Pegasus

CHAPTER 13

They flew for about four hours. Lrrianay flew with them, and Aliaalia ; Sylvi did not see Hibeehea. Of the doorathbaa, the only one Sylvi had known before this journey was Ebon, and of the dozen or so pegasi who now flew free with their king and queen, she still knew only two, Hissiope and Aary, from the palace; they sometimes came with Lrrianay. Aary was unbound; Hissiope was a shaman, and shamans were never bound. Feeaha was also with them this morning, and Driibaa, who was the rufous pegasus she’d seen when she woke on her first morning in Rhiandomeer. It was colder today than it had been when she and her father had flown together, and she was glad of the drai’s padding and the blanket; the pegasi’s wings were brighter than banners in the sunlight.

Do you ever get cold? You’re probably working too hard.

If it’s that cold we don’t fly. Something weird happens to the air, or maybe our wings, when it gets that cold. It doesn’t very often—well, in the farthest northernmost mountains, but nobody goes there much. The Caves extend that far, I think, but I’ve never been half that way, so I don’t know what it’s like there. Flying in snow is fun, except it’s kind of easy to get lost.

The mountains that marked the edge of the pegasi’s land rose up abruptly out of the plain on the human side of the boundary, but wandered and rambled on the pegasus side for a long way, losing very little height, or losing it for a while and gaining it again. With the exception of three peaks Sylvi could see a great distance away, they were not tremendously tall, but there were a lot of them, steep and ragged, and she was glad she wasn’t toiling up and down the crests and ridges and long crooked passes on foot. The plateaus that lay between were surprisingly level if irregularly shaped; some seemed only wild meadow but some of them were clearly cultivated. Occasionally she also saw small wooden roofs, like the pavilion at the edge of the first meadow which had held the banqueting tables—and the bedding—and the cooking utensils. But the shfeeah were all small; there were no towns and no houses, and she saw no pegasi other than those around her in the air.

Already her father seemed very far away—farther away than a few hours’ flying—and the palace, and her mother and brothers, Ahathin, Glarfin, Lucretia . . . everything about her life was half a dream. Either what was happening now was imaginary, or her previous life was; the two must be incompatible. But she was here now, suspended over nothing, flying with the pegasi, the sharp wind stinging her face. What was she going to believe?

When they banked, steadied and then pulled the ropes taut again over another meadow, her heart began to beat faster. The landing itself was, of course, perfect, but she found that she was stiff with cold, which made her stagger a little, although that wasn’t why her heart was beating in her throat. She looked around, half in anticipation, half in foreboding, for a dark cave mouth, but she didn’t see anything but the meadow itself, spangled with spring flowers, and another pavilion at one edge. She looked again at the flowers: lavender, violet, yellow, blue—they were also new and strange to her. Even the flowers were different in Rhiandomeer.

Most of the pegasi who had attended the banquet had left before Sylvi’s little band had taken to the air, and since then Sylvi had seen only those she flew with. But now pegasi began to appear from among the trees, as if they had been waiting there for their arrival—as they had on her first day here with her father. She looked round at them—she recognised several from the last two days—and unthinkingly looked round for her father too. When she stopped herself looking, the stopping was an almost-physical pain.

For a moment she wished she’d gone home with him—that she’d never come, that Ebon hadn’t moved the many heavens and the one earth, as only Ebon could, to invite her, to enable her invitation to be made—that she ’d never seen this country, with its strange flowers and leagues of silent empty landscape, and its ability to make her doubt everything she had known about herself up till two days ago. For a brief, awful moment she couldn’t move; she was a statue in an alien landscape, its unknown flowers clustering round her feet, another of the bizarre, useless gifts humans had pressed upon the pegasi, which t he pegasi were too polite to refuse.

Feeaha and Driibaa unfastened the safety ropes, and the drai dropped away. She made herself move: one step, two steps. This was what it was like being human: this was how you moved, your queerly tubular and attenuated body swaying upright above a mere two legs, your long awkward arms and big outlandish hands pointlessly hanging....

Sylvi pulled the blanket around her, to wear as a shawl, although the two pegasi who had carried the two small bundles of her baggage individually round their necks came to her and bowed to the ground, rubbing the ropes off over their ears with their own hands, and she could have found something of her own. But the pegasus blanket was marvellously soft and comforting, and she didn’t want to give it up. One pegasus was detaching something from the back of her drai—she suddenly remembered her curiosity when she’d felt it being fastened there, when she could not see what it was. The pegasus came toward her—with her no-longer-wet clothing draped over his neck.

Sylvi laughed. She didn’t mean to; it burst out of her; it was about the strangeness and aloneness as well as about finding out that the answer to the mysterious question of what had been hung on the back of her drai was the mundane one of her clean laundry. When she laughed, several of the pegasi moved themselves as if into a new pattern—the pattern of looking at a human making an baffling and incongruous noise. She could feel her face heating up in one of her hair-frizzing blushes, but Lrrianay raised his head and called out—the resonant clarion sound that pegasi could make, except they rarely did so.

