Angel-Seeker

  “I want to see you,” he said.

  “You’re seeing me.”

  “Not like this.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  There was a sudden roar from the crowd as the harpist finished his song and then clattered down the steps, making more noise than it seemed one man should. Rebekah drew back into the shadows, saying nothing until the next group of performers tramped up the stairs and began to array themselves on the stage.

  “Not like this,” Obadiah said again. “Where I’m afraid any minute that someone will see us together and question who you are. I want to be able to talk to you. I want to be able to see your face.”

  “I’m betrothed to marry Isaac,” she said baldly.

  He was silent so long that the musicians on the platform above them had time to warm up their instruments and dive into the first measures of their music. A reel of some sort, lively and inappropriate.

  “When will you be married?” he asked at last.

  She shook her head. “Sometime next spring. They have not finished all the arrangements yet.”

  “Do you want to marry him?”

  She shrugged and found herself on the move, unable to stand there so quietly discussing this. She paced away from the shadows and in a tight circle around the angel. He pivoted slowly, following her. “I don’t know what I want! Marriage to somebody like Isaac is what my life has always held. Why should I not want to marry him? Because I have met you?” She stopped and stared at him. “I don’t even know you,” she said.

  “I hate to think of you living here,” he said, speaking very rapidly. “Trapped in some house, forced to wed at your stepfather’s whim, forced to live as your husband says—with no voice, and no choice, in your own life.”

  “That is the life of every Jansai woman. What else should I expect?”

  “You could come back with me to Cedar Hills,” he said. She had the impression that the words surprised him just as much as they surprised her, but he pressed on after only a second’s hesitation. “I realize—you don’t know me—I understand that. But there is a great deal of work to be done in Cedar Hills. There is an entire hold to be built, and there is work for all hands. You could sew or teach or watch the children. You could see me only when you wanted to. A woman can live on her own in Cedar Hills, can make her own way. And I would be a friend to you forever.”

  “I can’t leave Breven.”

  “You say that because you have never been on your own,” he replied. “You’re afraid. But it would not be frightening for long. Not as terrifying as living here, compelled to do as someone else decided—”

  “But here at least I understand my place and my purpose,” she interrupted. “To go to Cedar Hills—to leave here and go anywhere—that is like asking me to jump in the ocean and live under the sea. That is like asking me to do something that is—that’s not possible. That’s crazy.”

  “You don’t have to decide tonight,” he said. “But think about it. Promise me that. You’ll think about it.”

  “Every time I see you I start thinking about things, whether or not I want to think about them,” she said crossly.

  He grinned. “Well, then, I must hope that you see me quite often! I like to have you thinking about me and things I’ve said.”

  “I am not always sure it was such a good thing that I found you by the water and saved your life,” she said with a little scowl.

  “Well, it was a good thing for me, so I’m very happy you found me that day! I’m very happy I found you this day. And I want to see you again. How can I see you again?”

  “There is no way,” she said.

  “There has to be.”

  She looked up at him, shaking her head in the negative, but her mind had not accepted that impossibility. She considered and discarded ideas even while she told him no.

  “I will be here tomorrow night as well,” he said. “At the fair, I mean. I can stay another full day and another full night. If you will tell me someplace I can meet you.”

  “There is no place,” she said, still trying to manufacture a different alternative.

  “Can you get to my hotel?” he said. “I think we might be safe there.”

  “At a Breven inn?” she said, her voice derisive.

  “It’s a Manadavvi establishment. The Hotel Verde.”

  Her racing mind stopped dead on that thought. “The Hotel Verde,” she repeated. “Do they have any Jansai servants working there?”

  He shook his head eagerly. “No! Only Manadavvi. And there’s a woman who works there, the daughter of the owner, she goes about with her face uncovered. All the time. Even in the market.”

  “Her complexion must be as rough as a man’s,” Rebekah said without thinking.

  Obadiah smiled. “That wasn’t my point.”

