The Alleluia Files

  “But the Edori boat,” the housemaid said at last, toward the end of the narrative. “What in the world changed her mind about that?”

  Lucinda shook her head. “One day I was at Cedar Hills, having lunch with Omar—”

  “The Archangel’s son.”

  “Right. And the next day we were scurrying off to Port Clara, bound and determined to take the next ship out. I have no idea what set her off. You know my aunt. It could have been anything.”

  “No, not quite anything,” Emmie said, frowning. “She has strange reasons, sometimes, but once you know them they always make an odd kind of sense. Someone must have said something to her that made her feel like she’d overstayed her welcome. Or made her feel like she was in some kind of danger.”

  “Danger?” Lucinda repeated incredulously. “In Cedar Hills? It’s true someone may have made some comment that she took amiss—”

  Emmie leaned forward. “Did you ever ask her,” the girl said, “why she left Cedar Hills in the first place? When she brought you here? Did you ever wonder what made a middle-aged spinster bring a small child to the most isolated spot in the whole world? Did she kidnap you? Was she afraid someone would take you away from her? If she just wanted to raise you away from the hold, couldn’t she have found a nice little house outside one of the small towns in Jordana? Why Angel Rock? Why did she have to run away?”

  “I don’t know,” Lucinda said blankly. “She never said. It’s never come up.”

  Emmie sat back in her chair. “If I were you, I’d want to find out. And I would think whatever it was, that’s the same thing that sent you away from Samaria so fast that you ended up on an Edori boat. With the most handsome man I’ve seen walking around live in all my days.”

  After the meal, Lucinda carried a tray up to Maurice’s room, where she knew her aunt had spent much of the night. She was surprised to find, instead of a comatose man and a sleepy woman, two wide-awake Edori. Maurice was sitting up in bed, and Reuben was standing over him, grinning.

  “You’re awake! You’re better!” Lucinda exclaimed, laying her tray aside and coming forward. “How do you feel?”

  “Like five horses rode over me in the dark, and a sixth one kicked me in the head,” the captain replied promptly. “But not so bad, considering. Reuben tells me your doctor has recommended three more days in bed, but says there’s no reason I shouldn’t heal completely.”

  “Well, that’s good news. Are you hungry? Are you allowed to eat?” She glanced around. “Where’s my aunt Gretchen?”

  “I sent her off to her bed when I came in this morning,” Reuben said. “I don’t think she would have gone but she didn’t have the strength to protest.”

  “She must think he’s really better, or she wouldn’t have left anyway,” Lucinda said. She was considering the bacon and pancakes on her tray. “Not for you just yet,” she decided. “Reuben may eat this breakfast, if he likes, and I’ll bring up some porridge for Maurice.”

  “But I like bacon,” the hurt man wheedled.

  “I don’t think so,” Lucinda said. “But maybe if you do well with porridge, we’ll let you have some beef tonight.”

  She hurried back to the kitchen and returned to the sickroom twenty minutes later, carrying a fresh tray of porridge, tea, and fruit. Maurice ate like a starved man, so she relented and fetched him two slices of bacon. Emmie was still cooking; the other guests had begun to stir and ask for their breakfasts. At the Manor, breakfast was served until every last hungry person had been fed. Dinner, however, was served promptly at six, although anyone who happened to miss this meal could easily cajole one of the women to fix him a cold plate. Gretchen could not abide the thought of anyone going hungry under her roof, though her sense of hospitality warred with her desire for order. Hospitality always won.

  “Reuben tells me you’ve baths out back,” Maurice said. “If it wouldn’t be too much of an imposition—”

  “Jackson can help Reuben take you down there. It’s something of a walk and you’re still so weak.”

  So that was quite a procession, the three men limping through the halls and out through the garden, into the sauna—and then, half an hour later, reversing the process. Maurice looked pale and drained after the excursion, and it was no surprise to anyone when he opted for a nap as soon as he’d made it back to his bedroom.

