She took a deep breath and dropped her hands. She took a step forward. She bent down and picked up one of the flowers the pegasi had thrown in her path. She looked at it for a moment and then tucked it into the collar of her dress. She opened her mouth.
“Genfwa,” she said, thank you. That wasn’t what came next; that was supposed to come at the end. “I knew Ebon’s country would be very beautiful”—she stumbled over “very beautiful, ” fffooonangirii—“but it is beautiful in a way that speaks to my . . . ”
Spirit, she wanted to say. She could feel her mind slipping away, her memory disintegrating; spirit was the sort of word a human could not say in pegasi, nor a pegasus in human: you could say beautiful, you could even say friend; but you could not say heart or spirit, and you could not say anger or love. Spirit, she thought. She looked out into her audience; she was speaking slowly, so no one knew yet that she could not say her next word.
Pegasus eyes are mostly dark; some are copper; a few are pale honey. Ebon’s were as black as his hair. Sylvi looked at the pegasi looking at her, and her eyes met the queen’s eyes, which were a gold a few shades darker than her coat. The queen smiled at her, holding her gaze. Spirit, thought Sylvi.
“. . . Swaasooria.”
She thought she heard a few pegasi sigh; it was the first sound any of them had made since they parted to let her through. She held up her hands, palms together, and then spread them out, embracing her audience.
“I am not only honoured to be here, ” she went on, “I am glad and grateful.”Waaee shaar daeal. “ Thank you, thank you.”
She remembered something Ebon had told her: It’s not just ffff for emphasis, although that’s the usual. You ever really want to knock someone out, say “vraai.” You can stick it in pretty much anywhere, but you have to mean it. You don’t use “vraai” for . . . Ebon had paused and looked suddenly uncertain, and then distressed. Maybe you can’t use it. You wouldn’t use it for any of the stuff humans can talk to us about.
“Vraai,” she said. “Genfwa, esshfwa, vraai. ” Heart, she thought, gafweehaa. Love, oranooiaka. Thank you from the love in my heart. “Esshfffwa gafweehaa oranooiaka gloh.” And she walked up to the queen, and unfastened the garnet from around her own neck, and lifted it up to tuck it round a lock of the queen’s mane.
Again she woke the next morning not able to remember how the night before had ended. There had been dancing, she remembered—human dancing too. She had danced with her father, who had asked her when she had rewritten her speech. “I didn’t, ” she said. “Those were the words that wanted to come out.”
He had looked at her, smiling, but the smile was a little sad. “Well, I’m sure they were all excellent words—congratulations.”
But she couldn’t remember much more after that. She remembered feeling very sleepy, as if the pegasus feet and wings were writing a sleep spell.... Even before she opened her eyes she could feel herself smiling; the last thing she could remember was watching the pegasi all seem to flow together in the rhythm of their dance—was it that that made her smile?
There had been a dream—presumably after she’d fallen asleep, although perhaps it was still a result of the spell of the dancing—a dream of flying. She was flying with Ebon, but she was herself flying—she could almost feel the weight of wings now, pulling on the ordinary human bones of her shoulders as she lay on her side with her face on a pillow and the gentle hummocks of the mattress all around her. The friendly feather mattress would no doubt curl itself under and around wings as it did the rest of her. She didn’t want to open her eyes, or to move . . . to have her wings go away....
She woke again, knowing that it must be late—her father was leaving today! No, he wouldn’t have left without saying good-bye, but—She shot out from under the coverlet this time without thinking of either the comfort she was abandoning or the wings she had briefly possessed (for she had had them, brought momentarily out of her dream) and looked around. She heard voices, one of them human, and turned that way.
“Good morning, young one, ” said her father.
“I’m sorry—”
“No, I overslept too. Something very hypnotic about the dancing, wasn’t there? If you want to call it dancing. Dancing seems too frivolous a word somehow.”
Slowly she said, “It’s as if they were making—creating something. It was like . . . another sort of weaving. ”Or another sort of spell, she thought, remembering the rainbow veil and the smoke of binding. But it had been everyone, last night, all the pegasi, not just the shamans—and even, a little, herself and her father—who were the makers.
“Torchlight and shadow weaving, ” said her father.
No, thought Sylvi. That’s just turning it into human words.
“And being pegasi, ” said her father. “But what were they making? A rope, a basket, a drai, one of those amazing collars—”
“Siragaa, ” murmured Sylvi.
“A tablecloth? ” her father continued. “I’ve tried to ask Lrrianay, but I don’t understand his answer. Or maybe he doesn’t understand my question.” He looked a little downcast. “Mostly it’s been a little easier here—the air and my head are clearer.” He tried to smile. “I don’t suppose you’ve noticed any difference? But you and Ebon never have any trouble talking to each other, do you? ”
She thought of telling him about the haziness, about the disorienting sense of standing in a huge space listening to a noise like echoes, except that what made the echoes and what they reverberated against were unknown to her—and decided not to. “No. ”She looked at him and smiled. “Don’t worry.”
“I—” He hesitated. “Your pegasi has improved just since you’ve been here—two days. I didn’t understand all of your speech last night, but I could pick up that Lrrianay did. ”
“I’m not sure it has improved, ” said Sylvi honestly. “I was inspired, I think. Somehow. Something about last night.”
“The torchlight and shadows, ” said her father. “They were weaving a . . . ”
He stopped, but she could hear what he wasn’t saying as clearly as she heard Ebon’s words in her mind: “. . . a net to pull you away from us.”
“Dad, ” she said, “I’m human. I’m a human among pegasi. I’ve only got two legs and I can’t fly. None of that’s going to change. ” To her horror, her voice wavered. Almost three weeks. Here. Alone. One human among all the pegasi. . . .
“If there is any doubt in your mind—come back with me. We’ve already made history, coming here. You don’t have to make any more if you don’t want . . . if you can’t . . . if it’s too hard. Many times in the last weeks—since you had Ebon’s invitation—I’ve thought, what are we doing, sending a fifteen-year-old child where none of us has ever been? ”
“Fifteen isn’t a child, ” said Sylvi. “And I’m nearly sixteen. I’m just visiting my friend at home—and you and Mum like my friend and his parents. They’ll take good care of me. And I’m going to enjoy it. I won’t make any of the kind of history anybody will have to learn later. I promise.”
“You’ll do it beautifully, ” said her father. “If you find out what the dancing makes, you can tell me when you get back. But Sylviianel . . . be careful of your promises. I’m not going to hold you to this one, ” and for a moment he wasn’t her father, but the king.