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Aziraphale’s pretty sure it’s Crawley in the aviary. There seems to be a surplus black bird, after you account for the pair of ravens, the crows and the starlings, the rooks and the choughs.
He’s used a miracle to make the Ark larger inside than out. Noah and his family don’t seem to notice, just take it for granted that there’s room in here for all the creatures that bleat and scurry and roar and trumpet. Miraculously as well, they all get on, though there will be the occasional scuffle over some especially delicious seeds or grain where the birds all perch and flutter, the kind of spat that moves Aziraphale to exert a peaceful influence before somebody gets hurt, and that’s when he sees the odd corvid out.
He had his assignment before the rain began falling. He’s still trying to wrap his mind around God’s reasoning; She’s always moved in mysterious ways, but the humans hadn’t seemed to be doing that badly, and the animals aren’t guilty of anything. Why drown them too? He’d struggled with what to say to Crawley as they watched the pairs file up the gangway, and when he looked away for a moment to master his face and then looked back, the demon was gone. He suspected Crawley was trying to catch the unicorn; he’d always had a soft spot for them (“gentle, an’ they never shy or run away. Not like the bloody horses, those bastards’d trample me soon as look at me.” It was true; the angel had seen the delicate white beasts take bits of apple from Crawley's hand, and if Eve had Fallen because of it, they didn’t seem to).
Now he counts, and counts again, and that one bird’s elusive, he can’t quite account for all the pairs before some burst of eagles’ wings or commotion of sparrows forces him to start over. He still can’t be certain, angel or no his presence makes them skittish, but he’d swear an oath that there’s an extra bird in there. In the end there’s only one way to find out.
The dove body is one he hasn’t tried before; not that large, as birds go, but comfortably thick and muscular in a familiar way, with broad, powerful wings. It feels good; he doesn’t get to let his wings out much, what with being ordered to blend in on Earth, to mingle with the humans as one of their own. (That’s one of the things that’s got God so tetchy; some of his colleagues took the command a bit too much to heart, and there are a good number of half-angel toddlers running about now, shouting and scuffling with the rest of the kids, except that there are those extra eyes that they can’t quite keep from manifesting, and spare animal heads that their playfellows accept with the uncritical aplomb of children.)
(Were. Were running and shouting and scuffling. The waves that lift and rock and slap the sides of the Ark are their own kind of silence, deep and long.)
The bird body immediately wants to sample the sesame seeds, the scraps of family meals scattered in wooden bowls, but also to stretch those white-plumed wings, to rise and swim through the air. There’s only the high loft of the aviary though, and he flutters up to the tallest perch and gazes down; the birds keep to their pairs, loyal creatures, the females drab on the whole, the males strutting in their finery. Mate for life, most of them.
There. There’s the solitary raven, brooding down from what’s little more than a branch with the bark stripped. Its beak echoes the silvery sheen on its inky feathers; unlike the others, the irises of the beady eyes are yellow. Aziraphale glides down, banks onto the twisting branch in a little storm of white pinions.
“All right, found me,” says Crawley in that inside-your-head voice they use when they’re beasts. “Figured you would eventually. Like some grubs? Sparrows swear by ’em.”
“Why were you hiding?” replies Aziraphale. “I missed you.”
“Didn’t feel like talkin’.”
“Why ever are you even here? I supposed you’d have to go back Downstairs and report, or – or something.”
“Just s’posed to keep an eye on ’em.” Crawley preens one glossy wing – he’s always been a little vain about what he wears – bates a little, and settles. “Kinda restful, bein’ a bird. Don’t have to be wily all the time. Just let the instincts take over. Try it for a while, you’ll like it.”
“I suppose it would be awkward if you changed back. Noah’s got used to having an angel of the Lord on board, but I have to think a demon would raise some questions.”
“My job, ennit?” Crawley coasts down then to one of the wooden trays that are mounted throughout the aviary on top of short posts; spears a tidbit, what looks like a bit of gristle from the preserved meats that the Noahs laid in. The miraculous refusal of any of the food stores to diminish or spoil is another thing they’ve taken in stride.
“Gettin’ to be a habit,” he explains as he settles back in on the perch. “Body likes to eat. Keeps hankerin’ for a bit’ve dead rat or something.”
“There’s only one pair, I’m afraid,” says Aziraphale. “Unclean beasts, you know.”
“Right, like me.”
They’re silent a while, shifting on the perch. Sparrows squabble below them, the owls call as the light angling into the hold from the deck prisms grows dimmer.
“They’ll expect me to bless the evening meal,” Aziraphale says finally. “I should go.”
“Save me some,” Crawley answers. He realises on his way up to the cabins that that means come back.
He does, almost every day; there’s always a bit of time when Noah’s clan won’t notice him missing, especially on Shabbos, when it’s normal for the humans to keep themselves to themselves and the couples seize precious, private time together (Japheth’s wife is looking distinctly stout about the middle, he notices). He tells Crawley about that, and the other happenings on board, because whatever he says, it doesn’t seem as if the demon’s got that much opportunity to keep an eye. He supposes everything he says will be put in a report Downstairs eventually, but he can’t see what harm it’ll do.
