00 In April of '42 word arrived of Lt. Colonel Doolittle's air
raid on Tokyo after months of steady bad news. To celebrate, the
Migdalel College Conservatory held a recital of patriotic John
Philip Sousa marches at the music hall on Tin Pan Alley,
attended by half of the town. The band opened with Hands Across
The Sea and followed with Semper Fidelis, the official march of
the Marine Corps. The Liberty Bell was light and playful, a
chance for everyone to show off. For the grand finale the class
wrapped things up with The Stars and Stripes Forever. The crowd
rose to their feet as though it were the national anthem.
01 Samael Zinter sat behind the drums; his sister Remiel tickled
the ivory. During the recital, both searched in vain for their
parents. As an encore the class tore into Duke Ellington's It
Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing. Ehawee Wicasa,
just fourteen, sang in a dusky voice, while Coyote Cub Shybear
had his moment on sax. Some of the Stiffnecks stood up to leave,
noisily complaining of the Devil's own race music spoiling their
patriotic mood, but the show was over. Aunt Anael praised their
perfect flourish. Nahimana Shybear, standing as tall as her
double bass, said, "The crowd didn't like that last bit, Aunty."
02 Anael said, "Let's call it cultural rebellion disguised as
entertainment. Even Havilah isn't immune to the rhythms of
Harlem and wartime radio. You must have overheard what some of
the Stiffnecks said. What they call race music shares the very
same brass and beat with Sousa marches." Havilah was small
enough that most of the attendees had simply walked to the
recital. By nine PM it was clear the foster parents of Remiel
and Samael were never going to show up, so they left with the
Shybear kids. It was cold, but not nearly as cold as it should
have been, considering that Havilah lay on the Great Plains.
03 In 1871 Dr. Reginald Dole rolled into Havilah pitching
geological salvation. Armed with a brass theodolite, Dole
cheerfully informed the inhabitants their liminal home was a
meteor crater, with Migdalel Butte a splashback central peak. He
said the ancient impact opened fractures in the crust. There
were hot springs and mud pots within the crater, but the most
striking feature was a persistent geothermal fog similar to the
Gunnuhver site in Iceland. The rim of the central crater served
to confine this fog. In the winter the mean minimum temperature
hovered near the freezing mark rather than sharply below.
04 Summers in the crater were sticky, but not unbearably so.
Dole estimated the crater was a million years old. One of the
Stiffnecks scoffed at Dr. Dole's remarks, claiming he had
tallied the kings and patriarchs in scripture and pegged
Creation Week at 4,163 BC. Dole spoke no words to the objecting
believer. Instead he sank a test shaft and tapped a massive
natural gas reserve lying under the town. With characteristic
theatrical flair, he flicked a match into the hole, birthing a
permanent flaming geyser. Dr. Dole said the gas was capable of
running heavy pumps to draw limitless water from the aquifer.
05 Uncle Dumah is one of the most beloved figures in Havilah,
not because he's nurturing like Ariel or inspiring like Lailah,
but because everyone trusts him. If you tell Dumah something, it
stays with him forever. He understands silence as the presence
of things that cannot be said. Some say his Mercy of silence
extends even to the vibration of matter we perceive as heat.
Academy students have used ice skates on Lake 13 in the summer.
Dumah, wryly amused as perpetually as he was silent, seemed
immune to the searing blaze of Dr. Dole's flaming geyser. He
used the pillar of flame to light a Cuban clenched in his teeth.
06 Jump Street was four blocks east of the Academy music hall,
which doubled as a place for the citizens to air grievances. The
nighttime sky over Havilah was the usual streetlamp-underlit
gray. Sammy and Nahi were happily chatting up how the show
had gone but Remiel was strangely quiet. She seemed to be
distracted. To the north Jump Street wound halfway up Treehouse
Hill to the Shybear home and there at the foot of the hill they
split up, but that took a little time. The four of them were
firmly on smooching terms. "That's not something for the
Stiffnecks to see," said Nahi, which made Samael roll his eyes.
