Windhaven

When at last Evan had done, and he rose and put away the bowl and cloth, Maris thought she would burst with impatience. “Can I walk?” she asked.

  Evan looked at her, grinning. “Can you?”

  Her heart lifted at the challenge, and she sat up and slipped her legs over the edge of the bed. S'Rella offered her support, but Maris shook her head slightly, motioning her friend away.

  Then she stood. On her own two feet, without support. But there was something wrong. She felt dizzy and sick. She said nothing but her face gave her away.

  Evan and S'Rella moved closer. “What's wrong?” Evan asked.

  “I, I must have stood up too fast.” She was sweating, and afraid to move, afraid she would fall or faint or throw up.

  “Take it easy,” Evan said. “There's no rush.” His voice was warm and soothing, and he took her good arm. S'Rella offered support on her left side. This time Maris did not shake them off or try to move alone.

  “One step at a time,” said Evan.

  Leaning on them, guided by them, Maris took her first few steps. She felt mildly nauseated still, and strangely disoriented. But she also felt triumphant. Her legs were working again!

  “Can I walk by myself now?”

  “I don't know why not.”

  Maris took her first unsupported step, and then her second. Her spirits lifted. It was easy! Her legs were as good as ever. Trying to ignore the uneasiness in her stomach, Maris took her third step, and the room tilted sideways.

  Her arms flailed and she stumbled, seeking level ground in the suddenly shifting room, and then Evan caught hold of her.

  “NO!” she cried. “I can do it—”

  He helped her back on her feet and steadied her.

  “Let me go, please.” Maris drew a shaky hand across her face and looked around. The room was calm and still, the floor as flat as it had ever been. Her legs held up firmly. She took a deep breath and began to walk again.

  The floor suddenly slipped out from under her feet, and would have hit her in the face had not Evan caught her again.

  “S'Rella—hand me the basin,” he said.

  “I'm fine—I can walk—let me do it—” But then she couldn't speak, because she had to throw up, and blessedly S'Rella was holding a basin before her face.

  Afterward, shaky but feeling better, Maris walked back to the bed with Evan's guidance.

  “What's wrong?” Maris asked him.

  He shook his head, but he looked uneasy. “Maybe just too much exertion too soon,” he said. He turned away. “I have to go now and tend a colicky baby. I'll be back in an hour or so—don't try to get up until I return.”

  She was elated when Evan removed the cast from her arm; overjoyed that the arm proved whole and strong, with no permanent damage. She knew she would have to work hard at building up the muscles before she could fly again, but the idea of long, hard hours of exercise excited rather than dismayed her after so much time spent doing nothing.

  Too soon, S'Rella announced that she had to leave. A runner had come from the Landsman of Thayos. “He has an urgent message for North Arren,” she told Maris and Evan, making a disgusted face, “and his own flyers are off on other missions. But it is time I left anyway. I must get back to Veleth.”

  They were gathered around the rough wooden table in Evan's kitchen, drinking tea and eating bread and butter as a farewell breakfast. Maris reached across the table and took S'Rella by the hand. “I'll miss you,” she said, “but I'm glad you came.”

  “I'll return as soon as I can,” S'Rella said, “though I expect they'll keep me busy. Anyway, I'll spread the word about your recovery. Your friends will be relieved to hear.”

  “Maris hasn't entirely recovered,” Evan said quietly.

  “Oh, that's only a matter of time,” Maris said cheerfully. “By the time everyone hears from S'Rella, I'll probably be flying again.” She didn't understand Evan's gloom; she had expected his spirits to lighten with her own when her arm came out of the cast. “I may meet you in the sky before you get back here!”

  Evan looked at S'Rella. “I'll walk you to the road,” he volunteered.

  “You needn't bother,” she said. “I know my way.”

  “I'd like to see you off.”

  Maris stiffened at something undefined in his tone. “Say it here,” she said quietly. “Whatever it is, you may as well tell me.”

  “I've never lied to you, Maris,” Evan said. He sighed, and his shoulders slumped, and Maris suddenly saw him as an old man.

