It was still dark when Elizabeth rose, moving silently through the sleeping house. In the kitchen she stirred up the fire and lit a few candles -- the cheap ones, the ones that were good enough for the hired help but that wouldn't be tolerated in any of the grand rooms where the family dwelled. In a few minutes, she had the water boiling, the bread kneaded, and the porridge heating on the stove. The sun was beginning to make a sullen appearance over the horizon. By the look of the sky, heavy with fat-bellied clouds, this day would be as dreary as the one before, and the one before that.

And the one before that.

The field hands tramped in, their feet noisy but their mouths mostly silent, and settled themselves around the table. Elizabeth served them with a cool dispassion, nodding if one of them looked up and caught her eye but making no effort to converse or smile. Most of them had learned long ago that she wasn't your average farm cook, willing to flirt with a handsome new hand, softened by wheedling, happy to put together a special meal or a late dinner just because some brawny but brainless man grinned at her. Most of them had tried flirting with her anyway, because there weren't many diversions here on the sprawling farm. The nearest collection of buildings that called itself a town was a half-day's ride, and to get anywhere remotely interesting, like Semorrah or Luminaux, took a full three days and a knapsack of provisions. But they had soon learned, if they wanted dalliance, they were better off saddling up and riding across the low Jordana foothills and into the Blue City.

Elizabeth herself hadn't been to Luminaux in six months or more. The first few years she'd been at James's farm, she had pined for the gaiety of that most beautiful and luxurious of cities, and she had taken whatever opportunities arose to travel there for a brief holiday. But she had no money, so she just felt bitter and envious as she strolled through the azure streets, staring into the shop windows; and she had no true joy in her heart, so the constant thrum and backbeat of the music pouring out of the cabarets did not lift her spirits or make her smile. Luminaux just reminded her of what she had lost or what she would never attain, and so it was best for her if she did not return to Luminaux. She would stay, instead, mired forever on this limitless farm in the unexciting foothills of southern Jordana, and wish her life away.

"I'd take some more of that bread, if you've got any," one of the hands said in a neutral voice. Elizabeth nodded and cut another slice from the loaf.

"Anyone else?" she asked. A few murmurs of assent, so she continued cutting till the bread was gone.

"And some tea. Thanks," said another man.

"Looks like another wet day," someone observed.

"Damn hot for this time of year," the first speaker grumbled. "Should have cooled off a bit by now."

"Winter'll come soon enough, and you'll be wishing for weather this warm."

She let them talk around her, not listening until they asked for something she could supply, scarcely noticing as they finished their meals and filed out past her. Personally, she did not care if it was hot or cold or wet or dry or summer or winter or day or night. It was all the same: dismal, dull, pointless.

She had been made for a life much better than this. She had been born for finer things. Sometimes she still lay awake at night, eyes wide open in the dark, fists clenched to her sides, unable to believe she had come to this.

"Elizabeth?" The use of her name caught her off guard. She had turned to the oven to set the fresh loaves in to bake, and she'd thought she was alone in the kitchen. In fact, one man remained, a rangy, seedy field worker who'd been at the farm about three months. He hadn't entirely learned the lesson about flirting with the cook, for he still gave her a warm, private smile from time to time as if to remind her of some stolen kiss or illicit midnight tryst. His name was Bennie. She supposed it was short for Benjamin, but no one called him by the more elegant name. Bennie. As if she would ever consider someone with a name like that.

"What is it?" she asked somewhat warily, crossing her arms over her chest to underscore her unapproachability.

He smiled anyway and leaned back against the table as if prepared to perch there and gossip awhile. "His lordship's asked me to take a little trip tomorrow," Bennie said. James was hardly a lord, not like the wealthy merchants in the river cities; sometimes the field hands called him that as a joke, because James was so pretentious. "Thought you might want to come."

Elizabeth could feel her features tighten in distaste. "I don't believe it would be appropriate for me to travel under your escort," she said repressively.

He grinned. "Put that in plain language. You mean, you wouldn't be caught dead riding anywhere with me?"

His hair was black and unkempt, though it fell over his forehead with a sort of roguish charm. He was thin and wiry, but tall, and his demeanor suggested he had always had good luck with women. Not this woman. Elizabeth drew herself a little farther away. "I don't have any time off coming to me," she said. "Angeletta doesn't like it when I'm gone from the kitchen. So. Thank you, but I can't."