  “And you?” Lucinda asked Reuben as they closed Maurice’s door and stood for a moment in the hallway. “Has all this activity tired you out as well?”

  “Not at all,” he said promptly. “In fact, I was just wondering what I might do to entertain myself. You, no doubt, have a list of chores fifteen pages long—”

  “I do,” she interrupted, “but I’ve been gone for weeks and the world hasn’t ended while they remained undone. I can give you a few hours. Would you like to see the island? Or have you been here before?”

  “I’ve been, but I don’t believe I’ve set foot outside the harbor,” he said. “I was hoping you’d have time to show it to me.

  “Well, then,” she said, “before Aunt Gretchen finds me. Let’s go.”

  They strolled out into the cool spring afternoon and walked at a leisurely pace down the cobblestoned road leading from the Manor to the harbor. “There are really only two roads on Angel Rock,” she said. “The hotels and the general store and a couple of the houses are along Harborview, and as you can tell, it’s quite short—you can stand at any point and see from end to end. Here,” she said as they came to a gravel road intersecting the main one about a quarter mile from the harbor, “is, Old Crossing Lane, and most anyone who doesn’t live on Harborview has a cottage somewhere along this road. Well, Parker has what you might call a shack and it’s about a mile off the track, but you get to it by following the road all the way south and then turning left.”

  “How many people live here? And what do they do?” the Edori asked.

  “Twenty-four, including me. Almost everyone works at one of the hotels or in the shipyard or at Coburn’s. Coburn’s is the general store but you can get everything there—fabric, machinery, grain. Most of us lay in our own supplies, of course, and trade with all the ships that come in, but Coburn picks up things none of us think we’ll ever want, and then one day we want it and he has it. He’s amazing.”

  “When was the island wired for electricity?”

  “About ten years ago. It was such a controversy! Because of course some of the residents came here to get away from all that ‘newfangled’ technology—Foster and Parker and all the old-timers were bitterly opposed to it. Celia and Hammet came from Luminaux, where of course there is every luxury, so they were delighted at the idea of installing a generator and powering everything up. But James Sauverne—Timothy’s father, you know—he thought electricity was evil and would end in us all being fried in our beds. I’m not sure if he thought the electricity itself would destroy us or if Jovah would be so incensed he’d send thunderbolts rolling down from the heavens, but he was the worst of the whole group. Now, of course, he’s got every room in his house wired and he wants to have his own generator installed, except he can’t afford it.”

  “Where did your aunt Gretchen stand?”

  She smiled at him sideways. “On the side of progress, oddly enough. She’s so conservative that I thought she’d vote against change, but she’s also a businesswoman. And she’d had enough mainland guests complaining about poor heating and insufficient light, and it just galled her to think there were luxuries that she couldn’t offer. She wants to consider the Manor as grand a hotel as anything in—oh, Semorrah, I guess—and so she had to argue for change. Actually, I think it was her opinion that swayed the others, because she’s a very strong-willed woman, my aunt Gretchen. People find her hard to resist.”

  “I like her,” he said.

  “So do I.”

  They had arrived in the center of town. The harbor was before them, the three hotels at their back. Lucinda pointed to the half a dozen buildings, identifying each one—the har
bormaster’s home, Coburn’s store, the house where Gia and her parents lived and where they made candles, curtains, bedding, and all sorts of domestic items. Those were the shipyards, that was the house Emmie shared with her mother and sister, back there was the cottage that was empty now that Dora and Vestry had moved with their three children to a large empty lot at the north edge of Old Crossing Road….

  And that was it. No more sights in the harbor. Lucinda paused blankly, not sure what else to point out, and then she gave a slight laugh. “You must feel sorry for us, so few of us living in such a small place—” but he interrupted.

