by Dawn Cook
“You need to fly, Alissa.”
“I don’t,” she said, holding her breath to catch a sob.
“Beast does.”
Jolted, she looked up. His eyes held a questioning hurt. Then her alarm broke apart, torn by apathy. She slumped, and her gaze returned to Talon.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.
She shifted her shoulders. “You would have made me suppress her until she might as well have been destroyed. I like her, Useless,” she said, her voice low so it wouldn’t break. “She’s hiding now. So far I can hardly sense her.” Looking up at his silence, she was surprised at his calm expression. “You aren’t angry?”
He grimaced. “Later, maybe.” He gave her a mirthless smile. “Actually, I think your notions concerning feral awareness are worth considering, no matter how uncomfortable they are. We may have been making the same mistake for thousands of years, too afraid to admit we are closer to our feral kin than we would like to be. But if you don’t help us understand what you’ve done, we can’t change anything. I—” He hesitated. “I don’t like the idea that I might have a feral beast in my thoughts, waiting for me to falter so it can take control.”
“Beast isn’t like that.”
“I was talking of mine. And everyone else’s.”
Alissa’s thoughts swung to Silla. Softly she whispered, “Silla needs help.”
Useless blinked. “Silla? She . . .” Face ashen, he shook his head in denial.
Alissa nodded. “She’s having a difficult time finding a balance. She’s close to going feral. That’s why I could reach her across the ocean. And why Keribdis hates me. She knows Silla is balancing on the edge. Keribdis will blame me if she goes feral, saying Beast is a sickness I gave Silla.” Alissa pushed one of Talon’s feathers straight. Her throat tightened.
For a long time, Useless was silent. Only the sound of the water and the waves broke the stillness. Even the gulls had gone, sleeping on the sand in rows and columns.
“None of them wants to believe,” Alissa said, not looking at him. “It doesn’t matter. Let them think what they want. Just help Silla. Help her suppress her feral consciousness until she all but destroys it, like I should have.” A feeling of helplessness welled up in her, making the blood pound in her head and broken hand. “And I won’t have another source,” she said louder. “If I do, I’ll belong to whoever gives it to me. I can’t do that.”
“I wouldn’t ask anything of you,” he said, the firelight flickering deep on his wrinkles.
Alissa believed him, but she knew the feeling would haunt her nonetheless. “And what can I do without a source?” she said, not wanting to acknowledge she had heard him.
“You can do fields,” he said with a forced brightness as he brushed the hem of his vest.
“Fields.” She made a helpless noise. “Stopping stones and moving feathers? Protecting my thoughts from burns that no longer matter?”
She was bitter, and she jerked away when Useless reached to turn her chin to him. “You’re still a Master,” he said, a hint of iron in his voice. “Your voice will be heard in the conclave whether you can work wards or not. And you will have a source again. I promise.” She made a miserable sound, and he leaned closer. “Don’t mind their looks and whispers,” he said. “You’re not a cripple. We will get you another. The looks will stop. You will go on.”
“It’s not that,” she breathed, losing her will to even speak. “I’ve been stared at before.” Useless was wrong. She would never fly again. Beast would wither and die. Already, her awareness had begun to fade as the promise of flight turned to ash.
For a long time he was silent, then he asked, “Are you ready to go back to the village?”
Alissa’s eyes closed. The sound of the breeze in the palms was too much like the sound the wind made in her ears when she flew. The silence grew expectant, and remembering he had asked her something, she nodded, fully intending to stay where she was.
Useless forced a smile. “Strell is just over the dune, waiting for you.”
“Strell?” A spark of emotion flickered, then slid down to nothing. She should tell Useless what they had done but couldn’t bring herself to. What did it matter?
“Search him out, Useless prompted. “You don’t need— you need only your own strength for that. And you will fly again.”
Alissa managed a false smile. He was trying to make it better. He didn’t understand. Wanting him to leave, she cocked her head and made her gaze distant. She nodded as if she had done a search and found him.
