The only conclusion anyone could come to was that the temple's mutations were because of Jocelin's presence. At the feast, for example, Priest Dave had nearly had a nervous breakdown when startling food kept appearing in the basement where the food was kept – a whole roast peacock, for example, with its tailfeathers artfully reattached, and a roast ox, and bushels of fresh fruit that suddenly just seemed to be there though by any rights they shouldn't have been, and a plate of some kind of tiny worm-like things which Lord Lucien took one look at and identified as hummingbird tongues, and bread.
Jocelin had been the only person to be entirely unsurprised about all this. The angel had eaten the entire plate of hummingbird tongues without any help.
No one could figure out if Jocelin even meant to do it or not, but sometimes the air around the angel's shoulders shimmered and left a trail behind like mirages on a hot day.
Exactly two weeks and three days after the angel's arrival, the kitchens kept getting lost every night. What had been a modest little house one day, and half a Greek temple the next, was a large building modeled after a Buddhist vihara the morning after, and an Arabian palace the morning after that. It was causing everyone no end of locational crises, because when the buildings changed, so did the furnishings inside.
Lucien in particular was already irritated with falling asleep in one bed, such as the original sensible thing they'd found in the house, and waking up on another, such as an enormous mattress, in the middle of a ridiculous expanse of marble floor, with orange and red silk banners waving gently from the ceiling, and Lalael curled up in the corner of the same bed about, oh, fifteen or twenty feet away. The same bed. With fifteen feet between them.
It was an insult to his dignity, is what it was, Lucien fumed, firstly because his old bedroom had been his, and this vast room would have fit the entire house in it, probably, and secondly because he preferred to know that he was going to be waking up in the same bed as someone, even if “same bed” was a really liberal description of the situation.
The second point caused him the most distress. Lalael tended to thrash in his sleep.
***
It was awfully inconvenient that one could not affix a single gendered pronoun to the Angel Jocelin, Mara thought. Not that they had to, of course, but the grammar was just difficult to navigate. If only Jocelin looked more masculine or feminine, then they could have assigned gender based on the angel's appearance, since the angel didn't appear to have a personal preference. But as it was, the angel persisted in mystery. 'It', Mara supposed tentatively, was the most accurate pronoun available in Webster's English Dictionary, but it seemed incredibly offensive and she didn't even feel comfortable thinking about using it.
So one day, after an especially confusing argument between Jocelin and Lord Lucien, Mara took up her patience in both hands and paid Jocelin a visit. “Excuse me, Angel Jocelin?” She said, opening the door to Jocelin's quarters, which had rearranged themselves into a tiny room of Spartan proportions and comfort.
“Honored High Priestess Mara! We are... Word? It is a little touch. It feels.” Jocelin's eyes closed and the angel swayed.
“Happy?”
“What is a happy?” The gray eyes snapped open and focused on her.
“Well,” Mara said, “It's an emotion. Like when you see someone for the first time in a while. Someone that you love. Or when something good happens, or when you accomplish something you've been working on.”
“What is love?”
“Good question,” Mara said. She gestured at the bed. “Can I sit?”
Jocelin looked in surprise at the mattress, as if the angel hadn't realized it was there. “We do not know. Canst thou?”
“I mean may I. I was asking your permission.”
Jocelin stared blankly at her. “We... We do not...” The angel blinked and somehow made a perfect straight posture even more rigid. “We believe it is a possibility that thou may... sit... Yes. In the now that does not happen now,” Jocelin said loudly.
Mara sat. Jocelin relaxed. “So, uh. I'm trying to find a way to ask this in a way that won't, er, offend you.”
“Offend us? What do we feel when we are... offended?”
“When Lucien offends you, you pull weapons on him.”
“We now understand.”
“So... Alright, I'll be blunt.”
“Thou shalt? But thou hast no sharp parts to change. We cannot hurt ourselves on thee, so thou art... blunt, art thou not?”
Mara shook her head. “Never mind.”
“Yes.” Jocelin half-turned away and stared intently at the wall.
The priestess sighed. “That's not what I mean. Nothing. Forget it.”
“We already forget nothing. And we have forgotten the Nothing. And the Nothing has forgotten us.” Jocelin swayed alarmingly.
“I just have a question,” Mara said, a little desperately.
“So do we.” Jocelin looked at her, head tilting. “We have many, many questions, all stirring themselves around in our head,” the angel, eyes drifting closed, crooned softly. “But no one and no one ever answers them.” The angel looked at her suddenly. “What is thy question?”
“I want to know if... if you'd like us to think of you as a man or a woman.”
Long, long silence, in which Jocelin moved not an inch. “A... what? What are they?”
“They're... Look, you know Andrew?”
“It is a short one who bosses. He looks at many papers.”
“He's a man. I'm a woman.”
“Thou art? Ought we feel something for thee?”
Mara rolled her eyes. “Andrea and Esme are women. Lucien and Lalael and Paul and Dave are men. Hal Norton's a man. Granny Banner's a woman. Annie's a woman – a girl. Do you see?”
“They not are! The Angel Lalael is one of the Host, and Fallen Lucien is one who has sinned.”
