Windhaven

I Storms

Maris rode the storm ten feet above the sea, taming the winds on wide cloth-of-metal wings. She flew fiercely, recklessly, delighting in the danger and the feel of the spray, not bothered by the cold. The sky was an ominous cobalt blue, the winds were building, and she had wings; that was enough. She could die now, and die happy, flying.

She flew better than she ever had before, twisting and gliding between the air currents without thought, catching each time the updraft or downwind that would carry her farther or faster. She made no wrong choices, was forced into no hasty scrambles above the leaping ocean; the tacking she did was all for joy. It would have been safer to fly high, like a child, up above the waves as far as she could climb, safe from her own mistakes. But Maris skimmed the sea, like a flyer, where a single dip, a brush of wing against water, meant a clumsy tumble from the sky. And death; you don’t swim far when your wingspan is twenty feet.

Maris was daring, but she knew the winds.

Ahead she spied the neck of a scylla, a sinuous rope dark against the horizon. Almost without thinking, she responded. Her right hand pulled down on the leather wing grip, her left pushed up. She shifted the whole weight of her body. The great silver wings—tissue thin and almost weightless, but immensely strong—shifted with her, turning. One wingtip all but grazed the white-caps snapping below, the other lifted; Maris caught the rising winds more fully, and began to climb.

Death, sky death, had been on her mind, but she would not end like that—snapped from the air like an unwary gull, lunch for a hungry monster.

Minutes later she caught up to the scylla, and paused for a taunting circle just beyond its reach. From above she could see its body, barely beneath the waves, the rows of slick black flippers beating rhythmically. The tiny head, swaying slowly from side to side atop the long neck, ignored her. Perhaps it has known flyers, she thought then, and it does not like the taste.

The winds were colder now, and heavy with salt. The storm was gathering strength; she could feel a trembling in the air. Maris, exhilarated, soon left the scylla far behind. Then she was alone again, flying effortlessly, through an empty, darkening world of sea and sky where the only sound was the wind upon her wings.

In time, the island reared out of the sea: her destination. Sighing, sorry for the journey’s end, Maris let herself descend.

Gina and Tor, two of the local land-bound—Maris didn’t know what they did when they weren’t caring for visiting flyers—were on duty out on the landing spit. She circled once above them to catch their attention. They rose from the soft sand and waved at her. The second time she came around they were ready. Maris dipped lower and lower, until her feet were just inches above the ground; Gina and Tor ran across the sand parallel to her, each beside a wing. Her toes brushed surface and she began to slow in a shower of sand.

Finally she stopped, lying prone on the cool, dry sand. She felt silly. A downed flyer is like a turtle on its back; she could get on her feet if she had to, but it was a difficult, undignified process. Still, it had been a good landing.

Gina. and Tor began to fold up her wings, joint by foot-long joint. As each strut unlocked and folded back on the next segment, the tissue fabric between them went limp. When all the extensors were pulled in, the wings hung in two loose folds of drooping metal from the central axis strapped to Maris’ back.

“We’d expected Coll,” said Gina, as she folded back the final strut. Her short dark hair stood out in spikes around her face.

Maris shook her head. It should have been Coll’s journey, perhaps, but she had been desperate, longing for the air. She’d taken the wings—still her wings—and gone before he was out of bed.

“He’ll have flying enough after next week, I expect,” Tor said cheerfully. There was still sand in his lank blond hair and he was shivering a little from the sea winds, but he smiled as he spoke. “All the flying he’ll want.” He stepped in front of Maris to help her unstrap the wings.

“I’ll wear them,” Maris snapped at him, impatient, angered by his casual words. How could he understand? How could any of them understand? They were land-bound.

She started up the spit toward the lodge, Gina and Tor falling in beside her. There she took the usual refreshments and, standing before a huge open fire, allowed herself to be dried and warmed. The friendly questions she answered curtly, trying to be silent, trying not to think. This may be the last time. Because she was a flyer, they all respected her silence, though with disappointment. For the land-bound, the flyers were the most regular source of contact with the other islands. The seas, daily storm-lashed and infested with scyllas and seacats and other predators, were too dangerous for regular ship travel except among islands within the same local group. The flyers were the links, and the others looked to them for news, gossip, songs, stories, romance.

“The Landsman will be ready whenever you are rested,” Gina said, touching Maris tentatively on the shoulder. Maris pulled away, thinking, Yes, to you it is enough to serve the flyers. You’d like a flyer husband, Coll perhaps when he’s grown—and you don’t know what it means to me that Coll should be the flyer, and not I. But she said only, “I’m ready now. It was an easy flight. The winds did all the work.”

Gina led her to another room, where the Landsman was waiting for her message. Like the first room, this was long and sparsely furnished, with a blazing fire crackling in a great stone hearth. The Landsman sat in a cushioned chair near the flames; he rose when Maris entered. Flyers were always greeted as equals, even on islands where the Landsmen were worshipped as gods and held godlike powers.

After the ritual greetings had been exchanged, Maris closed her eyes and let the message flow. She didn’t know or care what she said. The words used her voice without troubling her conscious thought. Probably politics, she thought. Lately it had all been politics.

When the message ended, Maris opened her eyes and smiled at the Landsman—perversely, on purpose, because he looked worried by her words. But he recovered quickly and returned her smile. “Thank you,” he said, a little weakly. “You’ve done well.”

She was invited to stay the night, but she refused. The storm might die by morning; besides, she liked night flying. Tor and Gina accompanied her outside and up the rocky path to the flyers’ cliff. There were lanterns set in the stone every few feet, to make the twisting ascent safer at night.

At the top of the climb was a natural ledge, made deeper and wider by human hands. Beyond it, an eighty-foot drop, and breakers crashing on a rocky beach. On the ledge Gina and Tor unfolded her wings and locked the struts in place, and the tissue metal stretched tight and taut and silvery. And Maris jumped.

The wind caught her, lifted. She was flying again, dark sea below and rumbling storm above. Once launched she never looked back at the two wistful land-bound following her with their eyes. Too soon she would be one of them.

She did not turn toward home. Instead she flew with the storm winds, blowing violently now, westerly. Soon the thunder would come, and rain, and then Maris would be forced up, above the clouds, where the lightning was less likely to burn her from the sky. At home it would be calm, the storm past. People would be out beachcombing to see what the winds had brought, and a few small dories might be casting off in the hope that a day’s fishing might not be entirely lost.

The wind sang in her eyes and pushed at her, and she swam in the sky-stream gracefully. Then, oddly, she thought of Coll. And suddenly she lost the feel. She wavered, dipped, then pulled herself up sharply, tacking, searching for it. And cursing herself. It had been so good before—did it have to end this way? This might be her last flight ever, and it had to be her best. But it was no use: she’d lost the certainty. The wind and she were no longer lovers.

She began to fly at cross-purposes to the storm, battling grimly, fighting until her muscles were strained and aching. She gained altitude now; once the wind-feel left you, it was not safe to fly so near the water.

She was exhausted, tired of fighting, when she caught sight of the rocky face of the Eyrie and realized how far she had come.

The Eyrie was nothing but a huge rock thrust up from the sea, a crumbling tower of stone surrounded by an angry froth where the waters broke against its tail, sheer walls. It was not an island; nothing would grow here but pockets of tough lichen. Birds made their nests in the few protected crevices and ledges, though, and atop the rock the flyers had built their nest. Here, where no ship could moor, here where no one but flyers—bird and human—could roost, here stood their dark stone lodge.

“Maris!”

She looked up at the sound of her name, and saw Dorrel diving on her, laughing, his wings dark against the clouds. At the last possible moment she turned from him, banking sharply, and slipped out from under his dive. He chased her around the Eyrie, and Maris forgot that she was tired and aching, and lost herself in the sheer joy of flying.

When at last they landed, the rains had just begun, howling suddenly from the east, stinging their faces and slapping hard against their wings. Maris realized that she was nearly numb with cold. They came down in a soft earth landing pit carved in the solid rock, without help, and Maris slid ten feet in sudden-mud before coming to a stop. Then it took her five minutes to find her feet, and fumble with the triple straps that wrapped around her body. She tied the wings carefully to a tether rope, then walked out to a wingtip and began to fold them up.

By the time she had finished, her teeth were chattering convulsively, and she could feel the soreness in her arms. Dorrel frowned as he watched her work; his own wings, neatly folded, were slung over his shoulder. “Had you been out long?” he asked. “I should have let you land. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize. You must have been with the storm all the way, just in front of it. Difficult weather. I got some of the crosswinds myself. Are you all right?”

“Oh, yes. I was tired—but not really, not now. I’m glad you were there to meet me. That was good flying, and I needed it. The last part of the trip was rough—I thought I would drop. But good flying’s better than rest.”

Dorrel laughed and put his arm around her. She felt how warm he was after the flight and, by contrast, how cold she was. He felt it too and squeezed her tighter. “Come inside before you freeze. Garth brought some bottles of kivas from the Shotans, and one of them should be hot by now. Between us and the kivas we’ll get you warm again.”

The common room of the lodge was warm and cheerful, as always, but almost empty. Garth, a short, well-muscled flyer ten years her senior, was the only one there. He looked up from his place by the fire and called them by name. Maris wanted to answer, but her throat was tight with longing, and her teeth were clenched together. Dorrel led her to the fireplace.

“Like a woodwinged idiot I kept her out in the cold,” Dorrel said. “Is the kivas hot? Pour us some.” He stripped off his wet, muddy clothes quickly and efficiently, and pulled two large towels from a pile near the fire.

“Why should I waste my kivas on you?” Garth rumbled. “For Maris, of course, for she is very beautiful and a superb flyer.” He made a mock bow in her direction.

“You should waste your kivas on me,” Dorrel said, rubbing himself briskly with the big towel, “unless you would care to waste it all over the floor.”

Garth replied, and they traded insults and threats in laconic voices. Maris didn’t listen—she had heard it all before. She squeezed the water from her hair, watching the patterns the wetness made on the hearth stones and how quickly they faded. She looked at Dorrel, trying to memorize his lean, muscular body—a good flyer’s body—and the quick changes of his face as he teased Garth. But he turned when he felt Maris watching him, and his eyes gentled. Garth’s final witticism fell limply into silence. Dorrel touched Maris softly, tracing the line of her jaw.

“You’re still shivering.” He took the towel from her hands and wrapped it around her. “Garth, take that bottle off the fire before it explodes and let us all get warm.”

The kivas, a hot spice wine flavored with raisins and nuts, was served in great stone mugs. The first sip sent thin lines of fire down her veins, and the shivering stopped.

Garth smiled at her. “Good, isn’t it? Not that Dorrel will appreciate it. I tricked a slimy old fisherman out of a dozen bottles. He found it in a shipwreck, didn’t know what he had, and his wife didn’t want it in the house. I gave him some trinkets for it, some metal beads I’d picked up for my sister.”

“And what does your sister get?” Maris asked, between sips of kivas.

Garth shrugged. “Her? Oh, it was a surprise, anyway. I’ll bring something from Poweet the next time I go. Some painted eggs.”

“If he doesn’t see something else he can trade them for on his way back,” Dorrel said. “If your sister ever gets her surprise, Garth, the shock will kill all pleasure. You were born a trader. I think you’d swap your wings if the deal was good enough.”

Garth snorted indignantly. “Close your mouth when you say that, bird.” He turned to Maris. “How is your brother? I never see him.”

Maris took another sip of her drink, holding on to calm with both hands. “He’ll be of age next week,” she said carefully. “The wings will be his then. I wouldn’t know about his comings and goings. Maybe he doesn’t like your company.”

“Huh,” said Garth. “Why shouldn’t he?” He sounded wounded. Maris waved a hand, and forced herself to smile. She had meant it lightly. “I like him well enough,” Garth went on. “We all like him, don’t we, Dorrel? He’s young, quiet, maybe a bit too cautious, but he should improve. He’s different somehow—oh, but he can tell some stories! And sing! The land-bound will learn to love the sight of his wings.” Garth shook his head in wonder. “Where does he learn them all? I’ve done more traveling than he has, but…”

“He makes them up,” said Maris.

“Himself?” Garth was impressed. “He’ll be our singer, then. We’ll take the prize away from Eastern at the next competition. Western always has the best flyers,” he said loyally, “but our singers have never been worthy of the title.”

“I sang for Western at the last meet,” Dorrel objected.

“That’s what I mean.”

“You shriek like a seacat.”

“Yes,” said Garth, “but I have no delusions about my ability.”

Maris missed Dorrel’s reply. Her mind had drifted away from their dialogue, and she was watching the flames, thinking, nursing her still-warm drink. She felt peaceful here in the Eyrie, even now, even after Garth had mentioned Coll. And strangely comfortable. No one lived on the flyers’ rock, but it was a home of sorts. Her home. It was hard to think of not coming here anymore.

She remembered the first time she’d seen the Eyrie, a good six years ago, just after her coming-of-age day. She’d been a girl of thirteen, proud of having flown so far alone, but scared too, and shy. Inside the lodge she’d found a dozen flyers, sitting around a fire, drinking, laughing. A party was in progress. But they’d stopped and smiled at her. Garth had been a quiet youth then, Dorrel a skinny boy just barely older than she. She hadn’t known either of them. But Helmer, a middle-aged flyer from the island closest to hers, had been among the company, and he made the introductions. Even now she remembered the faces, the names: redheaded Anni from Culhall, Foster who later grew too fat to fly, Jamis the Senior, and especially the one nicknamed Raven, an arrogant youth who dressed in black fur and metal and had won awards for Eastern in three straight competitions. There was another too, a lanky blonde from the Outer Islands. The party was in her honor; it was seldom any of the Outers flew so very, very far.

They’d all welcomed Maris, and soon it seemed almost as if she’d replaced the tall blonde as true guest of honor. They gave her wine, despite her age, and they made her sing with them, and told her stories about flying, most of which she’d heard before, but never from such as these. Finally, when she felt very much part of the group, they let their attentions wander from her, and the festivities resumed their normal course.

