“I’m ready,” he said and leapt into the air.
I muffled a squeak and tried not to cower in his arms. His whole body was nothing but strain—muscles bunching, wings working, every bone and tendon pulling skyward. I didn’t see how he could do it, didn’t see how he could possibly lift from a stationary position to an upward arc, carrying a heavy burden, and it was all I could do not to bury my face against his chest so I wouldn’t have to watch as we tumbled headlong to the ground. But the powerful wings drove down, sending great gusts of air all around us, and suddenly we were clear of the roof, we were suspended above the dark sprawl of the school, we were high over the narrow snake of the road, we were flying.
I wrapped my arms more tightly around Corban’s neck and gazed around in rapt astonishment.
The world had never seemed so strange or wondrous. The ground below was a patchwork of variegated textures—corrugated forest, silky sand, a linen weave of grass. Everything was shadowy and mysterious, only half illuminated by the spectral moonlight. It was a landscape from a dream, unreal and beautiful.
“Oh, Corban,” I breathed.
“Not so terrifying after all, is it?” he replied.
“It is terrifying—but in a wonderful way,” I said. “I can’t explain it.”
“You don’t have to,” he said. “I know.”
He canted to one side, dipping his left wing, and suddenly the winding ribbon of the road disappeared. “Wait,” I said, slightly panicked. “I haven’t been paying attention. Don’t go so far. I have to keep track of where we are.”
He leveled out, lower to the ground, and spoke in a soothing voice. “We haven’t gone very far yet. Even if we had to land and try to get our bearings, we would only be a mile or so from the house. Do you see anything you recognize?”
“Turn around. Back that way. No, that way. If I could find the road—”
In less than a minute, it reappeared and I let out a sharp sigh of relief. “All right, let’s go back to the school so I’m sure I know where we are. And then we can set out for someplace else. The wreck of the old mine?”
“The ocean?” Corban said.
“Not tonight,” I said. “It’s too far away, and I’m still getting used to this.”
He seemed disappointed. I waited for him to try to cajole me, but he had promised not to disregard my comfort, and so he acquiesced. “Some other night, then,” he said. “Where are we now?”
“Back over the school. Turn to your left and you’ll be facing straight north. Can you find the mine from here without my assistance?”
“Yes,” he said and plunged through the unresisting air.
For this short flight, I didn’t need to watch for landmarks. The northbound road stayed always on our left, a comforting and reliable presence. Faster than I would have believed possible, we were close enough to hear the eerie, intermittent sound of the old windmill slapping against the broken roof of the collapsed mine. Corban hovered directly above the wreckage, and I peered down in fascination at the angles and splinters of the abandoned buildings.
“So when you’re here, you can still catch my voice from the roof of the Great House?” I said.
“I can’t actually hear you this far out,” he admitted. “But I know the approximate direction I have to go to return, and once I’ve flown for about five minutes, I can pick up your voice.”
“How do you know which way to come back? I would be wholly turned around if I couldn’t see the ground.”
I felt his shoulders move in a shrug. “It’s automatic, I suppose. I’m always aware of which direction the wind is blowing. If it’s at my back when I fly out, I know it needs to be in my face when I return.”
“But the wind shifts.”
“It does, but the general pattern is stable enough to steer by.”
“We should put something on the roof of the Great House that makes noise all the time,” I said. “Bells, maybe. Chimes. Something that could guide you back if I wasn’t there.”
“Why wouldn’t you be there?”
“I’m just trying to give you more options. Something else to rely on.”
He didn’t answer, but I could tell he didn’t like the idea. It was odd to think he trusted me so much he was not interested in investigating substitutes.
“Show me how well you can get back without any direction from me,” I said after a moment of silence. “And let me know when you think we’re close to the house. I want to see how accurate your sense of distance is.”
“Not yet,” he said. “Let’s go a little farther out. I want to see if there’s another point I can find once I make it this far.”
