When he did speak, he sounded irritated already. “You don’t like to make things easy for people, do you?”
That made me grin. “Honestly, I don’t,” I said.
He pivoted, his wings making a lovely, majestic sweep. “You don’t even say hello. You don’t even let me know you’re here.”
“You knew I was here.”
“That’s not the point.”
“You think I’m rude?”
“I think you’re—” He searched for the right words. “Deliberately provoking.”
I grinned. “That’s about as accurate a description as I’ve heard.”
“My question would be, why? Is it your goal to make people dislike you?”
“Do you dislike me?” I responded.
His brows twitched together. “I was talking about other people.”
“I can be accommodating when I feel like it,” I said. “I can get along with people if I want to.”
“So you reserve this provoking behavior for me.”
“Not just you. I was very insubordinate with the housekeeper at my last job, for instance.”
“Ah. So you like to challenge authority—or people who believe their station in life puts them above you.”
“Yes, but you can see that I only harm myself by such behavior. I lost that position a couple of months ago. And the one before it.”
“Yet you don’t try to be more submissive. More conformable.”
“There is a certain contrariness at the base of my personality,” I allowed. “It is so hard for me to act the way people expect me to act, even if it’s in my own best interests.”
“How, I wonder, would someone come by such a trait?”
Oh, there was a story it would take half the night to tell. “I was born with it, I believe,” I said lightly.
“But I don’t,” he said.
I was lost. “Don’t what? Don’t believe me?”
“Dislike you,” he said. “Most of the time.”
“I can try harder to be annoying,” I offered.
“I’ll let you know if that becomes necessary.”
It was peculiar to have an angel tell me he didn’t dislike me—though that didn’t mean he liked me, and, at any rate, it scarcely mattered, since I doubted my future held many more intimate nighttime conferences with this one. Because I didn’t know how to answer him, I changed the subject. “So why are you out here on the roof?”
“I was thinking about something you said.”
“Really? What’s that?” I rubbed my arms. It was probably ten degrees above freezing and I’d only worn a light jacket since I hadn’t expected to be outside any longer than it took to climb the hill.
“Flying.”
“Really? You think you might be ready to attempt it again? You think you can sense the buildings and the trees—”
“Not that, not yet,” he interrupted. “I don’t even know if my wings can support my weight.”
“Well, we aren’t very far from the ground up here,” I said. “Three stories. You could jump off the roof and just try to glide down. You’d be careful because you know the ground isn’t very far away.”
“That’s a possibility,” he said gravely. “But I want to try something else first. Coming back to the roof.”
“That seems harder,” I commented.
“Yes,” he replied. “A better test.”
“And you’re not worried about losing your bearings?”
“You’ll have to help me, of course. You’ll have to call out to me. I would not get so far from the house I would lose the sound of your voice.”
I was washed with a sense of pleasure so irrational that I immediately tried to destroy it. “You trust me to do that? What if I decide to remain silent, just to confuse you?”
I had thought to baffle him or enrage him or make him so uneasy that he instantly abandoned his plan. But he was getting as good a measure of my personality as I was of his. “In that case,” he replied, “I will come awkwardly to ground—perhaps injure myself—attempt to make my way safely back to the house without your help—and then refuse to see you again. Which would cause you to lose what I have come to believe is your very real pleasure in visiting with me for however long this arrangement lasts.”
I was silent for a beat. “That was good,” I said. “You thought this through before I even arrived tonight, didn’t you?”
He was smiling—a real smile, pleased with himself, a little smug, but I had to admit I liked it. “I did,” he said. He had started pacing slowly around the perimeter of the roof, as if trying to get an exact feel for its dimensions. I kept turning slightly to keep him in my sight. “I don’t think you would betray me in such a fashion. If I ask for your help, and you promise it, I don’t think you’ll renege.”
Oh, yes, a very good measure of my personality. “What do you want me to do?” I asked.
“Stand in the middle of the roof. Where there are no pipes or poles that will trip me up when I land. They are too small for me to sense, and they have brought me down more than once before this. I will go aloft—I will circle—and then I will come down to the sound of your voice.”
“How far out will you be able to go and still hear me?”
He cocked his head, as if listening. “It’s a still night,” he said. “Sound should carry some distance. When your voice grows faint, I’ll circle back.”
“So you want me to stand here the whole time you’re in the sky, shouting out nonsense like an idiot?”
“That shouldn’t be too hard for you,” he said.
Before I could respond with indignation, he laid a hand on the half wall and vaulted up to a crouch. I was suddenly flooded with a very real fear. “Corban—” I began, but I couldn’t think what to say. Be careful. As if this was an enterprise where caution was possible. Are you sure you’re ready? As if I hadn’t been the one pushing him to try this very feat. Good luck. As if I was afraid he’d fall....
He straightened in one quick, graceful motion, his wings spread to help him keep his balance. For a moment he stood there motionless, limned against the moonlight, a distinctive shape with such primeval power that I felt my breath catch in my throat.
And then the great wings spiked downward, sending a current of wind billowing over the roof, and Corban was airborne.
