by Sharon Shinn
Suddenly Stephen fixed me with his intense gaze again. It was as if, while we discussed Raphael’s flaws, he had forgotten that more personal matters lay between us, but now he had remembered. “And will you go to the Gloria on that day?” he asked.
“I doubt it. I haven’t been to one in years.”
“You haven’t told me yet. Where are you living? What have you been doing? Why are you in Laban?”
“I came to Laban for the festival,” I said.
He almost smiled. “Why are you in this part of Samaria,” he said, speaking deliberately, “and under what conditions do you live?”
“I’m living at a large farm about forty miles from here—a big complex run by a wealthy landowner. About fifty people live there, and every one of us is needed to keep the place running. I mostly work in the kitchen, but at harvest, sometimes all of us are in the fields.”
“I can’t say this is a setting I would ever have expected to find you in.”
Now I smiled. “No, nor the kind of place I would have expected to come to rest,” I said. “But I find I like the work. I like the rhythms of the seasons. I like the thought that my labor contributes to something tangible and meaningful. Something that sustains life.”
It sounded embarrassingly naïve and melodramatic, but Stephen was only nodding. “Yes—I can understand that—it is easier sometimes to get through the days if you are convinced they have a purpose. How long have you been there?”
“Ten years.”
“And how long do you propose to stay?”
I had long ago perfected the art of watching someone very closely without seeming to be paying much attention at all. “As long as Sheba needs me to provide a home for her.”
“Who’s Sheba?”
“My niece. Ann’s daughter. She’s seventeen.”
His brows dipped in a slight frown. “Why are you raising her?”
“Ann died fourteen years ago of a lung infection, and there was no one else to take Sheba.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, but the response was one of those automatic expressions of sympathy; he didn’t seem remotely moved. “Did you reconcile with your sister before she died?”
I gave a short laugh. “No. In fact, I would say our relationship deteriorated after Sheba was born.”
“Was there a reason?”
“Well,” I said, my voice almost breezy, “she told me that the man who had fathered her child was you.”
He simply stared at me.
I elaborated. “She said that when you came looking for me, you were satisfied to find her instead. She said you stayed with her a week, promising when you left to return often—but you never kept that promise. She said she wrote to tell you of the baby’s birth, but you never replied.”
“None of that is true,” he said, finally finding his voice. “Not a word of it.”
I could feel my spirits soaring, for what seemed the first time in seventeen years. I had never known Stephen to lie, whereas Ann had lied all the time. But I had believed her about Stephen. He had left behind a bracelet, patterned with the Windy Point jewels, an item that I had seen on his wrist a hundred times. He had obviously been to her house. Why wouldn’t he have slept with her?
“I told her that angels never cared about their mortal offspring,” I went on. “I told her that she now knew what it was like to live an angel-seeker’s life, and that she should be glad she learned her lesson in a few months, instead of years.”
“I never went to bed with her,” he said, his voice insistent. “I was in her house perhaps two hours before I left again. I never came back because I had no reason to believe that you would ever be at that house again.”
“I thought she was telling the truth,” I said simply.
He came a step nearer, though he was already quite close. “And all this time, that’s what you have thought of me?” he demanded. “That I would betray you with your sister—a woman I knew that you despised?”
“I had betrayed you with a man you have come to hate,” I said. “I suppose it seemed like justice.”
“I have never believed in a justice so severe,” he said, sounding almost angry. “You did not understand me at all if that is what you believed.”
I bowed my head. “I left Windy Point thinking I did not understand anyone,” I said. “I had been wrong about so many things. I so easily could have been wrong about you.”
He lifted his hands to lay them on my shoulders. I felt the heat of his skin through my thin shirt; I felt the tension of his body in the convulsive grip of his fingers. “I was angry when you went to Raphael’s bed,” he admitted. “I was devastated when you disappeared. I have spent the last eighteen years trying to convince myself it would be better if I never saw you again. But nothing has ever made me so sad as learning that all this time, you have believed me capable of being so cruel.”
I lifted my own hands to place them on either side of his face. Along his jaws, I felt the faintest edge of roughness from his whiskers, though his cheeks were smooth as a baby’s. “I deserve your anger,” I said. “But don’t waste your time being sad for me. I don’t deserve your compassion.”
“I can’t help it,” he said, stubborn and sincere as always. His arms drew me slowly against his body. “I have never been able to bear the idea that you might be unhappy. I can’t bear the idea that anything I might have done could have given you a moment’s pain.”
“You never loved my sister,” I said. “Just hearing those words washes all the pain away.”
His arms gathered me against his body; his wings wrapped around us both, enfolding us in a cocoon of saturated white. I rested my head against his chest and heard the thunderous hammering of his heart. My arms went around his back, my palms flat against his warm skin, and I felt feathers brush my hands with a whispering touch.
Sweet Jovah singing, if I could stand—just like this—for the rest of my life, I would be unutterably happy.
“I do not know,” he said, and I heard his voice both above me and beneath me, rumbling against my ear, “that it will be possible for me to let you go again.”
