Angels and Exiles Read Free Page A

as more and more dropped down from the sky; and they built castles of metal, and surrounded them with gardens under glass.
    And soon something strange happened: the land around the castles of the Others became poisonous. Plants withered, animals died, and when we ventured there, we could not breathe the air for long.
    What could we do to change things? There was nothing that could be done to the metal and glass of the Others. So we retreated to the high mountains, where the air was thin, but still pure. And from the mountaintops we watched the Others spread onto the world like a bloodstain.

    One day a ship without wings came to one of the mountains where we lived. Many were afraid and said this was the end: the Others had come to take us all and cut us apart with their metal. Many said nothing, but gathered up their hunting bows and their best blades.
    The ship was not so large as the first ones we had seen. It landed on a plateau, and a door opened in its side like a hut’s. An Other walked out, and it was naked. Several of us had come out of their caves, and they now pointed their bows at it, and drew.
    The Other looked them in the eye, calmly. Then it spoke. It said, in the male mode, What do you want with those weapons? Please do not harm me. Do you speak?
    Later we understood he did not know the meaning of the words he had spoken. He had merely repeated the sounds one of our captive brethren had made when he had tried speaking with the Others who were about to cut him. Thus we would know he was the Prophet.
    We began to talk with him. He pointed at himself and gave his name, which is too holy to repeat. We gave him our own names, and then he made a gesture, and a second Other came out of the ship. She was his mate. And thus it all began. It proceeded slowly, but we had all of time.
    Eventually we understood one another. The Prophet told us why the Others were the Enemy. He explained how the poisoning would one day kill all of us. He said he had come to teach us the Others’ magic, if we would learn it. That, this way, we could fight them. He used a word:
sabotage
. He said that the castles were fragile, that the metal way for trains could be destroyed, that we could regain our land, one day.
    We knew that he was holy, for nothing he said made sense, and at the same time, we felt it was deeply true. So we let him live and began to learn from him.
    It took years. He taught us better ways to count, and to measure distances, and so many other things that our souls could not hold them all. Every day, he taught us. He filled us with the magic of the Others, and when we were full, we started the war.
    What we liked best was to make bombs, to place them next to the castles or the rails, and to make them explode. Soon the Others installed weapons that threw bullets at us, but they could not protect all the rails, and where they were not protected we destroyed them easily.

    Careful as we were, many of us were injured by the Others’ defences, and some died. So we began to make young again, to readjust our numbers.
    One day the Prophet went to witness one of our young being made into an adult. When we performed the Time rite, he inquired what we did.
    We answered, We do not know how the Others do it, but this is how we make her undying.
    He repeated, Undying? But all things grow old and die.
    At this we were stunned. But
we
do not, we said. Don’t the Others know how to work that magic?
    He had us explain. We showed him our magic, how we changed a person’s twin fires with our souls, how we made them keep always in balance, neither one devouring the other. He was amazed. He named our magic
psychokinesis
. He demanded that we prove our claims.
    So we did. We showed him how we could make a leaf whither with our souls, driving one of its fires hard and repressing the other. We showed him the rock mice, how by reaching with our souls we could make them die or live longer, although it demanded more effort and more care, as they