Angelica (57 page)

“Very nice,” he said, a smile sounding in his voice. “It will be something pleasant to get used to.”

She lay tentatively against him, knowing that much more could happen between them than this simple sharing of body heat, unsure if she should make the first overture, unsure of what he wanted, too happy with this much to risk it all by asking for more. She was still tired, but she was not at all sleepy. She could turn to him now, and press a kiss against
his full mouth, show him what she knew and explain to him what she wanted.

The thought made her giddy and, for a moment, weak. It had been so long since she had loved a man, and she had never felt for Dathan what she felt for Gaaron. She had loved Dathan—she had thought she had loved Dathan—but that emotion had been girlish and shallow compared to what she felt for Gaaron. Dathan had energized her and frustrated her and delighted her and disappointed her; half of the time she had wanted to fold herself into him, and half the time she had wanted to change him. But Gaaron put her in awe. She would follow him barefoot from Luminaux to Mount Galo, dumbly doing any task he requested, because she believed in him so passionately, because he was so brave and so good, because she simply wanted to be with him. Because she loved him so much. He had come to occupy her thoughts so often that it was like she shared the space of her mind with another person; there were two people inside her skin. She did not know how to separate herself from him. She did not want to.

But she did not know how to present herself to him so that he would feel the same way about her. He cared for her—that she could not question. He had stated it as plainly as a man with few eloquent phrases could state it. But did he love her? At least as she wanted him to love her? How could she discover that—and if he did not, how could she bring such a thing about? Cautiously, she thought, for Gaaron was not a man who was adept at romance. Unlike Dathan, he did not look for lures and signals; he did not expect to be loved.

She could change all that. But slowly. Not tonight.

She settled against him a little more closely. His arm came up and rested on her waist. Susannah smiled but said nothing. She closed her eyes and allowed happiness to waft her into dreaming.

The first thing she noticed when she woke in the morning was that she was shivering. There was no other thought in her head except
I'm cold,
and she felt for the cast-off covers before even opening her eyes.

It was while her hands were groping for the blankets that she remembered why these blankets had not been spread over her to begin with, and she opened her eyes to see why Gaaron was not still lying beside her.

He had not left the room. He had not been that thoughtless, to spend the night beside her and leave without warning. But he was standing apart from her, staring out the window, and his face looked as remote as the mountain reaches of the Caitanas.

“Gaaron,” Susannah said, sitting up and pulling the covers around her shoulders. He turned at the sound of her voice, and she could see that the window was open before him. No wonder she was freezing.

“I'm sorry—are you cold?” he asked courteously, shutting the glass. “I should have covered you up.”

“What's wrong? What woke you?” she asked directly. “Is there bad news?”

His face looked pinched and wintry. If she had not known better, she would have said that he, too, was cold. “No—no news. I merely woke and—I got up.”

She felt a frown flicker across her face. This distant and dispassionate person was not the kind man who had shown such concern for her last night. “Was it me?” she asked with a nervous laugh. “Keren and Kaski often told me I woke them with my dreams.”

Now his face grew even more masklike. “Yes, I assume you were dreaming,” he said.

“What did I say?” she wanted to know. She had not, last night, had that frequent vision of the white-and-chrome room; there had been no sonorous voice calling out her name. She tried to remember what she
had
dreamed about. Happy things, she thought. Edori dreams. “I'm sorry if I woke you.”

“I was sorry not to be the one you dreamed about,” he said stiffly.

“What?” Pulling the blanket more securely about her shoulders, Susannah got out of bed and crossed the room to his side. Dearest Jovah, but the stone floor was icy against her bare feet. “Gaaron, I don't even remember who or what I dreamed about. What did I say?”

“You called out names,” he said, as if reluctant to speak at all.

“I did? Whose?”

He looked down at her, and she was shocked at the hurt expression on his face. She had seen Gaaron angry, she had seen him worried, she had seen him baffled, but she had never seen him devastated. He did not answer, but he did not have to.

“Dathan,” she guessed. “You heard me say his name.”

He nodded wearily and turned away. “I have to leave as soon as I can for Windy Point,” he said. “You know the news I must share with Adriel. After that, I will probably go to Monteverde. I may not be back for three or four days.”

