So it’s this big good thing that your dad doesn’t get a Speaker and then it’s this big uneasy thing that you’re going to have to have one because you can’t talk to the king even though the reason you’re here is that you can talk to the king’s fourth son. So to make the uneasiness go away you have the huge honour of Hibeehea as your Speaker. He’s scary but he’s not a bad old bird really and having decided to support your coming he said he’d be your Speaker. And it may be an even huger honour to you as a mere fourth child to have Hibeehea Srrrwa as your Speaker as it was for your dad not to have one, are you following me? And then you act like he’s superfluous. I didn’t teach you anything to say to my mum! You see?
I see.
She turned and looked for Hibeehea. She didn’t see him at once, and shouldn’t have been able to pick him out from the crowd of pegasi; in the torchlight, and tired as she was, the silky gleaming backs of the pegasi swirled together and began to look like some exquisite and impossible kind of marble. But perhaps he felt her looking for him, because there was suddenly a little space around him, and he turned and looked back at her. She crossed her hands over her breast again and gave him her deepest bow, even deeper than she’d offered the queen: the sort of bow that, when you’re tired and worried, you could easily not be able to get back out of, or you might even fall over, the sort of bow you shouldn’t risk making when it was important. She told herself that this was the best bow she had ever made, and felt herself come gracefully back to upright again in a way that even when she wasn’t tired and worried and a little frightened was rarely possible for her. But she was surrounded by pegasi, who were perhaps the most graceful creatures in the world, and she wanted, very badly, to make a good impression on one of them.
He couldn’t have known what a bow like that cost her, the graceless human princess. But in spite of the distance between them, and the uncertain light, she saw his ears briefly quirk, and the black shadow lines when he smiled at her, and while his return bow was only a lowering of the head, he held it down the length of time it took to take a long, slow breath. And then he nodded at her, and turned away.
There was food after that, but she was by then so tired she could barely eat, except to recognise that she didn’t recognise about half of what was offered to her. It all tasted good however—and she realised with the first bite that she was tremendously hungry, and was even willing to put off sleep a little longer to eat—and she ate and ate. She sat next to her father, but he spent more time looking around than he did eating, and when she looked at him he seemed so baffled and disoriented that she felt even more lost and far away from home….
And he was leaving her here alone….
The banquet in her father’s honour was tomorrow, and the morning after that one human passenger in one drai would fly back to the palace. She looked at him again, and he caught her eye and smiled, and with the smile he was her father again, king of his country, visiting his friend, king of the pegasi.
But the day after tomorrow she would still be here, alone.
They had brought certain things from the human lands: grapes and melons from the king’s glasshouses, tender crumbly white rolls from the king’s kitchens, which the king and his daughter knew the pegasi liked. There was a whispery murmur of speech, which Sylvi was too tired to try to translate; she was too tired also to try and read the pegasi’s kinetic language; she did respond to the sign-language gestures of welcome and welcome, friend, that some of the pegasi had learnt to greet them.
Please feed me and go away, she thought. She hadn’t realised she’d thought it aloud till there was a tickly sensation across her ear, which was Ebon’s mane as he shook his head and laughed at her.
All you did was sit there, he said. Why are you so tired?
I sat very diligently, she said.
CHAPTER 12
When she woke the next morning she couldn’t imagine where she was. She was lying on a mattress on the ground, which should have been cold and uncomfortable, but was not. It was a feather mattress, and as she slept, it had shaped itself under and curled itself around her like a friendly animal, or animals; she thought of the way her father’s dogs lay together in sinuous heaps. There was another, lighter feather mattress or feather-stuffed quilt over her, and pillows beneath her head, and sunlight dappling her face through leaves. She didn’t want this mysterious idyll to end, but as she turned her head she saw a bright rufous pegasus walk past, in the clear daylight beyond the tree shadows, and it all came back to her in a rush.
