Robin McKinley - Pegasus

Hibeehea was wearing another little pouch around his neck on a string, and he dropped his head and rubbed the string over his ears with a foreleg, then knelt by the water. He loosened the mouth of the pouch with his teeth, laid it down, nudged it over with his nose, and a small stoppered bottle rolled out.

After over a fortnight in their country Sylvi was still not accustomed to the way the pegasi did things—the way they had to do things—because their hands had no gripping strength. At the palace the pegasi were rarely seen doing anything but being splendidly elegant—and, she thought now, that was partly because they were rarely seen to do anything except stand at the shoulder of their bound human or a little behind the bound pegasus they attended, as Lrrianay’s courtiers did. It was some of why they seemed so enigmatic—and some of why the humans seemed so much in command. But she wondered now if some of that tradition came from some human, long ago, perhaps even Balsin himself, wishing to preserve his allies’ dignity against human foolishness. It would be easy, in human terms, to think less of a shaman seen kneeling, using his teeth and his nose.... She had to stop herself, as she had often had to stop herself these last three weeks, from trying to help, which she knew instinctively would be utterly and grotesquely rude. She had forgotten, that once with Ebon and Hili—but that was because it had been Ebon. To offer aid to a shaman, to the king’s shaman . . .

Hibeehea stood up, graceful as ever; she hadn’t noticed till now that his long forelock had been twisted back round his ear and plaited into the mane at his poll, and tied there with ribbons. He was standing quite close to her, and she could see that the plait was made up of many tiny plaits; had his son or daughter done it? His—what was the word— hrmmmhr ? Did shamans wed or have children? Or perhaps an acolyte did such things for a master? She couldn’t imagine him doing it himself.

There is still so much I don’t know about just ordinary things, she thought. Who plaits you if you’re plaited?

The little bottle lay where he had left it. Take the bottle, said Hibeehea, and choose your water.

Choose your water? Sylvi thought—only to herself, she hoped—what an odd way to put it. But she bent and picked up the bottle (grasping it only with the tips of her fingers as if to minimize the length of her fingers, the strength of her hand), and knew at once what he meant; this was not where she should fill her bottle. She took a hesitant step along the shoreline, away from the rest of the pegasi.

Yes, said Hibeehea. Go where you are taken. Ebon, you may go with her. And Hibeehea turned and left them.

It was not so very far after all. They came to a place where the trees grew to the edge of the water and one bent old fellow bowed so low that his leaves trailed across the water.

He looks like a pegasus with a very long mane come to drink, said Sylvi.

Eh? said Ebon. He probably has a name. You could ask Hibeehea. This is where your water is, is it? as she knelt and flicked the stopper out of the bottle, wondering how a pegasus would do it, and not wanting to ask. It’s a little like something that happens when you’re accepted as an apprentice to a sculptor, Ebon said. Idly he pawed at the pebbles at the waterline. The sculptor who has said he’ll sponsor you—or she—takes you to one of the big chambers with several other sculptors who’ve agreed to be part of your choosing. There are a lot of small stones lying around—that have been scattered around. You have to choose one. Which one you choose decides what happens next. There’s an old mwhumhum, a, er, scare-story that everyone who is trying to be accepted hears, that if you choose the wrong stone you don’t get apprenticed after all, but I’ve never heard of it happening. What does happen sometimes is that you aren’t apprenticed to your sponsor after all.

Were you?

No. Silence.

What went wrong? she asked bluntly, standing up.

Ebon raised his head, but he looked away from her.

Ebon?

I don’t know why I’m telling you this, he said, except that mostly I tell you everything, and the Dreaming Sea does this kind of thing to you, like makes you tell stuff you weren’t planning on telling. He stopped.

My dad said that about just being here—I mean in your country.

Ebon cocked an ear and moved one foreleg back: thoughtfulness. Did he? Maybe we can bring him here some day.... Maybe, now, they’ll let us bring— He stopped again.

Mum, thought Sylvi. Not just Dad. Danny. Ahathin. I’d like to bring Ahathin here. Maybe he could figure out what went wrong. Maybe he could bend our magicians’ magic so that . . . Redfora . . . I don’t suppose I can ask her to help us.

Sylvi rubbed his mane, and said, Tell me.

Ebon sighed. There was some question about me being apprenticed at all, because of our binding. The sovereign’s family doesn’t usually get apprenticeships to shamans or sculptors because we have to spend too much time at your palace. Apprentices to shamans or sculptors may disappear for years while they learn their trade. I’m two years older than you, you know, and Niahi is a half year younger. I never even thought about it, when I was little, as soon as I found out about binding: Niahi was going to be your pegasus, and I was going to be a sculptor. They could find a third cousin who never came to the palace to bind me to. Then I found out I was going to have to be your pegasus after all—but I was still going to be a sculptor! He gave one of the musical half-humming, half-snorting huffhuffhuffing noises that was his out-loud laughter. I was going to be a sculptor like later on I was going to bring you here for your birthday. It was just going to happen.

I did one or two things pretty well—that you have to demonstrate to be considered for apprenticeship—unexpectedly well for a king’s to-be-bound son. Gedhee agreed to be my sponsor, saying that it still depended on the choosing. If I chose one of his stones, he’d accept me—he has a cousin who’s bound to one of your cousins, and she’s still a sculptor.

Deerian. I can’t remember her pegasus’ name.

Fwanfwah. Yes. But Deerian doesn’t require her pegasus’ presence much.

She almost never comes to the palace.

Eah. And I’d be bound to the princess. So there was this question about whether I couldbe apprenticed to a sculptor. I wondered if the story about choosing the wrong stone and not being apprenticed after all was about a bound pegasus, but nobody knew, and Dad told me I’d chosen my path so walk it and shut up. Well, you know what I mean. Then there were almost no sculptors willing to come to my choosing. Gedhee said, Never mind, I’ll take you, we’ll work it out. What if I choose the wrong stone? I said. Well, you’d better not, Gedhee said.

On the day there were three.... Usually there are at least five sculptors, sometimes more. You’re allowed to bring one person with you, who, uh, stands for you. Like declaring you’re serious—as if there were any possibility you weren’t, but you know how rituals are. So there was Dad and me and only three sculptors. Gedhee and Brax. And Shoorininuin. Ebon paused again. Shoor doesn’t take apprentices. . . . So there’s only three of ’em and one of ’em is Shoorininuin and I . . . it doesn’t really work like this with the stones, it’s not one stone for one sculptor, or at least I don’t think it is—there’s magic to it, of course. But I was completely blown by seeing Shoor there and I looked at all the stones, because there were lotsof them—nobody had told me there were going to be so many that I was going to break either my feet or my knees just trying to walk across them. And I thought, if I pick up the wrong stone it’ll be Shoor and he’ll say forget it. What was Shoorininuin doing there, for rain and hail’s sake?