“There,” Useless said overly cheerful. “He’ll walk you back to the village. He probably has something else for you to eat, too. Go on. I’ll join you before sunrise. I have—an errand.”
Alissa’s gaze dropped to Talon. The bird’s feathers were soft against her fingertips. Keribdis. There was no fear in the name. There was nothing. No hate, no anger, nothing. “It doesn’t matter,” she whispered. “It’s done. Let her be. I have no outrage left to avenge.”
“I do,” he said shortly as he stood and brushed the sand from his yellow trousers. She heard the determination in his voice and decided it would be easier to bend to his will. “Go on,” he added. “Strell is waiting. Join him before he has a conniption fit trying to decide if he is doing something wrong by trying to get you to eat.”
Alissa forced herself to rise, ignoring Useless’s outstretched hand. She had no intention of finding Strell. Seeming satisfied, Useless moved a few steps away. The lines on his face were deeper than she remembered. Giving her a nod, he shifted. Alissa froze in misery as her tracings resonated with a ward she could no longer do. She slumped to the ground. Her head drooped until her chin almost touched her chest.
There was another pull on her thoughts, and Useless shifted back. Saying nothing, he returned to the fire. “You aren’t going, are you,” he said flatly, his white eyebrows bunching.
“No.” Alissa wouldn’t look up. “I want to—” She swallowed, her eyes on the small kestrel. “I want to take care of Talon.” Her vision swam. Her friend was dead.
Useless sighed. “My errand can wait,” he said as he sank down beside her.
A lump filled her throat. Grateful for his presence, she brushed a finger over Talon’s graying markings as Useless added wood to make the fire high and hot. Alissa’s eyes closed against the new heat. She would miss Talon. Even her habit of plying her with her catches, snakes included. A faint smile stirred her to open her eyes. “Did you know Talon once spent an entire week bringing me snakes?” she said, and Useless’s eyes softened.
Alissa clutched her good arm about her knees as the warmth of the fire went through the thin fabric of her dress. Her broken hand lay like a dead thing in her lap. “It wouldn’t have been so bad,” Alissa said, “but she brought back one that wasn’t dead once. Talon dropped it in the kitchen. My mother killed it by throwing a knife at it. I didn’t know she could do that. I had to sit with my feet off the floor for three months until she was sure Talon hadn’t brought back another that we didn’t know about.”
“Did she? Bring you another, I mean?” Useless asked, his voice gentle.
“Only one other time. I made such a face, I think Talon realized I’d never eat it.”
Useless pushed a stick into the fire, his fingers almost amongst the flames. “I’ve never known a bird to do that.”
Alissa glanced down at Talon, then away. “Talon never did anything normal,” she said, finding it easier to talk than she would have imagined. She picked at the binding about her wrist.
Seeming to understand, Useless took on a more casual air. “What I don’t understand is how she could fly at night. She was a fine flyer. The only thing I couldn’t catch.”
Alissa looked up. “I thought you always won those games of hers.”
Useless shook his head, a veil of memory coming between her and his eyes. “No. And I’ve been able to catch everything, Keribdis included.” He grimaced, then forced himself to be light. “That’s
not entirely true. I was never able to catch Redal-Stan. He was the one who taught me to fly. For a transeunt, he was more of a raku than most born to it.”
Alissa nodded, edging back from the flames as they grew higher. Wiping her bleary eyes, she wondered if the fire was hot enough yet.
“Yes,” Useless said as he made a platform of the old coals, almost as if he read her mind. “When you’re ready. She lived an extremely long life for a bird. It’s time she returned to the Navigator.” His golden eyes shone. “I’d wager you’ll find her waiting on the back of your chair at the Navigator’s table when you get there,” he said, and Alissa choked back a sob.
Tears dripping from her unchecked, she awkwardly picked Talon up with one hand. The small bird was light, almost as if she wasn’t in her hand at all. Eyes closing, Alissa buried her nose in the silky neck feathers, breathing in Talon’s scent for the last time. The wild smell of clouds coursed through her, almost covering up something she had never noticed before.