  “Yes. I know. Your point was that, if I could make it to your hotel, I would be safe there from prying eyes. But that would mean leaving my house and traveling through the city, and being stopped by no one, and not being missed while I was gone—”

  “No,” he said, suddenly, and his voice was bleak. “No. I can’t ask you to try that. I’m sorry, I—no. I don’t realize how much actual danger you face. All I realize is that I—I’m sorry. I don’t want to put you at risk.”

  On the instant, she decided she would do it. “I can’t promise anything,” she said. “It depends on if I can get out of the house. Nighttime is more likely. But I can’t promise.”

  He came a step nearer, so there were really only a few inches between them. “Rebekah,” he said, and his voice was urgent. “I don’t want you to risk your life for me. I don’t want you to risk your life for anything. I want to see you—more than anything I can think of at this precise moment, I want a chance to be alone with you—but my blood chills in my veins at the thought of you putting yourself in danger. For me. Because if something happened to you—”

  “Before midnight,” she said, as if he hadn’t spoken. “If I’m not there by then, I won’t be coming.”

  He grabbed her arms with a clasp so strong it swayed her almost against his chest. “Promise me you won’t even try to come if someone will discover you,” he said. “If you’ll be in danger, promise me you won’t come.”

  “I’m in danger now,” she said calmly. “But here I am.”

  Silence fell like a warning the instant the words left her mouth. The performers hit their last chords, and the crowd took a moment to react. Still in the angel’s grip, Rebekah lifted one hand to tug her mask from her head. They stared at each other like penitents gazing into the face of Jovah.

  “Angelo?” said a voice behind them, and then the thunderous applause of the crowd drowned all other noise.

  A shove, a swirl of feathers, and Rebekah found herself pushed behind the angel, his wings half folded around her as if to shield her from all hazards. Her heart was pounding and her blood clamored with terror. She had dropped her mask, and she could not see it anywhere on the ground. Who was there, who had seen her, how could even the angel explain away such an intimate conference with a young Jansai boy? Unless, with her mask gone, she had not appeared to be a boy.

  “What is it, young man? Who are you?” Obadiah asked sharply. She had not thought his pleasant voice could sound so imperious.

  “Angelo, I was looking for someone. I thought he might be back here, with you.”

  It was hard to make out the voice over the noises of the night, but Rebekah thought there was the slightest chance it could be familiar. She tried to peer around Obadiah’s wing, but it was too high, too broad.

  “There is no one here but me,” Obadiah declared.

  “I’m sorry, angelo. There was a boy here a moment ago. I saw him—”

  “That boy is no concern of yours.”

  Rebekah dropped to her knees and stared out through the froth of feathers at the base of Obadiah’s wing. It was still hard to see, but she could make out a figure standing beside the platform, casually dressed in trousers and a v
est. The new arrival was wearing a mask of black and gold feathers and toying with a pendant hung around his throat.

  “But I’m looking for my cousin,” the boy said.

  Rebekah scrambled to her feet and pushed past the startled Obadiah. “Martha! Where have you been? You disappeared!”

  Martha gave her one quick, indignant look, easy to read even through the mask. “I disappeared! You’ve been gone forever! And where do I find you? In a dark field somewhere, exchanging kisses with an angel!”

  Rebekah didn’t know if she was more embarrassed at the accusation or the fact that Obadiah could overhear it. “I was not kissing him,” she hissed. “You’re the one who—”

  “I take it everything is all right, then?” Obadiah interrupted.

  Rebekah turned to face him. “This is my cousin Martha. I came here with her. But then she went off somewhere—yes, you did, don’t pretend you didn’t, I saw you with him—”

  “Saw me with who?”

  “Some Manadavvi,” Rebekah said and had the satisfaction of seeing Martha’s defiance melt away. She returned her attention to the angel. “Anyway. I came with her. She won’t betray me.”

  “Then you’re safe,” he said.

