The Book of Joby (24 page)

“He didn’t even have the nerve to deliver it himself,” Gabe reported indignantly. “There’s some terrified little functionary outside, trembling so badly that I’m tempted to take his hand and help him find his mommy.”

“Stress management, Gabe. Remember?” the Creator said, still perusing Lucifer’s letter. “So . . . My wayward angel thinks he’s caught Me violating the terms of our wager. I guess we’d better go dash his hopes before he gets too attached to them. I’ve no intention of letting him win
that
easily.”

“Or
at all,
I should think,” Gabe said pointedly.

To the angel’s discomfort, the Creator only said, “Go tell Lucifer’s messenger that we’ll come resolve his master’s
misunderstanding
. Suggest that park in San Francisco. I haven’t been there in ages. It should be lovely this time of year.”

“ . . . Happy birthday to yooooooou!”

Everyone around them clapped and cheered as the singing ended. The waitress had brought out a chocolate cake festooned with candles, and Joby was determined to eat half of it himself, despite being stuffed already. The White Tern was the most amazing restaurant he’d ever eaten at. White beets, hearts of palm, quail stuffed with saffron and chanterelle mushrooms; Joby had never heard of half the things they served here! When he’d found boar meat listed on the menu, he’d nearly flipped. Taking his first bite, thick, savory, and as tender as custard, he’d felt just like a knight of old.

“You gonna blow those candles out?” his father chided. “Or you tryin’ to seal that cake in melted wax for later?”

Joby laughed as he puckered up to blow and had to take another breath.

“Don’t forget to wish!” his mom warned. “And don’t tell, or it won’t come true.”

Joby stopped to think.
When I grow up, I want to live here,
he thought. Then he blew as hard as he could, knowing every candle must go out if he were to get his wish.

“Just the candles on
this
table!” his father teased, leaning back as if against a gale.

It had been Joby’s best birthday ever. They’d picnicked on the headlands by a thicket of wild lilies and bramble rose, then gone hiking beside a shallow brook through a canyon full of redwood trees. It had taken Joby a while to realized that these were the same trees he’d seen in Arthur’s solemn grove, though the ones here were smaller. He’d even heard the same strange bird-song, though he’d still never seen the bird that made it.

They’d run into more animals that day than he’d seen in his entire life: deer, and herons, wood ducks, otters, a fox, and too many hawks to count. And that was just the
big
ones! There’d been a gazillion smaller, even more exotic creatures flitting and wriggling through the water and the undergrowth! To Joby, Taubolt seemed as good as Africa!

In the end, his father had the waitress wrap the remaining cake, not even
offering
her his credit card. By now it had become puzzlingly clear that no one took them here.

There really was something strange about Taubolt, and Joby didn’t think credit cards were the half of it. The locals all seemed very warm and helpful, but he’d seen the knowing smiles and cryptic remarks that passed between them when they thought no one was looking. At first Joby had figured it was just because they all knew one another. But he’d been to lots of places in the city where he’d known no one but his parents, and still never felt so much like an outsider as he did here, as if there were some kind of invisible barrier—nothing unpleasant, just . . . always there.

The shops were strange too—full of shells and glass fishing floats, telescopes and teakwood chests, large colorful candles, sticks of incense and dried apple dolls. Not one thing you’d see in department stores back home. The old buildings themselves seemed magical somehow, with high, beamed ceilings, creaking staircases, dark, spiderwebbed corners, and half-open doors into shadowed rooms that customers were clearly not meant to ask about. Joby thought Taubolt would be an awesome place to Christmas shop.

During their after-dinner walk through town the streets were eerily quiet. From within the other restaurants, Joby heard the laughter of diners through amber-lit windows, the clink of glasses, silverware on china. But outside, they encountered no one at all until they neared the west edge of town,
where they passed a young man sitting on a split-log bench outside a closed quilt gallery. Joby could tell he was local. He wore weathered jeans and a red plaid flannel shirt. His flaxen hair tumbled from beneath a gray baseball cap that shaded eyes bluer than the sea. A fine gold stubble glittered in the late light on his chin and upper lip. He smiled as they walked past, following them with his blue, blue eyes. Joby wanted to turn and ask him for an answer to the riddle he felt so strongly all around him, but that barrier was there—outsiderness—and Joby couldn’t bring himself to cross it.

