Nocturne

“I’ll be waiting for you.”



I spent the next three nights flying with the angel.



I’ll be honest, I could have been dreaming for every minute of those excursions. Who sees the world from such a perspective, barely lit by moonglow, decorated with slabs of stone and stands of miniature trees and the occasional lonely flicker from an isolated homestead? None of it seemed real, not the landscape, not the motion, not the fact that I was held against an angel’s heart. And if it was not real, I might as well enjoy it, might as well let my wonder well up unimpeded, my delight spill over without reservation. I might as well drop my usual guards, cast aside cynicism and suspicion. I might as well look around me with a childlike sense of awe.



One night we flew south, above the desert, where the sands unrolled below us as if they stretched, empty and untouched, to the end of the world itself. Once we flew west, above the uneven hump of the Caitanas with their sharp, stark points. Even I could feel the cooler air rising from their stony peaks as if exhaled by the mouth of a chilly god.



Once we flew east, just to the edge of the ocean, where the restless waves rushed back and forth over a narrow stretch of beach, roiling the sand, then smoothing it clean. The wind was stronger here than at any other place during our travels. Corban found it harder to hold to a steady hover; instead, he was pushed in all directions by its mercurial currents. I actually found myself afraid, during a particularly energetic gust, that he would be tossed against one of the rocky overhangs or dashed into the water. I clung to his neck and cried, “Fly back toward land!” He nodded, pushed himself upward to gain altitude, and retreated from the shoreline. We decided there was no need to make that particular journey again.



I had collected a few musical oddments from around the school—ancient, rusted bells from a festive horse bridle; something that looked like a nautical buoy; and a set of glass chimes whose connecting strings had rotted straight through—and I repaired them and set them up around the perimeter of the roof. It didn’t take much wind to set any of them in motion, and Corban agreed that these would serve to guide him home if he ever took off without me.



“Though I don’t know why I would,” he said as we returned from our outing to the sea.



“Well, maybe you’ll accidentally drop me some night, and you’ll have to make your way back here by yourself,” I said.



“I won’t accidentally drop you,” he exclaimed. “And if I did, I’d come down to find you instead of returning here.”



“Well, that’s good to know,” I said.



I had opened the trapdoor, and enough light spilled out to let me see him shaking his head. Why can’t Moriah ever be serious? “Of course, I might throw you to the ground some night when you’re being particularly exasperating,” he said, following me down the stairs.



“Oh, you’d have done that long before now if you were going to,” I said cheerfully. “You’ve gotten used to me by now.”



“I don’t know—does anyone really get used to you?”



I laughed. “I’ll have to think that over.”



“So, where shall we go tomorrow night? I think we should head north again—past the mine, toward Windy Point.”



“Maybe,” I said. “But the moon’s already only half full. It’s getting smaller and rising later, so it’s harder for me to see landmarks. We might have to stay close to home for a while or risk getting lost.”



His face showed a quick frown. “If you’ve got the compass—”



“Which I also can’t see in the dark.”



“Well, maybe we don’t need you to see. If we go to the mine and north from there, I think I can find my way.”



“In which case, you don’t need me anyway,” I said.



His frown deepened. “Of course I need you,” he snapped. “I think I know where I am, but I could easily miscalculate.”



“We’ll see,” I said. “But we might have to stay close to home and fly for strength, not distance, until the moon starts waxing again.”



“Very well,” he said reluctantly. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”



But we didn’t talk about it the next day, because everything changed; and a few days after that, everything changed again.



CHAPTER 6



Over the past four days, I had continued to spend a few hours in the kitchen, though now I went in early enough to help with the work of preparing dinner. I rarely encountered Rhesa, but I guessed she had complained incessantly to Deborah, because within two days the head cook was asking me when I thought Alma would be well enough for me to resume the overnight shift. I knew Corban was not yet ready to announce his existence to the rest of the world, but pretty soon I would either need to return to my old post or lose my job. Or explain exactly what was taking up all my time at the Great House.



The day after the flight to the ocean, all those options were put on hold. I made my way down to the kitchen in midafternoon to find the place in chaos. Deborah was the only cook in evidence, though she was attended by a small army of students who were rushing between stove and table and pantry, trying to do her bidding.



“No, not the clotted cream—sweet Jovah singing, don’t you even know what milk looks like? Yes—that jar there. And yes, I meant the potatoes, not the turnips! Moriah! Thank the good god you’re here. I was about to send someone to wake you up.”



“What’s going on? Where are the others?”



“Sick. All of them. With something”—she patted her stomach—“that has made them vomit through the night. And about twenty of the students have come down with it as well.”



“Oh, no,” I said. “I suppose everyone will get it eventually.”



“I suppose,” she said. “But as long as we’re healthy, we need to do the work of four. I’ve already sent a note up to Alma saying that you can’t be spared tonight.”



I put on an apron. “Obviously not,” I said. “Let’s get dinner ready.”



The illness made its way quickly through the school. About half the students and three-quarters of the staff succumbed over the next few days, though most of them recovered after a couple of bad nights. But two older men, one a teacher and one a handyman, couldn’t seem to shake it. They came down with a fever as well as the stomach disorder, and they languished on their beds, refusing to eat or drink.



Judith, who had some healing skills, had turned nurse the minute she recovered enough to get out of bed. I had no interest in tending the patients, but I didn’t mind doing the extra laundry and scrubbing down the sickrooms.



“I’m worried about David,” Judith told me on the afternoon of the third day. We were folding what seemed like a thousand towels that had just come through the wash. “Jonathan’s beginning to improve, but David is getting worse, and I’m almost out of drugs to give him.”



“Maybe we should hoist a plague flag,” I suggested. People in settlements all over Samaria would catch the attention of angels flying nearby by raising distress signals—called plague flags, though it didn’t really matter what disaster they portended. “Ask an angel to pray for more medicine.”



“I thought of that,” she said. “But I don’t know that anyone would see it. We’re so remote here—and most of the angels are likely to be headed for the Plain of Sharon.”



Startled, I did a quick calculation. Spring had tiptoed to the border of winter while I had not been paying attention, and the equinox was almost here. “You’re right! It’s less than a week till the Gloria.”



“So I don’t think we can expect help from any angels,” she ended with a sigh. “I’ll do what I can for him.”



I didn’t answer as I continued to fold linens. I wondered if Corban would be willing to sing a prayer to Jovah if the situation was dire. I didn’t know much about it, but I believed angels usually offered their prayers from a high altitude, and Corban had never gone too far off the ground since he began flying again. I didn’t know if he was afraid of the winds or the disorientation, but I had to confess I didn’t like the idea of getting way above land, either.



Meanwhile, since that first week when I had spotted him on the roof of the Great House, I hadn’t heard him sing a note. That was odd, because angels were all steeped in music; they couldn’t live without it, or so it seemed. Corban had told me he composed songs in his copious free time, but I’d never heard him play, either. I wondered if he had abandoned music in a bitter response to the god he thought had abandoned him.



But surely if he thought a man’s life was at stake . . .



I decided that, if David took a turn for the worse, I would ask Corban if he was willing to petition the god. And if he said no, I would mock him and shame him until he agreed. And then he would fling himself aloft and offer his prayers to Jovah and be successful and feel proud of himself and fall in love with me because I always pushed him beyond his fears—or he would be tumbled off course by a swift, unfriendly wind, and fail to sing a note, and return to land full of doubt and self-loathing and never wish to speak to me again.