Sword Mountain (12 page)

“How'd you feel if you were called perfect and golden all the time?” Cloud-wing said.

“I don't know,” said Dandelion. “I'd be very glad at first, I guess.”

Cloud-wing nodded.

“But it's pretty tough keeping up with perfect,” Dandelion went on after a pause. “I guess you lose yourself.”

“See? That's what I mean. You understand.” He waved a wing impulsively. “Isn't it funny, I could send others reeling if told them I planned to dye my feathers dark. You're the only one I bet who won't.”

“I won't. But,” she said, thinking further, “you don't believe that my feather color is what makes me think one way or another, do you?”

“No! Great Spirit, what a stupid thing I said. I was trying to say you understand me because you're like me,” said Cloud-wing. A look of relief flooded his face.

“Like you?” Dandelion was shocked. He nodded. “I'm miles away from even being acceptable here!”

“No, don't you see, Dandelion?” said Cloud-wing. “Others call you a valley bird and take for granted you're slow-witted and clumsy, when you obviously aren't. They don't see who you really are. They see a country bumpkin. As for me—they think I'm perfect, and I tell them I'm not. But they don't believe me, and cry that I am wonderfully modest. All they see is Golden—an ideal eaglet of their dreams. They don't see
me.
Cloud-wing doesn't exist.”

“Rubbish. That was definitely Cloud-wing, not Golden, making that speech,” said Dandelion.

Cloud-wing smiled faintly.

“Still,” Dandelion added, “I think being thought of as perfect is a little more endurable than being thought of as a peasant.”

“Is it?” he whispered.

The two eaglets looked into each other's face. Each wondered, for a split second, whether the other was a mirror image, even though the two looked nothing alike.

“Although others make assumptions about your so-called perfection, they still support you,” said Dandelion. “They give you confidence, so you can take on tough tasks, like learning to fly, and—”

“Wait,” said Cloud-wing. “Can't you fly?”

Dandelion shook her head.

“Then I'll support you,” Cloud-wing said. “I'll teach you how. There's enough time yet before my examinations. I'm going to get something you'll need to fly. Meet me at the boulders outside the castle.”

“Why?”

“Why not? It'll be an adventure of sorts.”

Dandelion thanked him and was about to turn when he called to her.

“Dandelion? I'm sorry about the way Pudding and the others acted. They … they don't know any better,” Cloud-wing said. “But I hope you will stay awhile on the summit.”

She couldn't believe her ears. Though touched, Dandelion knew she needed to return home as soon as she could. She remembered Olga's rose-scented envelope and presented it to him. His eyes widened.

“Olga,” said Dandelion hastily. “Er … My lady, Miss Olga, sincerely wishes Master Golden the best of luck in the examinations!”

“Thanks … tell her thanks,” Cloud-wing said politely, but added, “Why are you running her errands? She's your companion, she's supposed to make sure you're okay.”

Dandelion took a deep breath and walked down a corridor. She supposed she'd better tell Olga that her note had been delivered before going outside for her flight lesson. The corridor wound into the interior of the castle. Instead of windows, there were rows of mirrors on the walls, hung between torches.

All sorts of mirrors were there: round, square, silver, copper, most of them framed by painted wood, some with a rosy or blue tint, others uneven so that they would distort the viewer's image.

She stopped in front of one that had a metal plate over it:
FLIGHT MIRROR
. It was so wide it allowed birds to see every feather of their wingspan.
What will flight look like for me?
Curious, Dandelion unfurled her wings before it. Her wings filled up the frame, grand in their symmetry, so that she seemed five times bigger. The feathers that had frayed from her fall gave her the air of a flight veteran already. Dandelion lifted her wings up and down, angling them as if in a dive, imagining herself listening to every wind's whisper, as the sky's confidante.

Dandelion was not the only one to be fascinated. As she continued on the corridor, she found Olga slouching dreamily in front of a sheet of glass labeled
BEAUTY MIRROR
.

The mirror had a floral-design frame and was tinted gold. As Olga gazed into her lighter, yellower reflection, she breathed toward the glass, and on the fogged surface, she rubbed the shape of a heart. With every inhale, the heart faded away, and with every exhale, Olga redrew the heart.

Perhaps it would be best, Dandelion thought, not to tell Olga about her letter after all.

Olga didn't notice Dandelion as she slipped quietly past. Dandelion glanced back once and saw, alone in that shining section of the corridor, Olga continuing her endless drawings of hearts.

 

Flight: It is your escape, yet it is your destiny.

—
FROM THE
O
LD
S
CRIPTURE

W
ith a foot suspended over the edge of the cliff, Dandelion asked, “So I won't fall?”

Cloud-wing adjusted the complicated straps that looped around her wings and over her back, opened her bulky new backpack, and pulled out white folds.

“You'll never even notice,” he said. “The parachute will buoy you up!”

“All right. One … two … three …!” Dandelion sprang from the edge as Cloud-wing flung the backpack behind her. She spread her wings wide, and with a
poof
, a great white parachute billowed above her, her very own cloud. She imaged herself a dandelion seed, out in the crisp mountain air.

Oh, my!
Dandelion thought. And she had shaken her head in disbelief when Cloud-wing first thrust the pack at her. “It's an army parachute; my father let me borrow it so long as I don't tear it,” he had said. “In battles the wounded use them, to help them stay aloft as they steer themselves to a healer's station.”

“Move your wings to go left or right!” Cloud-wing now called, launching himself in the air to follow Dandelion.

Encouraged, Dandelion focused on flapping her wings, but the parachute that had supported her now resisted her efforts to move forward. At the mercy of the wind, she floated farther away, where she was swiftly caught in a gust that had funneled through narrow mountain passes.

“Cloud-wing!” she shouted as the wind hurled her backward, faster and faster, lower down the mountain. Dandelion glanced behind her to see a line of trees.

Crack!
The parachute caught in the branches of a pine tree. Dandelion flapped her wings as hard as she could to free herself, but the harnesses tangled even more and she heard a loud rip. And so she hung there, miserably, swinging back and forth, covered with pine needles.

“Where are you, Dandelion?”

“Here!” she said. “Please, help me. I'm in the tree!”

When Cloud-wing had loosened her harness and gotten her down, they both gazed up at the ruined parachute, limp above their heads. Though she could not really fly in the contraption, Dandelion felt tears in her eyes to see it ruined.

“But that was worth it,” Cloud-wing was saying. “What a sight. And what fun!”

“You'll get in trouble.” Dandelion was worried, but Cloud-wing merely said, “I'll take whatever punishment comes.” He retrieved the remnants of the parachute.

In the distance, a drumroll sounded.

“That's the call for tryouts!” Cloud-wing jumped with a start. “I have to go to Rockbottom—”

“Then give the parachute to me, Cloud-wing,” Dandelion said. “Let me try to fix it, and you can get it after your exams.”

Back in her room, the huge white cloth spread over her bed, Dandelion studied the parachute. In the backpack of the harness, she had found white thread and a large needle.

She hadn't flown this evening, but she had jumped with a parachute filled with hope. And she had found a friend. The thought made her smile. Dandelion bent, crawling from one edge of the parachute to the other, the large needle flashing like a miniature sword in her claws as she pulled and mended. Sewing together her parachute. Sewing together her dreams.