TIME AND PERSONAL SPACE
It was dusk in Tadfield, perfect weather as always. As agreed, Crowley parked the Bentley in the lane that stretched back from Jasmine Cottage.
"To minimise further time-travel-related weirdness," Crowley said, "We should probably get out of the car – not bring it with us. Also, it'll be a good indicator of when it's safe to leave the area. When the Bentley appears in the lane, it'll mean we've caught up to now, and it'll be all right to drive it home."
"All right – I understand. I still feel a bit incomplete knowing we'll be here for fifteen days, yet I've brought none of my things with me," Aziraphale said, climbing out of the car.
"You don't need things, you've got me," Crowley said flippantly. He was now standing to the side of the road, just behind the Bentley. "Okay, it's going to take a bit of meditation to activate the thing, and make it understand what we want it to do. For that, I'll need your hands."
"All right," Aziraphale said offering up his open hands.
Crowley set the triangular apparatus half in Aziraphale's right hand, and half in his own. Then he cradled Aziraphale's right hand with his left, and gestured for the angel to do likewise.
"Close your eyes," Crowley whispered. "Concentrate on the big picture – ley lines, the Glastonbury triangle, Agnes Nutter and her talents, how much you want to find her second book… concentrate your angelness on it."
Aziraphale more or less understood what he was supposed to do, when Crowley said the big picture. All of these points of power were part of, well, God's ineffable plan. Even though the apocalypse had been averted, She still had much to accomplish, and there was a certain way in which She liked to do it. In the angel's mind, all of those things were easy to reconcile, and make part of the vortex of power, that of Her creation, Her will, Her pervasive existence and influence…
He no longer felt about it the way he used to, no longer struggled to convince himself that the Almighty was infallibly good, and he was Her eternal, unquestioning servant. Those days had passed. But the ineffability was still there, and Aziraphale was still, at heart, an angel.
The triangle's edges began to glow.
"Now, concentrate on that Sunday," Crowley whispered. "Where were we? What were we doing?"
"We'd body-swapped," Aziraphale answered. "You were in heaven, and I was in hell."
"Don't tell me – I already know," Crowley lulled. "Think on it. Bring us back to that day. Early. Breakfast-time."
And before either one of them knew it, they were opening their eyes not onto a Tadfield dusk, but onto a bright Tadfield morning, fifteen days prior. The Bentley was nowhere to be seen.
The angel and the demon could both feel magic upon the air – that was the touch of Adam. Everything had been newly reset, and for a half-day or so, there would be the tinge of artificiality about it. They both remembered this feeling from before, though they'd both wondered at the time how much of the "tinge" they felt was as a result of being on each other's turf for several hours.
"Well – what now? Wait to see them leave the cottage?" asked Aziraphale.
"I reckon so," said Crowley.
Just then, a posh car surprised them, coming round the bend, and parked outside Jasmine Cottage. They hid behind some trees, and watched a man exit the car, holding an old black box, roughly the size of an early-1990s computer monitor.
They watched Newton Pulsifer let him into the house, and five minutes later, they watched the man leave the house in terror, jump in his car, and flee without the box.
"You don't think…" Aziraphale began.
"…he just delivered Agnes Nutter's second volume?" Crowley finished. "Yes, I do."
"I wonder how all of this came together," Aziraphale commented, a delighted look on his face. "Oh, I do hope I get the chance to find out!"
For the next ninety minutes, the two of them sat on tree stumps on the edge of the wood, by the roadside just behind Jasmine Cottage, chatting. They both understood that right now, Anathema was probably inside the house, agonising over what to do with the book, and Newton was trying not to say something that would see him cast out.
"He's a good lad," Aziraphale mused, as they discussed the former Witchfinder Private. He happened to put his hand in his waistcoat pocket just now, and discovered he'd brought a small packet of biscuits along. It was a four-pack of dark chocolate Hobnobs. He took a bite from one, and offered the packet to Crowley. He knew the demon was not historically wont to snack between meals (if he ate meals), but things had changed recently. Crowley had discovered the wonders of food the way he himself had discovered the wonders of sleep.
"Astonishingly uncool," Crowley mused, concerning young Pulsifer, and he indeed took a biscuit as offered, and had a bite. "But yes – a good lad. I suspect that Miss Device will go a long way toward boosting his cool, though."