“Well, yes, but they're men too. Do you understand?” she asked desperately.
“How dost thou know they are?” Jocelin asked suspiciously.
“Because that's what they look like and that's what they say they are and – I'm just trying to get this sorted out.”
Jocelin stared. “Why?”
Mara took a deep breath. Then she stopped and realized that explaining political correctness and how to be respectful of someone's personal identity to Jocelin was an exercise in futility. “Why what?”
“Why are men?”
“For... For – gods, I never thought I'd be telling an angel about the birds and the bees.”
“We know about them. Birds don't touch the ground sometimes, and the bees bite us when we taste their golden water.”
Mara nodded encouragingly, more for her own benefit than Jocelin's. “We call it honey. But that's right! Birds... really don't touch the ground sometimes.”
“But why with the strangeness?” Jocelin's head fell to one side slightly.
“So we can continue the species. It happens with –” Mara paused, took all she had ever learned about human reproduction and condensed it further down than she would have if she'd been talking to a three year old. “Men and women together have children.”
Unfortunately, this set Jocelin off. “Different things don't belong together!” The angel stood up, highly agitated. “The dark sky mixes not with the light, and it shouldn't mix with the water!” Jocelin went silent for a long few moments, then fell to the floor and keened, a high, alarming sound that grated on the instincts of Mara's hind-brain. “We told it not to, we told it and it wouldn't listen to us! It stayed mixed with the sky, so we slapped it for being insolent, but it just mixed again!” Jocelin sobbed softly as Mara forced herself to pat one of the angel's shoulders, even though her whole being screamed at her not to touch.
“I'm... I'm sure it will realize the error of its ways eventually.”
“Thou knowest?” Jocelin asked, looking up at her. “Thou art sure of it?” Before Mara could answer, Jocelin's head tilted again. “What are we?”
&nb
sp; “That's... what I'm here to ask about.”
“We are neither, are we not? We are like the sky and water, when they mix.”
“I suppose you are, Angel Jocelin,” Mara said weakly. “We've been fretting about whether to call you 'he', 'she', or... whatever you wanted us to say. We – We didn't want to be rude. I didn't, at least.” Some people just picked one and ran with it, but Mara felt that was a little presumptuous.
“And we are like the air and the fire,” Jocelin continued, ignoring her. “And trees and fog and plants and the sea, and other things. We must contemplate this.” The angel looked at her. “Yes. Now leave us.”
That had been entirely unhelpful.
***
Three weeks after Jocelin's arrival, the gods awoke to find the temple as a large country mansion. Many of the other buildings that the followers had been housed in were now noticeably closer than they had been before, and each day they seemed to get closer faster. The winery was now only a minute or two's walk away through the enormous garden, the orchard, and the wide, sweeping lawns.
“If we keep having to deal with huge labyrinths, you'd think that I might have my own room," Lucien said, munching on a rosy apple from the tree next to the balcony, and watching Lalael trying to find the wardrobe that contained his shirts. This morning they had woken up in bunk beds. "Actually, we ought to figure out how to stop Jocelin mutating the temple. It's got to be her. Didn't do this before and I don't hold with it.”
Lalael slammed the door of one of the six closets and started opening drawers. A pause to rummage through a drawer. “Might not just be Jocelin. Could be us. Maybe we can only hold a certain amount of power.”
“Jocelin could be the catalyst, then.”
“Where are all my clothes?” Lalael demanded. “I can't go around in sleep clothes all day. I have things to do.”
“We could just get rid of him.”
“No, we can't do that,” Lalael said immediately. “Jocelin wouldn't leave anyway, and Jocelin is practically family, and we don't know how Jocelin got out of Ríel or if Jocelin was left behind like us... Why can't I find any fresh clothes?!”
“Jeans lying right over there,” Lucien said around a mouthful of apple.
“They're too small. They chafe.”
“As all good pants ought to. You're looking a bit glowy this morning, by the way. You should work some off.”
Lalael sighed and nodded. “Throw your apple core off the balcony.” They had continued experimenting with what they could and could not do: They could both create little areas of heat and cold, and fire that would burn for a while without fuel, and Lucien could do most things that were weather related – they had agreed this was probably because he understood it so deeply – and food that Lalael touched lasted a little longer than it otherwise might have.
Lucien took one last bite of apple and flung it off the balcony. This was a useful exercise for what Lalael was trying to do – it used up excess energy even though nothing actually happened. As Lalael, intense and focused, watched it fall, the pearly gleam went off his skin and hair. Lucien nodded, “Better.”
There was a faint thump and a short cry.
Lucien peered over the edge of the rail and immediately jerked back. “Shit, I hit Jocelin. She saw me look, too. Think he'll be pissed?”
Lalael groaned and put his face in his hands.
Lucien looked over the rail again; below, the other angel had picked up the half-eaten apple and was looking at it in amazement. Jocelin looked up again, spotted Lucien again, and fled indoors.
“What happened?” Lalael asked, voice dripping with resignation.
“Blushed. Ran away.” Lucien shook his head. “Nutcase.”