My fear mutated to outright terror as he seemed to list and stutter against the faint breeze. I could see his wings beating frantically, his arms chopping through the air as if he was fighting to realign his weight. He made one sloppy circle overhead, dipping dangerously close to the corner of the house, before he was able to gain a little altitude. I saw his body straighten out, his arms stop thrashing—and then it was as if he had it. He remembered the trick. He was flying.
He widened his arc, climbing upward at the same time. From this odd vantage point, directly underneath him at intermittent points, I could see the laboring of his wings, feel the faintest draft from his passage. It was so impossible and yet so beautiful, the sight of an angel in flight. I felt an awe, a sense of wonder, as if the god had stepped down and rested his hand upon my shoulder.
Corban’s range expanded to an even greater distance. I had the impression that he had grown giddy with motion and, like a drunk man, lost all fear or capability for rational behavior. “Corban, not so far!” I called out, remembering for the first time that I had a responsibility in this little drama. “Corban, can you still hear me?”
For an answer, he canted his body over so that his wings were almost perpendicular to the ground and made a tight spiral back in my direction. “Corban!” I shouted. “Can you still hear me?”
He passed over my head and waved and kept flying.
I twisted to watch his progress and continued to call his name out at regular intervals, adding the occasional That’s too far and Come back this way now. It’s hard to know what words to employ when you’re acting as a human foghorn. The part of my brain that wasn’t taken up by fear was swamped with embarrassm
ent at being in such a ridiculous position, so I started singing a children’s lullaby at the top of my lungs. He might mock me for my untrained voice, but at least I didn’t have to think about the lyrics.
For all his seeming rashness, it was clear Corban truly was listening to me. He strayed farther than I liked, but almost immediately came back, as if he had discovered the outer border beyond which my voice would not carry. I wasn’t sure I could have heard him from the same distance, but I knew his ears were sharper than mine.
The wind picked up force and I was terrified that it would blow him off course, but after a shaky moment, he seemed to remember how to ride the draft. So all I need to worry about is whether I’m going to freeze to death, I thought, rubbing my arms again and stamping my feet for warmth. I got tired of the lullaby and switched to a tavern ditty. I wondered if he could catch the words, or only the snatched phrases of my melody. I wondered how long he planned to stay out on his first flight in two years. I wondered if he kept circling the house because he was afraid to try to land.
Almost as soon as I had the thought, I realized that he was flying in a narrower and narrower curve, dropping downward as he closed the distance. I abandoned music and began shouting directions. “Corban! This way! You’re about twenty yards up now and twenty yards out. All right—now you’re just above the wall, you need to come in closer. That’s right—and a little lower—”
He adjusted some angle of his feathers and suddenly went into a whole different mode of travel, hovering instead of flying. His body swung from a horizontal to a vertical position, his legs pointed down as if he were feeling for the surface with his toes. His wings, which had been outstretched and quiescent as he glided, were now beating the air again with great energy, holding him in place just a few feet above the roof. I was so close to him I was buffeted by every stroke; my hair whipped around my face.
“Almost there—drop down a few more inches—”
He put his hands out, as if reaching for me, and I unthinkingly grabbed them. Many things happened at once. His feet hit the roof hard and he stumbled into me, clutching my shoulders for support. His wings lashed around us both, helping his balance, maybe, but adding to my clumsiness and confusion. For a moment, the world was a chaotic ball of motion and feathers and unexpected heat as our bodies crushed together and we both staggered and tried not to fall over.
And then the angel came to rest with his arms around me and his wings draped over my shoulders and the moon ladling silver over us both. I could feel his rapid heartbeat, the heavy suck and release of breath as he gasped for air, but for a moment what astonished me most was the sheer radiant warmth of his body. I knew, but I had forgotten, that angels’ blood ran at a higher temperature than a mortal’s, to keep them warm when they flew at high altitudes. I was so cold that I wanted to burrow in, practically dig for shelter against his skin.
Instead I waited another heartbeat, until I was steady on my own feet, and then stepped back just enough to free myself from his arms. His wings still lingered on my shoulder blades, the feathers tickling my throat.
“You did it!” I exclaimed. “Were you scared? Are you excited? What did it feel like?”
“Terrifying. Exhilarating. I thought I would fall—there at the beginning—I couldn’t get the height, I thought I would crash down, but I didn’t. I caught the updraft, and then I remembered, I remembered all of it, as if it had only been a day since the last time I flew—”
“You went pretty far,” I said in an encouraging voice. “Maybe a hundred yards out and almost as far up. Could you tell how much distance you were covering?”
“No, but I think with practice I could,” he said. “Or maybe I could devise some kind of numerical system—flying at a steady rate for a count of five hundred would mean I had covered a certain set mileage—”
“That sounds like you want to keep trying,” I said.
“Yes! There are a lot of things I could experiment with. Pressure, for instance. The air feels different when you reach a certain altitude, so if I make careful assessments of how it feels at different levels, I’ll be able to tell how high I am.”
I couldn’t help laughing. “That’s ambitious for someone who hasn’t even been aloft for almost two years!”