I laughed shakily and clung more tightly. “Oh, it is very exciting to meet with an old lover again, and all sorts of crazy feelings are stirred up,” I said in a teasing way. “But then you start to remember her annoying habits—the way she gobbles her food or how she snorts when she laughs—and it turns out you didn’t really miss her all that much. In fact, you start wishing she would go away again very soon.”
He pulled back just enough to frown down at me. “What I remember now is that you would never let me be serious.”
I stretched up enough to give him a quick kiss on the mouth. Just to get it over with—that first kiss after a long estrangement, which can otherwise be so important and so disappointing. “What I remember is that you were always much too serious for your own good.”
“But I mean what I say,” he said. “I do not want to fly out of Laban and fly out of your life.”
There was a time I would have said, “Then take me with you to Monteverde!” and blissfully cut every other tie I had formed. I wouldn’t have minded if I harmed anyone I left behind; I wouldn’t have cared if my headlong action resulted in me being left alone and adrift when my angel protector grew tired of me. I never used to think about consequences or other people’s feelings. Back then, I scarcely thought at all.
“I have never been able to imagine a time that you would be back in my life, even temporarily,” I said quietly. “You have no idea how thrilled and hopeful I am that such a thing might occur. But I must behave rationally and I must think of others besides myself. I cannot abandon Sheba, and I do not want to abandon the farm. And so much time has passed! We may find that the emotions we feel this hour cannot be sustained for another year or even another day. Can we proceed slowly to figure out what we should do next?”
Now he was the one to plant a swift kiss on my mouth. “Cautious—it is not a word I ever expected to pai
r with Salome,” he said. “I do not believe that what I am feeling now will quickly fade. But I admit that we face obstacles. And I am willing to work around them with a certain amount of care.”
“You will create a frenzy if you come to visit me at the farm,” I said. “Just a few weeks ago, angels arrived at the hold to perform a weather intercession, and all our young girls went mad with desire. One of them even left with the angels when they departed. I assume she is still at Windy Point.” I shook my head. If she was not, then Neri’s fate was probably even more disastrous than I had described.
I felt Stephen grow tense. “Angels were visiting the place where you live?” he asked stiffly. “Which ones?”
“Hiram, Saul, and the Archangel,” I said steadily.
His arms turned to iron, but he did not fling me aside. “And did you have conversation with Raphael?”
“I tried to avoid it,” I said, “but, yes. He seemed amused to find me in a menial situation, earning my living with such mundane work. He’s the one who told me you had left Windy Point.”
He did not answer, but he looked so wretched that I had to try to reassure him. “Stephen. I hate Raphael. If I knew that I would never have to see him again, I would thank Jovah without ceasing. I know it is my own fault if you don’t believe me, but I never loved him. He dazzled me and I wanted the glory I thought I could have if he kept me near, but long before I left Windy Point eighteen years ago I had come to despise him. The only emotions I felt when I saw him at the farm were contempt and revulsion. And a certain amount of fear.”
He looked down, a little shamefaced. “You think I’m a jealous fool.”
I lifted my hand to pat his cheek again. “I think it is astonishing that you could care enough to be jealous over me.”
“Raphael took what I wanted most,” he said quietly, “and threw it away.”
“Then let us make sure he never has a chance to destroy anything else we value.”
“I still love you, Salome.”
“Oh, Stephen,” I whispered, “I love you so much that it hurts my heart.”
We spent the next two hours on that lonely, uninhabited, ordinary stretch of ground, building ourselves a small square of paradise. The sun was hot enough to be uncomfortable, so we moved under the shade of one of the trees. Arms wrapped around each other and wings sheltering us from the slightest wind, we talked, we kissed, we confessed, we forgave. You would think both of us were a little too old for flinging aside inhibitions in a relatively public place, but we even stripped off our clothes and made love there in that blessed and almost holy spot.
I could not believe how completely the bitterness of eighteen years dissipated to be replaced by incandescent happiness. I was like a tarnished silver goblet polished to a new shine. There were no marks on me; you would not have believed I had ever been dull and neglected. From the things he said, Stephen was going through much the same transformation. Certainly, just by looking at him, I could see the way delight reshaped his solemn face. It was dizzying to think I was the one who had such power to change him.
“In a week, then, I will come to the farm to see you,” he said once we had resumed our clothes and were sitting up, closely and comfortably embraced.
“More likely ten days,” I said. He was being completely unrealistic about how long it would take to fly to Monteverde—where he owed Ariel a message—and back to this corner of the world.
“You had better prepare Sheba and all those other silly girls for my arrival! Let them know that I am coming to see you.”
“Sheba won’t be so surprised—she knows there is something interesting in my past—but everyone else will be astonished. They think I am so straitlaced and a little prim.”
“Perhaps Sheba would like to come live at Monteverde,” he suggested.
“Perhaps she would, but I am not bringing her anywhere near an angel hold,” I retorted. “I need to see her married to a dull, respectable man who will worship her and keep her in comfort. She doesn’t realize it yet, but that is the best life any woman could hope for.”
“She might want to make her own decision about that.”
“She can make whatever decision she wants as long as it doesn’t include angels.”