She sat up with a sigh, and thrust her feet out from under the coverlet. She’d somehow managed to get herself into her nightgown—she didn’t remember this at all—but she knew she needed a bath. She stood up, waveringly.
A pegasus she didn’t remember meeting before appeared almost as if by magic, briefly touched her cheek with a feather-hand, nodded and turned away from her, looking back over her shoulder to see if she would follow. She did, bemusedly stroking her cheek where the pegasus had touched her. The pegasus led her toward a sound of running water and then Ebon emerged from the darker tree-shadows.
Clear morning and clear sky to you all day, he said. And it looks like we might get them. You humans like privacy for bathing, don’t you? Straight through there, then, there’s a pool, and it’s yours while you’re here. Someone even thought of, uh, towels. When you’re done rattle the bushes and I’ll come for you.
I’ll need some clothes, she said.
Right away? Surely it’s warm enough in this sun even without any hair? Never mind. I’ll get your dad to show me what to bring, and I’ll leave it here.
She had a glorious bath, made only slightly less glorious by an ignoble fear that some pegasus or other would forget that humans like privacy while they bathe and interrupt her; there was nothing (she decided) like being entirely surrounded by pegasi to make a human feel stringy and pathetic, naked as a rat’s tail. She wondered what the towels were for when there weren’t any humans to use them as towels—since there never were any humans to use them as towels, and they felt soft with some kind of use. Perhaps the pegasi had other things that needed drying. Maybe baby pegasi had baths; perhaps they dried the dishes after a banquet. She looked at the towel she wrapped herself up in: it had the same kind of soft, close, near-invisible weaving that all the pegasus fabric she’d ever seen did, but it was thick and heavy, like fine wool, but smoother than any wool she knew.
Her bag of clothes was hanging on a branch as promised and, assuming she’d be warned in advance of any formal occasions, she dressed in tunic and trousers, and then took hold of the bush and rattled. She could smell food, and she was hungry again.
That first day was all about her father, which suited Sylvi very well. Her father did all those royal and gracious and diplomatic things better than she did, the catching on to unknown customs and unusual situations—he, like Danacor was doing now, had travelled a great deal when he was the sovereign’s heir, both round his own country and outside it. Sylvi was more than happy to stay in his shadow and let him take the brunt of the attention—and perhaps pick up what she could. He was leaving her here….
They went for a long walk for most of that day, the two humans, Lrrianay and Ebon and a dozen more pegasi of those the visitors had met the evening before; they stopped often, and there were cushions for the humans, and food and drink were offered. Sylvi found the strangeness much more tiring than the walking. But she was glad to see that they walked on well-worn paths. I told you, said Ebon. We walk a lot.
Everywhere they went there were more groups of pegasi, who came as if from nowhere to see them—but they always appeared from round corners of rock, or up steep paths or through trees, never flying overhead. The pegasi would walk up to them, slowly, heads and tails raised and wings a little arched in what Sylvi thought of as their best-foot-forward pose; often they had ribbons or flowers in their manes, and intricately embroidered siragaa and nralaa around their n
ecks. They would bow their heads and lift one curled foreleg and then the other, setting each down very precisely; a few had ribbons around their ankles. Most of them said “welcome”; a few said a sentence or two. Sylvi noticed that they hummed through the breaks between words: welhummmmfrennnnhuuumaannnnnnn.
Very occasionally Lrrianay would make a quick open-and-shut gesture with a feather-hand, and a few murmured words, and a pegasus might then touch the face of one or both the humans as he or she also said a few words. There was for Sylvi a funny hazy quality to the entire experience of meeting so many new pegasi, and it grew hazier yet when a pegasus touched her, as if the attempt at communication was turning into a cloud, like water turns into steam when heated.
The visitors’ party paused the longest in a shfeeah at the edge of a wood; Sylvi had no warning that this glint of sunlight through the trees was going to be anything other than another meadow. But instead there was a series of small fields, tucked together as cleverly as the pieces of a sky hold to take advantage of the land’s contours, with the early spring crops showing in neat rows of green, and a few small low buildings together in a cluster which had, Sylvi saw at once, not nearly enough walls.
