Nocturne

I lingered a moment, my palm centered on his chest. “I’m sorry for the things I said last night,” I said. “Well, the meaner things. But it frightened me to see you so lost. And I sound cruel when I’m afraid.”



“Just don’t apologize for the kinder things you said—later,” he replied. “I like to delude myself that you meant them.”



I laughed, pressed my fingers against his lips, and departed.



Downstairs, I checked on Alma again. She was either asleep or in a dead faint; she didn’t wake when I shook her. By the time I left the house, I was running.



It was harder than I expected to lure Judith from the school to the Great House. Alma was not the only one who had fallen deathly ill overnight. The old handyman David was comatose, three more teachers had become violently sick, and the effort of caring for them all had left Judith pale and exhausted. And fearful.



“There’s nothing I can do for any of them,” she told me as we stood outside Alma’s room after Judith had made a quick examination. We had roused Alma enough to make her swallow a pill, but it was the last one in the infirmary. “All that’s left is broth and kindness.”



My own worry was intensifying to the point of panic. “We have to raise a plague flag,” I said.



She nodded somberly. “We did that last night. But the Gloria is tomorrow. Angels aren’t likely to be flying this way again for another few days.”



“So they’ll arrive in a day or two and pray for medicine then.”



Her face was pinched. “It might be too late. For Alma—for all of them.”



I felt as if she’d punched me. “What?”



“When fevers run so high, sometimes people don’t recover. Or if they do, they’re seriously damaged. It’s as if such a hot temperature burns the body out and leaves only a shell behind. I’ve seen it more than once.”



I stared at her for a moment, then bolted for the stairs.



Corban was seated in the cutaway chair, his back to the door and the cello between his knees. He was picking at the strings very softly, creating a melody that sounded like raindrops dancing on platters of bronze. It was a merry sound; I took a moment to be surprised that Corban was capable of something so lighthearted. If he was feeling a surge of genuine happiness, might I be in any way responsible?



No time to ask. “Corban,” I panted, breathless from my run. “You have to go aloft and pray.”



He spun around in his chair, his face registering surprise closely followed by dread. “I can’t,” he said.



I crossed the room and knelt before him. “You have to. Judith—she’s from the school—she says Alma could die. And there are others down at the school. They’re all sick. They’re all in danger. Their fevers are too high, and their bodies won’t recover. And we have no drugs left.”



“A plague flag—”



“Tomorrow is the Gloria.”



He winced at that, no doubt thinking that if times were different, he would be assembling on the Plain of Sharon with all the other angels. He turned away, carefully leaning the cello against the wall. “I can’t do it,” he said.



I reached for his nearest hand and cradled it between both of mine. “I’ll help you,” I whispered. “I know that the best way to catch Jovah’s attention is to fly very high, but I’ll come with you. I don’t care how cold it gets. I don’t care how far off the ground it is. I won’t make you go alone and I won’t let you get lost.”



He tore his hand away and jumped to his feet. “It’s not just the flying, it’s the singing,” he said, gesturing in agitation. “I haven’t—Moriah, the last time I prayed to the god, he sent a thunderbolt! He blinded me!”



I rose more slowly. “You didn’t sing that prayer. It was that boy.”



He turned away and began pacing, unerringly avoiding chairs and tables but tripping on discarded shoes and clothes that lay in his path. “Yes, but Jovah sent the thunderbolt anyway! He must have known I was in the room! He could have chosen not to strike me!”



“You think he would send lightning again? Even if you pray for medicines?”



He whirled around in my direction. “I think I cannot bring myself to ask for anything from a god I cannot trust. I cannot pray, I cannot supplicate. I am too angry to ask him for anything.”



Oh, sweet Jovah, this was not a complication I had anticipated. I had thought I could talk him through his fear, but what he felt was fury for a god who had betrayed him. “I understand, I think,” I said, my voice halting. “I don’t think it would have mattered who was about to die. I wouldn’t have been able to ask Reuel Harth for help to save them.”



