Angels of Darkness (38 page)

I had collected a few musical oddments from around the school—ancient, rusted bells from a festive horse bridle; something that looked like a nautical buoy; and a set of glass chimes whose connecting strings had rotted straight through—and I repaired them and set them up around the perimeter of the roof. It didn't take much wind to set any of them in motion, and Corban agreed that these would serve to guide him home if he ever took off without me.

“Though I don't know why I would,” he said as we returned from our outing to the sea.

“Well, maybe you'll accidentally drop me some night, and you'll have to make your way back here by yourself,” I said.

“I won't accidentally
drop
you,” he exclaimed. “And if I did, I'd come down to
find
you instead of returning here.”

“Well, that's good to know,” I said.

I had opened the trapdoor, and enough light spilled out to let me see him shaking his head.
Why can't Moriah ever be serious?
“Of course, I might
throw
you to the ground some night when you're being particularly exasperating,” he said, following me down the stairs.

“Oh, you'd have done that long before now if you were going to,” I said cheerfully. “You've gotten used to me by now.”

“I don't know—does anyone really get used to you?”

I laughed. “I'll have to think that over.”

“So, where shall we go tomorrow night? I think we should head north again—past the mine, toward Windy Point.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But the moon's already only half full. It's getting smaller and rising later, so it's harder for me to see landmarks. We might have to stay close to home for a while or risk getting lost.”

His face showed a quick frown. “If you've got the compass—”

“Which I also can't see in the dark.”

“Well, maybe we don't need you to see. If we go to the mine and north from there, I think I can find my way.”

“In which case, you don't need me anyway,” I said.

His frown deepened. “Of course I need you,” he snapped. “I
think
I know where I am, but I could easily miscalculate.”

“We'll see,” I said. “But we might have to stay close to home and fly for strength, not distance, until the moon starts waxing again.”

“Very well,” he said reluctantly. “We'll talk about it tomorrow.”

But we didn't talk about it the next day, because everything changed; and a few days after that, everything changed again.

O
ver the past four days, I had continued to spend a few hours in the kitchen, though now I went in early enough to help with the work of preparing dinner. I rarely encountered Rhesa, but I guessed she had complained incessantly to Deborah, because within two days the head cook was asking me when I thought Alma would be well enough for me to resume the overnight shift. I knew Corban was not yet ready to announce his existence to the rest of the world, but pretty soon I would either need to return to my old post or lose my job. Or explain exactly what was taking up all my time at the Great House.

The day after the flight to the ocean, all those options were put on hold. I made my way down to the kitchen in midafternoon to find the place in chaos. Deborah was the only cook in evidence, though she was attended by a small army of students who were rushing between stove and table and pantry, trying to do her bidding.

“No, not the
clotted
cream—sweet Jovah singing, don't you even know what milk looks like? Yes—that jar there. And yes, I meant the potatoes, not the turnips! Moriah! Thank the good god you're here. I was about to send someone to wake you up.”

“What's going on? Where are the others?”

“Sick. All of them. With something”—she patted her stomach—“that has made them vomit through the night.
And
about twenty of the students have come down with it as well.”

“Oh, no,” I said. “I suppose everyone will get it eventually.”

“I suppose,” she said. “But as long as
we're
healthy, we need to do the work of four. I've already sent a note up to Alma saying that you can't be spared tonight.”

I put on an apron. “Obviously not,” I said. “Let's get dinner ready.”

 

 

T
he illness made its way quickly through the school. About half the students and three-quarters of the staff succumbed over the next few days, though most of them recovered after a couple of bad nights. But two older men, one a teacher and one a handyman, couldn't seem to shake it. They came down with a fever as well as the stomach disorder, and they languished on their beds, refusing to eat or drink.

Judith, who had some healing skills, had turned nurse the minute she recovered enough to get out of bed. I had no interest in tending the patients, but I didn't mind doing the extra laundry and scrubbing down the sickrooms.

“I'm worried about David,” Judith told me on the afternoon of the third day. We were folding what seemed like a thousand towels that had just come through the wash. “Jonathan's beginning to improve, but David is getting worse, and I'm almost out of drugs to give him.”

“Maybe we should hoist a plague flag,” I suggested. People in settlements all over Samaria would catch the attention of angels flying nearby by raising distress signals—called plague flags, though it didn't really matter what disaster they portended. “Ask an angel to pray for more medicine.”

“I thought of that,” she said. “But I don't know that anyone would see it. We're so remote here—and most of the angels are likely to be headed for the Plain of Sharon.”

Startled, I did a quick calculation. Spring had tiptoed to the border of winter while I had not been paying attention, and the equinox was almost here. “You're right! It's less than a week till the Gloria.”

“So I don't think we can expect help from any angels,” she ended with a sigh. “I'll do what I can for him.”

I didn't answer as I continued to fold linens. I wondered if Corban would be willing to sing a prayer to Jovah if the situation was dire. I didn't know much about it, but I believed angels usually offered their prayers from a high altitude, and Corban had never gone too far off the ground since he began flying again. I didn't know if he was afraid of the winds or the disorientation, but I had to confess I didn't like the idea of getting way above land, either.

Meanwhile, since that first week when I had spotted him on the roof of the Great House, I hadn't heard him sing a note. That was odd, because angels were all steeped in music; they couldn't live without it, or so it seemed. Corban had told me he composed songs in his copious free time, but I'd never heard him play, either. I wondered if he had abandoned music in a bitter response to the god he thought had abandoned him.

But surely if he thought a man's life was at stake . . .