“Gaaron.” She put her hand on his arm to stop him; he was already stepping toward the door. He turned back to her, but his face was guarded, as if he did not want to hear what she had to say. “Gaaron, I don't even remember seeing his face in my dreams. It has been months since I have wanted to see his face in the flesh. You are the one I wanted to be with last night—and for all the nights to come. Please don't be angry because of a name I might have spoken when I was sleeping.”

“I am not good with women,” he told her. “Mahalah and Adriel have said that to my face, and I have always known it—and it must be obvious to you. I do not know how to flatter and say pretty things. I do not know how to express what I want. I have tried to think how to say those things to you, when the time was right—and I have thought the time would be right when you were happy here, when you no longer missed your Edori friends and your—your Edori lover. But I see I was wrong. You will never forget those friends and lovers, you will never be at ease here. I have expected too much to expect you to change that far. You have been gracious in consenting to live here, and you came at the god's behest, but you will not become one of us. You will not become mine. I will release you from the burden of my hoping for such a thing.”

“Gaaron!” she exclaimed, and she shook the arm that she still had hold of. “Gaaron, do not say such things! I am here
of my own free will, I have committed myself to you. I will—”

He pulled back a pace and released himself from her hand. “I know. You will do as the god directs, and so will I. But I will not expect more from you than that.”

“But Gaaron, I will give you more! I will ask for more! If I had had to settle for a loveless marriage with an indifferent man, I would have accepted it, if it was the god's will. But we can create something better than that, you and I—we
can
love each other, we can believe in each other. We—”

“I am not good at love, and you clearly love elsewhere,” he interrupted. “That's as close to heartbreak as either of us needs to come. I must go. I am out of words for the moment.”

And he swept away from her, his spread wings seeming to brush across every surface of the room as he stalked to the door and stepped through it. Susannah stared after him, feeling shocked and rebuffed and confused.

But not entirely hopeless. Only a man with his heart engaged would have any fear of harming it. Perhaps she had been wrong about Gaaron, last night; perhaps, after all, he already loved her.

She would have to wait four or more days to find out.

M
iriam sat with Jossis in the mud and played with dolls.

It was a fine winter morning, brilliant, cold, and beautiful, and they had crept away from the camp before all the work was done merely to enjoy the sunshine. Tirza had seen them go, however, and had done nothing to stop them, so Miriam didn't feel too bad about it. They had wandered along the northern edge of the mountain, clambering over rocks and skidding from time to time into shadowed banks of gray snow, and they had laughed and pointed things out to each other and generally had a grand time.

When they had come to a sun-warmed little alcove punched into the rock, they had instantly settled into it, safe from the inquisitive breeze and almost comfortable with the built-up heat stored in the stone. Miriam pulled out a packet of dried food while Jossis melted snow in a bowl, and they ate a companionable lunch under the noon sun. From time to time, Jossis would point at something he had not seen before—though there was little, here on the upper reaches of the Galo range, that he had not come across by now—and ask the inevitable “Ska?” When she knew, Miriam told him. When she did not, she spread her hands and laughed.

Today she had decided to work on counting, so once the meal was done, she gathered a handful of twigs and rocks, then settled back down on their spread blanket. Jossis crouched beside her, instantly on the alert; there was nothing he loved so much as a new lesson. Miriam held up a single twig.

“One,” she said.

He nodded, still waiting, not sure if that was the name of the object or some other piece of knowledge that he would only comprehend as the lesson unfolded. She picked up a second twig and held it with the first. “Two.”

She went all the way to ten before repeating the exercise with the rocks, which was when she could tell Jossis began to catch on. Excited, he jumped to his feet and returned with a handful of empty seed pods, all more or less alike.

“Wuh,” he said, separating a single pod from the pile. “Tooooo. Theee.”

“Yes, yes! That's it!” Miriam said, clapping her hands with excitement. She extended her index finger. “One.”

He held up both of his own index fingers, side by side. “Toooo.”

He got stuck after three, so she had to repeat the whole sequence for him several times. She made him match the word to the actual amount the first few times—one finger, two rocks, three twigs, four seed pods—so that the sound and concept became synonymous. But after that she just allowed him to recite the series of syllables over and over so that he would memorize the phonetics.

“Very good,” she approved when she was sure he had it. Once he learned something, he never forgot it. He would integrate the most unexpected words into his limited conversations.

“More?” he suggested.

She laughed. “Well, you already know your colors and every object we own in the camp, and now you can count. I wish you could tell me more about
you,
that's what I really want to know.”

