by Sharon Shinn
He was my age, of course, or close to it—a year my junior, which I had never let him forget. I was the sophisticated young woman who could estimate the worth of a jewel merely by cupping it in her hand; I had bedded my first angel when I was sixteen. His father had sent him from Monteverde to Windy Point so he could gain a little sophistication of his own by serving with the Archangel-elect. He wasn’t a virgin when he arrived, but he might as well have been. He understood so little about the games between men and women.
He learned them all rapidly and very well.
I wondered how many women he had loved in the years since I had seen him last. I wondered how quickly he had lost his soulfulness, his sweetness, his sincerity. Was he by now as jaded as Raphael, as insensitive as Saul? Would I recognize his heart as instantly as I had recognized his face?
I studied him as he sang. He stood a little apart from the other performers, all of whom looked to be Sheba’s age or even younger. He seemed to be watching them, as if they were children climbing the branches of a tree and he was afraid they would fall. As if he was standing directly beneath them, his hands already half lifted to catch them when they tumbled down. Perhaps this was their first public performance and he was guiding them through it.
Perhaps one of them was a son or a daughter, and what he was showing was not concern, but love.
I put a hand to my throat as if to hold back the sound of weeping.
It was impossible that such a small movement across such a large room filled with so many people could have caught his attention. And yet something turned his gaze my way. I saw him recognize me and then freeze immobile. His eyes bored into mine; he actually missed a note of the music. The soprano sent him one quick, expressive glance of astonishment, while the tenor faltered and then manfully caught up. The alto, rapt in her own luscious melody line, didn’t seem to notice.
It was only half a measure, and then Stephen’s voice steadied, underpinning the whole complex composition again. The soprano gained the courage to fling her voice up half an octave, and the song finished up on a wildly exuberant flare of eighth notes. The audience erupted into applause, and most of those lucky enough to have chairs surged to their feet, whistling and cheering.
The whole time, Stephen did not take his eyes from mine.
There were calls for an encore, and the younger angels seemed willing, but it was clear Stephen wanted to get off the stage immediately. Still watching me, he motioned to someone out of my sight line, and a heavyset young man climbed the stairs to take his place. Stephen barely waited for this re-formed quartet to begin a new piece—something lively and up-tempo—before he exited the stage with a single jump, spreading his wings just enough to cushion his landing. I was certain that he would instantly find the nearest exit—and that he would be looking for me outside.
Part of me wanted to hide here among these strangers or slip out a side door and run with all the speed I could muster back to the safe haven of the inn.
Most of me wanted to claw and punch my way out of this room so I could find my way to Stephen’s side and fling myself into his arms.
I followed the second plan of escape, though I tried very hard not to hurt anyone as I urgently broke through the crowd. “I’m going to be sick,” I threatened, holding one hand to my mouth and one to my stomach, and this worked pretty well to clear a path through the mob. Finally I was at the door, I was down the stairs, I was dashing around the side of the building—
And there was Stephen, waiting for me.
This close, I could see the changes wrought by time. The curly hair definitely was not quite as thick; the face had gained an ineradicable knowledge of human nature. But the intensity was still there in the watchful expression, the slightly hunched shoulders. He looked, as always, to be poised on the balls of his feet, ready to leap into the air at a moment’s notice.
I tried not to guess what similarities, what differences, he saw in my own face, my own body.
“Salome,” he said.
I could not think what to answer—even his name wouldn’t come to my lips. But before he could speak again there was a muffled shriek behind me and the sound of footsteps pattering closer. I could only guess that a few women who had clustered outside the building to hear the singing had just realized that an angel was practically in their midst. I could have laughed—I could have cried. All this time without a chance to speak to Stephen and now we would be surrounded by giggling girls and panting women, eager to stroke a wingfeather with their fingertips.
I saw Stephen’s gaze go briefly behind me; his mouth tightened in the slightest display of irritation. Then he took three running steps in my direction, scooped me into his arms, and flung himself into the brilliant summer sky.
Four
I had lied to the girls back at the farm, of course. It is a magical experience to be carried in an angel’s arms. Or at least it is if the angel is thoughtful, considerate, and remotely interested in your well-being. He cradles you against his chest as if you were precious beyond description. The heat from his body—so much warmer than that of an ordinary man—fills you with a sense of well-being and protects you from the chill wind of the upper heavens. And you are flying—you are coasting above the world in a fluid, gliding motion that is simultaneously dizzying and exhilarating. You realize you have never before felt so deliriously alive. You realize you never again want to come back to the ground.
Stephen flew for maybe ten minutes, far enough to take us some distance beyond the confines of Laban, close enough that I could walk back if I had to. He circled to land in some random spot marked only by a stand of trees in an otherwise grassy stretch of land. He came down so gently that I barely marked the transition between divine flight and prosaic standing.
The minute he was on the ground, he set me on my feet, released me, and stepped back as if he suddenly remembered that he did not want to touch me.
