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III. THE WOMAN AT THE LOOM
Gabe flew westward towards Branch, where Jake had sent his daughter, Mira, to stay with Hannah until a solution could be found to circumvent the loathsome prospect of having Josh as son-in-law. Jake need not have worried. The terrible resolution to Mira's bungled betrothal was even now soaring towards them on fire-bright, misery-laden wings.
The hundred days' sojourn at Babylon had been less than delightful for Gabe. One-by-one, each of his brothers had attended him. Even Rafe--up to his elbows in the machinations and intrigues of Caligula's court--had spared ten full days to see to Gabriel's education.
Gabe had tried to affect an air of gratitude for their concern. He tried to accept their profound affection with the same grace with which it was given. He tried to pretend he returned their love. But, in truth, he did not love them.
Gabe had never loved them. He probably never would.
He respected them. He honored them.
And if it came to that, he would die for them.
But it would not be out of love.
This latest change only made Gabe's disparity more apparent. He was sickened by their newest transcendence of spirit, the burning in their eyes and souls. Gabe found it ironic in the extreme that he, the Simurgh, should be the only one of the Five Guardians to fear The Flame.
Gabe found a new stream in the rivers of air and rode it higher over the eastern plateau. Below him the land arrayed itself in cloud-veiled greens and gold. Just beyond the western horizon lay the verge of the Great Rift which had swallowed Sodom and its brother city. Gradually the valley revealed itself in dark shadows and deeper greens beneath the billowing crest of a storm. Gabe banked northward, skirting the storm. He flew so seldom he had never really gotten skilled enough to roll through lightning and rain as his brothers, Sama and Mica, loved doing.
Safe once again in the quieter heights, Gabe returned to his assessment of the brief imprisonment. The first days at Babylon, he had managed to slip away for long, delightful conversations with the old mage from Th'zar. The astrologer was an endearing and entertaining soul, brilliant of mind and gentle of temperament. Baal had explained the meaning of the three-and-three astrological portent for the coming year.
As Gabe understood it, Marduk coming into Palestine foretold the overthrow of the Judean monarchy. Having already been overthrown, Gabe thought this a bit redundant, but he supposed the stars referred to The Idumean. The conjunctions also heralded a new age in Pisces. The era would be tumultuous, uncertain, chaotic, but out of this would come a new king, The King of the End of Time.Gabe had told Baal about his own flock's identical predictions, and how they had been predicting just such a time for many, many centuries. Eschatology was not Gabe's forte, but he had always been fascinated by his people's preoccupation with The Anointed. The Messiah was such a prevalent and abiding notion in Gabriel's herd that mortal shepherds would often point to this or that disturbance of their sheep and proclaim that the Messiah was walking through their flocks.
When the fields waved and parted in the wind, they said that the Messiah was prowling the earth, and surely the end was at hand. When Herod proclaimed his sovereignty, many took this as a sign the Messiah would soon be coming, if only to rectify the abject injustice of the situation. The Anointed was everywhere, just beyond the next turn, and the Apocalypse rescheduled for each new dawn.
They would look into the eyes of their newborn sons to ask, "Are you the One?"
All their children were potentially royal, and all their days the last. Gabe sighed. For The Chosen, Mira, today is the end of the world.
And I...Gabe blinked mechanically and cocked his brilliantly plumed head...and I am the Messiah come to tell her this is so.
This was for the best, he tried to remind himself. Mira was not made to grow old and despairing. She was not born to suffer so cruelly, whatever would be the cause. Gabe found he could not even bear to imagine what would bring Mira to the grave straits of Rafe's grim vision. What would have happened, had he not come this day to redeem her.
Instead of kneeling somewhere, begging for death, Mira would be made holy. And by her sacrifice, the world would be sanctified.
So they had all said, day after miserable day. If not for Baa1, Gabe would surely have been more miserable. In the second month of his stay, Mica had found Gabe conversing with Baa1, when Gabriel was supposed to have been alone in his cell, contemplating his willful waywardness.
