Angelica

by Sharon Shinn

  But, of course, the next morning, she had.

  “I thought it would be easier on me, on everybody, just to be gone,” Susannah said at last. “I did not think—I did not expect to see you now. I don’t know that I am ready for it. It is so hard to leave behind one life and embrace a new one. I thought if I did it all at once, it would be easier.”

  “And has it been?” Tirza asked.

  Susannah gave a small, desperate laugh. “No! I am so lonely at times I cannot bear it. But everyone has been kind, and I think, after I am with them for a while, I will come to love them all. Already I love Miriam, who is the most impossible child imaginable. Think of Keren, only multiply all her sins and all her blessings, and you might have an idea of Miriam. She is so bad and she is so good. And the others—I am finding them already snuggling into the empty places of my heart. I will be content there someday, I know. But for now—I miss all of you. I miss our way of life. I miss living with the rain and sun and the open land and the new adventure of every day.” She put a hand on Tirza’s arm. “I miss the sound of breathing around me every night. That I miss most of all.”

  “Do you miss Dathan?” Tirza asked.

  Susannah was silent. “I try not to,” she said at last. “Dathan is the reason I agreed to leave.”

  “He has been—I would like to say he has been faithful to your memory—” Tirza began.

  Susannah shook her head. “I left to marry another man. That set Dathan free.”

  “And he has taken advantage of that freedom,” Tirza said regretfully. “Though he is not, at the moment, tangled in any woman’s charms. And I know, though he has not said so, that he thinks of you often. He will be happy to see you tonight.”

  “I don’t want to see him,” Susannah whispered. “I will sleep in Claudia’s tent.”

  They paused under a brightly striped awning while Miriam and Keren cooed over an assortment of ribbons and bows. Claudia had ranged ahead and was earnestly talking with a vendor about some kitchen pot that looked big enough to boil a horse in. Susannah could not imagine packing that up every night and taking it on to the next campsite.

  “You will have to fence Dathan out of your heart before you can invite someone else in,” Tirza said seriously.

  Susannah produced a small smile. “Perhaps I will not invite anyone else in. Perhaps it will be my own small solitary garden full of private flowers.”

  “What about this angel?” Tirza asked. “Gaaron. If you are to marry him, he may well want to smell those blossoms.”

  Now Susannah laughed. She had almost forgotten the easy way Edori talked about relations between men and women, how such relations were a source of constant and personal interest among the other members of the tribe. “We have not planned the wedding yet,” she replied, evading.

  But Tirza was not to be put off. “So how do you deal together?” she asked. “I liked him well enough when he was at the campsite, but he may have been putting on his best manners just for show.”

  “No, pretty much that is how Gaaron always behaves,” Susannah said. “He is very serious and considerate and kind. He is completely to be trusted. Everyone in the hold comes to him with every problem, from the smallest to the gravest. He expects it. He is used to handling everything and having no one at all to help him. He is not so interested in entering a woman’s flower garden and playing at love.”

  Tirza did not answer, and Susannah looked over at her. The other woman was watching her with a tiny frown. “That’s strange.”

  “What is?”

  “How you talk about him.”

  Susannah felt breathless. She thought her voice had been completely neutral. “How do I talk about him?”

  “As if you are aggrieved.”

  Susannah laughed nervously. “Aggrieved by what?”

  Tirza shrugged and shook her head, as if she could not quite define it. “By how unappreciated he is by his friends—and by how little he appreciates you.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Susannah said. “I think he appreciates me a great deal. He has told me more than once how he values my judgment, and I know he likes to talk things over with me.”

  “How odd,” Tirza said.

  “Stop saying things like that,” Susannah said impatiently.

  Tirza shook her head again. “He does not seem like the kind of man you would fall in love with. And yet I think you have.”

  Susannah looked away. “The god has decreed that I marry him,” she said softly. “And I will do it. The god said nothing about love. That comes at our bidding, not Yovah’s. Gaaron is a good man. I will not be unhappy with him. I do not expect more than that.”

