Angelica (68 page)

“Which means you must return with me to the Eyrie today,” he added.

“I'm not going to marry you,” she said.

Gaaron stopped and put his bucket down. She had thought
his response might be a quick flare of anger, but he seemed composed. “Then we must talk about that,” he said.

She put her own bucket on the ground and faced him. She was more tense than she had thought she would be. When she had imagined this scene, as she lay awake in Mount Sinai, she had been serene and reasonable. “I have decided not to be your angelica after all,” she said.

“And why is that?”

“You have asked me often what it would take to make me happy at the Eyrie—among the angels—in your life,” she said. “And I had thought I could be happy enough doing the work of the god. Becoming your angelica because he asked me to. But I have realized that is not enough for me. If I am to marry you, I have to love you.”

“And you do not love me,” he answered steadily.

“I do love you,” she said, and she saw the shock on his face. “I just have not said so.”

“Susannah—”

“And I have not said so, because you have not said that you love me. And I will not marry you unless you do.”

There was a long silence. Gaaron turned his head as if to look meditatively into the distance; he had quickly hidden his astonishment behind the usual mask of calm. But she was beginning to be able to read his face, even the texts he did not want to make public. “Susannah,” he said. “We were such good friends before. Can we not find a way to mend this breach and be friends again?”

“
I
can't,” she said flatly. “I cannot be married to the man I love and pretend that I want nothing more from him than kindness and companionship. I do not want to—I do not
intend
to—spend my days yearning for you. If I cannot have you as my lover, then I will not have you in my life at all. I will stay here with the Tachitas, or perhaps go back to the Lohoras, or perhaps find a place with some other clan, and go on with my life.”

“The god wants you beside me,” he said, still looking away.

“The question is, do you?”

Now he looked down at her, and there was some kind of repressed emotion in his face. His eyes smoldered with it,
but she did not think it was anger. Fear, perhaps, a fear even deeper than he knew how to analyze.

“My life has been bounded by so many restrictions that I have not been allowed very many freedoms,” he said slowly, as though the words were being tortured out of him. “I consider all emotions to be a kind of distraction, and love to be the most irresistible distraction of all. It is all very well and good when it is going smoothly, but when it fails? When one person loves and the other does not? Or when one person still loves and the other turns away? I know myself well enough to know that I would not lightly endure such devastation. I know myself well enough to realize that I would not emerge intact. I have too many other things to do to allow myself to be broken by love. And so I have sworn to myself that I would not love you.”

“You may have sworn not to
say
it,” Susannah answered softly, “but you do love me.”

“I cannot afford love,” he said, and bent to pick up his bucket.

Susannah caught up her own pail and hurried after him. “Then you cannot afford an angelica,” she said in a conversational tone. “And you will have to cancel this wedding when you return.”

“You have to be at the wedding,” he said, still walking.

“No. And I don't have to be at the Gloria, either,” she said.

That stopped him dead in his tracks. “Don't have to—of
course
you have to be at the Gloria!” he exclaimed, finally roused to emotion. “If the Archangel and the angelica do not lead the masses in prayer—if representatives of all the people of Samaria are not gathered together to sing on the Plain of Sharon—”

“I know,” Susannah said. “The god will smite the mountain, and then he will smite the river, and then he will destroy the world.”

Gaaron started walking again. “So don't be so foolish as to say you will not come to the Gloria.”

“Well, I won't.”

He whirled around, exasperated and disbelieving, but she stood her ground. “I won't,” she said again. “I won't come
sing at your side at the Gloria unless I am married to you, and I won't marry you unless you say you love me.”

“This is ridiculous,” he snapped. “To say you would risk the demolition of the entire world—”

“Miriam told me,” Susannah said, “what Mahalah told you. That Yovah picks for every Archangel the spouse who is his perfect complement. So that if the Archangel is impetuous, the angelica will be wise. And if the Archangel is arrogant, the angelica will be humble. And you thought, because you are stubborn, that your angelica would be docile and easily swayed.

“But what you didn't realize,” she continued slowly, “is that I am even more stubborn than you are. Yovah picked me because you cannot wear me down. I will not do what you want unless you do what I want. And I want to live with a man who loves me.”

“But Susannah—you cannot seriously tell me—you would not really let the god loose his wrath upon Samaria—”

She shrugged and stepped forward again. At this rate, they would never make it to the river. “I think the god knows my heart better than you do,” she said over her shoulder. “And he will understand why I refuse to sing.”

“But Susannah—”

She kept walking, letting him catch up with her, and attempt to argue with her, and receive nothing from her but silence in return. They made it to the riverbed, a quick, shallow stream that fed into the Galilee not a mile from here, and she dipped her pail into the clear water.

“Fill your bucket,” she directed as she stepped away from the bank, for he had stood there this whole time haranguing her.

He did so hastily, but she didn't wait, starting back on the rocky path toward camp. He hurried so much to keep up with her that water sloshed out of his bucket onto his leather boots and her cotton dress.

“That's
cold!
” she exclaimed.

“Susannah, wait. Listen,” he said. He had set down his pail again and now he caught her by the arm to make her stay in place. Obediently, she waited, placing her bucket
carefully on the ground beside her feet. “You cannot mean what you say,” he went on.

“Which part of it?” she said.

“Any of it.”

She put her hands on her hips and frowned up at him, like any virago giving a scold to her errant husband. “And now you're accusing me of lying?” she demanded.

“What? I didn't say that. Susannah—”

“I tell you that I love you, and you don't believe me. That means you think I'm lying.”

“It means,” he said, and his voice sounded tired, “that I think you love someone else more. Or someone else, too. It means that I don't trust your love, anybody's love, to be there when I need it most. And I have too many people relying on me for
me
to rely on supports that will not hold.”

Her face softened. She came a step nearer and reached up so she could lay a hand against his cheek. He had shaved that morning and his skin was free of whiskers, but it seemed roughened by other things: worry, work, wonder. She wanted to smooth away every line, refresh every tired pore with a kiss.

“But you see,” she said softly, “I am the support you can count on. You have so many people to care for. I want to be the one who cares for
you
. I want to be the sweet voice in the dark that answers only to your call. I want to be your place of warmth and safety, your refuge and your home. I want to be the one you think of when every other thought is gone.”

“You are that thought,” he said, very low. His head was bent down; his eyes were closed. It was as if he wanted to be conscious of nothing but the feel of her fingers against his cheek. “You are that place. You are that voice.”

She put her other hand up and guided his face down toward hers. “Then say it,” she whispered.

“Susannah, I love you.”

“And the world did not end,” she said, and kissed him.

His arms went around her first, bulky and uncertain; it was like being taken in the massive embrace of an oak, unused to clasping humans. Next his wings enfolded her, more cautiously, settling down on her with the weight and color
of sunlight. She kissed him—or he kissed her—there was, in the whole world, nothing but mouth and cheek and feather and arm. He held her so tightly that there was not even air to breathe, but she did not need air. She had Gaaron, and that was enough.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's Imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

 

The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is
http://www.penguinputnam.com