Angel-Seeker

  “Here,” said a voice that she almost recognized. “Put these on.”

  “These” were a pair of small cotton gloves, not entirely clean, from which the fingertips had been clipped away. They were too big for her, but she gratefully slipped her frozen hands inside. “Thank you,” she said, sparing a moment to glance up at her thoughtful assistant.

  It was the Edori Rufus. Whom she had not seen in more than three months.

  “What else can I get you?” he asked gravely. “How can I help?”

  For a moment her mind was completely blank. “Something else hot to drink, thank you,” she said. “Soup, if there’s any to be had. I don’t want to get faint.”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  She wanted to stare after him, wanted to call, “Wait! How have you been? I’ve thought about you.” But the troubled breathing of her patient called her back to her situation, and she quickly bent over his wounded chest again. Broken ribs, too, no doubt, but there wasn’t much she could do about them. She silently recited the list of imperatives that Mary had taught her on her very first week on the job: breathing, bleeding, bones, burns. He was breathing; she was taking care of the bleeding. He had no burns, and his bones could wait. She took another stitch.

  It was close to sunset by the time Mary arrived, looking exhausted but capable. Rufus and two of his fellow workers had strung a few lanterns above Elizabeth’s head so that she wouldn’t have to work in darkness, though she still had to be careful to hold her head so that its shadow did not fall in her way. The cold had gotten even sharper as a wind had arisen. Now Elizabeth couldn’t feel any part of her body: not her knees and ankles where she knelt on the ground, not her icy fingers, not her frozen nose.

  “Let me see, let me see,” Mary said briskly, and Elizabeth was never so glad to turn responsibility over to another human being. “Hmm—yes, very good. Has he spoken? Has he thrown up?”

  Elizabeth shook her head and quickly rattled off the drugs she’d administered and the steps she’d taken. “But I don’t know how to set his hipbone, and I’m sure he’s got some broken ribs,” she finished up.

  “Well, you did an excellent job sewing up the wound,” Mary said. She had knelt beside Elizabeth on the dirt road, but now she glanced up and around. “We can’t leave him outside in the middle of the street. We have to get him to a house, or at least a bed. Somewhere he can stay a good week or two. He’s going to have to be immobilized.”

  “We were afraid to move him,” someone said.

  “Right, you did the right thing for the moment, but now he’s going to have to be taken someplace safer,” Mary said. “How far is his house?”

  There followed a short discussion about possible sickbeds, with the construction crew quickly deciding that their foreman’s office was the closest and most logical location. “But I don’t know how we can move him without killing him,” one of the men added.

  “I’ll get a door,” Rufus said. “It’ll be flat and sturdy. We’ll pull the blanket over onto that. Four of us can carry him once he’s on it.”

  “Is he ready to be moved?” Mary asked Elizabeth, who was setting the final stitches as close as she dared to the smashed hip.

  “I’ve done what I can,” Elizabeth said, sitting back on her heels. She used the back of her wrist to push the hair out of her eyes. She wanted to curl up in a ball and fall asleep, right here in the middle of the road. “How’s the baby?”

  “Just fine,” Mary said, permitting herself a small smile. “Little girl, quite perfect. The mother is sleeping. The baby is not sleeping, and so her father is getting a chance to learn how to calm her.”

  “I wish you’d been here,” Elizabeth said.

  “It doesn’t look like you needed me,” Mary said. “But the man told us three people had been hurt. Where are the others?”

  Elizabeth rose tiredly to her feet. “I can look at them now, if you can take care of Henry.”

  Mary nodded, all her attention back on the unconscious man. “You do that,” she said. “I’ll finish up here.”

  There wasn’t much Elizabeth could do for the other two injured men, for other hands had cleaned their wounds and applied rough medicine. But she checked the splints anyway, offered drugs to stop pain and infection, and asked after any symptoms of dizziness or fever. One of the men, a thin, evil-looking fellow, cursed venomously the whole time she looked him over, furious at the prospect of missing work and losing pay, and blaming someone named Joe for carelessness on the job. His fellow sufferer just looked tired and morose, accustomed to more and worse setbacks than this.

