Jovah's Angel

by Sharon Shinn

  “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.

  “Oh, sweetie, you know I can’t,” Alleya replied. “I’m a big important person now! I can only come home for visits.”

  “Archangel,” Deborah said. “Smartest angel in Samaria.”

  Alleya laughed. “Well, I wish,” she said ruefully. “Angel with the most troubles in Samaria.”

  “Too much rain,” Deborah said, nodding sagaciously.

  Alleya laughed again. “Among other things. So how’s your schooling going? Are you learning your letters? Are you learning your numbers?”

  “Can read!” Deborah said proudly. “Hear me? Read you story?”

  “Yes, I’d love to. I’ll come by the dorm tomorrow or the next day, all right? Which story are you going to read me?”

  “Pick one. Be good one.”

  “I’ll look forward to it.”

  Deborah answered, but Alleya didn’t catch the words. A movement at the front of the house had caught her attention, and she looked up to find her mother framed in the doorway. Hope Wellin nodded when she saw she had her daughter’s attention. Alleya kissed Deborah on the top of her flaming head, then shooed her away toward the girls’ dorm. Not hurrying about it, she made her way up the walk.

  “Hello, Mother,” she said when she got close enough to come to a halt. “I hope my timing isn’t inconvenient. I need to make a trip to the Corinni Mountains, and since I was so close—”

  “It’s good to see you, Alleluia,” Hope said without much expression. “How long are you staying?”

  “A day or two. Unless that’s a problem.”

  “Certainly not. It will be delightful,” Hope replied coolly. “I see you’ve already had a chance to visit with Deborah.”

  “She looks like she is doing well. How is she doing in her classes?”

  “It’s hard to make her settle down and concentrate, but she’s intelligent, so she learns quickly. She doesn’t have much patience for lacemaking but she doesn’t mind menial chores, so we can always put her to work. I think she could do quite well outside of Chahiela, if she decides to leave us when she’s older. I have hopes for her.”

  Alleya smiled. “Maybe she’ll go to work in Velora some day. I’d like to have her near me.”

  “She misses you. She asks about you.”

  “I would like to come more often, but these days—”

  Hope abruptly turned and led the way into the house. “You have had your troubles, I know. Come inside. Tell me what’s happening at the Eyrie. And all the gossip of Samaria.”

  So they spent a pleasant enough hour, mother and daughter, discussing the state of the realm, the worries over the weather, the effect of Breven factories on Chahiela lace, and the latest events in the lives of people they both knew. It was too much to say that Hope was cordial, but she was a little warmer than civil. It was the best her mother was capable of. Alleya let herself fall back into her old familiar patterns, answering what was asked, asking what seemed appropriate, and letting everything else slip away from her.

  During pauses in the conversation, she glanced around the house. It had not changed much in the twenty years that had passed since she had lived here. The furniture looked new, and the wall tapestries had been changed, but the colors were very close to the old ones. In one corner of the room, propped on a brass easel, was a faded painting of Hope’s parents and brother—all deaf, all dead. The brother had died quite young, trampled by a runaway horse he could not hear approaching. As far as Alleya could tell, he was the only person Hope had ever truly loved. She talked about him very little, but she had told Alleya once, “My brother could hear me, as these children can hear you. He never heard any voice but mine in his entire life.” It was one of the few times Alleya had been able to identify any emotion in her mother’s voice: grief.

  “While you’re here,” Hope was saying, “it would be appreciated if you were willing to sing.”

  “Of course I will,” Alleya said quickly. “I’d be glad to.”

  “There are two new women here—I don’t believe you’ve met them—and I think you might be able to reach them. One of them lost her hearing when she was a little girl. The other has always been deaf. But I thought they might hear your voice. So many do. It would mean a lot to them.”

  “I would be glad to try. Tonight?”

  “Oh, no. Tonight I will keep you for myself, and Mara and Seth and Evan, who usually take dinner with me. But tomorrow, if you would care to attend some of the classes—”

  “Certainly. And I’ll sing in the evening.”

