Wolf Wing

by Tanith Lee

  ‘When you first came to the Wolf Tower, Claidi, things happened that forced you again and again towards this truth. When Nemian tagged your diary – yes, it was Nemian – so you could be found and caught again – and when Ironel sent you off to the Rise to save you from the Wolf Tower – you got pushed into a nearness with the things that had been mine. It seems you always have been. Which was all chance. Certainly I didn’t make it happen. But Claidi, as my mother once told you, chance also plays with our lives.’

  She said I’d grown better and better at being ‘in tune’ with the Power ring. This ring wasn’t like the Power jewels Twilight had made, not even like the sapphire Ironel gave to Argul, and that he added to the ‘charm’ to charge it. I’d soon known the diamond was stronger.

  ‘No,’ said Ustareth. ‘What’s stronger is you.’

  I sat scowling. The sun stood high above the central valley. It was very quiet, though I could hear the hum of bees.

  ‘Me.’

  ‘The Power jewels,’ said Ustareth, ‘when worn, give people abilities they don’t actually have. For example, what you call flight. Your ring – yes, now truly yours – isn’t the same. This ring, if often worn, teaches your own powers how to work.’

  I stared. ‘What are my own powers?’

  ‘I can’t show you,’ she said. ‘You must show yourself. Take off the ring.’

  ‘No,’ I said. I looked at it. The sun blazed in the diamond. ‘No.’

  ‘Take it off,’ she said again. Now it was her other voice, that of command.

  I thought, So what. I thought, To all the rest, this is nothing.

  So I took off the ring, which had meant so much, and perhaps, like the ‘charm’, had nothing to do with what it meant. It lay there on the table, turned so the sun no longer shone in it.

  ‘Claidi,’ said Ustareth, gently, ‘just fly.’

  ‘Don’t be—’ I said.

  But when she’d spoken the words, my memory of flying came, and

  and

  She has done this. Another trick—

  No. It’s me.

  Thu raised his nose, wrinkled his brows, and glanced at me as I swooped over his head. I landed light as wheat pollen on the grass by the statues.

  ‘You did it when the river boiled,’ she said. ‘You did it. And you lifted your dog and your horse clear of the water with you. You were in a panic, not even able to think – and you did it. No Power jewel has the strength to lift more than its wearer, Claidi – remember other times … even then, it was beginning to be you, not the ring. In any case, the diamond lost all its Power, as did the other jewels, and Yinyay, the moment you all came down in the sea.’

  ‘ ’ I said.

  ‘And yes, I sent the river after you,’ she said. ‘Lose your temper if you want, but don’t be too angry. I already knew, from what you’d already done, it wouldn’t be much of a problem.’

  ‘I could have drowned!’

  ‘I doubted that. And see, I was right.’

  ‘And if you’d been wrong—’

  ‘I could have saved you. Your animals too.’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So it was a test—’ I babbled.

  ‘Indeed. And how you passed my test. All my tests. Argul has psychic ability, Claidi. But not like yours. Few have. The ring’s done its work with you and woken up your own powers, which were always there inside you. So don’t be afraid of me, don’t even bother to hate me. To you, now, I’m what the Hulta say, “A candleflame to the sun.” ’

  My legs felt unleglike, and I sat down cautiously by Thu. Who licked my hand very thoroughly, in case there was any biscuit left there.

  I’m sitting up now on another hill in Her Valley, with olive trees. I flew up. It’s, well, second nature to me, flying. Easy. Unlike everything else.

  The sun’s gone over. Shadows getting longer. There’s a gap (arranged?) in the mountains to the west, just right to show off the sunsets.

  She told me everything, as she said.

  She told me everything I’d done, and not known I had, thinking it was the ring – or her – or someone else. Never, never – me.

  Why would I think it was ME? I’m – me.

