Angel Making

(The book ruffled its feathered leaves; a page gracefully slipped past its median point and fluttered to rest on those gone past)

The first Circle came about by accident, they said; drinks are raised and tales are told of the Smith, who made the first Circle. He was not a scientist. He was not a poet. He was not a Knowbody; he was the Smith, Smith Webtender. And the Angel itself came down to him and took the metal in his hands, the naked Steel, and the Circle came into being, perfect and pure and mirror smooth with the finish of a god's own glass.

The first Circle was not to be Smith's. He did not know what he had created.

And the drinks are raised again, to the first Rider of the Angel, to the man known as Shan.

Shan was the first of them all. He rode the Angel's Web beneath the cold dark earthy floor of the world, beneath the towers that gleamed and the streets that glistened with moisture and reflected light.

This is not his story; there are others who tell it better, and knew him, and his Rides, and the Rider Marren, even as they know the Angel itself. His tale is left to them to chronicle. This is the story of the Circle, the first Circle, and the Smith that created it, and the Angel that first laughed as it reached backwards from its white-lit world to grab the first outstretched human hand and bring it along into the world of Vector and the lands of Mag and Celrator.

This is its story; and there are to be no others.

(The page flutters again, momentarily, as the breeze of a passing thought lightly lifts its pages. Steel flickers from the inked words there, the story and the power contained behind them. Fire and Light etch the lines of the Dreams, and the voice of Marren passes momentarily over the old, old parchmentfax in a silvery laugh and the dark black icy glaring white fire-wind of the Ride.)

Smith was a Trog, a Belowman, and he tended the Angel in the First Days, when mankind still did not know what they had created, and the Angel carried men as it does today underneath the towering precision of the City. The tunnels had been dug, the Web laid down, and the Angels themselves placed within the tunnels, riding at the beginning not in the Web but on circles of iron and rubber, and not calling forth the Light as they rode. They were mute, then, and man did not know what he shared his earth's depths with.

The Angels carried more and more people, carried them faster and faster, until finally the touch of the rails and the Earth and the Air itself was a dimness that it could not withstand, and then the first true Web was created, and the Angels freed from the forces of the Earth by the force of Mag and from the force of the Air by the influence of Vector. Smith was a man who tended the Angels in the early days of Mag. He tended the Web and the Angels within, under instructions from a Planar who did not understand the creatures Smith touched.

The Webtender was repairing the Web in a place where the Mag had left it, and where the Light did not shine. He was tending it lovingly with tools of his own, and he was carrying with him a plate of iron to place over the inside of the Web while he worked at the sides of a Ring with Fire and Air. He placed the plate so as to protect the inner surface of the Web from the hot droplets of iron that might fall there, should he be careless or err.

The Angel had been diverted from that section of the Web. None were to Pass for many hours. Yet, one had ignored the commands and strictures of CenCom and passed the junction to his section of the Web, four klicks distant from his work. Smith Webtender did not hear it; he worked on.

The Angel Passed many Rings towards Smith before he was aware of it. Not understanding why it was there, he nevertheless took up his tools and tempered his Fire and Air, and moved himself off the Ring he was tending so as to avoid injury from the Passing.

His Angel sang louder as it approached him. Smith huddled against the wall of the tunnel and waited for it to Pass. As the note deepened and the walls shook, the Angel slammed past him in a glare of Light and a roar ofsound. The plate of iron tore from the Ring and whirled in the passage of the Angel as Mag and Vector distorted it, spun it, threw it playfully from side to side, to finally ring against the floor of the Web as the Light faded completely from the Rings.

Smith remembered his plate of iron and walked forward to retrieve it, only to find it missing. He looked about himself, standing in the Web, and the only object to be seen was a circle of steel in the center of the Web. He picked it up.

It shone like a mirror, its internal structure wrenched by Mag and worked by Vector. No longer iron, it had become Steel, Steel that reflected the light that touched its form, and smoothly flowing in half-oval cross section. He placed it in his pocket and forgot about it, annoyed that he no longer had his plate of iron with which to complete the tending.