And one of the pegasi who had come shyly out of the trees and paused—paused so intently that Sylvi had noticed her at once among the others—now came dancing toward her. No, prancing, like a young pony or a long-legged puppy. She pranced directly up to Sylvi, lifting her knees very high and shaking her long glossy mane—and put her soft nose to Sylvi’s cheek.

Sylvi blinked; surely this was very brash for a pegasus one hadn’t been introduced to. She then said—something; it was very long, and had no audible breaks in it, and no consonants either, so far as Sylvi could hear, except she thought she might have heard Ebon’s name tucked in there somewhere. And there was a queer background hum or buzz, like a bee caught in her hair—no, caught in her skull.

“No, ” said Sylvi in sign. “Slower. ”

“Yooooo—mmwyyhuma—Ebohnwaanno—Iha—onnyno.” Her ears and tail were going all the time, teasing and flicking; she nodded and shook her head, and rippled the skin over her shoulders, rustled her feathers. Sylvi thought, those aren’t just word breaks, those are all the interesting adjectives too, and I don’t know any of them.

“You’re Ebon’s little sister, ” said Sylvi. “Ebon. Shaarraia, ” she said, which she hoped meant “sibling.”

The pegasus reared up and clapped her wings together. Sylvi had never seen a pegasus do this before. This was not a gesture Sylvi could match in any way at all; she felt very small and boring and wrong as she anxiously said one of the first things Ebon had taught her, when they first knew that she would be coming to visit him here: “swahavihaahwhahodh , ” and involuntarily made the old human gesture of apology and placation too, holding her hands spread and palm out.

The pegasus promptly dropped back to four legs again and put her nose into one of Sylvi’s hands, and without any thought or intention Sylvi brought her hands together, so they were cradling the pegasus’ muzzle—which was probably even more brash than the pegasus’ behaviour, but she seemed to like it, and leaned toward Sylvi till her nose was resting against Sylvi’s breast, and Sylvi’s hands ran up her chin, and stroked her face.

The pegasus sighed. “Ebonfffffwahoowhooftha, ” she said. Ebon is lucky. All the ffff ’s meant very lucky.

“Sahaliliyo,” said Sylvi, which was one of the other thank yous she knew; she hoped it was the right one. This one was supposed to be for nonmaterial compliments when you wanted to be modest.

She was aware that the adult pegasi watching the two of them were watching very closely indeed; she had been constantly aware of their watching her since her father left—how could they not be watching her? But she somehow felt that this, now, meeting Ebon’s little sister, was more than that, more than meeting another member of her bondmate and host’s family; more than that she was about to be the first human to visit the pegasus Caves since the pegasi’s chronicles began several thousand years ago. Wasn’t that enough? She knew the pegasi wanted something from her, or from the visit, but—wasn’t the visit itself enough? But there was something else....

As she stroked Ebon’s little sister’s cheek she suddenly thought, I didn’t know there was a something else. A something besides, a something further. I didn’t know till right now. But I can feel it.

She looked up.

Lrrianay was standing at an angle in front of Ebon—a blocking sort of angle, she thought, as if Ebon was going to interfere and Lrrianay was saying “no, don’t.” But as she looked at Ebon he ducked round his father and trotted the few steps to where Sylvi and his sister stood—and bit his sister briskly over the withers. The young pegasus jerked her head up out of Sylvi’s hands and Sylvi didn’t need any help translating her open-mouthed snort as “ow.”

Hey, bird-face, you don’t rear at humans. They’re all smaller even than you are! Don’t you have any manners?

Sylvi thought, How very odd. I can hear him, and he’s not talking to me.

Of course I have manners, you big ugly thug! I’m very small and I know what it feels like when everyone tiptoes around you just because you’re small!

It was like—what was it like? It wasn’t like anything. It was like flying when you have no wings; it was like galloping on four legs when you have only two; it was like hearing the colour red; it was like being someone else. And, being someone else, you no longer know how to be you. Sylvi wobbled on her suddenly-too-few-for-balance legs, and—fell down.

Ebon was on his knees beside her almost before she finished falling. Syl?

She heard me! said the young pegasus. I know she did! I heard her hearing me!

Slowly Sylvi said, I don’t know your name.

The young pegasus spoke both aloud and silently, Niahi!

Sylvi said—still sitting down, but one hand gripping Ebon’s mane—Ebon, your name isn’t precisely Ebon either, is it? It’s—

Ebon is close enough, said Ebon, sounding worried. Are you all right?

There were murmurs all round her, in her ears, in her head—in her eyes, she thought, I am seeing murmurs. Tell me your real name!

“Eeehboohhn,” said Ebon, and it was one of those ripply, pegasus noises in her ears, and a seen murmur, as well as the familiar nonsound in her mind. Who cares? Ebon for short. Like Syl.

I care, said Syl. Everything’s different.

Nothing’s different, said Ebon, rather desperately. I’m still me. You’re still you. And we’re still bound to each other. The only difference is that we’re here rather than there.

