her, but some of them smiled, and she knew that she was saying it too much; but she couldn’t help herself.
You don’t have to wear it out, said Ebon.
But it’s been wonderful, she said. Scary, she thought. Scary and wonderful. It’s been . . . I don’t know what it’s been. It’s only been eighteen days since my father left. Twenty since we left the palace. It feels like years. She added recklessly, I feel ten years older—twenty.
Well, stop it, said Ebon. I don’t, and I don’t want you older than me. He thought about it. Maybe five years. He rested his nose on her shoulder in a gesture that had become habitual in the last eighteen days. She remembered again with astonishment that she was not supposed to touch any pegasus; she had just had her arm around the queen before Ebon reclaimed her. But it was my idea before the grown-ups stole it and made a big grown-up thing about it. I’m so glad you came. Glad—hiyahaimhia—glad isn’t really good enough. I’m “hiyahaimhia, hya hyama,” I’m glad you came. That you saw the Caves.
Me too, said Sylvi, and raised her hand to put it against his cheek. Me too. I don’t care about the grown-ups.
She was crying again when she had to say good-bye to everyone but the pegasi who would be carrying her back to the human world. She cried over Niahi, she cried over Aliaalia, she cried over Feeaha and Driibaa—she even cried over Hibeehea. Hibeehea’s nose was showing one or two wrinkles as he said, You’re bound to us now, child. You’re bound to the pegasi, not just to Ebon. You have changed the world, you know, little human child. And you’ll be back, if you’re crying for the Caves too.
He sounded so like his shaman self—You have changed the world, little human child—that she stopped crying. But he was still smiling, so she said tentatively, Well, I’m mostly crying for—for the pegasi. For all my—friends.
Ah, then that is easy, he said. For we will come to visit you—yes, I too. I wish to discover how much of the world you have changed. I wish to discover if perhaps . . . Child, listen to me a moment, and he had stopped smiling. Lrrianay may say something like this too, but he is king, and bound to your father, and he sees these things from closer in—almost like a human sometimes. He looked almost grim, she thought, low-headed, his feet braced. We will come to visit your palace now not only for the sake of the Alliance, but because of you. Because you were here, and because you spoke to us. This is a great thing—but it is also a greatly dangerous thing. It is possible that to have sent you home early, weak and confused, would have been more welcome than what has happened. If I may give you my advice, king’s daughter, the advice of an old pegasus shaman, you will tell no one but your father the entire truth about your experience here. And, and he moved his head till his eyes were looking directly and levelly into hers, you may find you cannot tell even him everything.
Eighteen days and twenty years ago she would have turned away hastily, or covered a spurt of anger with court politeness. But it was not eighteen days and twenty years ago, and she said, Yes. I have already taken your advice.
You are a wise child,he said, and to her astonishment he unfurled his wings and swept them forward, and his feather-hands reached out toward her, and the tiny feathery pegasus fingers pressed for a long slow moment against her temples. Good-bye, said Redfora’s voice.
The flight back was unremarkable if—Sylvi thought—you could ever describe flying as unremarkable. There were clouds on the distant horizon but where she flew with the pegasi the sky was blue and bright and the wind was blowing over the mountains toward the palace strongly enough that occasional gusts threw the pegasi’s manes and tails forward, and bounced her in her drai. A month ago she might have felt alarmed; she did not now. Wisps of cloud streamed past like the tails of invisible pegasi—she had a brief daydream of catching one in her hand as it flicked by and a long shining hair remaining in her hand. She stretched her arm out. Niahi had given her a bracelet she had plaited of hairs from her mane, and Ebon’s, Lrrianay’s and Aliaalia’s,