Windhaven

Her wings were wide and tight, metal humming softly in the wind, and she felt utterly serene and sure of herself. She reached up, wrapped her hands around the grips, ran, jumped, soared. Up she flew, up and up, and she did a loop for the sheer joy of it and then dove, sliding down and down through the air, riding and shifting with the little eddies and currents, angling toward the gates. She was banked sharply and wheeling as she went through the first gate, her wings drawing a silver line from the top of one pole to the bottom of the other, but she stabilized gracefully and swayed the other way for the approach to the second, slid through it fluidly. It was the feel of it, the love of it, not the thought; it was instinct and reflex and knowing the wind, and Maris was the wind. The third gate was next, the difficult upwind turn, but she snapped around easily, quickly, cleanly, then looped above the water to correct her angle on the fourth gate, and she was through that too, and the fifth was a wide lazy downwind turn, and the sixth was almost straight ahead, not a difficult angle at all, but small, so she dropped a little and skimmed low over the sand, her wings taut and full, and the spectators were shouting and cheering.

In a heartbeat it was over.

Just as the sixth gate loomed ahead of her, she hit a sink, a sudden cold downdraft that had no right being there. It pushed at her, clutched at her, just for an instant, but that was long enough for her wings to brush the ground, and then her legs were trailing through the wet sand and she slid along bumpily before finally jolting to a halt in the shadow of the gate.

A small blond girl ran up to her and helped her to her feet, then began folding up her wings. Maris stood breathless and exhilarated. Five, then, five it was. Not the best score of the day, but a good score, and it was enough. Corm trailed Val by such a margin that it would not be enough for him to beat her. He had to humiliate her, crush her, collect two pebbles from each of the judges. And that he could not do.

He knew it too. Disheartened by her flight, he did not even come close. He failed on the fourth gate, a decisive victory for her, for Val. She felt elated as she trudged across the beach, wings folded on her back.

Criers' calls ran up and down the shore. S'Rella stood poised on the precipice, the sun shining off the bright metal of her wings, and behind her Maris glimpsed wiry, black-haired Jirel of Skulny.

S'Rella leaped, and Maris stood to watch, her heart flying with her, hoping, hoping. S'Rella banked and circled, a leisurely approach instead of the wild rush Maris had employed, and came gliding down smoothly on the same tack Leya and Kerr had used in their turns. Through the first gate, turning, leveling, wheeling now in the opposite direction — Maris felt her breath stop for a minute — and through the second gate, and now a very sharp turn upwind, a clean knife-thrust of a turn as if the wind itself had changed direction at her command, and through the third gate, still in control, and another hard veer and she was through the fourth gate — people began to rise and cheer — and the fifth was as easy for her as it had been for Maris, and now it was the sixth that she was moving in on, the sixth on which Maris had failed, and her wings were swaying a bit but then they stilled and she came in higher than Maris, and the sink shook her but didn't ground her, and then she was through the sixth gate too — shouts everywhere — and the seventh demanded a split-second bank at just the right angle, and S'Rella did that as well, and she came around toward the eighth—

— and it was too narrow, the poles set too close together, and S'Rella was just a bit too far to one side.

Her left wing hit the pole with a snap, and the wing-struts shattered even as the pole did, and S'Rella went sprawling on the ground.

And Maris was only one of dozens running toward her.

When she got there, S'Rella was sitting up, laughing and breathing hard, surrounded by land-bound who were shouting at her, yelling hoarse-voiced congratulations. The children pressed close to touch her wings. But S'Rella, her face reddened by the wind, couldn't seem to stop laughing.

Maris pushed her way through the crowd and hugged her, and S'Rella giggled through it all. "Are you all right?" Maris asked, pushing her away and holding her at arm's length. S'Rella nodded furiously, still giggling. Then what…?"

S'Rella pointed at her wing, the wing that had struck the gate. The fabric, virtually indestructible, was undamaged, but a support strut had broken. "That's easily fixed," Maris said after she'd looked it over.

"No problem."

"Don't you see?" S'Rella said, jumping to her feet. Her right wing bobbed with the motion, taut and vibrant, but her left hung limp and broken, silver tissue dragging on the sand.

Maris looked and began to laugh. "One-Wing," she said helplessly, and they collapsed into each other's arms again, laughing.