Sylvi was still listening to the difference. It’s only the difference between being alone with someone and being in a crowd, she told herself. It’s only . . . but it’s not. It’s not only. There’s nothing only about it. It’s . . . maybe it’s a little like the difference between hearing one person singing and a choir. Maybe, if you were used to listening to someone singing by themselves, a choir—a sudden choir—all those different voices singing slightly different things, would make you dizzy. It might make you so dizzy, perhaps, that you’d fall down. She’d said to her father, “I’m human. I’m a human among pegasi. I’ve only got two legs and I can’t fly. None of that’s going to change. ” It was easier if she could only talk to Ebon. It was easier to have only two legs and no wings, to be carried around like a parcel or someone’s washing—it was easier to be different, if she could only talk to Ebon. She wanted to cry. She did not want to cry. She bit down on her lip. She should try to stand up. She didn’t think she could.

And then someone else knelt beside her: Lrrianay. Oh, no! Sylvi said, and struggled to sit up, climbing Ebon’s mane like ladder rungs.

Syl— began Ebon.

Don’t struggle. Rest a little. Let yourself find yourself again. This is a tremendous change—a tremendous thing that has happened. Please, said Lrrianay. And then Sylvi cowered back against Ebon, and put her hands over her face, because she heard Lrrianay too. We are born knowing we can’t talk to the pegasi, she said to herself; it’s as much a certainty as anything written on the treaty—as not having wings.

How can I bear to talk to them when I cannot fly?

Did you bring me here hoping this would happen? Is this what this is about? Is this why I could say spirit and heart and l-love in my speech at the banquet—say them out loud? Why don’t humans ever come here? It’s one of the first things we ever talked about. You come to us. We don’t come here. Ebon, she said, stumbling over using his name because for the first time she needed to specify who she was talking to—I just wanted to see where you lived. It was too strange that I didn’t know what your home looked like, even if it didn’t have four walls, and—and bedrooms. It was even stranger that I didn’t know where you lived than that we could talk to each other—

Lrrianay interrupted. Child, believe me, you would not have been a disappointment to us if this had not happened!

And she heard the colour red; she listened to the choir. She believed him.

She sat on the ground among the little unknown wildflowers, clinging to Ebon’s mane and the saving familiarity of their friendship, and the breeze in her nostrils smelled sweetly of green spring and of pegasi. The pegasi accepted what came. Ebon had been telling her that for four years. Here, in his country, talking to his father and his sister in the pegasi’s silent-speech, she finally believed him. I don’t know the wildflowers yet, she thought, but I know I’m sitting on llyri grass.

But it was—worth the thinking of, Lrrianay went on, tentatively, watching her, watching her closely, earnestly, kindly, gauging her reaction to what he wanted to tell her—reminding her, suddenly, powerfully, in that gentle but implacable watchfulness, of her own father. That your father and I can half talk to each other is much more than most bondmates have. True talking is so unimaginable that we barely tell stories about it—we pegasi do not, nor humans either, I believe. Your magicians translate, as our shamans may also; what real need have we to talk? It is the way things are. But we—your father and I—hoped that what we had might repeat itself. We have thought of it since before Danacor and Thowara were born. But it seemed less likely after each of your brothers was bound, and none of them can talk to their bondmates even so much as your father and I can. I was not thinking of it at all when Ebon said you should have Niahi, and not him. There are precedents for such discontinuous bindings.

Ebon put his nose in Sylvi’s hair and said, “Phoooooey. ”

We did think of it: the youngest child of the king and the only sister after several brothers. But the shamans advised against it, and so it was done the usual way.

But it was Niahi just now— began Sylvi.

Yes,said Lrrianay. It was. It may only have been that you were another day distant from your own land—a day distant from your father’s departure—a day farther into our land. Perhaps also that Niahi was very—er—eager to meet you. We did not allow her to come to your banquet, much to her dismay, hoping that these other things might help produce a new connection with the sister of your bondmate, the sister you might have been bound to, when you finally met her. It was nothing we did that put those words in your mind last night—but you are right that we took note that you used—could use—them.

I’m afraid, he went on, I’m afraid this has been in our minds since the beginning—since the extraordinary binding between you and Ebon. Since Niahi is a king’s daughter and your father has no more children, and because she is small for her age and until this year would have found the journey to your palace difficult, we have been able to avoid binding her. Because we have been wondering . . .

Sylvi said sadly, None of us has wondered anything. To us—to us humans—Ebon and I are just freaks. The magicians translate; that is the system. There is nothing to—to talk about. She looked at Lrrianay, and he looked back, from his dark, deep, inscrutable pegasus eyes. What are you still not telling me? she said. There was a pause. She took a deep breath, finished letting it out and said, It’s about our magicians, isn’t it?

There was another, longer pause. The other pegasi had now retreated a little farther—beyond eavesdropping distance, Sylvi assumed ; she’d heard Niahi being herded away by her mother, protesting every step.

You have held to the treaty, Lrrianay said at last, and that great promise has given us our lives, by your strength to hold. And your commitment to our bonding ritual tells us that we are a part of your lives and not merely ink marks on an old page.

Ebon interrupted. What Dad will take the next day and a half to say in king talk is yes, the problem is your magicians, or anyway the magic they do, or the way they do it—it’s all wands and smoke and—and—stuff. Have you ever wondered why none of our shamans seems to stay long when they visit your palace? And you don’t see the same one very often? Is there any shaman you knew by name but Hissiope? At first—eight hundred years ago—they thought it was just that we were so strange to one another. Later they decided that the magic your magicians made was keeping it that way.

