Archangel (22 page)

The shopping was curtailed by a spell of cold, wet weather, so Rachel and the angel stayed in for several days. These hours passed agreeably as well. Magdalena taught Rachel the intricate board games that she had seen some of the affluent Semorrans play (and lose huge amounts of money on, though she and Maga did not gamble). In return, Rachel taught her some of the rudimentary weaving skills that had earned her such fame among the Manderras.

And they each spent some time, separately, in the recital chambers—Magdalena, no doubt, to rehearse, and Rachel to listen to recordings. Magdalena also signed up for several one-hour harmonic shifts, and sang duets with three or four of the Eyrie angels during those rainy days. She had a pure, wistful alto; her voice was not as strong as her sister’s, but sweet in tone and absolutely true. Rachel liked to listen to her. Or maybe she just liked Maga.

She was not the only one. The Monteverde angel was a universal favorite with the Eyrie residents, and while she was in Magdalena’s company, Rachel could count on continuous brief visits from mortals and other angels. After the first day or two, she stopped glowering at the visitors and just ignored them while they talked to Maga. Most of them returned the favor.

The only person, as far as Rachel could tell, who did not like Magdalena was Hannah. This had become evident on the first day that Maga was there, when the older woman joined them for breakfast.

“I understand you’re staying with us for a few weeks,” Hannah had said in her usual measured tones.

“Yes—a month or so,” Magdalena replied.

“You realize of course that we’ll expect you to sing some of the harmonics while you’re here.”

“Certainly. I’m looking forward to it.”

And Hannah had not said another word to the angel except to admonish her sharply not to dip her sleeve in the milk. Rachel had observed all this in surprise, since Hannah—although not especially warm—had always been kind to everyone Rachel had seen her with before.

It was late in the second week, during a rainstorm that had turned, messily, to snow, that Rachel asked Magdalena for an explanation. They had just returned from trying out Rachel’s new boots in the snow that had fallen on the plateau, and Hannah had severely criticized them for tracking in water.

“I’ve never heard her speak to anyone the way she does to you,” Rachel said, once they were ensconced in her room. “Doesn’t she like you? I thought Hannah liked everyone. I thought everyone liked you.”

Maga was toweling her thick, short hair. “She used to like me. But this whole business with Nathan—” She shrugged and folded up the towel. “She thinks it’s all my fault, I suppose.”

“But why does she care? More than anyone else, I mean.”

“Because Nathan’s her son.”

Rachel stared. “Her
son
? But I thought he and Gabriel were brothers—”

“Half brothers. It’s rare that you’ll find full-blooded siblings among the angels.”

“You and Ariel?”

Maga shook her head. “Oh, no. You don’t know that story?”

“No one talks to me. I don’t know any of the gossip.”

“No one talks to you because you’re extremely unfriendly,” Maga retorted.

Rachel grinned. “I don’t care much for angels, as a rule.”

“You married one.”

“Duress.”

“And you seem to like me well enough.”

“Everybody likes you. Tell me your story.”

“Well, my father was an angel, and he was married to Ariel’s mother, and she was born. Shortly after that, a young woman came through Monteverde and drew my father’s attention. Well, she drew the attention of several of the men at the hold. She was one of the angel-seekers, and she’d been to Windy Point—”

“Wait a minute. Angel-seeker? What’s that?”

“A woman who seduces angels in hopes of bearing an angel child and thus being accepted into the hold.”

Rachel’s eyes grew big. “You mean, that’s her goal? Her purpose for loving a man? Are there many women like that?”

“Oh, yes. Haven’t you noticed them in Velora? I’ll point them out to you next time we go.”

“So they seduce angels and—then what? If they have an angel child—”

“Then they can choose to raise the child in the hold, and live there as long as they like. Angel babies are rare and precious, you understand. A woman who bears one gains a certain status for life. It’s a gamble, of course, because so few women do have cherub children.”

“And what happens if her children are mortal?”

