On the other hand she could smell all their intense individual scents, and could at the same time tell that the enjoyable reek of the dollop of horse dung behind her on the other side of the pool had been dropped there by Levanter.
“Still all right?” said Benayu (wonderful, godlike Benayu) in a curiously deep voice.
She hadn’t really thought about it, because the change had been all-absorbing, but, yes, the magic was still there, twice as strong now, half of it coming from within her and half from outside, two steady powerful vibrations which might well have been too much for her if they hadn’t balanced each other out, like the two pillars of an archway, each of which can only stand and bear the weight above it because the other one is there.
“Tell him yes, I think so, Jex. It depends what else happens. Shall I try and get Sponge to do something?”
“Try not to think of it like that,” said Benayu, when Jex had relayed the message. “I don’t tell my hand to scratch my ear—I just do it. So it’ll be you doing it, with Sponge’s body. You’ll get used to it. On his own he’d sit there all morning until I told him he could get up. I’m not going to, and you couldn’t make him break that rule simply by telling him to get up. You’re going to have to break it yourself. Just see how it goes.”
It wasn’t as difficult as it sounded. It isn’t a rule for me, she thought, and got up, and then for a while did whatever the body wanted without thinking, eased her muscles after all that sitting by reaching forward with her front legs and then transferring her weight onto them so that her back legs stretched luxuriously out behind her. She unfolded her wings and resettled them, scratched under her chin with her right hind leg and looked around. What next? Ribek, of course. Give him a good lick to show him how much I love him. Like this. Nice.
“That’s enough, Maja,” he said, trying to push her away. “That’s enough!”
No it wasn’t. She might never get another chance. Somebody was laughing. She stopped licking and looked over her shoulder. Saranja and Benayu, both of them, looking as if for the moment they’d totally forgotten the urgency and danger of what they were all four trying to do. She realized that she’d never seen or heard Saranja laughing before. It was an odd sound, almost a guffaw, the strangeness enhanced by her own strange dog-hearing. She realized without any embarrassment or shame that they were both well aware of her besottedness. Had been, probably, for a long time. Never mind. She had another good lick.
“Now stop it!” said Ribek again, struggling with his own laughter. “That’s enough, I tell you, Maja! Can’t you see you’re making Benayu jealous?”
She broke off and trotted over to Benayu, spreading her left wing so that she could rub her flank against his thigh without it getting in the way, to show him that she knew perfectly well where Sponge’s own affections belonged. He bent and rubbed the sensitive area behind her ear. That’s nice too, she thought. Something you miss, being a human.
“So far so good,” said Benayu. “You’ve obviously got the idea. But that’s all dog stuff. Try doing something Sponge wouldn’t normally do.”
The pool was close beside her. She skipped up onto the coping of the wall, but it turned out to be narrower than she’d thought and she had to spread her wings for balance or she’d have toppled in. Once steady she trotted round the rim, still using her wings for balance, hopped down and sat where Sponge had been sitting in the first place.
“All right,” said Benayu. “It’s not going to be so easy outside, mind you, and I can’t help you as I’ve never been there myself. It isn’t just that there’ll be strange things there. You’ll be seeing them strangely. They won’t fit together the way you’re used to. It’ll look something like the bit in your story where Faheel destroyed the Watchers. I’ll give you a few minutes to get used to that, and then I’ll send a warning pulse, so you can count to ten and be ready when Saranja says the name. Then it’ll be up to you. If anything goes wrong just think ‘home’ and Sponge will bring you back.
“Assuming you manage to follow the trail, I don’t know what you’re going to find or what to do about it when you find it. You may have to come back and tell me and I’ll try and work something out. Probably your best bet is to say the name. You can’t actually say it out loud, so you’ll just have to think it as hard as you can.
“Now you’ve got a bit of time while I make your eggshell. Don’t worry about not touching it. It’s going to be small enough for me to put a kind of four-dimensional lining into it. Any other questions you come up with I’ll try and sort out when it’s ready.”
Ribek was still sitting against the tree, so she trotted over and lay down with her head in his lap. His hand teased gently at her ears. Lovely, lovely. This stupid adventure is just an interruption, she thought. Perhaps when it’s over he could get himself a cute puppy, and Benayu could put me into it, and I could be his dog. A dog in his household. Strange that she should be able to think those words, to remember her aunt using them as she’d chained her to the floor of the kennel, without even a tremor of horror. That would be better than nothing, a lot better. And at least it wouldn’t matter then that he’s so much older than I am. We’d be growing old together and I’d probably die first. We wouldn’t be able to go back to Northbeck, though, because that sort of thing doesn’t work in the Valley.
“Don’t you want to watch what Benayu’s doing?” he said.
Not if it means stopping doing this.
He must have guessed her thought.
“Shift round so you can see, shall I?”
They resettled comfortably, but there wasn’t much to see because Benayu was kneeling with his back toward her in the gap in the hedge beyond the rose beds, close to the shell of the egg. His head was bowed over some object he seemed to be holding between his hands, judging by the position of his elbows. His shoulders heaved regularly as if he was taking a series of deep breaths, or more likely blowing onto or into whatever he was holding.
At length he rose and turned. The movement seemed to bring him more sharply into focus, and she was able to see that he did indeed have an egg-shaped something about the size of a man’s head floating between his hands without their quite touching it.
“Sponge! Maja!” he called, urgency in his voice. “Come over here. Hurry. I haven’t got it quite right. Some of our air is getting through to the surface, and it won’t stand a lot of that.”
She let her body react instantly to its own name. She was with him before he’d finished speaking. Close up she could see that the surface of the egg was sprinkled with come-and-go sparks of light—tiny bits of air getting through to it and exploding against it, she guessed, and nibbling away at it as they did so.
“Good boy—I mean girl,” he said. “This is the tricky bit, for you, Maja, as well as me. I’m going to have to tinker with your rag-doll shield a bit so that you’ll be able to sense the trail. No one’s ever done this sort of stuff before, so I’m just going to have to guess. I won’t be able to do that once you’re inside the eggshell. But what I’ll be doing is fairly powerful stuff close up to you, about as much as you can bear, I should think, and you’re going to have to keep old Sponge absolutely stock still while it’s happening. If you kneel that side, Ribek, you can hold his collar with one hand and use your other to keep Maja steady. No, put your fingers together round her cord, close against her head, and keep the rest of your hand as high as you can. That’s better.