Lawrence Watt-Evans - Taking Flight

“Well, all right, then,” she said. “We probably couldn’t get very far tonight anyway, in the dark. We’ll talk at the inn over there, all right?”

“All right,” Kelder agreed.

By the time they reached the inn Irith’s wings were gone, and some of her annoyance was gone as well. She didn’t so much as grimace when she realized that she would be paying for everything.

“At least we’ll be comfortable in here,” she said.

The inn was arranged with tables along the walls and high backs to the benches that accompanied them, forming booths and providing an unusual degree of privacy. The three of them took one of these booths and ordered two ales and a lemonade from a young man with an apron and a tray.

As soon as the young man had departed, Asha asked Irith, “How could you watch us without us seeing you?”

Irith sighed. “Do I really have to tell you?”

“I think so,” Kelder said. “At least, if you want us to travel with you.”

“All right, then,” she said. “Mostly I was either a cat or a bird; sometimes I was invisible, but I have trouble with that.”

“What’s ‘invisible’?” Asha asked.

“It means I’m still there, but nobody can see me. Except it’s not comfortable and I can’t see very well when I do it, and it only lasts a few minutes, so mostly I didn’t get very close or anything, I just stayed a bird and flew overhead, or a cat and watched you from a distance. Except cats and birds … well, cats can’t hear low noises very well, so I couldn’t hear what anyone was saying when I was a cat. Birds can hear low noises, but they don’t hear very well sometimes. So when you were coming up the cliff I snuck up close as a cat and then turned invisible and listened, and you were talking to that old man and he was talking about going to Shan with me years ago, but he didn’t, I never went there with him!”

“You’re sure of that?” Kelder asked.

“Of course I’m sure! I never traveled with that scruffy old drunk!”

“Well, he wasn’t a scruffy old drunk, back then,” Kelder pointed out.

“When?” Irith demanded.

“Forty years ago-forty-three, I think it was, actually.” Kelder watched her reaction closely. Would she be surprised, declare the whole idea of her doing anything forty years ago to be ridiculous?

“Forty years ago?” Irith stopped and stared.

That was ambiguous, Kelder thought; she hadn’t dismissed it as ridiculous, but she hadn’t accepted it, either. “Were you around forty-three years ago?” he asked.

“Well, of course I was, but I wasn’t associating with dirty old men!”

There it was. She had been around back then; it wasn’t her mother or grandmother. Asha stared. Kelder swallowed, and said, “He was nineteen, maybe twenty.

“Oh,” Irith said, taken aback. “Oh, I guess he would have been, wouldn’t he?”

Kelder nodded.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” she said.

“Did you know him?”

She frowned. “I don’t know,” she said. “What’s his name?”

“Ezdral.”

Irith stared. Her eyes grew wider than Kelder would have thought possible.

“Ezdral?” she said. “That’s Ezdral of Mezgalon? It really is?”

“That’s what he says,” Kelder told her.

“I was sort of afraid it might be somebody I knew once, you know,” Irith said, the words spilling out in a rush. “And I really hated to think about anyone I know getting old and icky like that, and drinking so much and lying around, so I didn’t like it when he said he knew me and I wanted to get away from him-but I never thought it might be Ezdral!” She blinked. “That’s awful!”

“He says you traveled with him when he was young, and then one day he woke up and you weren’t there.”

“Well, that’s sort of true,” Irith admitted. “I mean, I was there, at first, but he didn’t see me. And I’ll bet he didn’t mention that we’d had a fight the night before, did he? Or that he’d been being a real pest, talking about all this stupid stuff about settling down and raising kids.”

“What’s stupid about it?” Asha asked, before Kelder could react.

“I’m too young, that’s what!” Irith said quickly.

Asha and Kelder looked at each other. Kelder’s visions of a life of domestic bliss with Irith suddenly seemed much less attainable.

“Oh, it was all a long time ago, anyway,” Irith said.

“Irith,” Kelder said, “it was a long time ago, more than forty years ago, but you keep saying you’re only fifteen.”

“I am only fifteen!” she retorted angrily.

“How are you only fifteen?” Kelder asked. “Where were you between then and now? Were you under a spell or something?”

“A spell?” Irith stared at him.

“Turned to stone, maybe?”

“Silly,” she said, almost laughing, “of course not! I’ve been traveling, enjoying the World.”

“For forty years?”

“Longer, really.”

“How long?”

“Oh, well…”

“How long?” Kelder demanded.

“I don’t know,” she said defensively. “I haven’t kept track.”

Kelder found himself momentarily baffled by this response. How could anyone not know something like that?

Irith stared at him in mild irritation. “Why are you asking so many questions? What difference does it make?”

“When were you born?” Kelder asked. “What year?”

“Oh, well, if you put it like that,” Irith said, “I was born in 4978.”

“That’s more than two hundred years ago!” Kelder said, shocked.

“Yes, I guess it is,” Irith admitted.

“So you’re more than two hundred years old?” Asha asked, fascinated.

“No,” Irith insisted, “I’m fifteen! I’ve been fifteen for two hundred years, and I’ll always be fifteen!”

“Always?” Kelder asked.

Irith nodded. “It’s part of the spell,” she said.

Asha and Kelder exchanged glances. “So you are under a spell?” Asha asked.

“No, not like that,” Irith said.

Kelder asked, “Then like what? What spell are you talking about?”

“Well, the one that made me what I am, of course,” Irith said. “The one that made me a shapeshifter and everything.”

Just then the young man in the apron returned with their drinks; they accepted them, and waited until the young man had departed again.

Kelder sipped his ale, then turned back to Irith. “I think,” he said, “that you’re going to have to tell us all about it.”

Irith looked at him, at the unsmiling expression on his face, and then down at Asha, sitting beside him, her own little mouth set firmly.

Irith sighed.

“Oh, all right,” she said, “I’ll tell you the whole story.” She shifted on the bench, and then remarked by way of preamble, “You know, you two aren’t being any fun at all!”

The others just sat, and Irith began. “It’s called Javan’s Second Augmentation of Magical Memory,” she said. “The spell, I mean.”

“Tell us about it,” Kelder said.

“How did you learn it?” Asha asked. “Were you a magician?”

Irith frowned. “I guess I’d better start all the way back at the beginning,” she said.

She took a deep breath and began, “I was born in the Third Military District of Old Ethshar, which was already being called Dria-it was run by someone we called a Colonel, but he declared himself king when I was five. It was a lot bigger then than Dria is now-the Colonel ruled everything as far east as Thuth.”

She saw the rather blank expressions on both Kelder’s and Asha’s faces, and explained, “That’s all on the eastern plains, between the mountains and the desert-south of here.”