George Martin: Windhaven

“You,” he said.

The child looked up, terrified, and found him smiling at her.

“Don’t be frightened,” he said. “I won’t hurt you.”

She took a step backward. She had often watched the flyers, but none of them had ever noticed her before.

“Who is she?” the flyer asked his helper, who was standing behind him holding his folded wings.

The young man shrugged. “Some clam digger. I don’t know. I’ve seen her hanging around before. Do you want me to chase her off?”

“No,” the man said. He smiled at her again. “Why are you so afraid?” he asked. “It’s all right. I don’t mind your coming here, little girl.”

“My mother told me not to bother the flyers,” the child said.

The man laughed. “Oh,” he said. “Well, you don’t bother me. Maybe someday you can grow up and help the flyers, like my friends here. Would you like that?”

The girl shook her head. “No.”

“No?” He shrugged, still smiling. “What would you like to do, then? Fly?”

Timidly, the child managed to nod.

The older woman sniggered, but the flyer glanced at her and frowned. Then he walked to the child and stooped and took her by the hand. “Well,” he said, “if you’re going to fly, you have to practice, you know. Would you like to practice?”

“Yes.”

“You’re too little for wings just now,” the flyer said. “Here.” He wrapped strong hands about her, and hoisted her up to his shoulders, so she sat with her legs dangling on his chest, and her hands fumbling uncertain in his hair. “No,” he said, “you can’t hold on if you’re going to be a flyer. Your arms have to be your wings. Can you hold out your arms straight?”

“Yes,” she said. She raised her arms up and held them out like a pair of wings.

“Your arms are going to get tired,” the flyer warned, “but you can’t lower them. Not if you want to fly. A flyer has to have strong arms that never get tired.”

“I’m strong,” the girl insisted.

“Good. Are you ready to fly?”

“Yes.” She began to flap her arms.

“No, no, no ,” he said. “Don’t flap. We’re not like the birds, you know. I thought you watched us.”

The child tried to remember. “Kites,” she said suddenly, “you’re like kites.”

“Sometimes,” the flyer said, pleased. “And night-hawks, and other soaring birds. We don’t really fly, you know. We glide like the kites do. We ride on the wind. So you can’t flap; you have to hold your arms stiff, and try to feel the wind. Can you feel the wind now?”

“Yes.” It was a warmer wind, sharp with the smell of the sea.

“Well, catch it with your arms, let it blow you.”

She closed her eyes, and tried to feel the wind on her arms.

And she began to move.

The flyer had begun to trot across the sand, as if blown by the wind. When it shifted, he shifted as well, changing directions suddenly. She kept her arms stiff, and the wind seemed to grow stronger, and now he was running, and she bounced up and down on his shoulders, going faster and faster.

“You’ll fly me into the water!” he called. “Turn, turn!”

And she tilted her wings, the way she had watched them turn so often, one hand going up and one down, and the flyer turned to the right and began to run in a circle, until finally she straightened her arms again, and then he was off the way he had come.

He ran and ran, and she flew, until both were breathless and laughing.

Finally he stopped. “Enough,” he said, “a beginning flyer shouldn’t stay up too long.” He lifted her off his back and set her on the sand again, smiling. “There now,” he said.

Her arms were sore from holding them up so long, but she was excited almost to bursting, though she knew a spanking was waiting at home. The sun was well above the horizon. “Thank you” she said, still breathless from her flight.

“My name is Russ,” he said. “If you want another flight, come see me sometime. I don’t have any little flyers of my own.”

The child nodded eagerly.

“And you,” he said, brushing sand from his clothes. “Who are you?”

“Maris,” she replied.

“A pretty name,” the flyer replied pleasantly. “Well, I must be off, Maris. But maybe we’ll go flying again sometime, eh?” He smiled at her and turned away, and began walking off down the beach. The two helpers joined him, one carrying his folded wings. They began to talk as they receded from her, and she heard the sound of his laughter.

And suddenly she was running after him, churning up the sand in her wake, straining to match his long strides.

He heard her coming and turned back to her. “Yes?”

“Here,” she said. She reached into her pocket, and handed him the clam.

Astonishment broke over his face, then vanished in the warmth of his smile. He accepted the clam gravely.

She threw her arms around him, hugged him with a fierce intensity, and fled. She ran with her arms held out to either side, so fast that she almost seemed to fly.

Maris rode the storm ten feet above the sea, taming the winds on wide cloth-of-metal wings. She flew fiercely, recklessly, delighting in the danger and the feel of the spray, not bothered by the cold. The sky was an ominous cobalt blue, the winds were building, and she had wings; that was enough. She could die now, and die happy, flying.

She flew better than she ever had before, twisting and gliding between the air currents without thought, catching each time the updraft or downwind that would carry her farther or faster. She made no wrong choices, was forced into no hasty scrambles above the leaping ocean; the tacking she did was all for joy. It would have been safer to fly high, like a child, up above the waves as far as she could climb, safe from her own mistakes. But Maris skimmed the sea, like a flyer , where a single dip, a brush of wing against water, meant a clumsy tumble from the sky. And death; you don’t swim far when your wingspan is twenty feet.

Maris was daring, but she knew the winds.

Ahead she spied the neck of a scylla, a sinuous rope dark against the horizon. Almost without thinking, she responded. Her right hand pulled down on the leather wing grip, her left pushed up. She shifted the whole weight of her body. The great silver wings—tissue thin and almost weightless, but immensely strong—shifted with her, turning. One wingtip all but grazed the white-caps snapping below, the other lifted; Maris caught the rising winds more fully, and began to climb.

Death, sky death, had been on her mind, but she would not end like that—snapped from the air like an unwary gull, lunch for a hungry monster.

Minutes later she caught up to the scylla, and paused for a taunting circle just beyond its reach. From above she could see its body, barely beneath the waves, the rows of slick black flippers beating rhythmically. The tiny head, swaying slowly from side to side atop the long neck, ignored her. Perhaps it has known flyers, she thought then, and it does not like the taste.

The winds were colder now, and heavy with salt. The storm was gathering strength; she could feel a trembling in the air. Maris, exhilarated, soon left the scylla far behind. Then she was alone again, flying effortlessly, through an empty, darkening world of sea and sky where the only sound was the wind upon her wings.

In time, the island reared out of the sea: her destination. Sighing, sorry for the journey’s end, Maris let herself descend.

Gina and Tor, two of the local land-bound—Maris didn’t know what they did when they weren’t caring for visiting flyers—were on duty out on the landing spit. She circled once above them to catch their attention. They rose from the soft sand and waved at her. The second time she came around they were ready. Maris dipped lower and lower, until her feet were just inches above the ground; Gina and Tor ran across the sand parallel to her, each beside a wing. Her toes brushed surface and she began to slow in a shower of sand.