Windhaven

"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.

It required a great effort for her to seat herself beside S'Rella and ask, with a show of interest, for news.

S'Rella's face was shining with barely repressed excitement. "I've come here on business," she said. "I've come with a message for you. I've come to ask you, to invite you, to make the voyage to Seatooth, and live there as the new head of the Academy. They need a strong, permanent teacher at Woodwings, not like the ones who have come and gone over the past six years. Someone committed, someone knowledgeable. A leader. You, Maris. Everyone looks up to you — there could be no one better than you for the job. We all want you there."

Maris thought of Sena, dead nearly fifteen years now, as she had been in the last years of her very long life. The fallen, crippled flyer, standing on the cliff at Woodwings, shouting herself hoarse as she tried to convey her knowledge of flight to the young Woodwingers circling in the air above her. Never to fly again herself, permanently grounded with one almost useless leg and one blind, milkwhite eye. Forever standing below, staring fiercely into the storm-winds, watching the Woodwingers fly away from her, year after year. All those years until she finally died. How had she borne it?

A deep shudder went through Maris, and she shook her head wildly.

"Maris?" S'Rella sounded bewildered. "You've always been the staunchest supporter of Woodwings — of the whole system. There's still so much you could do… What's wrong?"

Maris stared at her, goaded, wanting to scream. She said, very softly, "How can you ask that?"

"But…" S'Rella spread her hands. "What can you do here? Maris, I know how you feel — believe me.

But your life isn't over. I remember that once you told me that we, we flyers, were your family. We still are. It's foolish to exile yourself like this. Come back. You need us now, and we still need you.