Lrrianay said gravely, There has never been any such decision—

Oh, Dad, that’s king talk again! Can we please go the short way? We already know Fthoom is a bad guy! Syl and I have known it since our binding—or anyway I knew it then and I guess Syl has known since she first met the brute. It stands out around him like that weird robe he likes to wear. Syl?

It was a long journey, Sylvi thought, going Ebon’s short way. I’ve always been afraid of Fthoom, which isn’t the same thing. It wasn’t till the binding . . . I knew something was wrong. And . . . not all our magicians are bad. Ebon, you know Ahathin.

Yes, said Ebon. He’s another freak.

I take my son’s point about—er—king talk, said Lrrianay, but it’s not as simple as that human magicians are the villains in our story. There is a great deal of strength in humankind that we do not have. It is a good strength when it stops the taralians and norindours from killing all of us, but it is not a good strength when one of your villages goes to war with their neighbours over the ownership of a field. We think there is something of the same about your magicians’ powers. It was a good power when it forged our Alliance, much quicker, and possibly more securely, than our shamans would have been able to do it. But it was . . . perhaps not the best alliance that could have been made.

We feel that perhaps the misfit of our Alliance is coming to a time of crisis. It is interesting that you—the link that you and Ebon have—should come at the same time as the magician Fthoom. It is that sense of crisis, I believe, that made your father force through an acceptance of you coming to us. He had to . . . displease some people it would have been better not to displease.

Lord Kanf, Sylvi thought. Senator Barnum. “ The king is the most tightly tied by his freedom to rule,” was one of Ahathin’s favourite maxims, and she tried not to believe it because she knew it was so—and because she was the king’s daughter.

Only about ten days before she had been due to depart, and when she knew that the senate had still not officially ratified her going, one of the oldest of the king’s council members had sought her out at one of those state dinners she was now obliged to attend. She knew that Senator Orflung was one of those who were against her journey. She braced herself, and tried not to let it show that she was bracing herself.

“My lady, my apologies for my presumption”—which was a phrase she was accustomed to hearing in her father’s court but she’d never heard it addressed to herself before—“but would you be good enough to tell me if you—you yourself, with no one whispering in your ear—if you want to visit the pegasi’s land? ”

She looked at him blankly for a moment, as if he were a strange pegasus speaking pegasi. She had given a short, formal speech to the combined senate when her father had first introduced the news of her impending journey, in which she had said that she did want to go, very much. But she had also been saying it to two hundred senators, lords, ladies, barons and granddames, and she had been concentrating on getting through it, not on being convincing. She noticed now—having not studied his face close up before—that there were deep smile lines round Senator Orflung’s eyes and his mouth, and the frowning look he wore at present was more worried than angry or bullying. She relaxed a little. “Yes, my sir, I do wish to visit it. The—the full senate is very intimidating, you know. ”

The frown disappeared and he smiled. “Yes, my lady, I do know. After forty years I still have to take a deep breath before I climb to my feet to address it.” The smile disappeared.“I am, of course, aware of the prohibition against querying you about the pegasi. But I would ask you to indulge me so far as to tell me . . . you feel you and Hrrr Ebon to be true friends, is that correct? As—as you might be friends with my daughter. ”

His youngest daughter was eight years older and a foot taller than Sylvi, and almost as daunting as her father. “Ebon and I are friends, yes,” she said carefully. “And I can speak to him as I could speak to your daughter. ” She realised that this might sound too similar to what she had said to the senate, and cast around for something she could add that would sound genuine, that would not sound as if she were hiding some important truth. “We can laugh together. He—he teases me. He tells terrible jokes. ”

The smile crept back into his eyes again. “The pegasi tell jokes? I am glad to know that. They are always so grand and solemn at court—and we rarely see any but those who are human bound. We never see the little ones, the children—I understand that it is too long a flight for them. Do they play, like human children? Do they scamper and jump and fall over? It is not only that we cannot speak to them clearly—how can you know anything about a people if you have never seen its children? But I am sure, if they tell jokes, that their children also play.

“And I will ask you one more question, and then excuse you from the burden of my company any further. My lady, forgive me, but I wish to recast the question I began with. Do you want to visit your friend at his home? Aside from any other question of who you are or who your friend is, or what your parents’—er—colleagues think of the matter, or whether anyone else with a friendship such as yours has done such a thing. Do you want to go—not just over the Starclouds to somewhere no human has been, but to visit your friend, because you can laugh with him, and exchange terrible jokes? ”

She thought, how odd that no one has asked me this but my mother and father, and Danacor, and Lucretia and Diamon—Ahathin didn’t have to ask, and Glarfin would think it was none of his business. But it was easy to answer immediately:“Yes, my sir, I do wish to go. For just those reasons. Because he visits me at my home. I want to visit him at his.”

