It’s true, then, said the queen. I knew it was—Niahi told me—Niahi has told everyone—and she laughed, both silently and aloud: wheeeee. But we, like you, grow up knowing we cannot talk to each other. This—today—is a story come to life, a story as amazing as any that our bards tell us. How hard this must all be for you, my dear. A little exciting too, I hope, but hard. How much we all hope from you—how much we cannot help but hope, while we try not to. Do not let us crowd you too closely!
But I hope too, said Sylvi. And my father does, and my mother, or they would not have let me come, I think—it was very hard to let me come, you know. We cannot help hoping either. And if—if you crowd me very closely, you will hold me up, and I will be grateful because I—I am oddly wavery, since—since Niahi spoke to me.
You poor child, said the queen. Is there anything I can do for you?
Talk to me, said Sylvi. So it doesn’t seem so ... strange. So that it’s just talking. What are the stories your bards tell you?
The queen raised her head and looked away from Sylvi. Sylvi followed her gaze—as dark dappled Hibeehea seemed to materialise from the shadows. She had not seen him since the first evening. He bowed to them—to her and the queen, and the queen bowed back—Sylvi hastily following suit. Hibeehea, she thought. Oh dear. The queen then looked back at her, and her voice in Sylvi’s mind sounded grave and sad and proud. Our favourite stories are that we have hands, she said. Hands like yours: strong to grasp and hold, and wrists that turn back and forth.
Sylvi spent most of the next day asleep. She woke once, early, and lay quietly, watching the sunrise, pink and gold and soft blue-green, thinking sleepily, wistfully, confusedly, that it was the sort of sunrise that ought to happen in the pegasi’s land, beautiful but somehow enigmatic and unattainable; and then she thought, But why should either a sunrise or a pegasus be attainable, that its not being attainable should make me feel all doleful and spooky? And she turned over and wriggled farther into her friendly feather mattress, and went back to sleep.
She woke again and found a bowl of fruit by her pillow: two apples and three pears and a handful of plooraia, which the pegasi grew instead of grapes, because grape-vines here (Ebon had told her) only grew leaves and hard, sour, inedible black pebbles. And it was raining gently, but the pegasi had thrown something like a tent roof over her, tied to tree branches above her head; she could hear the rain as it fell, and smell the wet earth, but she was dry, curled up in her feather-bed. She ate a pear, thinking, It must be late, I must get up, and only managed to finish it before she fell asleep again.
The third time she woke, it had stopped raining, and Ebon was lying near her. There was a little bag with a long loop of ribbon—long enough to hang round his neck—lying on the ground beside him, and he was holding a small wooden bead with one alula-hand, and buffing it with a cloth he held in the other. She pulled herself onto one elbow to see better. She had seen him do this back at the palace, when they had their lessons together, but she had never had the excuse to watch from only a handsbreadth away before—to watch when she wasn’t supposed to be doing her own lessons. And there was something almost miraculous about this bead; it shone like a tiny moon.
I think that if you sleep any more the Night Shaman will take you away and make you a star, but Dad says yesterday was a hard day and we won’t go anywhere today and if you want to sleep through it that’s fine. And I say that I don’t want to sleep through it and there’s stuff to show you and you don’t have to talk. And you should get up because what if the Night Shaman isn’t just a fairy tale?
Night Shaman?
Eah. He gets you both ways—if you don’t go to sleep when you’re supposed to and if you don’t wake up when you’re supposed to. Then you’re a star awake in the sky forever and ever, showing pegasi where to fly. When you’re little you