by Jane Lebak
When Gabriel didn't say anything, Tobias poured him some more wine. "Finish that and then go upstairs. I'm sure the demon won't come back tonight."
Gabriel didn't move. Tobias settled back at the table. "You might send word where you are. Then if your father relented, he could send for you." Tobias drank some of his own wine. "At least they wouldn't be worried."
Gabriel's face was tight. Tobias could probably see even in the light of the lamp that his shoulders were as rigid as iron bands.
"Let me tell you one more thing," Tobias said. "Before Gabelus, Sarah had another baby. He was born the last day of the rainy season, and the next morning dawned clear, but the baby had died." Tobias shook his head. "He was perfectly formed. Little wrinkled feet, tiny fingers, his face still pushed in, his ears flat as a sheet of parchment. Thick black hair." Tobias sighed. "We laid him in the ground and planted a tree on the spot come spring."
Gabriel bit his lip. Raphael had approached him that day, vibrating but dim. "Tobias and Sarah named their baby after you, but the baby's going to die before morning." Gabriel had been working out a calculus problem with three other Cherubim, and he'd said, "Was there demonic activity? Are you allowed to heal him? Then it's God's will that the child die." Raphael had protested that Tobias would grieve. "Probably, but soon he'll realize the child is in a safe place. He'll never sin. He'll rest in Sheol until the Redeemer arrives to set him free. Just explain that to him." And he'd turned back to the other Cherubim to argue about the range of an integral.
About to speak, Gabriel cut himself off.
"You were going to say it was God's will," Tobias said dryly.
"No." Gabriel choked on the word. "I was going to say, I'm sorry." His head dropped. "I'm truly sorry."
"We had Gabelus the next year," Tobias said, "but I think about that baby sometimes, especially at the close of the rains. I remember another daughter we lost to a fever when she was four. People say how proud I must be of my children, and I am—but when they say this, I always think of all my children. Even with this many, I remember the little lost ones, and I can see the hole they've left in my family by their departure."
Gabriel shivered.
"You need to get back to sleep," Tobias said, standing. "Come on. Back to bed with you."
Gabriel drained the cup, then followed him up the stairs. "So you're saying that just the way you still love your Gabriel, my father still loves his?"
Tobias turned. "I thought I didn't tell you the baby's name."
Gabriel tried to focus on the man's face. "I thought you did."
"Then yes, that's what I'm saying." Tobias continued climbing the staircase, then guided Gabriel through the dark to his room. "I'll leave the censer in your room for the rest of the night."
Gabriel said, "It wasn't the fish that expelled the demon."
Tobias said, "Maybe you're right. Maybe it was just something Azariah made me do while he drove it off."
Gabriel said, "I was thinking it was your faith."
"Then I'll have faith enough for both of us." Tobias kissed his cheek. "Trust that your father still loves you, even after all this."
Sivan 6
The wheat harvest over, all the workers turned their attention to the oats. After the oat harvest would come the lentils, the dates, the flax, the figs, the grapes, and finally the olives.
The attacks by Satan grew fierce, although now Gabriel called for assistance whenever demons confronted him. Sometimes they didn't focus on him: the demons might attack his work. Animals might become belligerent, accidents might happen with materials or equipment, or the weather might become too brutal to permit work. They attacked Gabriel's prayer life. At times he couldn't concentrate, and the whole effort seemed redundant. Why pray when in time you'll return to God? Why struggle now, when it'll be so much easier later on? They caught Gabriel in questions: did he pray correctly? Did he work toward the correct ends for the correct reasons? Should he devote his prayers to other things?
The fallen Seraphim tried multiple times to do what Asmodeus had, leaving sparks like a trail of bread crumbs wherever Gabriel went, until he wondered some days why the Earth itself wasn't on fire. It raked him with longing until he found himself queasy and shivering, yearning for the interior contact that would enliven him and how he'd return his own Cherubic calm to the Seraph. He never gave in; he didn't want a demon in his heart.
