Knees shaking, she sank down beside Strell. He released Talon, and the ruffled bird shook herself, starting to preen in short, abrupt motions. Her complaints never stopped.
“Perhaps we should wait until we get home?” he said, and she felt a wash of defiance.
Fingers moving, Alissa caressed Talon to help the bird put her feathers in order. She felt her breath slip in and out of her in an easy motion as she gathered her resolve. “I don’t want to wait,” she whispered.
26
The wind was brisk atop Silla’s cliff, damp with the moisture of the afternoon’s rain. Alissa sat on an outcrop of stone by the drop-off with her arms clasped about herself as she looked over the edge. Talon was perched on her shoulder. The bird’s eyes were closed, and she was leaning forward as if delighting in the wind. Far below, the Albatross rode in the lagoon where they had left it. Alissa wondered how Hayden and the captain were doing.
To her other side was the unseen village under its canopy of mirth trees. A faint plume of smoke showed where the shelter was. By the shadows, it was almost noon. And if Alissa was honest with herself, she would admit she was too frightened to go back down.
She had stood Keribdis up.
Alissa’s breath came and went in a quick heave of worry. This morning she had told herself it was defiance. Now she wondered if it hadn’t been fear. Putting herself on Silla’s cliff had sounded like a grand idea at the time. The air had been cool, almost damp enough for a fog as she had made the tedious climb upward. Her thoughts had been simmering with revolt, making her strides long and her mind set. How dare Keribdis give her a scarf! She was Useless’s student. As far as Alissa knew, the sash still lay where she had left it. But with the sun hot upon her shoulders and her middle rumbling from hunger, Alissa’s rebellion had burnt itself to an ash of worry. She couldn’t just go down as if she had forgotten.
A small scuff on the path behind her brought Alissa spinning around. Frightened, she sent a questing thought out to find Silla. Immediately she slumped. “Hi, Silla,” she said as the purple-clad young woman puffed her way up the last steps.
Silla gave Alissa a small smile of greeting and went to stand at the edge. The wind tugged at the ribbons in her hair and the hem of her skirt to make her into a picture. Alissa felt a moment of sour self-consciousness. She would never be that beautiful.
“You really love him?” Silla said softly as if trying to understand. “A commoner?”
“I thought I was a commoner when I met him,” Alissa said, surprised at her question.
Silla’s thin shoulders shifted. Clearly she didn’t understand. But there was no disgust in her eyes, and Alissa would be satisfied with that. “Is Keribdis upset?” Alissa prompted.
A wry look came over Silla. “I’d say.”
Alissa frowned, wondering if her defiance would be worth the fallout.
“She took it out on me,” Silla added defensively.
“I’m sorry,” Alissa gasped.
“She had me doing first-decade wards all morning.” Silla looked down the drop. “I am so bored with fields, I could chew nails and spit rust.”
Alissa winced. “Sorry.”
Silla turned back, a wide smile on her. “Don’t be. No one could find you. Keribdis was quite vocal with her opinion of the situation. Which is how I found out it was possible to block a mental search.” She grinned. “I learned a new ward today, thanks to you.”
“So, how did you know where I was?” Alissa asked as she set Talon on the rock and held her hair out of her eyes.
Silla’s eyes dropped. Taking the ribbons from her hair one by one, she tied them about her wrist so they wouldn’t blow away. “Connen-Neute told me,” she said softly.
Alissa stiffened in a pang of angst until she remembered that Connen-Neute could find her whether she had set up a block or not. “Blocks don’t work between us because we’ve pickabacked,” she said. “I can’t hide from him, and he can’t hide from me. I’m not so sure I like it anymore.”
Silla made a small sound of surprise. “That’s what he said.” Pulling the last of the ribbons from her hair, she shook her head to let the wind take the black mass and stream it behind her. With the single gray ribbon she had kept in hand, she bound her hair in a simple tie. Looking almost embarrassed, she came to sit by Alissa.
“What was it like?” she said, her eyes scrunched from the bright sun. “Having Connen-Neute’s thoughts so close to yours they could mingle as if one?”
Alissa smiled as she heard the interest in Silla’s voice. “Scary at first. I almost burnt his tracings to a crisp before I got control of myself. I’d never had anyone that close before. It’s a shock, an assault, really, though it gets easier with trust.”