We stood there a few moments, merely staring at each other. I realized that I had not profitably employed my time during the flight formulating anything I could say to him.
I tried his name. “Stephen.” But that just led to another long moment of silence.
Finally he spoke. “I had given up on the idea that I would ever see you again.”
“Did you want to see me again?” I asked, before I bothered to wonder if I would like his answer.
He nodded, very slowly, as if not certain the answer was yes. “I had questions I wanted to ask.”
I almost laughed. No doubt he did. “Well, ask them,” I said. “Eighteen years ago, I might not have answered, but now—” I made a helpless gesture. “It seems pointless to keep any secrets.”
“Have you been well?” he asked. “Have you been safe and healthy and adequately cared for?”
I stared. Those questions were not even on the list of queries I would have expected him to prepare. “Well enough,” I said. “As safe and healthy as anyone is, I suppose.”
“You were so frail,” he said, “after the baby was born.”
I caught my breath. Of course, he had been at Windy Point when I delivered that stillborn child. He had not come to see me, but any number of people could have given him hourly reports on my condition. “Within a month, I was well enough to travel,” I said.
“I know,” he said. “You left while I was taking a message to Monteverde. And no one knew where you had gone.”
“To be perfectly candid,” I said, “I have to say I’m surprised that you even bothered to inquire after my whereabouts.”
For the first time, he glanced away from me, as if taking one long last look at something in the past. “It was badly done of me,” he said, his voice very subdued, “to be so wrapped up in my own anger that I did not bother to notice how deeply you were hurt.”
“If anyone should be making apologies for that time, it’s me,” I replied swiftly. “Generous as you are, you can’t possibly believe that you can be blamed for anything that happened.”
He shrugged, an
d his tightly held wings lifted and settled behind his back. “I could have tried harder to understand what mattered to you and why you did—everything you did.”
“I abandoned a man who cared for me so I could become the bed-mate of a more powerful man,” I said baldly. “There is nothing there to understand but ambition.”
He was still looking away from me. “I think perhaps you did not realize,” he said, “how much I truly loved you.”
I fell silent again, surprised. He was right, of course. I had adored Stephen, everything about him—his serious face, his earnest conversation, his passionate lovemaking. When I was with him, I felt such a blaze of internal happiness that at times I thought my skin would catch fire. But I hadn’t believed he had loved me in the same way.
Oh, I knew he was fond of me. He didn’t just show me affection, he spoke of it openly. But I was an angel-seeker. I had been living among angels for four years when I met Stephen. I knew very well what kinds of relationships were possible between angel men and mortal girls. Few angels bother to marry, and those who do are seldom faithful. It is so important that they produce new angel offspring, and it is so rare that they do, that the very culture of Samaria encourages them to be promiscuous. No girl who cannot bring a live angel infant to term expects to have any emotional hold on one of those magnificent creatures. I understood that rule; I was willing to abide by it. I had not had any reason to believe that, in Stephen’s case, it did not hold true.
Now he looked at me again, his dark eyes darker with an old pain. “That is what I blame myself for,” he said. “Not making sure you understood my feelings.”
I made a small, fatalistic gesture with one hand. “Well, you should lay down that burden of guilt,” I said. “The girl I was back then did not deserve any man’s love. I was so flattered by Raphael’s attention that I’m not sure anything you could have said would have kept me away from him. I wanted to bear an angel baby, and I wanted it to be the Archangel’s child. I was so blinded by thoughts of my glorious future that it was hard for me to see any other riches that might have been laid out, waiting for me to sweep them up.”
“I was so sorry to learn that your child was stillborn,” Stephen said. “I knew how hopeful you were that this time—” Now he was the one to make a gesture that served to complete his sentence.
I nodded. I had miscarried three times before—twice with Stephen’s children. I had been optimistic once I made it safely past the third month, elated once I passed the sixth month. I was certain that the child inside me was angelic, and so were the healers at the hold. Those last few months, as my belly distended and I began to suffer uncommon aches, one healer or another was at my side almost constantly. I knew those women didn’t care about me; I knew they would be happy to consign me to death if they could just coax a living angel child from my womb. They fed me special concoctions; they massaged my stomach; they forbade me to walk more than six feet from my bed.
All to no avail. My son died before he could be born. I saw the thin membranes of his wings wrapped around his tiny body before they carried him from the room.
“It was a bitter day,” I said.
“I would have thought,” he said, and then hesitated and tried again. “It had seemed to me—Raphael is careless of the people around him, and yet in your case—”
I guessed what he was trying to say. “You did not expect him to cast me from the hold mere weeks after I suffered such a traumatic event,” I said.
Stephen nodded. “I always thought he was fond of you, in a rather careless way.”
“He didn’t throw me out,” I said. “I chose to leave.”
Stephen watched me, his dark eyes suddenly narrowed. “That’s what Raphael told me when I came back from Monteverde,” he said. “But that seemed completely inconsistent with everything I knew about you.”