  Evan leaned back in his chair, but looked steadily into Maris' eyes. “Haven't you wondered about the dizziness you feel when you stand or sit or turn too suddenly?”

  “I'm still weak. I have to be careful. That's all,” Maris said, already defensive. “My limbs are sound.”

  “Yes, yes, we need have no worries about your legs, or your arm. But there is something else wrong with you, something that can't be reset, splinted and allowed to heal. I think something happened when you hit your head on the rock. There was some damage inside, to your brain. It affected your sense of balance, your depth perception, perhaps your vision. I'm not sure what exactly. I know so little—no one knows much . . .”

  “There's nothing wrong with me,” Maris said in a reasonable tone of voice. “I was dizzy and weak at first, but I'm getting better. I can walk now—you have to admit that—and I'll be able to fly again.”

  “You are learning to adjust, to compensate, that's all,” Evan said. “But your sense of balance was affected. You will probably learn to adjust to life on the ground. But in the air—an ability you need in the air may be gone now. I don't think you can learn to fly without it. So much depends on your sense of balance—”

  “What do you know about flying? How can you tell me what I need to fly?” Her voice was as hard and cold as ice.

  “Maris,” whispered S'Rella. She tried to catch Maris' hand, but the injured woman pulled away.

  “I don't believe you,” Maris said. “There's nothing wrong with me that won't heal. I will fly again. I am just a little sick, that's all. Why should you assume the worst? Why should I?”

  Evan sat still, thinking. Then he rose and went to the corner by the back door, where the firewood was kept. Separate from the logs and kindling were some long, flat boards, leftover lumber that Evan cut up to use as splints. He selected one about six feet long, seven inches wide, and two inches thick, and laid it down on the bare boards of the kitchen floor.

  He straightened up and looked at Maris. “Can you walk along this?”

  Maris raised her eyebrows in mocking surprise. Absurdly, her stomach was tight with nerves. Of course she could do it; she couldn't imagine failing such a test.

  She rose from her chair slowly, one hand gripping the table edge. She walked across the floor smoothly, not too slowly. The floor did not slip or buckle beneath her as it had that first day. Absurd to say there was anything wrong with her sense of balance; she wouldn't fall on level ground, and she wouldn't fall from a two-inch height.

  “Shall I hop on one foot?” she asked Evan.

  “Just walk along it normally.”

  Maris stepped upon the plank. It wasn't quite wide enough to stand normally, feet side by side, so she had to take a second step at once, with no time for consideration. She remembered high cliff ledges she had skipped along as a child, some with paths narrower than this board.

  The board wobbled and shifted beneath her feet. Despite herself, Maris cried out as she felt herself falling to one side. Evan caught her.

  “You made the board move!” she said in sudden fury. But the words sounded petulant and childish in her ears. Evan only looked at her. Maris tried to calm herself. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I didn't mean that. Let me try again.”

  Silently, he let go of her and stepped back.

  Tense now, Maris stepped up again and walked three steps. She began to waver. One foot went over the side onto the floor. She cursed and pulled it back, and took another step, and felt the board shi
ft again. Again she missed it. She lifted her foot back onto the board and took another step forward, and lurched to one side, falling.

  Evan did not catch her that time. She hit the floor on hands and knees and jumped up, her head spinning from the exertion.

  “Maris, enough.” Evan's firm, gentle hands were on her, pulling her away from the treacherous plank. Maris could hear S'Rella weeping softly.

  “All right,” Maris said. She tried to keep the anguish out of her voice. “There's something wrong. All right. I admit it. But I'm still healing. Give me time. I will get well. I will fly again.”

  In the morning, Maris began exercising in earnest. Evan brought her a set of stone weights, and she began working out regularly. She was dismayed to find that both her arms, not merely the injured one, were sadly weakened by her time of enforced idleness.

  Determined to test the air again as soon as possible, Maris had her wings taken to the keep, to the Landsman's own metalsmith, for repair. The woman was busy with preparations for the impending war, but a flyer's request was never to be ignored, and she promised to have the damaged struts straightened and restored within a week. She was true to her word.

