by Sharon Shinn
They unrolled their sleeping gear all around the room, talking without ceasing. Chloe slipped into the water room adjoining the bedroom. (Such a luxury, Susannah always thought, and such a waste—a place of continuously flowing water reserved for the use of one person!)
“I’d like lighter streaks around my face—do you think we could try that?” Chloe called from the mirror in the other room. “I don’t want to end up looking like a skunk, though.”
“What about you, Susannah?” Miriam asked. “Would you like blond shadings in your hair?”
They all clustered around her, stroking the long, silky length of her black hair and admiring its sheen and softness. “Oh, no, you can’t streak Susannah’s hair,” Sela said in her gentle voice. “It’s too beautiful.”
“We could cut it,” Chloe suggested, but the others cried out against that.
“Braid it, maybe,” Miriam decided. “With ribbons and pearls. That would be pretty.”
“How do you plan to wear it at your wedding?” Sela wanted to know.
“What are you going to wear for your wedding?” Miriam asked.
“When is the wedding?” Chloe demanded.
Susannah laughed and raised both hands to fend them off. “I don’t know! I don’t know! I’ve scarcely even seen Gaaron since we got to the Eyrie, and it’s not like I exactly knew him before—”
“Plus she’s in love with another man,” Miriam supplied. “But she doesn’t like to talk about it.”
That news made Chloe and Sela croon out little aahs and crowd closer, as if to hear the tale or as if some of that doomed romantic glory might rub off on them. “Really—it’s just that—actually, I don’t want to talk about it,” Susannah said, a little desperately.
“That’s all right. We can plan your wedding anyway,” Miriam said matter-of-factly. “We’ll figure out what you need.”
Before they’d made any headway on this promising activity, the chime sounded again. Zibiah entered, bedroll in her arms. She was followed by a small, wiry girl dressed from head to foot in dark, flowing robes. Her head was covered with a veil that draped over her face so that only her eyes were visible. But these were narrow, sharp, and suspicious, darting quickly around the room as if to seek out dangers. They instantly fixed on Susannah as the source of potential trouble, since she was clearly familiar with the other three in the room.
Susannah, seeing her, grew very still. So tiny and young she was to have witnessed such a catastrophic event, to have survived the death of what was probably her whole family. And then to be uprooted and replanted here, among angels and strangers. Well enough Susannah knew what that relocation felt like. She had a lot in common with this little waif.
Susannah took a few cautious steps closer to the Jansai girl, then dropped to her knees so that their faces were at the same level. Zibiah stood beside the girl, her hand on one frail shoulder, and spoke in a low voice. “That’s Susannah. She just came here to live with us. She’s an Edori. Have you seen Edori before?”
The girl nodded.
“Susannah’s our friend, and she’ll be very nice to you, just like Chloe and Sela and Miriam. She’ll sing to you if you want—” Zibiah threw a quick questioning look at Susannah as she said this, and Susannah nodded. “And she’ll stay with you sometimes when I can’t. You’ll like her, I think.”
“Do you have a name?” Susannah asked quietly.
The little girl shook her head.
“She’s never told us anything about herself. She hasn’t talked at all,” Zibiah said.
Susannah moved a little closer, sliding across the stone floor on her knees. “Can I call you mikala? It means ‘young girl’ in the Edori tongue,” Susannah said.
The narrow eyes wrinkled up a little, as if behind the veil the face was showing a small smile. The girl nodded.
“I think she knows the word,” Miriam said.
Susannah nodded. “She might. The Jansai know a lot of the Edori language. They travel as much as we do and go to the same places—sometimes we share words for those places. Isn’t that right, mikala?”
Again, the wrinkled eyes. Again, the small movement of the head. Susannah smiled at her and edged closer. “You know what?” Susannah whispered into the girl’s ear, leaning closer and pretending no one else could hear. “Jansai love luxury much more than the Edori do. Now this bed right behind me—it’s too soft for my bones. I’m used to sleeping on the hard ground. But you—I bet you never came across a bed that was too soft for you. I bet you could sleep on five feather mattresses piled one on top of the other. I’m going to scoop you up and dump you on that bed, and I want to see you bounce.”