  “Not at all. The Edori mostly live in small clans of no more than thirty,” he said. “And know each soul as well as they would know a brother’s. And count themselves happy and fortunate to have such a close connection to so many. But the Edori also have a great need to come together at least once a year and see all their brothers and sisters and cousins and uncles five times removed, and so we have an annual Gathering that everyone attends. And then we are really happy,” he said, smiling broadly. “For we like nothing so much as living practically on top of one another in one big communal heap.”

  “I’ve heard of this Gathering, I think,” she said. As she spoke they both unconsciously turned and headed slowly away from the harbor. As they approached Old Crossing Road she headed northward, and he followed her. “I always thought it was like the Gloria. A celebration to Jovah. But it’s not?”

  “Well, certainly there is much singing, and we direct many of our songs to the god—asking him for livable weather, you know, and good health in the coming year—but I wouldn’t say that praising the god is the real motivation for our celebration. Mostly it is a chance to see old friends and family members who have joined with another clan, to tell each other the events of our lives in the past year. Edori have remarkable memories. Most anyone can recite you his clan history for five generations and every event of significance in the life of every living Edori. So the Gathering is as much a time of sharing information as it is a time to worship the god.”

  “I know that when the Edori lived in Samaria, they were wanderers,” Lucinda said. “Are they still? In Ysral?”

  “Some are, some aren’t. It’s very interesting,” Reuben replied. They were walking more slowly now, since Old Crossing Road was steeply pitched and not particularly well graded. It would eventually peak on the highest point of the island, then meander down toward sea level again, gradually petering out about a mile beyond Dora and Vestry’s place. “There are actually two pretty good-sized towns, not unlike what you’ve got here, only a bit bigger. Not the size of Luminaux, of course— more like Cedar Hills. And the Edori who live there seem quite happy. They have their businesses and their crafts and their homes and their gardens and their friends and their families. They don’t seem to want for a thing. But the more traditional Edori—the ones who are still wanderers—have a certain scorn for these town folk.”

  “Allali,” Lucinda said with a smile.

  He smiled back. “Not quite that bad, but you’ve got the general idea. The wanderers refer to the city dwellers as the corelli—which means, roughly, someone who loves safety, who is afraid to take chances. And it’s true that most of the corelli are Edori who emigrated to Ysral long after the first shiploads came over to explore. The corelli were born in the Edori sanctuaries on Samaria, they were not brought up wandering from Gaza to Breven and back again in a single season. They grew up liking the comforts of the same roof over their heads night after night. They didn’t see any reason life should have to be harder than it already was.”

  “I can’t tell,” she said. “If you were corelli or not.”

  “My mother’s people were,” he said. “But she fell in love with my father, and chose to follow him as his clan drifted through Ysral. Every summer we would return to Covallah to visit her parents for two months. So I got a taste of both lives.”

  “And which did you prefer?”

  He smiled again. “Well, you see, I have chosen to wander even farther afield,” he said. “But if I were to stay in Ysral? I think I would be corelli. I might journey off from time to time, spend a few weeks with friends in a traveling clan. But I am a man who likes his comforts. And I am lazy enough to not want to work any harder than I have to.”

  They had arrived at the highest point of Old Crossing Road, and Lucinda came to a halt. From this vantage, most of the island was laid out before them, a patchwork of cool green and misty gray that came to a sudden shocked halt at the lavender expanse of the sea. The sky overhead was an insistent turquoise, and one billowing white cloud rose voluptuously over the far horizon. There was nothing to see but color.

  Reuben took a deep breath, surveying the landscape for a long time in silence. “Well, now, that’s a pretty view,” he said at last. “The sea changes colors like a child changes moods, but I’ve rarely seen it just that shade. Is it always like that, or only on sunny days?”

  “Mostly that color. Sometimes, on gray days, a little darker. The color it is farther out.”

  “And at sunset?”

  “The sea and the sky are both on fire, and all of Angel Rock seems like a tiny piece of kindling that is about to be dropped into the blaze.”

  “Well, that is the danger,” he said absently. “To be consumed by beauty.”