Corban caught his breath at the comparison, but he didn’t speak.



“But Jovah didn’t harm me,” I went on in a low voice. “Can you teach me the song? Can you carry me up toward the heavens so I can sing it to him? Can you let me ask him, if you can’t do it yourself?”



It seemed like an hour that we stood there, facing each other, both of us so tense that our hands clenched and our shoulders hunched and our faces were creased with concentration. I didn’t know if a mortal could sing the holy songs. I didn’t know if I could learn them. I didn’t know if Corban could forgive his god even enough to let me try. But I knew I would keep pleading until I heard Judith’s weary steps on the stairs as she climbed up to tell us the terrible news.



At last Corban took another shuddering breath and pressed his hand to his forehead, as if pushing all his rioting thoughts back inside. “I won’t sing to the god,” he said in a quiet voice, “but I’ll sing to you. Put on a coat. It’ll be very cold.”



Nothing—not three sweaters, my coat, Alma’s coat, and a pair of the headmistress’s boots I found in her closet—could keep me warm as Corban hovered so high above the ground that I could no longer make out landmarks below. I felt ice at the edges of my eyes where the tears leaked out. My cheeks felt ready to crack from cold. It wasn’t just that the temperature was so bitter, but that the wind was so strong. I couldn’t imagine how Corban held himself relatively steady against its incessant buffeting, but in fact, he seemed to be riding the merciless currents without effort; clearly his body remembered this particular skill.



The cold wasn’t actually the worst of it. There was no air at this altitude, or so it seemed. I found it nearly impossible to inhale. I felt myself gasping and growing light-headed with insufficient oxygen. I couldn’t believe that Corban would be able to get enough air to pray.



But he drew an easy breath and began to sing.



This was nothing like that mournful tune I had overheard one night as I spied on the Great House. This was a marching army of a song; this was a piece that burst into houses and ransacked drawers and upended cabinets, searching for treasure. This was a song on a mission.



True to his word, Corban did not lift his voice to the god. He held my body tightly to his and sang the piece to me. I felt the melody surge inside my skull, charge down my spine, bivouac in my elbows and knees. His voice was a confident baritone—foggy on some of the higher notes, from having gone so long unused—but rich and bright and warm. If I had been a god, I would have given him anything he asked for.



He sang the prayer straight through four times, and each complete rendition took about ten minutes. By the end of the second round, I thought my feet had turned to ice and sheared off and plummeted to the ground. By the end of the third one, I thought that the only part of my body still hoarding a small flame of warmth was probably the center of my rib cage. By the time he was almost done with the fourth performance, I was numb all over. I had resigned myself to a frozen death. As if to underscore my fate, the air around us began to coalesce into icy chunks, and slivers of wicked sleet burned my skin as they hissed past my cheeks.



Corban finished the fourth song with a musical flourish, decorating the last note with an unnecessary trill. I waited in desolate silence for him to begin the prayer for a fifth time, but he shouted, “That’s done it! We can go back now.”



That was when I realized that the hailstorm around me wasn’t ice, but pellets of medicine being flung to the ground. Corban might have sung to me, but the god had answered.



It was even harder to explain away the angel’s presence once he had stepped forward in such a spectacular fashion. The ground around the school was littered with hard granules; students and teachers spent all day scooping the grains up and racing to carry them back to the infirmary for Judith to dispense. All the patients responded remarkably well to their healing powers, even David recovering quickly enough to sit up in bed two days after he had swallowed the first pill. Alma, too, was soon on her feet, eating and drinking normal food, and apologizing for the inconvenience she had caused.



I was back in the kitchen, fending off more questions, acting as if I was as astonished as everyone else. It turns out the angel is blind! That’s why he’s been here all this time. But Judith asked him if he could pray for drugs, and he said he would if someone would go with him. Yes, I was terrified to be so high in the air! And it was so cold! But I would do anything for Alma, you know—and all the others, too, of course.