  Maris checked out her wings carefully on the day they were returned, folding and unfolding each strut in turn, scanning the fabric to make sure it was taut and firmly mounted. Her hands fell to the task as if they had never stopped doing it; they were a flyer's hands, and there was nothing in all the world they knew how to do better than tend a pair of wings. Almost Maris was tempted to strap on the wings and make the long walk to the flyers' cliff. Almost, but not quite. Her balance had not yet come to her, she thought, though she was steadier on her feet now. Every night, surreptitiously, she gave herself the plank test. She had not yet passed it, but she was improving. She was not yet ready for wings, but soon, soon.

  When she was not working, sometimes she walked with Evan in the forest, when he went abroad to gather herbs or tend to other patients. He taught her the names of the plants he used in his work, and explained what each herb was good for, and when and how to use it. He showed her all manner of animals as well; the beasts of the chilly Eastern forests were not at all like the familiar denizens of Lesser Amberly's tame woods, and Maris found them fascinating. Evan seemed so at home in the forest that the creatures did not fear him. Strange white crows with scarlet eyes accepted breadcrumbs from his fingers, and he knew the hidden entrances to the tunnel-monkey lairs that honeycombed the wild, and once he caught her arm and pointed out a hooded torturer, gliding sensuously from limb to limb in pursuit of some unseen prey.

  Maris told him stories of her adventures in the sky and on other islands. She had been flying for more than forty years, and her head was full of wonders. She told him of life on Lesser Amberly, of Stormtown with its windmills and its wharves, of the vast blue-white glaciers of Artellia and the fire mountains of the Embers. She talked of the loneliness of the Outer Islands, hard up against the Endless Ocean to the east, and the fellowship that had once thrived on the Eyrie before flyers had divided into factions.

  Neither ever spoke of what lay between them, dividing them. Evan did not contradict Maris when she spoke of flying, nor did he mention any invisible damage to her head. The subject was like a patch of dangerous ground, no wider than a wooden plank, upon which neither was willing to step. Maris kept her occasional dizzy spells to herself.

  One day as they stepped outside Evan's house, Maris stopped him from turning deeper into the forest. “All those trees make me feel like I'm still inside,” she complained. “I need to see the sky, to smell clean, open air. How far away is the sea?”

  Evan gestured to the north. “About two miles that way. You can see where the trees begin to thin.”

  Maris grinned at him. “You sound reluctant. Do you feel sad when there aren't any trees around? You don't have to come if you can't bear it—but I don't understand how you can breathe in that forest. It's too dim and close. Nothing to smell but dirt and rot and leaf-mold.”

  “Wonderful smells,” Evan said, smiling back. They began to walk toward the north. “The sea is too cold and empty and big for my tastes. I feel comfortable and at home in my forest.”

  “Ah, Evan, we're so different, you and I!” She touched his arm and grinned at him, somehow pleased by the contrast. She threw her head back and sniffed the air. “Yes, I can smell the sea already!”

  “You could smell it on my doorstep—you can smell the sea all over Thayos,” Evan pointed out.

  “The forest disguised it.” Maris felt her heart lightening with the thinning of the forest. All her life had been spent beside the sea, or over it. She had felt the lack every morning waking in Evan's house, missing the pounding of the waves and the sharp salt smell, but most of all missing the sight of that vast, gray immensity, beneath an equally immense and turbulent sky.

  The tree line ended abruptly, and the rocky cliffs began. Maris broke into a run. She stopped on the cliff's edge, breathing hard, and gazed out over the sea and the sky.

  The sky was indigo, filled with rapidly scudding gray clouds. The wind was relatively gentle at this height, but Maris could tell from the patient circling of a pair of scavenger kites that up higher the flying was still good. Not a day for rushing urgent messages, perhaps, but a good day for playing, for swooping and diving and laughing in the cool air.

  She heard Evan approaching. “You can't tell me that's not beautiful,” she said, without turning. She took another step closer to the edge of the cliff and looked down . . . and felt the world drop beneath her.