Maga shrugged. “It depends on the woman. Sometimes she raises them. Sometimes she abandons them. There are a lot of stray children in Monteverde. And Velora is overrun with them. Surely you’ve seen them in Velora. Some of them become almost feral—street children, with no one to care for them but each other. There are even more in Breven and the other Jansai cities. That’s where a lot of the angel-seekers end up, because the Jansai cater to women with—certain moral standards.”

Rachel was shocked to the core. “How can a mother abandon her child? Just leave the baby on a street corner somewhere—”

“Or in a field or a cave or a wagon by some roadway. It’s gruesome, I know. To these women, children are a liability. Mortal children, anyway. When you’re around angels long enough, you’ll come to expect it—the sight of these lost children who would have had such different lives if they’d been born angelic.”

Rachel felt physically ill. “I can’t imagine— Among Edori, children are valued above everything,” she said. “You would sell yourself into slavery before you would permit harm to come to your child. We don’t believe in allowing ourselves to have children unless we are able and willing to care for them. To have one on a gamble, on a chance, for some other purpose than to love the child for itself—”

“You are appalled, I know, but to me the chance seems worth it,” Maga said seriously. “You see, I know how few angels there are, and how worried the host leaders become when baby
after baby is born mortal. There is such rejoicing when a new angel enters the world. They say even Jovah dances. I don’t believe the mortal children should be abandoned, but I cannot blame anyone for trying to sire—or bear—an angel.”

Rachel shook her head, still amazed and disturbed, but clearly she and Magdalena would never agree on this subject. “So—your mother,” she said, her voice sounding a little strained. “She was one of these—angel-seekers …”

Maga nodded. “And she came to Monteverde. Ariel had just been born and my father was feeling proud of himself, confident that he could sire another angel. So when my mother approached him, he was eager enough to sleep with her, and within a few weeks it was clear that she was pregnant. He was delighted. She should have been delighted, too, but meanwhile she’d fallen in love with another man—a mortal man, I mean, a Jansai—and she wanted to leave Monteverde and go off with him. My father refused to let her go. So they left anyway, in the middle of the night.”

Magdalena paused, resettling herself on the pillows next to Rachel. “And they were gone,” she said simply. “No one could find them. My father searched for the next year. He went to Breven, he went to Luminaux; he had portraits of her sent to every hold and city. No one had seen her, no one knew what had happened to the baby. He finally stopped searching.

“Then, one day a few years later, he was on a routine search flight over Gaza and he saw a plague flag over a rocky area where he knew there were no villages. He came down and found a little camp—a tent, a hut, a few rabbits in a hutch. The Jansai man was dead. My mother was dying. I was lying in the hut, crying and hungry but not sick. Angels rarely succumb to plague, for some reason. My father brought me back to Monteverde, and that’s where I’ve been ever since.”

Rachel was fascinated. “Do you remember any of it?”

Maga shook her head. “Nothing. Ariel’s mother once showed me one of my mother’s portraits, but I didn’t remember the face. I don’t remember anything but Monteverde. I wonder about her, though.”

“What do you wonder?”

“Why she did what she did. It’s almost incredible. I mean— angel-seekers, that’s what they live for, to bear an angel child. And she—first, she left without knowing what kind of child she
would bear. And then, when she
had
me—when she could have taken me to any hold in Samaria and been welcomed for my sake—still she chose to hide me, to live as far from angels as possible, to be with the mortal she loved rather than with my father. I’ve never heard of anyone else who did such a thing.”

“She loved him,” Rachel said softly. “She dared everything for love.”

“She could have given me up to my father and still lived with that Jansai man,” Maga said. “She didn’t have to hide the way she did.”

“She loved you, too,” Rachel said. “She couldn’t give you up either.”

“Maybe. I’d like to think so, but—”

“There’s no other explanation.”

“And then I’ve always wondered. The plague flag. Did they really hope an angel would come in time to save them? Or—”

Rachel shook her head. “She raised it for you. So an angel would come down and find you. She knew she was dying and she could not leave you alone. But she wouldn’t give you up till the very last moment.”

“Maybe,” Maga said again, her sweet voice wistful. “I would like to believe she loved me that much—”

“You have to believe it.”