Baal Th'zar had been sent back with Peni to the library at Alexandria for more intensive research on the triple conjunctions...or so Mica claimed.
Shortly thereafter, Rafael arrived from Rome to give Gabe such a dunning as Gabe hoped never to know again.
Rafe's seemingly endless diatribe had worn Gabe down. Gabe finally had to admit that his sentimentality was jeopardizing his flock, if not the Guardians themselves. He finally agreed, at least in principal, that he should stop indulging his own selfish whims about particular friendships. He promised he would try to stop "mucking about with the mortals," as Rafe put it, and start acting the part of his divine heritage.
Surrendering to Rafe had not garnered any mercy for Gabe, though. Rafael had next turned to Gabe's continual betrayal of the Beltane Compromise: how time and again they'd had to steal the sacrifice from the Judean herd, how they had gone to such trouble to accommodate Gabriel's peculiar and infantile bonding with his charges...on and on.
Rafe repeated the vision of Mira's extremity, making Gabe feel it in his marrow. Rafe had overwhelmed Gabriel with such unrelenting grace that Gabe had finally begged to be put to torture instead.
Whereupon Rafael had kissed him tenderly and given him a strange stringed instrument from the northwest Isles. He apologized for having distressed Gabe so. He told Gabe to be strong for them all. Rafael would not be more specific, but he intimated that everything rested on Gabe's comportment this Beltane. The triplet of stars worried Rafe more than the rest of them. He suggested a terrible fate might await them all.
Rafe blessed Gabe and warned him to be very careful. He also said that the stars were the Voice of the Father, and whatever lay ahead, they must never forget that their Father loved them all passionately.
Gabe had watched Rafe fly away, suddenly seized by the fear he might never see his brother again. Even now, he felt a tremor pass through him again, and he knew a little of what his flock felt, living always balanced on the verge. He clutched the bundled robe closer to his breast and wondered if, like the legend, he would end up scattering all their fates over this land like so many dropped stones.
He gazed upon the verdant, tortuous line of the Falling River valley, the Jordan trench. The lush and glaucous vegetation of the river's meandering cheered him immediately.
Ah, he was such a Lith, such a bird! All the brilliant facets of the earth came streaming into him through his eyes, to his ultimate pleasure and delight. His keen eyes were the repository of his soul, the altar where he celebrated the sacrament of Creation.
Rafe relished the sounds of life, music most particularly, and Mica knew the feel of things. Samael tasted, continually flicking out his tongue, even when he was not in full dragor manifest, and Peni drew in the world through his proud, flared nostrils.
But for Gabe, the experience of his existence in the world was almost entirely visual, as if the whole of creation were the Face of his Father and he could do no other thing but worship The Sight.
Even Gabe's emotions were cast in imagery, stunning flashes of dynamic light. The sparkling splendor of The Lake splashed suddenly into view and he fell several thousand feet before he was able to close his eyes and concentrate on flying.
Long after he had landed, and transformed, and dressed, the liquid mirror of Galilee floated before his eyes and lifted his heart, even in this dark hour.
Gabe hid in Jake's garden, waiting for Hannah to depart on some errand with the servants. Jake himself was still in 'Salem, trying to buy his way out of having Josh his soon-to-be heir.
Through the doorway of the day room, Gabe could see the white-washed walls with their high, sunny arches. Simple furnishings in rich wood graced the scrubbed tile floor. There were loving touches of color and care, subtle whispers of Hannah, all round the room: a bowl of grapes, an ivy hanging in one of the archways, the simple labor of stubborn cleanliness, the artful slant of a rust-hued blanket placed just so over a low bench.
Gabe entered the day room to a vision which bypassed his eyes and struck him straight through the heart--mortally, as if that were possible.
Weaving and singing in the center of the room, sat the perfection and completion of Hannah's wifery: the woman at the loom. Gabe's breathing quickened to the slap, swoosh of the shuttle and the sleigh. His heart beat to the rhythm of her perfect pale fingers, moving purposefully, effortlessly, back and forth over the blood-purple tapestry. Each time she changed the shuttle, purple to rose to gold, she would toss her head unconsciously, floating her indigo veil across the sinuous arc of her slim back.
