Read Crow Jane for Free Online Page B

full height, like a mighty oak tree, and suddenly he opened his robe. His glowing body was even more finely-muscled than Abil’s, as if it were the light and the original at the same time, and Abil’s newly-acquired man-body were merely a shadow.
    “And now … daughter of Eve?” the Messenger rumbled. He spoke slowly, but as he spoke he picked up speed, as if he were making up his mind. “Now what do you choose, since you have learned the unstoppable power of your own free will? You are a rebel against the First Precept. Will you rebel with me?”
    Qayna fled again, scrambling through trees that clutched at her and tore her flesh. She scrambled up the stone and way, staring back at the Messenger behind her. “Who are you?” she demanded. Mother had taught her the First Precept, and though Qayna feared and rejected it, she knew that it didn’t mean that the Messengers were supposed to mingle with the mortals entrusted into their care. “You defy Heaven, too!”
    “I am Azazel,” the Messenger called back, smiling brilliantly, “and you teach me that I need not care.”
    “I want nothing from you!” she cried at the terrible, naked figure.
    “Remember me, mortal!” the Messenger bellowed, his rumbling voice rebounding against the sky itself.
    Then Qayna tumbled out of the top of the canyon and left the Messenger Azazel behind.
    * * *
    She ran naked and bloody, holding nothing but the knife that had killed her brother. That night, she butchered lambs from Abil’s herd and hid from the eyes of Father and Shet, who wandered the hills crying her name and Abil’s. She wondered what had happened to the Messenger Azazel, and why he had not reported his own failure, or Qayna’s crimes.
    She traveled at night, taking comfort from the rebel moon and nursing the thought that if she was a disobedient child, she had learned from a Mother with a similar streak. By day she lay in the hollows of rocks, ate the flesh of her stolen lambs and chewed on roots she dug out of the ground. When she slept, she dreamed that the stones around her were the grinding, merciless arms of her dead brother, Abil.
    On the third day, they found her.
    It was Shet who was staring at her, wide-eyed, when she awoke.
    “They found Abil,” her younger brother said. “And your clothes.”
    She stood, dropping the last of the uneaten carcass and the tiny, guilty blade.
    Then came Father, the sternness of his brow trembling in hint of softer feelings behind the facade, and with him a company of Messengers. She expected them to bring Swordbearers, but there were only the blue-white, six-winged giants she had always seen. She searched the faces of the Bearers of the Word—the first time she had ever really done so—wondering whether she might see Azazel and almost hoping that she would. She had witnessed terrible things in his eyes, a rage to possess and to destroy, but at least when she had looked into his eyes she had seen something , and not just the blank tables on which were inscribed the long list of Heaven’s mandates.
    But she was disappointed; Azazel was not among them.
    “I’m sorry,” Father grunted, grabbing her by her shoulders and throwing her down.
    “I deserve it,” she said. She didn’t really mean it, but she hadn’t intended to cause Father grief.
    “This world is a hard and fallen one,” he said, tears streaming down his cheeks. “That is not your fault.”
    The foremost of the Messengers bore down upon her, a clay pot in his hand. Qayna stared at the Messenger’s face, imprinting it upon her memory. “This dye,” the Messenger thundered, “is the blood of Abil. His blood cried to heaven to witness your guilt, and now it will cry to all your family and their descendants as an eternal witness.”
    The Messenger dipped a shard of bone into the pot and scraped its jagged edge across Qayna’s face. She screamed and twisted, and Father held her down.
    “This stylus is the bone of Abil,” the Messenger continued.