After a couple of weeks of this, he learned by accident that if he got excited about something else, he could mimic a Seraph's enthusiasm and kindle a small fire within himself. Although weak, it removed the urgency. Intense sadness sometimes accomplished the same. It took work, but eventually he learned the shortcuts: he could meditate on returning home; he could get Raguel to talk about something the boy found exciting; he could coax the family to trade funny stories.
The demons found Gabriel's most vulnerable area: sleep. If they woke him in the night, he usually returned to sleep without remembering. Striking from miles away, sometimes even from Hell to avoid detection by Raguel-junior's guardian, they could wake him forty or fifty times a night. Gabriel showed signs of fatigue, but Saraquael discovered the attacks, and afterward Gabriel slept with a guardian.
The enemy responded by attacking through his dreams. A crippled Vision came to him during dreaming, once every few nights, never enough to predict, never enough to satisfy. The effect was that of allowing a starving man to smell food without eating, and Gabriel awakened from these dreams longing for company, longing for God.
Sivan 8
After working through the morning, Gabriel broke for lunch with the other men. The sun was hot enough to soften metal, but he shivered.
Raguel spoke to his father, who sent Gabriel back to the house. The women got one look at him and told him to go to bed. He protested, but Raguel's mother ushered him upstairs. "Two of the children are sick too," she said. "Joshua has a high fever, and Rafaela is vomiting."
She promised to bring him something to drink, but Gabriel found himself unnerved by the notion of vomiting. He knew the physical process and could have described exactly which muscles would tense, which would relax, and to what effect. He understood the reason it could happen. But until that minute, when faced with the idea that it might happen to him, his body had seemed tame. Now it transformed into a wild thing, able to do whatever it wanted without permission.
Raguel's mother returned with a cup of broth. He sipped, concerned he'd see it again. He wasn't even queasy.
It shocked him how little of a human body was under control of its owner. The body breathed without permission, digested food without guidance, and transmitted pain the human would rather not feel. Living this way was like clinging to an enraged bull. The actions a human chose to do with the body were so minimal in comparison to the actions a human didn't choose, such as growing hair. Such as getting sick.
Gabriel dozed through the afternoon, alternating praying with sleeping with writing a nerve-wracked journal entry with sleeping again. At the dinner hour, he awakened to find Rafaela curled at his back, so he slept again until Rafaela's mother lifted her away from him. He didn't eat anything.
The next morning he avoided breakfast and gathered with the other men to go back to the fields to tend the grapes. Gabelus sent him back to the kitchen.
"You really don't look good," Angela said. Gabriel insisted he could work, so she sent him into the cellar to make room for the harvest that would be coming in through the rest of the summer. Sliding around crates and baskets sounded like an easy job, except that after half an hour Gabriel had barely started, and his head felt full of cotton. He was shivering again.
He sensed someone arrive, and he looked up to find a golden angel: Remiel. She smiled at him, and then an abrupt concern came to her pale eyes. "You look like death warmed over."
Gabriel sat on one of the crates. "Maybe just death left out in the sun."
"What do you need to do?" He told her, and Remiel moved things around while he watched, dazed. The ho
usehold guardians came down to give her pointers. There was a vague sense that she shouldn't be doing this, but he couldn't put it into words, and after a while she sat beside him. "I think everything is where they needed it."
Gabriel felt cold, which was odd because he knew his body was actually too hot, but right now he wanted to stop trying to think. He needed to lie down.
Remiel helped him stand, and when he faced the staircase, she said, "You can't climb that," and made him hold onto her while she flashed him to the top. From there he got to the kitchen. He sat at the table, stunned.
Raguel's mother brought him broth heavy with herbs.
He thought about stomach spasms and relaxation of the esophageal ring. "I really don't want this."
"It was Sarah's remedy," Raguel's mother said. "She insisted on making it for any kind of illness. It doesn't smell good, but it's something of a staple in this home."
"In my home," Gabriel said, "they'd just let you be sick," and she laughed.