And Susannah leapt to her feet and pounced on the little girl, who gave a muffled shriek that didn’t sound at all frightened. Susannah whuffled into her hair and twirled her around in one big circle before dropping her from shoulder height onto the bed and then jumping on top of the mattress right alongside her.
“Bounce!” Susannah cried. “Up and down you go!” And the two of them bounced on the too-soft bed. And the little girl laughed out loud.
“That’s a sound I haven’t heard before,” Miriam commented just a second before Chloe gave a little yelp and bounded across the room to land on the bed with the others. Moments later, all of them were on the bed, rolling around like maniacs and laughing like giddy children. Susannah positioned herself near the edge to make sure the Jansai girl didn’t accidentally get pushed off, but everyone remained safely on, wonderfully happy.
“Ah, I knew this bed would be good for something,” Susannah said breathlessly as she slid off the end and came to a seat on the floor, her back against the frame. The women behind her giggled. “And I didn’t mean good for that,” Susannah said over her shoulder.
“Well, it will be once you’re married,” Zibiah said.
“Or even before,” Chloe added.
“Let’s keep in mind that little mikala ears are listening,” Susannah warned in a light singsong voice.
The bed behind her jiggled and swayed as various bodies righted themselves. “Your wedding,” Miriam said. “We need to start planning that.”
“Yes, let’s take a look at your clothes,” Chloe said.
Susannah came to her feet and looked somewhat doubtfully at the tall armoire across the room. She had her traveling clothes, of course, and Esther had made sure to supply a few rather nondescript dresses that seemed a little more acceptable in the angel hold, but Susannah didn’t have anything that would pass for finery. “Probably not a very good place to start.”
But they insisted on going through her wardrobe anyway, laying out her skirts and her dresses and exclaiming over the fine sewing on the handmade Edori clothes but making no other comment about their attractiveness. However, they all seemed to genuinely love the embroidered shirt that she had made last winter and that she had not had the heart to sell in Luminaux.
“You could pair this with a—let me think—a blue silk skirt and wear it on your wedding day,” Miriam said. She laid it on the bed where the Jansai girl still sat and stood back to view it through half-closed eyes.
“I love it, too, but on her wedding day?” Zibiah said doubtfully. “Is it really fine enough?”
“It looks like a piece of Edori craft work, and Gaaron is marrying an Edori woman,” Miriam said.
“I truly would not want to embarrass him by wearing something unsuitable,” Susannah said. “But perhaps there would be another occasion—some dinner when we announce our betrothal—do you have such events?”
Miriam snapped her fingers. “The wedding breakfast,” she said. “Held the morning after the ceremony. All the important guests will still be here, but it’s not as formal as the wedding itself. It will be perfect to wear then.”
The others agreed, which pleased Susannah. She liked the idea of wearing some token of her past life as she made the transition into her new one. “And where will I find this blue silk skirt?” she asked.
“Oh, Velora,” the
women answered in a chorus of voices.
“The little city at the foot of the mountain? But how can I get there?” Susannah asked. “I didn’t think there was a way down the mountain.”
“No, someone has to fly you down, but I can do that anytime you like,” Chloe said. “Or Zib or Nicky or Ahio. Just ask us.”
“Let’s go tomorrow!” someone cried, and within minutes they were planning a shopping expedition for the following day. No one seemed to be worried about any duties they might be shirking here at the hold, and there was certainly nothing keeping Susannah at the Eyrie, so she was happy to be plotting future amusements.
The whole evening went like that, elliptical conversations punctuated by bursts of laughter followed by more discussion on some completely unrelated topic. They took turns sitting on a stool in the middle of the room and having Sela make up their faces. Only Chloe and Miriam were brave enough to try the hair-coloring product, and they walked around the room for the rest of the evening with silver knots in their hair and the pungent smell of chemicals drifting up around their faces. Between them, they drank three bottles of wine, even Susannah sampling some, although she didn’t usually like it. But this was much sweeter than the bitter, raw wine they usually had in camp; it tasted more like dessert than alcohol, though its effects were much the same.