“I missed blessing one of the barrels of grapes,” he says after an especially tiring week, when the Ark’s taken a buffeting and there’s been work to caulk leaks, bail, mend thatch while the rains assail them. “We thought they were spoilt, but the smell was actually nice and Ham had a taste, he’s one of those people who has to find out about everything. It turned out to be remarkable. I’ve brought you one.”
Crawley pecks it out of the angel's beak, and that’s an odd thing to be doing, but how else was he to carry it?
“Hmm. Nice, that. Makes you go a little funny.”
“Yes. More so in these bodies. Noah says when we get back to land, he’ll plant more and try to make a drink like this.”
“See if you can get Mrs. Ham to bring some of those in here when she drops off the table scraps. Could get used to that.”
“Tempting your new shipmates, I suppose.” Crawley doesn’t answer. The other birds give him a wide berth, Aziraphale’s found. He’s never found another one sharing a perch with him; that honour’s reserved for the dove alone.
“How’s the unicorn?” Crawley asks finally.
Now it’s the angel’s turn not to answer. The silence goes on just that much too long, and Crawley says “I thought so.”
“Grief,” says Aziraphale. “They mate for life. Like the birds do.”
“So it’s just gonna be bloody horses now,” spits Crawley. The tessellated pattern of plumage on his shoulders catches the prism’s light as he turns his head away.
There comes a day when the rains pause for a few minutes, then a quarter hour, and the clouds thin; a contrary wind comes up, bringing a subtly different scent on the air, and the waves grow gentler. Sun breaks through on the third day, and there’s a cry from Ham that brings them all clattering up the ladders to see: huge twinned arcs of transparent colour, shading hazily from deep red at their inner borders to a blue deeper than the sky. The calm surface of the water reflects them.
Noah kneels, and his wife weeps with joy. “The Lord hath made a covenant with us,” he says when he’s mastered his voice. There’s a tone that comes into it when he passes on Her utterances, Aziraphale’s heard it before: “ And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature.”
Presently they spread their always-damp and musty outer robes across the roof of the deckhouse to dry. For the first time in months they see the sun set, light spreading orange and gold and plum-coloured over the waters from the hazy, sinking disc. Aziraphale has almost forgotten light and colour, and when he goes below he tells Crawley about it, the glory of the rainbow, the dazzle of the sun, and Crawley asks if he’s got any more of those grapes.
The next morning Shem says he thinks he can see land in the distance, but they drift away again, and it’s nearly a week later while they’re exercising the animals, round and round the deck in the open air, that a shudder goes through the Ark and its keel scrapes bottom.
Noah prays, and gives thanks to the Lord for their deliverance, and for weeks everyone takes turns on the watch as the water slowly drops, exposing the tumbled boulders of a mountaintop that must be the only eminence for miles. There’s no sign of dry land elsewhere. Finally, one day, Noah enters the aviary, just as Aziraphale’s settled in beside Crawley on a low perch.
“You,” says Noah, reaching with knotted, callused hands to cup Crawley’s wings against his sides. “You’ve no mate, golden-eyed one,” and Aziraphale can’t explain how those words make him feel. “Guess you stowed away. Earn your keep? Need you to spread those big strong wings. Come back when you see dry soil, bring us some growing thing for proof, show us which way it is.”
Aziraphale’s just able to regain human shape and get back to the deck before Noah finishes his prayer, raises the black body over his head and releases it with a little lift. He almost expects Crawley to resume his usual form and tell the old man to fuck right off, but instead he stretches his wings and soars, the pinions at the tips like long fingers, the sun glazing his feathers as he banks into it. Everyone holds their breath until the dark speck disappears into the hazy sky at the far horizon.
Aziraphale stays there for a long time, after everyone else has gone below, until the shadows swallow the waters.
They’ve sat on the mountaintop for days, and Crawley still isn’t back. Japheth’s wife, by now deeply gravid, cries a good deal, and Shem mends rope that doesn’t need mending.
“Send another bird,” says Noah’s wife finally.
Aziraphale’s in the aviary by the time Noah enters. He makes quite a show of descending from his solitary perch, spreading his wings in the beam from the prism like an emblem of Grace, and settles on the old man’s wrist, pinking the skin with delicate claws.
“The Lord has chosen,” says Noah, and carries him topside. It’s a bright day, the light angling through wispy clouds to tease rainbows from the surface of the water, the Almighty’s certainly gotten fond of Her rainbows, and the breeze buffets Aziraphale as he soars, treading the air with his short legs. It’s good to finally do this, to be borne up towards Heaven, to feel the sails of his wings fill. He almost forgets to look for land, until a little irregularity in the horizon catches his eye.