  On the shark ship, we were all separated – especially Argul and I (she said) to see what we’d be able to do, minus the Power jewels. For example, if we could speak to each other in our heads – telepathically! Well, I hadn’t managed that. Meanwhile, apparently, no one but the Sharkians could work their lifts – but I did, even if not very accurately. Almost nobody else understood the Sharkians either – but somehow I did understand their speech, or some of it. (She said Argul was not bad at understanding them. Probably because he has another Natural Ability with languages.) The shark boat, when it put me off at the shore, was meant to get us all out instantly, turn us out into the sea if we wouldn’t leave. But I’d kept it there and it hadn’t been able to, and the shuddering it had gone into had been the boat trying to resist what I (not knowing anything about it) was doing to it.

  Then I opened the door through the wall.

  She said Argul too managed to open one of these doors. With the others, she’d had to open the doors for them.

  (She’s watched us all this while, of course. But I knew that. Maybe she’s even watching me now. Or can I, now, somehow stop that?)

  She said yes, the food trees would help anyone, but they’d come walking towards me, instead of my having to find them. Even fireflies came to give me light to write in this book.

  ‘I knew,’ she said, ‘when I gave you the statues, at Peshamba.’

  Dully I said, ‘You gave me the statues.’

  ‘They were mine. As you’ve long known, I helped create Peshamba. And the statues were another of my – what you would call – games. Certain people have always been able to make them move a little. But as they look very like some of the other dolls scattered around parts of the town, no one worried too much if they were seen in motion. But no one has ever been able to make them move about as you did. You and the ring combined, first to make them appear – they hadn’t been seen in the Mask Grove for some while – and then you shifted them right out on to the street. When they followed you, they weren’t chasing you, Claidi. They’d become your servants.’

  ‘I’m – I was a servant.’

  ‘Yes. So from your own experience, don’t you think its far better to have servants made of stone and metal, who really don’t mind serving?’

  The statues are my servants, then. They kept appearing when I got in a state – but I hadn’t, as she put it, yet mastered them – and I was nervous of them too. So they’d appear and then vanish. Not until I was here, and wouldn’t risk the ramp, and they flew me down to the meadows, did I really get them working.

  ‘Where do they appear from?’ I said.

  ‘Out of the air, quite literally,’ she told me. She then explained, and of course I haven’t the faintest what she meant. She said they form by changing ‘matter’ and ‘molecules’ (Yinyay used to go on about molecules) and integrate, then they are taken apart again (?) and dis-integrate, and vanish.

  ‘I have my own mechanical servants here, that also do this. They look very similar to the ones that are now yours. In fact, when you were at the House this time, and saw two of these figures in the grounds there, they were my servants which you saw, not your own. However, even these became visible – integrated – because of your own Power, and that of your ring. You probably wonder why I sent my mechanicals there – I’m afraid it was to conduct an experiment, and on a human thing – just as you always think I must be doing, and generally I am not. Although, you may not think, in this case, she is human.’

  I stared. Then I said,’ You disintegrated Jade Leaf – and had her brought here.’

  ‘Yes. One does this by grasping hold of the mechanical statues, who are able to come and go that way themselves. They take you with them, and return you where they’re told. This time they took hold of Jade Leaf, not the ot
her way about, of course. I’m sure you’re very shocked. But it doesn’t hurt, moving in that way. Disintegration is a pleasant, airy sensation. You see, I’ve done it myself a number of times. One can then cover vast distances – it really is the fastest of all methods of travel.’

  I shook my head, as Thu does to clear his ears of water. ‘Why did you want her?’ I asked.

  Was I feeling protective of Jade Leaf?

  Ustareth shrugged slightly, a little impatient again.

  ‘I said, an experiment.’

  And there we have it, don’t we. The Experiment, Science and Knowing, come first. But then she added,’ I might make something of her, with time. She’s a wretched little thing. Perhaps she can be changed.’

  And so, another experiment.

  ‘Great,’ I said.

  And she just nodded. She said, ‘She’s been a little upset, inevitably.’

  Poor old Jade Leaf. I mean she’s foul and serve her right and all that. But – one minute there in the Garden of the House, happily trying to stab Dengwi and me in the back, then flung away by the ring (or by some Power of mine??) and next gripped by a stone figure, disintegrated and reintegrated here, to be changed.

