by Sharon Shinn
“No,” she said. “It would make me happy.”
His hands slid from her shoulders and around her back as he drew her closer in. It was like being embraced by fire, exhilarating and delicious. His wings drifted around her like white flickers of harmless flame. His mouth on hers was heavy, sweet, and slow, and the kiss itself was alchemy; it changed her. She did not know what knowledge her features would show or what shape her body would hold once that kiss was ended.
He lifted his mouth, but the magic was not broken; she was still in the process of transformation. “I don’t know,” he said, in a slow, drugged voice, “how much of love you want to learn this night.”
“I have to leave again two hours after midnight,” she said. “How much can I learn by then?”
He gave a soft laugh. “It could take a lifetime to learn the whole library,” he said, “but a few hours can give you the basic text.”
She could not help giggling. She lifted her hands shyly to put them on either side of his face, marveling at the rough textures, the unfamiliar scents. So strange to have somebody else’s body this close, to be aware of every breath and heartbeat of a separate human being. So strange, and so intoxicating. “I think I’ve learned some of the alphabet already,” she said. “I want to see what’s in the book.”
He laughed aloud. “Well, then,” he said, dropping his head to kiss her again. “Chapter one . . .”
Several hours later, lying on her own mat in her own room, with Martha peacefully slumbering beside her, Rebekah just accustomed herself to the idea that she would never sleep again. She had almost convinced Martha that she would never speak again, since she had refused to say much during that long, terrifying walk home, when the streets appeared to be full of drunken rowdies who could not bear the idea that the harvest fair had come to its wild conclusion. Twice they’d been engulfed by large groups of young men who wanted to assimilate them into their parties. “Come with us! Back to my father’s tent!” had been the basic cry, and it had taken Martha’s angry rant against “my stupid father who never allows me to have any fun” before they were allowed to go on their way home to beat their professed curfews. Each time, though, they had been forced to drink a few swallows of high-proof liquor from a dirty goatskin bag as a mark of fellowship before they were permitted to pass. Rebekah had never been so relieved to see the back gate of Hector’s house, or felt so safe and happy as she stepped inside the garden.
“Sweet Jovah singing, what a night,” Martha said, briefly leaning against the gate, removing her mask, and letting her anxiety melt away. Then her face lit up with an impish expression. “And in so many ways, what a night!” she exclaimed. “But you! You haven’t told me anything!”
“There isn’t much to tell.”
“You were with the man for three or four hours. I think there is something to tell.”
“We talked.”
“You talked! I didn’t spirit you through the streets of Breven so you could talk to the angel. Did he kiss you?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“And I am tired and I have to go to sleep,” Rebekah said. Without another word, she turned and threaded her way through the garden and into the silent house. Martha followed, perforce silent herself, as they crept up the stairwells and down the hallways. They passed Rebekah’s door and went all the way to the end of the hall to clean themselves up in the water room. Under cover of the gurgling pipe, Martha began her interrogation again, but Rebekah would not answer.
“Was it bad? Why aren’t you telling me anything?” Martha finally demanded.
“Oh no. It wasn’t bad.”
“Then—?”
Rebekah gave her one last, desperate look. “Because I cannot talk about it,” she said in a low urgent whisper. “I have to think about it first.”
And that answer, strangely enough, seemed to satisfy her cousin. They finished their quick baths, put on clean sleeping clothes, bundled up their dirty boys’ clothes, and returned to Rebekah’s room. Martha was asleep in five minutes.
Rebekah, of course, would never sleep again.
She had thought kissing brought a body close to a body, but the act of love made kissing seem a light thing, a casual touch that was suitable for the public viewing of the marketplace. She had not realized that the angel would touch every inch of her skin, would seem awed by every curve and hollow and hidden architecture of bone. Nor had she thought to wonder how a man’s body might differ from her own—not just in his private parts, but in the layering of his muscles and the tailoring of his hips. They had stood side by side and naked before the mirror just so she could absorb the differences.
“And all men look like this?” she had asked.
He had laughed. “Allowing for differences of weight and height and athletic condition, more or less.”
“How strange,” she had said, and he had laughed again.
They had laughed a lot. He had seemed delighted by everything she asked, every observation she made, and it had not occurred to her that she shouldn’t say or ask anything. There was a great deal, she had discovered, that she did not know. Jerusha had fairly briefly outlined to her what she might expect in the marriage bed, and overheard conversations from other married women had allowed her to imagine some variations, but it still had never been clear to her exactly how everything came together.
Obadiah had explained everything, and then he had demonstrated.
Once the initial pain was past, she found the entire experience much more enjoyable than she had been led to expect. She had not known that a breast or a lip or a patch of skin on the inside of her forearm could react with such feeling. It would not have occurred to her that fingertips playing down the length of her spine could cause her to gasp or tremble. It had simply not crossed her mind that her body was an instrument to be played for pleasure. The Jansai women talked of marital duties and the hope of bearing children. They never described experiences like this.