  They stood awhile, Reuben turning slowly to take in whatever part of the vista he may have missed, Lucinda noting that a few of the more impatient bushes were beginning to uncurl their spring buds. Soon there would be washes of vermilion and lilac and canary to decorate the pure emerald and stone of the island.

  Reuben pointed down to the rocky strip of land that separated the island from the sea. It was low tide; in a few hours, that whole stretch would be underwater. “Can we get down to the shoreline?”

  “Not on foot,” Lucinda said. “There’s no path. I can get there.”

  He turned his attention to her. “And can you take me there?”

  She lifted her chin. “I can. If you trust me.”

  He spread his arms; an invitation. “Why would I not trust you? Don’t angels have the strength of five men? If you say you can carry me, I will feel safe with you.”

  She felt a rush of—something—excitement, panic, terror; but she nodded with dignity. “Certainly I can carry you. And it is not very far, after all.”

  “I do not expect to be dropped even over short distances,” he retorted.

  “No, and you shall not be.”

  Before she could think about it too long, she stepped behind him and wrapped her arms around his chest. It was like embracing an oak, solid and sturdy and unlikely to break, except that he was warm and muscled and scented more like cedar…. She shook her head once, tightened her grip, and drove her wings in short hard sweeps against the air.

  Hard to take off from a standing position, carrying a burden nearly twice her own weight, but she was determined to do it gracefully, and she managed. She was aware of the steady, rhythmic beating of her wings, the tensing and relaxing of the sinews across her back, but nonetheless she felt like she was floating through the air. She and the Edori drifted peacefully across the broken terrain, silent and light as milkweed, circled once over the rocky margin of the shore, and settled easily a few yards from the sea. Their feet were on the ground a good twenty seconds before she remembered to drop her arms, and he had not made one movement to free himself or step aside.

  But. She released him and instantly bent to retrieve a shell, an opaline fist with spiky knuckles. “Isn’t this pretty? You so rarely find them whole down here. The sea comes in too roughly.”

  “Very pretty,” he said, his voice sounding as distant to her ears as her own had, as though he spoke through some formal curtain of restraint. “Do you ever hold one to your ear to listen for the sea?”

  “Why would I have to?” she said. “The sea is right here.”

  “In case you’re ever gone from it,” he said.

  She looked out at the
shifting purple water, rising and falling as if it breathed. “I don’t think I’d ever be gone from it for long,” she said. She looked over at him directly for the first time. “Do you?”

  He was bemused. “Do I what?”

  “Do you carry mementos of places—and people—that you’ve left behind forever?”

  He answered slowly. “I haven’t left that many things behind for what I consider forever,” he said. “That’s one of the benefits of being a wanderer. You can always wander back to what you miss.”

  “What if it doesn’t miss you anymore?”

  “That’s a risk,” he acknowledged. “And maybe there haven’t been that many people—or places—I really expected to miss me.”

  She began walking along the shoreline, watching her feet because there were so many rocks and hazards. He fell into step beside her. “Mother—family—clan members,” she suggested.

  She could hear the smile in his voice, though she did not look at him. “They’re happy to see me go. Happy to see me return, I’m sure, but not grieving when I set sail again.”

  “And of course they know you’ll be back.”

  “They know it. I tell them so. I never made a promise like that I did not keep.”

  “And to how many others have you made that promise?” she asked before she could stop herself.

  “Not as many as you might think,” he murmured. “The Edori reputation has been somewhat exaggerated.”

  “Well,” she said. “I don’t know much about Edori. I don’t know much about anything off this island.”

  He came to a halt and she followed suit. He stood for a moment gazing out at the ocean, as if he had not seen it every day of his life for as long as he had been at sea, and then turned his head so he could survey the short, sharp cliffs that sealed off this tumbled shore. “It’s a nice island,” he said, as if he had assessed it and found it acceptable. “I’ll want to return. Often. Though I would not want to come so often that anyone found me intrusive.”