  “If you have any pain or bleeding or any red marks streaking up your arm, come look for Mary or me,” Elizabeth instructed the second man.

  “It’s just a bone,” he said wearily.

  “A broken bone can kill you if you’re not careful,” she said.

  The thin man had been listening to their conversation. “Then I’ll just have to kill Joe first,” he said.

  “Or find a job that better suits your good temper,” Elizabeth said without pausing to think about it. There was a short silence, and then the second patient burst out laughing. The thin angry man jumped to his feet and stalked away.

  “That’s better than any number of drugs,” said the tired man, suddenly cheerful. “Thank you for your help.”

  “You’re welcome,” she replied.

  After he left, levering himself to his feet and cradling his wrapped arm against his chest, Elizabeth repacked her bag with slow, deliberate movements. She was so exhausted she wasn’t sure she could stand up, and the thought of making the long walk back to the dorm was almost overwhelming. Her eyes were not focusing properly; her mind kept flashing her images of the long, ugly gash in Henry’s chest, the sharp bits of bone protruding from the destroyed hip. Neither Henry nor Mary was to be seen in the street, so Elizabeth assumed the other workers had carted the patient off to some protected place where Mary was doing what she could to set the bone.

  Elizabeth should go help her. She should push herself to her feet and ask one of the construction workers where the healer and her patient had gone. She should go stand at Henry’s bedside and closely watch Mary’s ministrations, so that next time she was alone with someone so drastically injured, she would not feel foolish and helpless and terrified.

  Instead, she leaned over and vomited into a ditch at the side of the road.

  There was nothing she hated more than throwing up. She hesitated a moment, and then vomited again.

  “Maybe it was the soup I brought you, but I think it was the sight of Henry’s blood pumping out of his heart,” said a soft, burred voice behind her, and a hand was laid comfortingly upon her shoulder. She knew even before she looked that it was Rufus. “You haven’t been at the healing profession so long that you’re used to sights like that.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, wiping at her mouth and hating the taste on her tongue. She was mortified that he had seen her.

  “Sorry? For being sick? That’s a silly thing to say. Here. I think a little water might improve things.”

  He handed her a jug of water but nothing to pour it into. She cupped her hand and managed to take a few swallows. The water tasted sweet, a welcome contrast to the acrid residue in her mouth.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I didn’t realize—I haven’t done that before.”

  “Now let’s see if you’re able to stand up,” he said, a trace of humor in his voice. “You look worn down to sinew. A mighty frail state for a girl who’s going about saving lives.”

  She climbed to her feet and found herself a bit steadier than she’d expected. “Where’s Mary?” she asked. “She might need me.”

  “Mary sent me out here to tell you to go on home.”

  Elizabeth regarded him with suspicion. His face was smooth and dark, the face of any Edori man; the silky black hair had been cut recently, leaving the broad cheekbones and brown eyes completely exposed to view. Yet she found it hard to read his
expression. “You might just be saying that,” she said, her voice half-accusing, “because you think I look so weak.”

  He grinned. “And I would say it, too, for just that reason, except she really did tell me to send you home. She said, ‘I’ve got things well in hand here. Tell that girl to go home and sleep.’ ”

  “I think I’m too stunned to sleep,” Elizabeth said.

  Rufus nodded. “Oh, and I forgot! She said, ‘And if Elizabeth says she doesn’t feel like sleeping yet, well, Rufus, you just take her back to town and make sure she gets a good dinner.’ ”

  In spite of herself, Elizabeth giggled. “Now, that I know you made up.”

  “I did,” he admitted. “But doesn’t it sound like a good idea? You’ve just lost your lunch and breakfast.”

  “I don’t think I could eat,” she said. “But I’d like some hot tea.”

  “I know just the place,” he said.

