by Sharon Shinn
He edged himself over a couple of feet, an excruciating process. When he had fallen in front of the water, he had managed to land on his right shoulder, with both his wings stretched out behind him, but they did not easily travel across the sand. He summoned the strength to lift them a few inches as he shoved himself backward, till the ground beneath him shifted from soggy to dry, then he collapsed again. He absolutely could not lever himself up into a sitting position so he could pull the pack off. “I can’t,” he said. “You’ll have to help me.”
She regarded him, unmoving. “I can’t touch you,” she said.
“I can’t sit up.”
“I shouldn’t even be talking to you.”
“I know. I can’t thank you enough—I can’t—there are no words—”
She shook her head, which he took as a signal to fall silent. “Hold very still,” she said. Daintily, as if he were a rotting corpse and she a finicky grave robber, she set her fingers on the buckles of his pack and slipped open the leather strap. Gingerly she withdrew every item of clothing stuffed inside—four shirts, two pairs of trousers.
“This ought to be enough,” she said. “Are you comfortable there where you are?”
“As comfortable—as I can be,” he said with an attempt at humor.
“Then let’s make you a little tent.”
He had thought the very existence of his wings would make it impossible for anyone to rig a shelter over him, but the Jansai woman had obviously been considering the problem. She placed one spidery bush at the back of his shoulders, right above the join of muscle and wing; another one at his forehead; another one near his navel; and a forth one behind him again, near the bend of his knees. Tying sleeves together and weighting everything with rocks, she made an awning of the shirts and stretched them over the insubstantial framework of shrubbery. Instantly, he felt the assault of the sun get turned aside. The air around his face could not have cooled by a degree, but he felt relieved, refreshed, hopeful.
“That helps a great deal,” he murmured. “But now I can—no longer see you.”
“You are not supposed to see me,” she said, though without much conviction. “Can you stretch out your wounded leg? I’ll try to clean it.”
He extended it as far as he could outside of his makeshift shelter, and the woman gently peeled back the fifth shirt, the one that had served as a bandage. No way, in this delicate operation, could she entirely avoid contact with him, and he felt her small, quick fingertips brush across the surface of his skin. He shivered, surely the aftereffect of shock.
A small sound of dismay escaped her when the wound was laid bare. “What—is it?” he gasped. “Infected already?”
“No—it looks cauterized. You may not get an infection at all.”
“Cauterized? Then—”
“Then it was a burn,” she said quietly.
There was a small ripping sound as if she tore off one of the sleeves; then he heard her turn away and dip the shirt into the jet of water. “There’s some sand in it,” she said. “I’ll do what I can, but this will be painful.”
“I know,” he managed. “Thank you.”
In fact, it was agonizing, and it was all Obadiah could do not to shriek and jerk his leg away from her hands. She obviously moved as rapidly as she could—or quickly concluded that she might be doing more harm than good—because the ordeal did not last long. “I can’t do any more,” she said at last. “Except bind it.”
Now her hands competently and firmly wrapped a strip around the gash, an action which seemed to hold the torn edges in place and actually reduced the pain.
“What about your wing?” she asked when she was done. “How badly is it injured?”
“The wound—seemed smaller. Maybe cauterized as well. I don’t know. I didn’t get—a very good look.”
She stood up and moved around his body. He felt her shadow bending over his tent, throwing its coolness along the feathers stretched pitifully over the sand. She did not touch his wing, though, merely straightened up and circled around him again. She sat near his face this time, though he could not see much of her through the weave of the bushes except the white folds of her tunic around the triangles of her folded knees.
“Small and also clean,” she pronounced. “I don’t think there’s much I can do for you there. I can’t even guess how to bind such a thing.”
“No—I don’t know that—anyone has attempted to bandage—an angel’s wing,” Obadiah said, trying to speak lightly again. The effect was rather spoiled by the long breaths he had to take between phrases.
“If I had some manna root salve . . .” she said, and then her voice trailed off.
“It will soothe a burn?”
“Oh yes. There’s nothing it won’t help to heal.”
There was a moment of silence. He wondered what she was thinking. “I know you must want to know,” he said at last, “how I got such wounds. In truth—I don’t know myself. I thought perhaps—an arrow dipped in fire? But—I didn’t see any arrow. It was like fire—thrown by itself through the air.”
“It doesn’t matter what caused it,” she said, her voice a little cold, he thought. “All that matters is that you have been hurt.”
“You have been so kind.”
“I’ve done very little. There is very little more I can do.”
“I don’t think I should—ask you to seek help—from the others in your party.”
A small, short laugh. “No indeed. The men I travel with are outspoken in their dislike of angels.”
“So you will not tell them you encountered me—alone and helpless—out in the desert?”
“Believe me, I will never be able to tell anyone of this adventure. I would be locked in Hector’s house for the rest of my life.”
“Who’s—Hector?”
“My mother’s husband. Do you have any water?” she asked abruptly.
“There is a geyser right before me,” he joked. “All the water—even I could need.”
“Closer to hand, I mean. You must have a waterskin with you.”
