A Gathering of Wings (20 page)

“So I am told,” Malora says, smiling ruefully. “But at least they’re not Leatherwings.”

“I have watched them,” he says, “and I have seen unimaginable savagery. Be on your guard.”

“I will,” she says. A shadow passes over and she looks up, expecting Leatherwings, but it is only a cloud.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “They can’t fly this high. The Leatherwings are ground-huggers. Ground-huggers and blood-suckers. Now, what is it that you need for your journey?” He eyes her tattered tunic. “Besides something to wear.”

“I’ll need a stick.”

“Yes, of course,” he says. “Your friends have taken the Kavian snake staff with them back to Mount Kheiron. Who could blame them, when that is all of you that they have left?”

“What do you mean?” she asks.

“I removed the message you left for them on your cot,” he says.

Her face heats up. “
What have you done?
I told them I was going into the Downs after Sky! Now they won’t know
what
happened to me!”

“Stop blustering and listen to me. I hovered over their camp long enough to see them find your snake stick and your bloody clothes lying all about and conclude that the crocodiles got you.”

“The crocodiles!” Malora blurts.

“Which they most certainly would have,” Lume says, “if I hadn’t taken your knife and sliced the net.”

“You have my knife?”

“I left it on the riverbank. Your friends found that, too. And a single bloody boot. The blood from your hand was
everywhere
.”

Malora looks down at her hand. It is white around the Dream Wound, temporarily bled out. It depresses her to think that her friends are mourning her right now.

“It’s better this way,” he says softly. “They won’t be following you into the Downs, which they certainly would have had they read your note. It is your choice to court death, but to make
them
do so … You wouldn’t really want that, would you?”

“No,” she whispers.

“Come,” he says, striding toward the double doors. “Let’s find you a proper stick.”

Malora follows him into his home, which seems even bigger from inside. She stops on the threshold. Her first thought is that Honus would love this place. Above her, the woven roof soars, hung with baskets of herbs and berries and strips of dried fish. The stone slab floors are covered in animal skins:
zebra, giraffe, impala, lion, leopard, and many more she doesn’t recognize. Objects are displayed on driftwood-plank shelves: crockery shards and old bottles and urns, tiny birds’ and wasps’ nests, crystals, seashells, sea stars and urchins, nubs and other coins, delicate animal skulls, teeth and horns, and ancient, rusty pieces.

“Relics of the Scienticians,” Lume says.

Malora has seen similar objects for sale in the marketplace of Kahiro. Taken singly, none of the items on display are what Malora would call valuable or even beautiful. But the cumulative effect is beautiful and fascinating.

While he rummages about, she wanders over to a curtain made from braided rags and peers through to see a low, oval-shaped nest larger than a centaur’s bed, feathered with down, dried grasses, and wildflowers. It looks comfortable—almost luxurious—and it smells as fresh as a meadow. She drops the curtain and turns to find him contemplating a large urn that is chock-full of sticks, hand-carved walking sticks, tree limbs worn smooth by water or wind, and a stout club with an ugly round head.

“Come choose one,” he says, crooking a finger.

She joins him, quickly settling on a cane with the head of a fierce serpent and eyes of emerald.

He frowns. “That one’s my favorite,” he says.

“Then I’ll pick another,” she says quickly.

“No,” he says reluctantly. “I asked you to choose one and you did. I could have left that one out of the selection, but I didn’t. I dug it up from a ruined palace at the far side of the Narrow Earth. It is special. See?” He unscrews the dragon’s head and unsheathes a small sword.

“Are you sure you want to part with it?” she asks. His look, as he shoves the sword back into the cane, tells her she had better accept the offer.

“Thank you,” she says.

“Use it well. You’ll find something that fits you in there.” He sweeps a hand toward a large willow basket overflowing with salvaged articles of clothing. Setting down the sword cane, she begins to sift through the items, drawn to something that looks as if it might fit her. She lifts it out and examines it. It is a shirt made from impala skin, stitched together with sinew.

“That looks like my work,” she says. There is a pouch sewn into the side of it, where she once kept seeds and berries. “It
is
my work! You
stole
this from me!”