It had been a strange, unforgettable party, and one incident in particular was burned golden in her memory. Raven, the only Eastern wing in the group, had been taking a lot of needling. Finally, a little drunk, he rebelled. “You call yourselves flyers,” he’d said, in a whiplash voice that Maris would always recall. “Come, come with me, I’ll show you flying.”

And the whole party had gone outside, to the flyers’ cliff of the Eyrie, the highest cliff of all. Six hundred feet straight down it plunged, to where the rocks stood up like teeth and the water churned furiously against them. Raven, wearing folded wings, walked up to the brink. He unfolded the first three joints of his wing struts carefully, and slid his arms through the loops. But he did not lock the wings; the hinges still moved, and the opened struts bent back and forth with his arms, flexible. The other struts he held, folded, in his hands.

Maris had wondered what he was up to. She soon found out.

He ran and jumped, out as far as he could, off the flyers’ cliff. With his wings still folded.

She’d gasped, run to the edge. The others followed, some looking pale, a few grinning. Dorrel had stood beside her.

Raven was falling straight down, a rock, his hands at his sides, his wing cloth flapping like a cape. Head first he flew, and the plunge seemed to last forever.

Then, at the very last moment, when he was almost on the rocks, when Maris could almost feel the impact—silver wings, suddenly, flashing in the sunlight. Wings from nowhere. And Raven caught the winds, and flew.

Maris had been awed. But Jamis the Senior, the oldest flyer Western had, only laughed. “Raven’s trick,” he growled. “I’ve seen him do it twice before. He oils his wing struts. After he’s fallen far enough, he flings them away as hard as he can. As each one locks in place, the snap flings loose the next one. Pretty, yes. You can bet he practiced it plenty before he tried it out in front of anyone. One of these days, though, a hinge is going to jam, and we won’t have to listen to Raven anymore.”

But even his words hadn’t tarnished the magic. Maris often had seen flyers, impatient with their land-bound help, draw their almost-open wings up and shake out the last joint or two with a sharp snap. But never anything like this.

Raven had been smirking when he met them at the landing pit. “When you can do that” he told the company, “then you can call yourselves flyers.” He’d been a conceited, reckless sort, yes, but right at that moment and for years afterward Maris had thought herself in love with him.

She shook her head sadly, and finished her kivas. It all seemed silly now. Raven had died less than two years after that party, vanished at sea without a trace. A dozen flyers died each year, and their wings usually were lost with them; clumsy flying would down and drown them, long-necked scyllas had been known to attack unwary skimmers, storms could blow them from the sky, lightning hunted out the metal of their wings—yes, there were many ways a flyer could die. Most of them, Maris suspected, just lost their way, and missed their destinations, flying on blindly till exhaustion pulled them down. A few perhaps hit that rarest and most feared menace of the sky: still air. But Maris knew now that Raven had been a more likely candidate for death than most, a foolish flashy flyer with no sky sense.

Dorrel’s voice jarred her from her memories. “Maris,” he said, “hey, don’t go to sleep on us.”

Maris set down her empty cup, her hand curved around the rough stone, still seeking the warmth it had held. With an effort, she pulled her hand away and picked up her sweater.

“It’s not dry,” Garth protested.

“Are you cold?” asked Dorrel.

“No. I must get back.”

“You’re too tired,” Dorrel said. “Stay the night.”

Maris drew her eyes away from his. “I mustn’t. They’ll worry.”

Dorrel sighed. “Then take dry clothes.” He stood, went to the far end of the common room, and pulled open the doors of a carved wooden wardrobe. “Come here and pick out something that fits.”

Maris did not move. “I’d better take my own clothes. I won’t be coming back.”

Dorrel swore softly. “Maris. Don’t make things—you know that—oh, come, take the clothes. You’re welcome to them, you know that. Leave yours in exchange if you like. I won’t let you go out in wet clothes.”

“I’m sorry,” Maris said. Garth smiled at her while Dorrel stood waiting. She got up slowly, pulling the towel more closely around her as she moved away from the fire. The ends of her short, dark hair felt damp and cold against her neck. With Dorrel she searched through the piles of clothes until she found trousers and a brown woolweed sweater to fit her slender, wiry frame. Dorrel watched her dress, then quickly found clothes for himself. Then they went to the rack near the door and took down their wings. Maris ran her long, strong fingers over the struts for weakness or damage; the wings seldom failed, but when they did the trouble was always in the joints. The fabric itself shone as soft and strong as it had when the star sailors rode it to this world. Satisfied, Maris strapped on the wings. They were in good shape; Coll would wear them for years, and his children for generations after him.

Garth had come to stand beside her. She looked at him.

“I’m not so good at words as Coll is, or Dorrel,” he started. “I… well. Goodbye, Maris.” He blushed, looking miserable. Flyers did not say goodbye to each other. But I am not a flyer, she thought, and so she hugged Garth, and kissed him, and said goodbye, the word of the land-bound.

Dorrel walked outside with her. The winds were strong, as always around the Eyrie, but the storm had passed. The only water in the air was the faint mist of sea-spray. But the stars were out.

“At least stay for dinner,” Dorrel said. “Garth and I would fight for the pleasure of serving you.”

Maris shook her head. She shouldn’t have come; she should have flown straight home and never said goodbye to Garth or Dorrel. Easier not to make the ending, easier to pretend that things would always be the same and then to vanish at the end. When they reached the high flyers’ cliff, the same from where Raven had leapt so long ago, she reached for Dorrel’s hand, and they stood awhile longer in silence.

“Maris,” he said finally, hesitantly. He looked straight out to sea, standing by her side, holding her hand. “Maris, you could marry me. I would share my wings with you—you needn’t give up flying entirely.”

Maris dropped his hand, and felt herself go hot all over with shame. He had no right; it was cruel to pretend. “Don’t,” she said in a whisper. “The wings aren’t yours to share.”

“Tradition,” he said, sounding desperate. She could tell he was embarrassed also. He wanted to help her, not to make things worse. “We could try it. The wings are mine, but you could use them…”

“Oh, Dorrel, don’t. The Landsman, your Landsman, would never allow it. It’s more than tradition, it’s law. They might take your wings away and give them to someone with more respect, like they did to Lind the smuggler. Besides, even if we ran away, to a place without law or Landsmen, to a place by ourselves—how long could you bear to share your wings? With me, with anyone? Don’t you see? We’d come to hate one another. I’m not a child who can practice when you’re resting. I can’t live like that, flying on sufferance, knowing the wings could never be mine. And you would grow tired of the way I would watch you—we would—oh…” She broke off, fumbling for words.

Dorrel was silent for a moment. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I wanted to do something—to help you, Maris. It hurts unbearably knowing what is about to happen to you. I wanted to give you something. I can’t bear to think of your going away and becoming…”

She took his hand again and held it tightly. “Yes, yes. Shh.”

“You do know I love you, Maris. You do, don’t you?”

“Yes, yes. And I love you, Dorrel. But—I’ll never marry a flyer. Not now. I couldn’t. I’d murder him for his wings.” She looked at him, trying to lighten the bleak truth of her words. And failing.

They clung to each other, balanced on the edge of the moment of parting, trying to say now, with the pressure of their bodies, everything they might ever want to say to each other. Then they pulled away, and looked at each other through tears.

Maris fumbled with her wings, shaking, suddenly cold again. Dorrel tried to help, but his fingers collided with hers, and they laughed, haltingly, at their clumsiness. She let him unfold her wings for her. When one of them was fully extended, and the second nearly so, she suddenly thought of Raven, and waved Dorrel away. Puzzled, he watched. Maris lifted the wing like an air-weary elder, and threw the final joint into lock with a clean strong snap. And then she was ready to leave.

“Go well,” he said, finally.

Maris opened her mouth, then closed it, nodding foolishly. “And you,” she said at last. “Take care, until…” But she could not add the final lie, any more than she could say goodbye to him. She turned and ran from him, and launched herself away from the Eyrie, out on the nightwinds into a cold dark sky.

It was a long and lonely flight over a starlit sea where nothing stirred. The winds were steady from the east, forcing Maris to tack all the way, losing time and speed. By the time she spotted the light tower of Lesser Amberly, her home island, midnight had come and gone.

There was another light below, turning on their landing beach. She saw it as she coasted in, smooth and easy, and thought it must be the lodge men. But they should have gone off duty long ago; few flyers were aloft this late. She frowned in puzzlement just as she hit the ground with a jarring shock.

Maris groaned, hurried to get up, and set to work on the wing straps. She should know enough not to be distracted at the moment of landing. The light advanced on her.

“So you decided to come back,” the voice said, harsh and angry. It was Russ, her father—stepfather, really—coming toward her with a lantern in his good hand, his right arm hanging dead and useless at his side.

“I stopped by the Eyrie first,” she said, defensively. “You weren’t worried?”

“Coll was to go, not you.” The lines of his face were set hard.

“He was in bed,” Maris said. “He was too slow—I knew he’d miss the best of the storm winds. He would have caught nothing but rain, and it would have taken him forever to get there. If he did. He’s not good in rain yet.”

“Then he must learn to be better. The boy must make his own mistakes now. You were his teacher, but soon the wings will be his. He’s the flyer, not you.”

Maris winced as if struck. This was the man who had taught her to fly, who had been so proud of her and the way she seemed to know instinctively what to do. The wings would be hers, he’d told her more than once, though she was not of his blood. He and his wife had taken her in when it seemed that he would never father a child of his own to inherit the wings. He’d had his accident and lost the sky, and it was important to find a flyer to replace him—if not someone of his blood, then someone he loved. His wife had refused to learn; she had lived thirty-five years as a land-bound, and she did not intend to jump off any cliffs, wings or no. Besides, it was too late; flyers had to be taught young. So it was Maris he had taught, adopted, and come to love—Maris the fisherman’s daughter, who would rather watch from the flyers’ cliff than play with the other children.

And then, against all probability, Coll had been born. His mother had died after the prolonged and difficult labor—Maris, very much a child, remembered a dark night full of people running, and later her stepfather crying alone in a corner—but Coll had lived on. Maris, suddenly a child-mother, came to care for him, love him. At first they didn’t expect him to live. She was happy when he did; and for three years she loved him as both brother and son, while she practiced with the wings under their father’s watchful eyes.

Until the night when the same father told her that Coll, baby Coll, must have her wings.

“I am a far better flyer than he will ever be,” Maris told him now, on the beach, her voice trembling.

“I do not dispute that. It makes no difference. He is my own blood.”

“It’s not fair!” she cried, letting out the protest that had been lodged inside her since the day she had come of age. By then Coll had been strong, healthy; still too small to bear the wings, but they would be his on his coming-of-age day. Maris had no claim, no right at all. That was the law of the flyers, stretching back through generations to the star sailors themselves, the legendary wing-forgers. The first-born child of each of the flying families would inherit the wings of the parent. Skill counted for nothing; this was a law of inheritance, and Maris came from a fishing family who had nothing to leave her but the scattered wreckage of a wooden boat.

“Fair or no, it is the law, Maris. You’ve known it for a long time, even if you chose to ignore it. For years you’ve played at being a flyer, and I’ve let you, because you loved it, and because Coll needed a teacher, a skilled one, and because this island is too big to rely on only two flyers. But you knew all the while this day would come.”

He could be more kind, she thought wildly. He must know what it means, to give up the sky.

“Now come with me,” he said. “You’ll not fly again.”

Her wings were still fully extended; only one strap was undone. “I’ll run away,” she said madly. “You’ll never see me again. I’ll go to some island where they don’t have a flyer of their own. They’ll be glad to have me, no matter how I got my wings.”

“Never,” her father said, sadly. “The other flyers would shun the island, as they did after the mad Landsman of Kennehut executed the Flyer-Who-Brought-Bad-News. You would be stripped of your stolen wings no matter where you went. No Landsman would take the risk.”

“I’ll break them, then!” Maris said, riding the edge of hysteria. “Then he’ll never fly either, any more than… than…”

Glass shattered on rock and the light went out as her father dropped the lantern. Maris felt his grip on her hands. “You couldn’t even if you wanted to. And you wouldn’t do that to Coll. But give me the wings.”

“I wouldn’t…”

“I don’t know what you wouldn’t do. I thought you’d gone out to kill yourself this morning, to die flying in the storm. I know the feelings, Maris. That’s why I was so frightened, and so angry. You mustn’t blame Coll.”

“I don’t. And I would not keep him from flying—but I want to fly so badly myself—Father, please.” Tears ran down her face in the dark, and she moved closer, reaching for comfort.

“Yes, Maris,” he said. He could not put his arm about her; the wings got in the way. “There is nothing I can do. This is the way of things. You must learn to live without wings, as I have. At least you’ve had them for a time—you know what it is like to fly.”

“It’s not enough!” she said, tearful, stubborn. “I used to think it would be, when I was a little girl, not even yours yet, just a stranger, and you were Amberly’s greatest flyer. I watched you and the others from the cliff and I used to think—if I could have wings, even for a moment, that would be life enough. But it isn’t, it isn’t. I can’t give them up.”

The hard lines were all gone now in her father’s face. He touched her face gently, brushing away tears. “Perhaps you’re right,” he said, in a slow heavy voice. “Perhaps it was not a good thing. I thought if I could let you fly for a while, a little bit—that would be better than nothing, it would be a fine bright gift indeed. But it wasn’t, was it? Now you can never be happy. You can never be a land-bound, really, for you’ve flown, and you’ll always know how you are imprisoned.” His words stopped abruptly and Maris realized that he was talking of himself as much as her.

He helped her unstrap and fold the wings and they walked back home together.

Their house was a simple wood frame, surrounded by trees and land. A creek ran through the back. Flyers could live well. Russ said goodnight just inside the door and took the wings upstairs with him. Has he really lost all trust? Maris thought. What have I done? And she felt like crying again.

Instead she wandered into the kitchen, found cheese and cold meat and tea, and took them back into the dining room. A bowl-shaped sand candle sat in the center of the table. She lit it, ate, and watched the flame dance.

