tobacco smoke—stained room stacked high with books, was more representative of our school. Dr.
Raphael could often be found lounging in the sunny depths of his wife’s polished office, discussing
the finer points of a lecture or—as Gabriella was doing that morning—drinking coffee from Dr.
Seraphina’s Sèvres service.
That Gabriella had beaten me to Seraphina’s office upset me more than I revealed. I could not
know her motives, but it appeared to me that she had arranged a private conference, excluding me to
her advantage. At the very least, Gabriella had taken the opportunity to speak with Dr. Seraphina
about the work we would be undertaking, perhaps requesting the choice tasks. I knew that the outcome
of our efforts could change our individual standing in the school. If the Valkos were pleased with the
results, there would be a place on the expedition team. Only one of us would attain this.
We had been assigned work suited to our scholarly strengths, which were as opposite as our
appearances. Whereas I loved the technical components of our coursework—the physiology of
angelic bodies, the composition ratios of matter to spirit in created beings, and the mathematical
perfection of early taxonomies—Gabriella was attracted to the more artistic elements of angelology.
She liked to read the grand epic histories of battles between angelologists and the Nephilim; she
could gaze at religious paintings and find symbolism that surely would have been lost upon me; she
parsed ancient texts with such care that one believed that the meaning of a single word had the power
to change the course of the future. She had faith in the progress of good, and over our first year of
studies she made me believe that such progress was possible, too. Accordingly, Dr. Seraphina
assigned Gabriella to work through the mythical texts, leaving me the more systematic task of sorting
the empirical data of previous attempts to find the gorge, sifting geological information of various
epochs, and collating outdated maps.
From the look of satisfaction upon Gabriella’s face, they must have been chatting for some time. A
series of wooden crates sat at the center of the office, their rough-hewn edges pressing upon the red
and gold Oriental carpet. Each crate had been stuffed with field notebooks and loose papers, as if
they had been packed in haste.
My astonishment at Gabriella’s presence, not to mention my curiosity regarding the crates of
notebooks, did not go unnoticed. Dr. Seraphina waved me into the room, asking me to close the door
and join them. “Come in, Celestine,” she said again as she gestured for me to sit on a divan near the
bookshelves. “I was wondering when you might arrive.”
As if to second Dr. Seraphina’s remark, a grandfather clock at the far end of the office chimed eight
o’clock. I was an hour early. “I thought we began at nine,” I said.
“Gabriella wanted to get a head start,” Dr. Seraphina said. “We have been looking through some of
the new materials that you will catalog. These boxes are Raphael’s papers. He brought them from his
office last night.”
Walking to her desk, Dr. Seraphina took a key and unlocked a cupboard. The shelves were filled
with notebooks, each shelf ordered and meticulous. “And these are my papers. I have arranged them
by subject and date, the years of my schooling are on the lower shelves, and my most recent notes—
mostly quotations and outlines for articles—are on the top. I have refrained from cataloging my work
for years. Secrecy has been a large factor, but, more important, I have been waiting for the right
assistants. You are both bright students with exposure to the basic fields of angelology—teleology,
transcendental frequencies, theories of morphistic angelology, taxonomy. While you have studied
these at an introductory level, you have also learned a bit about our field of antediluvian geology.
You are hardworking and meticulous, knowledgeable and talented in different ways, but not
specialized. I am hoping that you will come to the task with fresh eyes. If there is anything in the
boxes that we’ve missed, I know that you girls will catch it. I am also going to require that you sit in
on my lectures. I realize that you completed my introductory course last year, but the subject matter is
of special significance to our task.”
Running her fingers along a row of journals, she extracted a number of volumes and placed them on
the coffee table between us. Although my first instinct was to take one of the journals, I waited,
endeavoring to follow Gabriella’s lead. I did not want to appear too anxious.
“You may want to begin with these,” Seraphina said, settling lightly upon the settee. “I think you