  They sat in a cozy little cafe not far from the center of town and talked for the next two hours. After the hot tea, Elizabeth decided her stomach was calm enough to chance a little bread; and after the bread, she believed she would try some soup. Rufus ate more heartily but paused every few bites to ask her how she was feeling. He didn’t order any wine, which made her grateful. David’s constant indulgence in wine and other spirits had made Elizabeth begin to lose her taste for alcohol.

  Not that she had seen David for three weeks or more.

  “So how’s the healing business going?” Rufus asked. “You seem to have become adept in a short time.”

  Elizabeth made a face. “There’s so much I don’t know. I feel like I’ve learned amazing things—and then every day something happens, and I don’t know how to deal with it. It makes me feel stupid.”

  “Not stupid,” he said quickly. “But young enough to have a lot to learn.”

  “I don’t feel so young, either,” she grumbled.

  He grinned. “Well, but younger than Mary, who must be fifty, wouldn’t you guess? Do you think she learned everything in one winter? I would suppose it took her a good twenty years to become the healer she is now. And even she is probably still learning.”

  “I love the work,” she said. “But there are so many things that can go wrong.” She looked up at him, her face serious. His own face looking back at her readied itself for solemn news. “I’ve seen two people die,” she said in a quiet voice. “Though we did everything we could. And I saw someone almost die—a friend of mine.”

  “And you hadn’t seen people die before?”

  She nodded vehemently. “Yes! My mother and one of the hands on my cousin’s farm. But they weren’t—I wasn’t trying to save them. I didn’t know that I might be able to. Now I think, if I do everything right, why shouldn’t I be able to save everyone? So it frightens me to think I might do something wrong.”

  “Though everyone will die sooner or later, and not all the work of the best healer in Samaria will be able to save them,” he said gently. “Yovah gathers up the old souls to make room for the new ones. That is the way the cycle goes.”

  “Yes, but—” She shook her head. She was not thinking clearly enough to get into a debate on religion and the miracle of existence. “Yes, but they shouldn’t die because my skills failed,” she said.

  He nodded gravely. “And this friend of yours? What happened to her? For it’s clear she was one you did save.”

  Elizabeth was silent a moment, long enough for the Edori to guess that the story was not a simple one. “Or clear that I almost killed her,” she said at last. “I gave her some herbs, and she took too many, and her body started bleeding, and she almost died.” She looked up at him. “I did tell her. I did warn her. But I didn’t speak strongly enough. I was irresponsible.”

  “Or she was,” he said. “What did she want so badly from these drugs? Sleep? A release from pain?” He half-smiled and made a motion with his hand. “Those brilliant, crazy, waking dreams that you can distill from the lossala plant?”

  “Fertility,” Elizabeth said. “She was in love with an angel boy, and he was on the point of leaving. She thought—if she had one last try—these herbs would increase her chances of conceiving his child. But instead—” She hesitated a long moment, remembering Faith’s bitter sobs that day they had conferred in Mary’s office. Faith had not blamed Elizabeth, not once, but Elizabeth felt as guilty as a murderess. “Instead, the drugs have burned out her womb, and she will never bear children for anyone, angel or mortal. She believes her life is ruined. I am so happy that she is alive, but she is so sad that sometimes I’m not sure she can go on.”

  Rufus made no reply for so long that Elizabeth had to look up at him to try to gauge his reaction. He, too, looked sad, but he did not exhibit Faith’s level of wild grief, just a certain wistfulness at the way the world was ordered.

  “I understand the desire for children—that is a deep need among the Edori, to bear children and raise them with great joy—but this obsession with bearing angel children—” He shook his head. “I cannot comprehend it.”

  “It’s just that—”

  “A child is a gift from Yovah,” he interrupted, his voice gaining passion as he spoke. “Every child. Can you imagine a greater miracle—a new life, set in your arms by a god who trusts you? One day there is nothing, just you and your small circle of friends. The next day there is another living creature, created from you, from desire and divinity. That thought doesn’t stop your heart with wonder? That realization does not make you shiver where you sit?”

