Nocturne

Page 16

Well, then. Always something to look forward to.
I was still asleep early the next morning when there was a frantic pounding at my door and the sound of someone calling my name. My schedule had changed again during this time of illness, so I had gone to bed around midnight, but I still was not ready to rise with the sun.
“Moriah! Come quickly! He’s gone!”
For a moment, I didn’t recognize the woman’s voice and couldn’t think who he might be or why I would care if he was missing. But I dragged myself out of bed and opened the door to say “What?” in an aggrieved tone.
Alma stared at me, her lined face a study in worry. “Moriah, Corban’s not in his room. I don’t know where he could be.”
Instantly I was wide awake and flooded with fear. “Jovah’s balls, he went out on his own,” I whispered. “Let me get dressed.”
Five minutes later, looking a fright, I brushed past an interested crowd of observers in the hallway and towed Alma down to the ground level of the dorm. I declined to answer the questions tossed out by a handful of students and staff. What’s going on? Who’s missing? I glared at a few people and they eventually stopped trailing behind us as I pulled Alma all the way to the stable. I noticed she walked with a slight limp, but she kept up with me well enough.
Once we were inside the stable, I turned to Alma. I was so full of fear that most of my breath had been squeezed out. It was hard to appear calm, hard to speak, but I focused fiercely on figuring out what I should do. “When did he leave?” I asked.
She looked bewildered. “I don’t know. He was there when I brought him dinner last night, but gone when I went up with his breakfast this morning. I didn’t even hear him come downstairs.”
I shook my head. “He didn’t. He’s been practicing flying. He left from the roof.”
“Flying? But he can’t see!”
“He navigates by sound.” I paused, pressing my lips together to hold back a whimper of terror. “Or with my help. I suppose he got tired of waiting for me and decided to see how far he could get on his own.”
“Dear sweet Jovah,” Alma whispered. “He must have gotten lost—and come to ground somewhere—how will we ever find him?”
That was clearly the question. “I think—it seems likeliest—he would try to make it to the place he can always find. The old mine up the road. I’ll go there first and then make wider circles around it until I find him.”
“I’ll come with you,” she said.
I hesitated, but if Corban was seriously injured, I’d never be able to get him back here on my own. I was already debating whether I would bring a wagon or merely saddle a horse—it would be easier to cover ground from horseback, but impossible to bring back an injured angel without a wagon.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll hitch the horses. You get supplies. Food and water and maybe some bandages. Meet me at the gate as soon as you can. Don’t tell anyone where we’re going.”
She paused long enough to give me an incredulous look—It will be hard to keep the angel a secret once we bring him back in a wagon—but just nodded and hurried off.
In less than fifteen minutes, we were on our way, heading north on the rutted road. I tried to block from my mind all the horrifying images that clamored to get in, pictures of the angel bruised and broken on the open ground, bloodied and unconscious on a peak in the Caitanas, adrift on the ocean, his great wings spread like seaweed along the surface of the water. How could he have been so reckless, so stupid? Damn arrogant angels, they think just because they want something, they can reach out their hands and take it, I thought angrily. They don’t have to wait patiently, like ordinary men, or obey the laws of the physical world.
But they did. They did.
We were probably still a mile from the mine when I started shouting Corban’s name. If he was alive, if he was conscious, he would be able to hear me from a fair distance and call back. When I paused to give my throat a rest, Alma lifted her own voice. “Angelo! Angelo! Where are you?”
About an hour after we set out, we approached the ruins of the mine. I pulled the wagon over so Alma and I could jog over to it through the sandy soil. It was immediately clear how Corban might have lost his bearings here. Sometime in the past week, the elements had wreaked additional damage to the fallen buildings; the windmill had wholly collapsed. There was no longer any rhythmic tapping noise to tell Corban he had arrived at his destination. He must have flown confidently in this direction, been puzzled at the missing sound, wondered if he’d misjudged his route, turned around, tried to get back to the house, felt a rising self-doubt that made him question any choice he made, and ended up thoroughly lost. He could be anywhere within a five-mile radius.
