“And what did this...” He paused and smirked. “This angel of yours look like?”
Annabeth closed her eyes, picturing the apparition. “She was a beautiful lady with long flowing hair and a white gown that was so soft it must have been spun from clouds. The hem of her robe shimmered with stars. And she had wings too. Wings that reached from the top of her head all the way to the ground. Huge wings that could soar higher in the sky than I could see.”
The diviner leaned forward in his chair, peering closely at her. “I am the diviner, am I not?”
The woman nodded uncertainly.
“The Lord has appointed me as the guardian of his flock. God speaks to me, Annabeth. Not to you. And I tell you there are no female angels. This is surely a trick of Satan’s!”
“It is not!” She unexpectedly jumped out of her chair. “This is no trick. The lady angel was the only one who could make those demon voices go away. She banished them just like that.” Annabeth snapped her fingers in a casual gesture of dismissal.
She continued. “I know you don’t believe in female angels. You don’t even believe women belong in heaven unless their husbands let them in. Mother Rachel told me so. I think you’re wrong about that. Women can get to heaven all on their own otherwise there wouldn’t be any lady angels.”
The diviner took a deep breath and counted to ten. He rose and towered above her. “Let me repeat once more—a female angel is an illusion fabricated by the devil.”
“Then why do I feel better when I listen to her?” Annabeth stamped her foot impatiently. “Why is it she can stop the demons in my head when you can’t?”
He glowered at her. “Because you are being deluded by Satan, you foolish woman. Read the scriptures! It’s right there in print.” He pointed to the oak stand between the windows that held his leather-bound Bible. “All the angels who are mentioned in both the Old and the New Testament have masculine names. They are referred to as ‘he’—never ‘she.’ There is not one instance, not a single case, in which an angel is described as female.”
Annabeth darted over to the Bible stand. She gripped the edges of the sacred tome, studying the lettering with keen interest. Flipping rapidly through page after page, she scanned the text, mouthing the words as she went. After several minutes of fruitless searching, she raised her head. “I can’t find her,” she said plaintively.
The diviner struggled to suppress a smile of triumph. He was finally getting through. “It’s as I told you. There are no female angels, Annabeth.”
A cunning expression flitted across her face. “Only men get to write in this book, don’t they?”
Abraham was taken aback by the question.
Before he could formulate a reply, she had drifted off and was apparently talking to the Bible itself. She released her grip on its pages, and they fluttered back into place. “No. You wouldn’t allow any lady angels in here.” She transferred her attention to the locked bookcases filled with prophecies written by former diviners. “Only men get to write in those books too; I’ll bet.”
She backed toward the center of the room and then revolved in a slow circle. Her index finger pointed accusingly at the Bible and at the other volumes lining the walls. “Men’s books everywhere I look. Men stole all the words.”
Rounding on the diviner, she said, “Men think they know everything, but they don’t. Men don’t know what mothers feel: the pain of birthing a new life into the world, how your heart bleeds when that little life is ripped out of your arms for no reason at all.” She paused. “The lady angel knew. I didn’t have to explain any of that to her.” She gave a bitter laugh. “Men busy as bees. Stealing all the words. Writing all the rules. Telling me how I should feel about things they can’t even guess at.” Annabeth shook her head vehemently. “No more!”
She ran back toward the Bible, her eyes flashing with hostility. With a violent shove, she toppled the oaken stand, pitching Abraham’s sacred volume to the floor. She kicked the book open, exposing its thin sheets of text. Then in an act of supreme sacrilege, she crouched down and ripped out handfuls of pages and threw them in the air. “No more SHOULD! No more MUST! No more WORDS!” she screamed. “NO MORE!”
“Annabeth!” Abraham roared. He rushed over and dragged her up by her hair. She squirmed in his grasp, but he managed to haul her to the door, ejecting her forcibly from the room. “Be gone, witch! Back to your quarters!”
She wasn’t in the least cowed by his display of temper. Instead, she stuck her tongue out at him like an unruly child and then ran away.
Abraham slammed the door and leaned his back against it, winded by the physical exertion. Truth be told, he was even more shaken by the appalling display he had just witnessed. In all his years as diviner, he had never seen such an outright act of defiance. Not even from his most rebellious archwarden. And to think a woman was capable of such conduct. A mere woman, he repeated to himself, gazing at his desecrated Bible. No, not a woman, his inner voice told him —something far worse.
He hobbled over to the windows and righted the overturned oak stand. Then he gently lifted the holy book back to its rightful place, gathering the torn pages and fitting them into proper order. He realized with a sense of shock that his hands were trembling. His own immobility in the face of Annabeth’s rampage alarmed him as much as the outburst itself. Satan had chosen his vessel well. The