He stares at her, expressionless.

“I thought a lion took it,” she says.

“A lion
might
have taken it,” he says carefully. He busies himself wrapping berries in a square of cloth. “And you with it. But I harried her off while you slept. You had just broken your arm. You were hot with sickness. Call it my reward for saving you.”

She shakes her head. “How many other times have you meddled in my life?”

He wraps salted fish in another square of cloth. “Not very many. I’m sorry,” he says, “the next time a lion wants to rip you apart, I promise not to meddle.” He hands her the two packets of food, his expression bland.

She takes them, her anger melting. How can she remain angry with someone who has saved her life, not just once, but
how many times she doesn’t even want to know? Tucking the packets into the pouches of her impala shirt, she follows him back out onto the terrace. She watches as he stands at a barrel cistern and fills a goatskin bladder with water.

He fits the woven sling carefully over her head. “There. You are ready now,” he says, his voice heavy with reluctance.

“How will you fly with me?” she asks nervously.

He shrugs. “I hold you in my arms. I drop down off the wall. I pick up a brisk current of air. If I’m lucky, I’ll ride it clear to the mouth of the river. If not, I’ll switch to another headed in the right direction.”

But Malora is stuck on the
holding her in his arms
part. “Don’t you need your arms to fly?” she asks.

The dimple reappears. “I find that’s where the wings come in handy.”

She shakes her head, feeling foolish. “Of course. Let’s fly, then,” she says, nearly overcome with dread as her eyes dart over the side of the wall into nothingness. “Try not to drop me,” she mutters.

He gestures to the double doors behind them. “I flew across two and a half oceans carrying those. Somehow I think I’ll manage with you.”

With very little ceremony, he steps behind her and lifts her up, his arms encircling her just above the waist. When he hops up onto the wall, she lets out a feeble cry as she looks down.

“You will be easier to transport if you relax,” Lume says, jouncing her up and down as if to shake the tension out, which only makes her more nervous. “Perhaps a blindfold?”

“Please, no. I’ll just close my eyes,” she says, before realizing that he has made another joke. His humor is dryer than her mouth after eating the salted fish.

She feels him bracing to leap.

“Wait!” she says.

He relaxes. “What now?”

“Where are you taking me?” she asks.

“To the banks of the River Neelah, where I found you,” he says.

“If it’s so easy for you to fly with me, why can’t you take me directly to the wild centaurs?” she says. “It would save time.”

His arms tighten around her. “Oh, I will take you directly to the wild centaurs,” he says. “I will even help you rescue your stallion. But only if you promise to help me fight the Leatherwings afterward.”

“No,” she says.

“I thought you’d say that. Then to the shores of the River Neelah we go. I’ll take you to the western bank. I wouldn’t want you to get caught in any more hippo nets,” he says.

“Very well,” she says stiffly. “I’ll fall down a sinkhole instead, thank you very much.”

Ignoring this last, he says, “We go.”

Before she can draw another breath, he has leapt from the wall into the air. Her stomach rises as quickly as she falls. She is just about to open her mouth and scream when she feels the tug of his wings as they unfurl and lift them upward. He catches a current of air that carries them smoothly forward like an invisible river. She can hear the rushing of the wind through his wings. It sounds like the surging of sea tides.

“You can open your eyes now,” he says. She feels his voice more than hears it, rumbling in his chest behind her neck.

“I never closed them,” she calls out to him.

“Brave girl,” he rumbles back.

She can’t be sure whether he is mocking her. She doesn’t
feel
very brave. She feels helpless and in dire peril. Unable to see either above or below, she finds herself in an alien world, cold and clammy, filled with smoky clouds. She is grateful for the warmth of his body seeping into hers.

Much later, she awakes to thinning clouds and, tucked in among the valleys here and there, a smattering of settlements and ruins. It is not long before they are hurtling over the molten metal platter of the sea. On and on they race, as if they are being pulled toward the lands to the west. Then she spies the tiny city of Kahiro, huddled by the sea, the torches of the Backbone of Heaven twinkling, the soaring port arch looking so fragile, the Arms of Kahiro like twigs floating on the water. Lume follows the frothy coastline westward, over dunes and scrubland. She catches her breath as he shifts direction and starts to barrel toward the earth. It feels more like a controlled fall than flight. The river, slithering along like a silver snake, grows wider, filling her sights. With a lurch of her heart, she smells the same mud and reeds and water that nearly claimed her life.