I decided that, if David took a turn for the worse, I would ask Corban if he was willing to petition the god. And if he said no, I would mock him and shame him until he agreed. And then he would fling himself aloft and offer his prayers to Jovah and be successful and feel proud of himself and fall in love with me because I always pushed him beyond his fears—or he would be tumbled off course by a swift, unfriendly wind, and fail to sing a note, and return to land full of doubt and self-loathing and never wish to speak to me again.

Well, then. Always something to look forward to.

 

 

I
was still asleep early the next morning when there was a frantic pounding at my door and the sound of someone calling my name. My schedule had changed again during this time of illness, so I had gone to bed around midnight, but I still was not ready to rise with the sun.

“Moriah! Come quickly! He's gone!”

For a moment, I didn't recognize the woman's voice and couldn't think who
he
might be or why I would care if he was missing. But I dragged myself out of bed and opened the door to say
“What?”
in an aggrieved tone.

Alma stared at me, her lined face a study in worry. “Moriah, Corban's not in his room. I don't know where he could be.”

Instantly I was wide awake and flooded with fear. “Jovah's balls, he went out on his own,” I whispered. “Let me get dressed.”

Five minutes later, looking a fright, I brushed past an interested crowd of observers in the hallway and towed Alma down to the ground level of the dorm. I declined to answer the questions tossed out by a handful of students and staff.
What's going on? Who's missing?
I glared at a few people and they eventually stopped trailing behind us as I pulled Alma all the way to the stable. I noticed she walked with a slight limp, but she kept up with me well enough.

Once we were inside the stable, I turned to Alma. I was so full of fear that most of my breath had been squeezed out. It was hard to appear calm, hard to speak, but I focused fiercely on figuring out what I should do. “When did he leave?” I asked.

She looked bewildered. “I don't know. He was there when I brought him dinner last night, but gone when I went up with his breakfast this morning. I didn't even hear him come downstairs.”

I shook my head. “He didn't. He's been practicing flying. He left from the roof.”

“
Flying?
But he can't see!”

“He navigates by sound.” I paused, pressing my lips together to hold back a whimper of terror. “Or with my help. I suppose he got tired of waiting for me and decided to see how far he could get on his own.”

“Dear sweet Jovah,” Alma whispered. “He must have gotten lost—and come to ground somewhere—how will we ever find him?”

That was clearly the question. “I think—it seems likeliest—he would try to make it to the place he can always find. The old mine up the road. I'll go there first and then make wider circles around it until I find him.”

“I'll come with you,” she said.

I hesitated, but if Corban was seriously injured, I'd never be able to get him back here on my own. I was already debating whether I would bring a wagon or merely saddle a horse—it would be easier to cover ground from horseback, but impossible to bring back an injured angel without a wagon.

“All right,” I said. “I'll hitch the horses. You get supplies. Food and water and maybe some bandages. Meet me at the gate as soon as you can. Don't tell anyone where we're going.”

She paused long enough to give me an incredulous look—
It will be hard to keep the angel a secret once we bring him back in a wago
n—but just nodded and hurried off.

In less than fifteen minutes, we were on our way, heading north on the rutted road. I tried to block from my mind all the horrifying images that clamored to get in, pictures of the angel bruised and broken on the open ground, bloodied and unconscious on a peak in the Caitanas, adrift on the ocean, his great wings spread like seaweed along the surface of the water. How could he have been so reckless, so stupid?
Damn arrogant angels, they think just because they want something, they can reach out their hands and take it,
I thought angrily.
They don't have to wait patiently, like ordinary men, or obey the laws of the physical world.

But they did. They did.

We were probably still a mile from the mine when I started shouting Corban's name. If he was alive, if he was conscious, he would be able to hear me from a fair distance and call back. When I paused to give my throat a rest, Alma lifted her own voice. “Angelo! Angelo! Where are you?”

About an hour after we set out, we approached the ruins of the mine. I pulled the wagon over so Alma and I could jog over to it through the sandy soil. It was immediately clear how Corban might have lost his bearings here. Sometime in the past week, the elements had wreaked additional damage to the fallen buildings; the windmill had wholly collapsed. There was no longer any rhythmic tapping noise to tell Corban he had arrived at his destination. He must have flown confidently in this direction, been puzzled at the missing sound, wondered if he'd misjudged his route, turned around, tried to get back to the house, felt a rising self-doubt that made him question any choice he made, and ended up thoroughly lost. He could be anywhere within a five-mile radius.

“Corban!” I shouted, but there was no answer.

“Are you sure this is where he came?” Alma asked.

“I'm not sure of anything.”

I thought for a moment. It seemed likelier that he had overshot the mark than undershot it—anyway, if he was behind us anywhere along our route, he would have heard us calling. I hoped. “Let's go north,” I said. “At least another five miles.”

She nodded, and we returned to the wagon. I drove more slowly for the next hour as we peered around, both hoping and fearing to see a crumpled ball of feathers lying along the side of the road. I had given up the notion of shouting his name and now I began singing, hoping the sustained, persistent notes would catch his attention even if he was in a groggy, hallucinatory state. After a few moments, Alma added her voice in a sweet alto harmony. Without conscious thought, I had opened with another Manadavvi ballad, and I raised my eyebrows when it turned out she recognized it. She shrugged and smiled and kept singing.

Just as I was wondering if it was time to widen our search east or west, we heard a voice cry out my name. I jerked on the reins and we both fell abruptly silent, listening hard. There it was again, faint and exhausted.
Moriah!

My heart leapt. Praise be to Jovah, at least he was alive. “Corban!” I shouted, throwing the reins to Alma, grabbing a flask of water, and jumping out of the wagon. “Keep calling me! I'm on my way!”