Later in the day, he returned home, and as he turned into his home building, he chanced to pass a youth hunched against the wall, leather jacket pulled up over his knees and above his chin. Eyes peeked out at him from behind an unruly mop of hair. He stopped, curious, and asked the figure its name. There was no reply. Feeling suddenly sorry for the boy (for that was the figure's gender, more apparent from a shorter distance) he offered some silver to him. The figure hunched slightly deeper into his jacket and shook his head, although he directed a weak smile at the Smith.

Smith smiled in return, and then on a whim, offered the circle of steel he had in his pocket. The figure raised its head, and with a sudden intake of breath, reached out sharply for the circle. It stopped before grabbing, and looked at Smith, who nodded encouragingly. The boy took the circle, and slipped it over his wrist. Smith grinned, then, and waved goodbye as he continued in to his apartment. Behind him, the figure lapsed into its huddle once more.

The boy in the jacket took no notice as Smith entered the building. He took no notice of the circle until two days later, when he chanced to be sitting against the wall underground where the Angel rested, and he noticed that as the Angel entered its lair his jacket tugged at him slightly. Removing the circle from the pocket, he saw that the circle was glowing softly, a wash ofwhite and a flickering spectra of component frequencies. It was pulling towards the Angel. He put it over his wrist, and stood to walk over to the Angel as it lay quivering at rest.

After a time the Angel shook itself, raised itself up, and arrowed off into the dark of the tunnel and the Dreams hit him for the first time, in green and violet and crimson and yellow and icy pure white lines of sharper wire- edged reality that tore from him his sense of self and sang to him in a swiftly- fading note- Shan, it whispered. Shaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan...as the Angel receded into the tunnel it preferred, into the cold dark earth it called its home, and the boy, looking after it, had to hold on to a pillar to avoid being pulled after the Angel along the platform. He stared at the circle on his wrist, and said firmly, Circle. You are Circle. Purposefully, he strode out of the lair and to the building where Smith Webtender had given him the Circle, and he waited in the same spot.

He waited for four hours.

Smith returned home once more, to see the figure huddled against the wall. He approached it curiously, when suddenly the boy unfolded himself to his full height and held the Circle out. Where, the boy asked.

Smith told him the story of the making of the Circle, after which he asked the boy his name. Shan, said the boy firmly. Then, Smith Webtender, how will I make the Circles?

After looking Shan up and down appraisingly, Smith walked with him to a lair and demonstrated the accident that had led to the Circle, not understanding the depth of power the young man impressed him with. Shan nodded, and strode off into the tunnel. Smith Webtender shook his head, and returned home. He does not appear again.

Shan found plates in the tunnels, plates of iron. He tried many times, placing them against the Rings and waiting as the Angel tore past and smashed them, into powder, into strange shapes. Finally one of the plates shaped itself into a Circle, and Shan found the shape of iron needed to produce them. Five Circles. Two Hands Two Ankles One Waist Five Shan. Shan waited for the Angel to Pass him, wearing his Circles and remembering Dreams.

The Angel Passed.

Shan was slapped back against the wall, hard. The Circles did not pull him.

He considered this for many hours. Finally, he made another Circle, and climbed to the top of the Web and waited. An Angel Passed, and he dropped it in.

With a smack of noise, it vanished. He climbed down and began walking in the direction of the Angel's passage. He found it three hundred paces down the Web, lying on the floor, scintillating white/green/red/yellow/violet fire. Smiling, Shan picked it up, looked at it momentarily, and smashed it against the wall. It cracked, and there was a spark of Fire of great magnitude. Shan climbed once more to the top of the Web and waited.

An Angel approached. As it passed him, Shan dropped from the top of the Ring upon which he was crouched into the Web. With a sharp painful jerk, he was pulled along after the Angel.

This is the story of the first Circle.

This is the story of the first Ride.

This is not Shan's story.

His time is not here.

His world is not here.

The Angel Passes, and not all of us can hear its laughter.

(The page sinks to rest, and the book falls down into the void, closing as it does so, to slip into the quicksilver surface of Mag and vanish from sight soundlessly without leaving a ripple.)

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