Book paste? she thought, hesitating. Why did Talon smell like book paste?
Her eyes opened, unseeing. She had smelled it before; she knew it.
Alissa’s tears hesitated as a faint thought struggled to solidify. Visions of her chair before the fire in the Keepers’ dining hall and of Redal-Stan’s pillow flitted through her mind. “No,” she whispered, not believing the two were connected with Talon. But the scent of book paste delved through her thoughts, tugging them into order.
“Redal-Stan?” she whispered, her eyes widening as she looked frantically at Useless.
She had given the old Master a memory of Talon. She remembered that, she thought, her pulse quickening. Could Redal-Stan have figured out how she crossed the patterns to shift through time after all? Had he used her memory to shift forward?
Feeling numb and unreal, Alissa cradled Talon close. But why shift into a bird? He had known birds didn’t have complex enough tracings to shift back to human or raku with.
Her breath caught at the answer. “He knew he would go feral,” she said aloud, not caring that Useless was bending over her in concern. “He knew he would go feral from shifting too far through time and losing his reference points, so he purposely shifted into a bird, where it wouldn’t matter if he was feral or not.” She looked at Useless, seeing the sudden alarm in his eyes.
“He was feral!” she said, not caring he might think she had snapped. “Right up until the last few years when he found new reference points. But he was a bird. He had no tracings to shift back with! He knew he would be trapped as a bird. Why? Why did he do it?”
“Alissa?” Useless’s hand was tight on her shoulder. “What are you talking about?”
The tears welled up as she realized why. He had done it for her. To help her when there was no one who could. To keep her from being alone as she struggled to become herself.
Alissa shook in huge racking sobs, crying for understanding come too late and the love the old Master must have held for her. Unable to see the fire through her tears, she let Useless take Talon and place the bird on the fire. Knees drawn up to her chin, she rocked herself as she struggled to pull her will together. Redal-Stan had a gift other than his love to give her.
Slowly, her field took shape in the flames that flared up from burning feathers. It was small, but as her heartache swelled so did her field until the entire fire was encased. The heat inside the field grew, seeming to warm her from within. Still weeping, she bowed her forehead to her knees, clutching her broken hand between her legs and her chest, sobbing, rocking, feeling the difference in the flames.
“Alissa?” Useless whispered. The weight of his long hand rested upon her shoulder. Then it fell away with a quick intake of breath. “Wolves, Alissa,” he said, his voice suddenly full of awe. “What are you doing?”
Alissa looked up. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Her breath came in a ragged sound as saw her field was not red with flame but white with the shadow of infinity. “Talon was Redal-Stan,” she whispered. “She was a he after all. I only said she was a girl because of her size. When she was younger, her markings were much darker.”
“Redal—” Useless stammered.
She sent a tendril of thought past her field. Her eyes widened with unbearable emotion as something eased from the field and began to settle in her thoughts.
There was a sliding of sand, and she felt both Strell and Yar-Taw’s presence behind her. “What do you want?” Yar-Taw said tightly. “I said I was busy with Silla.”
“Look at the fire,” Useless said, and she heard Yar-Taw gasp.
“What the Wolves!” the bewildered Master exclaimed, taking a step back.
“Help her, Yar-Taw,” Useless said harshly. “It’s a pyre field. But I don’t know if this is right or not.”
“But how . . .”
“Talon was Redal-Stan,” Useless explained tersely. “We knew he was experimenting with tripping the lines when he went missing. He helped Alissa get back from the past. Obviously he shifted forward to help her when there was no one else who could—when you abandoned the Hold. Now tell me, Yar-Taw! What is she doing wrong? Why is she crying?”
“She’s doing nothing wrong!” Yar-Taw said, and Alissa shook with a racking sob. “But it’s so concentrated. Usually it’s within a field a hundred times larger. I think . . . Alissa? I think you should bind some of it now.”
