Archangel (35 page)

Naomi dropped her long-handled spoon and flung her arms wide. A great smile transformed her rather solemn face into a portrait of delight. “Raheli!” she cried, her voice carrying easily across the twenty yards that separated them. “I knew you would come! And so I told Luke just yesterday afternoon! What took you so long?”

The words made Rachel laugh, and the smile broke through the fear that had kept her in place. She stretched out her own arms and ran forward to take Naomi in a fierce embrace. Not until that moment did she really believe that she was with the Edori again.

“I was always sure you were not dead,” Naomi told her. “Luke told me it was foolish to hope—and cruel, too, because if you were living, your life was miserable—but I knew you were not dead. I used to want to go to Semorrah. Dress up like a merchant, or a southern Jordana farmer, and come to the city and look for you. What I would have done if I’d found you, chained in some lord’s household, I had no idea.”

“Simon
is
dead,” Rachel said abruptly.

“You know? You saw him fall?”

Rachel shook her head. “No, he—I went to the oracle at Mount Sinai, who can track the life of any man or woman who has been dedicated to Yovah. And this man told me that Simon had died. Three years ago.” Naomi gave a soft exclamation of horror. “I know. I had rather he had died in the fight.”

“I don’t wish to hear how dreadful it was,” Naomi said hesitantly, “that life, that awful life in Semorrah—but if it will ease you to talk about it, you may tell me, and I will listen.”

Rachel shook her head, smiling a little. “It eases me to not be there,” she said. “I never think of it. Now and then I dream about it, a little. It could have been worse, I suppose. But it was bad enough.”

Naomi shivered a little and drew closer to the fire. They were outside, seated on small woven mats before the fire; it was at least two hours past midnight, and they had not nearly had their fill
of talking. Inside the tent, Luke and the children slept—two girls, three years apart, with faces as solemn as their mother’s and hearts just as merry. Luke had been smiling and quiet, affectionate with his wife and clearly besotted with his daughters. He had folded them into their blankets when Naomi and the visitor retired outside to continue their conversation.

“And are you happy now?” the Edori woman asked. “With the angels? When the story went round among the people, that the angel Gabriel had chosen an Edori slave girl for his wife, no one could believe the news.”

“Yes, they were equally shocked in the angel holds,” Rachel said. “Gabriel still has not gotten over the mortification, I believe.”

Naomi watched her with sharp attentiveness. It was not the first time Rachel had made a sarcastic reference to her husband. “Tell me about Gabriel,” she said.

“What do you wish to know?”

“Well, is he handsome?”

Rachel considered. “Very. He has dark hair, but finer than an Edori’s. And his skin is paler, though a little dark from weathering. And his eyes—Yovah guard me from his eyes.”

Naomi’s own eyes had widened at this. “Color?”

“Blue. Bluer than dawn breaking over Luminaux.”

Naomi’s face remained serious, but the laughter began to edge her voice. “And his body? I have not seen many angels, but I have studied their bodies before this—they wear very little clothing, I’ve noticed. Their arms are particularly attractive, very strong—”

“His body is much as any angel’s body is,” Rachel said repressively.

“And his kissing? His lovemaking abilities? Very important attributes in a husband, though I cannot believe an Edori woman would stoop so low as to participate in a marriage—”

“I have not sampled them,” Rachel said.

“What haven’t you sampled? His
kisses
?”

“Any of his—physical attractions.”

“No! You’re jesting!”

“It is a marriage of policy merely.”

Naomi hitched her mat closer. “No, but Rachel—you’ve been his wife how long now? Four months? If I were married for
four months to any man as desirable as the one you just described to me—”

“Well, you’re not married to him,” Rachel said irritably. “We have no—contact. That way.”

Naomi stared, fascinated. “And in what way do you have contact?”

Rachel laughed shortly. “Mostly we argue. In fact, we always argue.”

“About what?”

“Oh, everything. Edori beliefs. The existence of Ysral. My behavior. His behavior. Judith. Obadiah. This trip. We agree on practically nothing. He hates me, actually.”

“He
hates
you? He has said so?”

“No. Well, he might not hate me. Well, I wouldn’t blame him for hating me. What I said to him—but then, what he said to me was worse—and anyway, it’s all horrible.”

