June

Issue 33

    Sir Charles Hallwyn was riding at the head of his retinue when he spotted it, an arrow-flight away across the wasteland:  an angel sitting on a rock.
    Heart pounding, he halted the others. What could it want? Half-forgotten stories swirled through his head. What did angels usually appear to do? Was he being assigned a great task?
     Knowing knights weren't supposed to run away, he rode toward it instead, sword sheathed. The scrub brush crackled as the horse pushed through, and a cloud of dust followed their passage. Perhaps that was why his mouth had gone dry.
    The angel wore a linen robe and a gold cape that covered most of the stone on which he sat, and he carried his wings tucked up so they touched neither the ground nor the rock. Standing he would have towered a head taller than Sir Charles (whose broad shoulders and short stature had earned him the school nickname "whiskey bottle"). At full extent the angel's wings would have spread to twice his height, and the feathers glistened silvery blue in the straight noontime sunlight.
    The angel smiled. "Thanks for stopping. Not many pass this way."
    Shaking inside, the knight dismounted and removed his helmet, then brushed his sweat-drenched brown curls from his eyes. He bowed as well as he could manage wearing leather mail, and his sword clanked against its scabbard as he genuflected.
    "Please don't." The angel wore a no-nonsense expression in his brown eyes. "The only one to worship is God, and anyhow, I simply wanted to talk."
    Sir Charles took in the angel's slender features, his relaxed poise, the way the breeze lifted the straight ends of the angel's black hair. The air around the angel carried the scent of tea leaves, leaving him dizzy. "Do you bear a message for me?"
    The angel shrugged. "Nothing specific. Where are you going?"
    Sir Charles gestured toward the foothills twenty miles away.
    The angel sat taller. "Dragons live there. You're planning to fight one?"
    Sir Charles chuckled. "I'm not that skilled a knight. I raise dragons."
    The angel cocked his head. "Now that's a reversal! I'm glad some of your kind can see them as intelligent and beautiful creatures. It saddens me how often knights venture out to slaughter one, and how many of them either fail to return or else parade home dragging their victims' severed heads as if homicide were a mark of glory."