“I am,” she wept, feeling the strength of the old Master course through her until finding the empty spot within her and making her whole again.
Without warning, her field collapsed in on itself. Alissa convulsed as a wave of emotion crashed over her. Her eyes shut as a word echoed in her thoughts. “Squirrel,” came a soft whisper, and tears streamed from under her closed lids.
Strell’s hand touched her shoulder, trembling. She opened her eyes. The fire burned only wood. The three men were staring at her, their expressions tinged with alarm. Feeling self-conscious,she straightened. There was grit on her fingers, and the breeze coming off the water was chill upon her damp cheeks. Her broken hand hurt, helping to bring her back to herself.
Embarrassed by their witnessing what had happened, she took a steadying breath. The tears were utterly gone, lost in wonder. “It’s—it’s different,” she said, conscious that she was the first Master in existence who could possibly know sources carried a whisper of their previous owners. She searched herself, tasting the subtle distinctions of strength settling deep inside her mind. “It tastes like—book paste.”
38
The wind lifted Alissa’s hair, trying to tug it free of the copper-colored ribbon glinting in the sun. Smiling, she leaned against the railing of the Albatross and watched Hayden ferry Silla, Lodesh, and Connen-Neute from the island to the boat. Strell stood beside her. Alissa leaned to run a finger down his jawline. He had shaved off his beard, and she wasn’t sure she liked it.
Her smile grew as he ran a hand through her hair, taking the copper-colored ribbon out and tucking it away. Alissa’s hair billowed behind her. Beast didn’t mind the touch, and for that Alissa was grateful. Her feral side’s definition of bringing-to-ground didn’t include small, random shows of affection as apparently feral rakus were not that subtle.
“Ready to go home?” Strell whispered in her ear, causing a chill to fill her from the inside out. Beast did take notice of that, and Alissa mollified her with a bitter thought that they were not going to roll about on the deck of the ship.
“Go home? In a way,” she said as she remembered what he had asked.
“In a way?” Strell’s eyes were wide in incredulity. His gaze flicked to her hand in its sling and back to her. “I would’ve thought you couldn’t wait to leave.”
She shifted her shoulders and gestured to the island. “It’s warm. I like the water. There’s lots of fish to eat.”
He grunted as he turned back to the shoreline. “But it rains every day.”
She made a face, turning as Captain Sholan raised his voice at Yar-Taw. The captai
n had become quite bold when dealing with Masters, deciding if they were going to eat him, they would, but he would not cower like a cur in the meantime. Apparently the water barrels Yar-Taw had constructed weren’t up to the captain’s standards.
Captain Sholan’s final acceptance of Masters had happened this morning when Neugwin, Beso-Ran, and Connen-Neute rowed out shortly after she did and silently fixed a new boom to the tallest mast. Neugwin had fastened the rigging, Connen-Neute had fixed the hardware, and Beso-Ran had held it in place while standing armpit deep beside the boat in his raku form. Through it all, the captain had stood at his wheel and watched, his brow furrowed in thought. Alissa hadn’t even known they had been making a new boom.
Later, she had seen Captain Sholan running a hand down the boom’s length to gauge the strength of the dark, fragrant wood. She knew it was a well-appreciated gift, and could almost see his thoughts circling about the possibility of what else could be made out of the dense wood.
The sound of Hayden’s oars pushing against the water came faintly over the wind and the cry of the gulls, and she turned back to the ocean. Silla and Connen-Neute could have flown over, but the captain understandably didn’t like it when his boat nearly swamped every time a raku landed on it. She pushed away from the railing and made her way with Strell to where the ladder snaked over the side.
“Oh, here,” Strell said as they crossed the deck. “You should probably have these back. I think the captain and Hayden would appreciate it, even if no one else does.”
Alissa’s gaze dropped to his hand as she recognized a faint jingle. “My bells!” she exclaimed; she had forgotten all about them.