  They talked a little longer, then parted so Alleya could freshen up before the meal. She would stay in her old room, of course, the bare gray chamber with the narrow bed and the single window which never seemed to admit much light. Standing now in the middle of that room, Alleya turned slowly, taking in its hard angles and cold features. It was difficult to remember if she had been happy or unhappy in this room; she’d had nothing to compare it to, no outside life, no privileged or destitute friends. It was just her life. She had not known that she was strange, or shy, or special, because every other child here was scarred or gifted or maimed. They were all odd. She had fit right in.

  At the age of ten, given her choice, she never would have left. At the age of thirty, knowing what she knew now, would she have chosen to stay?

  The next few days were an oasis of calm sunshine in what Alleya was beginning to consider her stormy life. She distributed her hours among the various classrooms of the deaf students, drawing the children about her in a circle. The older ones knew her from her past visits; some of the younger ones were awed at her presence and her great, gleaming wings, but her smile won them over.

  “I want all of you to pay close attention,” she said in her first session, saying the words aloud and also making the appropriate motions with her hands. She had learned the language of silence long before she had learned the music of the angels. “I want all of you to cover your eyes with your hands.”

  Everyone did so; she continued talking. “I know all of you have problems with your ears, but some of you can hear my voice. Raise your hands if you can hear me speaking.”

  There was an incoherent murmur of amazement from the students who were unused to hearing any voice; more than half the hands went up. Behind her, Alleya heard the teacher’s gasp of surprise. It gave her confidence.

  “You can put your hands down now,” she said. “Now I’m going to sing a little song. If you can hear me, I want you to raise your other hand.”

  She chose a simple nursery tune, pitched in the high, sweet key that had always reached so many of the children in Chahiela. The ones who had heard her speaking waved their hands in the air. The other children, every one of them, dropped their palms from their eyes and leapt to their feet, staring at her in disbelief. She continued singing, beckoning them closer.

  “Can you hear me, can you hear me?” she crooned as they crowded around her, reaching out with their small, wondering fingers to touch her lips, her throat. “Yes, you can. Yes, you can! Hear Alleya singing, hear Alleya singing! Clap your hands. Clap your hands.”

  They applauded crazily, happily, calling out indistinct words of question and excitement. She hushed them with her gestures, and sang the rest of her words, setting them to different, always lilting tunes.

  “Let’s count our numbers from one to ten,” Alleya sang, holding up the fingers of her left hand. “One… two… three… four…” They listened intently, for most of them had never heard these syllables before, and held up their own fingers along with her. When she fini
shed with numbers, she went through the alphabet, and then she randomly began naming objects in the room: dress, boat, book, flower. Some of the children began pointing to themselves, which at first Alleya did not understand.

  “They want you to name them,” the teacher murmured in her ear.

  “Tell me their names.” And as the woman introduced each child, Alleya sang the names back. The looks that crossed the small, engrossed faces were indescribable. Alleya felt her heart contract with a strange combination of sorrow and elation.

  It was the same in the other classrooms, though she was not successful in reaching everyone. Three of the youngest children, who were both blind and deaf, did not even know that Alleya was singing. Two of the older, teenage boys (who looked as if they resented learning anything and didn’t care about hearing their names sung by a stranger) either did not hear her or refused to acknowledge that they did. Mara, who had never responded to Alleya’s voice, shook her head regretfully when the angel sang to her again.

  But the others heard her—heard her and were moved, delighted, thrilled, thunderstruck. It gave Alleya a fierce pleasure—a gratification so intense that she knew it must be vanity, and should, be repressed—to touch so many people with such a simple skill.

  “Not my gift, Jovah, but thine,” she whispered once, and she knew it was true. But it was the gift of Jovah’s that she most cherished.

  In the evening, she was the centerpiece of a gala entertainment that started with a feast, was followed by charades and ended with her performance. As she stepped up to the makeshift dais, facing the disordered chairs clustered in a few tight rows, she was gripped with a moment’s stage fright. Even in Chahiela, where she had sung her whole life, it panicked her to be the center of attention. But the sight of her mother, cool and waiting at the back of the room, calmed her down; and her glimpse of Deborah, wriggling impatiently in her chair, made her laugh. She took a deep breath and began to sing.