In such a mixed group, it was hard to know what would please most, so she sang a little of everything—the solos from two of the sacred masses, a handful of lullabies, two of the Edori ballads that had stuck in her head well enough for her to remember them now, even a couple of the popular tunes that she had overheard in Velora and Luminaux. Every selection was greeted with extravagant applause, but, even more telling, no one rustled or whispered or even moved while she was actually singing. It was such a rare gift, such an exotic pleasure that she offered them; clearly, they did not want to miss a note.
She sang till the children began to look tired, and then she presented a final number. When she made a little bow to signify that she was done, the protest was so clamorous that she offered a quick, upbeat encore. Even this did not quiet some of the more vehement protests, but Hope Wellin had already come to her feet, and now she made her way to the stage beside her daughter.
“Tomorrow,” she spelled out with her fingers. “Alleya will sing for us again in the evening.” And with this, everyone was forced to be content. At any rate, no one had the nerve to dispute her; no one ever did.
Alleya stayed behind with her mother and some of the staff to straighten up the room after the crowd had emptied out. One of the women (Alleya thought she was a cook) approached her somewhat shyly as Alleya arranged chairs against the wall.
“I just wanted you to know—I’ve been able to hear every day of my life, and I’ve never heard anything so beautiful as your voice,” the woman said. “I can’t imagine what it must have been like to these people, never hearing a single sound and then suddenly—you singing. I know I saw two women crying.”
“Oh, thank you—you’re so kind,” Alleya said, stammering. She was both pleased and embarrassed by the compliment. “But some of them have heard me sing before, though I haven’t been back for months. So it wasn’t their first time.”
“It may as well have been,” the woman said. “I felt like I had been deaf all my life when I first heard you sing. That until I heard your voice, I had only known silence.”
It’s because you live in Chahiela, where the world is mostly silent, Alleya wanted to say, but it seemed undiplomatic, especially with her mother standing so close. “I’m glad you enjoyed my singing,” she said instead. “And I’ll sing again tomorrow.”
“I’ll be right here.”
The next two days passed in essentially the same manner, with Alleya moving from classroom to classroom during the day, and giving a cappella concerts at night. The teachers had quickly thought of ways to take advantage of her gift, and devised lesson plans with which she could serenade the students. It felt a little silly to be singing of multiplication and plant biology, but then, some of the prayers she sang to Jovah were laced with technical language that was far from poetic, and those never felt foreign in her mouth. She willingly obliged the teachers.
It was late in the third day of her visit before she finally made good her promise to come to Deborah’s dormitory room for a story. All the other little girls came running up happily when Alleya entered the room, though they were not so eager to hear Deborah reading. So Alleya promised to sing them all a lullaby before she left, and they scattered back to their toys while she visited with Deborah.
“This is a story… about a tall man,” Deborah began somewhat haltingly, painstakingly reading every word, every pronoun, every article. She had waited for Alleya to get comfortable, then perched on the angel’s lap like a cat who knew it had every right to be there. Alleya closed her wings around both of them, sheltering them in a white cocoon, and bowed her head over Deborah’s.
“He was so tall… his head… barely fit on the page,” the little girl continued. She pointed at the illustration of a thin man whose dark hair grazed the top margin of the printed book, then glanced back to make sure Alleya was smiling. “He was… so very tall… no one could see… the color of his eyes.”
It was a childish story, actually a little tedious, but Alleya listened with great patience all the way through. “Very good! You’re reading so well!” she exclaimed when Deborah was finally done. “You must be studying hard and practicing every night.”
“Most nights,” Deborah amended. She wrinkled her nose. “Hard to be good.”
“Quite true. Although if you practice being good, it becomes easier.”
“That why Alloo Archangel? Good?”
Alleya wrinkled her own nose in response, making Deborah laugh. “I think I’m Archangel because Jovah can hear my voice,” she said. “Just like you and all the other little girls can hear me when they can’t hear anybody else. Jovah picked me because he can hear me.” She sighed, adding under her breath, “Or because he used to be able to hear me.”
Deborah, unexpectedly, caught that final comment. “Jovah not hear Alloo?”
“Sometimes he does. I think—sometimes he doesn’t.”
“Jovah blind too?”
Alleya laughed. “What? I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
Deborah put her fingers up to Alleya’s face and began tapping out the slow, complicated language Hope Wellin had invented to communicate with children who could neither hear nor see. Alleya had to concentrate to remember what each separate symbol meant, but Deborah’s message was simple: “Hi, Jovah.” Alleya laughed.
“Silly girl,” she said, whuffling her breath into the flyaway red hair. “Is that what you think I should say to the god?”
Deborah nodded. “Maybe how talk to Jovah,” she said. “Can’t hear, can’t see. Touch face.”
Alleya rested her chin on the bright head, thinking a minute. “I don’t know where Jovah’s face is,” she said finally, sighing. “Or I might give it a try.”
Two days later, Alleya left Chahiela. Everyone turned out to see her off, which was a little unnerving but spared her the ordeal of a private farewell with her mother. They had said formal goodbyes over breakfast, of course, Hope wishing her well in her future endeavors.