Mira's pure soprano filled the room like sunlight and Mira filled Gabe's eyes to the brim and over. He might have stood there staring, captured, for the rest of his immortal span, but Mira felt his presence and turned around on the loom's bench to face him.
The hypnotic motion of her weaving ceased. The song stilled.
"Master Gabriel, you look awful!" She held out her arms to him. "What ails thee, rabbi?"
Gabe came to her and knelt as he always did. "I am neither your master nor a rabbi, Mira."
"Ah, but you are my own dear Gabe," Mira smiled and took his hands in hers, bringing them to her cheek. "And you do look awful."
For a moment more, Gabriel could only stare. Then he remembered why he had come and he hardened his heart...but his gaze still lingered over the fragile sun-blushed planes of her face, the opalescent ivory between the petals of her lips, the delicate, spidery shadows of her long dark lashes. Today she was an alabaster sculpture. Tomorrow she would be dust.
"Gabriel?" she asked softly. "Are you in pain?"
Gabe shook his head clear and found his tongue. "Tell me what you were singing."
Mira's smile stayed, but her lips pressed together in a knowing smirk. She was not fooled by his changing the subject, but she was more than willing to follow where he led--in most things--so she answered his evasion. "It is a lullaby my mother taught me. I am learning so many things from Hannah which you never taught me, Gabe. I am a little sad Father sent me to Surrender when I was so young and I did not have a chance to know my mother and my home before now.
"But then I never would have had you as my teacher," she added hastily. "I have missed you so these months, Gabe. So much has happened! I am married!"
"Oh?" Gabe sat back on his heels.
"But you know that already." She loosed his hands and ruffled her slender fingers through his tangled golden curls. "You were the dove who landed on Josh's shoulder. You can say anything you like, but I will not believe anything else. You knew how lonely I was, and you knew I did not care for Isaac--though my father thought him wonderful. How clever of you to have found me Josh!"
"Mira--"
"Oh, I did not understand at first. You will have to forgive my being stupid, but I was so unhappy, and Josh is so old!
"But I went with Father to Date Home when Josh paid the bride price and I visited with his children. They all love him dearly and they spoke so highly of him I soon amended my first impression of Dear Josh. Father thinks he is poor, but that is not so. Do you know he owns Cleopas' house at Date Home, and another at Bread Home, another at Fig Home, one in Arimathea, not counting the house his son, Joshua lives in here at Branch. And he owns several fields which he lends out west of here. Oh, but of course, you already knew that.
"Josh took me up the mount, west of Date Home, where he has an olive grove and a large stone press--and a very old, scruffy donkey who can probably walk only in circles having clopped round and round the press for so long. We sat in the garden near the press and talked. His accent is a little like my mother's. I suppose that put me at ease, or more likely it was the gentle things he said to me and how he never treated me like a child. Josh is far from stupid, not like Isaac at all, and he is not nearly so old as I thought. He just works so hard all the time..." Her voice drifted away and her deep eyes softened.
"Mira--" Gabe tried to take advantage of the lull to explain how Josh had nothing whatsoever to do with any of this.
"And then Father sent me here, and I had the dream my first night home, and Mother found me walking in the garden, still sound asleep--and, well, after that I just knew everything would be wonderful, and there was nothing for me to be unhappy about. And then the priests chose me to weave the royal purple for the new Temple Veil. And then--"
"Mira!" Gabe decided that getting a word in was not going to be a matter of patient waiting.
"I know." Mira took a deep breath and straightened her veil. "I am going too fast, but I am so excited!"
She needn't have explained. Gabe could see the glow of her joy clearly enough, could hear the sheer glee in every word. It was probably a blessing that her last day should be joyous, but it did not make this any easier for Gabe.
"Oh, I nearly forgot. You dropped this." She reached into a fold of her robe and drew out a small pebble, holding in her open palm. This was the joke she had repeated so often it had acquired the force of ritual.
