A living body is claimed

The sky was veiled with ice-​​clouds, and the pale sunlight came down blue. Filtered through the screen of pines and tinted by the green and golden glass, it lit the priest’s office like the undersea.

For forty days and forty nights Araphel had stared up through dark and roiling water; for a hundred and fifty days, bound to his stone, he had stared up through the sea. For seventy generations he had stared up at the sky, tortured by the faces he imagined in the drifting clouds; and for half seventy he had been drifting himself, freed from the stone but bound to body after body, still staring.

In half seventy generations of watching, he had seen everything there was to see. The generations of men were copies of copies, each slightly less perfect than the last, each less like the first radiant beings who had been the living image of their creator. Still, they had done nothing to surprise him in many hundreds of years. For him there was nothing new under the sun.

But there was one thing he had never thought to see again. For seventy generations he and his brothers had been bound to stones; and afterwards, all through the half seventy generations of their labor, never had the seed of a son of heaven found root in the womb of a daughter of men. Never would it: this was the Covenant.

He had never thought to have a son again. And now – just now – he had to leave.

He sat at his desk and lit the candle. He would wait here, he told himself, beside this fire that burned and was bright, this light that was in the air.

He looked down, remembering his mortal hands, which lay incurled like sleeping cats upon his lap. He pinched the web of skin beside his thumb and rubbed it between his fingertips. This was living flesh draping his living bones. His fingernails were ten neat ovals tipped with slender, living crescent moons, and if he trimmed them away, moonlike the moons would soon return. His fingers were long and living and strong, and they flexed silently, without the faintest echo of clanking chains.

This body was not merely a prison. This body had loved a woman who was more than she had seemed – what she was his mortal, living eyes could not see, though he knew she was at least no demon. This body had also fathered a child. And now – just now – he had to give them up, body and woman and child.

The sky darkened: the ruffled snow-​​clouds he had seen on the horizon that noon were unfurling themselves over the valley. The room was murky like the twilit undersea. At last there came the knock.

“Lord Father?” he called.

The Abbot stepped inside, and for a moment his body was haloed with the pure blue light of the chapel windows. Then he closed the door.

“Good afternoon, Father.” He dropped a leather-​​bound sheaf of parchment on the table with a studied carelessness. “Here is the manuscript.”

Araphel had already read it. There was a grain of truth in it; the Abbot was making progress. It was a pity the book would never make it to Rome. Hands that were not draped in living flesh could not carry leather-​​bound sheaves of parchment.

Aelfden looked mournfully around the room. “You seem to have everything packed up.”

“‘Everything’ was not much,” Araphel smiled. “The parish isn’t being abandoned, after all.”

“No, of course not.” Aelfden scratched his head and stared at his feet, looking rather like he thought he was the one being abandoned.

“But I wanted to speak to you about that. You may disagree, but please hear me out. Father Alban is a good priest, but it is my opinion that he has been a monk for too long. He has lost the habit of the people.”

“But Father Timothy is too old.”

“You aren’t.”

The Abbot’s head snapped up. “I never had the habit of the people in the first place.”

“Didn’t you?” Araphel laughed. “If I have a sunny day for every time someone has asked me whether you will be taking up the parish again after I am gone, I can leave my cape and hood behind!”

Aelfden frowned. “But I am Abbot.”

“Aye, and have sixteen disciplined monks in your care. Meanwhile there are hundreds of people here. A vast flock of helpless, wandering sheep in need of a valiant shepherd.”

Aelfden turned his eyes heavenward and sighed.

“If I were you, I would rather let Father Alban run the business of the abbey and take on the parish myself. I might let him or Father Timothy celebrate some of the public Masses, but the people…” Araphel shrugged and smiled. “However, I am only my own self, of course, and not you at all.”

“I know, I know,” Aelfden grumbled. “I see where my duty lies.”

“Then you should thank the Lord. It is difficult enough to do our duty when we know it, but sometimes it is not even clear.”

Aelfden lifted his eyes and looked earnestly into his. “I shall thank God for that, but I thank you meanwhile for reminding me.”

“Reminding you of your duty or to be thankful?”

“Both.”