“Weren’t you afraid he would see all your thoughts, the secrets you never told anyone?”
Silla’s eyes were wide, and Alissa gave her a mirthless smile. “Yes, but I had no idea what the risk was until I had actually done it. I was innocent, and it was foolish. Now, I wouldn’t pickaback with anyone. Anyone but Connen-Neute, I mean.” She shook her head, then smiled a secret smile. “Strell, perhaps, if it was possible.”
Silla shuddered. “I could never do that.”
Alissa turned back to the view, thinking that might change someday. Though trust wasn’t interchangeable with love, you couldn’t have love without it. Her gaze went unseeing on the waves below. Perhaps trust was total understanding. She was unable to fly because she couldn’t find it within herself to trust the wind. By the same path, Beast couldn’t trust Strell, not even allowing a kiss now. Was it because Beast was unable to understand love? Alissa sighed. How was she going to teach Beast to understand something so basic?
“I wish I could fly properly,” Silla mused aloud. Scrambling to stand upon the rock, she closed her eyes and held her arms wide as if they were wings.
“You told me you could fly,” Alissa said.
“I can,” Silla said around a laugh. “I can fly in my sleep. I do fly in my sleep. Every so often, I wake up on a cliff edge or one of the other islands. Keribdis says it’s all right. That I shouldn’t worry. That I’ll outgrow it, like, uh . . .” She flushed. “Like night terrors. I just can’t do it very well, yet.” She shivered. “I don’t like updrafts.”
“Me neither,” Alissa said, eager to have found an understanding ear.
“You can fly.” Silla sounded hurt that Alissa might lie to make her feel better. “Connen-Neute said he broke his foot chasing you through a waterfall. Now that’s flying!”
“He didn’t break his—” Alissa bit back her words. If Connen-Neute couldn’t admit he had broken his foot tripping over a cliff’s edge, it wasn’t her place to bring it to Silla’s attention. “Do you want to practice?” Alissa suddenly offered. “Flying, I mean? The wind is perfect.”
“What, now?” Silla turned, her golden eyes wide and her arms clasped about herself.
“Beast? Up for a lesson?” Alissa asked, and a slow shiver filled her. A grin came over Alissa, pulled into existence from Beast’s eagerness.
“Yes,” Beast whispered. “I’d like another playmate.”
“Why not?” Alissa took off her string of bells and went to stare down the drop-off. “I can’t stay up here forever. I’m hungry.”
Silla fidgeted as she joined her. “I’ve always wanted to jump from here. I usually start from a run on the beach, using the updraft from the offshore breeze.”
“Like an albatross?” Alissa said, appalled, then winced as Silla flushed.
“Let’s fly,” Beast promoted. “You’re wasting good updrafts with your mouth chatter.”
Silla glanced over the edge again. “I don’t know. Keribdis and Yar-Taw have been trying to teach me, but I’m not supposed to fly on my own.”
“So who’s alone?”
Silla thought about that, smiling. “All right,” she said with a sudden determination.
A flash of anticipation went through Alissa as Silla vanished in a white mist and gre
w to her proper form. Alissa took her in with her human eyes, better able to estimate size that way.
Silla was very sleek as a raku, almost gaunt. Her tail wasn’t nearly as long as Alissa’s, but her hide had a pearly iridescence that Alissa lacked. Her wings were flawless, not a scratch on them, and Alissa felt a flash of coming shame for the ugly scar on her wing. The sun shone through their perfection to put Alissa in a golden shadow. Silla shook them in the wind before settling them against her properly.
Alissa squinted up at her, thinking she could almost forget the arm-long teeth and the talons that could span a ship’s wheel. Talon gave a call and launched herself from the rock. Jolted into action, Alissa shifted.
Her eyes closed in bliss as the wind went from a bother to a welcome companion. The ground seemed to tremble beneath her feet, and she realized the booming rumble she now heard was from the surf pounding the beach below. She opened her eyes to find the sky waiting for her, swirling with shades of darker blue and hints of purple to show her the updrafts.
“What happened to your wing?” Silla gasped into her thoughts, and Alissa started. She had forgotten she wasn’t alone.