He nodded, staring at her. “ Thank you, my lady. I believe you. ”

The next day her father said to her, “I don’t know what you said to old Orflung last night—I saw you talking to him—but Barnum tried to begin a last-minute rebellion this morning about your journey and Orflung essentially shouted him down. Said you were no longer a child but a young woman and you knew your own mind and wanted to go, and we should let you. Finally. Barnum wouldn’t have won, if it had come to that—I’d’ve invoked king’s fiat. But I have hoped I wouldn’t have to—and everyone listens to Orflung. But why it never occurred to anyone before to ask you—I’ve even suggested it two or three times, to Orflung among others. ”

“It’s because I’m so little, ” said Sylvi. “I’m just big enough to be a parcel to be wrapped up and sent somewhere. Or not. ”

The king snorted. “Helpless wrapped-up parcels don’t knock their experienced sparring partners over—with tricks the sparring partners have taught them. ” Lucretia had been so delighted by her protégé’s progress she’d brought the story to the king herself.

“You should have let me challenge Barnum to single combat. I’d’ve shown him what a parcel can do. ”

“I should have, ” said the king half ruefully.

Sometimes even being the king isn’t the answer, she had thought then, and thought again now, sitting on the llyri grass, talking to the king of the pegasi. Sometimes one of your oldest councillors does the job better. Sometimes your daughter is the only one who can do it at all.

What do I do now? she said.

Lrrianay wrinkled his nose and did a very unkingly ear-whirl. Eat dinner. Sleep. Wake and rise tomorrow morning and come with us to the Caves. That is all.

And talk to you.

Lrrianay bowed his head solemnly, arching his neck so that his forehead nearly touched the ground, and his long mane fell over his face, so she could see only the stiff alertness of his ears. When he raised his head again all the mischief was gone and he looked every inch a king, even lying on the ground with his legs folded under him and his wings negligently crossed over his back. Yes. If it is not too great a strain for you. I would like you to find out how many of us you can talk to, and how well.

Sylvi let go of Ebon’s mane to press her hands together and bow her own head. It is my honour to do as you would wish me to do, great lord. Then she put her hands carefully on the ground, and began to try to stand up. Ebon stood up first, with that quick forehand-first heave that should have been very like a horse’s but was not—especially when he had one feather-hand still in her hair. Climb up my leg, why don’t you. Go on, borrow one of mine. Then we’ll have three each.

Sylvi laughed a small croaking laugh and cautiously stood up. She didn’t quite climb Ebon’s foreleg, but she certainly hung on to it—and once upright she transferred her grip to his mane again. Niahi, her head over her mother’s back, half shouted and half whinnied a noise like cheering, and opened her wings and shut them again instantly, like a sort of applause.

They were all watching her, all the pegasi, beautiful, poised, attentive—several of them held their wings half roused—hopeful. One of the things she’d learnt just in the last two days was that there was a hopeful half-rousing as well as a wary one. She would have liked knowing this more if it didn’t make her aware that she’d only ever seen the wary one at the human king’s court.

The hopeful gesture was more open. Hopeful of what she might do for them, for all of them—her people, Sylvi’s people too. But the faces looking at her now were all pegasi. Niahi’s tail was lashing back and forth in what Sylvi was reasonably sure was excitement; Sylvi didn’t have a tail to lash. As she stared at them, their motionlessness—barring Niahi’s tail—made them, in her still rudimentary understanding of them and in the newness of this moment, almost expressionless—as if by gaining speech she had lost the fragile beginnings of her kinetic understanding. She looked again at the half-roused, hopeful wings: but there was no individuality that she could read. They were an artist’s representation of pegasi, beautiful and enigmatic.

She was conscious of Ebon’s skin beneath her hand: the warmth, the silkiness of his black hair, the feel of his breathing as his shoulder rose and fell—the ordinary, the habitual feeling of these things. She held out her free hand, caught Niahi’s eye—which was not difficult—and waved her hand back and forth in a swishy sort of gesture, like a switching tail. Niahi made a noise very like a giggle, ducked her head and whipped her tail twice as fast. Sylvi grinned—and saw the smile-wrinkles appear on Aliaalia’s nose.

Hey, aren’t you hungry? said Ebon. Thinking always makes me really hungry.

Yes,said Sylvi. Yes, I’m very hungry. It was only then that her stomach roared like six taralians and she realised she’d been smelling for some little while not only the faint sharp whiff of wood smoke but also the mild grainy scent of the porridgy stuff that the pegasi often made for her since she had this queer predilection for hot food. And she further realised that the pegasus porridge, which she’d never had before she’d come to visit Ebon at his home, was no longer strange to her. It was just food. Good food.

She ate, and listened to a rustle of silent voices, like wind through slender trees. But the only pegasi who had addressed her directly were Ebon and Lrrianay and Niahi; and while she ate, only Ebon stayed near her, eating from a bowl that had been brought with her porridge. It looked like chopped-up grasses speckled with seeds, but it smelled both spicy and flowery. His bowl was refilled three times while she ate her porridge, but he never left her, while the other pegasi wandered, as they usually did.

But when she laid her bowl down and licked her fingers, she saw a shadow pass very near her and looked up quickly: the queen, Aliaalia. She was still wearing Sylvi’s garnet, but now it hung on the gold chain that had been Sylvi’s official gift to her. Ebon put his nose to Sylvi’s hair, gave a brief, gentle tug, came gracefully to his feet, bowed to his mother, and left them. Sylvi scrambled to her own feet, stopping herself from looking after him apprehensively. The queen paused, almost hesitantly, Sylvi thought, taken aback, as if she was not quite sure of her welcome.

