Robin McKinley - Pegasus

It’s only a week, said Ebon. I’ll be back. He sounded subdued, not at all like his usual self.

I know, she said. It’s only a week.

He said, At least you get to sleep in one of your great human bedsagain.

She’d missed being outdoors under the sky the night before. Her bedroom had felt small and cramped, although the ceiling was better than twice her height above her. She’d leaned on the balustrade that had in a way started it all, the balustrade Ebon had flown in over and landed, skittering, on her bedroom floor, the night of her twelfth birthday, four years and several centuries ago.

She had leaned out as far as she could over it, till the rain ran down her face and made her sneeze, trying to breathe air that wasn’t in a room, thinking that the palace was so huge that even the air around it felt like house air, wondering if she could take a blanket out and sleep in one of the pavilions, knowing that she couldn’t, for the same reasons that Ebon was going home tomorrow. She had to appear completely normal, completely untouched by the last three weeks, completely as she had been when the king had allowed her to leave her human home and visit her bondmate at his home in the pegasi lands. Bondmate, she’d thought. Bondmate or bondfriend—that’s what the pegasi always call it. It’s much better than the silly formal human Excellent Friend.

The Caves had never felt as stifling as the palace did now.

She wondered where Ebon was, if he was asleep. She knew that despite the openness of their annex the pegasi often wandered out into the parkland and on rainy nights might sleep in one of the pavilions. Which was why she could not. It would not matter if she chose an empty pavilion; the humans who had not liked her journey would not like her sleeping as the pegasi slept after she returned. I would not be sleeping as the pegasi sleep, she thought. I don’t have wings to keep me warm; and my neck is too short to let my head be comfortable without a pillow.

She’d grow used to sleeping in a bedroom again—she thought, as the rain ran down her neck and wetted her nightgown—but some of the change in her was permanent, even if she did not know herself which part of it that was. Would she still be able to talk to other pegasi ? Could she risk trying? What if what made the pegasus shamans ill now made her ill? Was there the tiniest, most minuscule, invisible reason for Fthoom’s aversion to any closeness between human and pegasus ? She remembered Dorogin’s eyes....

She did not want to remember Dorogin’s eyes.

She thought of Redfora, and Oraan. For a moment she could taste Redfora’s honey-syrup on her tongue. She had gone back to bed and curled round that taste, that memory, and fell asleep, her wet hair soaking into the pillow.

Now she wanted to ask Ebon which pavilion they’d slept in, the night before, but she didn’t ask. She told herself, if I knew, I would go visit it, and he would not be there.

Yes, she said. With lots of pillows.

And hot water for all those baths, said Ebon. You wouldn’t like bathing in our ponds in winter.

Her father came up beside her and put an arm around her. She touched Ebon’s nose, briefly, barely long enough for her fingertips to register the velvet of it, and one of his feather-hands reached forward and swept over her cheek. Then she stepped back, closer into the circle of her father’s arm, and Ebon turned away and joined the other pegasi—all but Lrrianay, who stood at Corone’s shoulder, for he was staying at the palace. Only Guaffa was carrying anything; she recognised her drai , rolled up and lashed round his neck. The eleven pegasi who were leaving trotted, cantered . . . and flew. She knew it was only her eyes that made Ebon’s leap into the air the most beautiful. The backdraught of their wings brought the scent of their land to her: she had not realised there was a characteristic smell—a grassy, flowery, earthy smell—she didn’t remember noticing it on her arrival there. Perhaps that’s the smell of spring, she thought. What does summer smell like, autumn, winter? I would rather know than have hot water for baths.

Sylvi found that her legs were shaking, and she put her own arm around her father’s waist, to hold herself upright. They remained standing like that for a long minute, Lrrianay standing motionless behind them, till the pegasi had disappeared into the dawn twilight. Until Sylvi was sure her legs would hold her and she could let go, and speak lightly and aimlessly to the courtiers who gathered round the two of them; and she still kept one hand on the back of one her father’s tall hounds, for balance, for the small consolation of warm fur.

She exchanged a look with Lrrianay, but neither of them spoke.

That night again she leaned on the railing of the window Ebon had flown through on the night of her twelfth birthday, leaned out till the air against her face felt cool and smelled of plants, not of wood smoke and laundry soap and furniture wax and potpourri. After a minute or two she sighed, went and fetched a chair, and sat on the railing with her feet on the chair. She was uncomfortably aware of her own body: the way it balanced upright and folded in the middle: the curious position it took to sit on a railing with its feet on a chair. And the usefulness of the strong hands and long bony fingers to clasp the railing.... I’m back, she thought. I’m home. They’re all like me here. She let go with one hand and examined it, spreading the fingers, rotating the wrist to inspect both the palm and the back.

He’ll be here again in seven days, she said to herself. Six and a half. And I’m human, and we’re built like this. We can’t help it.

There was a soft knock on the door. Sylvi dropped her hand hastily, as if she were doing something forbidden; but she seemed to have mislaid the power of human speech. She opened her mouth and no words came. She had spent all day talking and talking and talking.... The door opened gently, and her mother put her head through. “May I come in?”

“Of course,” Sylvi said, surprised into remembering. She slid down off the railing as her mother closed the door behind her and looked thoughtfully at her daughter.

“Not ‘of course,’ ” said the queen. “Not any more. Although I’m not sure when the change happened. Maybe only in the last three weeks.”

Sylvi’s eyes, to her horror, filled with tears. She stiffened against them, and blinked till her eyes burned. Her mother said nothing; she had made a gesture toward her daughter, but drew back again at the expression on Sylvi’s face. At last Sylvi said, “How can everything change in three weeks? Three little weeks.”

Her mother smiled. “Sometimes they change in a moment.”

Sylvi thought of hearing Ebon’s voice in her head for the first time: I knowthat, he had said. Aren’t you excited , or are you just a dull stupid human? “Yes. Sometimes they do.”

Her mother drifted across the room and sat on the foot of Sylvi’s bed. “Can I do anything for you? Anything to—to help you come home again.”

“Oh,” said Sylvi. “Is it that obvious?”

“That you’re wandering around like a lost soul?” said her mother. “Possibly only to your father and me. And maybe Ahathin; it’s hard to guess what he knows. And Glarfin. He knows everything.”

Ahathin is a magician, Sylvi thought. We are not all bad, Redfora had said: Don’t make that mistake. I wonder, Sylvi thought, what would happen if Ahathin tried to cross the border into Rhiandomeer?

Real life began again tomorrow: real life, including lessons and projects. She wondered what sort of a report she would be expected to provide out of her trip to Rhiandomeer—she’d welcome a plain return to her work on dams and bridges, but she knew she wouldn’t be let off so easily. Danacor would be home tomorrow; he’d been held up in Darkford by a report of ladons. She would be glad to see him; she loved all her brothers, but he was the most . . . she couldn’t think of the word. He had that quality that their father did, that if he was present, then anything that needed to be fixed would be fixed.