  Keren came running up with a handful of red-dyed ribbons. “Look, Tirza, see, I can make a headband and wear them in my hair,” she said. She held up the shiny strips of satin, and they indeed made a gorgeous contrast against her black hair. “I will make a red dress and wear it at the Gathering, and tie these ribbons around my braids,” she said dreamily. “I will look so beautiful when I sing that no one will notice if I miss some of the notes.”

  Susannah and Tirza laughed. “Are we all done shopping now?” Tirza demanded. “It is time we got back. Everyone in the camp will be so excited to see our special guests.” Her smile included Miriam in this excitement. “It is selfish of us to keep them all to ourselves.”

  They quickened their steps and took fewer detours as they reached the edges of the city. Susannah was feeling more apprehensive by the moment, and when they got close enough to see the Edori tents a quarter mile ahead of them, she felt her heart begin to flutter. She did not want to see Dathan again, she did not.

  She did. Yovah be merciful, she did.

  For a few brief, painful minutes after they arrived at the Lohora camp, no one realized she was there. The campfires cooked, sending up their pungent, familiar flavors. The children ran yelling between tents, playing some complex, ridiculous game. Voices called to one another, laughter rippled from fire to fire. Everything was so familiar, so sweet. Everything was so agonizingly lost to her forever.

  Then—“Susannah!”—and the cry darted from mouth to mouth, tent to tent. Door flaps burst backward as bodies shot out, cook pots splashed as the cooks dropped their ladles. Never had there been such a frenzy and commotion. Susannah laughed and exclaimed as she went from one embrace to another. “You’ve grown so tall! You’ve cut your hair! Look at you, Shua, a baby on the way! Claudia must be delighted.” It hurt to feel so much love at once. She could not kiss enough cheeks, could not feel enough hands upon her arms and shoulders. She was trying not to cry, but the tears came anyway.

  “You should not have stayed away so long, not after leaving like that,” Anna said, scolding her as Tirza had.

  “No—of course I should not have—but aren’t you looking well—”

  She did not see Dathan, not at first. Perhaps he was out with the others, hunting, or down near the Galilee River. She did duck inside Bartholomew’s tent and put her hand on the hot forehead and note the way the skin had loosened around his wrists and collarbone. But his color was not bad, and she believed him when he said he was mending.

  “Seeing you will make me well before dawn,” he told her with a smile.

  She smiled back. “Who is tending you? Your sister?”

  “At night. Most days, Anna has sat beside me and fetched whatever I needed.”

  Her smile grew wider. “I am happy to hear that! Did she offer, or did you ask for her?”

  “She kindly offered.”

  Susannah bent to kiss him on the cheek. “Now you must work to reverse that,” she whispered in his ear. “Have your sister tend you in the daylight, and ask Anna to lie beside you at night.”

  He was not a jovial man, but his face looked amused as she drew back to survey him. “I will propose that to her as soon as I have recovered my strength,” he said.

  When she emerged from the tent, she found Dathan waiting for her, and everyone else deeply engaged in some urgent task. She roc
ked back a little on her heels and stood there a moment, unable to move forward.

  “Susannah,” he said.

  He looked beautiful as a summer morning. The slanting evening sun turned his skin to bronze and his hair a spangled midnight black. The bones of his face were elegant and severe; his dark eyes were soulful and imploring. She wanted nothing so much as to lay her hands upon his skin and soak up the very texture of his body.

  “Dathan.”

  He stared at her as if she could not possibly be real, a woman made up of dreams and longings. Whenever she had thought of Dathan these past weeks, which was often, she had always remembered him laughing. She had forgotten how devastating it could be to have Dathan focused on her, willing her to want him, to believe him.

  “I thought I might never see you again,” he said.

  She smiled as much as she could, which was not much. “It is too soon for me to be back here,” she said quietly. “It hurts even more than I thought it would.”