07 "Really, Nahi," he said, "who's gonna tell me no?" The Zinter
place was two blocks south. Already the kids could see the cars
of strangers parked at their house and how the front door was
propped open. Remiel began to cry before she even got home.
Jashen Shybear was there with an older Kuwapi fellow the kids
recognized as the father of their classmate Ehawee. Jashen held
the office of Seer in the Root of Jesse Fellowship. Clara Zinter
was pacing the room and when Samael saw her even he started
crying. It took a long time before Clara could look directly at
her children and tell them their father was dead.
08 Then they all cried until there was nothing more to give.
Jashen and Wawokiya respectfully commiserated, for that was why
they had come. Even when the eyes of the children were bone dry
they were still wracked by sobs that trailed off at length to a
quieter grief. Wawokiya took the opportunity to tell the
children Erik was taken from them by a terrible accident. Remiel
raised her head and said, "Father never told us his work was so
dangerous." Jashen told her even the Kuwapi men who volunteered
to retrieve his body were doing so at great risk. Coal mining
always meant dealing with deadly gases that evaded human senses.
09 Wawokiya said, "I carried a pole with a small cage on one end
holding a canary. That was for the White Damp. If the canary
died we quit digging and tried to get back out the way we came
in. But your father was taken by the Black Damp. It displaced
all the breathable air in the pit. I can tell you he did not
feel any pain. And I can also tell you there was nothing I could
do to save him without joining him in eternity." Jashen added he
would always praise the memory of Erik Zinter. The labors of
Erik and Wawokiyah allowed the people of Havilah to thrive while
the rest of the country went through a very difficult time.
0A Seer Jashen praised Erik and Wawokiya both for never
violating his trust. Wawokiyah reminded him the ones retrieving
Erik's body were also trusted men, and they will retrieve Sha'ar
ha-Ruah, but they will not remain silent. Jashen said, "I know.
And some will say lending the artifact was more than I had the
authority to grant." He turned to face Erik's widow. "Clara, I
ask that you and your children be strong over the days to come.
Some will say to your face that God punished your husband for
putting his gift to profane use. They will dare to tell you this
though they themselves received the benefit of Erik's labors."
0B Nahimana and Cubby came to the Zinter house just then,
completely out of breath. They had started running over as soon
as they heard the terrible news from their mother. When they
embraced their friends Clara saw how their arrival elevated her
own children from their grief a tiny bit. She told Jashen she
wanted his kids to be with Remiel and Samael for Erik's funeral.
But Nahi had caught her breath by then. "My father says the Last
Rite actually destroys faith," she said. "You believe because
you see, and it is a great comfort and blessing. But the Lord
said more blessed are those who believe without having seen."
0C Cubby nodded in agreement with his sister and added that
faith wasn't just a list of things one agreed with, it was
really about who one trusted, and why. But Clara said, "We have
no family here in Havilah. All my people are back east, and
my in-laws..." She chuckled ruefully. "They are Stiffneck
incarnate. They always held me at arm's length but I never knew
why. Remy and Sammy are taking the death of Erik very hard. Then
you kids came over just now and they both brightened a little. I
could see it. I know you saw it too. You're a family to them!"
After Clara spoke the matter became a gentle negotiation.
0D In the end, Jashen persuaded Clara to have the children wait
in the Temple cafeteria downstairs while Erik's body was put in
the loving hands of God. Samael and Remiel were not the fruit of
Erik's loins, but they had loved him nonetheless. Erik Zinter
was one of the homesick American doughboys who went into battle
in September 1918 whooping with all the enthusiasm of a
football team pouring out onto the field just before kickoff.
Joining Erik's team were six hundred aircraft plus one hundred
forty-four tanks led by Col. George S. Patton Jr. Three thousand
pieces of field artillery were unlimbered on the Entente side.