The mischief had completely left Naomi’s eyes. “But Rachel,” she said very gently, “tell me about it. Tell me everything.”

Waking, Rachel shut her eyes tightly and tried not to think or move. Pushing conscious thought to the back of her mind, she was aware of two curiously opposing but distinct sensations: one of extreme spiritual well-being, and the other of cramped physical discomfort. She squeezed her eyelids together, willing the sensations to remain inchoate, unresolved, avoiding for another minute or two whatever realities she would be faced with upon gaining full consciousness.

“Rachel, you lazy allali half-wit,” came a cheerful voice from right above her ear. “I swear I’ll dump a pot of spring water on your head if you don’t get up. It’s past
noon
, girl, and you’re still sleeping.”

Slowly, wonderingly, she opened her eyes to find Naomi’s laughing face inches above her own. Indeed, the Edori woman held a stewpot directly over her head and she looked ready to tip the entire contents onto the slothful guest. The smell of wood smoke and cooked pheasant drifted in through the open tent flap. The ceaseless throb of the drums ran under the earth where her ear was pressed against the ground.

She was in the Edori campsite. It had not been a dream after all.

“This ground is hard as iron,” she complained, stirring slightly to indicate her discomfort. “And there are rocks under my back.”

“My, my, the luxury of the angel holds has certainly made us unfit for the plain life among good, simple people,” Naomi said. “I ought to douse you anyway just for saying that.”

Rachel smiled up at her. “Don’t. I swear I’ll scream to set the whole camp howling.”

“And you’ve got the voice for it,” Naomi said, settling in next to Rachel on the thin mat that formed the tent’s only floor. “Which reminds me. I forgot to ask yesterday. Will you sing with me tomorrow night? I have a new song. You have time to learn it.”

Rachel curled up on one side. “Oh, Naomi, it’s been so long since I’ve performed …”

“Yes, but no one will expect you to sound as you once did. Everyone knows who you are and what has happened to you—but that just makes it more important, don’t you see? If you sing at the Gathering, all that sorrow will be wiped away from your heart. You will be as you once were. You will heal yourself.”

Be as you once were
. Rachel spared a moment to consider that. As she once was, twenty years old, happy, beloved, a wild young girl who had known, really, only one brief season of terror and that so long ago, she had nearly forgotten it … She would never be that girl again. Her life had taken too many dark turns.

“Well, let me try to learn the song, anyway,” she said, sitting up and stretching her sore muscles. “Yovah’s tears! This is a hard winter ground.”

“Get used to it,” Naomi said unfeelingly. “The river is also very cold. But it’s good for the soul to bathe in it. Here are drying rags. Now go.”

They spent the day as women at the Gatherings always spent their days, alternating between cooking huge pots of food over their own campfires and making visits to the women at other fires also preparing food for tomorrow’s feast. Naomi, it seemed, knew everyone.

“That’s Jerusha, see, in the red scarf. She followed a man into the Barcerra clan, but after bearing him one son, decided she had rather live with a man of the Cashitas, so she left him but took the son. But he followed her, wanting his son back, and
so they agreed that at every Gathering they would exchange him, so he lives one year with his mother and one year with his father… . That’s Attarah, she’s just a girl, but her voice! Yovah swoons when he hears her. There was fever among the people at the last Gathering, but Attarah sang songs of healing, and everyone woke up well… . Hello there, Caleb, my boy! Why aren’t you off helping your father gather wood for the bonfire? Now, we’re going to Tamar’s tent. You’ll like her, I think—”

At first Rachel hung back, feeling strange and shy; her life had taken her so far from these simple rituals, from these continuous joyous interactions. She had spent so many years defensive, closed, sharing no thought and no emotion, that she had forgotten what it was like to be among people who shared everything. Then, too, she wanted neither pity nor awe from them, depending on whether they were most moved by her five years of slavery or her current position of glory.

But she need not have worried. The Edori offered her unquestioning welcome, instant affection. “Come in, come in!” Tamar cried as they stopped before her tent. “Taste the bread I have baked for tomorrow’s feast. I have flavored it with hill flowers from the Heldoras and I think it tastes finer than the loaves from Luminaux.”

“Tamar, this is Raheli, come to stay with me for the Gathering.”

“Welcome, Raheli. Try some of the bread.”