"Don't you even want to know where I'm going?" he coaxed.

"Luminaux, I suppose."

He shook his head. "Better."

For a moment she was tempted. "Semorrah?" The fabulous river city of white spires and soaring architecture was the most beautiful spot in Samaria, as far as Elizabeth was concerned, and she had not been there in nearly five years. But no. She would be even more unhappy there than she would be in Luminaux.

Bennie was smiling more widely and shaking his head more emphatically. "Not Semorrah, either. Even better."

She couldn't think of any place better than Semorrah. "I can't guess, then. Probably someplace I wouldn't want to go."

He cocked his head to one side. "Cedar Hills," he said.

She felt her hands fall limply to her sides and her mouth grow loose with desire. Cedar Hills. The angel hold still under construction in central Jordana. It was rumored to be a place of great sweetness and charm -- not as artistically rich as Luminaux or as beautiful as Semorrah, but filled with life and laughter and music and hope.

And with angels. Overrun with angels. The most magnificent creatures in the world.

Elizabeth had only met an angel once in her life, when she was a little girl, when her mother had taken her to Semorrah to be fitted for a dress for some cousin's wedding. They had stayed in the house of a river lord who was friends with Elizabeth's father, and they had found that an angel was among the houseguests. He had been exceptionally tall, with thick golden hair and a sonorous voice, but all Elizabeth could really focus on were his wings. They trailed behind him wherever he walked like a commanding, ghostly presence, glowing with a life and sentience of their own. She had been consumed by a desire to sneak up behind him and run her fingers across their silky surfaces, but of course her mother had made sure she did no such thing. Touch an angel's wings, indeed! Such presumption was not allowed. The angel had been gracious, though; he had spoken courteously to her mother and kindly to Elizabeth herself, bending down from his great height to look her solemnly in the eyes. It had been the most terrifying and spectacular moment of her life to that point.

She still had not experienced anything to rival the moment an angel pronounced her name.

"Elizabeth?" Bennie said again.

She shook her head to clear away something -- memories, or regrets, or the accumulated misery of the past five years. "Yes. I heard you. Cedar Hills."

"Wouldn't you like to go? Surely you can find some reason that will satisfy her ladyship. Something you need in Cedar Hills that can't be found anywhere else."

"I don't -- what's in Cedar Hills that can't be found in Luminaux? She'll never agree to let me go."

He raised an eyebrow. "But you'd like to?"

She opened her mouth and then shut it. Acting like a stupid girl, seduced by promises, and in front of Bennie, of all people. "I would love to see Cedar Hills," she said in a voice that she tried to make frosty and dignified. "But I feel certain I won't be able to accompany you there tomorrow."

He shrugged and straightened up. "Well, if you change your mind before tomorrow morning, just let me know."

"When are you leaving?" she couldn't help asking.

"First light or before. In fact, if you could make me up a packet of food tonight, and just leave it here on the table for me, I'd be most obliged."

"How long will the trip take?"

"Three days, I imagine. Longer if the weather's bad."

"What are you going to be doing in Cedar Hills?"

He grinned at her. "Supplying food to the hold. Isn't that nice? His lordship negotiated a deal with Nathan over the summer. So I imagine I'll be heading off to Cedar Hills pretty often, once the whole harvest is in. Me or someone else, that is."

She felt her heart skip a beat. "So if I don't go with you tomorrow, I could go some other time. Maybe. If Angeletta doesn't mind."

"Well, you could," he said impudently, "if the offer was still open."

She felt herself flush. "Yes, well, I -- of course, if you didn't want company I wouldn't--"

Now he laughed. "But I'd probably take you any time you decided to go. Pretty boring trip for a man alone."

"I don't know that my company would make it any more tolerable," she said in an icy voice.

He laughed again. "Oh, I don't think you're so cold as you'd like us all to think," he said cheerfully. "You're just unhappy. Tell you a few jokes, make you laugh, I think you'd warm up soon enough."

She was both furious and disgusted, but she didn't want to show either emotion. She didn't want him to rescind the offer, even though she couldn't think of a single way for her to accept it. Angeletta would never let her traipse off to Cedar Hills for a pleasure jaunt! To be gone a week or more, for no reason except that her heart craved beauty! There would be no way to explain it. No way to convince Angeletta that Elizabeth needed to go to Cedar Hills, required it the way everyone else required a certain amount of food and water, and a healthy exposure to sun. Even if Elizabeth could come up with a good enough reason, she thought it would take more than a day to convince Angeletta to let her go and to find someone else to cover the kitchen while Elizabeth was gone.

