Jovah's Angel (35 page)

He headed back to where Noah was crouched over Delilah, urging her to a sitting position. She was struggling for composure, breathing hard but no longer crying. All of them were soaked through, hair and clothing plastered to their bodies, rain running into their eyes and washing away vision.

Caleb dropped to a squat beside them. “We could turn the cart over, shelter under it till the rain passes,” he suggested, shouting his words as he had shouted everything this afternoon.

“What about the horses?” Noah called back.

Caleb shook his head. “I think they're going to run. I set them free. We'll be walking back.” He thought Noah might argue, but instead the Edori nodded. “If the rain ever stops,” Caleb added.

“I think it will,” Noah said. “It seems to be letting up already.”

He was right. The sheets of rain seemed to be thinning out, and the lightning and thunder had subsided. Caleb rose to his feet to see if he could get any encouraging glimpse of shredding clouds and felt Noah stand beside him to look in the other direction. The wind, which had lashed at them all day, had fallen oddly still. The sky, at least where Caleb was looking, had turned a sickly green. But the rain was faltering; that seemed to be a good sign.

He turned to say so to Noah and found the Edori staring back at him with a stark look of terror on his face. Caleb whipped his head around to see what Noah had spotted, and the sight made him freeze: a black funnel-shaped cloud boiling down from the heavens, spinning lower and lower in the seconds that they watched.

“What in the god's name—!” Caleb cried, but Noah didn't
stop to speak. The Edori grabbed Delilah's arm, yanked her to her feet, and started off at a dead run for the muddy ditch that had capsized their cart. Caleb sprinted beside them, calling out questions. But it was impossible even to hear himself. A rumbling behind them grew into a tremendous roaring, drowning out the noises of the world, filling everything—ears, eyes, bones—with its deafening commotion. Delilah stumbled and Noah jerked her back to her feet, then flung her down into the ditch and dropped beside her. He shoved her face into the mud and buried his own head. Caleb scrambled in next to them and burrowed in as far as he could go.

It was as if a thousand horses stampeded across them; it was as if the Beast and a dozen of its brothers charged over the ditch. It was like being thrown off a cliff. It was like falling backward into the cacophonous waters churning through the Gabriel Dam. It was like nothing Caleb had ever experienced. The swirling, bellowing mountain of black wind passed over them, raked its thousand fingers across their backs, seemed to lift the very ground they lay upon and spin it in one dizzying circle. The world was nothing but sound and motion.

And then the world was nothing but rain.

It took Caleb a good five minutes to realize that the tornado had passed, dragging its train of destruction behind it. He had trouble hearing, but perhaps that was only because the rain muffled everything; there might be nothing to hear. He pushed his heavy body to an upright position, peered around him as far as he could.

The landscape was barely recognizable. What little shrubbery grew in this part of the world had been ripped up and flung aside; rocks and boulders stood upended or plowed at unnatural angles back into the ground. Splinters of wood and metal strewn all about showed where their cart had been smashed to pieces. The bodies of the horses lay, broken and still, fifty yards apart.

Nothing and no one had survived except the three of them.

Caleb dropped down to his knees again to find Noah once more coaxing Delilah to lift her head, stop her tears, sit up, be all right. Caleb's heart went out to her. He had never seen anyone, not even a child, so frightened of anything, and he would not blame her if her tears did not cease for a week. No doubt she was remembering that last fatal storm she had lived through, but barely, when she lost nearly everything she cared about. That must have been even more terrible than this.

But she was trying. She was sobbing, but she was choking down on her sobs; she had her arms wrapped about her body as if to hold in the screams. She allowed Noah to draw her to her knees, to her feet. She swayed but she did not fall, and she kept only one hand on his arm to achieve her balance.

“The horses are dead,” Caleb informed Noah in a low voice. The Edori nodded.

“We have to start back on foot,” Noah said.

“Now? Can't we wait a little, till the rain stops?”

Noah shook his head. “This kind of rain never stops. If we don't find shelter somewhere, we'll all wash away. And unless we keep moving—” He glanced at the angel, whose eyes were closed in concentration. Caleb wondered if she was trying to cut off the flow of the tears or if she was trying to remember how to walk. “We'll get sick and die if we stay here,” he ended abruptly.

Caleb nodded. “How long on foot?”

“In this? Hard to tell. A few hours. I'm trying to think where there might be shelter somewhere along the way.”

But neither of them could remember anything suitable from their previous journeys over this road. Grimly, they searched the remains of the cart, seeking any provisions that had escaped unharmed. They found no food, but the tarpaulin could be salvaged. Wet and bulky, it made an uncomfortable load, but it might be all they had to shield them against the oncoming night.

Eventually they set off blindly into the falling rain, trusting the Edori's sense of direction. The men took turns carrying the canvas and guiding Delilah along the path. She made no attempt to speak. Caleb had never seen anyone who made so perfect a picture of abject misery, and yet she never complained or asked them to stop. It occurred to him, finally, that she thought this was the end of the world; she was dead, or dying, or already in some un-imagined hell. Protestations would avail her nothing now.

And he looked about him at the scarred landscape, ripped apart as by the god's own hand, and thought perhaps she was right. Something was ending, had ended, was self-destructing, here on the plains outside of Breven. And if here, why not in Velora and Luminaux? Why not in Bethel and Gaza? What would keep all of Samaria from coming brutally apart, since neither mortals nor angels could trust Jovah to guard them and keep them safe?

And he plodded forward into the relentless rain and understood a measure of Delilah's fear.