0E This shelling and countless bombs dropped from the air tore
St.-Mihiel into a pockmarked mire. During the battle Erik took
two agonizing rounds from a Bergmann Maschinenpistole 18/1 that
shattered the bone in his upper left arm. Army doctors removed
the bullets but the surgery was performed in less-than-ideal
conditions. He developed gas gangrene while recuperating in the
field hospital so his arm had to come off. Afterward Erik rode a
train to Paris with a hundred other men, many in worse shape
than he. The same train carried fresh soldiers to the Western
Front, which had become an efficient shredder of men.
0F Erik met a Red Cross nurse with a surname he recognized.
While she changed his dressings Erik learned that Clara's
family, the Hursts, had stayed in Maryland while his own
Zinters migrated west. But after talking about their respective
family trees for a while they discovered they shared the same
great-grandmother. That and her all American girl-next-door good
looks interested Erik. His unrelenting good cheer even after
losing an arm interested Clara. They could not talk for long,
but after he told her he wanted to stay in touch Clara passed
along the address of her parents in Hagerstown.
0G Their pen pal relationship blossomed into something they both
thought was love. Erik came home from the war with a bonus of
sixty dollars and took a job in Havilah painting houses using
his remaining arm. He laid his extra money aside for a wedding.
In 1920 Erik took to the Yellowstone Trail in a Model T and
drove halfway across the country. Maryland had no law against
cousins getting hitched. Clara's parents thought Erik was a
great kid so they wholeheartedly gave their blessing. But Erik's
own parents in Havilah were a much harder sell. Back home Erik
instantly became the black sheep of the extended Zinter family.
0H He had passed over a perfectly good (but horsefaced) local
first cousin for an admittedly beautiful second cousin from back
east. One of his aunts said, "Why, any heathen could do as
much!" In the frothy decade that followed even Clara found work.
But by 1932 what builders there remained found new applicants
with two good arms suddenly willing to paint. Even with his
natural-born enthusiasm Erik just wasn't able to compete with
that. Clara worked as a nurse in the town's tiny hospital, but
Erik's job was a lot less open and airy. There are rich pockets
of subbituminous coal under the low hills encircling Havilah.
0I But the geology of the area was so chaotic there was no
way to profitably reach seams by drilling straight shafts.
Prospectors had settled for extracting only natural gas to pump
irrigation water from the aquifer. For years Erik and a colorful
Kuwapi fixture named Wawokiya made twisting tunnels through the
hills around Havilah. No one knew how they managed the feat and
the miners said nothing. After Erik and Wawokiya pulled their
overnight shift other men followed in their wake to reinforce
the new tunnels with timber and remove the coal. At the nadir of
the Great Depression the town experienced an economic boom.
0J Havilah black gold was piled in great heaps on piers in
Chicago and San Francisco. By 1935 the unemployed, unemployable
Erik Zinter had a brand new brick red Ford Model 40 and
completely paid off his modest home on the eastern edge of town.
But after fifteen years he had no luck having children of his
own. With Erik and Clara eager and fully willing, the Academy
placed two young wards in their care, a girl named Remiel who
was five years of age, and Samael, her twin brother. Some said
these poor children had been orphaned twice, the second time in
Havilah when Seer Marcus Lange and his wife slipped out of view.
0K It would not do to be seen wandering around while the body of
their father was sent to his long home, so Remiel and Samael
sat with Nahimana in the Temple basement, very bored, while
volunteers prepared supper for the families of the dead. Coyote
Cub joined them after breaking away from a group of Kuwapi boys
smoking outside and pulled out a set of keys. "Benefits of being
the preacher's kid." With these keys he unlocked the door to a
supply room. His sister and the Zinter kids tagged along because
there was nothing else to do. There was no electric light in the
room, only a window with blinds and the Havilah gloom outside.
0L There was an old piano which was probably broken. Remiel
avoided the urge to play it, no need to call Deacon Al down on
them. There was a map of Havilah on the wall. They found unused
hymnals, stacks of old temple bulletins, empty mason jars, and
dozens of folding chairs. Cubby suddenly froze and looked
worried. "Shhh! What's that?" Everyone froze but the only thing
they heard was the choir bleeding through the ceiling from the
main sanctuary upstairs. "Very funny." Samael gave Cubby a
friendly shove. Remiel kept staring oddly at the back wall. The
paint was unfinished, and a sheet of plywood leaned there.