Araphel folded his arms and looked the Abbot over. The letter had perhaps been right on that count: by now Aelfden would be better off without Brude. Constant reassurance had not taught him not to doubt himself. He needed to be challenged, not coddled.

But Aelfden was no longer his only concern.

“If you want to thank me, you may do me a favor. Or rather, a favor for one of my most helpless, most wandering sheep.”

Aelfden inclined his head. “Name it.”

“It is one you don’t know well, who joined us after you entered the abbey. Sir Aengus’s cousin Flann.”

“I know her elder sister. We have talked together several times.”

“I suppose I should wish you had spoken more often to the younger,” Araphel murmured. “I have not known how to help her.”

“Is she in danger?”

“I should not have said she was wandering. It’s led astray she was. By a man.”

Aelfden sighed.

“I think she will sin no more now, but it’s too late for her. Now begins the hard penance of wearing the shame the man wrapped her in.”

“I don’t like to conflate motherhood with penance, Father,” Aelfden said darkly. “Too many children live unhappy lives because they are looked on as punishment.”

“Too true,” Araphel whispered. “I thank you for reminding me. Will you help her love her child, then?”

“I shall help her as I always do. She is not the first young woman I have helped. It is never ‘too late’, Father, though I understand what you meant by it. Who is the man?”

“She won’t say.”

Aelfden snorted. “I trust he won’t marry her. Well, I shall talk to her. She needs to understand that by protecting such a man, she puts other girls in danger.”

Araphel said nothing. There was nothing to say. Perhaps Aelfden would tease the truth out of her after all. What would it matter, when Father Brude was no more?

He did not dare hold the Abbot’s gaze, so he looked away – but that was worse. The lurid light wavered as the wind shook the pines behind the windows. The air seemed as dense as seawater, and the shadows shifted like clouds.

There was only one face he saw now, one body: Flann naked and shy in the candlelight; Flann in the colored light of afternoon, when he only dared caress her through her clothes; Flann in the pure blue light of the chapel during Mass, holy and his – and Flann in the dark, as she would be, alone and waiting for him, waiting as long as she lived.

“Let us go out of here,” he said, almost in a moan. “It’s so gloomy in this room.”

“I have always liked it,” Aelfden shrugged.

Araphel gave him a feeble smile. “Shall I call you gloomy therefore?”

Aelfden laughed. “You aren’t the first and you won’t be the last.”

“Your boundless mirth and good humor shall ever remain our little secret,” Araphel chuckled.

They went out into the chapel and genuflected side-​​by-​​side in the aisle. The tall window had panes of every color, but the sunlight came in blue. The very stones of the walls were blue-​​gray like a cloudy sky.

“This is the sort of light I like,” Araphel said.

“Are you certain they weren’t asking you whether I would be taking the parish out of fear?” Aelfden smiled.

Araphel turned his head and grinned at him. “And dread?”

“Perhaps you will have a rainy day for every man and woman that asked about me? Forty days and forty nights of rain?”

“We shall at least answer little Bruni’s question as to whether I couldn’t simply wash my freckles off.”

“I hadn’t heard that one!” Aelfden laughed.

“Poor dear creature. She was so worried about me, as I have no Mama to wash my face for me, and I come in to church every Sunday with spots all over me.”

“Bless her!”

It was true that little children still had the ability to surprise him. He had always been fond of children, especially the little babies, who still had that look of lost Heaven in their blue eyes.

But he had never thought to love a child again. Now his living arms ached. Now his living breast ached. Now – just now – he had to go.

He had to go to Rome. But that was all the letter had said. It did not say how.

“I shall take your book to Rome, Lord Father!” he cried abruptly.

The Abbot grunted and turned to him, surprised at the sudden change in subject.

“I know a few men who should read it. And I shall deliver it to them with my own two hands.”

“Thank you. But it isn’t so very important…”

“On the contrary. It is very important to me.”

It was a long way to Rome, and it was a poor season for traveling, as Dantalion had said. He would have to hurry. He would have to push his living body to the limits of its endurance.

But this living body was not merely an instrument. This body was no prison. He did not want to give it up. Not even for wings.