“The funny thing is, I sometimes think my father loved her till he died. He didn’t talk about her, and if I asked, he would curse her, but he kept a portrait of her in his room. I saw it there once when I was a little girl, and it was still there the day after he died. I know, because I was the one who cleared his room out and bundled up his clothes. And sometimes I think—I wonder if maybe they weren’t true lovers—you know, intended by Jovah.”

“Why?”

“Well, something he said made me think that when he met her, his Kiss flared. You know”—and here Maga’s voice was edged with sarcasm—”the great sign from the god that lovers have met. Because he told me, a few days before he died, never to trust the Kiss, that it only led to sorrow. I had met Nathan by then, of course, but we were still young—friends—nothing had happened between us. The first time Nathan kissed my mouth— and the crystal on my arm came to life—I remembered what my father had said. And I realized he was right.”

Rachel frowned. They were half-sitting, half-lying on the
floor amidst Rachel’s new pillows, on top of her new rug, and it reminded her very much of sitting around an Edori campfire talking late into the night. She stretched out on her stomach, still frowning.

“At my wedding,” she said slowly, “the oracle Josiah talked to me a little about this. The reason the Kiss lights in someone’s arm. He said that Yovah is not so much interested in true love as—bloodlines. The children that two people might bear if they are brought together.”

“Breeding,” Maga said with a slight smile. “I’ve heard this argument before.”

“So then if
your
parents were brought together by the Kiss— and
Nathan’s
parents were brought together by the Kiss—”

“Were they? I didn’t know that.”

“Oh, yes. Hannah told me that the first day I was here. So that means Yovah united each of your parents specifically so you could be born. And if you and Nathan have been brought together by the Kiss—”

“I think, rather, the intensity of our love has caused the Kiss to light in each of our bodies,” Maga said. “Because angels are forbidden to intermarry, and Jovah was the one to lay down that prohibition.”

“Because of the monster children?”

“Right.”

“Hannah called them lucifers.”

Maga smiled a little. “That is the term for it among the Manadavvi—the term for anything dreadful and perverted. To them, even a rainstorm that goes on too long can be called a lucifer, because it is a good thing turned to evil purposes.”

“Hunh. Among the Edori, the word ‘lucifer’ means a false light. Certain insects at night give off a glow that looks like candlelight—they are called lucifers. Some swamp woods can burn, if you use them to build a fire, but only for a few minutes. They are called lucifers as well. And the Jansai—they have learned to build tent fires near Edori camping grounds, knowing the Edori will come seeking fellowship—and those fires are called lucifers, too.”

Maga smiled again. “The word really comes from the time of the founding of Samaria,” she said. “After Jovah brought us here and settled us into the three provinces, and divided everyone up into men, angels and oracles, he withdrew into heaven to
watch over us. And there was peace for a generation. But as the sons and daughters of the first settlers grew to adulthood, they began clamoring to see the face of Jovah for themselves.

“At that time, the Archangel was a man named Lucifer—he had succeeded Uriel, who was now dead. To quiet the people, Lucifer said he would fly to the heavens and visit Jovah, asking him to return to earth. And he took off from the Plain of Sharon and he was gone three days, and no one saw him return. But on the third day, he reappeared on the Plain, and beside him was a great figure of a man, wrapped head to toe in glowing white cloth edged with gold. There were crowds of people gathered on the Plain, and they shouted out glorias when they saw Lucifer return with the god. And they crowded forward to touch the god, and beg for his blessing and ask to be healed by his hand.

“Now this went on for days and days, with people from all over Samaria making pilgrimages to the Plain of Sharon to personally touch the foot of the god. And Lucifer began to grow jealous, because no one was honoring
him
anymore—all the attention was going to Jovah. Finally, he grew so enraged that he ripped the white cloths from Jovah’s face—to reveal, not the god at all, but a poor giant half-wit that he himself had dressed up for the role. And so the word ‘lucifer’ has come, at least among angels, to mean anyone who betrays a sacred trust—who pretends to bring you love, for instance, and brings you dishonor instead.”

“What happened to the Archangel?”

“He was banished. I don’t know where. There is no mention of him anywhere else in the histories.”

“And what happened to the half-wit?”

“Stormed by the crowd and bludgeoned to death.”