The Book of Joby Read Free Page B

moment, but had given his entire attention to the theater of water, sky, and stone constantly transformed before him by starlight, moonlight, and sunlight in the dark breathless hours before dawn . . . and day and dusk and night and dawn again.
    He had served his Master here for nearly two hundred years, and still the novelty of so much beauty so completely unmarred by the Dark One’s touch had yet to wear thin for him—which is not to say that angels are easily entertained, only that they find more meaning in the least fragment of shell or surf-polished glass than the most appreciative mortal mind might draw from a Russian novel or a week at the Grand Canyon.
    His eyes and the summer sea passed a single shade of blue between them, back and forth, back and forth; a private and familiar rhyme shared by friends too long and well acquainted to have need of words. Back and forth, back and forth: his long ruddy-gold hair matched the tall dry grass aroundhim, step for gentle step, in a long soft dance called by the warm wind sighing past them, headed north. He eavesdropped as the ocean whispered sweet cool nothings to distract the land while slyly dragging smooth round stones, one upon another, off the beach into its deep and secret pockets. Back and forth, back and forth; the world around him swayed to rhythms with which he seemed to sway as well, despite his utter stillness.
    This reverie was finally broken by a thin column of pale smoke rising from a distant beach hidden behind the cliffs. It was Michael’s charge to know what passed in this favored place, down to the silent flutter of moth wings at any evening porch light in the village. But when he cast his quizzical awareness toward the beach, he sensed no one where logic told him someone ought to be. A moment later, above the spot where he’d been sitting, a white gull wheeled on updrafts and turned to glide swiftly toward the mystery.
    Arriving there, Michael spread his wings and landed gracefully well down the strand from a grizzled old fisherman in heavy, salt-stained waders, standing at the ocean’s edge, patiently watching the tip of his long pole. Higher up the beach, a small driftwood fire blazed cheerfully in its ring of smooth gray stones.
    Maintaining his disguise, Michael aimed another mental probe. This time the man registered perfectly, his long life wound and stretched within him. A child’s simple pleasures; laughing adolescent mischief; early loves; earnest youthful dreams and ambitions; a radiant woman’s beaming face; a child held; flashes of joy, gratitude, and pride; moments of affection, fear, and wonder; griefs endured; losses survived; arrangements made; acceptance; in time contentment; and finally . . . the deep and lasting peace that comes to some fortunate few with age. A remarkably lovely life, but nothing unexpected within a very fortunate old man’s memory. Yet Michael’s concern remained.
    The old man’s presence should have been as easily detected before. There was nowhere he could have gone to or come from in the few moments it had taken Michael to fly from where he’d first seen smoke. He probed the old man’s mind again. Such broad passion and earthy understanding gradually unfolded amidst the small triumphs and crises of a modest life well and wisely lived. It all seemed too perfectly complete.
Too
beautifully drawn. Whatever the old man was, Michael felt certain he was
not
what he seemed; and the presence in this protected refuge of anyone pretending so well to be what he was not could only spell very serious trouble.
    The old man reeled in his heavily weighted line, then cast it out again, seeming to relish the labor. An angel’s eyes are quick and keen, and Michael’s concern suddenly dissolved. He laughed a gull’s shrill staccato laugh, spread his wings, and flew to the fisherman’s side, where he resumed his human form.
    Seeming unstartled by the bird’s sudden transformation, the old man merely grimaced in