Still, she might think of something. She might come up with a plan. She did not want to alienate Bennie at this juncture, in case he might be of use to her in the future.

So she contented herself with saying, with a touch of rue, "I'm not a lighthearted young girl. I don't think jokes and smiles will really have that great an effect."

He leaned a little closer, still smiling but with a certain kindness in his face. "No, you're not a lighthearted girl," he repeated softly. "But you're still a young woman. You can't be more than twenty-five."

She gave a hollow laugh. He was right by a few months; she had had an unremarked birthday in the spring. "You think so? I feel like I'm about a hundred."

"That's what a hard life will do to you," he said with easy sympathy. "Look at me! I look about fifty, but I'm barely thirty."

He was grinning again, and she knew this for a lie. He was probably a year or two past fifty, in fact, and looked every day of it. But the lines around his eyes didn't seem as if they'd come from years of suppressed anger and want. In fact, he didn't appear as if he'd worried about much of anything during those fifty years, just moved amiably from event to event without much care for where each experience might take him. That was a skill she could envy, as long as she was envying everything else.

"I'm sorry your life has been difficult," she said, because she couldn't think of anything else to say.

"Not as difficult as yours, I'd wager," he said, turning and heading toward the door. "You can tell me about it tomorrow on the way."

"But I won't be able to go with you tomorrow," she called after him, a note of wistfulness in her voice.

He stopped with his hand on the door and grinned at her. "Oh," he said, "I think you will."

Elizabeth spent the whole rest of the day trying to think of a way to join Bennie on the trip to Cedar Hills. Every excuse she came up with sounded preposterous, even to her ears, and she couldn't imagine trying to use one to convince Angeletta. She needed more time. She needed better ideas.

She needed to be answerable to anybody but Angeletta.

If her circumstances had been even a little less dire when she had arrived at James's place five years ago, Angeletta would not have been the bane of her existence. For the farm wife was the worst kind of social schemer, a transplanted Manadavvi woman who clearly thought she had come down in the world by marrying a Jordana landowner, no matter how rich. Angeletta had set about making the property a showplace, renovating the large but rather plain house, furnishing it with Luminaux treasures, and throwing grand parties once a year that were attended by all the Jordana elite. Angeletta's stated goal was to work her way into the social strata of Cedar Hills, to be welcomed there by the host, Nathan, and his wife, Magdalena. Hence, no doubt, James's deal to supply produce to the angel hold. Quite possibly there were other negotiations in the works.

Angeletta had not been the kind of woman to welcome into her household an orphan girl whose parents were distantly related to her husband. She thought James's antecedents were questionable enough without having to explain away the presence of an awkward and destitute young relative. It didn't matter to her that Elizabeth's parents had been wealthy people of some standing before her father had lost everything in a series of bad investments with the Jansai. It didn't matter to her that Elizabeth didn't have another soul in the world to care for her. It didn't matter to her that Elizabeth was homeless, motherless, fatherless, penniless. Angeletta would not treat her as a daughter or a sister or a cousin. Angeletta would take her in as a servant -- and James, after a few halfhearted arguments, had agreed.

Elizabeth hated Angeletta with all her heart, but she despised her cousin James. Weak-willed, stupid, vain, and ambitious, he was a man who had given over his whole life into his wife's control. Once Elizabeth had been relegated to the role of hired help, James went out of his way to avoid her, never coming to the kitchen, never lingering in the dining room or any public room where Elizabeth might come on him by chance. He had given her a place to stay and some certainty that it would be hers for life, but he had not given her a home. He had given her nothing she could really value.

For the first year of her tenure at the farm, Elizabeth had comforted herself with the belief that everything would change soon. One of her mother's friends would remember her existence, would invite her to come live in her gracious Semorran home. Her father's niece would track her down in Jordana and swoop upon the farmhouse, calling out, "For shame!" when she saw how Elizabeth had been treated. Or -- an even better dream -- one of the rich landholders who attended Angeletta's parties would bring his handsome son along, and the bored young man would wander out into the gardens, where Elizabeth would be resting after a long day of working in the kitchen to prepare the day's feast. He would sit beside her, and tell her stories, and catch sight of her features in the moonlight, and be struck dumb by her charm and beauty. . . .