It was so easy to be among the Edori. That part she had remembered. The life itself was not easy—the inevitable wear of the constant travel; the vulnerability to the weather, to illness, to the marauding Jansai; the continual threat of starvation during a hard winter or a meager spring—and yet the life was so pure. Work, eat, love; obey the laws of Yovah and the seasons. No one interrogated her. Everyone greeted her with a ritual kiss upon the cheek. It was hard not to relax, to feel happy, to grow festive.

There were, among the strangers, old friends and clan relatives to the Manderras, and these greeted her even more effusively, drawing her into prolonged embraces or breaking into tears at the sight of her. But, like Naomi, all of these forbore to question her about her past nightmares or her present status. She was among them and she did not indicate she wished to talk about these topics, and so they squeezed her hand and offered her a taste of whatever they were brewing for the feast day.

Late in the afternoon, when Luke returned from his tours rounding up firewood and hunting for game, the women left him in charge of the children and the cooking fire, and headed off to the edge of camp to practice Naomi’s song. First Rachel memorized the words, which were not particularly complex; then she listened three times while Naomi sang the part Rachel was to learn; then she hummed along with Naomi when she sang it through the fourth time.

“Now let me hear you sing it,” Naomi commanded.

“No, I’ll sing it against your part.”

“But I’m not sure you’ve gotten it yet.”

“Well, we’ll find out, won’t we?”

Naomi said. “Oh, very well. You’re so stubborn. I sing one measure by myself first. You start on the same note I do.”

So Naomi began her part of the ballad, and Rachel waited a full count until it was time to add her descant. She closed her eyes and began to sing, quietly at first, remembering what it was like to lay her music against someone else’s. They were like two hands, pressing palm to palm; voice strained against voice with an actual pressure, pushing the notes upward and downward on the scale. Then it became a loom, Naomi’s voice dark and Rachel’s a bright gold thread weaving a pattern into the tight fabric. Then it became a race, Naomi’s notes running, Rachel’s chasing after. But they arrived in the same place simultaneously, Rachel two pitches above Naomi and the harmony absolutely perfect.

Rachel opened her eyes and smiled. Naomi was staring at her.

“That was fun,” the angelica remarked. “Did I get all of it right?”

“Yes.”

Rachel frowned. “What? Has my voice changed so much?”

“Where did you learn to sing like that?”

“I’ve been practicing a little the last few months.”

“You always had a beautiful voice, but—Rachel!” The Edori woman shook her head in admiration. “Will you do a solo for us tomorrow night?”

Rachel turned away. “I must do a solo in less than a month before thousands of people. I think others should have the honor of performing at the Gathering.”

“Yovah must have chosen you for your voice after all,” Naomi murmured.

“Perhaps,” Rachel agreed. “Certainly it was not because I suited the Archangel.”

“They say he is very wise.”

“Gabriel?”

“No, silly, Yovah. Maybe he chose you for Gabriel as well.”

The next day dawned clear and beautiful. Here in southern Bethel, the air was more springlike than it had been in Velora, so perfect weather might have been expected—and the Edori had spent three days praying for just such a glorious day. The angels were not the only ones who could persuade Yovah to disperse the clouds and send forth radiant sunshine.

This was Feast Day, the most important event of the Gathering. All the work of preparation had been done; now there was nothing left to do but eat and sing. Early in the morning women hauled their stewpots and fresh-baked loaves and dressed venison to the tables laid out on one side of the double circle of fire at the center of the general camp. Thereafter, those who were hungry ate; the others performed, or watched the performers, or called out for musicians to delight them with another song.

Anyone who chose to could rise to his feet, move to the very center of the camp enclosed by the double ring of bonfires, and create music for the glory of the god. Most of the musicians were singers, but not all; some played reeds, some played pipes, some played fantastic stringed instruments carved from twisted, polished trunks of old trees. A few, like Naomi and Rachel, performed together. Some sang old favorite songs, others introduced new music they had worked on all during the long, dark winter months. From each clan, chroniclers stood and sang unadorned recitatives of the tribe’s history for the past year, complete with births and deaths and changes, so that all the Edori could know who rejoiced and who grieved. No matter who sang, no matter what instrument was played, the drums accompanied them. From that unchanging, steady pulse, each performer got his rhythm; all Edori drew their heartbeats from the same unvarying source.