They discussed the men of the hold, angel and mortal, and who was attractive and who was not. They performed the same exercise for the residents of Monteverde and Windy Point, and tossed off the names of half a dozen young Manadavvi men and their varying critiques of their faces, their manners, and their potential. Zibiah curled up around the Jansai girl, stroking the little one’s head, and spoke wistfully of wanting a child of her own someday. Chloe said flatly that she didn’t want the responsibility. Miriam laughed.
“Well, if you have an angel child at an angel hold, you have no responsibility at all. Everyone’s so delighted at the birth that you’re practically pushed aside so that the elder women can raise the baby right.”
Susannah had joined Zibiah and the mikala on the bed and was leaning her head against the wall to calm her dizziness. “Is that true?” she said sleepily. “That angel babies are so prized?”
There was a general chorus of agreement. “So much so,” Chloe said, “that sometimes mortal children born to angels are not exactly welcomed.”
Miriam jumped to her feet and took three quick bows. “As witness, me,” she said.
Susannah focused on her. “Who didn’t welcome you? Your parents? The others in the hold?”
Miriam sat down again and began pulling the silver rollers from her hair. Chloe said, “It’s not ready yet,” but Miriam kept removing them, one after the other.
“My mother was happy with me—she’d always wanted a girl, and so far she’d had only one child, and that one a boy,” Miriam said. “And, of course, Gaaron was just nine years old—he didn’t care one way or the other if I was born at all. But my father—oh, he hated me. My mother always swore that he never tried to leave me out in the cold unattended, or failed to feed me, but I always had the sense that he wished he’d gotten rid of me when I was young enough to dispose of easily. When I was a little girl, he would come up with tasks for me to do—impossible things—and then punish me when I couldn’t get them done right. And he would scream at me. So loud everyone in the hold could hear.”
Susannah sat up, disturbed and uneasy. Among the Edori, children were considered a rich bounty, and the whole clan shared the responsibility of caring for them. Unfit mothers and neglectful fathers would simply find their children appropriated, absorbed into some other family, some other tent. Abuse was not tolerated. “Is this true?” she asked, looking at Zibiah.
Zibiah nodded slowly. Her hand was still stroking the Jansai’s head, though the little girl appeared to have fallen asleep. “Oh, yes. My family lived just down the hall. You could hear the yelling, sometimes for hours. My mother would take me to the very back room, and crawl under the covers with me and make a little tent, and she’d read to me, but she couldn’t drown out the sound of his voice.”
“But—why couldn’t—why didn’t anyone stop him?”
Miriam was combing her hair out and peering into a hand-held mirror to see if the chemicals had had any effect. They didn’t appear to have. “He was leader of the host here,” Miriam said. “Everyone respected him—”
“Everyone was afraid of him,” Chloe interjected.
“And everyone thought he was probably right,” Miriam finished up. She set down the mirror and looked over at Susannah with an impish grin. “I was a pretty awful child.”
“She was always in trouble,” Sela said.
“What did you do?”
Miriam shrugged. “Stole things. Ran away. Hid out in Velora for three days so they couldn’t find me. Lied.”
Susannah thought of that big sober angel who had spirited her away from her clan and who seemed the embodiment of sound judgment. “And what did Gaaron say about all this?”
Chloe stood behind Miriam and began making tiny braids in the blond hair. “He was gone for a long time,” Chloe said. “Fostering with Adriel and Moshe at Windy Point. I think it was one of the reasons Michael was so cross with Miriam. He missed Gaaron so much.”
“Michael?”
“My father,” Miriam said. “Plus, he hated Adriel and he didn’t like the fact that she had Gaaron and he didn’t. It made him very unpleasant.”
“Why did he let Gaaron go to her, then?”
