by Jane Lebak
She couldn't remember even one unkind word from him in all the hours they spent together. He'd always realized what little things she wanted him to notice: perhaps her earrings, or the way the maidservant had styled her hair, or even her dress. He approved when she took his advice. When Naomi had felt like crying, he understood her mood instantly, and every time approached her depression differently: once making her laugh and at another time letting her talk. Once he let her cry, cocooned her in the cloud of his wings, keeping her sealed invisibly inside so no one would disturb her soon afterward.
Naomi had told Saraquael she wished she had a more artistic heart, like his own. She wanted to act as a creator in miniature, investing the lives of all her characters with value and resolving their worries. She wanted to describe perfect worlds and show perfect lives. Excelling in such a structured form as poetry, with such a hierarchy of masters, would make the art truer.
After Saraquael's departure, Naomi found she could spill forth poem after poem (not good, but written) on a bright afternoon when birds called one to another and flowers swayed in the breeze. When she stood in the shade of a fig tree, she could easily turn over words in her mind, and some mornings she would finger the fringes of her curtains and close her eyes against the sun.
The roots of the carnation had continued growing, tiny bubbles clinging to their smooth length.
- + -
Naomi lay dreaming.
As a child she hid in the garden, waiting for her mother to miss her and come looking. She crouched until needles of pain poked into her calves and her folded body ached, and then she came out to find her mother had gone inside the palace. When she asked the maid if she had been missed, and why had no one come looking, the maid said that of course Naomi had been missed—everyone was worried sick—and she should go play with the other children.
While she twitched in her bed, Naomi's mind raced up a tower to look out over Jerusalem, the houses and the city walls, distant herds of sheep and roads with travelers passing, none noticing the princess in the tower. Birds circled, one so low she might have raised her hand and have it alight, but then it spread its tiny wings and rose into the light of a pink sunset.
Her breathing grew ragged in sleep. Naomi remembered dressing in a gown alongside all her half-sisters and then marching into the main hall of the palace for a ceremony. She held a cluster of wild flowers, but her mother had taken from her because none of the other girls had flowers. As King David passed, one ambassador commented what lovely daughters he had, and David had said yes, they were all very lovely. Naomi smiled at him, but he did not meet her eyes.
The dream-memories might have continued, but then her images mixed with day-residue and melted one into the other, so that as a little girl she hid in a white dress behind a bush, a small bird in her hands, but the bird flew away when she tried to hold it too tightly, leaving behind a pink carnation.
Naomi awoke for good when David walked by and did not return her smile.
The room's darkness smothered her like wet gauze, but she shuddered it away. She turned to the window for light, but the best she could get was moonlight reflected from her poetry pages.
An animal called outside, and as Naomi turned, her eye caught a haze rising from her pages. She startled, but it was only the moon's pink reflection on a white surface. The bubble and carnation hung in stillness over the poetry.
- + -
The next time a poet recited before the court, Naomi resolved to try her work against a man.
She found the poet during the dinner following his recitation. He brushed her off until she explained that she was Bathsheba's daughter, and then he agreed to hear her recite
He frowned while she recited, seemed startled when she finished, then fingered his earlobe and told her she had promise. She asked if it were good, and he said it was admirable she was writing already, then turned to talk to one of the Levites.
Flushed, she thanked the poet and left the dinner early. She cried only a little on returning to her room.
Nothing hurts more, Naomi thought to her carnation, than being told you have promise. Potential counts for nothing. It's the words, the deeds. Those matter.
But she had an answer now. The poet hadn't enjoyed her work, so doubtless the court would dislike it, and that meant she'd never get to present it to her father. She'd reached her potential and could only stagnate now: the palace had become a world that would suffocate her, and how could she get the sustenance she needed? She had to leave.
Swallowing, she looked out her bedroom window. Outside the city walls, campfires of traveling merchants glimmered like beeswax candles. She might join one of them. She could leave in durable clothing and take any money she could find. She would bring her poetry and recite at the towns she passed. She could spin or weave to earn her keep. Then, when she grew proficient, she could return to her family and the court, and by then her brother Solomon might be king. Solomon would let her recite. After all, he had already written a poem of which everyone spoke well.
Naomi grabbed a dress from the closet and laid it on her bed. She gathered her writing next, placing all the pages into a leather bag.
A white gleam struck her, and she faced the window.
The pink carnation, hanging in its glass bubble, had focused the sunset into one dagger of light. She blinked until she could see again.
Peering around floaters, Naomi moved away from the light-spear. The carnation had grown larger, filling all the space in its glass bubble. In the water at the base, the roots traced the folds of the lowest petals.
She pulled the thread and freed the hanging sphere, warming it against her palm.
Naomi cradled Saraquael's goodbye, losing herself in the gleam of the curved glass, prickling with the reflected needles of the sunset. She traced the fullness of wrinkles in the petals, a marvelous cerebellum filling the whole bubble, and having inhabited everywhere it could, needed to escape, needed freedom.
Naomi imagined the roots moving, groping the bottom of the glass with their questions.
Her eyes grew wider and rounder; they filled with water.