  (I’ve seen her again, JL, in fact, down in the fields. She was wandering along picking cornflowers and poppies, and singing a little song to herself. I couldn’t hear the words, but she probably made it up and so it’ll be a load of twag. Still, she’s been dis- and re-integrated. And not changed yet. That’s nearly a relief.) (Her hair’s growing back.)

  What else did Ustareth say to me? So much. I’m trying to remember and put it all down (as if I could EVER forget).

  But, I sort of do forget, really. I mean – me?

  She said I’m the Powerful one. And – it seems I am. She says it doesn’t make any difference who you are or where you’re born – king, queen, servant, slave, educated, un – this kind of Power just comes. Though it may, if it’s in a child, be in their sister or brother. Venn, though, she says, doesn’t have much of this Power at all, even though Argul is ‘gifted’. Winter and Ngarbo, as she suspected (as I did too), have none. Frankly I think she merely let them come along for the ride. ‘What about Dengwi?’ I asked. ‘I hold,’ said Ustareth, ‘some great hopes for Dengwi.’

  She says I can call Yinyay. I’ll be able to do it. She says it’s probably the only way the others will ever get here, if Yinyay is brought up from the ocean, recharged and made large again, and sent to fetch them. And all this – by me.

  Ustareth said, actually smirking, ‘And I can’t do it, Claidi. Yinyay doesn’t recognize me any more. Remember, Venn ordered all memory of me wiped from her mechanisms.’ (Ustareth, as I do, calls Yin ‘she’. She thanks her machines, as well. ‘Thank you,’ she said when they served us lunch. Was she always like that? In her own diary at the Rise, she seemed more abrasive and in a hurry. But I suppose she’s over that now. As she’s over wanting to make rooms move about, or crossing rabbits with tigers. She survived death, and she’s free.)

  She wants Argul though, and Venn. She does. I can see it in her face when she speaks about them. Aside from all this Power stuff, she talked endlessly through lunch about how they were when they were children. Even Venn. She confided in me.

  I keep seeing her in my mind, not as she is now, but back before. I keep seeing her leaving the Rise, angry, refusing to look over her shoulder. And I see her too, gaunt and grey with the illness and its ‘frightful cure’, before it worked, looking through some statue with eyes at her husband, Kirad, and her son, Argul. Looking and looking as if she had to memorize them. And they never knew.

  She says I made the eyes open in ‘my’ statues. And it was my Power that made me able even to be heard by the others – if I’d wanted. ‘You could have appeared to them,’ she said.

  I’d never do that! Scare the life out of them.

  That’s why she never ‘appeared’ to Argul or his father, I suppose.

  And when she could have gone back, Kirad was dead, and Argul was a man.

  Do I feel sorry for Ustareth? Do I trust and believe her? Are we convinced, you and I?

  She says the Sharkians are one of several Animal Races she has ‘enabled to develop’ humanly-recognizable speech, and various other human abilities. She says they might get these things themselves very likely, anyway, in a few million years. She’s just hurried things up a bit. She told me there were monkeys in another place, beyond this continent, a Monkey Tower. And Bears somewhere, and Rats and Dogs – possibly there are lots more. She’s kept busy.

  I don’t know what I think of that. Of any of it.

  She has, despite anything she may say, experimented on me!

  She said she knew I’d been the substitute for Twilight and Fengrey’s daughter, at the House. Then, when I met Argul, at whom she’s gone on looking, from time to time, she took an interest in me. She didn’t/doesn’t interfere, she said. Only ever watches. (Worse, perhaps?)

  ‘You’ve always had a psychic knack,’ she announced. She reminded me about when I was a maid and I’d wished a swarm of bees on Jade Leaf. ‘What she got was a swarm of ants, but it wasn’t a bad try.’

  So in spite of what she said, she was watching me even then, wasn’t she.

  The thing about the ants is true, though. At the time I’d thought – well, I hadn’t really thought.

  She said I sensed, psychically, that Argul had been driven apart from me, when I was taken to the Rise. That’s also true. It’s like the way Venn and Argul suddenly sensed that Ustareth was alive. I didn’t. I didn’t want to, did I.

