Chris Adrian - A Better Angel

“What’s your hurry, brother?” Tercin called to him as he passed. Peter didn’t reply but tore away down the path and past the smithy and into the empty fields, sure that the vision was just at his heels. He hadn’t thought such speed was in him — he’d been in bed for days, and just that morning the effort of cutting his breakfast ham had drained him. It seemed the faster he ran, the faster he could go. For just a moment it was thrilling, to sprint over the soft earth, to outdistance his illness and escape the vision. But it caught him before he was halfway across the field. The roar of the angel overtook him, and when he looked over his shoulder he saw its shadow rushing along the ground, though the sky above was empty even of birds and clouds. He found somewhere inside himself another burst of insufficient speed. When the shadow caught him it lifted him up, and then the field and the ringing forest were gone. Everything familiar to him was replaced by the blue sky and the shining towers, and he rushed toward them, part of the angel now, feeling angry and exultant and awesome and afraid.

Dr. Herz’s potion tastes to me like a combination of rust and pine. Sam says gin and blood. Edgar Minton said pigshit and Sam asked him (all this by letter mind you) had he eaten pigshit, to know how it tastes? Edgar said he had smelled it and that’s how he knew. And so they launched a five page argument over whether to smell a thing is always the same as to taste it, and declared at last that someone was going to have to eat pigshit to know for sure, and vowed that as soon as they were feeling better they would force Reuben Claflin to do it. So must Eloise have written to Abelard! I get pages and pages of this — the pile from these two alone is six inches thick on my shelf and yours is only one. Not to scold, though .

Father says the stuff is already helping. He tells me how much better I look, as if mere insistence could make it so. I feel the same, though the elixir helps me sleep, and isn’t that a blessing? Still, my lady comes more frequently than ever — five or six times a day now. Do the visions come so frequently for you? Your lady is not my lady, you said last week, but you know I am starting to think they all share a quality, whether your falling lady or my lady in the window or Sam’s burnt woman hurrying in front of the tide of ash. Maybe it was just elixir booze, but last time I thought I caught a glimpse in my lady’s face of all the others. She was there at the window, same as always, staring out into the smoke, one hand on the glass, and same as always I marveled that any glass could be flawless and smooth, but her touch was my touch and I knew it to be true. Peter, how strange, but not how horrible, to be looking at her face, and to be inside her touch, and even to be looking out from her eyes as the angel rushed in. And then I saw it, a common feature not amenable to description. But this last time I also discovered a distinctive sadness in her, quite removed from the burning of the neighboring tower, and quite apart from what she read in the oncoming angel. She knew it was her death and felt. . relief!

Well, it’s a mystery and not just a chore and an affliction. Eleanor cries like a baby every time she has one, but I feel as elevated as debilitated by them. Such thoughts! Such feelings! It’s almost worth the fevers and the pains. Dr. Herz says we shall all be well within a week, and looks to you to improve first as you fell ill first, yet he is also heartened by Sam’s sudden absence of bruising. I told him his theory of propagation was more superstition than science. He said the evidence would bear him out .

Eleanor was here last night, borne on a litter like a queen by her brothers. They’re all strong but hardly of a height, so she rolled and shrieked as they made their lopsided way up the street. She talked of nothing for an hour and then decided, out of nowhere, to slander you with blame. I smacked her frog-lips, and cut her with my ring. “A spasm,” I said. I do get them sometimes .

Father has relented, and so I’ll see you this Saturday. Be well, friend!

Peter dreamed of health the way he had used to dream of flight. To climb slowly over the treetops, moving his arms as if he were swimming through the air, seemed like the most usual thing in the world until he awoke. Then he realized what he had been doing, and scolded himself for failing to properly appreciate it, and for failing to make proper use of it — he never climbed high enough, or showed Tercin what he could do, or floated to Sara’s window to take her out for a flight. So he awoke realizing he had been weeding in the salad garden again, pulling with his hands and his arms and his shoulders at a root that had wandered over from a beech, and when the bell had rung for school he had leaped up, dusted off his hands on his pants, and run full force down the path and through the woods that bordered on their farm. The school had been replaced by a half-scale model of the Colosseum, and that was what he wondered at in the dream. But when he woke it was the old usual strength in his hands and arms that he wondered at, which seemed as remote and miraculous as the gift of flight.

He was in his own bed — he only stayed in the window seat during the day — and saw by the moonlight on the floor that he was already late. This late in the summer it never fell across his door before two, and he had meant to leave by midnight. He listened for a moment for Tercin’s snoring and for voices in the house, but it was so quiet he could hear the distant call of an owl in the woods. The effort of packing his bag had exhausted him earlier, and he had nearly been called out by Caryn when she saw him spiriting food out of the kitchen. “I’ll bring you anything you like,” she’d told him, and he’d said he got hungry in the very middle of the night.

He walked carefully, partly to keep from waking anyone, and partly because his balance was off, and partly because he was sure that a sudden movement might bring on a vision, and to have one now would be ruinous. All day he had husbanded his strength, and made his mother think he’d grown sicker, though in fact he felt better than he had all week. The kitchen door was the closest to his room. He nearly upset a candlestick with the edge of his bag. It teetered but didn’t fall.

Outside he considered for the first time the distance to the woods, and the distance beyond that to a cave where Thomas had taken him once. It used to be a morning’s walk, but now it seemed as far away as another country, far enough to make it a trip beneficial to all the others, if Dr. Herz was to be believed, and far enough to hide him from Mr. Hollin and his charitable intentions. Peter had heard them all talking in the kitchen two days before. They hushed their voices but he heard them plainly, as if the fever had sharpened his hearing, or some household wind was blowing their words directly to his ear. Dr. Herz spoke of a fulminating contagion, and argued passionately that the best thing for the other children in town would be a separation from the “index case.”

“Then by all means take them away,” his mother had said. Dr. Herz said politely that that wasn’t what he meant.

“I know precisely what you mean, sir!” his mother had shouted then, and they were all very quiet. Peter knew they were listening for him to stir. When they continued they whispered even more quietly, but Peter was sure he could have heard them from a mile away. They argued, tense and polite, for another half hour, Dr. Herz describing in detail the homey comforts of his hospital in Cleveland, and Mr. Hollin assuring them again and again that every expense would be covered. Finally his mother threw them out — she told them goodnight over and over again, in response to every question they asked, until they just left. Peter opened his eyes enough to see them walking off down the path, hats in hand, each of them taking turns shaking his head. He heard the door open from the kitchen and was conscious for a long while of his mother staring at his back.