Naomi grabbed a pottery basin, and then the glass bubble lay smashed.
She tossed it aside, then dropped to her knees to pick the flower out of the broken glass. In her hands, the carnation was so much smaller than it had seemed. The lens-like confinement of the glass globe had made the bud seem bigger.
Naomi set the flower in bowl of water and sat beside it until it died.
A maid knocked at the door and asked if something had broken. The daughter of David and Bathsheba stood, hung her dress in the closet and placed her writing on the dressing table. The maidservant knocked again. Opening the door, she said that yes, she was fine.
The woman nodded, but suddenly her features shifted into the fatherly, concerned smile of the poet-angel. Naomi startled, and the look was gone.
Leaping from heart to heart as on stones through a stream, Naomi realized, a visiting angel could still protect and cherish. Friends need not always be visible. That night she wrote a poem to an angel about a dead flower, and she thanked him. Aided only by the light of a lamp, she set down letters with black ink on an unwrinkled sheet of white parchment.
Pomegranate
960 BC
Michael felt the summons from God and dropped to his knees where he was.
He called his sword back into his substance, then he crossed his arms over his chest and drew up his wings. Ready, Lord.
Open your hands.
Michael found himself holding a crowned red fruit.
Bring this to Gabriel.
Michael flashed to Gabriel with a thought.
He arrived at the Temple Mount as the sun rose, standing atop a half-completed wall and wondering why God wanted him to deliver a fruit to a creature who never got hungry.
"Michael!" Gabriel raised his wings. "Have you seen the supports for the walls? This is amazing!"
Beside Gabriel, Raphael nodded with eyes so
bright they gave off heat. "You've got to let him tell you about this."
Michael followed as Gabriel showed off the architecture of Solomon's temple, the supports crafted in such a way that they wouldn't run through the interior. "It contains design elements from a number of surrounding cultures," Gabriel said, "but if you'll note, Solomon modified them all in order to preserve the unique aspects of Israelite worship and the Israelite relationship to the Almighty as His chosen people."
Michael said, "I have something for you."
"In a minute." Gabriel then spent that minute explaining the origin of the stone blocks used for the foundation and the techniques developed for transportation of the carved stones.
Raphael said, "Surely they didn't come out of the ground that way."
Gabriel shook his head. "They're carved at the excavation site so the temple won't be defiled by the sound of chisels! Isn't that amazing?"
Michael said, "Is your minute up? I have something for you."
Gabriel paused. "Is that a pomegranate?"
Raphael said, "Oh! Like that fruit on the capitals at the front of the Temple—" and they both flashed to the front of the building, bringing Michael with them. The sky had grown just light enough to see the stone carvings.
Michael handed the fruit to Gabriel.
Without looking at it, Gabriel turned to Raphael. "Okay, so you were asking me about the symbolism of the pomegranate, and I told you how the multiple seeds inside the fruit represent the multiple mitzvoh in the Torah. Because of the multiplicity of seeds, it also represents fruitfulness. And it represents learning, too."
Michael watched Raphael's gaze all but devour Gabriel as he veered off into a lecture about pomegranate properties. For the moment, you'd think nothing in the world was more important than a fruit's antioxidants, or how pomegranate juice could lower cholesterol levels or repair damaged DNA. Raphael, who on his own tended to rush from topic to topic, remained focused on Gabriel's mini dissertation about the growth and tending of pomegranates, and for some reason Gabriel was getting more enthusiastic.
It was their bond, something Michael never really fathomed. But he watched with a smile because together a Cherub and a Seraph became something more, something intense and joyful and careful and amazed by God.
All the same, Why did you want me to deliver a pomegranate? Michael asked God.
Wait and watch, God replied.
At the point where Michael knew all he had ever wanted to learn about the cultivation of pomegranates (in fact, more), the workmen began arriving. Gabriel flashed to ground-level to inspect one of the tools.
Michael said to Raphael, "He's so different when he's with you."
"Well, not as if I would know." Raphael laughed. "I suppose I'm different too. I do see him with the other Cherubim, and they tend to get a bit esoteric. Discussions like how the future Messiah's mother's eye-color will affect the Messiah's theology."
Michael paused. "You made that up. Didn't you?"
"You can go on thinking I made it up if that makes you feel better." Raphael chuckled. "Maybe the two top choirs bond just so we won't strangle each other."
Michael laughed out loud.
Gabriel reappeared on the wall top. "Come see the Holy of Holies. We won't be going in there after it's complete, but we can now, with the workmen."
Michael followed. "Why can't we go in after it's complete?"
Gabriel said, "Only the high priest goes in there. That's where the Ark of the Covenant will be housed."
Michael replied, "We look God in the face. It's probably okay to stand near the Ark."
"Solomon's already drawn up the rules. No one but the high priest." Gabriel floated up the steps to the raised floor, then ran a hand over the cedar planks. "Isn't this amazing? It's fascinating the way the humans render objects serviceable and beautiful at the same time. God doesn't need the beauty, but it's fitting to have beautiful things for Him, and it will serve to uplift the people's minds to greater theological truths. Did I mention Solomon imported this cedar from Tyre?"