Zibiah rolled to her back and put her arms behind her head. Her wings spread out behind her, one of them drifting off the side of the bed and the other folding up against the side of the wall, the ragged wingtips making sharp serrated shadows against the stone. “It’s a tradition,” she said. “The young, promising angels are always sent for a few years to live with the Archangel, to learn what it’s like to rule the realm. That way, if Jovah chooses them to be the next Archangel, they will have some idea of what they’re getting into. Michael was sure Gaaron would be named the next Archangel. But Gaaron wasn’t the only angel fostered at Windy Point. There were four or five others over the next few years who also lived there. No one knew which one the god would choose.”
Susannah looked at Miriam. “Your father must have been very proud when Gaaron was chosen, then,” she said.
“My father was dead by then,” Miriam said in a voice of great satisfaction. “I think the god waited on purpose to make the announcement.”
“Miriam,” Susannah said in a voice of reproach. “Yovah is not so spiteful.”
Miriam shrugged. “Not spiteful. Just.”
“But things were better anyway, once Gaaron got back,” Chloe said. She began plaiting the smaller braids together, looping a blue ribbon through the whole confection. “Michael was just a little afraid of Gaaron.”
“Afraid of his own son? Why, how old was Gaaron?”
“He came back from Windy Point when he was nineteen,” Sela said. “And he was big. Not quite as muscled as he is now, but just as tall. And his wings! Michael had always had the greatest wingspan of anyone at the Eyrie, and he was very proud of his appearance. But Gaaron had grown a foot in height and three feet in wingspan while he was gone, and when he stood beside his father, he made Michael look small.”
“I had never thought Michael would be intimidated by anyone,” Chloe said.
“What did Gaaron do?” Susannah asked. She was horrified and fascinated by the whole story.
Miriam laughed. “Oh, not much. Things were pretty quiet when Gaaron first came back. We were all getting used to each other again. And then, a few times my father would yell at me for some reason, and I think once or twice he hit me when Gaaron was in the other room, or maybe once when Gaaron could see him, but it was all very restrained. Not like it had been while Gaaron was gone.”
She held up the mirror again to check Chloe’s work. “Oh, I like that. Use more of that dark blue ribbon.” She laid the mirror back down. “And
then one day I’d done something—taken one of my mother’s rings, I think, a gift that my father had given her—and my father started ranting at me. Slapped me once, went stalking around the room in a rage, slapped me again, stood in front of me screaming so loud that his face was red. And Gaaron walked into the room.”
She paused for a moment, as if reliving that scene, and everyone else in the room was silent. “He’d been in his bedroom but he’d been able to hear every word, I suppose, every slap. And he stood there in the doorway for a long time, just looking at my father. And—I’ll never forget this—my father’s face had been so red, and now it turned completely white. He straightened up and stood there next to me, and he seemed to shrink and shrink, till he was almost my size. And Gaaron seemed so big, just standing there watching us.
“And then Gaaron walked across the room, really slowly, and he kind of fanned his wings out. I remember, because they seemed to fill the whole room, and they were so white and so bright that they made the entire room glow. And he knelt down beside me, and he put his arms around me, and then he folded his wings around me. And so then I couldn’t see anything, of course, but I felt him turn his head so he could still look at our father. And he said, in the calmest voice you can imagine, ‘Don’t you ever touch her again.’ And he picked me up and took me back to his room and we played card games for the rest of the night.”
Miriam shrugged and picked up the mirror again. “Oh, that’s good,” she said.
“I thought about putting in some silver thread,” Chloe said.
“No, I like it just like this.”
“But, Miriam,” Susannah cried. “What happened after that? With your father?”
Miriam laughed. “Well, he never did hit me again. And once in a while he’d yell at me, but Gaaron would just have to walk into the room and he’d stop. It was great—except that then Gaaron always felt like he had to point out my faults and tell me when I was doing something wrong. I never cared what Gaaron said, though. I went ahead and did exactly what I wanted to anyway.”