Coll entered just as she finished, and stood awkwardly in the doorway. “’Lo, Maris,” he said uncertainly. “I’m glad you’re back. I was waiting.” He was tall for a thirteen-year-old, with a soft, slender body, long red-blond hair, and the wispy beginnings of a mustache.

“’Lo, Coll,” Maris said. “Don’t just stand there. I’m sorry I took the wings.”

He sat down. “I don’t mind, you know that. You fly a lot better than me, and—well—you know. Was Father mad?”

Maris nodded.

Coll looked grim and frightened. “It’s only one week away now, Maris. What are we going to do?” He was looking straight down at the candle, not at her.

Maris sighed, and put a gentle hand on his arm. “We’ll do what we must, Coll. We have no choice.” They had talked before, she and Coll, and she knew his agony as much as her own. She was his sister, almost his mother, and the boy had shared with her his shame and his secret. That was the ultimate irony.

He looked up at her now, looking to her again as the child to the mother; although he knew now that she was as helpless as he, still he hoped. “Why don’t we have a choice? I don’t understand.”

Maris sighed. “It’s law, Coll. We don’t go against tradition here, you know that. We all have duties put upon us. If we had a choice I would keep the wings, I would be a flyer. And you could be a singer. We’d both be proud, and know we were good at what we did. Life will be hard as a land-bound. I want the wings so much. I’ve had them, and it doesn’t seem right that they should be taken from me, but maybe—maybe the tightness in it is something I just don’t see. People wiser than we decided that things should be the way they are, and maybe, maybe I’m just being a child about it, wanting everything my own way.”

Coll wet his lips, nervous. “No.”

She looked a question at him.

He shook his head stubbornly. “It’s not right, Maris, it just isn’t. I don’t want to fly, I don’t want to take your wings. It’s all so stupid. I’m hurting you and I don’t want to, but I don’t want to hurt Father either. How can I tell him? I’m his heir and all that—I’m supposed to take the wings. He’d hate me. The songs don’t say anything about flyers who were scared of the sky like I am. Flyers aren’t afraid—I’m not meant for a flyer.” His hands were shaking visibly.

“Coll, don’t worry. It will be all right, really it will. Everyone is frightened at first. I was, too.” She wasn’t thinking about the lie, only saying words to reassure him.

“But it’s not fair,” he cried. “I don’t want to give up my singing, and if I fly I can’t sing, not like Barrion, not like I’d like to. So why are they going to make me? Maris, why can’t you be the flyer, like you want to be? Why?”

She looked at him, so close to crying, and felt like joining him in tears. She didn’t have an answer, not for him or for herself. “I don’t know,” she said, her voice hollow. “I don’t know, little one. That is the way things have always been done, though, and that is the way they must be.”

They stared at each other, both trapped, caught together by a law older than either and a tradition neither understood. Helpless and hurt, they talked long in the candlelight, saying the same things over and over again until, late, they parted for bed, nothing resolved.

But once in bed alone, the resentment came flooding back to Maris, the sense of loss, and with it, shame. She cried herself to sleep that night, and dreamt of purple storm-skies that she would never fly.

The week went on forever.

A dozen times during those endless days Maris walked up to the flyers’ cliff, to stand helplessly with her hands in her pockets looking out over the sea. Fishing boats she saw, and gulls, and once a hunting pack of sleek gray seacats far, far off. It made her hurt the more, the sudden closing of the world she knew, the way the horizons seemed to shrink about her, but she could not stop coming. So she stood there, lusting for the wind, but the only thing that flew was her hair.

Once she caught Coll watching her from a distance. Afterward neither of them mentioned it.

Russ had the wings now, his wings, as they had always been, as they would be until Coll took them. When Lesser Amberly needed a flyer, Corm answered the call from the far side of the island, or gay Shalli who had flown guard when Maris was a child first learning simple sky sense. As far as her father was concerned, the island had no third flyer, and would have none until Coll claimed his birthright.

His attitude toward Maris had changed too. Sometimes he raged at her when he found her brooding, sometimes he put his good arm around her and all but wept. He could not find a middle ground between anger and pity; so, helpless, he tried to avoid her. Instead he spent his time with Coll, acting excited and enthusiastic. The boy, a dutiful son, tried to catch and echo the mood. But Maris knew that he too went for long walks, and spent a lot of time alone with his guitar.

On the day before Coll was to come of age, Maris sat high on the flyers’ cliff, her legs dangling over the edge, watching Shalli wheel in silver arcs across the noonday sky. Spotting seacats for the fishermen, Shalli had said, but Maris knew better. She’d been a flyer long enough to recognize a joy-flight when she saw one. Even now, as she sat trapped, she could feel a distant echo of that joy; something soared within her whenever Shalli banked, and a shaft of silvered sunlight blazed briefly from a wing.

Is this the way it ends? Maris asked herself. It can’t be. No, this is the way it began. I remember.

And she did remember. Sometimes she thought she had watched the flyers even before she could walk, though her mother, her real mother, said that wasn’t so. Maris did have vivid memories of the cliff, though; she’d run away and come here almost weekly when she was four and five. There—here—she’d sit, watching the flyers come and go. Her mother would always find her, and she would always be furious.

“You are a land-bound, Maris,” she’d say, after she had administered a spanking. “Don’t waste your time with foolish dreams. I won’t have my daughter be a Woodwings.”

That was an old folktale; her mother told it to her anew each time she caught her on the cliff. Woodwings was a carpenter’s son who wanted to be a flyer. But, of course, he wasn’t in a flying family. He did not care, the story said; he did not listen to friends or family, he wanted nothing but sky. Finally, in his father’s shop, he built himself a beautiful pair of wings: great butterfly wings of carved and polished wood. And everyone said they were beautiful, everyone but the flyers; the flyers only shook their heads silently. Finally Woodwings climbed to the flyers’ cliff. They were waiting for him up there, wordless, circling and banking bright and quiet in the dawn light. Woodwings ran to meet them, and fell tumbling to his death.

“And the moral,” Maris’ mother would always say, “is that you shouldn’t try to be something you’re not.”

But was that the moral? The child Maris didn’t worry about it; she just dismissed Woodwings as an oaf. But when she was older, the story came back to her often. At times she thought her mother had gotten it all wrong. Woodwings had won, Maris thought. He had flown, if only for an instant, and that made it all worthwhile, even his death. It was a flyer’s death. And the others, the flyers, they had not come out to mock him, or warn him off—no, they flew guard for him, because he was just a beginner, and because they understood. The land-bound often laughed at Woodwings; the name had become a synonym for fool. But how could a flyer hear the story and do anything but cry?

Maris thought of Woodwings then, as she sat in the cold watching Shalli fly, and the old questions came back. Was it worth it, Woodwings? she thought. An instant of flight, then death forever? And for me, was it worth it? A dozen years of stormwinds, and now a life without?

When Russ had first begun to notice her on the cliff, she was the happiest child in the world. When he adopted her and pushed her proudly into the sky, she thought she would die from joy. Her real father was dead, gone with his boat, killed by an angry scylla after a storm had blown him far off course; her mother was gladly rid of her. She leapt at the new life, at the sky; it seemed that all her dreams were coming true. Woodwings had the right idea, she thought then. Dream anything hard enough, and it can be yours.

Her faith had left after Coll came, when she was told.

Coll. Everything came back to Coll.

So, lost, Maris brushed all thought aside, and watched in melancholy peace.

The day came, as Maris knew it must.

It was a small party, though the Landsman himself was the host. He was a portly, genial man, with a kind face hidden by a full beard that he hoped would make him fierce. When he met them at the door, his clothes dripped wealth: rich embroidered fabrics, rings of copper and brass, and a heavy necklace of real wrought iron. But the welcome was warm.

Inside the lodge was a great party room. Bare wooden beams above, torches flaming bright along the walls, a scarlet carpet underneath. And a table, groaning under its burden—kivas from the Shotans and Amberly’s own wines, cheeses flown in from Culhall, fruit from the Outer Islands, great bowls of green salad. In the hearth, a seacat turned on a spit while a cook basted it with bitter-weed and its own drippings. It was a big one, half again the size of a man, its warm blue-gray fur skinned away to leave a barrel-shaped carcass tapering to a pair of powerful flippers. The thick layer of fat that protected the seacat against the cold had begun to crackle and hiss in the flames, and the curiously feline face had been stuffed full of nuts and herbs. It smelled wonderful.

Their land-bound friends were all at the party, and they clustered around Coll, offering congratulations. Some of them even felt compelled to talk to Maris, to tell her how lucky she was to have a flyer for a brother, to have been a flyer herself. Have been, have been, have been. She wanted to scream.

But the flyers were worse. They were there in force, of course. Corm, handsome as ever, dripping charm, held court in one corner, telling stories of far-off places to starry-eyed land-bound girls. Shalli was dancing; before the evening had run its course she would burn out a half-dozen men with her frantic energy. Other flyers had come from other islands. Anni of Culhall, the boy Jamis the Younger, Helmer of Greater Amberly, whose own daughter would claim his wings in less than a year, a half-dozen others from the West, three cliquish Easterners. Her friends, her brothers, her comrades in the Eyrie.

But now they avoided her. Anni smiled politely and looked the other way. Jamis delivered his father’s greetings, then lapsed into an uncomfortable silence, shifting from foot to foot until Maris let him go. His sigh of relief was almost audible. Even Corm, who said he was never nervous, seemed ill at ease with her. He brought her a cup of hot kivas, then saw a friend across the room that he simply had to talk to.

Feeling cut off and shunned, Maris found a leather chair by the window. There she sat and sipped her kivas and listened to the rising wind pull at the shutters. She didn’t blame them. How can you talk to a wingless flyer?

She was glad that Garth and Dorrel had not come, nor any of the others she had come to love especially. And she was ashamed of being glad.

Then there was a stir by the door, and her mood lifted slightly. Barrion had arrived, with guitar in hand.

Maris smiled to see him enter. Although Russ thought him a bad influence on Coll, she liked Barrion. The singer was a tall, weather-beaten man, whose shock of unruly gray hair made him look older than he was. His long face bore the marks of wind and sun, but there were laugh lines around his mouth as well, and a roguish humor in his gray eyes. Barrion had a rumbly deep voice, an irreverent manner, and a penchant for wild stories. He was Western’s best singer, so it was said. At least Coll said it, and Barrion himself, of course. But Barrion also said he’d been to a hundred islands, unthinkable for a wingless man. And he claimed that his guitar had arrived seven centuries ago from Earth, with the star sailors themselves. His family had handed it down, he said, all serious, as if he expected Coll and Maris to believe him. But the idea was nonsense—treating a guitar as if it were a pair of wings!

Still, liar or no, lanky Barrion was entertaining enough, and romantic enough, and he sang like the very wind. Coll had studied under him, and now they were great friends.

The Landsman clapped him roundly on the back, and Barrion laughed, sat down, and prepared to sing. The room grew quiet; even Corm stopped in mid-story.

He began with the Song of the Star Sailors.

It was the oldest ballad, the first of those that they could rightly call their own. Barrion sang it simply, with easy loving familiarity, and Maris softened to the sound of his deep voice. How often she had heard Coll, late at night, plucking at his own instrument and singing the same song. His voice had been changing then; it made him furious. Every third stanza would be interrupted by a hideous cracked note and a minute of swearing. Maris used to lie in bed and giggle helplessly at the noises from down the hall.

Now she listened to the words, as Barrion sang sweetly of the star sailors and their great ship, with its silver sails that stretched a hundred miles to catch the wild starwinds. The whole story was there. The mysterious storm, the crippled ship, the coffins where they died awhile; then, driven off course, they came here, to a world of endless ocean and raging storms, a world where the only land was a thousand scattered rocky islands, and the winds blew constantly. The song told of the landing, in a ship not meant to land, of the death of thousands in their coffins, and the way the sail—barely heavier than air—had floated atop the sea, turning the waters silver all around the Shotans. Barrion sang of the star sailors’ magic, and their dream of repairing the ship, and the slow agonizing dying of that dream. He lingered, melancholy, over the fading powers of their magic machines, the fading that ended in darkness. Finally came the battle, just off Big Shotan, when the Old Captain and his loyalists went down defending the precious metal sails against their children. Then, with the last magic, the sons and daughters of the star sailors, the first children of Windhaven, cut the sails into pieces, light, flexible, immensely strong. And, with whatever metal they could salvage from the ship, they forged the wings.

For the scattered people of Windhaven needed communication. Without fuel, without metal, faced by oceans full of storms and predators, given nothing free but the powerful winds: the choice was easy.

The last chords faded from the air. The poor sailors, Maris thought, as always. The Old Captain and his crew, they were flyers too, though their wings were star-wings. But their way of flying had to die so a new way could be born.

Barrion grinned at someone’s request, and began a new tune. He did a half-dozen songs from ancient Earth, then looked around sheepishly and offered up a composition of his own, a bawdy drinking song about a horny scylla who mistook a fishing ship for its mate. Maris hardly listened. Her mind was on the star sailors still. In a way, they were like Woodwings, she thought; they couldn’t give up their dream. And it meant they had to die. I wonder if they thought it was worth it?

“Barrion,” Russ called from the floor. “This is a flyer’s age-day. Give us some flying songs!”

The singer grinned, and nodded. Maris looked over at Russ. He stood by the table, a wine glass in his good hand, a smile on his face. He is proud, she thought. His son is soon to be a flyer, and he has forgotten me. She felt sick and beaten.

Barrion sang flying songs; ballads from the Outer Islands, from the Shotans, from Culhall and the Amberlys and Poweet. He sang of the ghost flyers, lost forever over the seas when they obeyed the Landsman-Captain and took swords into the sky. In still air you can see them yet, wandering hopelessly through the storms on phantom wings. Or so the legends go. But flyers who hit still air seldom return to talk of it, so no one could say for sure.

