Windhaven - Страница 17

Sena’s good eye regarded Maris skeptically, and she pulled her hand away. “It is,” she insisted. “Of course they don’t tell you. No one wants to bring bad news, and they all know what the academies mean to you. But it’s true.” Maris tried to interrupt, but Sena waved her quiet. “No, enough, and not another word about my distress. I did not call you here to comfort me, or to make us late for breakfast. I wanted to tell you the news privately, before I told the others. And I wanted to ask you to fly to Big Shotan for me.”

“Today?”

“Yes,” Sena said. “You have been doing good work with the children. It is a real benefit to them to have an actual flyer in their midst. But we can spare you for one day. It should only take a few hours.”

“Certainly,” Maris said. “What is this about?”

“The flyer who brought the news about Airhome to the Landsman also brought another message. A private message for me. One of Nord’s students wishes to continue his studies here, and hopes that I will sponsor him in the next competition. He asks for permission to travel here.”

“Here?” Maris said, incredulous. “From Eastern? Without wings?”

“He has word of a trader bold enough to try the open seas, I am told,” Sena said. “The voyage is hazardous, to be sure, but if he is willing to make it I will not begrudge him admission. Take my agreement to the Landsman of Big Shotan, if you would. He sends three flyers to Eastern every month, and one is due to leave on the morrow. Speed is important. The ships will take a month getting here even if the winds are kind, and the competition is only two months away.”

“I could take the message direct to Eastern myself,” Maris suggested.

“No,” said Sena. “We need you here. Simply relay my word to Big Shotan and then return to fly guard on my clumsy young birds.” She rose unsteadily from her wicker chair, and Maris stood up quickly to help her. “And now we should see about breakfast,” Sena continued. “You need to eat before your flight, and with all the time we have spent talking, I fear the others have probably eaten our share.”

But breakfast was still waiting when they reached the common room. Two blazing hearths kept the large hall warm and bright in the damp morning. Gently curving walls of stone rose to become an arched and blackened ceiling. The furniture was rough and sparse: three long wooden tables with benches running the length of each side. The benches were crowded with students now, talking and joking and laughing, most at least half finished with their meals. Nearly twenty would-be flyers were currently in residence, ranging in age from a woman only two years younger than Maris to a boy just shy of ten.

The hall quieted only a little when Maris and Sena entered, and Sena had to shout to be heard above the din and clatter. But after she had finished speaking, it was very quiet indeed.

Maris accepted a chunk of black bread and a bowl of porridge and honey from Kerr, a chubby youth who was taking his turn as cook today, and found a place on one of the benches. As she ate, she conversed politely with the students on either side of her, but she could sense that neither had her heart in it, and after a short time both of them excused themselves and left. Maris could not blame them. She remembered how she had felt, years earlier, when her own dream of being a flyer had been imperiled, as their dreams were imperiled now. Airhome was not the first academy to shut its doors. The desolate island-continent of Artellia had given up first, after three years of failure, and the academies in the Southern Archipelago and the Outer Islands had followed it into oblivion. Eastern’s Airhome was the fourth closing, leaving only Woodwings. No wonder the students were sullen.

Maris mopped her plate with the last of the bread, swallowed it, and pushed back from the table. “Sena, I will not be back until tomorrow morning,” she said as she rose. “I’m going to fly to the Eyrie after Big Shotan.”

Sena looked up from her own plate and nodded. “Very well. I plan to let Leya and Kurt try the air today. The rest will exercise. Be back as early as you can.” She returned to her food.

Maris sensed someone behind her, and turned to see S’Rella. “May I help you with your wings, Maris?”

“Of course you may. Thank you.”

The girl smiled. They walked together down the short corridor to the little room where the wings were kept. Three pair of wings hung on the wall now; Maris’ own and two owned by the academy, dying bequests from flyers who had left no heirs. It was hardly surprising that the Woodwingers fared so poorly in competition, Maris thought bitterly as she contemplated the wings. A flyer sends his child into the sky almost daily during the years of training, but at the academies—with so many students and so few wings—practice time was not so easily come by. There was only so much you could learn on the ground.

