an ornamental wooden Chinese puzzle from her room. The idea was to build a sphere with interlocking pieces, there being only one possible configuration. She showed him the finished result then broke it down, handing him the pieces. He reassembled it in twenty seconds. They only did that one once; Donna was fond of the puzzle and worried that repeated assemblies at that speed or faster might ignite the wood or varnish through contact friction.
It was the same with Ninah’s puzzle book. He couldn’t do the crosswords of course as it required a knowledge of English, but everything visual was no problem. He solved every maze in a flash with no mistakes, even the find-a-words presented no real difficulties once Ninah showed him what to do, circling a word then crossing it off the list beside the word jumble. Within a minute he’d circled every word that was horizontally and right reading oriented in the puzzle. He looked at Ninah in confusion, obviously realizing he hadn’t crossed of every word on the list. Ninah showed him he could circle words reading up and down as well. His face showed obvious comprehension and he took the book back and found all the vertically written words. The list still wasn’t complete so of his own volition this time he found all the diagonal and backward ones as well. From go to whoa it took him less than five minutes, including Ninah’s tuition, and that was a full page find-a-word.
As the afternoon wore on they ran out of challenges for him, and eventually Donna had to get up and stretch her legs. She went downstairs and found her mother preparing a tray of food to take up for the angel. Donna explained about the Rubik’s cube and the other puzzles until her mother finished preparing the food. Once done, Donna offered to take up the tray, upon which sat a bowl of chicken soup, a bread roll and a glass of milk, and her mother thanked her. Felicity had felt mild concern over the slightly cannibalistic connotations of the chicken soup but figured it was a moot point.
When Donna finally returned to the spare room, she found Ninah asleep on the bed among the debris of the afternoon’s activities. Donna smiled; her sister must have been so over tired.
The angel was standing over by the window, his back to Donna, hands pressed to the glass and staring up at the sky. He turned to her as she came in and tried to smile but Donna could see the despair and longing lying beneath his feeble attempt. She didn’t know what it represented but her heart went out to him.
Judging that the floor would probably be the best place to attempt this, she knelt and set the tray down and gestured for him to join her. He came over and knelt down exactly as she had. Donna smiled, indicating the soup, “It’s for you,” she said. He looked from her eyes to the soup and back again and she could see his nostrils twitching at the aromas drifting up.
“Okay, I’ll show you,” she said and picked up the spoon, she dipped it in and held it up to his lips. Cautiously he tried it and immediately recoiled at the heat. “Sorry,” Donna murmured and tried again, this time blowing on it first. He smiled at the taste.
She gave him another spoonful, figuring he could probably do it himself now, but found herself reluctant to give up the closeness of the interaction. Half way through he gently put his hand on hers, causing her to gasp and sending her heart into overdrive, then with a tiny smile, and his eyes locked on hers, he gently removed the spoon from her fingers and to Donna’s disappointment, finished the soup unaided. He then ate the roll and drank the milk.
Once he had finished he looked at Donna, then lowered his head slowly and deliberately in a kind of bow. Donna frowned slightly and he did it again and this time he indicated the tray. Suddenly she realized he was thanking her for the food. Smiling she returned the nod, and surprised he nodded again himself, so did she as did he. Donna laughed and to her surprise the angel did also, a light alien sound, almost musical.
Not realizing she was doing it she reached out and took his hand in hers. With his free hand he did the same, surprising her, though it shouldn’t, he mimicked most of the things she or Ninah did, especially when it came to expression or physical contact. She stared at him, marveling at his naivete and taking in the sheer perfection of his features, realizing just how much she wanted him, wanted him in every way to be hers and hers alone. To teach and protect, and most of all, to love.
Somewhere down deep inside her she knew that that wasn’t supposed to happen, that she was setting herself up for a fall. But she couldn’t help it, her heart ached every time she looked at his face. Steeling herself for rejection and whatever calamity would follow, she prepared to try and kiss him, and had actually started to move her face towards his when her mother called from downstairs.