Angela came back upstairs, openly surprised Gabriel had managed to do as much as had been done. She told him to sleep again.
He awoke hearing clean-up sounds after the midday meal, but he still didn't feel hungry. He also didn't feel exhausted, so he retrieved his journal, got out Saraquael's feather quill, and inked it up.
Gabriel liked looking at the ink and thinking it was all his thoughts not yet stretched out. Ideas waiting to be thought: just add water. He wasn't particularly coherent, but then again, no one was going to read this but himself, and it was nice to hear an angelic voice in this world even if it was slightly delirious.
Of course that was when Tobias entered the room.
Gabriel snatched back the parchment. God! Saraquael said I wouldn't get caught! He sat up and started shoving the parchment into his pack.
Tobias squinted. "You're writing to your father?"
Gabriel shook his head.
Tobias said, "Poetry? Scripture?"
"Nothing that profound. One of my brothers asked me to keep a record."
Tobias came closer, but Gabriel pushed the pack into the corner.
"Is that yours?" Tobias said, picking up the quill.
Gabriel capped the ink with shaking hands. "It came from home with me."
"Amazing." Tobias touched the white and teal feather, let it balance in its hand. "One of the benefits of being raised a prince. Do you know what kind of bird grew this?"
How could he answer this without lying? "Just one that's native to our area." Maybe if he changed the subject—? "When the tip wears down, I can re-cut it, and it takes the punishment pretty well."
Tobias handed it back, and Gabriel cleaned the end with a soft cloth.
"Actually," Tobias said, "bring that with you, and come downstairs."
Saraquael, please, he sent, as soon as I'm out of the room, get that journal and hide it.
He felt an affirmative as he stood.
In the kitchen, Gabriel waited at the table, wondering the whole time if Tobias were hunting for the journal. Instead the man returned with a sheet of parchment.
The cooking fire usually made it warm in here, and especially in this season, it ought to have been uncomfortable, but for once Gabriel felt it just right. Angela and Raguel's mother were cooking, but the rest of the women were doing laundry or mending, spinning, or weaving.
Tobias said, "Gabelus is heading into the city. I want you to write to your father."
Gabriel sat back from the table. "But—"
"I'll have him find someone heading back toward Canaan to carry your letter for you."
Gabriel tried to focus. "I don't have any money to pay a messenger."
Tobias said, "You've worked here two months. That's twenty-six drachmae."
Gabriel furrowed his brow.
Tobias said, "You thought I wasn't going to pay you?"
"You're giving me a room and food," Gabriel said.
"You're incredibly naïve," Angela said with a laugh, and Raguel's mother interjected, "Perhaps his last employer was unscrupulous."
Tobias said, "Write to him."
Gabriel inked up the quill and sat before the blank parchment wondering what to do. In retrospect, it was inadvisable to have changed his story. He wouldn’t have had to write to an entire family slaughtered by marauders.
He wrote in his native tongue, in the higher script. "Gabriel, a servant in abeyance to the Lord Most High, Cherub and one of the Seven, to my God and Father the King, my source and destination, my Creator and Judge. Praise and honor to you."
He looked up. "What should I tell him?"
Tobias sat beside him to look over the parchment. "That's a beautiful alphabet."
Gabriel opened his hands. "It's a beautiful quill and a beautiful script, but that doesn't make the words beautiful. What do you want me to say?"
Tobias sounded amused. "You're doing this solely to obey your employer, aren't you?"
Gabriel looked at his hands. It was hard to string thoughts together.
Raguel's mother looked over his shoulder. "It is very pretty. Tell him where you are and that you're safe. That's the first thing I would want to know."
Angela added, "Assure him that you're being treated well. We don't want soldiers showing up at our gates."
Gabriel sighed. "I would hardly worry about that."