“More?” he repeated.

She frowned at him a moment, thinking. What else could she teach him, how could she get him to teach her? She
gathered up the twigs again and signaled for a new game.

“Miriam,” she said, holding up one of the twigs. “Tirza. Eleazar. Bartholomew.” She said a name for everyone in the camp, and Jossis nodded. “The Lohoras.”

“Lo-ho-
rah
,” he said obediently.

She planted the collection of twigs in the hard mud, then made a little mound of snow and dirt and rocks and pointed at the peak of Mount Galo. “Here,” she said, for that was a concept he had mastered a few days ago. “Lohoras here.”

He nodded again, though whether or not he truly understood was anybody's guess. Now she picked up a stick and moved to a flat wash of mud that had settled beside a boulder, and she began drawing a map. “Mountain here,” she said as she sketched in Galo. “River here. Lohoras here.” She stuck a small rock at the base of her pointed mountain. “And here's the rest of Samaria.” She added the outline of the coasts, a long squiggle for the Galilee River, and more triangular shapes to represent the Caitanas and the Velo range. “Samaria,” she said, then tapped her chest. “My world.”

He was crouched flat-footed before her map, studying it intently, and she had no idea how much he was absorbing. She didn't think she would understand if the situation were reversed and he was trying to explain his world to her. But then, as she had told Tirza, she thought Jossis was very intelligent—smarter than she was, smart enough to understand anything he was shown.

“Stick?” he said, holding out his hand, and she passed him her stylus. He bent lower and began scratching a few more designs into the dirt, and Miriam had to repress a smile. He had not understood her, after all. He thought she was demonstrating drawing techniques or basic topographical distinctions. When he was done making improvements, he picked up a few pebbles and embellished his finished masterpiece with carefully placed rocks. “Samaria,” he said, gesturing proudly.

Still smiling, Miriam bent over to have a look at what he'd done. But her smile faded almost immediately. For with the stick he had sketched in more mountains—the Heldoras in Jordana, the Corinnis in southern Bethel, the few ragged peaks that housed Mount Sinai and Mount Sudan and
Monteverde. With his rocks, he had marked the most prominent cities of the three provinces—Luminaux, Breven, Semorrah, Castelana—as well as the exact placement of all three angel holds. Each stone, each pointed peak, was as precisely placed as the imperfect limitations of Miriam's map would allow.

“Meerimuh?” he asked, when she did not speak. “Meerimuh?” He crouched even lower, bending around to try and peer into her averted face. “Samaria, yes? Meerimuh?”

She nodded, feeling her throat tighten to the point where words were difficult. Eleazar was right, of course. Jossis was a member of a clan that had come here to destroy them. Here was the evidence, a detailed and meticulous surveying of her entire world, more accurately drawn than she managed herself. Mountains here, rivers here, unprotected city dwellers there . . .

“Meerimuh? Sad?” he asked now, reaching out to touch her shoulder.
Happy
and
sad
. Those were two words she had taught him, for those had been easy enough emotions to convey.
Terror,
that would be a harder one, though not impossible, with the right look of horror and fear.
Betrayal
. She was not sure how to explain that one.

“Meerimuh?” he said, his voice and his hand both more insistent. He tugged her around to look at him, now putting his hand under her chin to tilt her face up. “Sad?”

She let him turn her, let herself meet his gaze, the whole while examining his face. He looked so innocent and so hopeful, his blue eyes blazing with the excitement he always showed upon mastering a new skill, but his mouth pursed, his eyebrows drawn down, in an expression of concern for her. “Sick?” he asked now.

She shook her head. “Not sad,” she said. “Not sick.” She spread her hands in the
I don't know
gesture, this time meant to convey
I can't explain.
It was his turn to explain something. She came slowly to her feet, crossing back to where she'd left all the twigs stuck in the ground. He rose and followed her. She passed over all the sticks except one, which she held up in front of him. “Jossis,” she said, shaking the twig a little. Then she handed him that one as well.

He looked down at the bundle in his hand, frowning, but not as if he was confused—more as if he was trying to decide
how to create a concept that she would understand. He nodded, then bent to lay all the twigs on the ground and went off in search of more props. He returned a few minutes later with a whole pile of kindling in his hand and motioned her over. He had found another level place on the ground, next to the map that represented Samaria, and he smoothed away the rocks and small debris that had piled on top of the mud.