The Edori came for them about an hour later. Thomas and Laban were driving one of the big transport wagons, large enough to hold three wounded men, and following the route they had always taken into the city. Never had Caleb felt such overwhelming relief to see anybody. Quick queries established that the three of them were unharmed, though their horses were dead, and the camp had been out of the main trajectory of the tornado.

“But half the tents were blown apart anyway,” Laban reported, helping Caleb dump the tarpaulin into the wagon. “Everything's upended and most of the fires are out. All the wood's wet, so you can hardly get anything to burn. It'll be a cold camp tonight if it doesn't stop raining.”

“Was anybody missing but us?” Noah asked.

Laban grinned. He was a big, easygoing man who found life almost universally agreeable. “Everybody else was smart enough to get back when the rains started,” he said.

“Well, we were
coming
back,” Noah said. “We were too far away.”

“Didn't you think about staying in the city?” Thomas asked.

“Thought of it. Too late. The storm came up too quickly.”

“You'll have to tell us about it,” Laban said. “After dinner tonight. There's not many who feel a tornado dance across their backs and live to describe the sensation.”

Noah glanced at Delilah, seated docilely in the back of the wagon. Caleb's eyes followed his. The angel had wrapped a dry blanket over her lap and shoulders, and she was huddled inside it in as small a shape as she could achieve. Even her wings seemed shrunken. Her dark hair was wildly disarranged, and her face was colorless. Her eyes were open, fixed on some point at the bottom of the wagon.

“I don't think this is going to be a story I'll want to tell tonight,” Noah said quietly. “Not at this campfire.”

“If there is a campfire,” Thomas nodded. “I think we're all ready here. Let's go.”

But there was a fire back at the Edori camp—just one, and everyone was gathered around it, but it was the most welcome sight in the three provinces, as far as Caleb was concerned. Noah cleared a place for Delilah right at the edge of the flames and covered her with pillows and blankets, but he was not the only one who fussed over the angel. Martha brought her food and
Sheba brought her wine, and the children clustered around her, offering her their toys and their treasures if those would make her feel better. Martha tried to shoo them away once, but Delilah freed a hand from her blankets and waved them all back.

“I like to have them near me,” she said, and her voice was husky as if she had been sick for a long time. “Maybe some of them would sing for me.”

Which they did willingly enough, lifting their sweet untrained voices in a medley of songs cheerful and sad. Gradually Delilah warmed herself before the fire of their affection. She began to smile; she let the blankets slip from her shoulders and reached her arms out to take the smallest girl on her lap. The girl whispered something in Delilah's ear, and the angel actually laughed. Caleb, watching from the other side of the fire while he let his own bones dry out, felt a great compression ease from around his heart. She would be all right, then. Delilah had survived another devastation.

It was a few days later that he realized he was not entirely correct about that. They were on their way back to Luminaux, none of them looking forward to the tedious, uncomfortable journey in the rumbling Beast, and they had stopped for the night at one of the same campsites they had utilized on the way to Breven. This trip, Delilah joined in the fuel-gathering and fire-building; she was as active as either of the men. Caleb regarded this transformation with suspicion, but Noah seemed to view it as one more proof of the angel's overall wonderfulness.

This night, over the fire, they were discussing the Edori's upcoming voyage to Ysral. Caleb was asking Noah pertinent questions: When did the Edori plan to set sail? When did the engines need to be completed? When did Noah have to return to Breven? Delilah listened carefully to each query and reply.

“They plan to leave the week after the Gathering,” Noah said. “One last chance to see all their brothers and sisters and friends. Then—off to Breven, off to the new land.”

“Not much time,” Caleb commented. “The Gathering is only a couple of months away.”

“The boats will be ready by then. And the engines.”

“You haven't changed your mind, have you?” Caleb said, as if he were joking, but he was seriously interested in the answer. “You don't intend to join them, do you?”

Noah laughed ruefully. “Half of my heart wants to go. What a splendid adventure! What a story to tell your children and your
grandchildren! I sailed for Ysral and lived to tell the tale. But I—” He shook his head. “I have so much I want to do here. I have such a stake in the new technologies we are exploring. In Ysral, it will be a fresh new world, yes, but there will be so much work to be done. And none of it scientific. And science owns most of my heart.” As he finished, he glanced at Delilah, but he did not say the words aloud:
And you own the rest of it
.

“Glad to hear it,” Caleb said. “I'd hate to lose you to this Ysral venture.”

“How many people are going?” Delilah asked.

“Twelve hundred. Well, there's room for twelve hundred,” Noah amended. “I think, at last count, eight hundred had signed up. Which is a lot. Which is almost a fourth of the Edori.”

“So few?” Caleb asked. “I thought the Edori numbered in the tens of thousands.”

Noah shook his head. “Not even in our more glorious days. There have always been few of us, because the life is so hard. And now… We dwindle away by the hundreds every year. Soon there may be no Edori left—at least, no Edori roving Samaria, living together in tribes. We'll be scattered throughout the towns and villages, forgetting our traditions and our clan names.”

“You sound like Thomas.”

“All Edori sound like Thomas. These things worry us. That is why so many are sailing for Ysral.”

“Freedom forever to live the untrammeled life,” Caleb said with a little smile. “And goodbye forever to the angels and the allali.”

Noah grinned. “And glad to see the last of them.”

“Not all of them,” Delilah said unexpectedly.

Both men turned to look at her in surprise. “What do you mean?” Noah asked.

“Not goodbye to all the angels,” she said. “I asked. Thomas said it would be an honor.”

“What would be an honor?” Caleb said, though the sudden clench of his stomach gave him the answer before she did. The look on Noah's face was one of profound horror.

“To have me along. They've agreed to let me sail with them for Ysral.”