Windhaven - Страница 53

“She’s very young,” said Maris.

Coll shrugged and set his guitar aside again. “Yes. There’s time. I don’t press her.” He blinked and yawned hugely. “It must be past my bedtime.”

“I’ll show you to a room,” Evan said.

Coll laughed and shook his head. “No need,” he said. “After four days, I feel quite at home here.”

He stood, and Maris also rose, gathering up the empty mugs. She kissed Coll goodnight and then lingered as Evan banked the fire and straightened the furniture, waiting to walk hand in hand with him to the bed they shared.

For the next few days Coll kept Maris’ spirits high. They were together constantly and he told her stories of his adventures and sang to her. In all the years since Coll had first gone wandering with Barrion, and Maris had become a full-fledged flyer, they had not spent much time together. Now, as the days passed and Coll and Bari lingered, they grew closer than they had been since Coll’s boyhood. He spoke for the first time of his failed marriage and his feeling that it was his fault for being so much away from home. Maris did not speak of her accident, or her unhappiness, but there was no need. Coll knew all too well what the wings had meant to her.

As the days merged almost imperceptibly into weeks, Coll and Bari stayed on. Coll traveled abroad to sing at the inns in Thossi and Port Thayos, while Bari began trailing after Evan. She was quiet, unobtrusive, and attentive, and Evan was pleased by her interest. The four of them lived comfortably together, taking turns with the chores and gathering together in the evenings for stories or games before the fire. Maris told Evan, told Coll, told herself, that she was contented. She thought of no other life.

Then, one day, S’Rella arrived.

Maris was alone in the house that afternoon, and she answered the knocking on the door. Her first response was one of pleasure at the sight of her old friend, but even as she opened her arms to embrace, Maris felt her eyes drawn to the wings S’Rella carried slung over one arm, and her heart lurched painfully. As she led S’Rella to a chair near the fire, and put the kettle on for tea, she was thinking dully, soon she’ll fly away again and leave me.

It required a great effort for her to seat herself beside S’Rella and ask, with a show of interest, for news.

S’Rella’s face was shining with barely repressed excitement. “I’ve come here on business,” she said. “I’ve come with a message for you. I’ve come to ask you, to invite you, to make the voyage to Seatooth, and live there as the new head of the Academy. They need a strong, permanent teacher at Woodwings, not like the ones who have come and gone over the past six years. Someone committed, someone knowledgeable. A leader. You, Maris. Everyone looks up to you—there could be no one better than you for the job. We all want you there.”

Maris thought of Sena, dead nearly fifteen years now, as she had been in the last years of her very long life. The fallen, crippled flyer, standing on the cliff at Woodwings, shouting herself hoarse as she tried to convey her knowledge of flight to the young Woodwingers circling in the air above her. Never to fly again herself, permanently grounded with one almost useless leg and one blind, milkwhite eye. Forever standing below, staring fiercely into the storm-winds, watching the Woodwingers fly away from her, year after year. All those years until she finally died. How had she borne it?

A deep shudder went through Maris, and she shook her head wildly.

“Maris?” S’Rella sounded bewildered. “You’ve always been the staunchest supporter of Woodwings—of the whole system. There’s still so much you could do… What’s wrong?”

Maris stared at her, goaded, wanting to scream. She said, very softly, “How can you ask that?”

“But…” S’Rella spread her hands. “What can you do here? Maris, I know how you feel—believe me. But your life isn’t over. I remember that once you told me that we, we flyers, were your family. We still are. It’s foolish to exile yourself like this. Come back. You need us now, and we still need you. Woodwings is your place—without you, it could never have existed. Don’t turn your back on it now.”

“You don’t understand,” Maris said. “How could you? You can still fly.”

S’Rella reached out and took Maris’ hand, and held it even though it remained limp, not answering her pressure.

“I’m trying to understand,” she said. “I know how you must be suffering. Believe me, ever since I heard the news I’ve thought about what my life would be if I were injured. I have been grounded for a year at times, you know, so I have some idea, even though I’ve never had to come to terms with the idea of its being permanent. Everyone has to think about it. The end comes for all flyers, you know. Sometimes it comes in competition, sometimes in injury, often just in age.”

