Clipped Wing

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

    “Careful, Jet! You don’t know what it could be.” I wasn’t pretending to be brave. “Blood. Poison. Poisonous blood.”

    He knelt in the stuff and examined it, smearing the liquid between his fingers. His eyes darted. His mind rattled through the options. “It’s paint,” he growled.

    Paint?

    Adelaine had been silent ever since that cryptic message about my Father. I asked her what he had to do with any of this, a stone in my stomach, but all she said was, “Ives will know.” As frustrating as that was, I knew to trust her instinct. Saints knew things that we lesser angels didn’t. Still, I refused to abandon her until she was okay. Instead, I rolled up the sleeves to my white satin gown and Jet, Adelaine, and I got to work.

    First, I scrubbed every visible surface of limestone with warm water and soap, tirelessly dragging rags away from me and back. I moved the bucket each time I finished with a section and hung it off a knot made in the bottom of my dress when I needed to fly to reach higher sections of the wall. The dress sagged from the weight of the pail, and I knew Mother wouldn’t be pleased to find it ruined. Every few minutes my hands would gravitate to the necklace, and every time I lifted it in my palm, it weighed the same. Father was still okay. Praise God.

    Meanwhile, Jet did the heavy lifting. He pulled entire bookcases out from inside the clouds where they had almost crystallized with frost. I had no idea he was that strong. He let out a few grunts when the weight was almost too much to handle. My heart broke as a string of curses dirtied his pious diction. It tore further when Adelaine, poor Adelaine, doused him with a cup of holy water to ‘wash his sinning mouth with.’ Then she returned to a cloud covered by many sprawled books and dabbed hopelessly at the paint on as many pages as she could get to. She hummed a bittersweet tune. What did any of this have to do with Father? Why did it ruin the library of all places? Was it all a sign? And of what? I took my distress out on the limestone walls.

   I decided then and there to ambush Father’s workplace. Uggh, I would have to find my answers from Ives, Father’s greasy boss. Even though he was nearly two hundred years younger, he still managed to be promoted to Bishop. We did not get along. One year, he made Father work through Saint Andyre’s birthday! The effrontery! True, Saint Andyre was an enormous misogynist who thought women were created by God as an after thought, but still, a holiday is a holiday. And Ives claimed that warriors shouldn’t take days off. That it was a luxury not meant for protectors of a people. Did he have no heart?

    After several hours, when it was guaranteed that if I shut my eyes all I would see was the color red, we had restored the library to its former grandeur. We dunked sponges in a concocted mix of spirits, holy water, and spritz that actually worked well in stripping the painted pages clean. I asked Jet where he obtained the alcohol from. He declined to comment.

    There were still splotches that couldn’t be removed without tearing parchment from the porous, ancient tomes, but most of the damage had been fixed by the magic of holy water and spritz.

    “Well done,” Adelaine beamed, planting her hands on her hips and scanning her second home. “We accomplished a great deal today.”

    “Surprising considering the number of times you ambushed me with holy water,” Jet grumbled. I chuckled lightheartedly, and even Adelaine joined in when she saw that Jet’s doused, maroon hair was still drying and a shade darker.

    "I’m setting off to Court.” I took a few steps back and away from Adelaine and Jet so I had room to execute a respectable low bow, hands coming up to form a temple. Together, I saw Jet and Adelaine’s eyes widen comically and their jaws drop. I was in the process of taking another half-step back, but took a tumble instead, my heel catching on one of the spare rags. I fell, wings first, into a mountainous pile of still wet, red-stained cloth. I could feel the paint clinging to my long, once white feathers.