Robin McKinley - Pegasus

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.