Taking Flight

She giggled-definitely birdsong, he thought.

“As far as I know,” she said, “there isn’t anyone else with wings. Just me.”

“Oh.” That answered that, and disposed of any notion he might have had of finding a land of winged people, but left her background a complete mystery. Kelder tried to think of some clever way to phrase his next question, but couldn’t. “How did you come to have wings, anyway?” he said. “Were you born with them?”

She giggled again. “No, silly, of course not!” She pushed playfully at his shoulder.

Startled and pleased by the unexpected familiarity, he asked, “Then where’d you get them?”

She blinked at him, and then leaned over toward him as if she were confiding a secret. “Well,” she said, “I was a wizard’s apprentice once, a long time ago. And I think I was pretty good at it, too. But my master was an old grouch, really stuffy about all these stupid rules and regulations and his precious guild and all my obligations as a wizard in training, and all that stuff, and I just got really fed up with it all, you know? So one day when he’d been especially nasty to me, after I was done crying and while he was out at the market or somewhere, I borrowed his book of spells-or stole it, really, I guess, since he’d told me never to touch it, but I gave it back. Anyway, I took it, and looked up a spell he’d told me about that would give me wings, and I used it, and it worked! See?” She preened slightly, flexing her wings so that they caught the sunlight and shimmered brightly.

“They’re beautiful,” Kelder said, in honest admiration. He was tempted to reach out and touch them, but dared not.

He wondered what it would be like, taking a flying girl to bed. Would the wings get in the way?

She smiled as she peered over her shoulder at them. “Aren’t they? And flying is such fun!”

He smiled back at her, sharing her delight, then asked, “What happened after that? Did the wizard catch you?”

She laughed. “No, silly,” she said. “At least, not then. I just flew away and never came back. And the next time I saw him wasn’t for years, and by then nobody cared any more, and we just forgot about the whole thing.”

Kelder nodded. “So you never finished your apprenticeship?”

“No. Why should I? I’ve got everything I need!” She spread her wings wide, and the breeze they made blew the hair back from Kelder’s forehead. “See?” she said.

He stared in amazement. He wondered just what she meant when she said “years,” though. She couldn’t mean it literally. After all, she must have started her apprenticeship at age twelve-that tradition was so ancient and sacred that Kelder couldn’t imagine it being violated-and it must have taken her at least a year before she learned enough magic to attempt something like a wing-making spell, and got fed up enough with her master to use it. He had always heard how difficult wizardry was, and he would have thought it would take at least a journeyman wizard to do something like that; the magicians he’d seen mostly limited themselves to little stunts like lighting fires or making trees whistle. Nobody could have made journeyman before age eighteen, from what he’d heard-sixteen at the very least. And yet Irith claimed she’d gotten her wings and run away years ago, and she was only fifteen now.

Of course, the wizards Kelder had encountered in a quiet nowhere like Shulara weren’t the best, but even so, she must have needed a year or two before she could have learned such a spell.

And she’d talked about visiting Shulara, and travelling back and forth on the Great Highway hundreds of times-she must just be prone to exaggerating, he decided.

Well, that was no big deal. Lots of the girls he knew liked to exaggerate-and not just girls, either, for that matter. So what if she twisted the chronology a little?

Of course, it did make it harder to know just what had really happened. She must have been a good pupil, he thought, to learn a way to conjure her wings so young. She probably only ran away a few months ago.

Part of the prophecy ran through his head-“The magic is strange, of a kind I have never seen, and that neither wizards nor witches know. It will both be yours and not be yours.” His wife’s magic would be his and yet not his-were Irith’s wings the “strange magic” that had been referred to?

But according to Irith’s story this was a magic that wizards know, wasn’t it?

Well, perhaps Zindre had gotten that one little detail wrong, or Irith had distorted something.

And the details didn’t really matter, anyway, did they? He decided not to be nosy, and asked no further questions. When they were married he would have plenty of time to find out.

“So where were you heading?” she asked him. “You said you came to see the Great Highway, right?”

“That’s right,” he agreed.

“Well, you’ve seen it; are you just going to go back home to your folks now?”

“Of course not!” he said.