Michael watched them pass, saw Joby turn, then give up and go on in silence. The angel looked away in sadness. If only the child had asked.

The word had come that fall, on the sighing wind, in the sprouting grass, the rustle of leaves, and the splash of raindrops, to every spirit or creature that still recognized the Creator’s voice. The lords of Heaven and Hell had made a wager, its fulcrum a little boy whom any serving Heaven should assist if he should ask it of them directly, but whom none serving Heaven might assist if he did not. Nothing further had been offered.

Then, just yesterday, Michael had scooped the hellish wraith from a boy’s slight shoulders at Taubolt’s southern border, as was his charge, being Taubolt’s guardian, then followed Joby, curious to learn why such a delightful child should have borne such a loathsome burden. The gold-brown gull following high above them as they’d entered Taubolt had never drawn their notice. Nor had the tawny field mouse peering at Joby and his friend from underneath the wardrobe in their room last night, and again as they whispered together at dawn.

Only after hearing the boys’ whispered confidences that morning had Michael realized who Joby must be, and been plunged into confusion.

His Lord had said the time was many years away, and that Michael would know the candidate when he came. Yet not one full year had passed, and Michael had
not
recognized Joby in time to let his filthy cargo enter with him as his Master had instructed. Had Michael misunderstood? . . . Had he failed?

Time after time that day he had cast these questions toward Heaven, and still there was but one answer in the rustling breeze and the whispering sea:

All things happen as they must.

Anxious and confused, Michael had remained cautious until now. The seal watching from out in the swell that morning, the hawk circling high above their picnic on the headlands, the squirrel following their progress through
the woods that afternoon; in all these forms, Michael had meant to elude Joby’s attention. But this time . . . this
last
time, Michael had hoped the boy
would
notice, would ask the question Michael had seen burning within him throughout the day. For, in this at least, his Master’s will was clear. If the boy should
ask,
assistance could be offered. . . . If only he had
asked.

Joby eased the door carefully shut behind him, then tiptoed past his parents’ room toward the stairs. He knew they’d have forbidden him to go out alone, but once they were up, there’d be no time for anything but breakfast and packing. If he wanted to see the beach again, it would have to be now. He had awakened before sunrise again, filled with an urgent need to go out and say good-bye to Taubolt. He’d thought of bringing Benjamin, but his friend had still been dead to the world, so he had let him sleep.

At the lobby, Joby abandoned any pretense of stealth, bounding through the inn’s leaded-glass doors out onto the sidewalk. The air was chill for spring. Taubolt’s buildings huddled in blue silhouette against the pale dawn behind them, and a single fraying shoal of fog climbed in wispy tendrils over the wooded hills flanking the river mouth. The sea smell was strong in Taubolt’s empty streets, the silence thick and secretive, as if there were no one left in all the village but Joby.

He trotted past blank-eyed shop fronts, through a gate in the fence across the street, and out onto the grassy headlands still heavy with dew. Halfway to the cliff tops, Joby turned to look back at the sleeping town.

“Good-bye,” he whispered.

Then he turned and ran toward the cliff-side trail that wound down to the beach. The tide was not as low as it had been before, but he ran out as far as he could without getting his shoes too wet, and gazed into the tide pools all around him, sensing the myriad creatures crawling, darting, swaying at his feet, though he could not see them.

“I’ll be back someday,” he said fervently. “Don’t forget me.”

He loped across a flat expanse of mussel bed to the edge of a deep fissure washed by foaming surf and stood peering down into its green, semi-opaque depths. Long dark strands of kelp writhed and curled in the current. As the wave receded, the water fizzed like soda, then began to clear. He bent closer, hoping to glimpse some secret treasure trove of shells, or perhaps . . .

But something large was moving there—zooming right toward him!

Joby leapt back in alarm as it burst the surface, and found himself staring down at a brown-haired boy near his own age, whose startled expression
mirrored his own! For a moment they both froze, openmouthed and speechless. Then, as another wave rushed through the trench, the swimmer plunged back beneath the surface and disappeared. When the fizzing water cleared, Joby saw no sign at all of the astonishing boy. In stunned disbelief, he began to scan the bay around him. There was nothing.