141 - The wind, and the wing, and you

Long past the bead of midnight, while all Arko slept, we took the moyawa from its hiding place in the woods to a grass-faib field near the edge. Folded up, it looked for all the world like a fine quality tent, and was light enough to carry in one hand. It was a masterpiece of craft, at least where the master’s hands had worked as opposed to the apprentice’s.

When we got there, Niku picked a handful of grass, flung it into the air and watched how the blades fell. I must have looked perplexed, for she said, “To measure the wind.” It was a very faint night-breeze, but enough for her to choose which end of the field was downwind.

There we unfolded the moyawa and she pulled it tight, and stood it on its tail-rod and the triangle of rods that seemed like a sort of base, facing into the wind.

With effortless skill again, she stepped into the harness, tightened it, got under the moyawa and hooked the carabiner to a ring on its frame, which was just back from the top of the triangle, and then another strap; two for safety, I saw. “Love, pull the shena—I mean, the tip, the foremost bit—down for me, will you? I have to do ensha—um… test it hanging. Like that, yes, good.”

“I think there are no words in Enchian, Arkan, Yeoli or any other language on the Earthsphere for those Niah ones,” I said, as I held the moyawa level, while she hung and bounced as she’d had me do. “Those who would learn this must learn some Niah… those who would learn this, what am I saying? Never mind.”

“Good, thanks, let it down.” Putting her feet back on the ground again, she picked the craft up on her shoulders, curling her arms outwards around the two sides of the triangle the easy way an old warrior slings on armour or draws a sword.

“In this air I cannot go high, because the moy—the, um, upness—comes from the running, from the movement forward,” she said. “And as soon as I’m off the ground, I’m no longer running. But it will be enough to see what needs adjusting.” I realized, my heart was pounding. Not with fear for her, I realized—she knew what she was doing—but just to see this.

There was no moon—good for our purposes tomorrow night—but there was starlight, and the glow that the city with its thousands of street-lamps throws up into the air. She sprang off, and I ran after her. Under the huge shape that was somehow more bat-like in darkness, her legs flashed, her feet seeming barely to touch the grass in that light way of hers, while the silk caught the wind just as a sail does. Then suddenly they seemed to be touching it only occasionally, and then not at all. She skimmed over the grass like a gull, just for a moment, then touched a foot, then ran flat out and rose again.

She said nothing, but I was yelling, “All-Spirit! Saint Mother! You’re flying. You’re flying!” until she yelled back, “Shut up, you idiot! You want to let the entire city know? And stay back—next one I’m going to turn.” She did gracefully, tilting like an eagle circling, then on the next long leap, turned the other way, testing. This time I was beside and a little ahead of her, and so saw—she was steering with the triangle of rods, by moving the weight of her body to one side or the other.

Close to the edge of the field, she came to a stop—both with her feet and the moyawa, by making it point up, just as birds do with their wings, and caught it smoothly on her shoulders.

“Good—a little adjustment here and there and it will be better,” she said. “Ama Kalandris!” Then something else in her own language, full of joy. “Omores—I can’t say how much I missed this.”

“You’ve been like a bird in a cage,” I said, wonderingly. I had thought I’d known her through and through. I had known nothing of her. But all manner of signs had been there, when I cast my mind back. The fighting-style that was so light and high, and had two axes held wide, like wings; the way she invoked Father Sky as well as Mother Sea; the tattoo of a swallow on the inside of her ankle.

I remembered how I’d said I’d thought of every way of getting out but flying; how deftly she’d misdirected me, speaking of building a great metal bird as before the Fire or growing wings from her shoulder-blades. The first time we’d made love, I’d had a vision of flying out of Arko. Foreknowledge, I thought; except I’d been Jinai, slightly, seeing it out of her eyes.

