The Book of the Unknown: Tales of the Thirty-six (27 page)

— Will you?

— No.

— Why not?

She gazed at him until he saw. He wiped a tear from Beitzel’s cheek, not knowing whether it was hers or his own.

— Tomorrow night is the new moon. For you to survive, I have to be gone by then.

— But if you truly . . .

She hushed him with another glance, and then told him the demons’ diabolical plan: Heavily cloaked, Boaz would approach the town gate shortly after nightfall. To the first person who saw him, he’d say that he was Beitzel’s cousin. The moment the gate was opened to admit him, demons hidden behind every tree and rock would rush in, overpowering the town, and Beitzel couldn’t describe what would happen then for fear that, somewhere in the heavens, her words might be mistaken for premonition.

— If I run away tonight, though, you can warn folks here tomorrow. Tell them you made me talk, and chased me out of town. You’ll be a hero.

— If you leave, I’ll go with you.

— You’ve never been without a community.

— You’d be my home.

— I’d be your widow.

— Then we’ll stay here. We’ll let everyone know what you’ve told me about your cousins.

— They’re humans, though. If they find out that I’m a fallen angel . . .

— What’s the difference?

— Mendel, humans and demons are enemies. They believe that they’re opposites—good versus evil—but their hate is the same.

— And us, Beitzel?

— Together, we’re loathsome to everyone.

•   •   •

Later that day, a bell was rung in the town square. Standing side by side, Beitzel and Mendel waited for everyone to assemble around them in a large circle. Folks waved to the young couple, and one of Lev’s girls handed Beitzel, dressed as usual in her plain hempen frock, a daffodil bouquet.

Mendel had never spoken in public. He knew neither stage fright nor show business. He talked as he would to a friend in the street. He said that the following evening folks should expect a plague of demons. In the back they couldn’t hear him, and in the front they didn’t understand: Just what sort of perverse wedding announcement was the blacksmith making?

Yod-Beit explained. While she’d never addressed a crowd either, the voice lessons she’d received in heaven had taught her to project. She pitched every damning detail.
How do you know?
asked Hirsh.
She’s a demon,
shouted everybody else. She nodded. The circle imploded.

Mendel begged people to be gentle with his Beitzel. He pleaded that she wasn’t a real devil, grotesque and perverse, just a poor angel who’d happened somehow to lose her balance. They dragged her down the stone steps beneath the bell tower, shedding daffodils, to the village’s solitary prison cell.

Forged by Mendel’s grandfather, the cell had scarcely been used, except as an underground aviary for the night watchman Ariel’s owls. The owls were roused by the ruckus. As the door was thrust open, they flew away, and Beitzel was thrown in their place.
Traitress,
folks shouted.
You can’t scare us, demon-girl. Let the devils attack today or next year. If they try, we’ll crucify their little moll.

Mendel pressed through the mob. In front of the iron cage, he faced Hirsh and Zvi and Lev, and, behind them, everyone else he’d ever known. Unable to follow the logic of punishing someone for being honest, he asked why he wasn’t locked away as well.

— You’re innocent, Mendel.

— Then let me in the cell. It’s prison for me to stand here with you, barred from my Beitzel.

For an instant, the mob quivered with confusion. Then, collective muscle flexed, the crowd pounded him into the dungeon.

Ariel the watchman was lonesome without his owls. His wife slept at night while he worked, and neither had seen the other awake in all their married years. While that was the basis of their famed connubial bliss—how they remained, so to speak, the lovers of each other’s dreams—both had to seek elsewhere for companionship. His wife had her affairs, and Ariel had his aviary.

The owls had not only been pets for the watchman. Year by year, he’d gone blind overlooking his wife’s liaisons. The owls were his eyes. On the night he was abandoned by them, he stood at the town gate beneath the new moon, not knowing where the night ended and where his gloom began.

He talked to himself as he’d spoken to his owls.
The winds are mighty strong,
he said.

Punishing weather,
a voice responded.

— Who’s there? It’s past curfew.

— My name is Boaz. I’m Beitzel’s cousin. I have to see her.

Please let me in?

— Beitzel is in jail.

— In jail? What happened?

Ariel didn’t know the circumstances of Beitzel’s incarceration. Each villager had left to others the task of informing him, as nobody wanted to take responsibility for the loss of his birds.

— Aren’t you curious, Ariel?

— Yes.

— I’ll stand guard for you while you find out. Just leave those keys here with me.

As Ariel reached out to hand him the ring, the winds turned. Talons drawn, an owl plunged between them, catching Boaz by the snout and ripping him away from the gate. The demon’s horrible bellow gelded the watchman’s ears. And stirred a hundred more devils, who charged the town as the owl hauled Boaz toward the end of the world.

The furor awoke the entire village. Folks opened their doors, and peered out into the night. They asked one another what was happening, and remembered Beitzel’s warning.

Lacking armaments, they grabbed as weaponry the cookware and cutlery that Mendel had forged them, and scrambled toward the town square. Ariel was already there, blindly stumbling over the cobblestones, deafly stuttering the word
owl
over and over again.

People looked up. The whole sky was alive. A thousand owls soared over their village, flying as if feathers of a single wing, so tight was their formation. The wing dipped as demons hammered at the walls of their town, swiping up the villains with a hundred honed talons.

Of course the shrewdness of owls was well known to the townsfolk: Because owls’ eyes are fixed open, even as they sleep, and their hearing penetrates all that they cannot see, the species has accumulated vast wisdom over the generations, an inheritance the envy of humans. Here Ariel’s flock had heard the truth in Beitzel’s tale and raised a squadron, while the villagers had denounced her and sent her to prison. Whose fault had it been? Who was to blame? They quibbled until dawn. Nobody saw the owls scatter, and it was blind Ariel who first remarked that the sun seemed not to be rising, but dropping straight down on them.