  “We have to go,” Martha broke in. “Ephram and Jordan are both back looking for us. I thought I saw angel wings behind the platform, which is why I came back here—”

  “Ah, so you know all your cousin’s secrets,” Obadiah murmured.

  Rebekah felt her cheeks redden. “Hush,” she said before Martha could say anything, and then, to the angel, “I have to go. Remember what I said.”

  “You remember what I said,” he answered.

  “Where’s your mask?” Martha asked.

  “I dropped it.”

  “Here,” Obadiah said, bending over to retrieve it from the ground. “I’m afraid I stepped on it.”

  Rebekah hesitated just a moment too long, so Martha strode forward and snatched it from his hand. “Thank you, angelo,” she said somewhat tartly, and returned to Rebekah’s side. “Turn around, let me tie this on.”

  In a moment, Rebekah was back in disguise, and Martha was pushing her toward the main clearing in front of the stage. It had ended too strangely and abruptly, this fortuitous meeting with the angel, and she did not want to leave like this, so many words unsaid. But Martha’s hand was firm on her back, and Rebekah could only look over her shoulder at the still, winged shape.

  “Good-bye,” she called. “Remember.”

  “I could not possibly forget,” he said.

  A few moments later they were back in the throng, getting buffeted from their true course by the constant motion of the crowd. “I want to know every—” Martha was saying, just as Rebekah demanded, “What exactly do you think you’re—” and neither of them had time to complete a sentence or answer a question.

  “There they are! Eph, here they are!” Jordan’s voice, sounding young and relieved, called out right at her elbow. “It’s late. We’ve got to get you back. I’m sorry I was gone so long.”

  Ephram joined them, smelling like wine and not looking sorry. “Where were you?” he demanded. “We searched all over for you.”

  Rebekah’s mind was blank, but Martha spoke with lofty coolness. “She had to relieve herself and was looking for some privacy. Now, do you mind? We’re both tired. I don’t know where you two have been all evening, but Rebekah and I need to get home.”

  “Was it fun, though?” Jordan asked a little anxiously. “Did you have a good time?”

  “Oh, yes,” Martha said, once more answering for both of them. “It was the most wonderful thing ever.”

  They didn’t have a chance to really talk until they were back in Rebekah’s room. The return trip through the Breven streets had seemed longer and even chancier than the trip out, as they encountered groups of drunken men and whooping boys intent on squeezing a last few minutes of riotous pleasure out of the evening. And then there was the slow, creeping journey through the sleeping house, through the kitchen, up the servants’ stairwell, down the hallway where the big-eared aunts lay on their mats, never as deeply slumbering as a girl might wish. But they encountered no true checks or dangers, and they slipped into Rebekah’s room with a series of muffled giggles, shoving the door shut behind them. Then they collapsed on the mats by the wall, still giggling.

  “Sshh—shh—you’ll wake somebody up.”

  “Jovah’s wicked bones, what a night! I love the harvest fair, I love it, I shall go every year for the rest of my life—”

  “Shh,” Rebekah whispered again. “Be quiet.”

  Martha had been rolling from side to side on the mat, clutching her arms around her chest in remembered ecstasy, but now suddenly she pushed herself to a seated position and pointed at her cousin. “You! You found your angel! Tell me every word he said.”

  Rebekah sat up, too, and leaned her back against the wall, sticking her feet out straight before her. There were no windows in the room, so it would have been completely dark except for the low flicker of gaslight on the wall by the door. “Oh no,” she said. “This is a night for you to be telling tales first.”

  Martha looked innocent, a hard trick to pull off with the remnants of a charcoal beard rimming her mouth. “I have no tales to tell.”

  Rebekah crossed her arms on her chest. “Disappearing with a Manadavvi lordling into the night. I think you have plenty to report.”

  “Oh, very well, but first you—”

  “Not a word from me,” Rebekah said. “Until you tell me everything.”