"You've called me astonishingly uncool, as well," Aziraphale reminded him.
"Right. He's got Anathema, you've got me. Only you're too bloody stubborn to let me help."
A few moments went by, and Aziraphale said, "As long as we're on the subject of us being stuck with one another, I'd like to ask: where are we going to stay?"
"Actually, I hadn't thought that far ahead," Crowley confessed, chewing. "But now you mention it…"
"I'd been assuming we'd ask Miss Device to give us shelter in her cottage, since we will be saving her ancestor's good work from the pyre, but now, I'm thinking…"
"That would be a terrible idea," said Crowley.
"Yes, exactly."
Crowley's next tirade came out as whine more than anything else. "It occurred to me, too, but let's face it: it would be two weeks of listening to the headboard banging against the wall all night. Either that, or two weeks of them feeling as though they have to hold back. No demon wants to be responsible for binding up the hedonistic tendencies of humans."
"Right, and we don't need four people in the house holding their breath all the time," Aziraphale said, then took another bite of his biscuit.
Crowley smirked, and waited for his friend to realise what he'd said, and try to cover his tracks. But he did not do so. Apparently, the angel's mind had immediately gone somewhere else, because he seemed to be completely oblivious to what he'd let slip.
"I suppose I could sit vigil here and wait for Miss Device and her young man to come out, and you could go into town and find us an inn," Aziraphale suggested.
Crowley thought about this, and immediately, the idea filled him with dread.
What he said was, "No way I'm doing that without you. You are a monumental snob, and I'll undoubtedly choose the wrong inn, and I'll have to hear about how shoddy tilework is in the bathroom (or some such rubbish) for the next fortnight."
What he thought was: I'm not making decisions about sleeping-arrangements without your direct input. Until shockingly recently, you wouldn't even let me sit beside you on the bus.
"We can't walk into an inn together, Crowley, people will talk!"
"Not in the twenty-first century they won't," the demon retorted. "Haven't you been paying attention? Well, I suppose it is a small town, but… honestly, what can they say that hasn't already been said?"
Aziraphale replaced the packet of biscuits (there were two left) in his pocket, and folded his hands in his lap. "There's a great deal that hasn't been said," he muttered, looking anywhere but at his friend.
"Well, I'm saying it as loudly as I dare. Whether you choose to hear me, that's on you, angel."
One would think that for two beings who had been on Earth for six thousand years, ninety minutes would pass like nanoseconds to a human being.
But these ninety minutes felt long and languorous, probably due to their uncertainty. At the moment, they were affecting nothing – they were just sitting there. But at any moment, they would see a young witch exit her home, and they would begin to meddle with history.
"If only she hadn't decided to burn that book," Aziraphale said, out of the blue, at one point, about seventy-five minutes in.
"Aw, give her a break," Crowley said. "It's got to be a bugger being a professional descendant. Three hundred and fifty years is a bloody long time, in human terms."
Anathema clearly had great respect for her ancestor, but neither Aziraphale nor Crowley truly wondered why she had decided to burn Agnes' second volume. She was tired. And both angel and demon could clearly see that the burden of being Agnes Nutter's descendant had taken its toll upon her, her life, and her personality, especially since it fell upon her to help avert Armageddon. They both felt they could relate to her burden, and had both rebelled in an ultimately similar way. Anathema had freed herself by burning the book, Aziraphale and Crowley had freed themselves with the body-swap, and the very satisfying scaring of their "superiors." All three of them knew there was work still to be done, now that the Earth was no longer immediately doomed, but none of them cared anymore to actually do it.
Though, Aziraphale's love of books and history and Agnes Nutter had won out, and he'd come here to do what he felt was the right thing. And because Aziraphale couldn't help himself, Crowley couldn't either.
And so, here they crouched in the woods.
"There they go," Crowley whispered. "Come on."
They followed a safe distance behind Anathema and Newt, and both made zero noise walking, even over dead leaves, and branches that should rightfully have snapped beneath their feet. They were miraculously stealthy.
"We're being creepy," Aziraphale whispered, with a frown of distaste.
"I know, isn't it fun?" Crowley said absently, with nevertheless, a big smile.
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