She pushed the thought away and lifted her wings from the rack. They made a compact package, the struts folded neatly back on themselves, the tissue-metal hanging limply between and drooping toward the floor like a silver cape. S’Rella held them up easily with one hand while Maris partially unfolded them, checking each strut and joint carefully with fingers and eyes for any wear or defect that might become evident, too late, as a danger in the air.

“It’s bad about them closing Airhome,” S’Rella said as Maris worked. “It happened just the same way in Southern, you know. That was why I had to come here, to Woodwings. Our own school was closed.”

Maris paused and looked at her. She had almost forgotten that the shy Southern girl had been a victim of a previous closing. “One of the students from Airhome is coming here, as you did,” Maris said. “So you won’t be alone among the savage Westerners anymore.” She smiled.

“Do you miss your home?” S’Rella asked suddenly.

Maris thought a moment. “Truthfully, I don’t know that I really have a home,” she said. “Wherever I am is my home.”

S’Rella digested that calmly. “I suppose that’s a good way to feel, if you’re a flyer. Do most flyers feel that way?”

“Maybe a little bit,” Maris said. She glanced back to her wings and set her hands to work again. “But not so much as me. Most flyers have more ties to their home islands than I do, though never so many as the land-bound. Could you help me stretch that taut? Thanks. No, I didn’t mean that particularly because I’m a flyer, but just because my old home is gone and I haven’t made a new one yet. My father—my stepfather, really—died three years ago. His wife died long before that, and my own natural parents are both dead as well. I have a stepbrother, Coll, but he’s been off adventuring and singing in the Outer Islands for a long time now. The little house on Lesser Amberly seemed awfully big and empty with Coll and Russ both gone. And since I had no one to go home to, I went there less and less. The island survives. The Landsman would like his third flyer to be in residence more often, no doubt, but he makes do with the two at hand.” She shrugged. “My friends are flyers, mostly.”

“I see.”

Maris looked at S’Rella, who was staring at the wing she still held with more concentration than it warranted. “You miss your home,” Maris said gently.

S’Rella nodded slowly. “It’s different here. The others are different from the people I knew.”

“A flyer has to get used to that,” Maris said.

“Yes. But there was someone I loved. We talked of marrying, but I knew we never would. I loved him—I still love him—but I wanted to be a flyer even more. You know.”

“I know,” Maris said, trying to be encouraging. “Perhaps, after you win your wings, he could—”

“No. He’ll never leave his land. He can’t. He’s a farmer, and his land has always been in his family. He—well, he never asked me to give up the idea of flying, and I never asked him to give up his land.”

“Flyers have married farmers before,” Maris said. “You could go back.”

“Not without wings,” S’Rella said fiercely. Her eyes met Maris’. “No matter how long it takes. And if—when—I win my wings, well, he’ll have married by then. He’s bound to. Farming isn’t a job for a single person. He’ll want a wife who loves the land, and a lot of children.”

Maris said nothing.

“Well, I have made my choice,” S’Rella said. “It’s just that sometimes I get… homesick. Lonely, maybe.”

“Yes,” Maris said. She put a hand on S’Rella’s shoulder. “Come, I have a message to deliver.”

S’Rella led the way. Maris slung her wings over a shoulder and followed down a dark passageway that led to a well-fortified exit. It opened on what had once been an observation platform, a wide stone ledge eighty feet above where the sea crested and broke against the rocks of Seatooth. The sky was gray and overcast, but the wild salt smell of the ocean and the strong, eager hands of the wind filled Maris with exhilaration.

S’Rella held the wings while Maris fastened the restraining straps around her body. When they were secure, S’Rella began to unfold them, strut by strut, locking each into place so the silver tissue pulled tight and strong. Maris waited patiently, aware of her role as teacher, although she was anxious to be off. Only when the wings were fully extended did she smile at S’Rella, slide her arms through the loops, and wrap her hands around the worn, familiar leather of the wing grips.

Then, with four quick steps, she was off.

For a second, or less than a second, she fell, but then the winds took her, thrumming against her wings, lifting her, turning her plunge into flight, and the feel of it was like a shock running through her, a shock that left her flushed and breathless and set her skin to tingling. That instant, that little space of less than a second, made it all worthwhile. It was better and more thrilling than any sensation Maris had ever known, better than love, better than everything. Alive and aloft, she joined the strong western wind in a lover’s embrace.