I stood in the dark with my mind and body full of a sudden stillness. I should not say it. I knew I should not say it. It was the worst recklessness; if the moyawa got broken now, one or both or all three of our lives, and perhaps Yeola-e’s freedom, went with it. Some might say it was insanity. I said it anyway. “After we escape, one of us might die, or life might might part us forever in some other way. Let me try this, just once.”

She gazed at me, her eyes black pools under her brows, in the darkness. She was still breathing hard from the running, but she heaved a long sigh, and laid her hand on my cheek. It was the worst recklessness, but she reached behind herself to unhook. “Tyromos,” she said. “I see it in your eyes.” I didn’t need to ask her what the word meant.

“I have never taught a grown-up before,” she said, once I was at the downwind end of the faib-field, in the harness, hooked on and holding the moyawa on my shoulders just as she had, with my heart pounding so hard I was afraid it would hammer its way out through my ribs. Am I in a dream? Am I really going to do this? “Never anyone who hadn’t already been up in his mother’s sling—or her womb—and seen it every day of his life… I will try. You were watching me…”

I looked ahead at the dim field, through the triangle of wires that helped hold it together. It’s probably even worse madness to do this at night, I thought.

“You are carrying it,” she said. It hardly felt so; I’d never carried anything so big in my life. “But almost as soon as you start running, it will float up—then you switch your grip, like this”—overhand to underhand, she showed me—“and then hold very, very lightly. Even more lightly than the sword. Like you’re hardly holding. Because… it is carrying you. Don’t pull on the chamir, that’s this”—she tapped the rod that made the base of the triangle—“that makes you come down. Don’t push, either; that will stop you. Come down lightly, and come down running or you go ah kah—no, no, not yet, you tyromos fool, we haven’t done the enshachik!” I was like a horse, champing at the bit.

“Air… has substance,” she went on, as we did it. “You see why, if you push the bar away, you rise and slow, or pull it close, you fall and speed? If there is a gust, it might seize you and throw you high; don’t let it take you too high.” Meaning pull on the chamir, I thought. “But don’t come down too fast.” Meaning not too hard. I hoped I’d remember all this when it was happening. Just then, a breath of wind one could barely feel on one’s face seized the moyawa hard enough that it almost unbalanced me. She said something in Niah which I learned later was a prayer. “Aba Tyriah, forgive me… Go, love.”

Knowing I could out-dash her, she had gone a little ahead, but I was soon abreast and then leaving her behind. Wind rushed through the silk, whistled in the wires.
It was as she said; it was off my shoulders in a moment, and she was yelling “Switch your grip! Switch your grip!” I did, telling myself lighter than the sword, and then the grass was gone from under my feet, so they flailed without finding it. I was flying.

It didn’t feel like I was being carried, though; it felt as if the moyawa was part of me, as if I had wings. So it must feel for soaring birds, or souls freed from the body: so smooth and effortless, as if you yourself are wind, and can go anywhere on the Earthsphere in a moment, on a thought, a slave of no one and nothing, not even the force that pulls all things downward. My eyes were suddenly full of tears.

I felt one foot and then the other touch and was running again; so I gave it everything I had so as to fly again. Just then a gust of wind did come, and the ground was suddenly two man-heights away, and the moyawa tilting to my sword-side. “Pull your weight to the shield side now now nooowwww!” she screamed; I did as she had, and it began to straighten, the ground coming up fast “Now sword side to straighten!” and grass was flying up at me “Now push, push hard NOW!!!” It wasn’t hard enough; I came down running but tripped. Better I take the pain than the moyawa, so I reached my arms hard through the triangle to break the fall, like a dive-roll though there’d be no roll, half-slowing it, and the side of my face and the tip plowed into the ground at about the same time.

Blinded with tears, I heard Niku’s feet come running up. She found me in hysterics. Never, ever, should one say that something is truly impossible. Like most people of an optimistic cast of mind, I had always thought humanity would one day fly again—how could we not, knowing that we’d once tasted it?—but I’d been sure I wouldn’t live to see it. Now I’d not only seen, but done it.




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