Robin McKinley - Pegasus

No, she’s a sweetie really. It runs in the family: she looks just like her dad, and her daughter looks just like her. They’d all give you their last feather if you were cold.

She’d had to tell Garren. She’d almost made him promise not to mention their conversation to Poih, when she realised he couldn’t. And it wasn’t the sort of thing you’d ask your Speaker to say for you. Human people often looked different than you found out they were too: Lord Ranruth, for example, one of her father’s councillors, whom she’d been terrified of when she was little, because he was always wearing a scowl. The scowl was short-sightedness: as soon as you got close enough, his big round face broke into an enormous smile. If people and pegasi were different from the way they appeared, mightn’t their Alliance be different too?

Different how? Why was there no ... no feel to it, this great important thing? Why did it seem no more than a silken representation on a banner, this thing that Balsin had called the foundation upon which their country was built? And that made magicians central to their lives? How could it hearten you when you couldn’t feel it?

She’d asked her father shortly after the awful morning that had resulted in Fthoom’s being given his charge, if Fthoom was likely to do it, well, honestly.

The king made a snorting, humming noise rather like a pegasus laugh. “No. But I’ve assigned him a huge number of helpers, which will, I hope, go some little way toward softening the blow of my stripping him from his position in my court and, at the same time, make it harder for him not to do what I asked him to do.” The king looked bleakly into the empty air for a moment and addd, “ The sad thing is that I’ve meant for years—for most of my working life as king—to set that task. Why aren’t there more stories about friendship between human and pegasus? Even your favourite, Erisika, isn’t quoted much beyond that they fought together as why she considered Dlaiali a friend. But there has never seemed to be the time and the people to do it.”

Sylvi had done a quick intensive study of how to avoid Fthoom. This was made easier by the fact he never went anywhere without an entourage, and by the fact that he had the sort of mind that believed that doing something the same way added to his consequence, so he always used the king’s library’s west portal, which was, of course, the grandest. The drawback was that the king’s library was also the country’s largest and grandest library, so he rarely went to any others, allotting any searching, fetching and carrying tasks to his staff. Before the day of her binding Sylvi had learnt to like finding books in the library—you often found other interesting ones on the way to the one you were looking for—but since the day after her binding she preferred to send messages, like her father, and have the material she wanted brought to her.

The queen one day told her that Fthoom had submitted an interim report saying that the work was going well—

“Which means he hasn’t found anything,” Sylvi interrupted. “He’s not going to find anything because he is determined not to find anything! He doesn’t want there to be any record of real communication—real friendship—between humans and pegasi!”

“No, he doesn’t, but if his committee finds such a record, it will be reported,” said the queen. “And don’t forget Cory and Lrrianay—your and Ebon’s relationship may be unprecedented, but friendship between bondmates is not.”

“Dad said he’s always wanted to appoint a commission to do what Fthoom is doing now, and it had never been the right time,” said Sylvi.

“So there,” said the queen. “We’re getting some use out of Fthoom after all.”

Sylvi tried to smile.

“It will be all right, love,” said the queen.“Remember that the longer it takes Fthoom to find nothing—because I’m afraid I agree he probably will find nothing; if there were anything, it would be a favourite bedtime story, not to mention the basis of dozens of plays and hundreds of ballads—the longer Fthoom takes to find nothing, the more used our people will have become to seeing you and Ebon together. The more normal and ordinary it will be.”

It ought to be very normal and ordinary by now, thought Sylvi a little wryly. She and Ebon were very popular guests at fairs and fêtes and festivals and, with Fthoom on everyone at the palace’s minds, she and Ebon were encouraged to accept as many (carefully screened) invitations as they could bear to. Since Ebon reported that his family felt the same way, they accepted a lot of invitations. Ebon was much better about these occasions than she was. I keep telling you—they aren’t my people. It’s easier for me.

They went with an entourage—just like Fthoom, Sylvi thought without humour. Occasionally, for a very grand one, she wore a frock and rode in a carriage, but usually she and Ahathin and at least one of her attendant guards, plus up to a dozen assorted aides and escorts all travelled on horseback, and Sylvi would pull a princessy tunic over her riding clothes when they arrived. (She also learned to bring a dog-brush on the chance that a hound or two or three would be found to have followed them and could be tidied up to join their company.)

Ebon would meet them there—with at least one pegasus attendant of his own, sometimes two or three; and they would be wearing a few flowers or a few ribbons, or especially vivid examples of the little embroidered bags around their necks that the pegasi often wore. Sylvi’s pony grew very fond of Ebon and would neigh when he saw him, and Ebon would whuffle at him in a way Sylvi found very like the way she would make a conversation out of “Good dog, what a good dog, there’s a good dog, stand still so I can get the knots out, what have you been rolling in?”

Pegasi looked almost more like four-legged birds, standing next to horses. Their necks were longer and their bodies shorter in comparison, their ribs tremendously widesprung for lung space and their shoulders broad for wing muscles, but tapering away behind to almost nothing; their bellies tucked up like sighthounds’, although there were deep lines of muscle on their hindquarters. Their legs seemed as slender as grass stems, and the place where the head met the neck was so delicate a child’s hands could ring it; they moved as if they weighed nothing at all, as if they might float away, even without spreading their wings.

And no human could ever take their eyes off a pegasus’ wings.

Sylvi and Ebon’s entourage stayed watchfully nearby, but the two of them were the centre of attention. All the little children wanted to pet Ebon—Ebon put up with this with unimpaired good humour, while Sylvi tried not to let it show that she felt it was an impertinence, which she did. Not from the children, but from their parents—didn’t they know you weren’t supposed to touch the pegasi? No one ever offered to stroke any pegasus who had come with Ebon—but Ebon was not only the one out in front with the princess Sylviianel, he was also a terrible flirt. He would put his head down till he was eye to eye with a toddler who was smiling and waving at him, and then tap its cheek or its nose with one of his feather-hands. If one too small to walk on its own screamed in excitement and bounced up and down in its parent’s arms he would very likely stamp a foot (gently) and go “eeeeeeeee” back at it. He even gave pony rides to the littlest. The first few times this happened, all the human eyes within range nearly stood out on stalks—the rule about not riding pegasi apparently had filtered comprehensively through the entire population.

Just lift the kid up there and stop fussing, he’d said the first time. Only the tiniest, mind. Nobody big enough to break a feather if they get too thrilled and start kicking, that’s the rule.