Robin McKinley - Pegasus

I think that if you sleep any more the Night Shaman will take you away and make you a star, but Dad says yesterday was a hard day and we won’t go anywhere today and if you want to sleep through it that’s fine. And I say that I don’t want to sleep through it and there’s stuff to show you and you don’t have to talk. And you should get up because what if the Night Shaman isn’t just a fairy tale?

Night Shaman?

Eah. He gets you both ways—if you don’t go to sleep when you’re supposed to and if you don’t wake up when you’re supposed to. Then you’re a star awake in the sky forever and ever, showing pegasi where to fly. When you’re little you think that if you fly high enough you’ll be able to see the stars even in daylight. I used to think there was some kind of mountain ridge up there where all the star-pegasi stood, shining and being awake all the time. And you should be able to visit them for a while when you don’t feel like sleeping and then come back again. Dad recommends against telling the story like that when I have kids, though, because I’m likely to have kids like I was a kid.

You tried to fly up to the ridge, right?

Of course.

A star sounds like a nice thing to be.

Not if you’re supposed to be a pegasus. The story really scared me for a long time—that’s why I wanted it to be somewhere you could go and come back from, because I never went to sleep or woke up when I should. He riffled his feathers and looked up through the trees, as if the memory still made him restless. Because I couldn’t. And the Night Shaman always needs more stars. What do human grown-ups tell you is going to happen to you if you don’t behave?

Oh, that the bogeyman will come and carry you away, and grind your bones for his bread.

Ebon, who had begun polishing again, stopped. The bogeyman? The hrundagia, with all the teeth, and the long tail it can throw after you and catch you when you think you’ve run away? You say that to a little kid? You humans really are savages.

Sylvi sat up and laughed. That’s what my mother said when she found out one of my minders was telling me that. I didn’t see that minder again. I’ve never heard of the hrundagia.

You don’t want to. They’re bigger, meaner, and smarter than taralians. And if they’re real, they live here.

You’re right. I don’t want to. What are you doing?

Ebon held it up so the sunlight glinted off it. It’s good, isn’t it? It’s the best one I’ve done. It’s coetotl wood. First you polish it and then you oil it and then you polish it and then you oil it and you go on doing that. There are some words you say over it too—like the ones I taught you, but there are more of them, and they make everything dark and light around you while you say them.

And then at the end you hang it around your neck when you go to the Caves because it glows in the dark. This one’s for you. It doesn’t really need any more polishing but I begged some sihria oil off my master, and maybe it’ll glow a little more. The Caves have candles and torches and lamps everywhere but . . . well, you’ll see. You want to glow in the dark yourself when you’re in the Caves.

Sylvi pulled her knees up under her chin and hugged them. We really are going?

Ebon gave her a look even more disbelieving than when she’d mentioned the bogeyman. To the Caves? That’s what you’re here for. Never mind the talking. You can’t have forgotten.

She hugged her knees harder. It’s just . . . the Caves. And . . . ssshasssha, she added, stumbling over all the sss’s .

I know, said Ebon. But after yesterday . . . if you said you wanted to be empress they’d say, Oh, okay, what do you want your crown to look like? And even if you’d hated everything you saw here and stopped talking to me too and kept saying you wanted to go home . . . we’d still haul you to the Caves and shove you in, because we promised. I’m glad you’re not, you know, but we’d still take you. We told your dad we were going to take you to the Caves so we have to.

Why?

Why the Caves? Which part of the story do you want? I wanted you to see the Caves. And it was the best way to tell your dad how serious we were. I was already serious, and I wanted you to see the Caves. I knew Dad and Mum had been thinking about bringing Niahi to you, as soon as she was big enough to fly that far easily—she’d’ve had a hard time if she’d had to come for your twelfth birthday—but she could do it now. I hadn’t realised they were already thinking about how they might bring you to us. But . . . I think my dad and your dad get stuff over to each other even when they can’t talk about it. I think your dad was waiting for my dad to say something.

You wouldn’t really drag me to your precious Caves if I’d been whining and horrible, would you?

He looked surprised. Of course we would. We promised.

Things change, she said, thinking of old Orflung asking her if she wanted to come here, thinking of what had happened last night. Things change.

Not giving your word, said Ebon firmly. Giving your word doesn’t change. Ever.

She looked at him and for a moment the chasm that had lain between every human and every pegasus since Viktur had first followed the path through the mountains lay between her and Ebon, and it was so wide she knew they could never bridge it.

And then Ebon leaned over and shoved her hard with his nose. Aren’t you ever going to get up? It’s really pretty here and there’s a hill that has the best sunsets, and it’s a day for a good sunset. And there’s a shfeeah with a paper maker on the way, and an orchard. But you have to walk to it and I suppose you’re going to insist on having one of your baths first? I’ll make your breakfast—hrrifinig— pegasi usually had two or three more quick meals in a day than humans did, including hrrifinig between breakfast and lunch— lunch. Late lunch. Hurry up.

She could see that it was a day that should have a glorious sunset. But what was even more glorious to Sylvi was that she finally met some pegasus children: little ones, with long knobby legs and little ribby bodies—and barely fledged wings. There were several of them, and they hid behind their parents and their bigger siblings and peeped out at her. How can you know anything about a people if you have never seen its children?

She didn’t know how to make friends with them—she didn’t know what would look like a friendly gesture to a pegasus baby—and somehow she didn’t want to ask. If she had to ask it would be no good.

But children are always curious. She sat down on the ground to eat her porridge, thinking about what she could do to attract them that wouldn’t look totally foolish when it didn’t work. After she’d finished eating she put her bowl on the ground and crouched over it (it was shallow enough that she could, and did, lick it out first), staring into it as if it was the most interesting thing she’d ever seen. This was not difficult to do: the bowl had the same gentle luminescence that every pegasus-made object she had seen did: the soft glow of the endless tiny rubbing of feather hands that produced it. And the wood it was made of was strange to her, and the colour of the tree-rings as they faded one into the next was very beautiful. She remained staring—very conscious of a baby who had come right out from behind its mother to stare at her —hoping that Ebon wouldn’t come along and laugh at her too soon.

The almost-inaudible tap of tiny light hoofs. She didn’t dare look; the baby’s mother must be aware of what was happening.