Deep Water Prompt #3198
There are Angel eggs everywhere, perfect delicate white pearls in the river, stuck to trees and the woolly coats of our sheep. It’s a shame to crush them, but we can’t risk it. They hatch hungry.
“Why do we crush them?” Annalee asked, big blue eyes studying the angel egg.
I leaned down and took it from her, gently cradling the pearly white egg in my palm. It was just smaller than my thumb and forefinger touched together, and in my hand it felt silky-smooth.
I held it toward her, but drew my hand back when she reached for it, simply showing it to her. “Have you ever seen an angel, Annalee?”
My charge hopped enthusiastically. The blessing of the young- energy to spare. “Yeah! They’re really tall and pretty with big wings and lots of eyes and-“
“That’s right,” I interrupted. “They are really pretty when they’re all grown up.”
“And they’re really nice! They help people who lose sheep, or get lost, or get hurt, or-“
“That’s right,” I interrupted. “They are really nice when they’re all grown up. Nothing is kinder than a grown-up angel.”
She stopped hopping and looked even more carefully at the egg. I could see her confusion mounting as she scrunched up her face and decided to give her an out. “But, Annalee, an angel’s too big to fit into this little egg here, right?”
“Yeah! They’re like chickens! They hatch and then they grow up!”
I nodded. “They are like chickens. This little egg could hatch and an angel larva could come out just like a little chicken, fuzzy and squirmy. A lot like a caterpillar!”
Annalee nodded sagely, her eight years of wisdom showing. “I know about caterpillars. They’re small but they eat a lot, then they make a blanket and sleep, and then they turn into butterflies!”
I roll the egg around my palm a little. “Well, angels are a lot like caterpillars, then. Because they eat a lot, Annalee. And they’re not really picky. They’ll eat anything, but they like meat best.”
“Like my uncle Gregor! He hates greens, he says they make you gassy.”
“Like your uncle Gregor. But they’re very hungry, Annalee. And they eat and they eat and they eat- they’ll eat anything they can catch, and they’re pretty quick.”
Annalee looked at the egg doubtfully. “It doesn’t look very fast…”
I rolled the egg between my fingers again, flipping it across my knuckles to show off a little and make Annalee giggle. “No, they don’t look very fast at all. But they’ll eat anything they can catch, and that means we have to crush them.”
I held the egg out and she cupped her hands to take it. I held it there for a moment, trying to meet her eyes with mine, but hers were firmly fixed on the egg. I sighed and put it in her hands. “Annalee, can you do something for me?”
She perked up, then struggled into a serious expression. “What is it, Mx. Hahn?”
I leaned close down, bracing myself on my walking stick as I bent almost double to move next to her and look her in the eye at her level. “I want you to take that egg and step on it. It’s very important.”
Annalee startled, maybe from the hardness of my tone, maybe from the request itself. Her lip quivered. “Won’t the big angels get mad?”
I sighed and leaned back a little. “No, Annalee, they won’t. They don’t seem to mind. Maybe they know their kids would eat more than we can spare.”
She looked at the ground, rolling the egg from one tiny hand to the other. The river trickled by us, and a dragonfly balanced on one of Annalee’s stray cowlicks before moving on. The moment stretched, and I idly wondered if she was going to take it and run.
In the end, she dropped the egg, bent and whispered something to it, and then stepped on it. It crushed easily, as they always do, delicate silken shell giving way under her heel to leave an opalescent stain in the riverbank’s mud. Of the larva nothing could be seen- they were never in the remains of crushed eggs.
Annalee looked ready to cry, so I knelt and took her into a hug, hushing her and murmuring praise for her bravery. I dried her tears and took her hand, and we got back to our riverbank walk, checking the fish traps and collecting what we found. As we went, we saw other angel’s eggs, but Annalee didn’t ask me about them again, and just put them on the ground and stepped on them.
After she whispered to the third one, I asked, “What are you saying to them, Annalee?”
She jumped up from where she’d been peering at the last of the eggshells, but said “It’s a secret.” She looked a bit bashful, so I grinned.
“I’ll trade you a secret for a secret, Annalee.”
She let herself look curious for a moment before she put her stern face on and shook her head. I cocked my head in curiosity, but she didn’t say. I shrugged, nudged her shoulder, and said, “All right then, keep your secrets.” It does the young good to have them, sometimes. Keeping things to yourself is part of growing up.