He did the song of white-haired Royn, who was past eighty when he found his flyer grandson dead in a lover’s quarrel, and took the wings to chase and kill the culprit.

He sang the ballad of Aron and Jeni, the saddest song of all. Jeni had been a land-born, and worse, crippled; unable to walk, she had lived with her mother, a washerwoman, and daily she sat by the window to watch the flyers’ cliff on Little Shotan. There she fell in love with Aron, a graceful laughing flyer, and in her dreams he loved her too. But one day, alone in her house, she saw him play in the sky with another flyer, a fire-haired woman, and when they landed they kissed each other. When her mother came home, Jeni was dead. Aron, when they told him, would not let them bury the woman he had never known. He took her in his arms and carried her up to the cliff; then, slinging her beneath him, he rode the winds far out to sea and gave her a flyer’s burial.

Woodwings had a song too, though not a very good one; it made him a comical fool. Barrion sang it, though, and the one about the Flyer-Who-Brought-Bad-News, and Winddance, the flyers’ wedding song, and a dozen others. Maris could hardly move, so caught was she. The kivas was rain-cold in her hand, forgotten in the face of the words. It was a good feeling, a restless disturbing glorious sadness, and it brought back to her memories of the winds.

“Your brother is a flyer born,” a soft voice whispered by her side, and she saw that Corm was resting on the arm of her chair. He gestured gracefully with his wine glass, to where Coll sat at Barrion’s feet. The youth had his hands folded tightly around his knees, and his look was one of rapture.

“See how the songs touch him,” Corm said easily. “Only songs to a land-bound, but more, much more, to a flyer. You and I know that, Maris, and your brother too. I can tell by watching. I know how it must be for you, but think of him, girl. He loves it as much as you.”

Maris looked up at Corm, and all but laughed at his wisdom. Yes, Coll looked entranced, but only she knew why. It was singing he loved, not flying; the songs, not the subject. But how could Corm know that, smiling handsome Corm who was so sure of himself and knew so little. “Do you think that only flyers dream, Corm?” she asked him in a whisper, then quickly glanced away to where Barrion was finishing a song.

“There are more flying songs,” Barrion said. “If I sang them all, we would be here all night, and I’d never get to eat.” He looked at Coll. “Wait. You’ll learn more than I’ll ever know when you reach the Eyrie.” Corm, by Maris’ side, raised his glass in salute.

Coll stood up. “I want to do one.”

Barrion smiled. “I think I can trust you with my guitar. Nobody else, maybe, but you, yes.” He got up, relinquishing his seat to the quiet, pale-faced youth.

Coll sat down, strummed nervously, biting his lip. He blinked at the torches, looked over at Maris, blinked again. “I want to do a new song, about a flyer. I—well, I made it up. I wasn’t there, you understand, but I heard the story, and well, it’s all true. It ought to be a song, and it hasn’t been, till now.”

“Well, sing it then, boy,” the Landsman boomed.

Coll smiled, glanced at Maris again. “I call this Raven’s Fall.”

And he sang it.

Clear and pure, with a beautiful voice, just the way it happened. Maris watched him with wide eyes, listened with awe. He got it all right. He even caught the feeling, the lump that twisted in her when Raven’s folded wings bloomed mirror-bright in the sun, and he climbed away from death. All of the innocent love she had felt for him was in Coll’s song; the Raven that he sang of was a glorious winged prince, dark and daring and defiant. As Maris once had thought him.

He has a gift, Maris thought. Corm looked down at her and said, “What?” and suddenly she realized that she’d whispered it aloud.

“Coll,” she said, in a low voice. The last notes of the song rang in her ears. “He could be better than Barrion, if he had a chance. I told him that story, Corm. I was there, and a dozen others, when Raven did his trick. But none of us could have made it beautiful, as Coll did. He has a very special gift.”

Corm smiled at her complacently. “True. Next year we’ll wipe out Eastern in the singing competition.”

And Maris looked at him, suddenly furious. It was all so wrong, she thought. Across the room, Coll was watching her, a question in his eyes. Maris nodded to him, and he grinned proudly. He had done it right.

And she had decided.

But then, before Coll could start another song, Russ came forward. “Now,” he said, “now we must get serious. We’ve had singing and talk, good eating and good drink here in the warmth. But outside are the winds.”

They all listened gravely, as was expected, and the sound of the winds, forgotten background for so long, now seemed to fill the room. Maris heard, and shivered.

“The wings,” her father said.

The Landsman came forward, holding them in his hands like the trust they were. He spoke his ritual words: “Long have these wings served Amberly, linking us to all the folk of Windhaven, for generations, back to the days of the star sailors. Marion flew them, daughter of a star sailor, and her daughter Jeri, and her son Jon, and Anni, and Flan, and Denis” … the genealogy went on a long time… “and last Russ and his daughter, Maris.” There was a slight ripple in the crowd at the unexpected mention of Maris. She had not been a true flyer and ought not have been named. They were giving her the name of flyer even as they took away her wings, Maris thought. “And now young Coll will take them, and now, as other Landsmen have done for generations, I hold them for a brief while, to bring them luck with my touch. And through me all the folk of Lesser Amberly touch these wings, and with my voice they say, ‘Fly well, Coll!’ ”

The Landsman handed the folded wings to Russ, who took them and turned to Coll. He was standing then, the guitar at his feet, and he looked very small and very pale. “It is time for someone to become a flyer,” Russ said. “It is time for me to pass on the wings, and for Coll to accept them, and it would be folly to strap on wings in a house. Let us go to the flyers’ cliff and watch a boy become a man.”

The torch-bearers, flyers all, were ready. They left the lodge, Coll in a place of honor between his father and the Landsman, the flyers close behind with the torches. Maris and the rest of the party followed further back.

It was a ten-minute walk, slow steps in other-worldly silence, before they stood in a rough semicircle on the stage of the cliff. Alone by the edge, Russ, one-handed and disdaining help, strapped the wings onto his son. Coll’s face was chalk white. He stood very still while Russ unfolded the wings, and looked straight down at the abyss before him, where dark waves clawed against the beach.

Finally, it was done. “My son, you are a flyer,” Russ said, and then he stepped back with the rest of them, close to Maris. Coll stood alone beneath the stars, perched on the brink, his immense silvery wings making him look smaller than ever before. Maris wanted to shout, to interrupt, to do something; she could feel the tears on her cheeks. But she could not move. Like all the rest, she waited for the traditional first flight.

And Coll at last, with a sharp indrawn breath, kicked off from the cliff.

His last running step was a stumble, and he plunged down out of sight. The crowd rushed forward. By the time the party-goers reached the edge, he had recovered and was climbing slowly up. He made a wide circle out over the ocean, then glided in close to the cliff, then back out again. Sometimes young flyers gave their friends a show, but Coll was no showman. A winged silver wraith, he wandered awkward and a little lost in a sky that was not his home.

Other wings were being broken out; Corm and Shalli and the others prepared to fly. Shortly now they would join Coll in the sky, make a few passes in formation, then leave the land-bound behind and fly off to the Eyrie to spend the rest of the night in celebration of their newest member.

Before any of them could leap, though, the wind changed; Maris felt it with a flyer’s perception. And she heard it, a gale of cold that screeched forlorn over the rocky edges of the peak; and most of all she saw it, for out above the waves Coll faltered visibly. He dipped slightly, fought to save himself, went into a sudden spin. Someone gasped. Then, quickly again, he was back in control, and headed back to them. But struggling, struggling. It was a rough wind, angry, pushing him down; the sort of wind a flyer had to coax and soothe and tame. Coll wrestled with it, and it was beating him.

“He’s in trouble,” Corm said, and the handsome flyer flung out his last wing struts with a snap. “I’ll fly guard.” With that, he was suddenly aloft.

Too late to be of much help, though. Coll, his wings swaying back and forth as he was buffeted by the sudden turbulence, was headed toward the landing beach. A wordless decision was made, and the party moved as one to meet him, Maris and her father in the lead.

Coll came down fast, too fast. He was not riding the wind; no, he was being pushed. His wings shook as he dropped, and he tilted, so one wingtip brushed the ground while the other pointed up toward the sky. Wrong, wrong, all wrong. Even as they rushed onto the beach, there was a great spraying shower of dry sand and then the sudden horrible sound of metal snapping and Coll was down, lying safe in the sand.

But his left wing was limp and broken.

Russ reached him first, knelt over him, started to work on the straps. The others gathered around. Then Coll rose a little, and they saw that he was shaking, his eyes full of tears.

“Don’t worry,” Russ said, in a mock-hearty voice. “It was only a strut, son; they break all the time. We’ll fix it easy. You were a little shaky, but all of us are the first time up. Next time will be better.”

“Next time, next time, next time!” Coll said. “I can’t do it, I can’t do it, Father. I don’t want a next time! I don’t want your wings!” He was crying openly now, and his body shook with his sobs.

The guests stood in mute shock, and his father’s face grew stern. “You are my son, and a flyer. There will be a next time. And you will learn.”

Coll continued to shake and sob, the wings off now, lying unstrapped at his feet, broken and useless, at least for now. There would be no flight to the Eyrie tonight.

The father reached out his good arm and took his son by the shoulder, shaking him. “You hear? You hear! I won’t listen to such nonsense. You fly, or you are no son of mine.”

Coll’s sudden defiance was all gone now. He nodded, biting back the tears, looked up. “Yes, Father,” he said. “I’m sorry. I just got scared out there, I didn’t mean to say it.” He was only thirteen, Maris remembered as she watched from among the guests. Thirteen and scared and not at all a flyer. “I don’t know why I said it. I didn’t mean it, really.”

And Maris found her voice. “Yes, you did,” she said loudly, remembering the way Coll had sung of Raven, remembering the decision she had made. The others turned to look at her with shock, and Shalli put a restraining hand on her arm. But Maris shrugged it off and pushed forward to stand between Coll and his father.

“He did mean it,” she said quietly, her voice steady and sure while her heart trembled. “Couldn’t you see, Father? He’s not a flyer. He’s a good son, and you should be proud of him, but he will never love the wind. I don’t care what the law says.”

“Maris,” Russ said, and there was nothing warm in his voice, only despair and hurt. “You would take the wings from your own brother? I thought you loved him.”

A week ago she would have cried, but now her tears were all used up. “I do love him, and I want him to have a long and happy life. He will not be happy as a flyer; he does it just to make you proud. Coll is a singer, a good one. Why must you take from him the life he loves?”

“I take nothing,” Russ said coldly. “Tradition…”

“A stupid tradition,” a new voice interjected. Maris looked for her ally, and saw Barrion pushing through the crowd. “Maris is right. Coll sings like an angel, and we all saw how he flies.” He glanced around contemptuously at the flyers in the crowd. “You flyers are such creatures of habit that you have forgotten how to think. You follow tradition blindly no matter who is hurt.”

Almost unnoticed, Corm had landed and folded up his wings. Now he stood before them, his smooth dark face flushed with anger. “The flyers and their traditions have made Amberly great, have shaped the very history of Windhaven a thousand times over. I don’t care how well you sing, Barrion, you are not beyond the law.” He looked at Russ and continued, “Don’t worry, friend. We’ll make your son a flyer such as Amberly has never seen.”

But then Coll looked up, and though the tears flowed still, suddenly there was anger in his face too, and decision. “No!” he shouted, and his glance at Corm was defiant. “You won’t make me anything I don’t want to be, I don’t care who you are. I’m not a coward, I’m not a baby, but I don’t want to fly, I don’t, I DON’T!” His words were a torrent, all but screamed into the wind, as his secret came pouring out and all the barriers fell at once. “You flyers think you’re so good, that everybody else is beneath you, but you’re not, you know, you’re not. Barrion has been to a hundred islands, and he knows more songs than a dozen flyers. I don’t care what you think, Corm. He’s not land-bound; he takes ships when everybody else is too scared. You flyers stay clear of scyllas, but Barrion killed one once with a harpoon, from a little wooden boat. I bet you didn’t know that.

“I can be like him, too. I have a talent. He’s going to the Outer Islands, and he wants me to come with him, and he told me once that he’d give me his guitar one day. He can take flying and make it beautiful with his words, but he can do the same thing with fishing or hunting or anything. Flyers can’t do that, but he can. He’s Barrion! He’s a singer, and that’s just as good as being a flyer. And I can do it too, like I did tonight with Raven.” He glared at Corm with hate. “Take your old wings, give them to Maris, she’s the flyer,” he shouted, kicking at the limp fabric on the ground. “I want to go with Barrion.”

There was an awful silence. Russ stood mute for a long time, then looked at his son with a face that was older than it had ever been. “They are not his wings to take, Coll,” he said. “They were my wings, and my father’s, and his mother’s before him, and I wanted-—I wanted—” His voice broke.

“You are responsible for this,” Corm said angrily, with a glance at Barrion. “And you, yes you, his own sister,” he added, shifting his gaze to Maris.

“All right, Corm,” she said. “We are responsible, Barrion and I, because we love Coll and we want to see him happy—and alive. The flyers have followed tradition too long. Barrion is right, don’t you see? Every year bad flyers take the wings of their parents and die with them, and Windhaven is poorer, for wings cannot be replaced. How many flyers were there in the days of the star sailors? How many are there today? Can’t you see what tradition is doing to us? The wings are a trust; they should be worn by those who love the sky, who will fly best and keep them best. Instead, birth is our only measure for awarding wings. Birth, not skill; but a flyer’s skill is all that saves him from death, all that binds Windhaven together.”

Corm snorted. “This is a disgrace. You are no flyer, Maris, and you have no right to speak of these matters. Your words disgrace the sky and you violate all tradition. If your brother chooses to give up his birthright, very well, then. But he won’t make a mockery of our law and give them to anyone he chooses.” He looked around, at the shock-still crowd. “Where is the Landsman? Tell us the law!”

The Landsman’s voice was slow, troubled. “The law—the tradition—but this case is so special, Corm. Maris has served Amberly well, and we all know how she flies. I—”

“The law,” Corm insisted.

