Angel turned on the kiln and went back to choosing glass. She worked for hours until she realized that there was only one choice. Since the accident, she had refused to use clear glass, for to see its shards glittering was to see again wreckage and death.
Yet there was no other backdrop possible for the summation Angel had chosen to set in glass – daggers of beveled crystal glass radiating outward from the focal point of the picture, a hawk’s extended talon as the bird of prey swooped down out of an empty sky.
Hours slipped into days as Angel worked. She ate when the demands of her stomach became too insistent to ignore and slept only when her eyes refused to focus on her work.
She dreaded those times, the night closing around her, her heart as empty as the echoing rooms of the house. She began wearing her silver jewelry all the time, letting the tiny cries of the bells speak for her, filling the silent void.
The hawk itself took several days, for each bronzed highlight was brought out by acid eating into different levels of the brown and bronze flashed glass. Etching was a long, patience-stretching process, but Angel immersed herself in its demands eagerly. When she worked she was totally absorbed, unable to think or feel beyond the instant in which she lived.
Finally she finished the hawk. More than seventy pieces of etched glass lay gleaming on her worktable, each brown feather highlighted in a fabulous network of bronze.
Angel began to assemble the pieces. She took the polished mahogany frame she had chosen to set the glass in and fastened the frame to a large, unusual table. It was rather like a drafting table on wheels, except that it was a table within a frame consisting of two thick, metallic runners with grooves deep enough to hold both the table surface and the frame of whatever Angel was working on at the time.
The table surface itself was rigged so that it could slide out and the frame could be tilted vertically, allowing light to pour through the panel while still holding it securely in place. Angel used the device to build and display stained glass panels that were too large for her to lift easily.
Angel worked steadily, disregarding midnight and noon, breaking only rarely to eat or catch a quick nap on the studio sofa.
And then she stopped sleeping at all, caught wholly in the creation coming together beneath her fingertips, glass polished and gleaming, a suggestion of a smile, a large crimson drop glowing amid the radiant gold, a subtle echo of that drop on the hawk; and all of it surrounded by the hard brilliance of beveled crystal shards.
Finally the last piece was leaded, the cement worked in and then removed, each glass surface polished until it shone.
With a sigh so deep that it made her earrings swing and cry, Angel leaned against the table. She knew that her summation was fin-ished, yet she was unable to accept it. She wasn’t ready to face the emptiness ahead of her, inside her, nothing left but the numb gray of exhaustion.
She pushed the special table into her bedroom. With hands that shook, she removed the plywood panel and fixed the frame in its vertical position, leaving nothing between the stained glass and the night beyond.
The panel was almost colorless, as bleak as Angel’s soul, for there was no light pouring through the stained glass, only darkness.
She looked at the bed that she hadn’t slept in since Hawk left. The small candy cane lay on the pillow, untouched, green ribbon gleaming in the light from the bedside lamp. With a silent cry, she picked up the candy, hearing the rustle of its clear paper wrapping, hearing even more clearly the echo of Hawk’s bleak past, the single sweet thing he had known of childhood.
Despite the exhaustion that made Angel tremble, Angel couldn’t face the thought of lying down, of sleeping, of wakening again.
And again finding Hawk gone.
Angel went back to the studio. For the first time in weeks, she really looked at it.
The room was a shambles. Normally Angel cleaned up as she worked. This time she hadn’t. Shards of glass covered the small worktable, colors she had tried and rejected, pieces she had broken and forgotten.
She walked into the studio, hearing silence and the tiny songs of the bells she wore.
As Angel stood near the worktable that was cluttered with brilliant fragments of glass, she realized that she was dizzy. She reached for the table, trying to brace herself, but it was too late. The table tilted, shaking off Angel, sending her into darkness.
A powerful black car pulled up in front of the Ramsey house. For a long time the driver sat unmoving in the darkness, staring up at the lights in the north wing.
Hawk had fought against coming back, was still fighting against being there. He hated himself for returning to Angel with no more to give her than when he left. Yet he could not stay away.
Life without Angel was as close to death as Hawk had ever come.
Slowly, he opened the car door. The stones of the front walk gleamed palely beneath the waning moon. He moved soundlessly, more shadow than man. He paused, then tried the door.
It was open.
He walked inside and called her.
“Angel?”
Only an echo returned. “Angel!”
The silence was like another shade of night, another kind of death.
Abruptly, Hawk ran down the hall to Angel’s studio. He saw the tilted table, the glitter of shattered glass – Angel unconscious, veiled in brilliant, lethal fragments.
He called her name as he knelt beside her, and the sound of his voice was like glass breaking. His hand trembled over her neck, seeking her pulse. When he found it, he bowed his head to the weakness and relief coursing through him.
Delicately Hawk removed each shard of glass covering Angel. As he picked off the last bronze fragment, he saw that Angel’s hand was clenched around something.
With infinite care he opened her fingers, afraid that he would find a piece of razor glass pressed against her palm. It was not glass that he found, but a candy cane wrapped in a green ribbon.
For the first time since he was a child, Hawk wept.
Angel didn’t awaken when Hawk undressed her and carried her to bed. She didn’t stir when Dr. McKay examined her and then told Hawk in sleepy, irritable tones what Hawk had already guessed. Angel had pushed herself too hard and her body had shut down, hurtling her into a deep, restoring sleep.
Hawk undressed and went to Angel’s bed, gathering her into his arms, giving her his warmth. His clear brown eyes watched her sleeping face through all the hours of night. He watched her as the strong morning sun climbed above the mountains and poured in the bedroom window, flooding the stained glass panel with life and light.
Beveled crystal daggers split sunlight into rainbows. Fantastic colored shadows crept across the room until they spilled over Angel, bathing her in beauty.
Distracted by the dancing light, Hawk looked from the rainbow shadows on Angel’s face to the panel that stood in the midst of radiance.
And then Hawk forgot to move, forgot to breathe, forgot everything but the stained glass so silent and yet so incredibly alive.
Compelled by beauty, Hawk came to his feet and approached the panel, drawn by the enigma within the golden cloud. As he walked, he saw first the swirl of evocative lines that transformed part of the cloud into a woman’s hair lifted on the wind.
Next he saw the slightly tilted eyes, a blend of shadow and brightness that shifted from moment to moment, extraordinarily alive. Her enigmatic smile could have come from agony or ecstasy or a beautiful, terrifying combination of both.
Hawk made a muffled sound and leaned closer, staring at the blood-red drop that welled from the point where the hawk’s talon pierced the cloud.
A rose was deeply etched into the crimson teardrop.
For a moment Hawk closed his eyes, afraid to look further. Yet he knew he must. He couldn’t evade the hawk,