Queen, said Sylvi, and bowed. Great Lady.

It’s true, then, said the queen. I knew it was—Niahi told me—Niahi has told everyone—and she laughed, both silently and aloud: wheeeee. But we, like you, grow up knowing we cannot talk to each other. This—today—is a story come to life, a story as amazing as any that our bards tell us. How hard this must all be for you, my dear. A little exciting too, I hope, but hard. How much we all hope from you—how much we cannot help but hope, while we try not to. Do not let us crowd you too closely!

But I hope too, said Sylvi. And my father does, and my mother, or they would not have let me come, I think—it was very hard to let me come, you know. We cannot help hoping either. And if—if you crowd me very closely, you will hold me up, and I will be grateful because I—I am oddly wavery, since—since Niahi spoke to me.

You poor child, said the queen. Is there anything I can do for you?

Talk to me, said Sylvi. So it doesn’t seem so ... strange. So that it’s just talking. What are the stories your bards tell you?

The queen raised her head and looked away from Sylvi. Sylvi followed her gaze—as dark dappled Hibeehea seemed to materialise from the shadows. She had not seen him since the first evening. He bowed to them—to her and the queen, and the queen bowed back—Sylvi hastily following suit. Hibeehea, she thought. Oh dear. The queen then looked back at her, and her voice in Sylvi’s mind sounded grave and sad and proud. Our favourite stories are that we have hands, she said. Hands like yours: strong to grasp and hold, and wrists that turn back and forth.

Sylvi spent most of the next day asleep. She woke once, early, and lay quietly, watching the sunrise, pink and gold and soft blue-green, thinking sleepily, wistfully, confusedly, that it was the sort of sunrise that ought to happen in the pegasi’s land, beautiful but somehow enigmatic and unattainable; and then she thought, But why should either a sunrise or a pegasus be attainable, that its not being attainable should make me feel all doleful and spooky? And she turned over and wriggled farther into her friendly feather mattress, and went back to sleep.

She woke again and found a bowl of fruit by her pillow: two apples and three pears and a handful of plooraia, which the pegasi grew instead of grapes, because grape-vines here (Ebon had told her) only grew leaves and hard, sour, inedible black pebbles. And it was raining gently, but the pegasi had thrown something like a tent roof over her, tied to tree branches above her head; she could hear the rain as it fell, and smell the wet earth, but she was dry, curled up in her feather-bed. She ate a pear, thinking, It must be late, I must get up, and only managed to finish it before she fell asleep again.

The third time she woke, it had stopped raining, and Ebon was lying near her. There was a little bag with a long loop of ribbon—long enough to hang round his neck—lying on the ground beside him, and he was holding a small wooden bead with one alula-hand, and buffing it with a cloth he held in the other. She pulled herself onto one elbow to see better. She had seen him do this back at the palace, when they had their lessons together, but she had never had the excuse to watch from only a handsbreadth away before—to watch when she wasn’t supposed to be doing her own lessons. And there was something almost miraculous about this bead; it shone like a tiny moon.

I think that if you sleep any more the Night Shaman will take you away and make you a star, but Dad says yesterday was a hard day and we won’t go anywhere today and if you want to sleep through it that’s fine. And I say that I don’t want to sleep through it and there’s stuff to show you and you don’t have to talk. And you should get up because what if the Night Shaman isn’t just a fairy tale?

Night Shaman?

Eah. He gets you both ways—if you don’t go to sleep when you’re supposed to and if you don’t wake up when you’re supposed to. Then you’re a star awake in the sky forever and ever, showing pegasi where to fly. When you’re little you think that if you fly high enough you’ll be able to see the stars even in daylight. I used to think there was some kind of mountain ridge up there where all the star-pegasi stood, shining and being awake all the time. And you should be able to visit them for a while when you don’t feel like sleeping and then come back again. Dad recommends against telling the story like that when I have kids, though, because I’m likely to have kids like I was a kid.

You tried to fly up to the ridge, right?

Of course.

A star sounds like a nice thing to be.

Not if you’re supposed to be a pegasus. The story really scared me for a long time—that’s why I wanted it to be somewhere you could go and come back from, because I never went to sleep or woke up when I should. He riffled his feathers and looked up through the trees, as if the memory still made him restless. Because I couldn’t. And the Night Shaman always needs more stars. What do human grown-ups tell you is going to happen to you if you don’t behave?

Oh, that the bogeyman will come and carry you away, and grind your bones for his bread.

Ebon, who had begun polishing again, stopped. The bogeyman? The hrundagia, with all the teeth, and the long tail it can throw after you and catch you when you think you’ve run away? You say that to a little kid? You humans really are savages.

Sylvi sat up and laughed. That’s what my mother said when she found out one of my minders was telling me that. I didn’t see that minder again. I’ve never heard of the hrundagia.

You don’t want to. They’re bigger, meaner, and smarter than taralians. And if they’re real, they live here .

You’re right. I don’t want to. What are you doing?