He didn’t answer that, but I could feel the skepticism in his silence. He didn’t know Sheba, but I suppose he remembered me at a youthful age, and he knew full well that I had not cared about anyone’s opinion but my own.
“I look forward to meeting her,” he said, “in a week.”
I laughed. “Or ten days.”
He sighed and rose to his feet, pulling me up beside him. “If I am to return so quickly, I must be on my way now,” he said. “I hate to leave you so soon after having found you again, and yet—”
“I am not afraid that you will not come back for me,” I said. “That makes it easier for me to see you go.”
Still, it was hard. We lingered another ten minutes in that tiny grove, another twenty. When he finally caught me up in his arms and took wing, I could tell that he dawdled on the flight, and we circled Laban more than once while we spoke another set of good-byes. I did not particularly want to have to explain my situation to any of my traveling companions, so I had Stephen put me down on the very edge of town, where fewer people were likely to see us. More farewells, more quick and hungry kisses, and then he tore himself away.
“Leave now or never leave,” he said, backing away from me. “I will return as soon as I possibly can.”
I watched him fling himself aloft. I stood there a full ten minutes, my hand up to shade my eyes, watching his narrow shape dwindle to the size of a bird, to a speck, to nothing.
Except that my body remembered every kiss, every touch, I might have thought I had imagined him. Except that my heart was so light it practically lifted me to my toes, I would have thought the whole day a dream.
Sheba hurried into our shared inn room, explanations tumbling from her mouth before she had even closed the door. “And then Adriel wanted to show me a dress she was thinking of buying, but it was so expensive, and I said we should try to bargain. And the merchant—he was Jansai, and I didn’t like him at all—told us we insulted him with the price we offered, so we left his booth and found another, where they were much nicer, but I didn’t realize how long we were gone, and I hope you weren’t worried.”
“Hope said she had seen you with the other girls not half an hour ago, so I knew you were all right,” I said. “Have you made yourself sick eating from the vendors’ booths, or do you want to have dinner? I’m meeting Hope and Joseph in an hour.”
“Of course I want to have dinner with you!” she exclaimed. I knew she would prefer to go off with her friends again, but she figured she would do penance by joining me for the meal and being so sweet that I would lose any remaining anger. At times, her thoughts were so transparent I could hardly keep from laughing. “Do I have time to change my clothes? A drunkard spilled wine all over my dress.”
About thirty minutes later, a small group of us sat at a pretty little restaurant with outdoor seating and festive lighting. Hope, Joseph, their two sons, Sheba, and I were joined by a few others from Thaddeus’s farm, including Hara and David. The younger members of our party spent the whole meal flirting with each other, while Hope and Joseph and I talked more rationally about how we had passed our days.
In my case, of course, many details were omitted.
“Did you hear the angels?” Hope asked at one point. “Utterly divine! I just stood there in the middle of the street with my mouth hanging open.”
“I did hear them,” I admitted. “I never expect to be moved by their voices as much as I always am.”
“I can’t say I agree with all of Raphael’s policies, but Jovah’s bones! The man has a voice,” said Joseph.
I looked up sharply at that. “The Archangel is here in Laban?” I said. “He wasn’t among the angels that I saw.”
“I believe they were performing at several venues,” Hope answ
ered.
I glanced at Sheba, but she and Hara were busy teasing Hope’s older son, using one of their own combs to style his hair in a different fashion and laughing immoderately at the results. “I wonder if he might have news of Neri,” I said in a low voice.
“Who—oh, the girl from your farm,” Hope said. “Well, I don’t know that I would have the courage to approach him to ask.”
“No,” I said. “I’m certain I don’t.”
I was not surprised when, at the end of the meal, Sheba turned to me and prettily asked if she could go to the dance that had been scheduled for the evening. I had seen the raw wood dance floor being laid and sanded in the center of town; I had been certain Sheba would want to attend.
“Please say yes, Aunt Salome,” she said. She only called me aunt when she wanted to melt my heart. “I promise I won’t talk to anyone I don’t know.”
“I’ll go with her, and I won’t let her out of my sight,” David spoke up.
“We’ll watch out for her,” said Hope’s older son. He glanced at Hara. “For all our girls,” he added.
I wasn’t too concerned about the possibilities for trouble at the dance, to tell the truth. Angels’ wings made it so difficult for them to participate in such an activity that they rarely attempted it, and Raphael always avoided any pastime that might make him look ridiculous. In fact, Sheba would probably be far safer on the dance floor tonight than in almost any other location in Laban.
“Well, I will come with you for at least a little while,” I said, as if allowing myself to be convinced. “I will see how respectable this crowd is. But you must come back to the inn with me if I don’t like how people are behaving.”
“I will.”
“And in any case, you must be back in our room by midnight.”
“I will be, I promise.”
Hope’s husband was already pulling out his money. “Then let’s pay our bill and go,” he said.
As I expected, the energy level at the makeshift outdoor dance arena was very high and the average age of the couples on the floor was about nineteen. The music—provided by a quartet of fiddlers and flautists so good they had to be from Luminaux—was exuberant, and the mood was infectiously happy.