“Corban!” I shouted, but there was no answer.
“Are you sure this is where he came?” Alma asked.
“I’m not sure of anything.”
I thought for a moment. It seemed likelier that he had overshot the mark than undershot it—anyway, if he was behind us anywhere along our route, he would have heard us calling. I hoped. “Let’s go north,” I said. “At least another five miles.”
She nodded, and we returned to the wagon. I drove more slowly for the next hour as we peered around, both hoping and fearing to see a crumpled ball of feathers lying along the side of the road. I had given up the notion of shouting his name and now I began singing, hoping the sustained, persistent notes would catch his attention even if he was in a groggy, hallucinatory state. After a few moments, Alma added her voice in a sweet alto harmony. Without conscious thought, I had opened with another Manadavvi ballad, and I raised my eyebrows when it turned out she recognized it. She shrugged and smiled and kept singing.
Just as I was wondering if it was time to widen our search east or west, we heard a voice cry out my name. I jerked on the reins and we both fell abruptly silent, listening hard. There it was again, faint and exhausted. Moriah!
My heart leapt. Praise be to Jovah, at least he was alive. “Corban!” I shouted, throwing the reins to Alma, grabbing a flask of water, and jumping out of the wagon. “Keep calling me! I’m on my way!”
His voice came from the eastern side of the road along a stretch that had mostly shaken off the sand of the desert and arrayed itself in stunted trees, prickly bushes, and a hardy vine that covered soil, stone, shrub, or tree with an utter lack of discrimination. Not the worst place for an angel to come down in an uncontrolled fall, though I tripped a half dozen times on a leafy runner or a tree root. “Corban!”
It was five minutes before I found him, huddled in the stippled shade of a squat tree just now unfurling its pale green leaves. His wings drooped behind him, so flat you could mistake them for a cloak thrown behind his shoulders, and his legs were thrust straight out on the grass. Not until I was close enough to see his face could I make out the scratches and bruises on his skin. But I didn’t see any gouts of blood, any sticks of bone protruding through the flesh. He’d made a rough landing, maybe, but not a disastrous one.
I skidded to my knees beside him, grabbing his shoulders in a shaking grip. “Corban, are you all right?” I demanded.
His hands came up to lock over my wrists. “Moriah, you found me,” he said in a whisper. And then he burst into tears.
I had never in my life seen a man cry.
No one has ever come completely undone in front of me; no one has ever been willing to display, before my cynical eyes, ungovernable weakness or need. I had seen this angel hurt and angry, I had spied on him in his despair, but I had not realized he could be so vulnerable as to weep in my presence.
Without another word, I took him in my arms and drew his head against my breast, comforting him as best I could with the soothing words I had never before had cause to use.
It was a moment before his own words came, halting and disjointed, muffled against my jacket. “—But I couldn’t find it—and then the wind came—and I was lost and I didn’t know—but I thought I could get back—but there was no sound, it was gone. And I was afraid—Moriah, so afraid—”
“Sshhh,” I said, patting his head, where the long curls were knotted from a rough wind and a night in the open. “Here. Have some water before you tell the rest.”
He took a ragged breath. “I’m so thirsty. Thank you, thank you—”
I didn’t speak again until he had practically emptied the flask with quick, greedy swallows. “You must try to compose yourself,” I said, my voice more brisk. “Tell me how badly you’re hurt. Alma and I came in a wagon and we can—”
“Alma’s here?” he demanded, sitting up straighter and actually wiping his sleeve across his nose. I had never seen him make such an inelegant gesture. “Where?”
“I left her with the horses. She’s the one who let me know you were missing, so you must be properly grateful to her. But the road is a little distance that way. Can you walk?”
He took another shaky breath. I could see him trying to impose an iron calm. I wondered how much practice he’d had doing that during the darkest days after his blinding, how often he had let himself give in to grief before pulling himself back together. Not often, I guessed. “I don’t think anything is broken,” he said. “I came down hard, but I didn’t crash. But I didn’t have any idea where I was—or how to get back—” He pressed his lips together.