***
“Most High and Honored Fallen Angel!¨ said Jocelin, bursting in the door to Lucien's office an hour later.
“What,” said Lucien, shocked. “What?”
“Honored Fallen Lucien, does this treasured object belong to you?" Jocelin held out the half-eaten apple, flesh now browned from the air.
“Is that the apple I dropped on you this morning...?" There were too many things going on with this situation for Lucien to deal with, and he was only ten seconds into this particular interaction with Jocelin, so there'd be a few dozen more things before it was done.
“Ah, so it is yours! Unless,” Jocelin clutched the apple hopefully, “Unless the Most Honored Lucien, lord of all he surveys, meant it as a gift unto us!”
“Look, Jos – Sorry, I know you don't like –”
“You honor us with a nickname! We feel joy. Priestess Mara told us of this. We wish to express our joy by. By...” Jocelin trailed off, staring at the apple as if the angel was not sure where it had been acquired.
“Right, whatever you say. It's just trash, you know.” Lucien nodded towards the apple.
“Never! It shines in the light, and there is brightness of hue upon its surface!”
“...Yep,” said Lucien.
“And the roundness of it! Glory be to the Síela for its creation!”
Lucien nodded and wished Lalael was within earshot.
“And the delicate fragrance of this object! Tell us, Honored Lucien, what purpose does it serve?”
“It's an apple, you're supposed to eat it.”
“Eat... it?”
“Yes, Jos.”
“But... its color. And its shape and scent and –”
“Jocelin, in this world, there are plenty of round, red, nice-smelling things. You don't have to be obsessed with just one specimen of one particular kind.”
“Then this... this –”
“Half-eaten apple,” Lucien supplied.
“It is thy gift unto us?”
“Sure, go on, go enjoy it while it lasts.”
Jocelin blushed madly and, once again, fled.
***
The knock, which came around midnight that night, was nearly drowned out by the sound of the rain slashing against the window.
“Honored Fallen Angel Lucien, may we enter?”
“Yes, Jos, come in,” the Fallen answered absently, wondering why everything edible in the store room was now something roundish and red.
The angel was suddenly standing next to him, dripping wet, radiating cold, yet smiling mysteriously and quivering with happy energy. “Honored Fallen, we have been told by...by... She with the dark eyes.”
“Mara?”
“No, she with also the red hair.”
“Andrea?”
“Yes, the Andrea has told us that it is a tradition to give presents to those whom we – What is the word?”
“Um. Those we know? Those we like? Those we want to stop trying to kill?”
“Yes. And so we went forth and we found a wonder, and we have brought it here as... as a present unto you.” Jocelin placed it reverently on the edge of the desk in front of Lucien and took several steps back.
“Oh. A moldy peach.” Lucien struggled for words. “Just what I always wanted.”
“We are so, so honored that you are pleased. We shall depart now, for Mara was most distressed when we ventured forth into yonder storm. She said unto us that we would... would... 'catch your death'. And we thought Death should not be caught or caged. But that is what she said when we returned with the present for you, and that we should... That she wished to show unto us the use of a bathing. With nakedness.” Jocelin nodded expectantly.
“Right. You go do that, then. Go get warm and dry, put some real clothes on. You're shivering like anything." Lucien turned back to the inventory and made a few marks on it. A moment passed, and he was immediately distracted by wondering when the experimental tub of ice cream they had had made would actually melt in the room-temperature cabinet they'd stored it in.
“Does,” Jocelin began, and Lucien started violently. “Does the Honored Fallen perhaps wish to attend the bathing?”
“No, he does not! I mean, no, I don't! Go away!”
They had arbitrarily decided that the New Year had su
rely passed by now, even though no one knew what the date actually was anymore. Sometime in January. In any case, they had a lot of food now, and it might not have been real food grown out of the ground, but it filled bellies and no one cared to look too close at it, and so there had been a celebration, because what the humans did know was that six full moons had passed since the end of the world, and they were still alive, and that was something worth getting raucously drunk over.
“Now that was a party,” Lucien mumbled, dropping into the chair next to Lalael the morning after. The previous night had been somewhat tipsy, draped in tacky decorations, and with far too many sweet foods for anyone's good.
The clinking of silverware and soft morning conversation filled the dining hall as he looked around blearily. “Where'd all this come from? How'd they get the food from last night cleaned up?”
Lalael didn't stop artistically buttering his toast. “No one knows. This probably is the food from last night. One of the followers found it this morning when he came in.” The angel waved his knife vaguely. “Toast?”
“Is there bacon?” Lucien wistfully asked.
Lalael peered under a few lids. “Pass the jam,” he said as he passed the plate of bacon to Lucien. He wasn't entirely sure the plate had been there a few minutes ago.
“There is a being higher than the Shousán,” Lucien said, munching a piece of bacon with an expression of elation, “And it looks after those who have truly done good, which I must have at some point.”
“Lalael and Most Highly Honored Lucien!” Lucien's blissful expression slid slowly off his face. “Are you reviving the feast of eons before?”
Lalael stopped trying to get the jam perfectly even on his toast. “It was just last night, Angel Jocelin,” he said, eyebrows knotted.
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