He returned to the page. "I am writing to you from a farm outside Ecbatana, in the employment of Tobias son of Tobit son of Raguel, exiles from Naphtali. I have worked here two months, aiding in their harvest as well as learning the care of livestock and the proper management of a household. I am well-paid and well-fed, and the patriarch of the family treats me fairly. If you or any of my family have been concerned as to my safety, you may rest easily. Such a household is an answer to prayer, and I am blessed to live here."
He stopped and looked up at Tobias. "Now what?" and Tobias asked him to translate what he'd written, so he did.
"Just how many languages do you know?" Tobias asked.
"About as many as I'll ever need to," Gabriel said.
Tobias said, "Now ask him if you can return."
Raguel's mother said, "Not yet. First you have to apologize."
Gabriel said, "Is there a formula for this kind of letter?"
"It just makes sense," she said. "Before you ask to come home, you soften him up."
Gabriel turned back to the parchment. "I beg your forgiveness for my disobedience. You deserve my allegiance and loyalty, and I should not have assumed I could operate on my own authority. I'm sorry I failed you and for the disgrace I brought on your house."
He stopped, staring at the page.
"Now," Tobias said softly, one hand on his shoulder, "ask for mercy."
Gabriel blinked hard, then took a deep breath. "I would ask for your mercy. Please reconsider your just judgment and have pity on me, and bring me home again. Let me see your face. I'm sorry. I miss you. I want to go back."
Gabriel realized there were tears in his eyes only when the ink smudged. He sat back from the table.
He felt hands resting on his shoulders, and a moment later he realized it wasn't Raguel's mother, but rather her guardian embracing him, head beside his head, wings wrapped around him. Gabriel leaned into the presence, and the guardian remained intangibly near, whispering to the human part of his being in the way only angels of the ninth choir can.
Tobias said, "Is that all?"
Gabriel whispered, "I don't know what else to say."
Raguel's mother hugged him, and Gabriel startled to realize how similar the feeling of her was to the feeling of her guardian.
"Read it back to me," Tobias said.
Gabriel skipped the introduction, clumsily adjusting the wording as he translated to make it less obvious to whom he was writing. Tobias nodded. "Then sign it and seal it, and we'll get it delivered."
Gabriel finished the letter with, "All praise to you and your servants. I am always yours," and he signed with his sigil. He folded the letter, and with
Tobias's sealing wax, Gabriel made pools in two places, sealing one with Tobias's seal and the other with his thumbprint, then writing an X over the folded part of the letter.
"That's an interesting way to seal it," Tobias said.
It was just the way Gabriel had seen it done before. "You can replace a seal," Gabriel said, "but if the X isn't matched properly, you know it's been opened."
Angela passed the letter to Tobias, then rested her wrist against Gabriel's forehead. "You're feverish again. Back upstairs. You shouldn't have been down here to begin with."
Gabriel went back up the steps, leaving the letter with the family.
Raguel's mother murmured, "Poor kid."
Angela huffed. "He's not poor. And he's not a kid."
Raguel's mother smiled at her. "He's so close in age to Raguel."
Angela stopped whatever she was about to say as Gabelus came into the kitchen. Tobias handed him the letter, and Gabelus slipped it into his bag.
"Do you think it will work?" Gabelus said.
Tobias said, "It depends on whatever it is Gabriel isn't telling us."
Raguel's mother paused in her cooking. "You don't think he's lying, do you?"
Tobias shook his head. "It doesn't feel as if whatever he's holding back would fundamentally change things, but there's something."
Gabelus leaned against the wall. "What do you think it might be?"
Tobias opened his hands "Well, let's break open his story. He claims he's a prince whose father threw him out. Why would a king do that?"
"He's a harsh king?" Angela said.
Raguel's mother said, "Given how all-consuming Nineveh was until its fall, he'd have to be strong to hang on this long."
"Not necessarily," Gabelus said. "Consider the timing. Nineveh fell three years ago, and all the little city-states in Canaan suddenly find themselves without an overlord. His father may have been under Ninevite control until then. The city-states are scrambling for any vestige of control they can get before Babylon tightens its hold. That means alliances between them. That means a lot of politicking."