We finished our walk and returned with the catch, splitting the fish half-and-half between Annalee’s parents and my own family. I bid them a fond farewell and turned to leave before I spotted an angel egg stuck to the wall of their house, over the doorway. I reached up and poked it, hard, with my stick, and it collapsed, running down the wall to pool on top of the lintel. Annalee’s father, Graden, leaned out of the doorway and peered up, grunting. “Damn eggs.”
“I told Annalee about them at the river today. She’s a curious child- keep an eye on her until the laying season’s over, won’t you?”
He nodded. “Girl’s gotta learn sometime. Her older sister never had so many questions.”
I grinned, crookedly. Annalee’s sister, Phoebe, was her father’s daughter- down to earth, practical, perhaps a little narrow-minded. She was a potter’s apprentice, and by all accounts perfectly content to shape clay on the wheel all day, every day. She wasn’t the sort to ask after things like angel eggs.
As I crossed the village green to get home, I detoured through the market. Our market is small, with stands that are practically institutions themselves, needing only walls and a door to become a real shop. Maybe someday they would be. Now, at dusk, was the busy time to be here- as the light gave out and people picked up whatever they needed for supper. Fortunately, we have a few angels in town, and they give enough light to keep things safe when the sun’s down.
One, Ezekiel, was busy manning the potato stall when I got there. “Evening to you, Zeke. Can I get a pound for a penny today?”
The angel inclined his head. Like most adults, he was approximately human, with a torso supported by legs, shoulders with arms, and a head. He was winged, of course, with great luminous wings like a moth’s, and eyes blinked not from his head but his upper chest, a line of five of them across his collarbone. “I wish you well, Hain Hahn, child of Janes and Marlyn. I do have for sale this day one pound of potatoes for a penny. Is this your wish?”
“It is.” I grinned and put up my hand, with a beaten iron penny in it, and the angel’s central arm, from the pointed peak of his collarbone, came and collected it as his other two arms dipped below the counter, fetching potatoes and weighing them to match the order. I tucked my potatoes into my bag as he said, “Was the labor of your day blessed, Hain Hahn?"
I seesawed my head back and forth, holding up the basket full of fish from the river. “Blessed with a decent catch, perhaps, enough for mine and my charge’s families. I had to speak on the subject of your eggs today, Zeke. The children always have questions during your spawning season."
The angel paused, his head inclining slightly. Its lack of eyes wasn’t as unsettling as it could be, given that Ezekiel’s mouth was also full of razor-sharp teeth and his hands tipped with claws- a child of the flesh, as the angels say. “It is natural. A child is a vessel, hungering to be full. They know not the ways of the world.”
I cocked my head. “True.” I paused, and Ezekiel gently asked, “You have a question for me, Hain Hahn. Please speak it.”
“Well, it’s not exactly a delicate one.” I hemmed for a moment before saying, “Ezekiel, do you…is it uncomfortable for you that we crush your eggs when we find them?”
He leans back, apparently thinking. His eyes blink- first the middle, then rippling outward toward his shoulders. His hands rest on the counter, rippling a tap from one end to the other, all fifteen fingers working in concert. This is the deepest contemplation I’ve ever seen Ezekiel undertake answering a question, although the runner up was the first time someone asked his counterpart, Viatha, what happened to us when we die. The answer eventually came back, “Travel.” Viatha refused to give any real clarification.
Ezekiel finally spoke. “It is necessary. We are aware that our larvae pose a threat of body to you and yours, Hain Hahn. And they come to no harm by your actions.”
I cocked my head. “No harm? We kill them, don’t we?”
He tapped his fingers in a wave again, right to left and then back, before finally answering, "It is indefinite."
I waited for more, but there was nothing else. He said, after the pause stretched, “Is there anything else you wish, Hain Hahn?” I shook my head and murmured a farewell, leaning heavily into my walking stick as the day spent trying to keep pace with an eight-year-old made itself known.
My home is on the edge of town, facing the woods with its back to a huge stone carved in symbols from the founders’ time. I greeted my hearth-husbands fondly with an embrace and our heart-wife with a knowing look and a fond smile- Zoe doesn’t care to touch, often, and she wore the red kerchief to show us it was one of those days. She returned both look and smile happily, though, and held out a hand for my bagful of food.
