“The whip,” said Tahl in a low voice. “It wanted to burn the horses. I wouldn’t let it.”
“Sounds like you’re well shot of it,” said Meena. “Well now, I suppose you stay-at-homes are wanting to know what we’ve been up to since you saw us off on the raft. It’s mostly going to be Tahl and Tilja, for the first half, anyway, because it’s confusing for Alnor and me after what’s happened to us. And then there was a bit when the other three of us were asleep, and only Tilja knew what was going on. It’s going to take a while—there’s a lot of it to tell. You sure you’re up to it, Til?”
“We can wait till tomorrow,” said Ma.
“I can’t,” said Anja.
“Thing is, there’s something we’ve got to do, Alnor and me,” said Meena, “and it’s only going to be worse for us if we hang around. So we’d like to get this over, if Til’s not too tired.”
“I’m all right,” said Tilja.
In fact the story seemed to tell itself, just as it had when she’d told it to the Ropemaker. Perhaps it was easier for them to understand because they had all just seen a piece of true, dangerous magic doing its work in Ma’s kitchen, until Tilja’s touch had unmade it. Even Anja, when she next woke, asked almost no questions, but stared at Tilja with wide, amazed eyes, as if her sister had been as strange a creature as the great roc that had carried her to Talagh. It must have been midnight before she reached the point where Meena and Alnor had eaten their grapes on the southernmost tip of the Empire, and from then on they joined in the telling. Tahl too by now had recovered his spirits, so they could pass the tale round among the four of them. Clearing the table while one of the others was talking, Tilja noticed a glint of gold among the litter of grass stalks into which Dorn’s whip had disintegrated. Yes, of course, she thought. For a piece of magic that powerful. She picked up the single strand of the Ropemaker’s hair and wound it carefully round the little finger of her left hand.
When it was over Da rose and stretched.
“Bed now,” he said. “Who’s sleeping in the attic?”
“Just Tahl,” said Meena. “Alnor and me are going out to the barn. And there’s no need to look like that, Selly—tales I could tell about when you were my age, and you always thought I didn’t know. Anyway, like I said, it isn’t that. There’s something we’ve laid on us to do, and we might as well get it over. Right, love?”
“It is decided,” said Alnor quietly. “It is for the Valley. Do you think we would not do otherwise if we had the choice?”
“And we’ll need the makings of a fire,” said Meena.
They had all heard the story. Only Anja didn’t understand what was happening. Somberly they helped pack rugs and firewood into two loads, but Meena and Alnor refused any help with carrying them out to the barn. Tilja was fighting with tears by the time they opened the door.
“Oh, cheer up, everyone,” said Meena, waving the lantern she was carrying to and fro like a dancer at the midwinter fire feast, and laughing as if she meant it. “Look at it this way. Suppose someone had come to us four months back and told us just you can be young again till you get home, d’you think we wouldn’t’ve jumped at the chance? This time we’ve been having, we wouldn’t’ve missed it for anything in the world! Right, love?”
She turned and staggered through the door under her load. Alnor paused in the doorway, smiled an odd, teasing smile, so that for a moment he looked just like Tahl, and followed her out into the darkness.
Tired though she was, Tilja woke from ancient habit when Da got up shortly before dawn to go and see to the animals. The little finger of her left hand was throbbing uncomfortably, and she realized that the Ropemaker’s hair must still be wound round it. Perhaps it was that that had told her so clearly in her sleep that there was something unfinished. As she slid out of bed her movement woke Anja, who, instead of snuggling complainingly back under the covers, sat straight up.
“Where are you going?”
“Shhh. Go back to sleep. There’s something I’ve got to do.”
“Magic?”
“Sort of.”
“I’m coming too. Please. I’ve got to be there.”
Tilja was on the point of telling her to lie down again when she realized that what Anja was saying might possibly be true.
“All right. Put some clothes on. We’re going outside.”
When she opened the door it was still dark, but the first gray light in the east outlined the roofs across the yard. Through the gap beside the barn she could see, close beneath the dark edge of the forest, a single orange spark, the glow of a fire. It was too bright to have been burning all night—the firewood Meena and Alnor had carried wouldn’t have lasted. Sighing, she took Anja’s hand and led her to the stables, where she left her by the door. Groping in the pitch black, she found a pannikin on the shelf, scooped it into the bin that contained the yellownut, carried it out and gave it to Anja, then led her up to the barn.
“Wait here,” she said, and again by touch went in and found and untied Calico’s tethers and led her out. She waited while Calico stretched and eased her wings with a tremendous rattle of plumes and then folded them along her flanks.
“Aren’t they beautiful!” said Anja.
“Yes, but I’m afraid I’ve got to take them away.”
“Oh, you mustn’t! I want to fly, too!”
“So do I, but it’s like Ma said. Magic doesn’t belong in the Valley, only in the forest and the mountains. If we let Calico keep her wings it will spoil everything. I don’t know how, but somehow or other it will, in the end. No more talking to the cedars, no more unicorns, no more Urlasdaughters at Woodbourne . . .”
“I suppose so.”
“All right. Now you give Calico the yellownut, a little at a time, just to keep her mind off what I’m doing. That’s right . . .”
As Calico nosed forward for the yellownut Tilja ran her bare hand along the spine of the great wing. For an instant she could feel the hardness of a bone as broad as her wrist beneath the silky plumage, then the flicker of numbness, and then just air. One golden feather wavered toward the ground. She picked it up, went round to the far side and picked up the other feather. That wing had already vanished with the first. She unwound the Ropemaker’s hair from her finger and rewound it round the quills of the feathers.
Calico was nuzzling into the pannikin for the last crumbs of yellownut. Realizing she’d had it all, she raised her head and gave her shoulders an irritable shake, then looked round, so obviously puzzled that Tilja laughed aloud.
“What’s that about?” said Anja.
“She’s wondering what happened to her wings. She knows something’s changed, but she can’t think what. These are for you.”
“Oh . . . what are they?”
“Let’s put her in her own stall and I’ll tell you there.”
They settled onto a pile of hay, close together, not just for warmth, but because they were long-parted sisters, with feelings for each other no one else could have, ever.
“Those are roc feathers,” said Tilja. “The roc gave them to me, so that the Ropemaker could use them to help me. He couldn’t have if I’d just found them, or stolen them somehow. That’s because a roc is a magical creature in its own right, like a unicorn, or the merman who towed us away from Faheel’s island. They aren’t made magic like the ring, or Dorn’s whip.
“Now I’m giving them to you, because someday someone is going to need them again. Not you, I hope, nor your daughter who can hear what the cedars are saying, when her time comes, nor many daughters’ daughters after that. But one day one of them is going to need to go to the Ropemaker and ask him to help the Valley, just as we went to look for Faheel.
“So you’ve got to keep the feathers safe, and pass them on to your daughter when the time comes, and tell her the story we told you last night. I’ll tell it to you again, because you were asleep some of the time, and if I can I’ll come and tell your daughter when she’s old enough to understand.