“And this is what it’s always like?” Rebekah had asked the angel as they lay wrapped together on the bed. Her hand was spread across his chest just so she could feel the fine pale curls under her fingertips; her head was resting on his shoulder. His wing was laid across her from chin to toe, so that she could not even see her own amazing body.
“Actually . . . no,” he said. “This was better than most.”
“But why?”
“Why was it better?”
“Why isn’t it always like this?”
He laughed. “Because sometimes you’re in a hurry, and sometimes your partner is not interested in all the—all the exploring, and sometimes you’re just interested in quick gratification, and sometimes you’re tired and your body doesn’t respond as you’d like, and sometimes the person you’re with doesn’t care if you feel good or not—and, I don’t know, there are a lot of different factors.”
“And why was this better than most?”
He kissed her quickly on the mouth. “Because it was with you.”
“That made it better?”
“It’s always better if it’s someone you love.”
She was silent a long moment. “But you don’t love me.”
“Actually,” he said, “I think I do.”
“But how do you know?”
He sighed a little, and his arm drew her nearer. Under the thin silk of hair, the warm layer of skin, and the hard cage of bone, she could feel the beating of his heart. “Because I have truly never felt like this before,” he said.
“But you’ve loved a lot of women,” she said. Her voice made it a question.
“Some. Not a lot. Not as many as some angels.”
“And I’m different?”
“Oh, you’re so different.”
“But how? In what way?”
He laughed again, a small, helpless sound that gave her the answer before his words. “I don’t know. I don’t know. But you are—by every measure I have—absolutely unique.”
“Will you be here
tomorrow night?” she asked.
He had lifted his head to look down at her. “You think you can come back tomorrow night? I hadn’t even dared to ask you.”
“I don’t know. I’ve been trying to work it out. I think I can. I can try.”
“I’m so worried about you. I’m so afraid something will happen to you—and because of me.”
She shrugged a little, feeling the caress of feathers across her skin as her shoulders moved. “I’ll try. If I can’t leave the house, I won’t come here. But if you think you’ll be here—”
“Oh, if you think you might be able to sneak out, I’ll be here. I’ll sit in this hotel room all day, and I won’t even go out for food.”
“You can leave during the day. I won’t be able to come till the night. I think. Unless . . .” Her voice stopped as she considered possibilities. “No. Not during the day. Tomorrow night.”
“Around the same time?”
“I would think so. But I might not be able to make it.”
“I won’t count on it. Except I’m counting on it already.”
“I know. So am I.”
They talked like that, circuitously and sleepily, for another twenty minutes. And then it was time to dress and say good-bye, and head to the lobby to meet Martha. Obadiah had wanted to come downstairs and wait outside with her, but Rebekah had refused. “You are too noticeable,” she said. “If you were just some Manadavvi lordling or a peasant farmer—but you cannot hide those wings. Everybody knows who you are.”
“But I’m worried about you. I wish I could escort you safely home.”
“You certainly can’t do that!”
“What if something happens to you on the street? You don’t show up tomorrow night, and I think it’s because you can’t slip out of the house, and it’s really because you were killed walking home?”
She laid her hands flat against his chest, a gesture that had new sense and meaning now that she had touched his bare skin. “I’ll be fine,” she said. “Don’t worry about me.”
He gave her a small, unhappy smile. “I’m afraid that’s what my life holds from now on,” he said. “Worry about you.”
“Good night,” she said, lifting her head for a kiss, which he dropped willingly upon her mouth. “Tomorrow, if I can.”
And she had let herself from the room, and swiftly had gone past the eleven doors and the blue statue and the lobby fountain. A young man was now sitting at the desk in the middle of the atrium, but he merely nodded and said, “Good night, m’kash,” as she walked by. She pushed open the heavy door, and there was Martha, just now stepping up to the hotel, toying with her silver necklace just in case Rebekah couldn’t tell who she was.
“Excellent timing!” Martha greeted her gaily. Her voice was pitched low, but it still carried an exultant note. Rebekah didn’t need to ask how well her cousin’s evening had gone. “Or have you been peering out here every five minutes for the past hour?”
“No, I just got here.”
“And how did your evening go? My own was wonderful.”
“It was very good,” Rebekah said. “Come on, we have to get moving.”
And so they had begun that perilous journey home, but Rebekah had never felt truly in danger. For she was aware, by some greatly heightened lover’s instinct, of the instant they were joined by a ghostly but inexorable companion, flying above them too high and silently to draw attention. He escorted them all the way from the market to Hector’s garden, hovering overhead when they were approached by strangers—perfectly willing, she was sure, to swoop down and snatch her off to safety should the need arise. She felt the shadow of angel wings pass over her face as she locked the garden gate behind them. She knew then that he had made one great circle in the night sky and was heading back to the Hotel Verde now that she was safe.
She didn’t tell Martha this. She didn’t tell Martha any of it. She didn’t know how you could ever talk about things that mattered so much.
Chapter Seventeen
Elizabeth was more disappointed than she had thought possible when her monthly bleeding arrived, right on schedule.