That evening’s banquet was very grand indeed. There were long tables with what looked like banners laid over them—longer, wider and more elaborate versions of the siragaa. Each was a different colour, or more than one colour swirled together, and many had cut or scalloped edges, and most were embroidered, with birds and leaves and flowers, as well as many other symbols Sylvi did not recognise. There were candlesticks of wood and stone, and a scattering of small sculpted shapes, mostly of creatures—deer, foxes, bears, badgers, hedgehogs, squirrels, erenooms, fornols, pegasi—curled up sleeping. The tables looked magnificent even before the bowls of food—mostly wooden and beautifully carved, and some copper or copper-bound, and a few silver platters she recognised as human gifts—were put on them. There were more banners threaded through the branches of the trees at the edge of the meadow where the tables were set. The spiral of torches had been taken away, although there were poles with fresh torches set round the edges of the meadow. She noticed this evening, as she had not the evening before, that the torch-poles were also sculpted, with long curling lines not unlike the flow of a pegasus tail.
Sylvi had watched a little of the setting-up process—it was already well begun when they came back from their day’s walk. The tables were stored in a kind of pavilion similar to the shfeeah buildings and near the stream, but they were brought out to stand in the meadow the human king’s party had flown into the evening before. The tables were moved by pairs of pegasi again wearing harness. Poles were laid on the floor of the pavilion and run between the legs of the tables. The harnessed pegasi again knelt, so that the little hands of other pegasi had only to lift the poles high enough to thread them through the harness, sometimes assisted by a boost from a strong pegasus foreleg. Then the kneeling pegasi stood up, and the poles took the weight of the table. Even the bowls of food had to be filled gradually, in deference to the weakness of pegasi hands, or moved by a carrying frame. There was a flagstone path to the edge of the stream and low knapped-stone platforms there for food preparation, but the exquisite little flint knives, wooden chopping boards and other tools (including baskets to carry the rubbish to the mulch-and-compost area) were kept in the pavilion. But everything the pegasi did they did as if they were dancing, as if they would do it this way even if their hands were as strong as humans’.
There were even two chairs, one very tall one at the narrow head of one of the tables, and a not very much shorter one at the head of the table next to it, and you climbed up two steps to sit in them, so you were no shorter than the standing pegasi.
For the banquet the pegasi all wore ribbons or flowers plaited into their manes and tails, or feathers some other colour than their own wings tucked into the plaits, and a few had ribbons around their ears and ankles as well. The royal pegasi wore flowers but also wide silky siragaa spangled with tiny shining gems; Hibeehea was wearing two nralaa on two damask ribbons.
Sylvi wore the one formal dress she had brought with her, an almost-pegasus russet, long and very full and flowing, with a pegasus-chestnut red-brown garnet on a pegasus-gold chain around her neck. She twisted her hair onto the top of her head and held it there by a pin whose head, no bigger than her littlest fingernail, was pegasus-made, glinting with silver netting and splinters of gems so small you only knew they were there by their sparkle: Ebon had given it to her on her fifteenth birthday.
Can’t I give you anything? she’d said, as she said to him every year on her birthday.
Just make sure there are always grapes when I come visiting, he’d replied.
You couldn’t look regal when you were this short, Sylvi thought, but she felt she looked as nice as possible, in spite of having only two legs and no wings. The swing of her skirt was almost a dance—and yesterday she had managed her bow to Hibeehea. She was embarrassed by her relief that he had not come on the walk with them today; she had known it was too much to hope for that she would not see him tonight either, but her heart still sank when she caught sight of him.