  She gasped for breath and her arms flailed, seeking some solidity, and she was falling, falling, falling, and even Evan's arms wrapped tight around her could not draw her back to safety.

  It stormed all the next day. Maris spent the day inside, lost in depression, thinking of what had happened on the cliffs. She did not exercise. She ate listlessly, and had to force herself to tend to her wings. Evan watched her in silence, frowning often.

  The rain continued the following day, but the worst of the storm was past, and the downpour grew more gentle. Evan announced that he was going out. “There are some things I need from Port Thayos,” he said, “herbs that do not grow here. A trader came in last week, I understand. Perhaps I will be able to replenish my stores.”

  “Perhaps,” Maris said evenly. She was tired, though she had done nothing this morning except eat breakfast. She felt old.

  “Would you like to walk with me? You have never seen Port Thayos.”

  “No,” Maris said. “I don't feel up to it just now. I'll spend the day here.”

  Evan frowned, but reached for his heavy raincloak nonetheless. “Very well,” he said. “I will be back before dark.”

  But it was well after dark when the healer finally returned, carrying a basket full of bottled herbs. The rain had finally stopped. Maris had begun to worry about him when the sun went down. “You're late,” she said when he entered, and shook the rain from his cloak. “Are you all right?”

  He was smiling; Maris had never seen him quite so happy. “News, good news,” he said. “The port is full of it. There will be no war. The Landsmen of Thayos and Thrane have agreed to a personal meeting on that accursed rock, to work out a compromise about mining rights!”

  “No war,” Maris said, a little dully. “Good, good. Odd, though. How did it happen?”

  Evan started a fire and began to make some tea. “Oh, it was all happenstance,” he said. “Tya returned from another mission, bearing nothing. Our Landsman was rebuffed on all sides. Without allies, he did not feel strong enough to press his claims. He is furious, I'm told, but what can he do? Nothing. So he sent Jem to Thrane to set up a meeting, to haggle out whatever settlement he can. Anything is better than nothing. I would have thought he'd find support on Cheslin or Thrynel, particularly if he offered them a large enough share of the iron. And certainly there is no love lost between Thrane and the Arrens.” Evan laughed. “Ah, what does it matter? The war is off. Por
t Thayos is giddy with relief, except for a few landsguard who'd hoped to weigh down their pockets with iron. Everyone is celebrating, and we should celebrate too.”

  Evan went to his basket and rummaged among the herbs, pulling out a large moonfish. “I thought perhaps seafood would cheer you up,” he said. “I know a way of cooking this with dandyweed and bitternuts that will make your tongue sing.” He found a long bone knife, and began to scale the fish, whistling happily as he worked, and his mood was so infectious that Maris found herself smiling too.

  There was a loud knocking at the door.

  Evan looked up, scowling. “An emergency, no doubt,” he said, cursing. “Answer it if you would, Maris. My hands are full of fish.”

  The girl standing in the door wore a dark green uniform, trimmed with gray fur; a landsguard, and one of the Landsman's runners. “Maris of Lesser Amberly?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Maris said.

  The girl nodded. “The Landsman of Thayos sends his greetings, and invites you and the healer Evan to honor him at dinner tomorrow night. If your health permits it.”

  “My health permits it,” Maris snapped. “Why are we suddenly so honored, child?”

  The runner had a seriousness beyond her years. “The Landsman honors all flyers, and your injury in his service has weighed heavily on him. He wishes to show his gratitude to all the flyers who have flown for Thayos, however briefly, in the emergency just past.”

  “Oh,” Maris said. She still was not satisfied. The Landsman of Thayos had not struck her as the type who cared much about expressing gratitude. “Is that all?”

  The girl hesitated. Briefly her detachment left her, and Maris saw that she was indeed very young. “It is not part of the message, flyer, but . . .”

  “Yes?” Maris prompted. Evan had stopped his work to stand behind her.

  “Late this afternoon, a flyer arrived, with a message for the Landsman's ears only. He received her in private chambers. She was from Western, I think. She dressed funny, and her hair was too short.”

  “Describe her, if you can,” Maris said. She took a copper coin from a pocket and let her fingers play with it.