  “Have you come back to stay?”

  She shook her head. “The god has called me to a new life. I must live with the angels now.”

  “The god might change his mind,” he suggested.

  This time the smile was more real. “That does not seem to be Yovah’s way.”

  “I’ve missed you,” he said.

  She swallowed against a tight throat. “Yes. I’ve missed you.”

  Not asking if he could, he reached out and took her arm. She felt that light grip against her skin as she might feel a brand of searing metal. “Walk with me a little bit,” he said.

  She could not speak, and so she nodded.

  He pulled her away from the tent, away from the campsite, sliding his hand down her arm until his fingers found hers. They interlaced their hands and continued walking, heads down, mouths silent, the busily gossiping camp falling ever farther behind them. It was close to sunset now, and a brisk chill laced the air, though it was not nearly so cold here as it had been at the Eyrie. Still, no part of Susannah was completely warm except the hand held in Dathan’s.

  “I remember the first time I saw you,” he said at last. “That time at the Gathering. You and your family had just arrived, and you were pitching your tent. And it was hot, and Paul was cross, and Linus had lost a tent peg. Your mother was too sick to help, so she was just sitting outside, looking at everything. And all of them were watching you. You were the calm, still center of that family. Every time you spoke any word, you brought peace. You found the missing stake. You gave your mother her dinner. You laughed your brother back into good humor. You kissed your father just because you loved him. And I thought, ‘I want to be in that tent, with that girl. I want that peace wrapped around me.’ ”

  Susannah smiled a little, her face tilted down so he could not see. “And the first time I saw you,” she said, “you were laughing. You looked so carefree and beautiful that I thought the sun and the stars themselves must love you. I wanted to stand inside your joy and let it fill me up, let it glaze me in gold. I wanted to be one of the things that brought that happiness to your face.”

  He stopped and turned to look at her. He had dropped her hand, but only so that he could put both his hands on her shoulders. “You are one of those things, Susannah,” he said quietly. “One of the only things that brings me happiness. I have been so sad with you gone from me.”

  She raised her hand so she could put her palm against his face. Dear Yovah, the smoothness of his cheek, the roughness of beard stubble along his jaw—how many times had she placed her hand just so and marveled at those subtle contradictions? She felt tears coming to her eyes and she did not know how to form any words at all, much less the ones she needed to say.

  “You left because of me,” he said. “No matter what call the god sent out, you did not leave at Yovah’s urging. Come back because of me. I will be whatever you want.”

  “I want you to be the laughing man who stands at any campfire and makes it burn brighter,” she whispered. “I thought I wanted to stamp that memory from my heart, but I find I want that image burned there always, a picture of joy and jubilation. I don’t want you to change for me. I don’t want you to change at all.”

  “I have changed anyway,” he whispered back.

  He kissed her, and the world ended. She could feel his arms around her back, his hair against her skin, his mouth upon her lips, but everything else was gone—earth, sky, scarlet sun. She kissed him back feverishly, pressing her hands against his face, against the back of his head, upon his shoulders. She dropped her hands lower, slipped them inside his shirt, her cool fingers against the warm silk of his skin. His ribs were like the carved ivory bones of some fine musical instrument; the knobs of his spine were as pronounced and delicate as spun glass globes. She touched them all, every bone of his chest, every bone of his back. She remembered each one of them.

  His own hands were wandering—through her hair, down her shoulders, up again to the fastenings at the front of her blouse. How many times had they made love on some open prairie a mile or two from camp, not even trying to find a secluded spot where no one was likely to come across them by accident? She laughed as the first bow untied in his hand, laughed even harder as the second one knotted up and refused to loosen. He paused to kiss her again. When he drew his head back, she leaned her body against him, cheek against his chest, arms folded around his waist. His own arms came up and wrapped her closer, and they stood that way, embraced, till the sun finally abandoned them, slipping behind the horizon line and leaving darkness behind.

