Coll said nothing. Maris didn’t want to see the pain on his face, so she stared into the fire, and let the silence grow. She heard the sound of a stone bottle being unstoppered, and then Evan was pouring the steaming kivas into three mugs.
“Can I taste?” Bari crouched beside her father, looking up, hopeful. Coll smiled down at her and shook his head teasingly.
Watching the father and daughter together, Maris felt the tension suddenly dissolve. She met Evan’s eyes as he put a mug filled with the hot, spiced wine into her hands, and smiled.
She turned back to Coll and was about to speak to him when her eyes fell on his guitar, which lay as always close to hand. The sight of it released a torrent of memories, and suddenly Maris felt that Barrion, dead now for many years, was again in the room with them. The guitar had been his, and he had claimed it had been in his family for generations, passed down from the days of the star sailors. She had never known whether or not to believe him—exaggerations and beautiful lies came from him as easily as breathing—but certainly the instrument was very old. He had entrusted it to Coll, who had been his protege and the son he’d never had. Maris reached out to feel the smooth wood, dark with many varnishings and constant handling.
“Sing for us, Coll,” she suggested. “Sing us something new.”
The guitar was in his arms, cradled against his chest, almost before the words were out of her mouth. The soft chords sounded.
“I call this ‘The Singer’s Lament,’” he said, a wry smile on his face. And he began to sing a song, melancholy and ironic in turns, about a singer whose wife leaves him because he loves his music too well. Maris suspected it was his own marriage he was singing of, although he had never told her why it had ended, and she had not been around to see much of it first-hand.
The recurring refrain of the song was: “A singer should not marry/A singer should not wed/Just kiss the music as she flies/And take a song to bed.”
Next he sang a song about the turbulent love affair between a proud Landsman and an even prouder one-wing—Maris recognized one of the names, but had not heard the story.
“Is that true?” she asked when the song had ended.
Coll laughed. “I remember you used to ask that same question of Barrion! I’ll give you his answer: I can’t tell you when or where or if it happened, but it’s a true story all the same!”
“Now sing my song,” Bari said.
Coll dropped a kiss on his daughter’s nose and sang a tuneful fantasy about a little girl named Bari who makes friends with a scylla who takes her to find treasure in a cave beneath the sea.
Later, he sang older songs: the ballad of Aron and Jeni, the song about the ghost flyers, the one about the mad Landsman of Kennehut, his own version of the Woodwings song.
Later still, when Bari had been put to bed and the three adults were working on the third bottle of kivas, they spoke about their lives. More calmly now, Maris could talk to Coll about her decision to stay with Evan.
The first shock past, Coll knew better than to express pity for her, but he let her know he did not understand the choice she had made.
“But why stay here, in Eastern, far from all your friends?” Then with drunken courtesy he added, “I don’t mean to slight you, Evan.”
“Anywhere I chose to live would be far from someone.” Maris said. “You know how widely my friends are scattered.” She sipped the hot, intoxicating drink, feeling detached.
“Come with me back to Amberly,” he coaxed. “Live in the house we grew up in. We might wait awhile, for spring when the sea is calmer, but the voyage is not so bad between here and there, truly.”
“You can have the house,” she said. “You and Bari can live there. Or sell it if you like. I can’t go live there again—there are too many memories there. Here on Thayos I can start a new life. It will be hard, but Evan helps me.” She took his hand. “I can’t stand idleness; it’s good to be useful.”
“But as a healer?” Coll shook his head. “It’s odd, to think of you doing that.” He looked to Evan. “Is she any good? Truthfully.”
Evan held Maris’ hand between his own, stroking it.
“She learns quickly,” he said after a few moments’ thought. “She has a strong desire to help, and does not balk at dull or difficult tasks. I don’t know yet whether she has it in her to be a healer—if she will ever be truly skilled.
“But I must admit, quite selfishly, I am glad she is here. I hope she’ll never want to leave me.”
A flush rose to her cheeks, and Maris bent her head and drank. She was startled, yet gratified, by his last words. There had been very little in the way of love-talk between her and Evan—no romantic promises or extravagant claims or compliments. And, although she had tried to put it out of her mind, somewhere within she feared that she had given Evan no choice in their relationship—that she had installed herself in his life before he could have any second thoughts. But there had been love in his voice.
There was a silence. To fill it, Maris asked Coll about Bari. “When did she start traveling with you?”
“It’s been about six months,” he said. He set his mug down, drained, and picked up his guitar. He stroked the strings, producing faint chords as he spoke. “Her mother’s new husband is a violent man—he beat Bari once. Her mother wouldn’t say no to him, but she had no objections to my taking her away. She told me he might be jealous of Bari—he’s been trying to get a child of his own.”
“How does Bari feel?”
“She’s glad to be with me, I think. She’s a quiet little thing. She misses her mother, I know, but she’s glad to be out of that household, where nothing she did was right.”
“Are you making a singer of her, then?” Evan asked.
“If she wants to be. I knew when I was younger than she, but Bari doesn’t know yet what she wants to do with her life. She sings like a little chime-bird, but there’s more to being a singer than singing other people’s songs, and she’s shown no talent yet for making up her own.”
“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.