I wasn’t positive this was a good idea, but I saw the look of concentration on his face and decided to keep quiet. Corban took a moment to assess something—the feel of the wind, maybe—and then drove his wings down hard enough to gain altitude. I could still see the road from this height, which kept me somewhat relaxed. He leveled out and began flying steadily in a more or less northern direction. I kept my eyes trained on the ground, looking for landmarks, which were mighty sparse in this rocky, sandy, barely habitable stretch of northeastern Samaria. Corban drifted slightly to the west, which was fine by me; we crossed over the northbound road, but it was still visible on my right. I knew that as long as I never lost sight of it, we could always find our way home.
We had been flying for perhaps twenty minutes when Corban began turning his head from side to side like a hunting dog trying to catch an elusive scent. “Something’s changed,” he said.
I listened as hard as I could, but I couldn’t hear anything except the rhythmic sweep and gather of Corban’s wings. “You must have the sharpest ears in the country,” I commented.
“It’s not a sound, it’s a—temperature. And a change in air density.” He jerked his head toward the left. “What’s over there?”
I slewed around in his arms to peer at the western horizon, which was dense with unrelieved night. “Nothing. Just darkness and shadows and—oh! The mountains!” I squirmed, trying to get a better look at the solid blackness. “We’re almost at the Caitanas. That’s why the air feels different.”
“The Caitanas,” he repeated, sounding pleased. “I could follow them all the way up to Windy Point. I’d know where I was then.”
Windy Point was an old angel hold that Gabriel had destroyed shortly after the god had brought down the mountain. It certainly must have been exciting to live in the days when Gabriel was Archangel. “It doesn’t exist anymore. How would that help you?”
“The hold was leveled, but pieces of it remained intact when they were blasted off the mountain,” Corban said. “You know why it was called Windy Point, don’t you? Because it was this drafty old cave and every time the wind blew, you could hear it moaning through the walls. Even now, if you’re right over the peaks where the hold used to be, there’s a constant whistling and shrieking. Really spooky the first time you hear it.”
“Sounds unnerving,” I agreed. “But Corban, it has to be sixty or seventy miles from here. I’m not sure you have the strength to go that far in one trip.”
I felt his muscles cord with silent dissent, and then he made a little sigh of agreement. “You’re right. It’s too far, at least right now. But maybe in a few days—”
“Or a few weeks.”
“We can try it.”
“It’s a good goal,” I said. “But I just realized something.”
“What’s that?” he asked. He had dipped his wing down again and was making a long, lazy loop to turn us back in a southerly direction. I was impressed; he seemed to have accurately gauged where the mountains were and how to retrace our route.
“You need to live in a place where there’s a steady, dependable source of sound so you can always find your way home. Right?”
“Well, I don’t want to live in the wreckage of Windy Point, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”
“No. But there is a hold in Samaria you could always get back to if all you needed was music.”
He was silent a moment. “The Eyrie,” he said. “I hadn’t thought about that.”
I had lived at the hold for nearly a week as I awaited my trial and went exploring its curving gaslit hallways. There was an open central plateau where someone was always performing music—an angel singing a solo, a small choral group offering harmony, a few flautists trying out a requiem someone had written just that morning. Apparently they all signed up for shifts to ensure that there was never a moment of perfect silence at the hold. I had expected to find the incessant music annoying—just another example of angels flaunting their superior talents—but instead I had found it comforting. There were days I had actually wondered what it must be like to live there and feel welcome, from time to time, to join the others in an impromptu concert.
But I hadn’t stayed long enough to find out.
“Well, it seems like the perfect place for you,” I said. “And you could find some nice young angel-seeker who’d fly with you whenever you wanted to leave.”
“That makes it an even more appealing notion,” he said dryly. “I’ll have to give it some consideration.”
I pretended to laugh, but the truth was I felt a little sad. Not that I had ever expected this strange midnight relationship with the blinded angel to last more than week or two, but it was the most interesting, the most enjoyable interlude I had had in years. I would be sorry to see him go. Sorry to see my life return to its usual parameters of drudgery and defensiveness and worry.
Well, at least I could cross worry off my list of activities. Among the gifts Corban had bestowed upon me was the knowledge that Reuel Harth was dead and the angels didn’t want to apprehend me for crimes against him. I could leave the Gabriel School, if I wanted. I could travel anywhere, look for any kind of work. I could live, as it seemed I had not for so long, in the light. It shouldn’t matter that an angel was unlikely to be beside me.