“Meerimuh—Samaria,” he said, pointing first at the woman, then to the map. “Jossis—Mozanan,” he added, pointing at himself and then the outline he was producing in the soil. Miriam nodded.

He didn't trouble with many details this time. Clearly, he was not so interested in showing her the arrangement of lakes and oceans on his home world. As soon as he had roughed in what looked like three or four large land masses, he began poking sticks and twigs into the mud. He bunched them so closely together that soon he could thrust more sticks into the forest and they would not even need to reach the mud to stay in place. More sticks—more—an overcrowded, claustrophobic, chaotic representation of a world.

He looked at Miriam seriously and spoke a few words. She nodded, though she didn't understand him, but she knew what he meant. There were too many people in his home, wherever his home was. There was not enough room for everybody.

“Now, Jossis,” he said, and plucked one of the twigs from the stand of sticks. He reeled off more names and drew more sticks from the mud, then bundled them together with a length of dried grass. Then, holding this package between his hands and making silly whistling noises, he made the bundle fly through the air, up and down, in the direction of the map of Samaria.

Miriam nodded again. Some of this was taking shape for her. She knew, though only vaguely, that the original settlers of Samaria had come from some other world, both overpopulated and prone to violence, and that Jovah had brought them to Samaria to start anew. How they had traveled here was unclear—the Librera claimed that Jovah had carried them in his hands—and Miriam had never really given it much thought. But that men could move through the starlit
alleys from one world to another she had always accepted on faith, and it seemed like Jossis and some of his companions had done just that.

She had another thought, but it was hard to get her mind around it. Had Jossis come from the
same
planet as the original settlers had? Could that explain the familiarity of his shape, his expressions, the fact that he looked very much like every other man she had ever encountered? True, there were some superficial differences in hair color and skin color—but even among Samarians, there were several races, all with some differences, all with great similarities. Could Jossis have come from another race that had not been among those to emigrate to this new world—until now? Was his history a shared history with hers? Could that explain the song he had sung at the campfire the other night, a song that the angels had brought with them from their home world, and that Jossis had learned on that same planet? Was he tied to her even more closely than she had thought?

And if he had
not
come from that world . . . then how many worlds were there, populated by people who looked enough alike and thought enough alike that they must be related in some way? Had they all been created by the hand of the same god and scattered throughout the planets of the universe? Or had the nameless one placed them all on one homeland and allowed them to move, in slow stages as the mood took them, to fresh worlds warmed by newer stars? Miriam could not grasp all the implications of this theory; she could not get her mind to comprehend the logistics.

Jossis was looking at her, hopeful again, wanting her to acknowledge that she understood. She nodded and repeated the gestures. “Samaria,” she said, pointing to the map of her own world. “Mozanan.” There was another word he knew; maybe he would grasp it in this context. “Far?” she asked, pointing again between the two worlds.

He nodded emphatically, then frowned a little, trying to figure out how to convey distance to her. Then he ran over to the blanket to pick up one of the seed pods, and handed it to Miriam. “Samaria,” he said, and she nodded. He held up a second pod. “Mozanan.”

She nodded again, and he took off running. They were in
a semi-enclosed space, so he could not get far before he ran out of level land, but then he began climbing. He clambered up a few tumbles of rock, awkwardly, using only one hand to pull himself up because he still had the seed pod grasped in his other.

“Jossis!” Miriam called, because this was dangerous; she did not want him to hurt himself.

He turned to face her, still waving the pod in his hand. “Far!” he exclaimed, and threw the pod away from him as hard as he could. Miriam watched, but she could not see where it landed. Nonetheless, the message was clear. Jossis' home world was so far from this one that the distance was unimaginable. She could not guess how he had gotten here, but she was beginning to understand why he—and his people—had come.

Two days later, Miriam and Jossis played with more sophisticated toys. Miriam had spent a couple of evenings using rags and string to create dolls with a little more personality, though Tirza had laughed when she showed them to her.

“That's supposed to be me?” the older woman said. “I like my hair.” It was a single swatch of black fabric culled from the ragbag and tacked to the doll's cotton head.

“Mine isn't much better,” Miriam said. She had cut a few scraps of yellow fabric into strips and sewed each of these to a misshapen head. “But I'm not going to try to sell these in a Luminaux market, you understand. I'm just trying to get a point across. And learn something.”