She flinched and he turned his head to the source of the voice. Inwardly furious, knowing the moment was gone, she dropped her gaze and shook her head sadly. He did also, bringing a ghost of a smile to her face. Sighing, she got up, collected the tray and headed downstairs.
15
That night over dinner, Donna explained to her father all that had happened during the day. Ninah had taken her dinner up to eat with the angel, who for the time being didn’t seem to want to leave the spare room. Ed had asked if he had used the bathroom yet and both Donna and her mother shrugged, if he had they didn’t know about it.
Later, both Ward Parker and Dave Morris returned to check up on their patient and see how he was healing. Parker was amazed at his apparent recovery from the fever and when Dave Morris had removed the bandages on the wing to check the wound, he whistled in impressed interest. The wound was healing so fast; it looked like a week had gone by since Dave had seen it. The pair of doctors talked and muttered to each other, never had they seen or heard of such regenerative ability in any terrestrial life.
For his part in all this, the angel put up with all the feeling, listening and poking at his body with obvious concern, though he didn’t try to prevent anything, not even when Dave Morris stretched his good wing out to its full and impressive three meter length. However, if Ninah and Donna both happened to leave the room at the same time, he became agitated.
Ninah, not realizing the full import of the intelligence that lay behind his rapid learning ability, wanted to show the others some of her angel’s ‘tricks’. She gave him the messed up cube and Chinese puzzle again. He seemed reluctant, but after some prompting, he solved both of them at, in light of his previous efforts, a medium speed of about a minute. Ninah, in barely disguised irritation, told them all he could do it a lot faster. Donna wondered if this was deliberate slyness on the angel’s part, not revealing his true abilities to those he didn’t trust, or on the other hand he might have just been tired and bored of the same thing. It didn’t really matter; everyone was impressed anyway, though not really surprised.
That night, Ninah slept in the spare room again and Donna herself didn’t return to her own room until well after one o’clock. With Ninah asleep on the bed once more, Donna again had the angel to herself, and sat with him for hours, just watching as he flicked through a pile of encyclopedias that her father had brought up from the bookcase in the living room. Not being able to read, he only looked at the pictures and Donna enjoyed the expressions they invoked in him. Earlier on her father and mother had come up and stayed for a while, like Donna, just watching him. Felicity had given him a copy of the Bible, but apart from the occasional picture in it, it made no special impression on him.
When he was half way through “G”, Donna yawned and said goodnight. He looked at her and cocked his head slightly in what she’d come to know as a sign of incomprehension. She smiled and waved, to which of course, he returned both, and then went to bed.
Donna awoke early the next morning and went to the bathroom to brush her hair and freshen up. She was about to leave when she noticed a feather in the bottom of the bath. She picked it up, staring at it; it was a small immature flight feather. She looked at the flannel, neatly folded on the rim rather than draped over it as usual; she felt it, damp with the tiniest hint of warmth. Smiling to herself, she realized he must have washed himself while
they all slept.
Donna was heading back to her room to change out of her nightshirt when she decided to quickly poke her head into the spare room to see how their visitor was doing. Immediately she gasped, her eyes widened and her face flushed bright crimson with embarrassment. He was still sitting cross legged on the floor as he’d been the night before, reading encyclopedias and he’d reached “W”, but that wasn’t what flustered Donna. It was the fact he hadn’t bothered to put the overalls back on after his shower; they sat beside him, neatly folded. He was totally, beautifully naked. Donna was immensely relieved to see Ninah was still asleep, despite the fact she’d said she’d found him this way.
He looked up at hearing her sharp intake of breath and smiled, waving a greeting. Then he stood, and yawning, stretched, arms out to the sides, wings arrowing out and down at the floor. He seemed totally unconcerned with Donna’s presence and his own nakedness. Donna knew she shouldn’t stare, but try as she might she just couldn’t drag her eyes away from that sculptured perfection. Her eyes dropped to his groin and her blush deepened, he had no pubic hair.
She looked up at his