She made a helpless gesture with her hands, but now he was beside her, and it was simpler to say silently. He took her into a gentle embrace, and she wrapped her arms around his back, resting her head on his shoulder. For a moment, he bore her full weight as she pressed herself against him, hugging him like a child fearful of the word goodbye, and then she freed herself and stepped back.

“I can't stay,” she said. “You confuse me.”

He took her shoulders in a light grip and held her so that she faced him. She let him hold her but looked unhappy about it.

“I don't mean to confuse you,” he said. “What I want is simple enough. I love you. I want to be with you. How does that distress you or complicate your life?”

“I'm the Archangel,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “It is my duty to find—and marry—the man Jovah has chosen for me. So far I have not had the time or inclination to look for my angelico too hard. But I must seek him out—soon, now, because he must sing beside me at the Gloria. And that is scarcely more than two months away. I have been terribly lax in my duty. But I cannot disregard it any longer.”

It was a blow; he knew very little of the conventions governing Archangels and their mates, but the word “marry” gave him a fair estimate. “How do you identify this angelico? What does he do? Is he a mortal man?”

She shook her head to signify she was not entirely sure of the answers. “Jovah selects him. I don't know the god's criteria. What the angelico does is—sing, and hear petitions that are not brought to the Archangel directly, and—and be spouse to the Archangel. Yes, he is a mortal man. Angels do not marry angels.”

“I am a mortal man,” Caleb said. “Why could I not be angelico?”

At that she wrenched herself away, and began pacing the room in some distress. “Jovah names him! Jovah chooses him! I cannot
just petition the god for the man I would select on my own!”

“Why not?”

“Because—because Jovah has his reasons. Because that is not the way it is done. Because Jovah has already made his selection.”

Another blow; he was beginning to feel physically bruised. But he kept up his dogged questions. “Who is he, then? Why have you not gone to him?”

She tossed him a look over her shoulder and continued her fretful pacing. “Because Jovah is sometimes obscure. He told me to seek out the son of Jeremiah, which I have learned means one of the descendants of the Archangel Gabriel. That's who I was looking for when I came to the Edori camp in Breven, because I thought the man might be an Edori… . But it turned out to be a false lead. I need to keep looking.” She sighed, stopped in her tracks, threw her hands into the air. “I need to do so many things.”

Caleb came closer. “What if I told you my father's name was Jeremiah?”

She actually laughed. “You would be lying. And anyway, I am fairly certain that the Jeremiah referred to is a man dead these hundred and fifty years.”

“And if you cannot find this man?”

She sighed. “I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if Jovah would allow an imposter to sing at my side. According to the legends, an Archangel may only replace the angelico—or the angelica—if the one chosen by Jovah is dead. And Jovah seems certain this man is alive, though he is, for whatever reason, unable to name him.”

“And if you find him, then what?” Caleb finally asked, the only question with an answer he cared about. “You will love him? You will cleave to him? You will not willingly see me again?”

Alleya spoke to the floor. “He will be my husband,” she said. “There are angels who care little about the implications of such a bond, but they would be difficult for me to cast aside lightly. It is hard to imagine that I will love him.” She looked up at him now, her face both defiant and oddly pure. “It is hard to imagine that I will love anyone but you. But they say the god is wise and chooses well. I must believe him.”

“The god,” Caleb said deliberately, “cannot even hear you
when you pray to him. How can you think he has your best interests at the core of his heart?”

She nodded. “Perhaps he does not. But as far as I am able, I must do his will. That is why I am Archangel, to carry out the laws and commandments of my god. I cannot choose which of those laws I am to obey and which I can with impunity break. It is everything or nothing.”

“Then nothing,” he said.

She shook her head. “And I am also Archangel because, of all the voices raised to him, mine is the only one Jovah heeds,” she said gently. “If I cannot reach Jovah, we are all lost. I cannot walk away now from the task I have been given. If we were all safe, if the storms had all abated, if someone else could make the god listen, I would go with you this morning. But you cannot ask me to abandon a whole world. There must be something I can do to save us.”

“Then abandon no one,” he said. “Do not abandon me.”