“Do you plan to come to the Gloria?” Alleya asked.
Hope looked surprised. “I don’t believe I’ve ever been to one. Why?”
Alleya spread her hands. “Well, as Archangel, I’ll be leading the singing—”
“Oh. Of course. I hadn’t realized that. Let me think about it. If everything is going well here, I just might. When is it, now?”
“When it always is,” Alleya said gently. “At the spring equinox.”
“That’s just a few months away. Well, I’ll try.”
And that had been the high point of their conversation. So Alleya was just as glad to have Deborah crying and clinging to her, and Mara hugging her carefully, and the others—children and adults—crowding close to wave goodbye and hope that she came back soon.
But she still was not sorry to leave.
And she still was more excited than she could believe to be heading for her assignation in the Corinni Mountains.
It took her half a day to fly there, a straight, untroubled journey. The good weather was still holding; maybe Jovah had a special fondness for this corner of the world. Maybe he read her own mood and, for once, was responding to her desires before she had even voiced them. Or maybe the skies could hold no more rain, not a drop, not in any clouds over the whole of Samaria. In any case, she flew in sunshine and felt joyous.
And late in the afternoon, when the sun was its most golden and most supine, she landed at the foot of the Corinni Mountains, at the base of the peak that sheltered Hagar’s Tooth. And there, camped like a gypsy before a small fire, sat Caleb Augustus, waiting. He had his hands to his forehead as if to shield his eyes from glare, and she thought he had been protecting himself from the sun, but he did not drop his hands as she came closer; and she realized that she was the bright source, the shining light he was afraid to look at too long. And then he dropped his hands and smiled at her, generating his own incandescence, and she knew a craven impulse to hide her eyes as well, for he was too luminous to gaze upon, and she was afraid of what she
might see.
Caleb had passed a singularly unpleasant two weeks and had almost forgotten what it was like to have something to look forward to or something to fondly remember. First, the trip back from Breven had consisted of hours of wretched tedium relieved only by moments of emotional stress. And the first few days back in Luminaux had been spent struggling to untangle a mess another engineer had created in the home of one of the wealthiest bankers of the city. Normally the challenge of the project would have compensated for its high irritation factor, but for whatever reason, even his work held little appeal for Caleb these days. He was hard put to say why; or rather, he knew well enough why his mind wandered and his soul was discontented, but he chose not to think about it any more often than he had to.
Daily, hourly, minute by minute.
In fact, he had spent most of his time on the uncomfortable drive back from Breven daydreaming about the Archangel. Well, she had promised to see him again; she had seemed to mean it; they would go to some small cabaret and talk late into the night, till the other patrons disappeared and the musicians laid aside their scores and the waiters refused to serve them more wine. Then they would walk through the deserted city streets (sometimes he pictured blue Luminaux, sometimes sparkling Velora), talking endlessly. It was astonishing the number of things he had to tell her. He practiced them all.
He wondered if he would dare to kiss her. He wondered if she would allow it. He wondered if he would survive the experience.
Enjoyable as these musings were, they could not completely counteract the physical wretchedness of the trip itself. First, it rained every day, all day, on the cold journey back. Half-a-dozen times, he or Noah accidentally steered the Beast off the hidden road, and then there was much cursing and exasperation as they strained to find their way again. The first time, there was no budging the hulking vehicle out of the mud until they created a makeshift ramp out of split logs and forced the rear wheels to back along these until they were once more in contact with the road. After that, they made sure to carry the logs with them and employ them in every emergency. Still, each halt was time-consuming and frustrating, and no one’s temper was easy.
Conditions did not improve much once they left the Jansai road behind, although, after they’d cleared the sodden desert, the terrain was rockier and a little easier for the spiked wheels to grip. But they made horrible time. More often than not, if late afternoon brought them anywhere near a small town, Delilah would insist that they stop for the night, and neither of the men could think of a reasonable objection. They were no longer on a schedule, and they were no longer being followed by a rescue team of Edori. It could take them the rest of the year to get home, and it would matter to no one. But the stops caused them to lose more time.
The physical discomfort of the trip was compounded by the emotional misery of the passengers—or at least of Noah. It was not hard to tell that the Edori and the angel had had a disagreement shortly after they left Breven, and that Delilah was determined not to allow Noah to patch things up. During Caleb’s stints at the wheel, though he tried not to listen, he could hear the low sounds of urgent argument going on in the compartment behind him. Noah’s voice ranged from angry to pleading; Delilah’s was sometimes sharp, sometimes derisive, but most often implacable. Not wishing to get involved in these quarrels, Caleb drove as long as he could stand it, till his arms ached and his legs were too heavy to move from throttle to brake.
When they stopped, Noah would silently take his place on the front seat, sometimes looking so grim and haggard that it was all Caleb could do to keep from asking him if he were ill. Once, when Noah’s face appeared particularly pale, Caleb felt his own anger rising as he climbed in beside the angel.
“What are you doing to him?” he demanded without preamble.
“Torturing him,” was the instant response. She looked at him with her dark, fathomless eyes, and appeared lazy and unremorseful. “Would you like a little pain, too? I’m sure I could make you suffer.”