Ebon held it up so the sunlight glinted off it. It’s good, isn’t it? It’s the best one I’ve done. It’s coetotl wood. First you polish it and then you oil it and then you polish it and then you oil it and you go on doing that. There are some words you say over it too—like the ones I taught you, but there are more of them, and they make everything dark and light around you while you say them.

And then at the end you hang it around your neck when you go to the Caves because it glows in the dark. This one’s for you. It doesn’t really need any more polishing but I begged some sihria oil off my master, and maybe it’ll glow a little more. The Caves have candles and torches and lamps everywhere but . . . well, you’ll see. You want to glow in the dark yourself when you’re in the Caves.

Sylvi pulled her knees up under her chin and hugged them. We really are going?

Ebon gave her a look even more disbelieving than when she’d mentioned the bogeyman. To the Caves? That’s what you’re here for. Never mind the talking. You can’t have forgotten.

She hugged her knees harder. It’s just . . . the Caves. And . . . ssshasssha, she added, stumbling over all the sss’s.

I know, said Ebon. But after yesterday . . . if you said you wanted to be empress they’d say, Oh, okay, what do you want your crown to look like? And even if you’d hated everything you saw here and stopped talking to me too and kept saying you wanted to go home . . . we’d still haul you to the Caves and shove you in, because we promised. I’m glad you’re not, you know, but we’d still take you. We told your dad we were going to take you to the Caves so we have to.

Why?

Why the Caves? Which part of the story do you want? I wanted you to see the Caves. And it was the best way to tell your dad how serious we were. I was already serious, and I wanted you to see the Caves. I knew Dad and Mum had been thinking about bringing Niahi to you, as soon as she was big enough to fly that far easily—she’d’ve had a hard time if she’d had to come for your twelfth birthday—but she could do it now. I hadn’t realised they were already thinking about how they might bring you to us. But . . . I think my dad and your dad get stuff over to each other even when they can’t talk about it. I think your dad was waiting for my dad to say something.

You wouldn’t really drag me to your precious Caves if I’d been whining and horrible, would you?

He looked surprised. Of course we would. We promised.

Things change, she said, thinking of old Orflung asking her if she wanted to come here, thinking of what had happened last night. Things change.

Not giving your word, said Ebon firmly. Giving your word doesn’t change. Ever.

She looked at him and for a moment the chasm that had lain between every human and every pegasus since Viktur had first followed the path through the mountains lay between her and Ebon, and it was so wide she knew they could never bridge it.

And then Ebon leaned over and shoved her hard with his nose. Aren’t you ever going to get up? It’s really pretty here and there’s a hill that has the best sunsets, and it’s a day for a good sunset. And there’s a shfeeah with a paper maker on the way, and an orchard. But you have to walk to it and I suppose you’re going to insist on having one of your baths first? I’ll make your breakfast—hrrifinig—pegasi usually had two or three more quick meals in a day than humans did, including hrrifinig between breakfast and lunch—lunch. Late lunch. Hurry up.

She could see that it was a day that should have a glorious sunset. But what was even more glorious to Sylvi was that she finally met some pegasus children: little ones, with long knobby legs and little ribby bodies—and barely fledged wings. There were several of them, and they hid behind their parents and their bigger siblings and peeped out at her. How can you know anything about a people if you have never seen its children?

She didn’t know how to make friends with them—she didn’t know what would look like a friendly gesture to a pegasus baby—and somehow she didn’t want to ask. If she had to ask it would be no good.

But children are always curious. She sat down on the ground to eat her porridge, thinking about what she could do to attract them that wouldn’t look totally foolish when it didn’t work. After she’d finished eating she put her bowl on the ground and crouched over it (it was shallow enough that she could, and did, lick it out first), staring into it as if it was the most interesting thing she’d ever seen. This was not difficult to do: the bowl had the same gentle luminescence that every pegasus-made object she had seen did: the soft glow of the endless tiny rubbing of feather hands that produced it. And the wood it was made of was strange to her, and the colour of the tree-rings as they faded one into the next was very beautiful. She remained staring—very conscious of a baby who had come right out from behind its mother to stare at her—hoping that Ebon wouldn’t come along and laugh at her too soon.

The almost-inaudible tap of tiny light hoofs. She didn’t dare look; the baby’s mother must be aware of what was happening.

With one of her little cousins she’d have needed a better toy than a bowl. But wasn’t she herself the new toy? Very slowly she put out one of her hands, very slowly uncurled one finger and very slowly touched the bottom of the bowl with her pointing finger.

The baby was a small but definite presence a little to her right; she could see out of the corner of her eye the slender shadows of its legs move as it took another step toward her. And now she could hear as it breathed in and out sharply, as if surprised at the smell of human. Sylvi hoped it wasn’t an unpleasant smell. She continued to stare at the bowl, and at her own finger.

Around her silence was falling: the silent voices were falling silent; the slight rustling of pegasi going about their business stilled.

The baby gave a prance. No, Sylvi thought, I’m not going to look at you; you have to come to me.

