The Unfinished Angel Read Online Free Page A

rocks, little rocks. From time to time, she opens the drawer, selects a rock, turns it around in her hands, studies it, and then returns it to the drawer. I feel as if she is collecting pieces to make a mountain. Is this insurance?
    Zola also has another secret drawer. In it, wrapped in a piece of blue silk cloth, are feathers: mostly slenderly, gray or white. I wonder about these feathers. What kind of insurance do feathers offer?

M Y T ERRITORY
    W hat exactly is my territory? I don’t have the information. Maybe it is the whole village, maybe only part of the village, maybe one family, maybe one person, but which one? Who is going to tell me? I am never seeing other angels, not even when I float north and visit the goats. Where are all the angels?
    And how does Zola know what angels are supposed to do? Why is she always telling me I’m supposed to know this and that?
    Today Zola says to me, “So, no swords?”
    â€œWhat is sword?”
    Zola slaps her headfore. “You must be a very young angel.”
    This is making me mad. I am hundreds of years old, and she is just a puny few-years-old people. Maybe ten. Maybe twelve. Maybe eight. Puh!
    Zola says, “Angels used to fight, you know. They weren’t always sweet and loving and peaceful.”
    She thinks I am “sweet and loving and peaceful”?
    So Zola tells me a story about a fearsome battle between angels and evil beings. The angels rode flying white horses and slashed swords and threw thunderbolts. They were strong like warriors, and they defeated the evil beings in a long and mighty battle.
    â€œThose were some amazing angels,” Zola says. “Do you do anything like that?”
    â€œLike what?”
    â€œLike ride flying horses and slash swords and throw thunderbolts.”
    She isn’t kidding. I can tell she really wants me to say yes, and I am even considering saying yes because then she will be impressified with me, but before I can answer her, she says, “Are angels dead people?”
    â€œWhat? What? No! I am not a dead people. I am an angel! A people is a people and an angel is an angel!”
    â€œOkay, okay,” Zola says. “Take it easy.” She runs a finger along the stone ledge, tracing a vein in the rock. Then, just when I am calming down, she says, “Are you a boy angel or a girl angel?”
    â€œWhat?” I don’t know why she is making me so fidgetated. I am not used to peoples seeing me, and I am especially not used to peoples asking me questions. Usually the peoples who see me are the ones who are in great dangering or are very sickly. They smile on me. I make them peaceful.
    Zola is studying me. “It’s hard to tell. You could be a long-haired boy or a sturdy girl.”
    â€œI am an angel,” I say. “I thought you knew a lot about angels. I am not a boy or a girl. I am angel. Angel. Angel!”
    â€œAh,” Zola says, nodding, her chip-chop hair flicking up and down. “It’s just that in churches, you know, sometimes the angels are women in long dresses, and sometimes they are babies, and—”
    â€œOh. Churches. I do not know about all those angels.” This is something very confusing to me. Zola is right: Some are women and some are babies, and it is a puzzlement because never I see these angels in real, only in stone and in paintings. Do some angels look like this? Am I supposed to look like that? I ask Zola what I look like.
    â€œWhat you look like?” she says. “Don’t you know what you look like?”
    â€œHow would I know?” I say. “In a mirror I behold white fogness. Do I look like white fogness to you?”
    â€œNo, no,” Zola says. She is studying me carefully with the eyes with the large black poppils. “You look like—now don’t get mad—you look like a person—”
    â€œNo! Not a people—”
    â€œWell, wait, not exactly, no, no. You have the shape of a