Folding back great wings of flame, an angel emerged from the light. He was more massive than any man the villagers had ever seen, yet as unblemished as a newborn. People shuffled to their feet to greet the distinguished visitor, trying frantically to get rid of their useless cookware by passing it back and forth. Ignoring their fulsome greetings, the angel said in a voice that rang like a towering bronze bell above their heads,
Where is Yod-Beit?

The villagers looked at one another. They asked, a bit nervously, if he meant Beitzel.

— Where is Yod-Beit, the fallen angel, who betrayed her fellow demons to save your lives? For this great deed, she has been recalled to heaven.

—
That
Yod-Beit? She may be under the bell tower, resting.

— Bring her to me.

Lev led a delegation down to the dungeon. They found Beitzel and Mendel asleep on the stone floor, curled up in the cradle of each other’s arms. Lev unlocked the cell door. Zvi crouched down and rocked the couple awake. As Beitzel opened her eyes, he told her that there was an angel waiting outside for her.

— What does he want?

— He’s come to take you back to heaven.

— Send him away.

— Don’t be afraid. Up above, they saw what you did for us, in spite of us. You deserve this.

— No, I don’t. You’ve never been in heaven. Do you know why I was banished?

She stood up. Mendel rose with her. The men looked at him. He didn’t have the answer. He hadn’t thought to ask her.

— I was cast out of heaven because I couldn’t sing on key.

— That can’t be.

— I wasn’t the only one. There were nine others the same night. Nine other young seraphim, just like me.

— What happened to them?

— They burned on the way down.
Shooting stars,
you call them here, tormenting them with your petty wishes as they fry.

— Singing off-key can’t be the only reason for banishment.

— You’re right. Some angels are tossed out because they’re too short or fat. My cousin Boaz was ousted because he had flat feet. Folks believe that heaven is special. It could be as good and bad as any other place. What makes it so much worse is that it tries to be perfect.

— You’re sure of this?

— I won’t go back. My home is here with Mendel. I won’t be a devil or an angel. It’s enough to be his Beitzel.

Yod-Beit took Mendel’s hand, and sent the delegation to tell the heavenly messenger her decision.

The angel scarcely waited for Lev to stammer Beitzel’s refusal. (
A most generous offer . . . Regretfully has prior commitments . . . So grateful that you thought of her . . .
) Wordlessly turning his back on the village, the messenger opened his wings to the sun, and faded into its distant glow.

Folks started to gather their cookware. They didn’t talk or even look at one another, yet none of them went home. Nobody left the square. As minutes gave way to hours, people glanced up at the sky less often. They milled about, walking off expectation, letting go the notion that heaven, rejected by feisty Beitzel, might come back for them instead.

Of course heaven had no such intentions. Returning from the world without Yod-Beit, her guardian found the gathered seraphim fuming.
Consider what it means for celestial prestige,
they said,
to be snubbed by a fallen angel in front of those earthly vermin.
He nodded, afraid that if he tried to speak, his voice would tremble like a crystal serving bell. They demanded that he return to her. They decreed that her apotheosis was not an offer, but an order.

He descended again with a train of deputies. The flight was always trying, for the wings they wore were borrowed beams of sunlight insulated with golden fleece that would ignite at the slightest fall from grace. Moreover, people no longer saw their lofty appearance as any great miracle, but, especially in big cities, expected aerobatic feats. Villagers were less demanding, since the angels didn’t have to compete with professional entertainers—circus trapezists and tightrope walkers—yet when a mission was significant enough to call for a conclave of them, they were expected at least to fly in formation, heralding their visitation.

That got people’s attention. The villagers dropped their pots and pans. They raised heads and hands, as if expecting a gift. Instead they got an ultimatum.

A crowd of them went to Beitzel, to communicate the angels’ demand. Everyone followed as she mounted the dungeon stairs into daylight. They watched her stride across the village square, to the cluster of angels. She approached them as an equal. Folks marveled that her height did not recede with distance. By the time she reached the heavenly coven, little Beitzel appeared as large as her persecutors. They cowered as she spoke. They clung to their wings of fire. None of the townsfolk could hear what she said to her fellow celestials, but when she turned her back on them, the angels looked broken.

With effort, they levitated. One slipped and immolated. The remainder scattered, scarcely visible on the horizon as Beitzel met Mendel in the middle of the square. She took his hands, and gazed at him, as little and fragile as she’d ever been.

— Heaven isn’t done.

— The angels are all gone. It doesn’t look like they’ll be back again.

— I know, Mendel. But this evening a celestial storm will come and take me away. Heaven will claim me by force.

Mendel tried to comfort her. He proposed that she wait out the storm in the cell beneath the bell tower. She pronounced that it would collapse. He offered to forge her armor of iron that no wind could lift. She foretold that it would corrode to dust. She would not be consoled. She dismissed all ordinary precautions. As the clouds came, she declared that she’d have to face the storm. As the thunder rolled, she confessed that she couldn’t withstand the tempest alone.

People scrambled for cover. Mendel didn’t budge. He wrapped his arms around Beitzel’s shoulders. He vowed that if heaven wanted Yod-Beit, it would have to take them together.

Of course the celestial sphere was too high a climb for the haughtiest kings, let alone a grimy blacksmith. The winds rose to meet his affront. A hurricane wrapped around the couple, quickening to rip them apart. Clothing was stripped away, shredded. They clung to each other’s skin. They pressed so close that the air could no longer distinguish between them, and could only batter them together. Thrown off their feet, they were thrust onto the ground. With a jolt, the last barrier between them broke. Heaven and earth mingled inside the couple.