“I always thought I would die,” Maris said quietly. “I never thought about going on living and being unable to fly.”

S’Rella nodded. “I know,” she said. “But now it has happened, and you have to adjust to it.”

“I am,” Maris said. “I was.” She pulled her hand away. “I’ve made a new life for myself here. If you hadn’t come—if I could just forget—” She saw by the quick flash of pain in S’Rella’s face that she had wounded her friend.

But S’Rella shook her head and looked determined. “You can’t forget,” she said. “That’s hopeless. You have to go on, to do the things you can do. Come and teach at Woodwings. Stay close to your friends. Hiding here—you’re just pretending…”

“All right, it’s pretense,” Maris said harshly. She stood up and walked to the window where she looked blindly out at the wet blur of brown and green that was the forest. “It’s a pretense I need, in order to go on living. I can’t bear the constant reminder of what I’ve lost. When I saw you standing in the doorway all I could think of was your wings, and how I wished I could strap them on and fly away from here. I thought I’d stopped thinking about that. I thought I had settled down here. I love Evan, and I’m learning a lot as his assistant. I’m doing something useful. I’ve been enjoying having Coll around, and getting to know his daughter. And the sight of one pair of wings sweeps it all away, turns my life to dust.”

Silence filled the cabin. Finally Maris turned away from the window to look at S’Rella. She saw the tears on her friend’s face, but also the look of stubborn disapproval.

“All right,” Maris said, sighing. “Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me what you think.”

“I think,” said S’Rella, “that what you are doing is wrong. I think you are making things harder for yourself in the long run. You can’t wipe out your life as if it never was; you don’t live in a world without flyers. You may hide here and pretend to be an assistant healer, but you can never really forget that you were, that you are a flyer. We still need you—there’s still a life for you. You haven’t come to terms with your life yet—you’re still avoiding it. Come to Woodwings, Maris.”

“No. No. No. S’Rella—I couldn’t bear it. You may be right, and what I am doing may be wrong, but I’ve thought about it, and it’s the only thing I can do. I can’t bear the pain. I have to go on living, and to do that I must forget what I’ve lost, or I’ll go mad. You don’t know—I couldn’t bear to see them all flying around me, rejoicing in the air, and to know that I could never again join them. Forever to be reminded of what I’ve lost. I can’t. Woodwings will survive without me. I can’t go back there.” She stopped, shaking with intensity, with fear, with the renewed reminder of her loss.

S’Rella rose and held her until the shaking passed.

“All right,” S’Rella said softly. “I won’t press you. I have no right to tell you what you should do. But… if you should change your mind, if you think about it again when more time has passed, I know the position would always be open to you. It’s your decision. I won’t mention it again.”

The next day she and Evan rose early, and spent the morning humoring a sick, querulous old man in his lonely forest hut. Bari, who had been up and playing at first light, tagged along after them, since her father was still asleep. She had better luck than either of them in bringing a smile to the old man’s thin lips. Maris was glad. She herself was depressed and out of sorts, and the ancient’s whining complaints only made her more irritable. She had to suppress the urge to snap at him.

“You’d think he was dying, the way he carried on,” Maris said as they started the walk back home.

Little Bari looked at her strangely. “He is,” she said in a small voice. She looked at Evan for support.

The healer nodded. “The child’s right,” he said grumpily. “The signs are clear enough, Maris. Haven’t you listened to anything I’ve taught you? Bari is more attentive than you’ve been of late. I doubt that he’ll last three months. Why do you think I made him the tesis?”

“Signs?” Maris felt confused and embarrassed. She could memorize the things Evan told her easily enough, but applying the knowledge was so much harder. “He was complaining about aches in his bones,” she said. “I thought—he was old, after all, and old people often—”

Evan made an impatient noise. “Bari,” he said, “how did you know he was dying?”

“I felt in his elbows and knees, like you showed me.” she said eagerly, proud of the things she learned from Evan. “They were lumpy, getting hard. Under his chin, too. Behind the whiskers. And his skin felt cold. Did he have the puff?”