She had made her way to David’s bed three more times in the intervening weeks, always after some not-so-chance meeting in the hallways in which she contrived to remind him of her existence. Each time he had given her first a blank look, then a slight frown of concentration, before his face broke into that roguish smile and he pronounced her name with real pleasure. “Elizabeth!” he said each time, and sashayed down the hall to place his hands on her shoulders or drop a kiss on her cheek. “My little laundress! Still working hard for your living, I see.”
Each time, she had returned some answer but combined it with a flirtatious smile, and he had asked what she was doing that night or the following night. And she had been available, and he had always arrived more or less on time, and they had, as Faith put it, “given in to their emotions.” David had never been entirely sober at any of these rendezvouses, and none of them were any more romantic than the first one, but at least Elizabeth knew what to expect now, and she didn’t really mind.
It bothered her that she didn’t feel any deep emotion for the dark angel. She had thought surely some kind of passion would develop between them, or at least a certain affection, but to date she hadn’t been able to muster up more than a fierce sense of triumph each time he asked her back to his bed. Yes. A victory. This was what she had come to Cedar Hills for; she was on the way to achieving her destiny.
So it was with great bitterness that she discovered her bloodstained undergarments that morning and knew that her destiny was still at least a few assignations away.
Faith tried to cheer her up as they sat together in the kitchen, scrounging up an early morning meal before heading off to their work-stations. “It’s very difficult for an angel to sire a child,” Faith said in a sympathetic voice. “And just as hard for an angel to bear one! That’s why there are so few angels in the world and so many more mortals. Don’t be discouraged! You just have to try again. And maybe again.”
Elizabeth sighed. “Well, I don’t even think David likes me that much. I don’t know how many more chances I’m going to have.”
“With David! But there are other angels in Cedar Hills!”
“None that I’ve had any luck with.”
“You can’t give up, though. You just got here, after all. Some girls have been here years and never had an angel baby.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better!”
Faith giggled. “Come out with me tonight,” she said. “They’re having a concert in the square. There will be plenty of angels singing there, and who knows? Maybe one of them will stop to talk to you.”
So Elizabeth had put on her green dress and accompanied Faith to the concert, and stood there the whole night shivering, because it was really too cool to be standing around outside, even with a coat on. The only angels she saw were traveling in pairs and bunches, great disdainful flocks of otherworldly creatures who didn’t even notice the frail human forms flitting around them. David was among them, his wings glittering in the light thrown by the ornamental lamps, his mouth curved into a perpetual halfwit’s grin. She stayed long enough to hear him sing a quick, rather risqué folk song, and had to confess she didn’t much care for his voice.
It was going to be hard to make herself keep trying to love him, but she was determined to do it.
The following day she was yawning over one of the soapy cauldrons when Doris hunted her up. “You’ve got a visitor,” the older woman said.
Elizabeth looked up hopefully, but Doris shook her head. “Not one of them,” she said. Not an angel. Nonetheless, Elizabeth dried off her clothes and batted her way through the steam to the front of the room, to find the healer Mary waiting for her.
“I’d bet half the girls who work here go home with lung troubles,” Mary said, glancing around and deliberately inhaling the heavily starched air. Her thin blond hair was already frosted with moisture. “How can you b
reathe in here? Must kill everybody off in a few years.”
“Doris has worked in laundry rooms her whole life, and she seems pretty healthy,” Elizabeth said. She was smiling, though; she was pleased to see the healer. “And so far, I seem to be fine.”
Mary appraised her. “Yes, you’re the type. You look languorous and fragile, but you’re strong as a Bethel farm girl. Probably never been sick a day in your life.”
Elizabeth smiled again, a little more ruefully. “Only when I was a little girl and there was someone to take care of me. Since I’ve been caring for myself, there hasn’t been time.”
“Listen, my assistant just took off for northern Gaza with her young man, says she’ll be back in two weeks, but I need some extra hands while she’s gone. I’ll pay you what you’re making here if you’d like to come work with me. The job might be permanent, you never know. She says she’s coming back, but she’s got the smell about her, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s carrying when she gets back.”
“The smell?” Elizabeth repeated. “Carrying what?”
Mary sniffed. “That baby smell. She’ll be carrying a child when she returns.”
Elizabeth paused for a moment to reflect what a useful skill that would be to have—the ability to know just by scent if someone was pregnant—and then she focused on what Mary had said to her. The healer had made the offer once before, but Elizabeth had never seriously considered it. “You want me to come work for you?” she said slowly.
Mary nodded. “For a couple of weeks first, to see if you like it, and then longer if everything works out. But I don’t want you to lose this job if it’s one you particularly like.”
Well, it was hard to develop any true love for doing laundry, but the job did put her in a position to see angels on a somewhat regular basis, and she had been able to parlay that to her advantage a few times. Though it hadn’t worked out all that well so far, she had to admit. And it would be nice to spend a couple of weeks away from the damp heat and the constant chemical smell of soaking clothes.