I smiled somewhat sourly. “What angel-seeker voluntarily leaves the hold?” I said. “What angel-seeker ever gives up hope that the next lover, the next baby, will be the one she has waited for all this time?”
“You had seemed so determined to get what you wanted,” he said. “I thought you could hardly fail.”
“It turned out that what I wanted carried a price too high for me to pay.”
If possible, his expression grew even more intent. “What price?”
Now I was the one to look away. This was a story I had never told a soul, and I was not about to repeat it to Stephen now. “Something Raphael asked me to do,” I said. “And I realized I could not do it.”
“What was it?”
I shook my head. “If I were to say it out loud,” I said, “I think the god might strike me dead.”
Stephen took a long breath. I was sure he was trying to conceive of an action so heinous that it would have repulsed even someone as morally questionable as I had been—but I doubted he would ever figure it out on his own. “He didn’t seem very happy that you were gone,” he said now.
“Did he look for me?” I asked.
Stephen shook his head. “Not that I’m aware of. At least, none of the people at the places I went, trying to find you, mentioned that the Archangel had been there first.”
Even after all these years, it was almost unbearably sweet to learn that he had sought me out. I spared a moment to wonder how my life would have been different if he had actually found me, but the images were so painful that I had to quickly close them out of my mind. “What places did you try?” I asked.
“I went to Velora, of course, and Luminaux and Semorrah. I remembered the names of some of your friends—women who had left Windy Point a year or two earlier—and I found three of them. But none of them knew where you were. I even went back to Monteverde, in case you had arrived there after I left, but you hadn’t.”
“And you asked my sister,” I said in an even voice.
He nodded, showing not the faintest trace of self-consciousness. “I went to her last because I couldn’t believe you would have taken shelter with her. You had told me often enough how strained your relationship was, but I thought that perhaps in such a stressful time, you would have found her your only haven.” He shrugged. “But you weren’t there and she said she hadn’t seen you. I kept looking, but with less and less hope.” He fixed his eyes on mine again. “I still cannot believe I found you here today.”
I was finding it a little hard to breathe. How many nights had I tortured myself, imagining how quickly Stephen must have been attracted to Ann to take her as a lover the very day he met her? Sometimes I was able to convince myself that he brought her to his bed merely because she looked enough like me to satisfy him in the dark. More often I remembered her fair skin, her silky blond hair, her grace and her elegance, and I thought he had been drawn to her because she was, in so many ways, my exact opposite. But it had never occurred to me that the encounter would mean so little to him that he would gloss over it as if it had not even happened.
“I did not expect to find you in Laban, either,” I said. “I was told you lived now in Monteverde. That’s a pretty long way to come merely to attend a small-town festival.”
He smiled slightly. “Ariel sent me to Windy Point with a message for Raphael,” he said. “Enough of the other angels were going to Laban that I thought it might be enjoyable. I always think it is good to perform in these small venues, for it is rare that common men and women get a chance to hear the angels singing.”
I had recovered my poise, or mostly. “Why did you leave Windy Point?” I asked. “And go to Monteverde, of all places?”
He was silent a moment. “I found—there were things about Raphael—I disagreed too often with the way he ran the hold,” he said finally. It was clear he was editing out all kinds of calamitous detail. “To stay would have made me complicit in some of his behaviors. I do not want to claim that I am more virtuous than the next man—but I am not capable of living the way Raphael lives.”
This raised my eyebrows practically to my hairline. “I always thought Raphael had the ca
pacity to be utterly dissolute,” I said. “I always thought that if he had been a mortal man, blessed with the same good looks and a certain amount of property, he would have sown bastards across the countryside and finished every night in a drunken stupor. But I believed that the very office of Archangel would have forced him to a higher standard. He is so much in the public eye. Angels from all holds are in and out of Windy Point on a daily basis. He could not possibly be as corrupt as he had the potential to be.”
Stephen actually seemed relieved to hear me put the case so bluntly, for he was nodding energetically. “Yes—so you would think—but he found ways early on to separate the public business of the hold from the private. There are parts of Windy Point that visitors rarely see. And thus there are activities that occur in Windy Point—well. I can only say that if Gabriel and Ariel knew about them, I think they would petition the god to relieve Raphael of his responsibility before his term officially ended.”
“Those are grave charges,” I said.
Stephen nodded. “But I think you know the man well enough not to be shocked.”
“Everything I hear about Gabriel leads me to believe he will be a better Archangel in every sense.”
Stephen nodded again. “He is young, but he has a great deal of presence and self-assurance. I know that Ariel admires him greatly. Some angels will tell you that he is arrogant, and others will complain that his standards of behavior are so high no one can be expected to meet them. I say, after Raphael, no Archangel could be too righteous or too demanding. I plan to be at the Gloria and sing with all my heart the year that Gabriel is installed in that office.”
“That will be an event worth celebrating,” I agreed.