“Uh, I ran into a tree,” she said. Her entire body went pink as she blushed, but she wasn’t going to blame her scars on anything but the truth. Alissa picked up Redal-Stan’s fallen watch. It fit snugly over the knuckle Bailic had broken. She shook open her wings, and with Beast in control, she lifted off the cliff’s edge as if stepping into the air.
“Bone and Ash,” Alissa almost moaned into Beast’s thoughts. “It’s been too long since we’ve flown.”
Beast said nothing, shunning her usual barrel rolls and sudden dives. She simply glided, glorying in the feel of the wind pushing on them. Perhaps, Alissa thought to herself, she should fly every morning so Beast would have some time to be herself.
“How gracious of you,” Beast said wryly, and Alissa cringed.
“Where’s Silla?” Alissa questioned, and Beast made an elegant turn. Alissa blinked in surprise as she spotted Silla standing at the drop-off, her wings awkwardly half open.
“She can’t fly,” Beast said. “Look at her. Her wings are wrong to rise up on the updraft, and she isn’t bunching her strength in her haunches for a launch.”
“She’s just learning,” Alissa admonished.
“She isn’t learning anything,” Beast said back. “Not crouched on that cliff as she is.”
“Well, what should I tell her to do?” Alissa thought, tingeing her tone with irritation.
“The same thing I’ve been telling you to do. Cup your wings about the air and let it pick you up,” Beast said dryly.
Alissa sighed, thinking this was going to be like the lame leading the blind. Talon dived from the higher reaches, calling aggressively as she tried to entice Alissa into a game of chase. Beast casually rolled on to her back and caught the startled bird in a gentle grip. Talon’s scream cut off in a shocked peep. Alissa, too, was surprised—not for having caught her but for the casual way Beast had done it.
“Go fly somewhere else if you aren’t going to be a help,” Beast thought as she rolled upright and released the ruffled bird. Talon dropped for a heartbeat, then found her wind, rising up higher than before. Alissa turned back to the cliff.
“You’re better than even Keribdis, I’d wager,” Silla thought, her wistful tone clear despite the distance. “I’ll never be able to do that.”
“Of course you will,” Alissa thought encouragingly.
“I can’t even soar,” Silla was saying. “I can’t find it within me to—to . . .”
“To trust the wind?” Alissa said, almost afraid when the young raku nodded; it sounded so familiar. At Alissa’s subtle suggestion, Beast angled them back to the cliff and landed. Wings snapping sharply, she folded the unwieldy spans of canvas tight against her. She couldn’t read raku emotions very well, but if it had been her, she’d be depressed. “Let’s start from the beginning,” Alissa said. “Open your wings.”
Silla did, looking as hesitant and ungainly as fledgling balancing on the edge of a nest.
“Tell her to arch her back,” Beast said.
“Arch your back a little more,” Alissa relayed.
“And bring the tips of her wings forward.”
Thinking relaying everything was going to get tedious, Alissa opened her own wings. “Like this,” she said, demonstrating. Silla mimicked her, seeming nervously encouraged.
“Now lean forward,” Beast said. “And close your eyes so you can taste the wind.”
Silla did, and Alissa stiffened. Beast had said that directly to Silla, but the wisp of a raku hadn’t seemed to notice the difference.
“The wind is a force as much as the ground beneath your feet,” Beast said, and Alissa knew Silla was hearing as well. “You can see it. You can feel it. It won’t drop you unless you refuse to let it carry you. Keep it flowing over your wings, and it will never fail.”
Silla’s breath was slow and deep.
“Let it lift you,” Beast said. “It’s the only thing you can trust.”
Silla’s lips curled back over her teeth. Grimacing, she leaned forward. Alissa held her breath as Silla left the cliff’s edge with hardly a shift in her wings. Alissa hastily followed, thrilling in Silla’s success. “You did it!” Alissa shouted, and Silla’s flight bobbled.
“Don’t talk to me!” the young raku exclaimed, her thoughts thick with excitement. “Don’t talk! I can’t listen.”
The wind was cold against Alissa’s teeth as she grinned. Slowly she came up alongside of Silla in a gentle glide. It felt good to help someone for a change instead of causing trouble. “See the updraft billowing up along the beach?” she said, smiling as Silla darted a quick glance up, and than back down. “Let’s ride it all the way around the island. We can end up on the beach in front of the village.”
“All right.”
