thing. When you leave the formal thing, you leave it.
Well, this is another formal thing, isn’t it?
It’s a different formal thing. If you mess up here it’ll be a new mess.
Oh, thanks. Thanks a lot.
Her father only smiled at her—and stayed sitting down. He didn’t stand up till it was time to give his speech—which he did beautifully, and she knew he did it beautifully, and she knew that the pegasi accepted it as having been done beautifully. But it was all wrong, she thought in distress. It wasn’t a dance.
The pegasi had stopped wandering while her father spoke, so it was easy for her to stop too. She stood with her arm along Ebon’s neck, her hand holding on to a plait; he arched the wing behind her just enough to give her something to lean against. There were pegasi all around her, standing quietly but for the occasional flick of an ear, swish of a tail, rustle of a wing. And yet the torchlight was still dancing, and as it danced across pegasus backs, the pegasi danced too, as did the trees and the long grass at the edge of the meadow: all these danced with the torchlight and with the shadows the torchlight cast. All but her father, who remained a standing human with light and shadow dancing over him. Sylvi held out her free hand and looked down at it: I suppose I’m just a standing human in dancing shadows too, she thought.
There was her cue: “And I am glad to introduce my daughter to you. . . . ” Her father’s speeches were never long—“no one listens to a long speech” was one of his precepts—but he had teased her that the real reason he wanted her to give a speech on this occasion was so that his could be shorter yet. “I can’t get my mouth around all those pegasi vowels, ” he said.
“ The ffff’s are even worse, ” Sylvi had replied: but her father was saying aooarhwaia mwaarai—beloved daughter—as if he’d never had any problem. She sighed, and Ebon said, Three wings, which was pegasi for “good luck.” The pegasi parted before her—there was no looking around; they seemed to know where she was—and she walked, trying to feel that she was dancing, along what was now a path among them. They moved, gently, gracefully, so that their heads were toward her as she passed them: cream and gold, brown and copper. A few of them pulled out flowers or decorative feathers from their wings and manes and tossed them down before her. She went slowly, skirt swinging, and stood beside her father, who bowed to her and then moved away, to sit down again in his chair.
She folded her hands in front of her as if she were reciting a lesson for Ahathin, but also to keep her hands from trembling—her arms from trembling, her whole body from trembling. The long skirt hid her trembling knees. “I am beyond honoured to be here, ” she began: “Waarooawhha niira hee.”And then she couldn’t go on.
It wasn’t that she had forgotten the words. She knew what came next: It has been my great wish since I have known Ebon that I should see his home. I knew I would not, because humans do not come here. That I am here is a gift beyond my imagining. I bow my best bow to you, to each of you I bow once, twice, three times. Respected friends, my thanks and gratitude. Thank you. But the words would not come out. They were trapped, trapped between her folded hands, between her arms and her body, between her pressed-together knees.
She took a deep breath and dropped her hands. She took a step forward. She bent down and picked up one of the flowers the pegasi had thrown in her path. She looked at it for a moment and then tucked it into the collar of her dress. She opened her mouth.
“Genfwa,” she said, thank you. That wasn’t what came next; that was supposed to come at the end. “I knew Ebon’s country would be very beautiful”—she stumbled over “very beautiful, ” fffooonangirii—“but it is beautiful in a way that speaks to my . . . ”
Spirit, she wanted to say. She could feel her mind slipping away, her memory disintegrating; spirit was the sort of word a human could not say in pegasi, nor a pegasus in human: you could say beautiful, you could even say friend;