The Landsman shook his head. “Yes, that is my duty, but—the law says that—that if a flyer renounces his wings, then they shall be taken by another flyer from the island, the senior, and he and the Landsman shall hold them until a new wing-bearer is chosen. But Corm, no flyer has ever renounced his wings—the law is only used when a flyer dies without an heir, and here, in this case, Maris is—”

“The law is the law,” Corm said.

“And you will follow it blindly,” Barrion put in.

Corm ignored him. “I am Lesser Amberly’s senior flyer, since Russ has passed on the wings. I will take custody, until we find someone worthy of being a flyer, someone who will recognize the honor and keep the traditions.”

“No!” Coll shouted. “I want Maris to have the wings.”

“You have no say in the matter,” Corm told him. “You are a land-bound.” So saying, he stooped and picked up the discarded, broken wings. Methodically he began to fold them.

Maris looked around for help, but it was hopeless. Barrion spread his hands, Shalli and Helmer would not meet her gaze, and her father stood broken and weeping, a flyer no more, not even in name, only an old cripple. The party-goers, one by one, began to drift away.

The Landsman came to her. “Maris,” he started. “I am sorry. I would give the wings to you if I could. The law is not meant for this—not as punishment, but only as a guide. But it’s flyers’ law, and I cannot go against the flyers. If I deny Corm, Lesser Amberly will become like Kennehut and the songs will call me mad.”

She nodded. “I understand,” she said. Corm, wings under either arm, was stalking off the beach.

The Landsman turned and left, and Maris went across the sand to Russ. “Father—” she began.

He looked up. “You are no daughter of mine,” he said, and turned on her deliberately. She watched the old man moving stiffly away, walking with difficulty, going inland to hide his shame.

Finally the three of them stood alone on the landing beach, wordless and beaten. Maris went to Coll and put her arms around him and hugged him. They held on to each other, both for the moment children seeking comfort they could not give.

“I have a place,” Barrion said at last, his voice waking them. They parted groggily, watched as the singer slung his guitar across his shoulders, and followed him home.

For Maris, the days that followed were dark and troubled.

Barrion lived in a small cabin by the harbor, just off a deserted, rotting wharf, and it was there they stayed. Coll was happier than Maris had ever seen him; each day he sang with Barrion, and he knew that he would be a singer after all. Only the fact that Russ refused to see him bothered the boy, and even that was often forgotten. He was young, and he had discovered that many of his own age looked on him with guilty admiration, as a rebel, and he gloried in the feeling.

But for Maris, things were not so easy. She seldom left the cabin except to wander out on the wharf at sunset and watch the fishing boats come in. She could think only of her loss. She was trapped and helpless. She had tried as hard as she could, she had done the right thing, but still her wings were gone. Tradition, like a mad cruel Landsman, had ruled, and now kept her prisoner.

Two weeks after the incident on the beach, Barrion returned to the cabin after a day on the docks, where he went daily to gather new songs from the fishermen of Amberly and sing at wharfside inns. As they ate bowls of hot, meaty stew, he looked at Maris and the boy and said, “I have arranged for a boat. In a month I will sail for the Outer Islands.”

Coll smiled eagerly. “Us too?”

Barrion nodded. “You, yes, certainly. And Maris?”

She shook her head. “No.”

The singer sighed. “You can gain nothing by staying here. Things will be hard for you on Amberly. Even for me, times are getting difficult. The Landsman moves against me, prompted by Corm, and respectable folk are starting to avoid me. Besides, there is a lot of world to see. Come with us.” He smiled. “Maybe I can even teach you how to sing.”

Maris played idly with her stew. “I sing worse than my brother flies, Barrion. No, I can’t go. I’m a flyer. I must stay, and win my wings again.”

“I admire you, Maris,” he said, “but your fight is hopeless. What can you do?”

“I don’t know. Something. The Landsman, perhaps. I can go to him. The Landsman makes the law, and he sympathizes. If he sees that it is best for the people of Amberly, then…”

“He can’t defy Corm. This is a matter of flyers’ law, and he has no control over that. Besides…” he hesitated.

“What?”

“There is news. It’s all over the docks. They’ve found a new flyer, or an old one, actually. Devin of Gavora is en route here by boat to take up residence and wear your wings.” He watched her carefully, concern written across his face.

“Devin!” She slammed down her fork, and stood. “Have their laws blinded them to common sense?” She paced back and forth across the room. “Devin is a worse flyer than Coll ever was. He lost his own wings when he swooped too low and grazed water. If it hadn’t been for a ship passing by, he would be dead. So Corm wants to give him another pair?”

Barrion grinned bitterly. “He’s a flyer, and he keeps the old traditions.”

“How long ago did he leave?”

“A few days, the word says.”

“It’s a two-week voyage, easily,” Maris said. “If I’m going to act, it must be before he gets here. Once he has worn the wings, they’ll be his, and lost to me.”

“But Maris,” Coll said, “what can you do?”

“Nothing,” Barrion said. “Oh, we could steal the wings, of course. Corm has had them repaired, good as new. But where would you go? You’d never find a welcome. Give it up, girl. You can’t change flyers’ law.”

“No?” she said. Suddenly her voice was animated. She stopped pacing and leaned against the table. “Are you sure? Have the traditions never been changed? Where did they come from?”

Barrion looked puzzled. “Well, there was the Council, just after the Old Captain was killed, when the Landsman-Captain of Big Shotan passed out the new-forged wings. That was when it was decided that no flyer would ever bear a weapon in the sky. They remembered the battle, and the way the old star sailors used the last two sky sleds to rain fire from above.”

“Yes,” said Maris, “and remember, there were two other Councils as well. Generations after that, when another Landsman-Captain wanted to bend the other Landsmen to his will and bring all of Windhaven under his control, he sent the flyers of Big Shotan into the sky with swords to strike at Little Shotan. And the flyers of the other islands met in Council and condemned him, after his ghost flyers had vanished. So he was the last Landsman-Captain, and now Big Shotan is just another island.”

“Yes,” Coll said, “and the third Council was when all the flyers voted not to land on Kennehut, after the Mad Landsman killed the Flyer-Who-Brought-Bad-News.”

Barrion was nodding. “All right. But no Council has been called since then. Are you sure they would assemble?”

“Of course,” said Maris. “It is one of Conn’s precious traditions. Any flyer can call a Council. And I could present my case there, to all the flyers of Windhaven, and…”

She stopped. Barrion looked at her and she looked back, the same thought on both minds.

“Any flyer,” he said, the emphasis unvoiced.

“But I am not a flyer,” Maris said. She slumped into her chair. “And Coll has renounced his wings, and Russ—even if he would see us—has passed them on. Corm would not honor our request. The word would not go out.”

“You could ask Shalli,” Coll suggested. “Or wait up on the flyers’ cliff, or…”

“Shalli is too much junior to Corm, and too frightened,” Barrion said. “I hear the stories. She’s sad for you, like the Landsman, but she won’t break tradition. Corm might try to take her wings as well. And the others—whom could you count on? And how long could you wait? Helmer visits most often, but he’s as hidebound as Corm. Jamis is too young, and so on. You’d be asking them to take quite a risk.” He shook his head doubtfully. “It will not work. No flyer will speak for you, not in time. In two weeks Devin will wear your wings.”

All three of them were silent. Maris stared down at her plate of cold stew, and thought. No way, she asked, is there really no way? Then she looked at Barrion. “Earlier,” she began, very carefully, “you mentioned something about stealing the wings…”

The wind was cold and wet, angry, lashing at the waves; against the eastern sky a storm was building. “Good flying weather,” Maris said. The boat rocked gently beneath her.

Barrion smiled, pulled his cloak a little tighter to shut out the damp. “Now if only you could do some flying,” he said.

Her eyes went to the shore, where Corm’s dark wood house stood against the trees. A light was on in an upper window. Three days, Maris thought sourly. He should have been called by now. How long could they afford to wait? Each hour brought Devin closer, the man who would take her wings.

“Tonight, do you think?” she asked Barrion.

He shrugged. He was cleaning his nails with a long dagger, intent on the task. “You would know better than I,” he said without looking up. “The light tower is still dark. How often are flyers called?”

“Often,” Maris said, thoughtful. But would Corm be called? They had already floated offshore two nights, hoping for a summons that would call him away from the wings. Perhaps the Landsman was using only Shalli until such time as Devin arrived. “I don’t like it,” she said. “We have to do something.”

Barrion slid his dagger into its sheath. “I could use that on Corm, but I won’t. I’m with you, Maris, and your brother is all but a son to me, but I’m not going to kill for a pair of wings. No. We wait until the light tower calls to Corm, then break in. Anything else is too chancy.”

Kill, Maris thought. Would it come to that, if they forced their way in while Corm was still at home? And then she knew it would. Corm was Corm, and he would resist. She’d been inside his home once. She remembered the set of crossed obsidian knives that gleamed upon his wall. There must be another way.

“The Landsman isn’t going to call him,” she said. She knew it, somehow. “Not unless there’s an emergency.”

Barrion studied the clouds building up in the east. “So?” he said. “We can hardly make an emergency.”

“But we can make a signal,” Maris said.

“Hmmmm,” the singer replied. He considered the idea. “Yes, we could, I suppose.” He grinned at her. “Maris, we break more laws every day. It’s bad enough we’re going to steal your wings, but now you want me to force my way into the light tower and send a false call. It’s a good thing I’m a singer, or we’d go down as the greatest criminals in the history of Amberly.”

“How does your being a singer prevent that?”

“Who do you think makes the songs? I’d rather make us all into heroes.”

They traded smiles.

Barrion took the oars and rowed them quickly to shore, to a marshy beach hidden by the trees but not far from Corm’s home. “Wait here,” he said, as he climbed out into the knee-deep, lapping water. “I’ll go to the tower. Go in and get the wings as soon as you see Corm leave.” Maris nodded her agreement.

For nearly an hour she sat alone in the gathering darkness, watching lightning flash far off to the east. Soon the storm would be on them; already she could feel the bite of the wind. Finally, up on the highest hill of Lesser Amberly, the great beacon of the Landsman’s light tower began to blink in a staccato rhythm. Barrion knew the correct signal somehow, Maris suddenly realized, even though she’d forgotten to tell him. The singer knew a lot, more than she’d ever given him credit for. Perhaps he wasn’t such a liar after all.

Short minutes later, she was lying in the weeds a few feet from Corm’s door, head low, sheltered by the shadows and the trees. The door opened, and the dark-haired flyer came out, his wings slung over his back. He was dressed warmly. Flying clothes, thought Maris. He hurried down the main road.

After he was gone, it was a simple task to find a rock, sneak around to the side of the building, and smash in a window. Luckily Corm was unmarried, and he lived alone; that is, if he didn’t have a woman with him tonight. But they’d been watching the house carefully, and no one had come and gone except a cleaning woman who worked during the day.

Maris brushed away loose glass, then vaulted up onto the sill and into the house. All darkness inside, but her eyes adjusted quickly. She had to find the wings, her wings, before Corm returned. He’d get to the light tower soon enough and find it was a false alarm. Barrion wasn’t going to linger to be caught.

The search was short. Just inside the front door, on the rack where he hung his own wings between flights, she found hers. She took them down carefully, with love and longing, and ran her hands over the cool metal to check the struts. At last, she thought; and then, They will never take them from me again.

She strapped them on, and ran. Through the door and into the woods, a different road from the one Corm had taken. He would be home soon, to discover the loss. She had to get to the flyers’ cliff.

It took her a good half hour, and twice she had to hide in the underbrush on the side of the road to avoid meeting another night-time traveler. And even when she reached the cliff, there were people—two men from the flyers’ lodge—down on the landing beach, so Maris had to hide behind some rocks, and wait, and watch their lanterns.

She was stiff from crouching and shivering from the cold when, far over the sea, she spied another pair of silvered wings, coming down fast. The flyer circled once low above the beach, jerking the lodge men to attention, then came in smoothly for a landing. As they unstrapped her, Maris saw it was Anni of Culhall, with a message, no doubt. Her chance was here, then. The lodge men would escort Anni to the Landsman.

When they had gone off with her, Maris scrambled to her feet, and quickly moved up the rocky path to the flyers’ cliff. It was a cumbersome, slow task to unfold her own wings, but she did it, though the hinges on the left wing were stiff and she had to snap it five times before the final strut flung out. Corm didn’t even take care of them, she thought bitterly.

Then, forgetting that, forgetting everything, she ran and jumped into the winds.

The gathering gale hit her almost like a fist, but she rolled with the punch, shifting and twisting until she caught a strong updraft and began to climb, quickly now, higher and higher. Close at hand, lightning flashed behind her, and she felt a brief tremor of fear. But then it was still. Again, she was flying, and if she were burned from the sky, well, no one would mourn her on Lesser Amberly save Coll, and there could be no finer death. She banked and climbed still higher, and despite herself she let out a laughing whoop of joy.

And a voice answered her. “Turn!” it said, shouting, hot with anger. Startled, losing the feel for an instant, she looked up and behind.

Lightning slashed the sky over Lesser Amberly again, and in its light the night-shadowed wings above her gleamed noonday-silver. From out of the clouds, Corm was coming down on her fast.

He was shouting as he came. “I knew it was you,” he said. But the wind blew every third word away from her. “… had to… behind it… never went home… cliff… waited. Turn.’ I’ll force you down! Land-bound!” That last she heard, and she laughed at him.

“Try, then,” she yelled back at him, defiantly. “Show me what a flyer you are, Corm! Catch me if you can!” And then, still laughing, she tilted a wing and veered out from under his dive, and he kept on down as she rose, still shouting as he passed her.

