Windhaven

It was a cold, starry night on the far side of the mountain. The sea moved restlessly below them, a vast, dark, melancholy presence. Maris climbed the stairs to the flyers' cliff. She climbed slowly, and when she reached the top her thighs ached and her breathing was labored.

Evan took her hand briefly. "Can I persuade you not to fly?"

"No," she said.

He nodded. "I thought not. Fly well, then." He kissed her, and stepped away.

The Landsman stood against the cliff, flanked by his landsguard. Tya and Jem unfolded her wings. Corina hung back until Maris called to her. "I'm not angry," Maris said. "This is not your doing. A flyer isn't responsible for the messages she bears."

"Thank you," Corina said. Her small, pretty face was pale in the starlight.

"If I fail, you are to bring my wings back to Amberly, yes?"

Corina nodded reluctantly.

"Do you know what the Landsman intends to do with them?"

"He will find a new flyer, perhaps someone who has lost his wings by challenge. Until someone is found… well, Mother is ill, but Father is still fit enough to fly."

Maris laughed lightly. "There's a wonderful irony in that. Corm has always wanted my wings — but I'm going to do my best to keep them from him once again."

Corina smiled.

Her wings were fully extended; Maris could feel the familiar, insistent push of the wind against them. She checked her straps and struts, motioned Corina out of her way, and walked to the brink of the precipice.

There she steadied herself and looked down.

The world reeled dizzily, drunkenly. Far below, breakers crashed against black rocks, sea and stone locked in eternal war. She swallowed hard, and tried to keep from lurching off the cliff. Slowly the world grew solid and steady again. No motion. It was just a cliff, like any other cliff, and below the endless ocean. The sky was her friend, her lover.

Maris flexed her arms, and took the wing-grips in hand. Then she took a deep breath and leaped.

Her kick sent her clean away from the cliff, and the wind grabbed her, supporting her. It was a cold, strong wind; a wind that cut through to the bone, but not an angry wind, no, an easy wind to fly. She relaxed and gave herself to it, and she glided down and around in a long graceful curve.

But the current pushed around again toward the mountain, and Maris glimpsed the Landsman and the other flyers waiting there — Jem had unfolded his own wings and was preparing to launch — before she decided to turn away from them. She twisted her body, tried to bank.

The sky lurched and turned fluid on her. She banked too far, stalled, and when she tried to correct by throwing her weight and strength back in the other direction, she tilted wildly. Her breath caught in her throat.

The feel was gone. Maris closed her eyes for an instant, and felt sick. She was falling, her body screamed at her. She was falling, her ears rang, and the feel was gone from her. She had always known: subtle changes in the wind, shifts she had to react to before she was half-aware of them, the taste of a building storm, the omens of still air. Now it was all gone. She flew through an endless empty ocean of air, feeling nothing, dizzy, and this strange savage wind she could not understand had her in its grasp.

Her great silver wings tilted back and forth wildly as her body shook, and Maris opened her eyes again, suddenly desperate. She steadied herself and tried to fly on vision alone. But the rocks moved, and it was too dark, and even the bright cold stars above seemed to dance and shift and mock her.

Vertigo reached up and swallowed her whole, and Maris released her wing-grips — she had never done that before, never — and now she was not flying, but only hanging beneath her wings. She doubled over in the straps, retching, and sent the Landsman's dinner down into the ocean. She was trembling violently.

Jem and Corina were both airborne and coming after her, Maris saw, but she did not care. She was weak, drained, old. There were boats below her, gliding across the black ocean. She took her wing grips in hand again, tried to pull up, but all she accomplished was a sharp downwind turn that sheered into a plunge. She tried to correct, and couldn't.

She was crying.

The sea came up at her. Shimmering. Shirting.

Her ears hurt.

She could not fly. She was a flyer, had always been a flyer, windlover, Woodwinger, skychild, alone, home in the sky, flyer, flyer, flyer—and she could not fly.

She closed her eyes again, so the world would stand still.

With a slap and a spray of salt water, the sea took her. It has been waiting, she thought. All those years.

"Leave me alone," she said that night, when they finally returned to his home. Evan took her at her word.

Maris slept most of the next day.