Half Discovered Wings by David Brookes Read Free Book Online Page B

magus was old, and it took less time to make up
his mind than in his youth. Remarkable it was, and that was that;
there was no point in looking at it further. He turned to the
church.
    Rowan stood nearby, only a little wet from the weather. She
was under the shelter of a bakery’s thatched roof, looking out past
the spire at the forests behind the town. She turned when the magus
arrived.
    ‘ You shouldn’t be out in the dark and rain,’ he said
reprovingly, taking her hand.
    ‘ I wanted to see a church other than the one at home,’ she
replied, and allowed him to lead her away. She wasn’t much taller
than him in height, as the magus was shorter than most men, and she
taller than most women. ‘You never said if you were religious or not, when we
were discussing it.’
    ‘ I am, though not in the way you think. I believe in
justification by faith, and one visit to a church was enough for me
to decide that my God would save me only if he wanted. I don’t
pray, nor do I worship trees. It simply isn’t needed.’
    ‘ I never thought of it that way. If the goddess Irenia were
ethereal, then she wouldn’t be concerned with material things, such
as idols and churches. They were built by men, after all, and not
God.’
    ‘ That’s true,’ said the man, and smiled. ‘You’re already
thinking for yourself.’
    They entered the inn to the sound of the musicians’ second
set. Gabel sat at their table they had occupied earlier, hunched
over a sheet of yellow paper, writing. They left him to it, but
much later, when they were all in their rooms with the rain
drumming them to sleep, Rowan sat up in her bed.
    The chair in
which Gabel had sat, watching over her like an angel in shadow, was
now empty, and on it lay the rolled up parchment. She read the
words that he had written on it by the pallid light from outside,
those luminous snakes swimming over her skin:
     
    When all the
grass is ghostly white
    And the birds
rot in the street;
    When the Earth
is lost to eternal night
    And baked in
atomic heat—
     
    When the
planets collide and break apart
    And spin on as
astral dust;
    When the sun
goes cold out from its heart
    And dies as
all things must—
     
    When all the
stars have fallen in
    And light
reaches us no more;
    When the
galaxy begins to boil within
    And collapses
out from its core—
     
    When eternity
has broken down
    And the
universe is finished;
    We shall
reside in the angel’s town
    And our love
shan’t be diminished—
    When all the
rest have burned or drowned
    Our love
shan’t be diminished.
     
    Rowan finished reading the words, scribed in Gabel’s ornate
handwriting. She had never known the hunter was capable of such
work, nor that he harboured such thoughts. His mood was somewhat
dark, but Rowan hadn’t imagined that Gabel had been affected by
Maeia and Taeia’s music in so melancholy a fashion.
    Having realised this, she sensed that his words were not a
promise, as most poetry was, but his reflection of how he viewed
the world. Surely he didn’t really believe the world was lost to
perpetual darkness? That the war that had swept across the planet
had actually succeeded in turning it into a dead
globe , despite the evidence to the
contrary? People were still here. Plants still grew. But Rowan felt
with a certainty she couldn’t explain that, as far as Gabel was
concerned, the Earth was simply a ruined, savaged world, still
spinning on and refusing to accept that it was finished.
    Hastily she rolled up the parchment, re-spun its twine and
then put it back where she had found it. She was still dressed,
having not had the space in her satchel to bring bedclothes, so she
wandered down the oaken stairs in her blouse and past the empty
bar. She stopped by the front window and peered through, and was
surprised to see Gabel standing by himself in the full fury of the
storm, looking outward over the trees.
    ~
    The following
morning, the three sat silently eating breakfast until the magus
told Rowan that they