A thousand times she’d played with Dorrel, chasing one another around the Eyrie, tag games in the sky; but now, this time, the chase was deadly earnest. Maris toyed with the winds, looking only for speed and altitude, and instinctively she found the currents and rose higher and faster. Far below now, Corm checked his fall, tilted up, banked and came at her from below. But by the time he reached her height, she was far ahead. She intended to stay that way. This was no game, and she could afford no risks. If he got above her, he was angry enough to begin forcing her down, inch by inch, until he pressed her right into the ocean. He would regret it afterward, grieve for the lost wings, but Maris knew that he would do it nonetheless. The traditions of the flyers meant that much to him. Idly, she wondered, how would she have acted, a year ago, toward someone who stole a set of wings?

Now Lesser Amberly was lost behind them, and the only land in sight was the flashing light tower of Culhall off to the right and low oh the horizon. That too was soon gone, and there was nothing but black sea below and sky above. And Corm, relentless, still behind her, outlined against the storm. But—Maris looked back and blinked—he seemed smaller. Was she gaining on him? Corm was a skilled flyer, that much she was sure of. He had always performed well for Western in the competitions, while she was not allowed to compete. And yet now, clearly, the gap was widening.

Lightning flashed once more, and thunder rolled ominously across the sea a few seconds later. From below a scylla roared back at the storm, hearing in the boom an angry challenge. But for Maris, it meant something else indeed. The timing, the timing; the storm was growing more distant. She was heading northwest, the storm due west perhaps; at any rate, she was angling out from beneath it.

Something soared inside her. She banked and flipped just for the joy of it, did a showman’s loop from sheer exultation, jumping from current to current like an acrobat of the sky. The winds were hers now; nothing could go wrong.

Corm closed in while Maris was playing, and when she came out of her loop and began to climb again, she saw him close at hand and dimly heard his shouts. He was yelling something about her not being able to land, about her being an outcast with her stolen wings. Poor Corm! What did he know?

Maris dove, until she could all but taste the salt, until she could hear the waters rolling a few feet below. If he would kill her, if he would force her into the waves, well, she had made herself vulnerable now, as vulnerable as she could be. She was skimming; all he had to do was catch up, get above her, swoop.

She knew, she knew, he could not do it, no matter how much he might like to. By the time she flew out from under the churning cloud cover, into a clear night sky where the stars winked on her wings, Corm was only a tiny dot behind her, dwindling fast. Maris waited until she could see his wings no longer, then caught a new upwind and changed course to the south, knowing that Corm would continue blindly ahead until he gave up and circled back to Lesser Amberly.

She was alone with her wings and the sky, and, briefly, there was peace.

Hours later, the first lights of Laus burned at her through the dark; flaming beacons set atop the rocky island’s Old Fortress. Maris angled toward them, and soon the half-ruined bulk of the ancient castle sat before her, dead but for its lights.

She flew straight over it, across the breadth of the small mountainous island, to the landing strip on the sandy southwest spur. Laus was not populous enough to maintain a flyers’ lodge, and for once Maris was thankful of that. There would be no lodge men to greet her or ask her questions. She landed alone and unnoticed in a shower of dry sand, and struggled out of her wings.

At the end of the landing strip, up against the base of the flyers’ cliff, Dorrel’s simple cabin was dark and empty. When he did not answer her knock, Maris opened the unlatched door and entered, calling his name. But the house was silent. She felt a rush of disappointment that quickly changed to nervousness. Where was he? How long would he be gone ? What if Corm figured out where she had come and trapped her here, before Dorrel’s return?

She set a rush against the banked and dimly glowing coals in the hearth and lit a sand-candle. Then she looked around the small, neat cabin, seeking some clue as to where and how long Dorrel had been gone.

There: tidy Dorrel had left some crumbs of fish cake on his otherwise clean table. She glanced toward a far corner and, yes, the house was truly empty, Anitra gone from her perch. So that was it; Dorrel was out hunting with his nighthawk.

Hoping they had not gone far, Maris took to the air again in search. She found him resting on a rock in the treacherous shallows of far western Laus, his wings strapped on but folded, Anitra perched on his wrist, enjoying a piece of the fish she had just caught. Dorrel was talking to the bird and did not see Maris until she swept above him, her wings eclipsing the stars.

Then he stared at her while she circled and dipped dangerously low, and for a moment there was no recognition at all on his blank face.

“Dorrel,” she shouted, tension sharpening her voice.

“Maris?” Incredulity broke across his face.

She turned and caught an updraft. “Come onto shore. I have to talk to you.”

Dorrel, nodding, stood suddenly and shook the night-hawk free. The bird surrendered her fish reluctantly and climbed into the sky on pale white wings, circling effortlessly and waiting for her master. Maris swung around in the direction she had come.

This time, when she came down in the landing strip, her descent was sudden and clumsy, and she scraped her knees badly. Maris was confused, in turmoil; the tension of the theft, the strain of the long flight after that stretch of days without the sky, the strange mixture of pain and fear and joy the sight of Dorrel had suddenly, unexpectedly given her—it all overwhelmed her, shook her, and she didn’t know what to do. Before Dorrel could join her she set to work unstrapping her wings, forcing her mind through the motions with her hands. She wouldn’t think yet, she wouldn’t let herself think. Blood from her knees trickled maddeningly down her legs.

Dorrel landed beside her, neatly and smoothly. He was shaken by her sudden appearance, but he didn’t let his emotions interfere with his flying. It was more than a matter of pride with him: it was almost bred into him, as much an inheritance as his wings were. Anitra found his shoulder as he unstrapped.

He moved toward her and put his arms out. The nighthawk made a bad-tempered noise, but he would still have embraced Maris, regardless of the bird, had she not suddenly thrust her wings into his outstretched hands.

“Here,” Maris said. “I’m turning myself in. I stole these wings from Corm, and I’m giving them and myself over to you. I’ve come to ask you to call a Council for me, because you’re a flyer and I’m not, and only a flyer can call one.”

Dorrel stared at her, confused as someone awakened suddenly from a heavy sleep. Maris felt impatient with him, and overwhelmingly tired. “Oh, I’ll explain,” she said. “Let’s go up to your place, where I can rest.”

It was a long walk, but they went most of it in silence and without touching. Only once he said, “Maris—did you really steal—”

She cut him off. “Yes, I said.” Then she suddenly sighed and moved as if to touch him, but stopped herself. “Forgive me, Dorrel, I didn’t mean… I’m exhausted, and I suppose I’m frightened. I never thought I’d be seeing you again under such circumstances.” Then she fell quiet again and he did not press her, and only Anitra broke the night with her grumbles and mutters at having her fishing ended so soon.

Once home, Maris sank into the one large chair, trying to force herself to relax, to make the tensions drain. She watched Dorrel and felt herself grow calmer as he went through his familiar rituals. He put Anitra on her perch and drew the curtains that hung around her (other folks might hood their birds to keep them quiet, but he disapproved of that), built up a fire, and hung a kettle to boil.

“Tea?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll put kerri blossoms in, instead of honey,” he said. “That should relax you.”

She felt a sudden flooding of warmth for him. “Thanks.”

“Do you want to get out of those clothes? You can slip on my robe.”

She shook her head—it would be too much effort to move now—and then she saw that he was gazing at her legs, bare below the short kilt she wore, and frowning with concern.

“You’ve hurt yourself.” He poured warm water from the kettle into a dish, took a rag and some salve and knelt before her. The damp cloth cleaning away the dried blood was gentle as a soft tongue. “Ah, it’s not as bad as it looked,” he murmured as he worked. “Just your knees—just shallow scrapes. A clumsy landing, dear.”

His nearness and his soft touch stirred her, and all tension, fear, and weariness were suddenly gone. One of his hands moved to her thigh and lingered there.

“Dorr,” she said softly, almost too transfixed by the moment to speak, and he raised his head and their eyes met, and finally she had come back to him.

“It will work,” Dorrel said. “They’ll have to see. They can’t deny you.” They were sitting at breakfast. While Dorrel made eggs and tea, Maris had explained her plan in detail.

Now she smiled and spooned out more of the soft egg. She felt happy and full of hope. “Who’ll go first to call Council?”

“Garth, I thought,” Dorrel said eagerly. “I’ll catch him at home and we’ll divide up the nearby islands and branch out. Others will want to help—I just wish you could come, too,” he said, and his eyes grew wistful. “It would be nice, flying together again.”

“We’ll have lots of that, Dorr. If—”

“Yes, yes, we’ll have lots of time to fly together, but—it would be nice this morning, especially. It would be nice.”

“Yes. It’d be nice.” She went on smiling and finally he had to smile too. He was just reaching across the table to take her hand, or touch her face, when a sudden knock at the door, loud and authoritative, made them freeze.

Dorrel rose to answer it. Maris in her chair was in full view of the doorway, but there was no point in trying to hide, and there was no second door.

Helmer stood outside, folded wings strapped to his back. He looked straight at Dorrel, but not past him into the cabin at Maris. “Corm has invoked the flyer’s right to call a Council,” he said, his voice flat and strained and overly formal. “To concern the once-flyer Maris of Lesser Amberly who stole the wings of another. Your presence is requested.”

“What?” Maris stood quickly. “Helmer—Corm has called a Council? Why?”

Dorrel tossed a glance over his shoulder at her, then looked at Helmer, who was plainly if uncomfortably ignoring Maris.

“Why, Helmer?” he asked, more quietly than Maris had.

“I’ve told you. And I don’t have time to stand here moving the wind with my mouth. I have other flyers to inform, and it’s a thick day for flying.”

“Wait for me,” Dorrel said. “Give me some names, some islands to go to. It will make your task easier.”

The corner of Helmer’s mouth twitched. “I wouldn’t’ve thought you’d want to go on such a mission, for such a reason. I hadn’t intended to ask for your help. But since you offer…”

Helmer gave Dorrel terse instructions while the younger flyer rapidly winged himself. Maris paced, feeling restless, awkward, and confused again. Helmer was obviously determined to ignore her, and to save them both embarrassment Maris did not question him again.

Dorrel kissed her and squeezed her tightly before he left. “Feed Anitra for me, and try not to worry. I’ll be back before it’s been dark too long, I hope.”

When the flyers were gone, the house felt stifling. Outside was not much better, Maris discovered as she stood against the door. Helmer had been right, it was not a good day for flying. It was a day to make one think of still air. She shuddered, fearing for Dorrel. But he was too skilled and too smart to need her worry, she thought, trying to reassure herself. And she would go crazy if she sat inside all day imagining possible dangers for him. It was frustrating enough to have to wait here, denied the sky. She looked up at the cloudy-bright overcast. If, after the Council, she should be made a land-bound forever—

But there was plenty of time for sorrow in the future, so she resolved not to think about it now. She went back inside the house.

Anitra, a nocturnal flyer, was asleep behind her curtain; the cabin was still and very empty. She wished briefly for Dorrel, to ease her thoughts by sharing them, to speculate with her on why Corm had called the Council. Alone, her thoughts went around and around in her head, birds in a trap.

A geechi game sat on top of Dorrel’s wardrobe. Maris took it down, and arranged the smooth black and white pebbles in a simple opening pattern, one her mind was comfortable with. Idly she began to move them, playing both sides, shoving the pebbles unthinkingly into new configurations, each suggested by the last, each as inevitable as chance. And she thought:

Corm is a proud man, and I injured his pride. He is known as a good flyer and I, a fisherman’s daughter, stole his wings and outflew him when he pursued me. Now, to regain his pride, he must humble me in some very public, very grand way. Getting the wings back would not be enough for him. No, everyone, every flyer, must be present to see me humbled and declared an outlaw.

Maris sighed. That was it. This was the Council to outlaw the land-bound flyer who stole wings—oh, yes, songs would be written about it. But perhaps it made no difference. Even though Corm had stolen a flight on her, the Council could still be turned against him. She, the accused, would have the right to speak, to defend herself, to attack senseless tradition. And her chance was the same, Maris knew, the same in Corm’s Council as it would have been in the one that Dorrel would have summoned. Only now she knew the full extent of Corm’s hurt and his anger.

She looked down at the geechi board. The pebbles, white and black, were arrayed across the center of the board, facing each other. Both armies had committed themselves to attacking formations; it was clear that this would be no waiting game. With her next move, the captures would begin.

Maris smiled, and swept the pebbles from the table.

It took a full month for the Council to assemble.

Dorrel brought the call to four flyers that first day, and five others the next, and each of those contacted others, and those still others, and so the word went out in ever-widening ripples across the seas of Windhaven. A special flyer was sent off to the Outer Islands, another to desolate Artellia, the great frozen island to the north. Soon, all had heard, and one by one they flew to the meeting.

The site was Greater Amberly. By rights, the Council should have been held on Lesser Amberly, home to both Maris and Corm. But the smaller island had no building large enough for such a gathering as this would be, and Greater Amberly did: a huge, dank hall, seldom used.

To it came the flyers of Windhaven. Not all of them, no, for there were always emergencies, and a few still had not received the word, and others were missing on long, dangerous flights; but most of them, the vast majority, and that was enough. In no one’s lifetime had there ever been such a gathering. Even the annual competitions at the Eyrie were small compared to this, mere local contests between Eastern and Western. Or so it seemed to Maris then, during the month she waited and watched while the streets of Ambertown filled with laughing flyers.

There was an air of holiday about it all. The early arrivals held drinking bouts each night, to the delight of the local wine merchants, and traded stories and songs and gossiped endlessly about the Council and its outcome. Barrion and other singers kept them entertained by night, while by day they raced and frolicked in the air. The latecomers were greeted riotously as they straggled in. Maris, who had flown back from Laus after getting special leave to use the wings once more, ached to join them. Her friends were all there, and Corm’s, and indeed all the wings of Western. The Easterners had come too, many in suits of fur and metal that reminded her irresistibly of the way Raven had dressed on that day so long ago. There were three pale-skinned Artellians, each wearing a silver circlet on his brow, aristocrats from a dark frigid land where flyers were kings as well as messengers. They mingled, brothers and equals, with the red-uniformed flyers of Big Shotan, and the twenty tall representatives of the Outer Islands, and the squadron of sunburned winged priests from the lush Southern Archipelago who served the Sky God as well as their Landsmen. Seeing them, meeting them, walking among them, the size and breadth and cultural diversity of Windhaven struck Maris as seldom before. She had flown, if only for a short time; she had been one of the privileged few. Yet there were still so many places she had not been. If only she could have her wings again…

Finally all those who were coming had arrived. The Council was set for dusk; there would be no crowds in the inns of Ambertown tonight.