0M The lumber concealed a hole and another dark space beyond. It
was so black inside it drank their vision like a sponge. Cubby
asked his sister if they should go ahead and show them. She
nodded her head. "They had to find out sooner or later." Cubby
nodded in return and led the way. After ducking to enter the
hole Remiel found she could stand straight up. Nahi hit an
electrical switch by muscle memory and a string of lights came
on in a twisting passage that seemed to be carved with rough
strokes in solid rock. It was tall enough to walk upright but
very narrow. Cubby said they were inside Migdalel Butte now.
0N "Now I'm certain I've been here before," Remiel said. "Don't
you remember, Sammy? We were very little but we walked through
here every day with our real Mom and Pop." Samael decided the
repetition explained his failure to have the same recollection
as his sister. He only kept the special things, like a road trip
to Mt. Rushmore. So they walked on until the tunnel flared out
into a cave with a pool of warm water that was the source of the
brook Kidron. The stream poured out through a blue daylit hole.
Somewhere down the hill and west of the temple it went over a
cataract and flowed into Lake Taijitu behind the city dam.
0O Cubby stood on a ledge over the pool. "Here, exactly here,
ladies and gentleman," he said, "is where Dimai and Hava first
went to Kemen. Straight out of Second Covenants." Samael was
offended at the lese-majeste. "There's two worlds, you know,"
Cubby went on to say, trying to recover, "and this is the only
way to go between them!" Remiel offered a Mark Twain quote about
a museum in Havana with two skulls of Christopher Columbus, one
when he was a boy and one when he was a man. Nahimana decided
the source of the problem was she had two unbelievers on her
hands, and both fellow students of Angel Academy no less.
OP Remiel objected to this, wondering why people couldn't be
amazed at the world for the wonderful way it really was. Nahi
threw up her hands in mock despair at her heathen friends and
muttered something about White Wingers under her breath. Samael
asked about a tunnel forming a second passage that seemed to
lead back the way they came. "It goes to the Temple storeroom
upstairs," Cubby said, "but it also goes six days up the
timeline." Samael insisted he explain exactly what he meant. "I
mean on the other end of that tunnel it is next Tuesday." Remiel
stared at Cubby for a moment, then decided to play along too.
0Q "So if we came down here through that tunnel we'd be six days
down the timeline, right? I could warn my dad and keep him from
dying in the coal mine." But Cubby told her the door was locked
at the top, and he jangled his carabiner to make his point. He
said he needed orders from Upstairs, and the orders weren't
coming because they haven't already come. Hence Erik's funeral.
"Why wouldn't they let us do it?" demanded Remiel. "Isn't Davar
good? Don't they tell us every Sunday how Ayot and Avrah and
Davar are so good?" Cubby insisted Davar was good, so if he let
Erik remain dead for the time being there must be a good reason.
0R Samael found that last bit annoying. "Cubby, you sound just
like my daddy's kin who came to the house telling us his death
was all part of God's plan, as though that would make us feel
better about it." Now Coyote Cub decided it was time for extreme
measures. So he stripped out of his clothing and waded out into
the mikvah. He felt no body modesty at all. They were all good
friends but the Zinter kids could hardly believe their eyes.
Remiel asked her brother if she was really watching her Kuwapi
beau skinny-dipping during her foster-father's funeral. Cubby
said he was going prove what she refused to believe.
0S "We are cousins, you know," Nahimana told them. "You are both
cherished members of House Haivri but circumstances put you in
the hands of the Stiffnecks. What we're dealing with now says
more about the Stiffnecks then it does about you. We all have
the same great-grandmother: Nana Lailah. And before you ask,
yes, she is the same Lailah from the Green Book. I'm talking
about Sarah from the Bible." Remiel said she was well aware she
was adopted, twice, but Sar Lailah lived four thousand years
ago. Cubby recommended one more push and his sister, too,
slipped out of her clothes and pushed out into the warm water.