  It was clear Martha was bursting with news, so she didn’t need any more encouragement. “Jovah take my bones and bury them in the desert, but I think I’m in love with him, Bekah,” she said. “I never thought I could—I mean, our mothers and our aunts don’t talk about love—and anyway, who could truly love a Jansai man? So I never thought I’d feel this way. But Chesed—I do love him, I believe. It’s so strange.”

  “Where did you meet him? How long have you known him?”

  Martha drew her knees up and rested her darkened chin on top of them. “In the market. I was there one day—”

  “How did you get to market?”

  Martha hunched a shoulder impatiently. “I go sometimes when no one’s paying attention. When my father and Ephram are traveling and the rest of the house is sleeping. It’s not hard.”

  “Do you dress as a man?”

  “Oh, no. I put on a stained old jeska over my most threadbare hallis, and I look like one of the campers from the city rim. A poor woman, who has to come to market on her own. Everyone despises me.”

  “You never told me any of this.”

  “I knew you would worry.”

  “Well, I’ll worry even more now!”

  “I tell you, no one pays attention to me in that house. My mother never asks me where I’ve been. Or maybe she knows and is afraid to ask. Maybe she crept out of the house herself when she was young—or out of the tent. I don’t think my grandfather owned a thing but that tent in his whole life—”

  Rebekah shook her head impatiently. “Back to the story. So you’ve been slipping out to market, and you met this Manadavvi, this Chesed—”

  “Oh, Bekah, he is the most wonderful man. His father owns land in Gaza—so much land—and they grow the most amazing fruits there, sweeter than plums, but so fragile they cannot be shipped south of the Verde Divide. He has met the Archangel, only think of it! And dined with Ariel and Nathan. And he has traveled to every hill and corner of the three provinces—”

  “So have you,” Rebekah interjected.

  “Oh, certainly! I’ve viewed every acre of land from the back of a tented wagon! But he has seen Semorrah and Luminaux and Velora. He has walked the streets. He has dined with miners and shipbuilders and artists and angels, and he tells me about all of it, and I want to go.”

  “Go? Go where? Go with him?”

  “Yes,” Martha said dreamily. She laid her cheek on her knees and rocked hersel
f gently. “I want to see every mile of Samaria from the back of a Manadavvi caravan, and then I want to go live in Gaza and eat fruit so delicate it scarcely survives the motion of being picked from the tree.”

  “You can’t go with him,” Rebekah said blankly.

  “I don’t see why not. I don’t want to stay in Breven.”

  “What do you mean you don’t want to stay in Breven? You belong in Breven! This is your home! You would be so lost and alone out among all those strange people—no one knowing your customs, no one knowing your name, no aunts to care for you when you fell sick, no brothers to watch after you—”

  “I am sick to death of aunts and brothers and fathers and cousins telling me what I can do! Watching my every move and reporting my every action! Other women are free, Chesed told me so. I want to be free, too.”

  “So you will ride away to freedom with this Manadavvi man? Will he marry you? Will that be your freedom? Or will he merely take you away from Breven to some city where you don’t know a soul, so he can abandon you there when he’s tired of you? Will that be your freedom?”

  “You don’t understand!” Martha cried.

  Before Rebekah could retort that she understood very well, there was a sharp knock on the door. “Girls!” came a low, edged reprimand. “Do you want to wake up the entire hallway?”

  It was Hepzibah, Hector’s oldest sister, who had the room directly adjacent to Rebekah’s. Rebekah gave her cousin a warning look and jumped up to run across the floor. She opened the door just a crack.

  “I’m sorry, awrie,” she said, using the respectful term that meant “beloved aunt.” Though cantankerous old Hepzibah was anything but beloved. “Martha and I sometimes forget what time it is.”

  “Well past midnight! You should be sleeping!”

  “How long have you been awake, listening to us argue? We didn’t mean to wake you up,” she asked in a contrite voice. She was really trying to determine if Hepzibah had heard them sneaking through the house or caught any of the words of their heated conversation.