“Just watch what I do,” Alissa encouraged, and Beast put them on a slow glide that would get them to the beach with the fewest upwellings of forest heat to contend with. Alissa’s first flash of pride for Silla slipped slowly from her, replaced with a cloud of self-pity. Silla was a better flyer than she was. At least Silla was being honest, doing it on her own.
“You’ll learn to fly as soon as you trust the wind,” Beast soothed. “I don’t know why you don’t. It will never betray you. It’s so obvious.”
“Yes,” Alissa thought sourly back. “As obvious as love. Trusting the wind isn’t in me, Beast. I can’t do it.”
“I don’t think it’s in Silla, either,” Beast said, a hint of warning in her tone.
Alissa felt her balance shift as Beast settled them into the updraft over the beach. Silla was right beside her, mirroring her exactly. She held her wings too tense but managed all the same. Together they followed the line of the beach, the salt heavy in the air. “What do you mean, Beast?” she questioned. Beast was conspicuously silent, and it stuck Alissa like a cold slap out of the dark. Silla retained her feral consciousness. That was why neither of them could fly properly. And why Silla was the only one Alissa could reach halfway around the world.
Suddenly the sun wasn’t enough to warm Alissa. Silla didn’t know. If she was waking up on cliff tops and nearby islands, then it followed that her feral consciousness was spontaneously taking control at night when Silla lay asleep. But why hadn’t she gone completely feral?
“No Master destroys their feral sides at first transition,” Beast thought, and Alissa’s heart pounded. “They suppress them, thinking they’re destroyed. And I did not evolve from nothing. I’ve always been here. The first time you shifted form, we got separated.”
Alissa went cold, seeing the truth in it.
“The raku-child is balancing on the edge,” Beast continued, speaking of Silla. “She’s suppressing her beast so far that she can’t fly. If she doesn’t allow enough of it to surface, she’ll probably die from a flight accident. If she brings it too close, she will go feral.”
“Wolves,” Alissa breathed, hearing it escape her in a rumble. She looked to see they had wound around nearly the entirety of the island. The village beach was before them, empty but for Yar-Taw fishing in the surf. He was in his raku form, thigh deep in the salt water. He looked up at the shadow of wings over him. His neck arched in surprise.
Silla snaked her head to look at her. “I don’t want to stop,” she said, pride radiating from her. “I’m not tired. Let’s go around again.”
“I-I have to sit down,” Alissa stammered. “Silla. I don’t feel well.”
There was a sudden burst of half-heard mental communication, and Alissa turned to the village. Her stomach knotted, and she felt herself stall.
“Silla!” Keribdis’s mental shout was far too loud, and the young raku beside Alissa faltered. She lost her concentration, and her wings collapsed.
“Angle your wings!” Beast shouted.
Silla beat her wings wildly, managing to set down in an ungraceful spray of sand. She shook her wings free of it. Her head was high in excitement, and her eyes glinted in success as she looked first to Alissa, then Yar-Taw.
Alissa landed next to her, frightened as Keribdis came to a wind-snapping halt before them. Keribdis was alarming as a woman, but to see her as a raku was enough to panic Alissa.
“Did you see me?” Silla bubbled. “Keribdis! Did you see? I flew all the way around the island. I started from the lookout and went all the way around!”
“I saw you, winglet!” Keribdis snapped, and Silla’s eyes went wide. “I told not to fly alone. You could have killed yourself!”
“I wasn’t alone,” Silla said with a faltering thought, and Alissa’s fear solidified into a sour lump. “Alissa was with me. She can fly wonderfully. She was helping me.”
Keribdis let her second eyelid fall, turning her eyes from gold to bloodred. Alissa took a shocked step back. Frightened, she curled her long tail twice about her body, the tip trembling.
“Where were you this morning?” the furious raku wedged deep into Alissa’s thoughts.
Alissa shifted. Flustered, she ended up reappearing in the first outfit she had managed to fix into her thoughts: Keeper garb. It probably wasn’t the best choice. Yar-Taw had waded out of the surf but was keeping in the background. “I was on the cliff, meditating,” Alissa said, hearing her voice tremble. Her gaze flicked to Yar-Taw. He shook his head in warning, and she belligerently added, “And you aren’t my teacher. Talo-Toecan is.”