Melianarrheyal

by G. Deyke

  ~*~

  The great bony hawk flies fast and far and high. The air is thin here, and cold. I nestle into my coat and hold my face down to shield it from the bitter wind, and I whistle to Snake to protect me.

  I don't like this; I am far from the ground, and there is nothing at all beneath me but a collection of long-dead bones and a thick leather saddle to keep our legs from slipping between its ribs. The long thin arms, hardly wings at all without their feathers, beat through the air without pushing it. I wonder how it is that the bird remains aloft, but perhaps it is better not to wonder too much.

  I sit and I wait and I try not to look down at the land below passing us by. I try, also, to pay as little heed to Therrin as I can, for she delights in this feeling of flight. “To think that my mother's people are always so high above the ground, flying!” she says. “Isn't it wonderful? I would fly like this whithersoever I went, if I but could!”

  We are moving very quickly, and very far from the safe shelter of the ground. I whistle to Snake again and again, though I fear that he cannot hear me this high up, and I long for the time when we may land. I have never liked heights. Anything could see us, and hurt us, and the very wind might throw us down, and the gods are far away, far beneath us. And it sickens me to look down and see the ground such a long way off.

  Night is cold around us when we see the village beneath us at last. “Is that it then?” asks Therrin, looking back; and the curse, sitting on the end of the thing's tail, nods. The bird begins to slow in its flight, as though to land. But the beat of its wings falters, and it stretches its neck upward and opens its gray beak in a silent cry.

  “What's wrong?” Ty asks. I don't know whom he's asking – perhaps the bird itself. But it can't answer any longer. It seems the spell which gave it life has ceased to work at last, so far from the necromancers' palace. The bones fall apart and lose their shape, and we plummet toward the village amid a rain of dry bones and thick leather.

  The wind of the fall whips the breath from my throat. I must not scream. I must be strong.

  Therrin cries out, and gropes in the air for something to hold to. She yells something and I cannot hear her words. Then there is a wind below us, bearing us up, slowing our fall; and while we still land hard between the falling bones, we are alive and unharmed.

  I am glad, so glad, to have the earth beneath me again. I whistle to Snake and I kiss the gray dusty ground and I lie flat, afraid even to stand, afraid it will drop away beneath me if I give it any chance.

  There are voices around us, voices I can't understand. I turn onto my back so that I can watch. Therrin has sat up now, and Ty stood, and we are in the midst of the village; and the villagers are gathering around us, staring at us almost fearfully, perhaps even with hatred. They are as gray and colorless as everything in this world, and look hardly alive.

  I cannot feel them with my nature sense, but I can feel nothing with it here, in this world, anymore. It is faded and gone. I am afraid. I remember when I lost my sight – but I used my sight less than this, far less. It is all cold and empty around me and I am all alone. I can feel Ty and Therrin – but barely. I'm not sure if they're real or if I only make myself think I can feel them, to preserve what mind I have left. I whistle again, afraid of these lifeless people.

  Some of them have short hair, but they cannot be kretchin. They look like commoners, but for their cropped hair and their dead faces.

  “What do they say?” asks Ty, and Therrin again takes out her little stone, and holds it, and listens. Her eyes are bewildered and afraid. She takes my hand and tugs at it, trying to make me stand. “Up, Arrek,” she says, her voice desperate, almost pleading. “Stand up.”

  I don't want to leave the ground, but she looks so afraid that I must. I whistle to Snake and push myself up. My side is sore from the fall, and my right hand a little scraped, but I can stand easily enough.

  “They're afraid,” she whispers. “They're afraid of your eye, Arrek, and of Curse, and of all of us because we fell from the sky and they don't know what we are... and the bones...”

  The bones that fell with us and all around us have shrunken down to the size of ordinary hawk-bones; but they were large enough when they fell, and now they are scattered all around the street. I shouldn't be surprised if some of them went through the thatched roofs, before they shrank.

  Now Therrin's hand tightens around mine in sharper fear. “Run,” she says.

  We do not move, perhaps too startled at the suddenness of her command.

  “Run!” she cries again, and turns and runs down a street, still gripping my hand with surprising strength. I am pulled with her. At first I only follow, afraid to lose my arm, but her fear is catching, and soon I am running with her, away, and Ty is running with us; and the villagers are pursuing us, yelling, some of them brandishing bright burning torches.

  As always in this strange world, the merry orange firelight seems more alive than anything else, though it is not as bright as the fires of Thilua. The streets are alive with its shadows, but it is bright enough to light our way. Our pursuers are fast behind us.

  At last we can run no farther. It is a small village, but there is a high wooden fence at its border and we are trapped against it. Therrin wheels to face the dark shapes approaching behind their fire, putting her hand to the knife at her belt. I whistle to Snake for help, for direction, for comfort.

  Ty seizes Therrin beside me and heaves her over the fence, and then does the same to me. I land hard. I am too startled to be glad, but I still know we must flee, and I push myself up. In a moment Ty leaps over the spiked fence himself. We are fortunate that he is so tall.

  “Which way is the lake?” Therrin asks urgently. The curse points, and we follow the line of its black arm, running through the gray fields, hoping to lose them in this darkness.

  At last we find a place where the land forms a small bowl, and here we make camp. This night we light no fires, afraid to give any sign of where we are. We leave the curse to keep watch. “They wanted to burn us,” Therrin tells us now. “They think we are a part of the bane on this land, and that we bring their doom. They hoped to save themselves by burning us.”

  To the curse she says: “If they come near, distract them, or lead them away, or try to lead them to make noise to wake us.” It nods its understanding. I don't like to put my life in its hands, but we must rest, and I suppose it does have reason to keep me alive until she comes to find me.

  I try not to think of that. I try to forget.