And it pranced up to her, and stopped, and put its face down, and touched her hand with its nose. Her nose: this fine little nose had to belong to a girl. Sylvi looked up then and smiled—smiled involuntarily, showing her teeth, the way humans do; humans bare their teeth when they’re pleased. But the baby didn’t skitter away, but wrinkled her muzzle in a pegasus smile as if she understood. Hroooo drifted through Sylvi’s mind, as soft and faint as the tap of baby hooves.

Hrooo to you too, Sylvi said, trying to say it quietly, how do you silent-speak quietly? she thought in despair, and the baby positively giggled: Hreee hreee hreee hreee, kicked up her heels, spread her infinitesimal wings and galloped around Sylvi three times before dashing off to stand behind her mother again. She poked her head out long enough to give one last cheeky “Hreee.”

Sylvi laughed, and stood up, and realised she felt better—lighter, freer—than she had since her father left—certainly since the night before, when she’d crawled into her nest of feathers feeling that she might never be able to stand up straight again from the weight she’d felt laid across her shoulders that evening.

That, said Ebon, is Hilililin, and she’s a brat. It would be Hili who had a go at you first.

She’s a very cute brat, said Sylvi.

The walkers set off almost at once, Ebon and Sylvi, Niahi, Feeaha, Aary, Dorheemiha, and Flanoohr; and the queen, Aliaalia.

There was a minor hubbub behind them—followed by the sound of tiny galloping hooves and an exasperated out-loud call. Even shouting, thought Sylvi, they have that musical resonance.

Why did I know this was going to happen? said Ebon. Hili bolted to Sylvi, hid behind her and poked her nose out to look at her mother, who was trotting toward them with her wings half roused. Sylvi could feel Hili panting as she leaned against Sylvi’s legs. “ There’s not much of me to hide behind, is there? ” she said out loud.

Lady, said Hili’s mum uncertainly.

Lady, Sylvi replied.“Fwif.”

Viawahah, said Ebon. Hilililin’s mum.

I— began Viawahah, and then stopped, obviously at a loss, dropping her wings and her head in a gesture, Sylvi thought, like spreading your hands and shrugging. It’s hard for them too, she thought. Of course it is.

Hilililin is a darling, she said.

“Hrooo, ” came a little voice behind her knees.

Viawahah’s head came up and her wings flattened and then folded neatly across her back: her upper lip just wrinkled and then smoothed again. She is a broliglag.

Monster, translated Ebon. It’s a small monster that gets into things. Like rats.

I am not a rat! put in Hili.

No, said Ebon. Your tail is too hairy.

I am not a broliglag!

Yes, you are, said Viawahah, and you’re too little to walk to the Golinghagah Hill. Come along.

I am not too little!

And furthermore, you weren’t invited, said Ebon.

At that, Hilililin drooped. She touched her nose to Sylvi’s hand like a good-bye, and went and stood by her mother.

The next time I come, said Sylvi, you’ll be bigger, and I’ll invite you.

Promise you won’t jump off anything and say you’re flying, and you can come now, said Ebon.

Hili’s head snapped around, and her mother’s wings began to rouse again. But—

I promise !

She can ride, said Ebon. He gave Sylvi a look through his eyelashes and added, I have a nice, broad, flat back, good for carrying passengers. I won’t let her fall off. He knelt, and then lay down, legs curled under him, and drew his nearer wing back. Climb up, small one, and mind where you put your hard little feet. Hili dithered for a moment, and then rushed forward and threw herself up Ebon’s side.

“Ggh,” said Ebon.

I’ll steady her while you get up, shall I? said Sylvi. She had already stepped forward and begun to put her hands out . . . and stopped. The pegasi had fallen silent again—that too-silent, too-still way they had. Sylvi curled her big strong human hands back against her body, trying to tuck them between her elbows and her rib cage where no one could see them, where she couldn’t embarrass herself or the pegasi with them, with what she could do and they could not. Surely the pegasi carried their babies on their backs sometimes? How did they do it?

She hadn’t meant to speak to be heard, but her inexperience betrayed her.

We have draia for many purposes, said the queen softly. Yes, of course we carry our babies. In the old days, before the Alliance, we had always to be ready to fly for our lives; and our children do not fly till they are several years old, and cannot fly far for some years after that. But we rarely carry them on our backs. There must be at least two of us to hold the baby while the bearer stands up; and our shamans have found no supporting word for this. A baby as big as Hili is now would be very difficult—indeed dangerous to those holding or lifting her. Our hands, once broken, do not heal readily.

I’m . . . sorry, said Sylvi, feeling wretched.

Yah, said Ebon from the ground. Since we have her, let’s use her. And she just said she’d come back, so we can use her some more. Come on, Syl, the sunset is soon. Grab the broliglag and let’s get on with it.

So Sylvi unfolded her hands again, feeling them like great ugly shovels suspended—sternly, unforgivingly—out in front of her. Hili quivered ever so slightly when Sylvi touched her—but at once put her nose to one of Sylvi’s hands again, this time as if in apology. She seemed to Sylvi to weigh so little that she might have floated off Ebon’s back if she moved incautiously.

Ebon stood up and Hili gave a little squeal of what was obviously pleasure. Watch yourself, you, said Ebon. I said I wouldn’t let you fall off—I didn’t say I wouldn’t make you want off.