Elizabeth Hand: Waking the Moon

There was an angel there. No— two angels. One to each side of my window. They were so lifelike that I started, the glass shuddering behind me. For a sickening moment I thought I’d fall; then I grabbed onto the window frame and caught my balance. After a moment I calmed down.

They’re only angels, I thought, stone angels. Given the peculiar spiritual history of the Divine, not unusual at all. I just hadn’t noticed them before. I blew down the front of my T-shirt, trying to cool off. Then I took another look.

There were angels everywhere. They seemed to flank each window of Rossetti Hall, and for all I knew they were everywhere across the entire campus. Ten feet high, wings folded in close against their sides, their long legs and flanks straight and smooth as pillars. It was the curling ends of a wing that I had been leaning against, its feathers swept up like the crest of a wave. Their long slender hands were posed in different attitudes—prayerful, admonitory, threatening, placating—their faces serene, eyes closed, mouths set in thin, unsmiling lines.

What was so startling about them was that they were naked, and had no genitals. Their thighs formed an inverted V and cast charcoal shadows against the wall. Stretching my hand, I could just barely touch the outline of sinew in the granite, the curve where a tendon bulged in a knee; the tiny details of muscle and lineament so lovingly rendered they must have been drawn from life. They didn’t look desexed, or childlike, or like they were missing anything. They looked like they were supposed to look like that; like they were true androgynes. Real angels, turned to stone.

And staring up at the face of the one guarding my room, I thought that it had been very purposeful of the artist to depict it with eyes closed: because it would have been terrible to have one of those creatures gazing down at me.

Suddenly I felt cold. The blind faces were turned to where the Shrine’s shadows had begun to creep across the Strand. I started to shiver uncontrollably, and realized I must have gotten sunstroke. I clambered back inside, kicked among my clothes until I found an old grey cross-country sweatshirt, and pulled it on. It was after five o’clock. I could find dinner in the dining hall, and maybe company.

That same afternoon, the afternoon of Sweeney Cassidy’s arrival at the Divine, word of the Sign came to Balthazar Warnick.

He was in his study at the Orphic Lodge, the Benandanti’s retreat in the Blue Ridge Mountains, nursing a brandy and making a halfhearted effort to repair the miniature orrery that stood in one of the many recessed windows that lined the room. Outside, rain lashed against gables and dormers, and sent the limbs of great oak trees rapping threateningly upon the mansion’s shingles and ancient panes of leaded glass. A late-summer storm had settled in during the night. While most of its fury was spent, frequent squalls and shrieks of wind still raged about the study’s turret.

“Well,” Balthazar said softly. The constant noise made it difficult to concentrate, but he wasn’t overinvolved in his task. Squinting, he adjusted his eyeglasses and peered at the instrument. “Now then.”

Between his long fingers the orrery looked like some giddily elaborate Christmas ornament, with its brass fittings and enameled representations of the planets dangling from orbits of gleaming wire, all of them rotating about the large golden image of the sun. Red, yellow, green, orange, white, blue, violet, black. His thumb and forefinger closed about the tiny whirling bead of emerald, pinched it until he could feel it grow hot beneath his touch.

And where is the world the Benandanti occupy? he thought, and Balthazar’s unlined face grew grim. Where was the world Balthazar himself lived, with its eternal rounds of meetings and retreats, its endless days and hours and decades of waiting? Without thinking, he pinched his fingers more tightly together. Threads of smoke rose from the little emerald globe, and glittering tufts of fire. The green planet third from the sun was in flames. Balthazar’s clouded expression suddenly grew calm. He leaned over the orrery, extinguishing the tiny blaze with a breath. The minute globe cooled, its smooth green surface uncharred, unchanged. Sighing, Balthazar set the orrery back upon its brass mount and turned to stare out the window.

Far below where the lodge perched atop Helstrom Mountain, the Agastronga River had flooded its banks. But above the line of mountains to the west the storm was finally starting to break up. On the easternmost rim of the horizon Balthazar gleamed a faint rind of gold, marking where the sun still shone. It would be unbearably hot in the capital today, at least until the storm moved in to cool things off. He winced at the thought. As though he had summoned it by this small action, a knock came at the door.

“Yes, Kirsten,” Balthazar called. “Come in.” For another moment he gazed out the window, then turned. “Yes, my dear?”

The Orphic Lodge’s housekeeper strode into the room, a bit of white paper fluttering in her hand. Balthazar’s heart sank.

“Excuse me, Professor Warnick. A telephone message.”

Kirsten crossed to the window, picking up the silver tray with the remains of Balthazar’s lunch, pickled herring and cornichons and a few crusts of pumpernickel bread. She handed him the slip of paper and took his brandy snifter, still half-full, and placed it on the tray. “Francis X. Connelly called. I wrote down the message.”

“Oh!” Balthazar nodded. He removed his glasses and squinted, trying to make out Kirsten’s spidery European hand.

Thursday 20 August 1:30 P.M.

Tell Professor Warnick to come at once and meet me on the steps in front of the Shrine. Tell him there has been a Sign. Francis X. Connelly

Balthazar started as a gust of wind sent the casements clattering. He read the note again.

Tell him there has been a Sign.

He rolled the paper into a little tube, carefully set it on the luncheon tray. He gazed wistfully out at the rain. “Well, I suppose I will be leaving, then.”

The housekeeper took the note and slipped it into her apron pocket. “Will you be back for supper, Professor?”

A Sign. Balthazar felt his heart beating a little faster. He jangled the keys in his pocket. Kirsten repeated her question.

“Dinner? Oh, well, no. I mean, I expect not—not if—well, if Francis has really—if there’s really something going on back at the Divine.”

Kirsten’s blue eyes narrowed very slightly. “I am making kalve frikadeller,” she said, holding the tray straight out in front of her as though it bore a ritual offering. Balthazar thought of the heads of certain saints and smiled weakly. “Veal, and chokoladebudding .”

His favorite dessert. Balthazar nodded, touched. “Yes. Well, I will certainly try to be back for dinner,” he said, and stood. He reached for the brandy glass, slowly drained it, and replaced it on the tray. “Thank you very much, Kirsten. Lunch was excellent, as always. I will—I will call you later, when I know what my plans are.”

The door groaned shut behind her. Kirsten’s heavy footsteps echoed down the hall. Balthazar drew the keys from his pocket and gazed at the orrery on its brass stand.

“Well,” he said, his voice thin and uneasy. “Well,” he repeated, and crossed the room.

There was a small door set between the bookshelves on that side of the study. It was made of mountain ash, the wood burnished to the color of pale ale. It held a small, old-fashioned keyhole. The lintel was formed of graceful Art Nouveau arabesques, rubbed with gilt paint that had nearly all flaked away with age, and surmounted by threadlike, almost invisible crimson letters.