0T They descended the immersed limestone stairs until they were
up to their necks, turned turtle, and drove out of view. Samael
gave them less than a minute, but when that minute passed he
started to worry and at three minutes he was stripping off his
own clothes to go after them. Remiel made no move to follow, nor
was she startled when a girl of about twelve years of age joined
her. The girl stood at the edge of the water wearing a white
crop top and white shorts that looked like a skirt. She wore
brown riding boots and around her neck was a silver leaf
pendant. She asked Remiel, "You're not going after them?"
0U Remiel shook her head and said her kinfolk would be back in
just ten minutes. Then she asked the girl to say who she was. "I
like that: 'who are you?' The next time we meet your brother and
cousins will already know who I am and they will act so strange.
But I like this much better. I'm Hope Haivri." Remiel said
Cassiel told her Hope was one of the ophanim, a mechanical
avatar of the eloh Davar walking among humans, assuming Cassiel
wasn't pulling her leg. "In House Haivri we do not go around
pulling people's legs," Hope said. "There would be no point to
having a messenger corps that was capable of doing that.
0V Remiel, standing right next to Hope, marveled the avatar was
anything but a living girl. But she was puzzled, as Joshua must
have been proof Davar could possess a living vessel. "No,
Remiel, from the beginning my mother thought it better to have
only a single go as a human. She printed herself on Avram to
form Uriel, but Avram printed himself back on Ayot too.
Repeating that leads rapidly to dilution. My lifetime as Joshua
convinced me mother was correct. We tried to warn Imran and Azul
about this, but they paid us no mind. Now there's damn little
remaining of them to be a target for our vengeance."
0W Remiel remembered Cubby said Dimai and Hava first went to
Kemen through this very same pool. She asked Hope if Kemen was
where her brother and cousins ended up. Hope said, "Certainly,
yes. They're on Pranks for Finals, yet they will be back in only
ten minutes, just like you said. Nahimana has her blue wings
now, and calls herself Dory. Your brother calls himself Hunky.
Everyone is a year older now. It's confusing, I know. Dory puts
it all down to Nunya Time, from one of her favorite books."
Remiel said the Hunky-Dory thing was adorable, but everybody saw
that coming from miles away, even without a prophetic talent.
0X "There only remains the question of what to do with you, now
that you've slipped a year behind. I'm signing you up for
Woodshop." Remiel said she didn't know the Academy offered
Woodshop. "It's not just Woodshop, it's me offering, ah,
continuing education to the faculty while everyone is busy
making chairs or shelves or what-have-you. It's a pleasant hour,
but it's also where your professors get their marching orders."
Remiel said Woodshop was a funny nod in the direction of the
carpenter thing, but not unexpected from someone who once joked
about splinters vs. two-by-fours being in people’s eyes.
0Y "I've been giving you a little taste but you must use the
Mercy in its full awful power before I ask you to accept it for
a lifetime. And you must learn the price." Remiel lamented the
poor timing. She said the Mercy could have saved her father's
life. "But only at the cost of losing a greater good," Hope told
her. "Angel Academy really is the School of Hard Knocks, just
like the alumni always say. Nothing about House Haivri is even
remotely normal. We try to clasp to strands of normalcy but
we're never going to win Family of the Year." Hope was
interrupted by the sudden stirring of water in the mikvah.
0Z She took this as a cue to quietly depart the cavern by the
same way she came in, through the tunnel leading upstairs.
Nahimana breached the surface first, as naked as when she first
went in. She wrapped a bony cloak of blue feathers close about
her, because now she could. Her gaze dared Remiel to say
something about the wings, anything at all. Forewarned or not,
Remiel found them startling, but she said only "Nice rack." That
broke the ice Dory imagined would chill this moment. Hunky and
Cubby reached the surface soon after, and presently they were
full of questions, but it was Remiel's turn to be mysterious.