Gabe took the stone. He kept every one she had given him.
The ensuing silence became oppressive. Gabe had waited so long for the opportunity to speak his piece, he found he could not seem to begin. He stood and walked beside the loom, drifting his fingers over the weft threads as if they were the strings of Rafe's strange gift. "It is a great honor that you were chosen..." he began.
"How could they not have chosen me when an angel taught me how to weave?" She rose and stood beside him, pointing out the designs in the weaving. "This is you, Gabe." She stroked the gild wing of a seraph. "And here is a leonine cherub, and a dragon, and a unicorn, and a sea serpent."
Gabe could hardly hear her above the drone in his heart which said, "This beautiful piece will never be finished now. The Holy of Holies will never wear this veil."
"Hannah says they are all dragons, just five different sorts: lions and birds, winged serpents, and sea serpents and hooved drakes. What sort of dragon are you, Gabe?"
"What? Oh, Lith. I am a Lithdrake, like the Roc, or the Hoyl, or the Phoenix," he named the various appellations that mortals had applied from time to time. He did not think she would know what a Simurgh was.
"Oh, of course, the way your eyes dart, and how you cock your head just so," she demonstrated, "when you are thinking."
Gabe retreated around the loom. "It does not frighten you I am a dragon?"
Mira laughed and Gabe saw her laughter billowing around her head like glorious dawn. No, Mira was not afraid. He was afraid and Mira was laughing.
And he still could not tell her what he must tell her. "This is a fine piece of weaving for one so young."
"'So young,' he says," Mira drew up tall. "You are speaking to a married woman, I will have you know, soon to be the mother of a fine young son of Israel.
"What!" Except for the sudden, explosive exhalation, the sound Gabe made would have had no volume at all.
"You told me I would have a son and I would call him Yeshua, after his father. Gabriel?"
Having breathed out to his limit, Gabe could not speak. He shook his head slowly and tried to inhale.
"My first night home, you came to me in a dream and you told me about my son. Then I knew everything would be well. That was when I realized you must have been the dove who flew out of the Holies and landed on Josh's shoulder. But, really, Gabe. I was there. I saw what you did to Josh's robe. That was not very nice." Mira put her tiny hands over her mouth and giggled wickedly.
A halo of pale pink rosebuds, Gabe thought. Soon to be a mother...Dear Lord! "You have not--? You and Josh did not--?"
"I am not yet known by any man," Mira answered boldly the question he could not even seem to ask. "Josh is not coming to claim me for three months yet. He is down at Herodium working on the tomb. When summer comes he will take me to live with Cleopas' wife, Mary. She is with child and will need help with Josh's brood now Anna is married and will be leaving with her young rabbi.
"Josh thinks I am too young to give him a son yet, but I will soon change his mind." An unfamiliar smile curled her mouth and fired her dark eyes. It was not the spiritual passion Gabe had begun to see in his brothers' eyes, but it was passion nonetheless.
Where was the girl child he had last seen only one hundred days before? Who was this dark mystery? This must surely be Hannah's fault. Poor, lonely Hannah, whose only joy was her house and her beloved daughter, whom Jake had taken from her only three years after her birth. Now Mira had returned home, and what else would Hannah be filling her head with but notions of grandchildren?
"Mira?" Gabriel gave up any all hope of handling this situation gracefully. "Do you remember all those times we spoke about your being The Chosen?"
Mira did not answer immediately. She led him away from the loom to sit in a sunny southern arch. "Dear Gabe," she began, reaching up to brush his cheek with the back of her knuckles. "I have not forgotten. You said that one day you would come to take me away with you to live with your Father forever."
"This is that day, Mira," Gabe said sorrowfully.
"I guessed as much." Mira settled her hands sedately in her lap, affecting a pose of inviolable serenity. "I could not think what else would rattle you so. I thought it would be better to wait until you were ready to tell me. You have served me well, Angel Gabriel, and I do not begrudge you the price of that service, though you are without price.
