by Sharon Shinn
They stopped once for a quick lunch, then resumed their search. They were now about a mile from the house and could choose either to go up toward the stony peak or down the overgrown mountain.
“What do you think?” Alleya asked.
“Up,” Caleb replied without hesitation.
She seemed willing to trust him, but asked, “Why?”
He smiled. “Closer to Jovah,” he said.
She smiled back. “As good a reason as any.”
So they made their way slowly up the mountain, where the greenery grew more and more sparse and the little stone caverns grew more and more numerous. Twenty men diligently searching for a week could not have looked inside all the possible hiding sites, Caleb thought in some disgruntlement. If they were to find anything, it would be through sheer luck.
He heard Alleya, a few yards away from him, give a tired laugh. “She even thought angels might try to land here,” Alleya said.
Caleb glanced over at her with a frown. “What? Who?”
Alleya pointed to a slim metal spike protruding from a cluster of rocks about twenty yards above them. “See? Another one of the pointed rods. All the way out here.”
Caleb glanced behind them, trying to remember where he had last seen one of Hagar’s lethal angel deterrents. Yards away, maybe half a mile. “I don’t think she’s the one who placed that,” he said slowly. “It doesn’t look like the others.”
Alleya shaded her eyes. “You’re right. It’s thinner. Shorter. Not so sharp-looking.” She looked back at Caleb. “What do you think it is, then?”
He moved toward it cautiously, since the rocky slope did not offer easy footing. “Flag, maybe. Tell people where something was buried. Or maybe—”
“What?”
He sought a better handhold and shook his head. “We don’t know much about noise and how it travels,” he said. “Maybe it’s something that facilitates the transmission of sound.”
She caught her breath. “The listening device.”
“Well, let’s see.”
Once they arrived at their destination, they had more work ahead of them, for the root of the thin metal rod was buried deep under a pile of heavy stone. Working together, the man and the angel lifted and laid aside twelve or fifteen boulders which had obviously been carefully selected and arranged to create a small, well-protected cairn. Caleb considered himself a fit man, but the angel’s strength was greater than his own; she could carry heavy rocks that his own muscles could not have supported. She worked beside him tirelessly for the full hour it took to open the crypt.
“I see something,” she said once, breathlessly, when about half the rocks had been removed.
“You have been gifted with special vision as well?” he panted.
“What? No, look, can’t you see it? It looks like something silver. And it’s—I can see a blue light glowing on top of it—”
So could Caleb, now that he peered more determinedly into the little cave. They redoubled their efforts to move the rocks and free the object inside.
At last, it was clear of all rubble and they both came to their knees to examine it as closely as they could. As Alleya had said, they had discovered a silver metal box encrusted with black knobs and a single glowing sapphire light. It was no bigger than the basket a woman would carry to market, but more square, and the thin rod they had spotted was embedded firmly into its back.
Cautiously, in case it gave off a violent heat, Caleb reached a hand out and placed his fingertips along the unmarked surface. Cool as water, and just as smooth. He touched each knob without adjusting it, ran his fingers down the back of the rod to see how it connected with the box. Then, frowning, he flattened his palm along the top plane of the device.
“What?” Alleya asked quickly.
“It feels like—there’s the slightest tremor inside.”
“Like it’s alive?” she demanded.
“No—like it has a motor running. A more finely tuned motor than I’ve ever encountered, but—there’s that electric vibration.”
“Let me feel.”
She laid her own hand along the top of the box, then moved it experimentally to the sides and the front. She nodded. “I can feel it, but barely. What does that mean?”
Caleb took a deep breath. “Well. That, and the blue light, would seem to indicate that it’s switched on. That it’s working.”
At first, she seemed excited. “It’s working? You mean, it’s listening to our words and sending them to Jovah?”
He nodded. “If that’s what it’s intended for.”
“Of course it is! And that means—” Suddenly the excitement faded from her face; now she appeared anxious. “But if it’s been working all along—if it’s been relaying our prayers to Jovah—”
“Well, I don’t know how great its range is, but I would assume pretty far—”
“Then he has been hearing our prayers and choosing to ignore them,” she finished quietly.
Caleb turned a hand palm-up in a gesture empty of comfort. “It’s only a guess,” he said. “Perhaps this thing isn’t working after all. Or perhaps—something else is blocking the songs of the angels.”
She shook her head. “Perhaps,” she said, but she did not sound convinced. “But I think he just has chosen not to listen.”
Caleb was fingering the foreign silver box again. He was dying to take it apart and examine every minute detail, but he knew there was no justification for such an action if it really was still functioning. “Sing for me,” he said suddenly. “Let’s see if that has any effect on the box. Maybe we’ll be able to tell if it’s really transmitting.”
She sat back on her heels, too discouraged to make her usual protest against performing. “What should I sing?” she asked helplessly.
“Anything. A prayer for sunshine.”
She did smile at that. “We already have sunshine.”
“Well, you must know more prayers than I do.”
She nodded abstractedly and thought for a moment. Then she folded her hands together and began a soft, musical incantation—so soft that neither Caleb nor the machine registered the beginning of her song. But her voice grew stronger, sweeter, rich with its own peculiar cadences, and for a moment Caleb suspended his breath to listen. Almost on the instant, a ripple of green lights played down the left edge of the silver box, and a blinking light, also green, set up a fluttering pattern next to the steady blue one. Alleya faltered briefly, then recovered, her voice soaring in a high, pure loop that seemed to brighten each individual bulb to a point of ecstatic radiance.
Caleb understood their frenzy. As soon as Alleya hit her first gorgeous trill, he felt a pulse of fever in the black Kiss on his arm. As the intensity of her song built, so did the heat in his Kiss, till he felt as if a brand were being pressed against his skin. He made no protest, though he glanced down once to see the scarlet light filtering through the charred nodule on his arm. He merely clenched one fist and listened intently to the heavenly sweep and circle of the angel’s song.
He had kept his eyes mostly on the antics of the machine; he did not feel capable of looking at Alleya while she sang so close beside him. So when she abruptly fell silent, he swung his eyes over in surprise, to find her staring at him with something like panic. Her eyes flicked from his burning Kiss to his face and back to his Kiss, and she put a hand across her mouth as if to hold back unspeakable words.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” he demanded, relieved to feel the heat beginning to fade from his arm.
She shook her head. “I think the machine is working,” she said in a whisper.
“No question,” he answered. “At least on this end. So what do we do now, angela?”
She was still shaken by some unexpected anxiety, but she was recovering fast, and she clearly was not going to offer him an explanation. “We bury the device again, and we leave it alone,” she said. “And we find some other way to reach Jovah.”
A few hours later, they were back at the cottage,
making unenthusiastic plans for leaving in the morning. They had said very little on the way back down the mountain, leaving Caleb to wonder what exactly had caused Alleya’s perturbation. Soon enough, he thought it might be physical pain, for he caught her favoring her injured ankle more and more.
“Would it be easier if I carried you?” he asked once, stopping her with a hand on her shoulder.
She shook her head. “Hard to carry an angel,” she said with an attempt at humor. “The wings get in the way.”
“Then fly back down,” he said.
“Nowhere to land safely,” she answered briefly. “I’ll be fine.”
But she looked haggard and worn when they finally made it to the door of Hagar’s cabin, and Caleb ordered her to rest while he prepared a meal. She slept longer than he expected, for it was well past nightfall by the time she reappeared. The food had been ready for an hour; he had kept it warming by the fire.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
“Better. I don’t think I’ll enjoy the climb down the mountain tomorrow, but after that I shouldn’t have to walk much till my foot is healed.”
“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 la
in 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.”