“You could make anybody suffer,” he said more quietly. “What’s the point?”
“Everybody suffers,” she replied. “It’s a way of equalizing.”
“What are you fighting about?” Caleb asked.
She laughed incredulously, as if she could not believe he would expect an answer. “Why do any lovers fight?” she mocked him.
Her use of the word embarrassed him, canceled the sentence on his tongue. “You could be kinder to him,” Caleb said at last. “He is a good man and he deserves gentleness.”
“I am being kind to him,” she said dryly. “If you only knew.”
More than that she would not say, and he gave up the effort. It was too exhausting to shout over the roar of the motor, trading barbed comments and elliptical replies. He waited for Noah to draw him aside at some campsite, pour out his heart and beg for advice, but the Edori kept his own counsel. And Caleb could not bring himself to ask.
He had his own guesses, of course; and one night, much against his will, he learned that he was right. It was the first day on which the rain had seemed less onerous, perhaps even intermittent, and they had pushed on as late as possible while travel conditions were passable. They camped that night close to the Heldoras, close enough to find rocky cave formations to serve as shelter for the night. They were able to build a fire and spread their blankets on a dry surface; and this passed for high luxury on this part of the trip. Despite the silence of his companions, Caleb felt his spirits rise during dinner. He was almost warm, he was almost dry, and he was almost asleep. Life seemed almost good.
He unrolled his blanket close to the fire and fell asleep within minutes of stretching out. It was an hour or two later that he was awakened by the sound of low voices locked in intense battle. By the time he realized he was witnessing another argument, he had heard enough to convince him he should pretend to still be sleeping. Although he thought both of them were too angry to care if he heard every word they said.
“It’s crazy, and you know it’s crazy,” Noah was saying as Caleb swam to consciousness. “It’s a death wish, pure and simple.”
“Dear Noah, surely you can’t have so little faith in your friends’ abilities to sail the seas,” she said in a light, almost teasing voice. “Why have you helped them if you doubt them so much?”
“Because I love them, and this is what they want to do,” he said. “But even they know their chances of survival are very slim.”
“They seemed quite confident when I was there.”
“Not confident! Fatalistic! They don’t care if they die! Is that the death you want, crashing apart in some stormy ocean, all that cold water closing over your head? Is that what you want? Or worse, starving to death, when your food runs out, or dying of thirst? How can you choose that death? How can you choose death?”
“It’s romantic and strange, and I have had nothing but weariness and monotony for too long,” she said, still lightly, still as if she cared about nothing she said, nothing he felt. “And there’s always the possibility of finding the miracle at the end of the voyage. I would hazard a lot for the chance to see Ysral.”
“You don’t give a damn about Ysral. All you care about—the god alone knows what you care about. You don’t care about yourself, that’s for certain. You don’t care about me.”
“How do we come to be talking about you again?” she mocked him. “Is that what this conversation has been about all along?”
“You know I love you,” Noah said desperately. “You know I would give my life for you. Why isn’t that enough for you? To know that someone loves you? Why can’t that make you happy? Tell me what you want and I will give it to you.”
“Give me my wings back,” she said instantly. “Make me fly.”
“I can try that,” he said steadily. “Caleb and I—”
She laughed aloud, making no attempt to muffle the sound. “You and Caleb! You’re boys playing with tools you don’t even understand. The god alone could restore me, and he has cho
sen not to. Don’t offer me any promises to make me happy. It can’t be done.”
“But why this trip?” Noah demanded, his voice anguished. “Why Ysral? Why should I let you die that way?”
“Because you love me and this is what I want to do,” she said, her tones slightly more gentle. “You have nothing to say about it, you know. You cannot stop me.”
“If I cannot stop you,” he said, “then I will come with you.”
“No,” she said sharply. “I won’t have you on that ship.”
“Why not?” he asked with renewed energy. “Why should you be allowed to die if I cannot choose to die by your side?”
“Because I don’t want you with me,” she said flippantly. “Not on the ship to Ysral—not when we return to Luminaux.”
There was a long, crackling silence. “You can prevent me from seeing you again in Luminaux,” Noah said calmly. “But you cannot keep me from boarding one of those ships.”
“You can’t go,” she said imperiously. “I won’t have it.”
“Why? Why shouldn’t I make the journey? I too would like to see Ysral. I will make this pilgrimage with my friends.”
“You,” she said scornfully. “You have too much to live for. Too many unrealized dreams. There is no reason for you to court death like that. You won’t go.”
“I will.”
“You won’t,” she repeated, but now her voice was edged with panic.
Noah must have shrugged. “I don’t see how you can stop me.”
She took a deep breath, seeming to draw up any reserves of honesty she had. It was as if she played the only winning card in her hand, as if she stopped, for a moment, toying with his heart. “I can tell you—that the only thing of beauty I leave behind in this world is you. I can tell you that you are all that has kept me alive this long. I can tell you that it’s the only thing that matters to me at all, knowing that you are still alive, and well, and happy. And surely, for my sake, you will not risk yourself on this terrible journey.”