  She remarked to me, ‘And now you have an important choice, Claidi. When you see Argul again, will you risk telling him how Powerful you really now are? Or will you lie, as I did to Kirad? Put the ring back on and say it’s only that? I wonder what you’ll decide.’

  But I think, when Argul gets here, all he’s going to be interested in – is HER.

  So. Shall I call Yinyay – see if I can. I’m not wearing the ring. Then bring everyone to her unmasked palace in the sunset.

  Or only go on watching the shadows lengthen over the yellow corn?

  OURS

  Argul rode across the mountains about half an hour later. He rode through the air. His horse swam the way Mirreen does, when she ‘flies’.

  He must have seen the golden-topped building on the hill, as I had, when it had a golden face. But I was jumping about on the other hill, waving frantically, and somehow he saw me better. Perhaps I can make people see me, now.

  They landed faultlessly.

  Then he was there, and lifting me up off my feet.

  For a time we didn’t say a word, just held each other. After all, he hadn’t quite forgotten me.

  ‘We have to stop getting separated like this, Claidi. It’s getting to be a bad habit.’

  ‘Yes. But she meant us to be.’

  ‘I know that. Is she here?’

  So I’m to be the one to tell him.

  ‘She’s over there, in that palace with the gold roof.’

  We looked at the palace.

  ‘You’ve met her,’ he said.

  ‘Yes—’

  ‘There’s a lot to tell me, is there? There usually is.’

  I took a breath. ‘I can tell you, or I can wait until – I don’t know which will be best.’

  I wondered then if she had confided in me, in the hopes I might make excuses for her to him. Rather than annoy me, it seemed really sad, that. Like my image of her staring at him through the statue-eyes. This Powerful mysterious woman, helpless and unsure.

  But he said, ‘Don’t say anything about her yet. It’s best I hear it from her.’

  His face was set. Waiting for her. (Shall I always see her in his face, now, always see his face in hers?)

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘go and find her. Fly there—’ I hesitated. One thing I did want him to hear now and not from her, ‘Only, Argul, it isn’t the Power coming back in the sapphire—’

  ‘I know,’ he said.
He grinned. ‘How could it be, here? I tried it out, just me, then with the horse – flying. I began to think something was going on when all those trees were rushing up with hot food.’ (And I thought, whatever Gift I have, I don’t have one for being quick on the uptake, do I? He worked out what he could do. I had to be thrown in a river and shown. And I imagined Ustareth making the river boil and chase me, not with a nasty cruel leer, but tapping her fingers from impatience at my slowness!) Argul said, ‘So if I’ve learned how to do this, somehow – are you the same?’

  I nodded.

  Even she had thought this might be a problem, telling him. Oh, there is more to tell – but already he has some idea. Things often get more simple, when he’s with me.

  He kissed me, and the breeze turned over all the silver leaves of the olive trees. My husband walked away down the hill to meet his mother.

  Yinyay brought everyone else. Yes, I called her, and it worked. Her Power returned, she grew large, there in the sea – and soon she too blew up over the mountain crags like a white pillar of cloud.

  When she’d parked on my hill, there was thunderous barking and up raced Thu from the fields below. He greeted the many storeys of Yinyay with roars of delight, bouncing at her doors, and then tumbling inside when she opened them. He then shot off up the nearest stairway, and straight into the first lift. Soon his pleased bellows echoed down from the bone-burying lawn.

  I tried to get him out before she took off to find the others. Thu wouldn’t leave. So Yinyay is the one he really loves and feels loyal to. Constant biscuit-feeding has its uses.

  I didn’t go with her. Venn and the rest know her by now, the Human Tower (U’s palace too has a human face). And Yin will explain to them. Really, I can’t deal with them just yet.

  I think to myself, If Argul found he had Powers, why didn’t he try to find me? If I’d known earlier, I would have – or would I? No, I’d have left him alone, once I saw how he was, and that he was all right. Well, I did leave him alone. And then I think, Did he find some way to look at me???

  I’ll go down in a little while, and then up to the garden again. About an hour to sunset. Argul has been gone a long while. With her.