“A canteen. I think I dropped it when I landed—”
She stood, and he saw her feet moving through the sand around the fountain. When she found the dropped metal container, she filled it from the fountain and brought it over to him, sliding it under the fabric of the tent.
“Here. How long will this last you? Maybe I should leave you one of our waterskins as well.”
“Not if you will be punished for that.”
“No one knows how many skins I brought with me, or how many are in the camp,” she said dismissively. “They will not miss one or two. Do you have any food?”
“No,” he said.
She made a small tsking sound of annoyance. “How did you come to be traveling across the desert so ill prepared?” she demanded. “You don’t have water, a tent, supplies—”
“I didn’t think it would take me—more than a few hours—to cross,” he panted. “I did not plan—to linger. Or be shot from the skies—by mysterious weapons.”
“I have food,” she said, her hands going to a packet at her waist. “I’ll leave it with you.”
“Not if you’ll go hungry,” he protested.
She laughed, a surprisingly girlish sound. For the first time he found himself wondering how old she might be. He had taken her for an adult woman, very probably married, but now he doubted it. He had never seen a Jansai wife who looked prepared to disobey the laws of her culture, no matter how far away her husband might be at the moment. If she was a rebel, she was a young woman.
“Oh, I ate well enough this afternoon, and I’ll be back in time to eat dinner at the campfire tonight,” she said carelessly. “You can have the few scraps I brought with me. It’s not very much, but if you haven’t eaten all day—”
“Since morning,” he agreed.
“And you’re weak—well, you’d better have it.” She paused. “Unless it might make you sick to your stomach.”
“I’ll jus
t eat—a little bit,” he said.
She unwrapped a small bundle. “Some bread—that should be easy enough to digest. Some cheese. Oh, and some strips of dried meat. That ought to last you a day, at least.”
“Thank you so much,” he said.
“Are you hungry now?”
“Not really. Just hot. And hurting.”
“Would you like to sleep awhile? I’ll just sit here and be quiet.”
“Don’t you have to get back to your camp?”
She made a rude noise. “I don’t want to go back. It’s too hot to walk three miles across the desert. And there’s nothing to do there.” A little pause. “But if you want me to go away . . .”
He smiled. “No. I’d like you to stay and keep me company. I don’t feel—quite so much pain—while I’m listening to you talk.”
She resettled herself on the sand, spreading her clothes around her more comfortably. “But I won’t talk if you want to sleep,” she said again.
“No. Please. Talk. Tell me—about yourself.”
“Tell you what?” she asked doubtfully.
“Your name—to start with.”
A small silence. “I’m not supposed to do that.”
She wasn’t supposed to be talking to him, helping him, allowing him to even be aware of her existence, but he didn’t point out any of those facts. “I’m Obadiah,” he said.
“I’m Rebekah,” she said after a pause.
“Where are you and your family traveling at the moment?”
Another little discontented noise. “To Castelana. I didn’t want to go, but my mother said I had to.”
“Why not? Castelana is a pretty place. Not nearly as beautiful as Semorrah, but more interesting than Breven, I would think.”
Through the scrim of the bushes he could see her fingers pick idly at the threads of her tunic. “Yes, but I wanted to stay in Breven with my cousin. I don’t like to travel. It’s so hot and it’s so boring.”
“Boring?” he asked, smiling. “Most people think traveling is an adventure.”
She flung her arms out. “Sitting in the wagon all day! Nothing to do but sleep or rock the baby. Sometimes once we’ve camped I can leave for a couple of hours, but it’s not like there’s much to do on the road between Breven and the Galilee River. It’s just so dreary.”
“Who’s the baby? Yours?”
“No!” she exclaimed, giggling. “He’s my brother. My half brother,” she amended. “I don’t usually like babies, but he’s really good. He hardly ever cries. Hard to believe that Hector’s his father.”
“So your mother remarried after—something happened to your father?”
She was quiet a moment. “He died at Mount Galo.”
“Ah. I’m sorry. No wonder you aren’t very fond of angels.”
He saw her drapes lift and fall as she shrugged. “Hector and my uncle Ezra and all the men—they hate angels. Or, I guess, they hate Gabriel. I don’t know much about what happened. I don’t know why Raphael hated Gabriel or why Gabriel wanted to bring the mountain down—”
“It wasn’t Gabriel,” Obadiah said softly. “It was the god.”
“See? I don’t know much about it. The men don’t tell the women very much, and the women don’t tell the girls anything.”
“Raphael was Archangel before Gabriel—”
“Well, that I knew!”
“But he didn’t want to give up power,” Obadiah said, speaking slowly so that he was not so breathless. “And he claimed that the god did not truly exist. And, he said, if the god didn’t exist, then all the people of Samaria did not need to gather on the Plain of Sharon, as it is prescribed in the Librera, and sing the Gloria to honor Jovah. And Raphael convinced a good many people—including your father, apparently—that if they all stood on the Plain of Sharon on the appointed day and failed to sing the Gloria, that nothing would happen. The god would not strike, and the world would go on as before.