"But I cannot go with you today, Gabe. I cannot go until my son is born and no longer needs me to care for him. How often have you spoken of your Father's great love and patience? Surely He will spare me a little while longer, seeing I have such important work to do."
Mira looked up at Gabe as if the matter were settled, and in that awesome glare, Gabe felt himself the unborn son of her obsession, and she his all-knowing mother...except that Gabriel did not have a mother, in the mortal sense, any more than Mira had a son.
"I had nothing to do with your dream, Mira. There is nothing left for you to do which has not been done. Mira, I am telling you, you must come with me. There is no choice." Gabe was sorry he had to do this but he turned the full force of his will upon the young woman.
Many grown men had quailed before the Angel Gabriel's fury, but little Mira was not the least intimidated. "And I am telling you, Gabe, I shall not die this year, or next year, or any year in which my son has need of me!"
"Stop this nonsense! There is no son! There never will be!" Gabe momentarily forgot how concerned he had been for Mira's sad fate, then his wit caught up with him. "Die?" Gabe echoed. He had been so careful never to say it that way.
"You have never been skillful at lying, Gabriel. I am well aware you mean to kill me, though you have never expressed it in precisely that fashion. You taught me well, Gabe, and I am not simple. I did not expect to have an angel attend me on a whim. I knew there was a price. When I was old enough to understand how very special you were, I accepted that price. I just cannot go this day, that is all. I am not afraid, you understand..."
Gabe did indeed understand. Her daunting courage and lambent assurance were evident in every word, every gesture.
"...but I am curious about one thing. When the time comes, how will you do it?"
"How?" Gabe's eyes widened. Surely Rafe's vision was in error. Mira was as unassailable as winged victory. Nothing on the earth--or in the heavens, Gabe worried--could prevail against her, not this magnificent mortal who sat there so calmly asking about her death.
"Yes, Gabe. You have always said you could not be seen with me because to do so would disturb the order of things. Will not my sudden disappearance be disturbing?"
"You will seem to die naturally, Mira," Gabe rose and began to walk the room. He was becoming more uncomfortable each passing moment. He should do it now, but he was not so fearless as Mira. "You will not be dead, but your family will believe you are...and they will put you in the tomb, and then..." Gabe swallowed hard. This was making him physically ill.
"Oh!" Mira exclaimed, but she was fascinated rather than disgusted. "Josh showed me the tomb he had carved in the garden of the olive grove. Don't make faces, Gabe. It was empty. He meant only to show me the stonework. And he showed me the solid stone wheel--like the stone of the olive press-- which he had carved to close the tomb's entrance. Josh says that bodies are sometimes stolen. He says that is the reason for the new law which requires the family to attend the body three days after death, to make sure it has not been disturbed."
Gabe put his hand against the nearest wall and leaned, trying to ignore the pocks of light before his eyes and his sudden loss of balance. Could she not shut up about this dying? Could she not just be done with this ghastly conversation?
"Gabe, you are a grave-robber!"
Gabe's forehead found the rough surface of the cool wall and lingered there. Her assertion was not exactly correct--his brothers had taken the others--but it was close enough to wound. Gabe felt an unmerciful self-loathing rise in his gorge in waves of dismal nausea.
He felt her arms around him, guiding him to the floor.
"Put your head down and breathe deeply," she was saying, but her voice seemed to emanate from a great distance and it echoed unpleasantly in his skull.
Gabe put his head down and the sudden rush of blood made him babble. "I would then come to your tomb and wake you and..."
"And then you will take me off to some quiet place and slit my throat, and that will be that. Hush, Gabriel. If you keep panting like that you are going to make yourself sick."
He did not heed her warning.
When his fickle flesh was done humiliating him, Mira helped him out to the garden while she cleaned up. Then she brought him a damp cloth for his forehead and sat with him until his shame lessened and his senses cleared.
"I am sorry, Gabe. I did not mean to upset you. Well--" Mira ducked her head, and was for an instant, the child he remembered. "Maybe I did mean to--just a little--but I surely did not mean this to happen."
"Please," Gabe croaked. The acid had done nothing good for his throat. "Do not apologize."
