banished

Author:billie sue mosiman
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781468005233
Publisher: Createspace
Published: 2011-11-29T00:00:00+00:00

Nick spent two months with Marva, the companion and friend of Mo-Mo, the owner of the bottle tree, the far-seer. She had questions for him, naturally, but not many he knew the answer for. He told her about Angelique and how he’d fled from her and the evil he couldn't abide. He spoke of Mary and an earthly love affair that had left him broken. He tried to speak of the vast darkness where he’d been imprisoned too long to remember, but it was difficult for a human mind to comprehend the endlessness of it, the bone chilling cold, the agony of self locked within self.

She told him her life story in return. How she’d always known the insides of people and things, even as a child. How she’d been orphaned and then widowed, always left alone by others, and finally how she'd found a little peace from the “ratty people” as she called them who scared her and made her shrink away. She’d adopted Mo-Mo, having found him wandering the highway. The bottle tree? It was just a communion with nature, she said, having no other words to explain it. The sound of the tingling glass, the prisms of color that rainbowed the ground when the sun hit the bottles—these things made her happy and she trusted that was reason enough to do it.

“Tell me more about the ‘ratty people’ you try to avoid,” he said. “Do you mean they’re evil, like Angelique?”

“Evil, I don’t know about. They’re dead inside and their hearts are black—black as your wings.”

“I guess I should look deeper into the people I meet on my journey.”

“If you do, you’ll end up like me, a crazy old crone living alone in some isolated place. Is that what you want?”

He considered the question. “No, I’d rather not do that. It would limit my experiences and that, I think, is all I have.”

She studied him. “For an angel, you don’t have a lot of wisdom at hand, do you?”

He laughed at her abrupt way of speaking. “I guess I don’t. How would I know? You’re the one who can see inside. If I have no wisdom, you’d be the one to know.”

Now she looked saddened. “You're looking for your wisdom.” She paused. “You’re leaving soon, aren’t you? I can feel it.”

“Yes.”

“You’re on a mission, but you don’t know what it is.”

“I guess so.”

“She’ll come after you, you know.”

“Angelique? I know.”

“She’s a warrior. She wants it all, heaven and earth. She wants you to...to help her.”

“She can’t have everything she wants, even you know that,” he said. “None of us get everything.”

“You’ll be careful? I know you cloak your soul; it was mighty hard to get to a place and an angle where I could see it. But she’s even greater than I ever could hope to be, from what you’ve told me. She sees farther, deeper, with more precision.”

“I’ll be careful.”

What he did not say was that now they’d opened up to one another, Marva was the one in danger.

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