  When Dathan’s hands grew restless again, pushing at her shoulders and trying to find her skin, she only held him tighter. She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her arms around his body, and would not look up or speak. He tried twice more, and then he knew. All the tension went from his body. His arms fell about her loosely, and for a moment, she was the only one holding on. Then he took a deep breath, gathered her to him more tightly, and dropped a kiss on the top of her head.

  “I’m not the only one who has changed,” he said.

  She still would not look up. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve been afraid to come back. Afraid to see you again. For so many reasons. But this wasn’t one of them.”

  “Do you love him? That angel?”

  “Not yet,” she said.

  “Then—”

  But she shook her head against his chest. “No,” she said. “I can’t. I don’t understand it, but I can’t. We have to go back to camp.”

  “All right,” he said. But he did not release her, and she still clung to him. They stood there a long time, not so much embracing as leaning against each other for support, as if they had witnessed a death or a disaster, before they disentangled. They walked back to camp even more slowly and silently than they had left it, to find everyone gathered around one central campfire, already eating dinner.

  “Susannah! Come sit with me! I’ve saved you a seat!” Amram called. Other voices called her name, invited her to try this stew or that loaf of bread, was she hungry, was she thirsty, put this shawl on against the chill. She smiled at everyone and accepted all the sudden happy embraces, but she felt hollow and strange inside. As if part of her had died, as if all of her had died and this was the wistful half-life of the dead. Tirza gave her one sharp look but said nothing, and Claudia bustled up and insisted Susannah wear her own jacket, very warm, and sit down right this minute and eat.

  Everyone in the whole camp seemed to know what had just happened, down to the whispered exchange and the last averted kiss. Everyone except Miriam. She sat half a dozen seats away from Susannah and watched her with a dark, accusing stare, as if betrayed on her brother’s behalf by Susannah’s presumed defection. Susannah gave her a tired smile, but she had no words with which to defend herself, no words to explain what had just happened. She accepted a plate and a glass from Anna, and allowed herself the luxury, for the duration of the meal, of thinking about nothing but the food in front of her.

  In the mor
ning, essentially the same delegation headed back into Luminaux, except that Claudia did not accompany them. Susannah had indeed spent the night in Claudia’s tent, claiming she wanted to be able to help should Bartholomew need aid in the night. In addition, as she pointed out, Tirza’s tent was already absorbing another body, since Keren had invited Miriam to sleep beside her so they could whisper secrets in the dark. Susannah had not exactly slept. Between listening to Bartholomew’s labored breathing and picturing Dathan, awake and brooding three tents over, she had had very little will to close her eyes and dream the night away.

  It was with extraordinarily mixed feelings that she made her good-byes in the morning and accepted the small gifts pressed on her by Bartholomew and Claudia and Anna. She hugged everyone once—twice—before she left again, though Dathan was nowhere in sight and so did not receive a farewell. She was sure he had absented himself to spare his own feelings, not hers, and yet she was glad he was not there.

  But she missed him terribly and carried a black stone in her heart as they walked away from camp and back toward Luminaux.

  They had been walking for about half an hour when Tirza said, in a cautious tone of voice that meant she was trying to sound casual, “I’ve been thinking.”

  Susannah put her hands to her heart and feigned astonishment. “Yovah rejoices! A miracle has occurred!”

  Tirza ignored her. “I do not like to imagine you so lonely in that angel hold. And now with Miriam gone for some weeks, I would guess you will be lonelier than ever.”

  “I know,” Susannah said. “But my loneliness is not the way to make decisions about Miriam’s life.”

  “I was thinking maybe you could take Keren back with you.”

  Susannah was so surprised that she actually came to a full halt on the road. “Keren? Bring her back?”

  “Just for a little bit,” Tirza said. “A month or two. She has such envy and desire for a softer way of life. Like your Miriam, she is a good girl, but somewhat misdirected. Maybe if she got a chance to see what that other life was like, she would learn that she loves the Edori way more than she realized.”