The Quickening Maze - Adam Foulds [41]
John walked to a bench.When he sat he saw that he held the Bible in his left hand and remembered why. He pulled out a loose paper from his pocket and spread it beside him to continue his work.The large, final words were calming to write.They resounded.They were heard.
Weep Daughters Of Israel Weep Over Saul
Who Cloathed You In Scarlet More Fair To Behold . . .
There were feathers in the clearing, three of them, connected at their shafts, a scrap of torn wing. They stood on one edge, shuddering like the sail of a toy boat in the breeze. Around them the dark leaves and frail flowers of bluebells that glowed here and there where the sun struck through.
Margaret sat and heard the wind pouring in the leaves overhead. She had fallen in the river once, as a child, and heard the rushing deafness of drowning. But she had been saved. The flowing of the air around her seemed to intensify, to grow louder, until it was so powerful it reversed her breath. It almost lifted her from the ground.
The wind separated into thumps, into wing beats. An angel. An angel there in front of her.Tears fell like petals from her face. It stopped in front of her. Settling, its wings made a chittering sound. It paced back and forth, a strange, soft, curving walk that was almost like dancing. It reached out with its beautiful hands to steady itself in the mortal world, touching leaves, touching branches, and left stains of brightness where it touched. Slowly, unbearably, it turned its face to look at her. When it spoke, she felt that the words were spoken precisely in the middle of her mind, but that they somehow pervaded the whole forest. The leaves crisped and trembled. ‘Do not weep,’ it said. ‘I am an angel of the Lord.’
‘Forgive me,’ she said. ‘Forgive me. Forgive my husband.’
Inclining its head towards her, it smiled. ‘There are things I must reveal to you.’
Margaret dared to look at it, hearing its voice quiet and full of love, and saw that angels’ faces are subtler machines than human ones. There were parts that worked sideways as well as up and down. It registered the finest changes, momentary and delicate, as it moved, like the iridescence on a pigeon’s neck.
‘Is He . . . Is He coming?’ she asked.
‘Do not,’ the angel told her, ‘ask to see Him. His Love is a flood. His glory is a fire. You could not withstand it. And we have need of you. Hold out your hand.’
Margaret did as she was instructed. The angel dropped onto her palm something small and round, about the size of a hazelnut picked up from the ground. ‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘It is all that is made.’
Margaret looked at it, marvelling at its minuteness, its delicacy. It had rivers narrower than a leaf ’s veins that pulsed, seas that ticked back and forth, and around it was the brightness of its own sky, then other skies, then darkness.
‘Only because God loves it,’ the angel instructed, ‘can it exist. Without His love . . .’
‘It vanishes.’
‘Vanishes. Vanishes. Vanishes.’
The angel removed it from her hand. Looking up, Margaret saw how the trees stretched their arms behind the angel, to protect it.
‘Here now is your first instruction.’
‘I submit. Utterly, I submit.’
‘Your name is no longer Margaret. That was the name given you by your earthly parents, used by your husband. Today you are rechristened.’
‘Rechristened.’ At that word all the leaves and trees were still, expectant, formal. She waited, not breathing for long heartbeats.
‘Your name is Mary.’
‘It is too much.’ Margaret covered her face with her hands.
‘It is His Word.’
‘Mary,’ Margaret whispered.
‘Mary.’
‘Mary,’ Mary answered.
‘Mary, you must bear witness. You have a task.’
‘I cannot bear it. I am excrement, a husk.’
‘It is His will. He has called you worthy.’
‘I submit utterly.’
‘Then you know what you must do.’
‘What I must do?’
‘Drive them out.’
‘Yes. Yes, of course.’
‘Now I will dance for you and shortly I will be gone. You will be left with your task.’
Mary sat and watched the angel dance. As it turned and twisted with joy, it