“You have a chance,” Barrion told Maris on the steps of the great hall just before the meeting. Coll was with her too, and Dorrel. “Most of them are in a good mood, after weeks of wine and song. I drift, I talk, I sing, and I know this: they will listen to you.” He grinned his wolfish grin. “For flyers, that is quite unusual.”

Dorrel nodded. “Garth and I have talked to many of them. There is a lot of sympathy for you, particularly among the younger flyers. The older delegates, most of them, tend to side with Corm and tradition, but even they do not have their minds completely made up.”

Maris shook her head. “The older flyers outnumber the younger ones, Dorr.”

Barrion put a fatherly hand on her shoulder. “Then you will have to win them to your side also. After the things I’ve seen you do already, it should be easy enough.” He smiled.

The delegates had all filed inside, and now, from the door behind her, Maris heard the Landsman of Greater Amberly sound the ceremonial drumbeats that signaled the beginning of the Council. “We must go,” Maris said. Barrion nodded. As a non-flyer, he was barred from the assembly. He squeezed her shoulder once, for luck, then took his guitar and walked slowly down the steps. Maris, Coll, and Dorrel hurried inside.

The hall was an immense stone pit, ringed by torches. In the center of the sunken floor, a long table had been set up. The flyers sat around it in a semicircle, on rough stone seats that ascended, tier after tier after tier, to the place where wall met ceiling. Jamis the Senior, his thin face lined by age, sat in the center of the long table. Though a land-bound for several years now, his experience and character were still widely esteemed, and he had come by boat to preside. On either side of him sat the only two non-flyers admitted: the swarthy Landsman of Greater Amberly and the portly ruler of Lesser. Corm had the fourth seat, at the right-hand end of the table. A fifth chair was empty on the left.

Maris went to it, while Dorrel and Coll climbed the stairs to their places. The drumbeats sounded again, a call for silence. Maris sat and looked around as the room began to quieten. Coll had found a seat, high up among the unwinged youths. Many of them had come by boat from nearby islands, to see history be made; but like Coll, they were expected to play no part in the decision. Now they ignored Coll, as might be expected; children eager for the sky could scarcely understand a boy who had willingly given up his wings. He looked dreadfully out of place and lonely, much as Maris felt.

The drums stopped. Jamis the Senior stood, and his deep voice rang over the hall. “This is the first flyers’ Council in the memory of any here,” he said. “Most of you already know the circumstances under which it has been called. My rules will be simple. Corm shall speak first, since he invoked this meeting. Then Maris, whom he accuses, shall have her chance to answer him. Then any flyer or former flyer here may have his or her say. I ask only that you speak loudly, and name yourself before you talk. Many of us here are strangers to each other.” He sat down.

And now Corm stood and spoke into the silence. “I invoked this Council by flyer’s right,” he said, his voice assured and resonant. “A crime has been committed, and its nature and implications are such that it must be answered by us all, by all flyers acting as one. Our decision shall determine our future, as have the decisions of Councils past. Imagine what our world should be now if our fathers and mothers before us had decided to bring warfare into the air. The kinship of all flyers would not be—we would be torn apart by petty regional rivalries instead of being properly airborne above the quarrels of the land.”

He went on, painting a picture of the desolation that could have followed, had that long ago Council voted wrongly. He was a good speaker, Maris thought; he spoke like Barrion sang. She shook herself out of the spell Corm was creating, and wondered how she could possibly counter him.

“The problem today is equally grave,” Corm continued, “and your decision will not simply affect one person, for whom you may feel sympathy, but rather all our children for generations to come. Mind you remember that as you listen to the arguments tonight.” He looked around, and although his burning eyes did not fall on her, Maris nevertheless felt intimidated.

“Maris of Lesser Amberly has stolen a pair of wings,” he said. “The story, I think, is known to all of you—” But Corm told it, nonetheless, from the facts of her birth to the scene on the beach. “… and a new bearer was found. But before Devin of Gavora, who is among us now, could arrive to claim his wings, Maris stole them, and fled.

“But this is not the whole of it. Stealing is shameful, but even the theft of wings might not be grounds for a flyers’ Council. Maris knew she could not hope to keep the wings. She took them not to flee, but rather with the thought of revolting against our most vital traditions. She questions the very foundations of our society. She would open the ownership of the wings to dispute, threaten us with anarchy. Unless we make our disapproval plain, pass judgment on her in Council that will go down in history, the facts could easily become distorted. Maris could be remembered as a brave rebel, and not the thief she is.”

A twinge went through Maris at that word. Thief. Was that truly what she was?

“She has friends among the singers who would delight in mocking us,” Corm was saying, “in singing songs in praise of her daring.” And Maris heard in memory Barrion’s voice: I’d rather make us all into heroes. Her eyes sought out Coll and she saw that he was sitting straighter, with a slight smile on his lips. Singers did indeed have power, if they were good.

“So we must speak out plainly, for all of history, in denouncing what she has done,” Corm said. He faced Maris and looked down at her. “Maris, I accuse you of the theft of wings. And I call upon the flyers of Windhaven, met in Council, to name you outlaw, and pledge that none will land on any island you call home.”

He sat, and in the awful silence that followed Maris knew just how much she had offended him. She had never dreamed he would ask so much. Not content merely to take her wings, he would deny her life itself, force her into friendless exile on some distant empty rock.

“Maris,” Jamis said gently. She had not risen. “It is your turn. Will you answer Corm?”

Slowly she got to her feet, wishing for the power of a singer, wishing that even once she could speak with the assurance Corm had in his voice. “I cannot deny the theft,” she said, looking up at the rows of blank faces, the sea of strangers. Her voice was steadier than she had thought it would be. “I stole the wings out of desperation, because they were my only chance. A boat would have been far too slow, and no one on Lesser Amberly was willing to help. I needed to reach a flyer who would call Council for me. Once I did that, I surrendered my wings. I can prove this, if—” She looked over at Jamis; he nodded.

Dorrel picked up his cue. Halfway up in the tiered hall, he rose. “Dorrel of Laus,” he said loudly. “I vouch for Maris. As soon as she reached me, she gave her wings into my safekeeping, and would not wear them again. I do not call this theft.” From around him, there was a chorus of approving murmurs; his family was known and esteemed, his word good.

Maris had scored a point, and now she continued, feeling more confident with every word. “I wanted a Council for something I consider very important to us all, and to our future. But Corm beat me to it.” She grimaced slightly, unconsciously. And out in the audience she noticed a few smiles on the faces of flyers who were strangers to her.

Skepticism? Contempt? Or support, agreement? She had to will her hands to part and lie still by her sides. It would not do to be wringing her hands before them all.

“Corm says I am fighting tradition,” Maris continued, “and that’s true. He has told you this is a terrible thing, but he hasn’t said why. He hasn’t explained why tradition needs to be defended against me. Just because something has always been done in one way doesn’t mean that change is impossible, or undesirable. Did people fly on the home worlds of the star sailors? If not, does that mean it was better not to fly? Well, after all, we aren’t dauberbirds, that if our beaks get pushed to the ground we keep on walking that way until we fall over and die—we don’t have to walk the same path every day—it wasn’t bred into us.”

She heard a laugh from her listeners, and felt elated. She could paint pictures with words even as Corm could! Those silly waddling cave birds had gone from her mind to someone else’s and drawn a laugh; she had mentioned breaking tradition, and still they listened. Inspired, she went on.

“We are people, and if we have an instinct for anything, it is the instinct—the will—toward change. Things have always been changing and if we’re smart we’ll make the changes for ourselves, and for the better, before we’re forced into them.

“The tradition of passing the wings on from parent to child has worked fairly well for a long time—certainly, it is better than anarchy, or the older tradition of trial by combat that sprang up in Eastern during the Days of Sorrow. But it is not the only way, nor is it the perfect way.”

“Enough talk!” someone growled. Maris looked around for the source and was startled to see Helmer rise from his seat in the second tier front. The flyer’s face was bitter, and he stood with folded arms.

“Helmer,” Jamis said firmly, “Maris has the floor.”

“I don’t care,” he said. “She attacks our ways, but she offers us nothing better. And for good reason. This way has worked for so many years because there is none better. It may be hard, yes. It’s hard for you because you weren’t born to a flyer. Sure, it’s hard. But have you another way?”

Helmer, she thought as he sat. Of course, his anger made sense, he was one whom this tradition would soon hurt—was hurting. Still young, he would be a land-bound in less than a year, when his daughter came of age and took his wings. He had accepted the loss as inevitable, perhaps, as a rightful part of an honored tradition. But now Maris attacked the tradition, the only thing that gave nobility to Helmer’s sacrifice-to-come. If things remained unchanged, Maris wondered briefly, would Helmer in time hate his own daughter for her wings? And Russ… if he had not been injured… if Coll had not been born…

“Yes,” Maris said loudly, suddenly realizing that the room was silently awaiting her reply. “Yes, I do have a way; I would never have presumed to call a Council if—”

“You didn’t!” someone shouted, and others laughed. Maris felt herself grow hot and hoped she was not blushing.

Jamis slapped the table, hard. “Maris of Lesser Amberly is speaking,” he said, loudly. “The next one who interrupts her will be ejected!”

Maris, gave him a grateful smile. “I propose a new way, a better way,” she said. “I propose that the right to wear wings be earned. Not by birth or by age, but by the one measure that truly counts—by skill!” And as she spoke, the idea sprang suddenly into her head, more elaborate, more complex, more right than her vague concept of a free-for-all. “I propose a flying academy, open to all, to every child who dreams of wings. The standards would be very high, of course, and many would be sent away. But all would have the right to try—the son of a fisherman, the daughter of a singer, or a weaver—everyone could dream, hope. And for those who passed all the tests, there would be a final test. At our annual competition, they could challenge any flyer of their choice. And, if they were good enough, good enough to outfly him or her, then they would win the wings!

“The best flyers would always keep the wings, this way. And a defeated flyer, well, could wait for next year and try to win back the wings from the one who had taken them. Or he or she could challenge someone else, some poorer flyer. No flyer could afford to be lazy, no one who did not love the sky would have to fly, and…” She looked at Helmer, whose face was unreadable. “And more, even the children of flyers would have to challenge to win the sky. They would claim their parents’ wings only when they were ready, when they could actually fly better than their father or their mother. No flyer would become a land-bound just because he’d married young and had a child come of age while he should, by all that is just and right, still be in the sky. Only skill would be important, not birth, not age—the person, not tradition!”

She paused, on the verge of blurting out her own story, of what it was like to be a fisherman’s daughter and know the sky could never be hers—the pain, the longing. But why waste her breath? These were all born flyers, and she would not wring sympathy from them for the land-bounds they held in contempt. No, it was important that the next Woodwings born on Windhaven have a chance to fly, but it was no good as an argument. She had said enough. She had set it all before them, and the choice was theirs. She glanced briefly at Helmer, at the odd smile flickering over his face, and she knew with dead certainty that his vote was hers.

She had just given him a chance to reclaim his life, without being cruel to his daughter. Satisfied, smiling, Maris sat.

Jamis the Senior looked over at Corm.

“That sounds very nice,” he said. Smiling, in control, Corm did not even bother to stand. At the sight of his calm, Maris felt all her painfully piled-up hope slip away. “A nice dream for a fisherman’s daughter, and it’s understandable. Perhaps you don’t understand about the wings, Maris. How do you expect families who have flown since—since forever—to put their wings up for grabs, to pass them on to strangers. Strangers who without tradition or family pride may not care for them properly, may not respect them. Do you truly think any of us would hand over our heritage to an impudent land-bound? Instead of our own children?”

Maris’ temper flared. “You expected me to give my wings to Coll, who could not fly as well as I.”

“They were never your wings,” Corm said.

Her lips tightened; she said nothing.

“If you thought they were, that was your folly,” Corm said. “Think: If wings are passed from person to person like a cloak, if they are held for only a year or two, what sort of pride would their owners have in them? They would be—borrowed—not owned, and everyone knows a flyer must own his wings, or he is not a flyer at all. Only a land-bound would wish such a life on us!”

Maris felt the sentiments of the audience shifting with each of Corm’s words. He piled his arguments on top of each other so glibly that they all slipped away from her before she’d had a chance to get at them. She had to answer him, but how, how? The attachment of a flyer to his wings was nearly as strong as his attachment to his feet; she couldn’t deny that, she couldn’t fight it. She remembered her own anger when she felt Corm had not cared for her wings properly, and yet they were never hers at all, only her father’s, her brother’s.

“The wings are a trust,” she blurted out. “Even now a flyer knows he must pass them on, in time, to his child.”

“That is quite different,” Conn said tolerantly. “Family is not the same as strangers, and a flyer’s child is not a land-bound.”

“This is something too important to be silly about blood ties!” Maris flashed at him, her voice rising. “Listen to yourself, Corm! Listen to the snobbery that has been allowed to grow in you, in other flyers; listen to your contempt for the land-bound, as if they could help what they are with the laws of inheritance as they now stand!” Her words were angry, and the audience grew perceptibly more hostile; she would lose it all if she championed the land-bound against the flyers, she suddenly realized.

Maris willed herself to be calm. “We do have pride in our wings,” she said, consciously returning to her strongest arguments. “And that pride, if it is strong enough, should make sure we keep them. Good flyers will keep the sky. If challenged, they will not be defeated easily. If defeated, they will come back. And they will have the satisfaction of knowing that the flyer who takes their wings is good, of knowing that their replacement will bring honor to the wings and use them well, regardless of parentage.”

“The wings are meant to be—” Corm began, but Maris would not let him finish.