There’s a small black spot in the middle of an islet that’s probably the peak elevation of a great highland. As he circles, riding the updrafts, the undiluted light glints off something flame-coloured, and he arrows downward, wings tight to his sides, then blooming out again as he reaches dry ground and resumes his human shape.
Crawley's own wings, black and glistening, are tented over his shoulders like a lean-to. The tumble of hair down his back is vivid against the dark robes. He’s seated on the ground, surrounded by reviving vegetation, looking out over the waters.
“Found me again,” he says. “Always do, you.”
“Dear, sometimes you find me.” He’s only just realising it.
Crawley's silent, and presently Aziraphale tries again. “I thought you’d gone back to – to report. Whatever have you been doing here?”
“Thinking,” says Crawley.
He's hugging his drawn-up knees, one hand gripping his calf, the other closed around something – the plant Noah wanted? A stone? His heart? “What have you got there?” asks Aziraphale.
Crawley brings his closed fist to his mouth, as if contemplating; says nothing. Finally extends his hand and opens his palm. There’s a crudely hewn wooden animal in it, maybe a donkey or a cow: a child’s toy, some attempt at pigment rubbed off where it’s been handled, a silly smile cut into its face below the hollows of eyes. Crawley's hand is pink and indented where he’s been holding it.
“They’re all under there,” says Crawley, nodding at the wasteland of the waters that stretches all around them. “The humans. The nephilim. The kids. All the kids. Couldn’t swim, couldn’t float. But the toys did, see?”
“Come back with me,” says Aziraphale. “It’s been lonely.”
“No one in the aviary wants to get cosy?” says Crawley. He sets the small effigy on the ground, idly rocks it from rear to forelegs in a crude imitation of walking, as children do.
“Noah will think his ship’s angel left when the waters dropped. We’ll just stay birds until they leave. You can make your report. Whenever.”
“Couldn’t stand it any longer,” Crawley goes on, ignoring him. “Hanging out with Mister Bloody One Righteous Man and his Righteous Family. Not after.” He trot-trots the little animal again. “The kids always named their toy animals, you know? Just like Adam. I nannied them sometimes, gave me a chance to teach ’em how to nick a piece of fruit from the market or play pranks. Nothin’ you drown someone for. Is it? I didn’t kill ’em, did I?”
“Dear, no one knows the ways of the Lord.”
“Piss on the Lord’s ways. And sod Her sodding rainbows, too, while we’re at it.”
Aziraphale winces. “I can’t stay. I’ve a task, to show there’s green land above the water now.”
“Bugger off then and do it.”
He’s halfway back to the Ark, the water spread below him like Heaven’s mirror, before he realized he’s forgotten to bring the smallest sprig with him.
He waits for Crawley. The demon doesn’t come. He passes the time in the aviary – Crawley’s right, it is oddly restful – until Noah enters again and sees him.
“Go thou again,” he says. “The Lord made this earth in seven days. Surely the water can recede in seven.”
He goes like an arrow to the highland, which is now just one of a range of hills rising out of the waters, the beginnings of a plain emerging beneath. There’s no sign of Crawley, but there’s a gnarled olive tree, can’t kill the things, like a lookout on the stony outcrops halfway down the slope. He wrenches away a branch of the tapering leaves, tearing away a long strip of bark. He doesn’t know what he’s angry at but he flies as If he’s trying to punish the air, to cut it with the flaming blades of his wings, and when he spies the Ark he swoops low and drops the olive branch at Noah’s feet before banking back into the sky and blazing into the setting sun, the molten rays painting his white wings with Divine fire.
It’s a hundred years later and they’ve built villages again, even towns, and the earth is tilled and the children are playing and meals are shared; they’re making textiles again and singing and carving, and there’s been an explosion of inventions, wine – Noah lived up to his ambitions – not the least of them. A stranger can get lost in the crowd again, and he’s back to his mission, nudging towards virtue, blessing those who toil.
He spots the flaming head in a dusty yard populated with shrieking children – he’s never been fond of the noise, but he has to see, and she’s wearing almost the same black abaya, better quality than they’ve learned to make again yet, but the demon’s always been vain about dress. He approaches quietly, stands beside her, watching two boys quarrel over possession of a stick and hoop.
“Heard the order was replenish the earth,” says Crawley finally without greeting or glancing at him. “Figured the nanny gig’d be called for eventually. Getting a knack for it. Parents’re all at the grape harvest.”
“Have you tried the wine, then? It’s first-rate.”
“Not yet. Hear they’re openin’ some jars after, when the work’s done. Festival, see.”
“So I hear too. Will you do me the honour of joining me? It’s been too long.” Crawley’s still not looking at him, but at the contest over the hoop, which the larger boy seems to be winning. “I'll miracle up a little bench, just for the two of us. Like birds on a perch. No one else would understand what we're likely to talk about.”
“Yeah. Good point,” says Crawley, finally turning his eyes sidelong toward him with the ghost of a smile. “Yeah, angel. I’d like that.”