So Sylvi unfolded her hands again, feeling them like great ugly shovels suspended—sternly, unforgivingly—out in front of her. Hili quivered ever so slightly when Sylvi touched her—but at once put her nose to one of Sylvi’s hands again, this time as if in apology. She seemed to Sylvi to weigh so little that she might have floated off Ebon’s back if she moved incautiously.
Ebon stood up and Hili gave a little squeal of what was obviously pleasure. Watch yourself, you, said Ebon. I said I wouldn’t let you fall off—I didn’t say I wouldn’t make you want off.
CHAPTER 14
The next day they flew again, and when they landed they had arrived at the entrance to the Caves.
Tomorrow morning they would go inside. Tomorrow morning she, Sylviianel, fourth child of the human King Corone IV, would enter the pegasi’s mythical Caves, where no human had ever before set foot, the Caves which were the centre of their lives and their civilisation, and of ssshasssha, the pegasi history and recollection, which no human understood.
Ebon had told her which of the mountain peaks roofed the main entrance to the Caves: there was a double-crowned mountain and then a falling-away series of smaller ones that made a zigzag line against the sky much sharper than those surrounding it. They were their own little range, visibly of some other, less erodible material than the rest. Ebon had first pointed them out to her the day she had arrived with her father, but she hadn’t taken it in; or rather, she had allowed herself to be distracted, because there were so many things to see, to make sense of, to try and understand.
Look at old Cuandoia, Ebon had said. He’s the big one in the middle, with the two peaks. He used to be a stag, you know, and the peaks were his antlers.
One of our story-tellers can sing you the story. Can you see how he looks like he’s leaning toward us? Our weather-seers will tell you it’s something about clouds and temperature but it’s still a good omen when you see him like that.
The days had passed, and those mountains had come closer, and Cuandoia seemed to watch them—watch and beckon. Well, he’s glad to see Lrrianay and Aliaalia, Sylvi said to herself. But it was hard not to feel, if she were going to think in terms of a mountain watching them, then he must be seeing her too, strange conspicuous creature that she was, and that it was acceptable to him that she was included.
She was shivering when she climbed out of her drai that evening near the main entrance of the Caves, although it was no colder than it had been the evening before, and the close-woven pegasus blanket kept the wind out better than several of the sheep’s-wool blankets she was accustomed to would have done. Cuandoia’s double crown was lost in the twilight, but she still seemed to feel him watching—as if she could sense, even in the darkness, that there was an awareness, sharp as a beam of light, coming from the crowned mountain above the Caves—and not from anywhere else.
They were here.
If she had been among humans she might have been able to pass off her oppression of spirits as mere tiredness: but she was not among humans. The problem with silent-speech was how much else was available about you than only your words.
I was scared gutless the first time I was brought to the Caves, Ebon said without preamble.
I’m still scared, said Niahi. They’re so big and they’re so full.
They’re nothing like full, said Ebon, in best big-brother- brushing- off-little-sister style. They’re hardly started.
Oh, Ebon, don’t be a strawhead! said Niahi, obviously flustered. Sylvi could hear herself in Niahi’s silent voice, talking to one of her brothers.
Niahi went on defensively, You know what I mean. There are leagues and leagues of them that are empty, but there are leagues of them that are full of us, of what we’ve been doing for the last thousands and thousands of years. And it’s not just the stuff on the walls. It hangs in the air. It follows you. It stands up ahead of you and calls you in a voice you can’t hear, but you know you’re being called, and it knows your name.
Like Cuandoia, thought Sylvi. She had a brief impulse to kneel and put her hand on the ground, like a salute, but it might be impertinent, as she had once been taught—it seemed ages and ages ago—that touching a pegasus was rude.
They’re the most beautiful thing in the world, said Ebon. And you want to go and make a spook story out of them. Fine, you can stay outside and watch for bears. Syl and I are going in with Dad.
There are no bears here!
Then it should be easy to watch for them.
Ebon, I hate you!
Sylvi thought Niahi sounded near tears, if pegasi wept, and she also sounded like some of Sylvi’s cousins, when they had all been younger, when Sylvi’s brothers had been tormenting them. She went over to her, not knowing if it was the right gesture or not, and pushed the forelock away from Niahi’s eyes as she might have pushed hair out of the eyes of one of her cousins, and swept a hand down her neck and shoulder as she might have patted her cousin. She wanted to tell Niahi that Ebon was her brother, she couldn’t afford to let him wind her up this easily, but she could guess it was her, Sylvi’s, presence that made it so easy. Niahi was the little sister who might have been Sylvi’s pegasus, if their fathers had decided that the human king’s daughter should be bound to a daughter of the pegasus king. And Niahi had been the second pegasus Sylvi had found she could talk to. Niahi had opened the door that their fathers had hoped would open—could be opened.
Tell him he has no imagination, she said to Niahi. Tell him he’s a thickie. That all he has is muscles.
Hey! said Ebon.
I’m a little sister too, you know, she said. And all my older brothers are big bullies. And I’ve only got three of them. I probably will be frightened of your beautiful Caves.
Yes, you probably will. That was my point, said Ebon. But they’re—they’re not— He switched his tail in a sign of frustration that was one of the first pegasus gestures she’d learnt to read after she met Ebon—before Ebon it hadn’t occurred to her that the pegasi would feel anything as ignoble as frustration—it was not dissimilar to the frustrated tail-switch of a horse. But a horse didn’t follow up with the long almost-invisible-unless-you-were-watching-closely sinuous shiver which was the signal of transition from gesture to language. They’re not spooky. That’s all wrong. There’s a . . . there’s an immensity to them, even in the smallest spaces. That’s what Niahi means about hangs and follows and calls—and full. You’ll see.
Niahi put her velvet lips briefly to Sylvi’s face. You’ll see, she said. And I don’t mean the Caves aren’t wonderful too. They are. They’re too wonderful.
They’re too wonderful kept recurring to Sylvi’s mind the next day.
She’d slept well—thanks to a sweet-smelling drink the queen had given her; she could feel it begin to work with her first sip and she went to her feather-bed smiling and relaxed. But she woke at dawn when the pegasi themselves were first stirring, and she was awake immediately and absolutely. She felt excited, but the wrong kind of excited, the way she might have felt on a test day for a test she hadn’t practised or studied hard enough for and she knew it, and whoever would be testing her would know it too. Ssshasssha, she thought. How does a human practise for that? But I wanted to do this, she told herself fiercely .I still want to. And it’s the most enormous compliment.