  Elizabeth stared at him, struck dumb.

  “Among the Edori, every new birth is celebrated. The whole tribe rejoices, and when the clans come together at the Gathering, it is with pride and delight that the elders stand up and recite the names of every new child born to their tents. But among the mortals—” Rufus made another gesture with his hand, an angry one, brushing debris from an invisible surface. “Children are thrown away every day. In Semorrah, in Castelana, there are beggars in the streets—cripples and blind boys and girls who are missing an arm—these were left behind by parents who decided an imperfect child was not pleasing. How can such things happen? But that is not the worst of it. Women who care only for angel babies will abandon infants who are born without wings. Will leave them in the streets or the alleys or the roads outside of town to die of exposure and starvation. So they can seduce another angel lover and try again for a better child.”

  He stopped, his generous mouth pinched tight, his dark eyes even darker with a long-held fury. “But why am I saying this to you?” he said, his voice quieter. “It is for just such a child that you made your way to Cedar Hills.”

  She was racked by emotions so deep and conflicting that for a moment she could not answer him. She wanted to lie—she wanted to explain—she wanted to say something that would make him admire her, or at least forgive her, and she could not think why that mattered. She scarcely even knew this man. But she could not let him leave this table thinking so badly of her, classing her with the worst of women, the worst of human beings. And he looked like he was ready to surge to his feet at any second and stalk away.

  “Yes,” she said in a small voice. “But that is no longer why I stay.”

  It was enough; it kept him in place, anyway. “I came because I—because it had been so long since I had anything of value. Since I had been anyone who mattered,” she said, her voice quavering but determined. She had never really thought how to put this into words. All the women she knew understood this instinctively. “If you bear an angel child, everybody loves you. I just wanted to be loved. I wanted to do something to be loved for.”

  “People love you for who you are, not the angels you produce,” Rufus snapped. But he was listening.

  She nodded. “People love you for who you are if you are worth loving,” she said in a soft voice. “And I don’t think I was. What did I do, what did I know, that mattered to anyone?”

  “But you could have done anything!” he exclaimed. “Taught
children or constructed buildings or written music or merely determined to be a kind person—”

  “Or become a healer,” she said steadily. “Yes. I understand that now. Don’t hate me because I didn’t know it before.”

  He grew suddenly quite calm but intense; his gaze was fixed on her with both sternness and speculation. “So you no longer chase angels like a child chasing after butterflies?”

  She gave a tiny smile. “I only ever chased one angel. And I haven’t seen him for weeks now.”

  Rufus shrugged. “There are plenty of other angels in Cedar Hills. And other holds across the three provinces.”

  “Having seen the—the rigors of childbirth, I am a little less eager to experience it for myself,” she said. “And from the stories I’ve been told, delivering an angel child is even more dangerous. If I fell in love with an angel and he fell in love with me? Oh, then I would happily try to bear his child. But as it stands right now—” She spread her hands palm up over the table. “I have other goals.”

  “Falling in love with an angel is probably no better than falling in love with any man,” Rufus said rather gruffly.

  Elizabeth could not stop a peal of laughter. “You think not? I don’t know. I’ve never fallen all the way in love with anyone. I suppose the experience could be just as fine if you fell in love with a farmer or a merchant or a miner.”

  “Or an Edori,” he said.

  “Or even an Edori,” she said.

  “But you would have to make the experiment to be sure.”

  “You’re the only Edori I know,” she said.

  He gave her such a look then—part mischief, part shyness—that she ducked her head and snatched up her water glass just to provide herself with a distraction. He might have been planning to say something, but she rushed into speech before he could. “And you’re not a typical Edori, I think,” she said. “You haven’t lived among your people since you were a child.”

  Whatever else he might have planned to say was blown away in a regretful sigh. “That’s true,” he acknowledged. “I haven’t been to the Gathering in thirteen years.”