Mira took back the cloth and waved it in the air to make it colder. She wiped his face gently and clucked at him like a motherly hen. "I know I have ruined your plans, Dear Teacher, but it will be a brief delay. Your Father will forgive you."
"You do not understand, Mira. These are not my plans. I cannot change what must happen. Believe me, Mira, I would if it were in my power to do so. You cannot have a son. No man may know you."
"Why?"
"Because there are certain, certain--" Gabe bent forward and wrapped his arms round his recalcitrant gut. "--requirements of purity, Mira. It is too complicated."
"If I were imperfect in some way, then you would not take me?" Her question sparkled with delight and hope.
"Something like that, Mira." Gabe pulled the top of his robe forward and grimaced. Josh was surely avenged this day.
"Then cut off my arm, Gabe," Mira said in all seriousness.
Gabe was surprised he could start retching again when he was already as empty as Josh's tomb. When the second paroxysm abated, he ventured cautiously to pick up the threads of this dreadful discussion. "Physical form has nothing to do with purity, Mira."
"Oh?" Mira chewed her finger. "Well, what then?"
Gabe mumbled something. Mira leaned forward and lifted his chin. "What did you say, Gabriel?"
"Children have an innocence, an innocence--" he stammered.
"Oh, you mean because I am still a virgin?"
Gabe sagged back on his elbows and tried to find comfort in the clear sky above him. "Yes," he whispered.
"Then you must take me to Josh, Gabe." Mira leaned forward and shook him by his wide shoulders. "Now!" she added imperiously.
"I cannot, Mira."
"Oh, come now, Bird Dragon, you could fly me there without rupturing your delicate feathers. I am not so heavy that I shall over-burden you."
Gabe sighed. She was wrong. Mira was such a heavy burden for his soul he could hardly breathe for his grief.
"Josh will not violate you, Mira. He would not risk your life."
"I know it is not lawful here in Galilee, Gabe, but they do not measure such things so tediously in the south. They would not stone me if my son came a little early."
Gabe's chin sank to his chest as he betrayed his friend. "Josh could not... there is a reason he has not remarried. He--"
"Oh," said Mira. "I see. Josh was not talking about my inability to make him a son, but the reverse...Yeshua!" She cried out suddenly, the name of her unborn babe, as if the infant lay newly-dead in her arms.
Gabe sat up and gathered her onto his lap, into the shelter of his arms. His heart broke for her beneath the cataract of her tears. He began to center himself for what he must do. He would take her now. Drift her off peacefully to sleep. Show her the wonder of Babylon. Deliver her to God the Fa--.
"Gabriel?" Mira drew back and wiped her nose.
Now she would ask him to take her away. This was the moment for which he had prayed. "Yes, Beloved Mira," he answered.
"It will have to be you," she said.
"I thought you would--I prayed you would come to this understanding, Mira. It is the only way to deliver you from--"
"You do care for me?" she asked shyly, wistfully.
"Oh, yes, Mira. I love you."
"And I also love you, Angel Gabriel. As far back as I can remember, I have loved you. It is a risk, but risk is better than certain death, and if I die, my son dies with me."
"What risk is that, Mira? What are you saying?"
Mira's chin lifted and she pinned him in her fearless stare. "Lie with me."
Gabriel fled mindlessly. He was not aware of rising suddenly, casting her to the sod of the garden. He was not aware of racing from Branch with the speed of a storm wind. He probably would have kept running all the way back to Babylon, but the Sea of Galilee got in his way and brought him back to his senses.
Mira's words were still ringing in his ears, blinding him to the world, to himself.
He thrashed back to shore, groping for the bank he could not see. Father, he moaned inwardly, what has she done to me? How can I even consider such a thing? Why, why did I not take her down to death while I still could? Father, Father, what can I do? Take out my heart and give me any of these lesser stones instead, that I might not commit such transgression.
"'Eh there. You all right?" A deep voice washed over him. Rough hands helped him up. "Something wrong?"