“So Raphael and all his followers stood on the Plain—or rather, stood on Mount Galo that overlooked the Plain, and waited for sunset to fall on the day of the Gloria. And when sunset came and the Gloria had not been sung, the god struck the mountain with a thunderbolt, just as the Librera promised he would do. And all those people died. So a day or two later, Gabriel and Rachel sang the Gloria, and there were no more thunderbolts.”
“So why isn’t everyone angry at Raphael instead of Gabriel?”
“Well, some people are. But Raphael was a friend to the Jansai, and Gabriel is not. So the Jansai don’t really like him much.”
“Do you know him?”
“Yes, very well.”
“Do you like him?”
“I admire him more than anyone I’ve ever met.”
“That’s not the same as liking him.”
Obadiah smiled. “You’re right. Yes, I do like him. He is not an easy man to be around. I would not call him my close friend. But I do like him.”
“I’ve never met an angel before,” she said next.
“No, I imagine not. As I understand it, Jansai women don’t meet many people—except other Jansai women.”
“Well, of course, I know all the men of my family: Hector, and Ezra, and my cousins, and Jordan—”
“Who’s Jordan?”
“My brother.”
“It sounds like a very strange life,” he said cautiously.
“Really? Why strange?”
“Among the angels—and most mortals—women intermingle freely with everyone else. There are no laws that prevent them from talking to anyone or going anywhere—and doing anything—that they please.”
“Really?” she said again. “But—don’t the men mock them when they appear in public? Or abuse them?”
Obadiah laughed softly. “Most of the women I know would not allow themselves to be abused,” he said. “They speak out quite strongly if there is something they do not like. And I know many women who are much wiser than the men of my acquaintance.”
“I would be afraid,” she said, “to voice my opinion to a man.”
“Are you afraid to talk to me?” he asked.
There was a moment’s startled silence. “No,” she said wonderingly. “But—I just assumed—you are not like other men.”
“Well, of course, I am very special,” he said. “Much wiser, much kinder, and definitely more interesting than most men.”
She laughed. “And much more injured.”
“True,” he agreed. “You can hardly be afraid of a man who cannot even sit up or fend for himself.”
“But I don’t think I would be afraid of you anyway,” she decided. “Not like I am of some of the Jansai men.”
That was telling, he thought. “There must be some good men, even among the Jansai,” he said. “I’m sure that’s the sort of man you’ll fall in love with.”
She laughed a little. “Fall in love! What are you talking about? Hector will find me a husband, and I’ll marry him when Hector says. He may have found one for me already.”
“Really? Who?”
“A man called Isaac. He’s on this trip with us.”
“What do you know about him?”
“Not very much. I’ve been watching him from the tent. He’s kind to Jordan, which is good. And I’ve never heard him say anything harsh to his mother. But I’ve only watched him a couple of days.” She toyed with a bracelet on her wrist. “He’s not bad to look at either,” she added. “Though he’s not as handsome as you are.”
This last statement caught him by surprise. He laughed. “Thank you. Though I would think I do not look particularly handsome in my present miserable state.”
He could hear the smile in her voice. “Or maybe it is that I am not used to blond-headed men. Most of the Jansai are darker than you. But your hair is so pretty. And I liked your face.”
“Thank you again,” he said softly. “I wish I could see your face and compliment you in return.”
Another startled silence. “Oh no. I can’t remove my veil
.”
“I know. And, anyway, it wouldn’t matter to me if you were the most beautiful woman in Samaria, or the most hideous. You have been so kind to me—you may have saved my life—I would be bound to look at your face and think you the incarnation of enchantment.”
“No man has ever seen my face. I mean, except the men of my family.”
“I know. And soon Isaac. Or someone like Isaac.”
“And I’m very ordinary. You’d be disappointed.”
“I don’t think so.”
“My mother says I’m beautiful,” she said wistfully. “But I think mothers always say that to their daughters. Don’t you?”
“They should, if they don’t.”
“But what I mean is, you can’t believe your mother when she says something like that.”
“There are more important things than beauty, anyway,” he said.
“Yes,” she said, as if she was not convinced. “But it would be good to be beautiful, too.”
“Perhaps Isaac will think you’re beautiful,” Obadiah suggested. “If you are to marry him, when will he first lay eyes on you?”
“After we’re married. After the ceremony, when he takes me home.”
“He has his own house?”
“No, he lives with his father and his uncle and the women of their family. But one day when he is wealthy enough, he’ll have his own house. With room for his mother, if she’s widowed, and his sisters, if they’re not wed, and other family members.”
“So a Jansai man must always be prepared to take care of the women he is related to.”
“Well, of course. Who takes care of your women?”
“We don’t think of them as so frail they have to be guarded by someone else. They are free to choose their own lives,” he said.
“That would be nice,” she said a little enviously.
“What would you do with your life if it was yours to dispose of any way you wanted?” he asked.
“Oh, I don’t know—” she said, but it was clear she was considering. “I would—I would marry and have children, I think. What else would I do? But I might marry someone other than Isaac.”