Raphael hesitated, his eyes glinting with reflected light from God. "Assignment," he said, and Gabriel extended a hand to him in blessing. Raphael touched his wingtips to Gabriel's, then departed.
Gabriel brought Michael to the stacks of cedar logs outside the construction site, then showed him the pulley system that raised hundreds of pounds of wood without exerting hundreds of pounds of force; Gabriel called it mechanical advantage, distributing the wood's downward force over the tension of several sections of rope rather than just one rope. But Gabriel watched it more, studied it in longer silences, and then started drawing diagrams in the air using light.
Michael said, "It's okay. You don't have to show me this if you're bored."
"It's not at all boring." Gabriel frowned. "This is physics. Humans use their tools in order to manipulate their environment within God's established physical laws, and that's entrancing."
Michael said, "But it's not as exciting as pomegranates?" But then he realized the difference: Raphael wasn't here, and neither was Raphael's fire. Gabriel was returning to his normal, thoughtful state.
Gabriel said, "Pomegranates are life. Cedar planking is art. This is physics— Oh," he interrupted himself. "That's not safe."
"Where?"
Gabriel set the pomegranate into the solid heart of a log and pointed to a scaffolding. "On the second level, the third support in from the back? The strut snapped, so they propped a pole in between it and the first level to support the second, but all that does is transfer the overload to the lower support."
Michael called to the guardians closest, who called to their charges. The foreman looked, but then dismissed the concern as the men hauled up another load of wood onto the scaffolding.
…which then collapsed, avalanching wood and men to the ground.
Gabriel rushed forward, shoved one of the workmen to the side, then dove headfirst into the chaos.
Michael called orders to the nearby guardians. "Everyone, clear your charges! Give me a headcount of all the wounded! Gabriel! Report!"
"There's a man trapped in the debris," Gabriel called from beneath the wood. "He's—Oh!"
Gabriel shot from the tumble of logs and boards. "He's got an Ashera!"
Michael said, "But he's alive?"
"I maneuvered the falling wood so he got pinned rather than crushed." Gabriel shook his head. "But he's wearing an Ashera charm, so if he wants further assistance, let him call on it."
Michael said, "Find a way they can get all that debris off him." He turned to three of the nearby guardians. "We've got a man under there. Alert your charges."
The guardians took off. Gabriel murmured, "He's an idolater."
Michael murmured back, "Analyze the stability of the debris pile and come up with a method to get him out of there."
Gabriel looked disgusted. "I don't want to touch him." He went back under, and after a moment Michael could feel Gabriel's energy sluicing through the wood. The workmen made voice contact with the man beneath the pile, and two of the foremen started calling for their crews.
Gabriel surfaced. "I've got a way. But, Michael –" He sighed. "The penalty for idolatry is death. If he dies, when they extract his body and find the idol, they'll see God's justice at work."
Michael focused on the pile, focused further through the wood until he could see the man's soul and could feel that idol's black presence.
Gabriel said, "I hate losing his soul as much as you do, but freeing him short-circuits God's decrees and doesn't guarantee conversion anyhow. Moreover, we're endangering the souls of all the other workers, who may attribute his survival on the Temple mount of all places to the idol."
Michael tasted the fear rolling off the man, the pain, the terror of what happened if that tenuous pile gave way. He could smell that idol's evil and the way it stained the man's soul—the way it would for eternity if nothing changed.
Michael heard himself speaking. "What if that Ashera isn't hi
s?"
Gabriel said, "Supposing, for example, that an Ashera charm on a thong fell from a bird just as the scaffolding broke, landing around his neck and under his tunic?"
Michael said, "He's not calling on Ashera or Ba'al to help him. I'll re-assess if he does. Tell me which pieces need to be removed and in which order."
Gabriel gestured, and the logs lit up in different colors before the angels' eyes. "They need to come off in order like the color spectrum, starting from red and ending with purple. But he's got to stay still so the centers of gravity won't change."
"Thanks. Get back under there and keep him calm."
Gabriel didn't hide his reluctance, but he slipped back into the heap.
Michael turned to the work foreman's guardian. "Did you understand?"
The foreman's guardian studied the rainbow lights the humans couldn't see. "I'll try to guide his decisions. Get me some prayer support."
The sun baked the men as they pried apart the pile. The priests came, praying for deliverance even as local women brought in water for the workers and tended the wounded. A team of donkeys helped clear the debris. Even though Gabriel stayed beneath to keep the man still, every so often the wood shifted, and momentarily the order of the lighting would alter.
Michael slipped beside Gabriel. He'd gone half-underground, lying directly beneath the man but with his hands on the man's head and his wings wrapped around him. The man's guardian lay inside his form, exuding calm. Gabriel murmured the Shema over and over, a drone and a steadiness that the man himself absorbed. Though in and out of consciousness, his lips moved with the prayer.
Michael touched Gabriel's wing with his own. "Thank you."
So intent on the man, Gabriel didn't respond.
Before the sun set, the foreman gave a shout, and the workmen were able to grab the man under his armpits and drag him from the pile. A woman ran to him, wailing and calling his name. She raised his body and kissed his face until with a moan he opened his eyes.