"I am blind," Gabe answered. Of everything that was wrong--and everything was wrong--this was the worst: The Father had seen fit to tear, not his heart, but his precious sight from him.
And nothing else meant anything, except that Mira was still in danger from his brothers.
"I though I 'eard you calling. You want something?" This uncouth lout was actually offering his assistance as if he had any to offer...stupid Galilean.
"I want to see, you cretin!" Gabe pushed away from the idiot's strong grip.
"And how bad you want this?"
"Bad!" Gabe's hands began wringing his robe as if there were any reason to do anything anymore.
"'Ad a fight with missus and been struck blind by 'Imself, yes?"
"Something like." Gabe sat down carefully. What was going to happen to him? He was worse than dead.
"Beg your pardon?" the lout asked close to his ear. Evidently the man had taken something Gabe did as an invitation to sit down beside him and chat.
Was it not bad enough he should suffer this agony of sightlessness? Did he now merit a Galilean gad-fly to torment whatever was left of him? "Yes. Fight with missus. Blinded by God." Perhaps if he were agreeable, the cretin would go away.
"Gotta be careful with them. Women, I mean. Being temples of Creation, and all. There be a little God in every one. They can sure put the misery to you."
"That they can, Friend. That they can." Funny how easy it was to fall into the sing-song of the northern Aramaic.
"If you want to see again, you just go back and make up with her. Simple as that."
"Right. And how am I supposed to do that blind?" Gabe added silently, "Leave me alone, you damnable Galilean. Let me bear this alone."
"’At's okay, Fellow. I'll take you 'ome."
Gabe's arms flailed in front of him, marking the void with little gusts of hopelessness. Somewhere in the awful darkness the rough, strong hands caught his wrists in an inexorable restraint.
"You must go back," the voice said with such force, Gabe was unconscious of the change in language and in tone. "She is your damnation and salvation," the voice continued.
"I do not understand." Gabe struggled but he could not free himself.
"There is no understanding here, son, only faith. Have you faith, Gabriel?"
"No!" Gabe wailed, losing the last of his reserve. There was little enough left to lose. "I have betrayed myself, my brothers, Mira!"
"That is not important, Gabe."
"I have betrayed my Father!" Gabe sobbed. How odd his eyes had learned how to weep just as they had forgotten all else.
"That is not true, Gabriel. What is the truth!"
Gabe could not keep from blurting out, "That I would do what Mira asks, but I am afraid. That I cannot bear to see her die, even though I know she must. I would save her but I am afraid...I am so afraid."
"Be not afraid, son."
Gabriel found himself squinting in the dim light of dusk. He had somehow been returned to Jake's garden. Perhaps he had never left. Mira was back in the day room. She was weaving, but she no longer sang.
As he approached the door, Mira rose from the loom to come greet him, but he raised his palm and she sat down again.
"Wait for me, Mira."
He stepped back into the shadows of the garden and pulled his robe down from his shoulders. He could not be in his true form with her, as was proper, but he could be more elevated than this deceptive shape. Committing himself to the moment, he ascended to the level which the mortals called, "Angel" or "Nike." Gabriel review the ritual which was the way of his race, though he had never actually participated in such a union himself.
He was as much a virgin as Mira.
The thought made him laugh, and the laughter took the last of his fear away.
Gabriel furled his wings and walked through the doorway. "Mira," he called softly. "Hail, Beloved, your holiness overshadows me..." he began the ritual, translating it so that Mira could understand the vows.
Mira left the royal purple of her weaving and came to stand before him, fragile as the sunset, stolid as the night.
"Be One-with me, Beloved," he finished their marriage. "I will not hurt you, Mira." Gabe touched her lightly on her shoulder.
"I know," she answered.
"You are supposed to place your palm over my heart...to signify your consent, Mira."
Her tiny hand hardly covered his thudding heart. He heard the voice saying, "Be not afraid." Or, it was Mira said this. He would never be quite sure.
Gabriel bent forward. His wings fanned out, brushing the ceiling. His long fingers caressed her face and he kissed her gently on her forehead.
With exquisite tenderness he lifted off her veil.