The pegasi wandered around, plucking up a bit of this or that from any bowl they chose as they moved, sometimes using their feather-hands, sometimes delicately using their lips. Sylvi noticed that if it was a long reach they used their necks; there was far too much wing to fold out of the way if they had to reach with their hands. They talked among themselves in gesture and aloud, and as they moved, they were careful also to pass the two chairs and greet the human king and his daughter, and to exchange some communication too, if they could. The human king and his daughter had bowls in their laps, which pairs of pegasi had brought them initially; these were full of delicacies, but many of the pegasi who paused to speak to them dropped further morsels into them. Everything Sylvi sampled tasted superb—including the fwhfwhfwha, which was indeed infinitely nicer than watered wine—but she began to feel trapped, sitting in her chair, weighed down by her bowl. Even Ebon went wandering, although he always came back.
Sylvi had met several more of the pegasus shamans by now, and was careful to let any one of them translate for her, if one were near her—and one usually was, like sentries on duty, Sylvi thought. Ebon, when he was beside her, remained silent, and let the shamans speak. But this evening, with the clear daylight gone, and the stippling, unreliable torchlight again seeming to manifest the essential, the absolute mystery of this place she found herself in, the haziness apparently caused by having her face touched by the pegasi’s feather-hands earlier that day seemed strangely now to focus any attempt at communication … perhaps it was only she felt that she was understanding more, since most of what was said to her was something about welcome: welcome, welcome human, welcome human child, welcome princess, welcome to our country, welcome, welcome; but she seemed to hear What a pretty dress! when the shaman said to her gravely, “She wishes to praise your garment”—although this shaman did not have Hibeehea’s clear diction, and it sounded more like, Sheewhishesstoopwwaisssyooahgahhmen. But Sylvi was preoccupied with having understood “dress,” which was more nearly “long encircling human siraga.” It is not really so surprising, she thought; it’s always been the little dumb superficial stuff that us humans can understand.
After a while Sylvi picked up her bowl in her two strong human hands, and set it down on the nearest edge of the nearest table, and went wandering too—letting the swish of her long encircling human siraga and the marvelousness of the pegasi teach her how to walk lightly. It was too peculiarly formal to sit still when everyone else was moving, like endlessly sitting out at a ball. She couldn’t stop thinking of the pegasi as dancing, and while her own real dancing was middling at best—at those formal occasions at home when a dancing princess was required—she felt, here, that her best, lightest, swingiest walk was more accepting-of-the-welcome-offered than sitting still. Although she kept a wary eye o
ut for Hibeehea or any other sign that she was getting it wrong again.
You would tell me if I were totally messing up again, wouldn’t you? she said to Ebon. Like yesterday, with Hibeehea.
Ebon made a small noise she recognised as ironic. I would tell you if I knew soon enough. You went over the edge really fast yesterday.
Has anyone—said anything about it?
Said anything? Why would they? You apologised and Hibeehea accepted your apology. Hey, that was a formal thing. When you leave the formal thing, you leave it.
Well, this is another formal thing, isn’t it?
It’s a different formal thing. If you mess up here it’ll be a new mess.
Oh, thanks. Thanks a lot.
Her father only smiled at her—and stayed sitting down. He didn’t stand up till it was time to give his speech—which he did beautifully, and she knew he did it beautifully, and she knew that the pegasi accepted it as having been done beautifully. But it was all wrong, she thought in distress. It wasn’t a dance.
The pegasi had stopped wandering while her father spoke, so it was easy for her to stop too. She stood with her arm along Ebon’s neck, her hand holding on to a plait; he arched the wing behind her just enough to give her something to lean against. There were pegasi all around her, standing quietly but for the occasional flick of an ear, swish of a tail, rustle of a wing. And yet the torchlight was still dancing, and as it danced across pegasus backs, the pegasi danced too, as did the trees and the long grass at the edge of the meadow: all these danced with the torchlight and with the shadows the torchlight cast. All but her father, who remained a standing human with light and shadow dancing over him. Sylvi held out her free hand and looked down at it: I suppose I’m just a standing human in dancing shadows too, she thought.