He grinned. “I know—I must start slowly and build up my strength and gauge how much I really can do. But—I can’t describe to you—just the sensation of being in flight—I have missed it so much.” He came closer and his voice took a deeper tone. “And I have you to thank for giving me the courage to fly again.”
Oh, no, no, no. I could not have gratitude and earnestness from an angel. I was not used to that from anybody. “Think how relieved I am that this night went so well,” I told him. “If you’d come crashing to the ground and snapped one of your wings—well, that would have been my fault.”
“I wouldn’t have blamed you,” he said, still in that serious manner.
“Are you joking? You’d never have stopped blaming me!” I exclaimed. “You’d have spent the rest of your life in some attic, sitting in the dark and cursing my name, hating me even more than that angel who wouldn’t help you fly when you first lost your sight.”
He took just enough affront to step back a pace; the last feathers of his wing slipped silkily from my shoulder, leaving me even colder than before. “But unlike that old friend, you were exceptionally helpful,” he said, and his voice had the slightest edge. “I had counted on you to keep calling, but I hadn’t expected songs. And such songs! ‘The Shy Angel-Seeker of Sweet Semorrah’? The last time I heard that piece sung, I was keeping very questionable company.”
“You’re keeping questionable company now. You just didn’t realize it before.”
“Oh, I realized it,” he replied. “I just haven’t had much latitude in my choice of companions.”
I snorted in amusement. “Well, I don’t mind if you make fun of my song selection,” I said. “Just don’t make fun of my voice. You can’t expect a mortal to sound like an angel.”
He looked surprised. “In fact, I was impressed with the quality of your voice,” he said. “Am I wrong, or are you an angel’s daughter?”
And then I did the stupidest thing. Instead of answering, I caught my breath, as if he had offered me the gravest insult, then turned around and practically ran for the stairwell. I had closed the trapdoor, not wanting the blind angel to put a foot wrong as he tried to land, and now my frozen hands couldn’t pry it up fast enough. With a pouncing motion and a swirl of feathers, Corban caught my arm and hauled me to my feet before I could escape.
“Moriah—I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to offend you,” he said.
“I’m not offended,” I grated out through chattering teeth. I tried to jerk free but his hand tightened automatically. High body heat and exceptional strength—oh, angels had far more than their share of advantages. “I’m tired of the conversation.”
“You’re cold,” he said in a wondering voice, suddenly registering the temperature of my skin. He lifted his free hand to wrap around my other arm. “Why didn’t you say so before?”
“Well, first, I was watching you fly. Then I was hearing you talk about how much fun it was to fly. Then I was arguing with you. So there hasn’t been time.”
Unexpectedly, he released me and then drew me against his chest once more. His wings overlapped behind me, a plush cocoon. “We need to get you warmed up.”
“We could do that inside,” I suggested. It was hard to make that sound convincing when I was snuggled up against him, luxuriating in the heat of his body.
“In a minute,” he said. “Why don’t you like to talk about the fact that you’re an angel’s child?”
I had braced myself for the question, and this time I had my armor on. “Why might that be?” I said in a scathing voice. “Oh, maybe because my mother was an angel-seeker. That’s not something to be proud of. Maybe because I was one of the hundreds of children abandoned every year by women who don’t want to be burdened w
ith the care of a mortal child. Maybe because I don’t want your pity or your disdain.”
He was silent a moment. “And how did you come to be at the Gabriel School?” he asked finally.
I laughed and tugged myself free. Jovah’s bones, but it was cold up here once a person stepped outside the protection of an angel’s wings. “Only the latest stop in a highly adventurous life,” I said. “I’m going downstairs. Your dinner’s probably cold by now, but I’d think you’d have built up an appetite.”
This time the recalcitrant door opened without a hitch, and I was quickly down the curving staircase into the blessed warmth of the attic. Corban, who had clearly learned to navigate the steps without being able to see them, was right behind me.
“Are you going to stay and eat with me?” he asked.
“No. I’ve been gone too long as it is.”
“Are you coming back tomorrow?”
I wanted to and I didn’t want to, and the fact that I wanted to really made me not want to. But I hated the idea that someone else might come to the Great House and discover the blind angel. “I suppose,” I said ungraciously. “Someone has to look after you.”
“Can you come back earlier or stay longer? The more I fly, the more I can build up my strength.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I’m just sneaking over here now.”
“Sneaking? Why?” he asked.
“Because no one knows there’s an injured angel hiding in the Great House,” I said tartly. “I thought that was on your command. We’ve all been warned away. People think the place is haunted, so everyone’s afraid of the house anyway.”
“So why did you start coming over?”
I let out my breath on a gusty sigh and offered a partial truth. “Because I’m the kind of person who always goes where I’m not allowed,” I said. “I thought you’d have figured that out by now.”
He was smiling slightly. “I have. I just wanted to hear you say it.”
I made an infuriated sound at the back of my throat. If I was as irksome to others as the angel was to me, I finally understood why some people despised me. “So, yes, I suppose I’ll be back,” I said as I made my way toward the door.
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