Ebon had tried to tell her, when he’d helped her with her speech: Stop making those great thumping human pauses. Someone could fall into one and disappear forever. Just speak it, don’t—I don’t know, don’t march it, like Fthoom coming down a corridor, thud thud thud.
She hadn’t known what he meant. She thought possibly she did now.
That morning Ebon was rattling the bushes at her before she had climbed out of her pond-bath. If you don’t want me to come in there after you, he said, hurry up. It’s late, and we have a long way to go.
She emerged from her little private glen still damp, crossly, rubbing her wet hair but already aware that the pegasi themselves were speaking aloud less since her father had left. This, presumably, was the usual pegasus way; they had spoken aloud more for her father’s sake, since humans were accustomed to mouth-language. Now that it was only herself, the human who could silent-speak to one of their own …
All alone. Her father had left her all alone—
She had washed out her clothes from the day before because she didn’t want to be dirty. She hadn’t seen a pegasus bathe, or swim, or even seen one wet, but they all gleamed, while she was almost hairless and faintly wrinkly—even the wrinkles across her knuckles, the folds in the bends of her elbows, looked ridiculous to her, surrounded by pegasi—and couldn’t gleam. But that meant she now had wet clothing to do something with—what long way did they have to go?
Here. Eat. There was a thin wooden bowl of something hot and soft that tasted a little like oatmeal with the bran still in, and another bowl of cold liquid that was almost but not quite water. Her face was the wrong shape to eat the oatmeal out of the bowl, so she dipped it up stickily and inefficiently with her fingers. It wasn’t too hot for her mouth, but it was for her fingers. She sucked them, and eyed the bushes, wondering if she could use a twig….
Oh, wet textiles, you humans, ugh, you’re obsessed with putting things in water.
She didn’t know what he did with them; he bore them off distastefully, tossing them round over his neck with his teeth and shuddering dramatically when they smacked down across his back, while she tried to eat without burning her fingers or getting oatmeal on her forehead. At this rate she’d need another bath.
But out on the meadow her drai was being laid out. She wouldn’t say the pegasi were hurrying, but the dance was quicker. The bowls were gently taken away from her, one at a time, by a pegasus whose name was something like Feeaha, and, putting her tentative new understanding into practise she said, “Thank you, lady,” trying to make it all one word, Genfwaalloofwif, and making what she hoped was a recognisable word-sign with one hand, since she didn’t have a tail and neither her nose nor her ears were mobile enough.
Feeaha looked at her what she feared was blankly for a moment—she’d probably said something like “may all your children have seven legs”—and then answered “Gwahayiiaya,” which Sylvi heard as distinctly as if her father had wished her good morning. It meant, more or less, “your thanks are unnecessary but thanks for thanking me,” which did at least mean Feeaha knew what she’d tried to say. It wasn’t really peculiar that it might be easier to talk to the pegasi here, in their own country; it wasn’t that the air was clearer and sweeter and the sounds were only things like birdsong and wind. It wasn’t that there were no other humans here … that there were no magicians here. It was only that the pegasi were concentrating on her, and she on them.
The pegasi harnessed to her drai lifted it into the air as she sat down; as the ropes took the strain she heard the web-magic words breathed into the air, and then she was swaying gently slightly higher than she was tall when standing on her own feet. As the feather-hands tucked a blanket over her and tied the safety ropes around her, she felt something being attached to the back of the drai, but she thought it would probably be rude (and impossible) to crane round far enough to see what it was. Perhaps it was only that she was expecting it this time, but she felt much less apprehensive this morning as the pegasi surged into a gallop almost instantly, and they were airborne before she’d had a chance to remember that she still didn’t know where they were going.
Where are we going?
To the Caves, of course!
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 invitati
on 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 l
egs 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.