I distributed the work of peeling and cutting potatoes, filleting fish, and fetching onion, cabbage and carrot from the garden, and we set to work making dinner. We caught each other up on our days- Wren is a teacher, and full of stories about the children’s lessons and mischief; Oslo is a carpenter’s apprentice, the youngest of us and excited to relate the newest barn his master has been charged with framing to raise; and Zoe one of the town’s greenest thumbs, and thus always in demand in field or home garden.
I train loreholders, and when I related the tale of my day, Oslo was first to speak. “Raw lesson for a nice day, Hain.”
“It couldn’t be helped,” I sighed. “She wanted to know, and even though I pitched it to her easy, she took it hard. I’ll have to make sure we go out and do it again, and soon. Angel hatching is not for a child to wonder about, but to worry.”
Wren grunted, “Better that than lose a finger to a hatchling.”
We all hummed some sound of agreement and the topic changed. We fried our fillets in corn oil with the potato fries, and boiled the vegetables before mashing them into a paste. Zoe broke out a bottle of the Saidow’s mead and we had watered glasses with dinner. It turned into a quiet night in, sewing and whittling, dish-washing and reading easing us all to sleep before we retired- Wren and Oslo to their rooms, and Zoe and I to ours.
As we dressed for bed, Zoe murmured, “Annalee Yod is a stubborn child, Hain. Watch her closely. If she doesn’t try to lay hands on a larva just to see what happens, I’ll be a rooster’s hen.”
Laying my stick by my bedside in its accustomed place, I nodded. “She already did. I saw her take one when she thought I wasn’t looking earlier. Still thinking on the best thing. Maybe I’ll ask Oslo to make a cage for it, let her see how dangerous it is. Hard lessons are the best, sometimes.”
She hesitated before climbing under the sheets, shivering at the cool cotton. “True.” I washed my face, changed, and joined her, lying back-to-back with her but not touching. She turned over, and brushed my hair off the side of my face, and placed a careful kiss to my temple. I looked up and smiled, and she returned it before lying back down.
Sleep came quick.
---
Annalee came to get me before I went for her the next morning. My house was still eating breakfast, Wren and Oslo not needing to be working until well after the sun was up and Zoe between requests for aid. Annalee’s tiny hands pounding on the door raised my eyebrows and made Oslo jump in his seat, but I fairly flew to the door, grabbing my walking stick from the table and blotting my mouth as I went.
Annalee was covered in sweat, dirt, and blood. I barked, “Oslo, water, please,” as I ushered her inside. She tried to fight me, but I knelt and said to her, “Let’s clean that up first. What happened?”
She sobbed, “I’m sorry Mx. Hahn, I know you said we have to step on them, but they’re so pretty, and. And I. I took one! I took it home, and I put it in a pot with a lid, and I opened it this morning and it hatched and it- and it-“
Oslo handed me a pot of water and a rag and I set about wiping her hands clean, saying nothing for the moment. Sure enough, there was a bite mark- maybe as big as my thumbnail. I tore a strip off the rag and bound the wound, then gave Annalee a quick hug. She clung to me, but this wasn’t the time. I pried her off.
Holding her by her upper arms, I looked her in the eye. “Show me where it went.”
I followed her across town as quickly as I could, stopping only to grab my heaviest leather gloves. A small crowd was gathered outside her house, and there was a general thrashing occurring inside. I took Annalee and handed her off to her neighbor in the crowd, then took a deep breath, pulled on my gloves, and went inside.
The inside of the house was a disaster. Annalee must have been keeping the pot in the kitchen near the stove; the angel inside shouldn’t have hatched that prematurely without being incubated. Graden was on the counter, peering down at the floor. His trouser leg was wet with blood at the ankle, and he had a rag wrapped tightly around his left hand. I closed the door behind me and raised my eyebrows at him. He nodded toward the woodpile. Figures it would be near the stove.
I looked at the kitchen table. It was a battlefield. A small bloodstain near the head of the table showed where Graden had been bitten. The spread, which looked like it had once been toast and eggs, had been obliterated by something small and absolutely without regard for the cutlery; I saw a fork that had a bite taken out of it just the same as the hunk of toast next to it.
I made a gesture, moving my hands close together to far apart, and quirked an eyebrow at Graden. How big?