But none of these things had happened, not in any of the years that Elizabeth had been hidden away in this green, gentle prison. She had lost all hope of being rescued. She had begun to wonder what she could do to rescue herself.

More than once it had occurred to her that she could hire herself out as a cook somewhere else -- on a nearby ranch, for instance, or even in one of the hotels in Semorrah or Luminaux. She had learned how to cook for twenty or more people at a time, and -- though she hated to do it -- she could work as hard as anyone. Angeletta paid her virtually no wage, considering her room and board to be salary enough, and Elizabeth was pretty certain she could earn something far more satisfying at almost any venue.

But she did not want to be a cook. She did not want to be a servant of any kind. She wanted to be a titled lady, or a pampered wife, or even just an indulged young daughter in someone's house. Why should she have to work at all? Why had Jovah been so cruel to her?

She had not missed her father at all when he died, drowned in an unfortunate boating accident in the waters between Semorrah and the Bethel coast. He had not been around the house that much; he was a remote and somewhat severe figure in her life. But her mother's death had hit her hard, for they had always had the closest of relationships. They had already moved from the big house, the house she had grown up in, to the small house, the one that was too tiny to afford any privacy and that was too close to the neighboring butcher shop to ever smell entirely clean. Elizabeth had already been unhappy and petulant, unable to understand why they had no money, why they could not afford silk shawls and fancy candies, why she could not see her friends from Castelana and Velora. Coming home one afternoon to find her mother feverish and delirious in her small bedroom had been the greatest shock of Elizabeth's life. But even then, she had not known what terrible changes that illness had portended. If she had, she sometimes thought, she would have crawled in under those hot sheets next to her mother's restless body and hoped to contract whatever fatal disease had struck her mother down. She would rather have died than live the way she was living now.

But if she could get to Cedar Hills. . .

Moving through the kitchen without conscious volition, scarcely aware of what she was doing, Elizabeth cleaned the dishes and wiped down the table and rolled out another loaf of bread. But her thoughts were not on her work. If she could get to Cedar Hills. . .

There was no possible excuse she could fashion that would be good enough for Angeletta. But what if she did not tell Angeletta she was going? What if she merely left? Could Angeletta turn her away at the door when she returned? Wouldn't James, contemptible creature that he was, insist that Elizabeth be readmitted to the house? She was, after all, a blood relation; he would not let her starve in the ditches of southern Jordana.

Elizabeth's hands paused in the act of mixing dough. What if she left the house without the intention of returning?

Methodically, her hands resumed their motions, but her mind was racing elsewhere. She had a little money set by -- not much, but enough to live on for a few weeks, she was sure. She could take every coin and copper with her on this journey. She could get a job in Cedar Hills, she knew she could. She would cook, or do laundry, or watch children, or anything else that was offered. She would take a job in Cedar Hills, and she would discover a way to meet an angel. . . .

At this point in her meditations, Elizabeth shivered. Even she was a little aghast at the direction her thoughts were taking. Angels were rare, mystical, divine creatures that should be admired from afar; they were the great winged messengers that carried the hopes and prayers of humans to the ears of the god Jovah. They were shaped like men and women, true, and they lived among humans on the earth, but they were not to be viewed as mortals were, or treated as human in any way.

Still, angels had to mate with humans in order to reproduce. Everybody knew that. So angels needed humans -- for some things, at least, at some times in their lives.

Elizabeth set aside the shaped loaf and began to pour more ingredients into her metal bowl. A mortal woman who bore an angel child was welcomed into the hold forever. She could live there while her child was raised, and after -- for as long as she liked. Perhaps she might be lucky enough to bear more than one angel child, and so become especially treasured by these divine beings.

Perhaps she would be lucky enough to actually spark true love in the heart of an angel.

Elizabeth was not stupid. She knew all about the wretched women who lived near the three holds, attempting to ensnare and seduce an angelic consort. No one had anything flattering to say about these desperate creatures, these angel-seekers, as they were called. Yet everyone forgot how manipulative and pathetic they seemed as soon as they produced those tiny winged shapes from their wombs. Anyone might mock an angel-seeker, but everyone cherished the mother of an angel. Such a woman would be honored till the end of her days.

I will go to Cedar Hills, Elizabeth thought. And I will find an angel who will fall in love with me. And everything will be different then.

Copyright © 2004 by Sharon Shinn