“The wings are not meant to be lost in the sea,” she said, “and clumsy flyers, flyers who have taken no care to be really good because they’ve never had to, these are the flyers who have lost wings for us all. Some hardly deserved the name of flyer. And what of the children who are really too young for the sky, though they may be of age technically? They panic, fly foolishly, and die, taking their wings with them.” She glanced quickly at Coll. “Or how about the ones who were not meant to fly at all? Being born of a flyer doesn’t mean you’ll have the skill. My own—Coll, whom I love as a brother and a son, he was never meant to be a flyer. The wings were his, yet I couldn’t give them to him—didn’t want to give them to him—oh, even if he had wanted them, I wouldn’t have wanted to give them up—”

“Your system won’t change that,” someone shouted.

Maris shook her head. “No, it wouldn’t. I still wouldn’t be happy about losing my wings, but if I were bested, well, I could stay on at the academy, train, wait for next year and try to get them back. Oh, nothing is going to be perfect, don’t you see, because there aren’t enough wings, and that’s going to get worse, not better. But we must try to stop it, stop all the wings that are lost each year, stop sending out unqualified flyers, stop losing so many. There will still be accidents, we’ll still have dangers, but we won’t lose wings and flyers because of poor judgment and fear and lack of skill.”

Exhausted, Maris ran out of words, but her speech had stirred the audience, moved it back toward her. A dozen hands were up. Jamis pointed, and a solidly built Shotaner rose from the mass.

“Dirk of Big Shotan,” he said, in a low voice, and then he repeated it again when the flyers in the back shouted “Louder! Louder!” His speech was awkward and self-conscious. “I just wanted to say—I’ve been sitting here, and listening—I’ve been—I never expected—all this, just to vote on an outlawing—” He shook his head, clearly having difficulty getting the words out. “Oh, be damned,” he said finally. “Maris is right. I’m half ashamed to say it, but I shouldn’t be. It’s the truth—I don’t want my son to have my wings. I’m afraid to. He’s a good boy, mind you, and I love him, but he has attacks now and again, you know, the shaking sickness. He can’t fly like that—he shouldn’t fly—but he’s grown up thinking of nothing else, and next year when he’s thirteen he’ll expect my wings, and with things like they are I’ll have to give them to him, and he’ll fly off and die, and then I won’t have my son and I won’t have my wings and I might as well die too. No!” He sat down, a dark red color and out of breath.

Several people shouted support. Maris, heartened, looked over at Corm, and saw that his smile was flickering. Suddenly he had doubts.

A familiar friend rose then, and smiled at her from above. “I’m Garth of Skulny,” he said. “I’m with Maris, too!” Another speaker backed her, then another, and Maris smiled. Dorrel had scattered friends all over the audience and now they were trying to stampede the assembly her way. And it seemed to be working! For, in between the endorsements from flyers she had known for years, total strangers stood to voice their support. Had they won, then? Corm clearly looked worried.

“You recognize what is wrong with our way, but I think your academy is not the answer.” The words jolted Maris out of her complacent optimism. The speaker was a tall, blond woman, a leading flyer from the Outer Islands. “There is a reason for our tradition and we should not weaken it, or our children may go back to the idiocy of trial by combat. What we must do is teach our children better. We must teach them to have more pride, and we must build the needed skills in them from the time they are very small. This is as my mother taught me, and as I am teaching my son. Perhaps a test of some sort is necessary—your idea of a challenge is good.” Her mouth twisted wryly. “I admit, I do not look forward to the day, which comes too quickly, when I must give up my wings to Vard. Both of us will be too young, I think, when that day comes. That he should have to compete with me, to prove himself as good—no, a better flyer—than I am, yes, that is an excellent idea.”

Other flyers in the hall were nodding in agreement. Yes, yes, of course, why hadn’t they seen what a good idea some sort of testing would be? Everyone knew that the coming-of-age was rather arbitrary, that some were still children when they took on wings, others full adults. Yes, let the youngsters prove themselves as flyers first… the tide swept the assembly.

“But this academy,” the speaker said gently. “That is not necessary. We birth enough new flyers among ourselves. I know your background and I can understand your feelings, but I cannot share them. It would not be wise.” She sat down, and Maris felt her heart sink with her. That had done it, she thought. Now they will vote for a test, but the sky will still be closed to those born of the wrong parents; the flyers would reject the most im-portant part. So close, she had almost done it, but not close enough.

A gaunt man in silk and silver stood. “Arris, flyer and Prince of Artellia,” he said, his eyes ice blue beneath his silver crown. “I vote with my sister from the Outer Islands. My children are of royal blood, born and bred to wings. It would be a joke to force them to fly in races with commoners. But a test, to see when they are worthy, now that is an idea worthy of a flyer.”

He was followed by a dark woman all in leather. “Zevakul of Deeth in Southern Archipelago,” she began. “Each year I fly messages for my Landsman, but I also serve the Sky God, like all of the upper castes. The concept of passing wings to a lower one, a soil-child, possibly an unbeliever—no!”

Other echoes came, and rolled across the hall:

“Joi, of Stormhammer—the-Outermost. I say yes, make us fly to earn our wings, but only against the children of flyers.”

“Tomas, of Little Shotan. Children of the land-born could never learn to love the sky as we do. It would be a waste of time and money to build this academy Maris speaks of. But I’m for a test.”

“Crain of Poweet, and I’m with these others. Why should we have to compete with the children of fisher-people? They don’t let us compete for their boats, do they?” The hall rocked with laughter, and the older flyer grinned. “Yes, a joke, a good one. Well, brothers, we would be a joke, this academy would be a joke if it let in riff-raff of any birth at all. Wings belong to flyers and over the years it has remained that way because it is the way it is. The other people are content, and very few of them really want to fly. For most it is only a passing whim, or too frightening to think about. Why should we encourage idle dreams? They are not flyers, were never meant to be, and they can lead worthwhile lives in some other…”

Maris listened in disbelief and rising anger, infuriated by the smug self-righteousness of his tone… and then she saw with horror that other flyers, including some of the younger ones, were bobbing their heads complacently in time with his words. Yes, they were better because they were born of flyers, yes, they were superior and did not wish to mix, yes, yes. Suddenly it did not matter that in times past, she had felt much the same way about the land-bound. Suddenly all she could think of was her father, her blood-father, the dead fisherman she scarcely remembered. Memories she had thought gone came back: sensory impressions, chiefly—stiff clothes that reeked of salt and fish; warm hands, rough but gentle, that smoothed her hair and wiped tears off her cheeks after her mother had scolded her—and stories he had told, in his low voice, tales of things he had seen that day in his little skiff—what the birds had looked like, racing away from a sudden storm, how the moonfish leaped toward the night sky, how the wind felt and the waves sounded against the boat. Her father had been an observant man and a brave one, daring the ocean every day in his frail boat, and Maris knew in her hot rage that he was the inferior of no one here, of no one on Windhaven.

“You snobs,” she said sharply, not caring anymore whether it would help or hurt the vote. “All of you. Thinking how superior you are, just because you were born of a flyer and inherited wings through no goodness of your own. You think you inherited your parents’ skill? Well, how about the other half of your heritage? Or were all of you born of flyer marriages?” She jabbed an accusing finger at a familiar face on the third tier. “You, Sar, you were nodding just then. Your father was a flyer, yes, but your mother was a trader, and born of fisherfolk. Do you look down on them? What if your mother confessed that her husband was not your real father—what if she told you that you could blame your birth on a trader she met in the East? What then? Would you feel obliged to give up your wings and seek some other life?”

Moon-faced Sar only gaped at her; never a quick man, he couldn’t understand why she had singled him out. Maris withdrew her finger and launched her anger against them all.

“My true father was a fisherman, a fine, brave, honest man who never wore wings and never wanted them. But if, if he had been chosen to be a flyer, he would have been the best of all! Songs would be sung of him, celebrating him! If we inherit our talent from our parents, look at me. My mother can spin and gather oysters. I cannot. My father could not fly. I can. And some of you know how good I am—better than some who were born to it.” She turned and glanced down the length of the table. “Better than you, Corm,” she said in a voice that carried all through the great hall. “Or have you forgotten?”

Corm glared up at her, his face flushed with anger, a thick vein bulging in his neck. He said nothing. Maris turned back to the hall. Her voice softened, and she looked out on them with false solicitude. “Are you afraid?” she asked them. “Have you hung onto your wings only on the strength of a pretense? Are you afraid that all the grubby little fisherchildren will come and snatch them away from you, prove themselves better flyers than you and make you all look fools?”

Then all her words were gone, and her anger. And Maris sat back in her chair, and silence hung heavy in the great stone hall. Finally a hand went up, and then another, but Jamis only stared blankly ahead, his face thoughtful. No one moved until at last he stirred himself, as if from sleep, and gestured at someone in the crowd.

High up against the wall, an old man with one dead arm stood alone in the flickering yellow torchlight. The assembly turned to watch him.

“Russ, of Lesser Amberly,” he began. His tone was gentle. “My friends, Maris is right. We have been fools. And none of us has been so big a fool as I.

“Not long ago, I stood on a beach and said I had no daughter. Tonight, I wish I could have back those words, I wish I still had the right to call Maris my daughter. She has made me very proud. But she isn’t mine. No, as she said, she was born of a fisherman, a better man than I. All I did was love her for a bit, and teach her how to fly. It didn’t take much teaching, you know. She was always so eager. My little Woodwings. There was nothing could stop her, nothing. Not even me, when like a fool I tried to, after Coll was born.

“Maris is the finest flyer on Amberly, and my blood has nothing to do with it. Only her desire matters, only her dream. And if you, my flyer brothers, if you have such disdain for the children of the land-bound, then it is a shaming thing for you to fear them. Have you so little faith in your own children? Are you so certain that they could not keep their wings, against a fisherchild’s hungry challenge?”

Russ shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m an old man, and things have been confused lately. But I know this much: If I still had use of my arm, no one would take my wings from me, not even if his father was a nighthawk. And no one will ever take Maris’ wings until she is ready to set them down. No. If you truly teach your children to fly well, they will keep the sky. If you have the pride you boast of, you’ll live up to it, and prove it, by letting the wings be worn only by those who have earned them, only by those who have proven themselves in the air.”

Russ sat down again, and the darkness at the top of the hall swallowed him up. Corm began to say something, but Jamis the Senior silenced him. “We have had enough from you,” he said. Corm blinked in surprise.

“I think I will say something,” Jamis said. “And then we will vote. Russ has spoken wisdom for all of us, but one thought I must add. Are we not, each of us, descended from the star sailors? All of Windhaven is family, really. And there is none among us who cannot find a flyer in his or her family tree, if we go back far enough. Think of that, my friends. And remember that while your eldest child may wear your wings and fly, his younger brother and sisters and all their children for generations after will be land-bound. Should we really deny them the wind forever, simply because their ancestors were second-born, instead of first?” Jamis smiled. “Perhaps I should add that I was my mother’s second son. My elder brother died in a storm six months before he was to take his wings. A small thing, that. Don’t you think?”

He looked around, at the two Landsmen who flanked him, who had sat silently through all the proceedings, quieted by flyers’ law. He whispered first to one, then to the other, and nodded.

“We find that Corm’s proposal, to name Maris of Lesser Amberly an outlaw, is out of order,” Jamis said. “We will now vote on Maris’ proposal, to establish a flyers’ academy open to all. I vote in favor.”

After that, there was no more doubt.

Afterward, Maris felt slightly in shock, giddy with victory, yet somehow not able to believe that it was really over, that she did not have to fight anymore. The air outside the hall was clean and wet, the wind blowing steadily from the east. She stood on the steps and savored it, while friends and strangers crowded about her, wanting to talk. Dorrel kept his arm around her, and did not ask questions nor express amazement; he was restful to lean against. What now? she wondered. Home again? Where was Coll? Perhaps he’d gone to fetch Barrion and bring the boat.

The crowd around her parted. Russ stood there, Jamis at his side. Her stepfather was holding a pair of wings. “Maris,” he said.

“Father?” Her voice was trembling.

“This is how it should have been all along,” he said, smiling at her. “I would be proud if you would let me call you daughter again, after all that I have done. I would be even prouder if you would wear my wings.”

“You’ve won them,” Jamis said. “The old rules don’t apply, and you’re certainly qualified. Until we get the academy going, there’s no one to wear them except you and Devin. And you took better care of these than Devin ever did of his.”

Her hands went out to take the wings from Russ. They were hers again. She was smiling, no longer tired, buoyed by the weight of them in her hands, the familiarity of them. “Oh, Father,” she said, and then, weeping, she and Russ embraced each other.

When the tears were gone, they all went to the flyers’ cliff, quite a crowd of them. “Let’s fly to the Eyrie,” she said to Dorrel. Then there was Garth, just beyond—she had not noticed him in the crowd before. “Garth! You come too. We’ll have a party!”

“Yes,” Dorrel said, “but is the Eyrie the place for it?”

Maris flushed. “Oh, of course not!” She glanced around at the crowd. “No, we’ll go back to our house, on Lesser, and everyone can come, us and Father and the Landsman and Jamis, and Barrion will sing for us, if we can find him, and—” and then she saw Coll, running toward her, his face alight.

“Maris! Maris!” He ran to her and hugged her enthusiastically, then broke away, grinning.

“Where did you go to?”

“Off with Barrion, I had to, I’m making a song. Just got the start of it now, but it will be good, I can feel it, it really will be. It’s about you.”

“Me?”

He was obviously proud of himself. “Yes. You’ll be famous. Everyone will sing it and everyone will know about you.”

“They already do,” Dorrel said. “Believe me.”

“Oh, but I mean forever. For as long as this song is sung they’ll know about you—the girl who wanted wings so much she changed the world.”

And perhaps it was true, Maris thought later, as she strapped on her wings and rose into the wind with Dorrel and Garth by her side. But to have changed the world didn’t seem half so important nor half so real as the wind in her hair, the familiar pull of muscles as she rose, riding the beloved currents she had thought might be lost to her forever. She had her wings again, she had the sky; she was whole now and she was happy.