He held his hands about a foot apart, then held up a fist. I sighed, grabbed his fire poker from the hanger, and stuck it in the fire, then grabbed a cast iron pot and put it on its side. As I turned around, looking for the lid, I spotted the larva- watching me.
As Graden had indicated, it was perhaps a foot long and a bit wider around than my wrist, a fat, pearlescent caterpillar-like creature with huge, rasping and grabbing mouthparts. It had no eyes on its face; they instead blinked from a double line running parallel down its back. It blinked, considering, then flared its mouthparts and bounded for me.
I grabbed the poker from the fireplace and belted it, bouncing it across the room’s front wall. Quick as I could, I leaned in and used my walking stick to spear it to the base of the wall, leaning in. Its skin dimpled but did not break, and I gritted out, “Graden, get the pot.”
He stayed where he was, frozen. I turned my head, leaning my whole body weight into the thrashing angelic larva as I looked at him, and hissed, “Graden. Get the fuck off the counter and help me or I will beat your ass like a child.”
He hopped to, his injured ankle giving way a little as he hobbled to grab the cast iron pot from where I’d left it on the floor. I took the fire poker, shifted my weight, and whacked the larva square above the mouth; it shrieked, a high-pitched sound like the squeal of rusty hinges, and I belted it again, to no apparent immediate ill effect. Graden got the pot into place, and, using my stick and the fire poker as tweezers, I maneuvered the infant angel into the pot and Graden slammed the lid down.
I sat on it heavily, as the pot rocked with the larva’s attempts to get out, but gradually it subsided. I called outside for assistance, and the house was full of people a moment later. I took charge, as an old teacher’s instincts came back after years of leaving the schoolhouse behind, and organized first aid for Graden and Annalee, got some rope to tie the pot together, and stepped outside for some fresh air as Graden’s wife Aoife came home from the field to see to putting their house back to rights. She gave me a tired look and I returned it: I’d long suspected Graden did badly under pressure, and it wasn’t a good time to have it confirmed.
“Thanks, Hain. We appreciate it. Annalee OK?”
I smiled, tiredly. “She’ll be fine. Got nipped on the hand. I’ve wrapped it. If you need her at home, or she needs her folks, y’all go on and keep her today. I’ll be back by tomorrow and we’ll pick up where we left off.”
She nodded briskly and headed inside, where I heard her voice ring out as she started coordinating her house’s reassembly and berated her husband for leaving a lorekeeper to wrestle with angels.
“Where is the larva, Hain Hahn, child of Janes and Marlyn? I would take it into the care of our kind.” Ezekiel stepped through the crowd, no wider than any human but half again as tall and thus easily visible from afar. There was a wake around him, a half-step where nobody wanted to get closer, and I planted my feet. He continued, “Now that the egg has hatched, the larva must be overseen. Has it tasted flesh?”
I nodded. “Yes, Zeke, it has. Another child of the flesh is born this day. Perhaps last night. Two people’ve been hurt by it, and scared partways out of their wits.”
The angel nodded, eyes solemn. His aura dimmed. “It is true. And we are sorry for it. Let us have the larva, and we will see to its care and pupation. Many apologies are needed, and this is but the first.” He stretched out his three hands, long-fingered and delicate. “The larva?”
I huffed, but stepped into the house and returned with the cast-iron pot, walking awkwardly without my stick’s support. I handed it to Ezekiel and he took it without visible effort. I grunted, “Your folk owe the Yods a new pot and a few plates and such besides.”
Ezekiel nodded. “Restitution will be made, Hain Hahn, for both harm to possessions and person. If you convey my apologies, I would be most grateful.” He turned, and without further comment started to leave. Annalee came out of the crowd and held my hand, her face pensive. I looked down at her, but she was watching Ezekiel go, so I just squeezed her hand once and released. Maybe Wren would let me sit in on his lessons and sneak stories for the kids in beside his basic arithmetic and writing.
Down the lane, Ezekiel stopped suddenly, and turned to face me again. In a voice that carried despite sounding no louder than a whisper, he inquired, “When the time comes and the larva has pupated, would you consider taking on this angel as a student, loreholder?” I started, but he continued, “We have been observing your lessons, and we think that the children of the flesh may benefit from learning from you.”
I accepted. Who else gets the opportunity to teach the angels?