Lume alights on the riverbank, taking a few running, skidding steps before he stops. His arms unlocking, he drops her. She lands, teetering on the balls of her feet before she finds her balance.

It is dawn, exactly one day after she “died.” She is where she would have come ashore had she completed her crossing.
On the far side of the river, nothing remains of the camp. As Lume reported, her friends have pulled up stakes and left, taking her horses and her few possessions with them back to Mount Kheiron.

“I will leave you to it,” Lume says.

He reaches over and fusses with her hair. “Flying has made a haystack of your hair.” He stands back and gives her a mildly approving look. Then he plucks a long feather from his wing. He winces slightly and the wing twitches. Malora wonders if it hurts but isn’t about to ask him.

He holds out the feather to her. She takes it, realizing with a surprising pang that she doesn’t want him to leave yet. There is something sturdy and earthbound about him, in spite of the wings. He may not be her dream man, but he is beautiful in his way. And something else: he smells
wonderful
. Better than horses. Better than centaurs. Better than the sweetest flowers or essences from Orion’s alchemical laboratory. She closes her eyes and holds the feather to her nose. She opens her eyes to discover that he is already running away from her, toward the river, as if he were going to dive into it. Instead, his wings extend and he floats above it. With one last unsmiling look at her, he turns to coast downriver until he seems to be nothing more than a white feather, drifting away from her.

She rakes her hair over one shoulder, plaiting the feather into the braid. Picking up the dragon cane, she walks along the dunes in a westerly direction. It is midmorning by the time she sees horse or centaur tracks forming a beaten path between two dunes. Turning into the path, she sets out to follow it.

Dunes rise up on either side of her, sparkling like gold
dust on her right, where the sun’s rays catch it. She is just beginning to think that this won’t be so difficult when she stumbles and sinks in sand up to her knees. More sand comes cascading down from the dune above, burying her up to the thighs. She digs the sword into the sand behind her. It takes all her strength to pull herself free of the dune. Then she inches backward on her hind end until she feels solid ground beneath her.
Now what?

It stands to reason, she thinks, that the peaks of the dunes are safe. Otherwise the weight of the sand would form sinkholes within them. The sinkholes, like the one she just blundered into, must lie in the valleys between the dunes. If she walks on the dunes, leaping from one to the next, bypassing the valleys, she will avoid the sinkholes.
But will that be the right direction?
She could meander through the dunes indefinitely until her supply of water ran out and the sun bleached her bones. Perhaps, from the top of a dune, she might see the thread of the path she has lost or something to give her some indication of the direction she should take.

Digging the cane into the nearest dune, she starts to climb. If the cane holds her weight without sinking, it is safe for her feet to follow. She continues in this fashion, first the cane, then the foot, then the cane … until she reaches the summit. Sinking down onto her back, she catches her breath.

The sun beats down. Her legs ache. The sweat pours off her. At this rate, she will be a shriveled bag of skin and bones within a day. She fingers the malachite stone on the leather string around her neck.
Will I end up like my mother?
She uncorks the flask and squirts enough water into her mouth to wet her tongue and throat. Lifting her head she looks around.
All she can see are dunes, rolling away in all directions like dry waves. She knows that the sea lies directly ahead to the north and that the river is at her back to the south, but that is all she knows. Ixion could be anywhere in between.

She lifts her nose and sniffs. At first, all she picks up is her own sweat and a faint note of rainstorm coming off of Lume’s feather. She concentrates on working her way past these to the very specific something beyond. The wind gusts. Sand sifts all around her. Her nostrils twitch and now she has it, a faint but complex ball of scent rolling toward her over the dunes from the northwest. It is the scent of the sea, of horses, and of woodsmoke. She climbs to her feet and angles herself toward the source of the scent, drawing a mental line across the tops of the dunes. This is her path.