by E G Stone
“What do you mean?”
The healer stroked the child’s black downy wings and she twitched, cooing and pulling away. Her squalling had stopped, and she was yawning in Tacitus’ arms, stealing his heart and breaking it simultaneously. “Her wings should be twice the size they are now,” the healer murmured. “At birth, she should be able to wrap them around her to keep warm. They barely meet in front of her chest.”
“She’s…deformed?” Tacitus breathed. His wings fluttered nervously behind him.
“Not deformed, just…small,” the healer said. He took a deep breath through his nose and let it out just as slowly. “It is possible they may grow. That her colouring and the smallness of her wings may be unrelated. But I fear otherwise.”
Tacitus hugged her closer, wanting to tuck his own wings around the child. “She will have a normal childhood,” he insisted. “As normal as we can give her. She will play with the other children. She will take the lessons. Learn the Dalketh. She will know what it is to be a sylph. And if her mother does not want her, then we will have to love her instead, no matter that we are male and Intellecti.”
The healer shook his head, tightening his aged wings against his back. He pushed towards the chamber Tacitus had abandoned. “I will check on the mother. And, for her sake, Tacitus, I hope that it turns out as you believe. The alternative would be difficult.”
Tacitus nodded and stepped away from the chamber so he could climb the winding stairs back to his own chambers. He would take the child and care for her. It was far outside his normal duties as Keeper of the Tomes, but surely, he could learn to care for the child. Some of the other Intellecti could help him. She would be raised in the Tower and she would grow well. Tacitus had no doubt.
“Tacitus!” the healer’s sharp voice called him back. Hope bloomed for a moment that the child’s mother would want her back, but the stricken look in the healer’s eyes told him otherwise. “She’s dead.”
“What?!” Tacitus flew forwards, his wings parting the air with a single thought. He slowed in the chamber where he had recently left the woman crying and denying her child with vehemence. She lay there, her wings limp and her mouth hanging open, the tears still wet on her cheeks. But there was an emptiness about her that left no doubt. She was dead.
The scholar staggered back to lean against the stone wall, hardly feeling its coolness through his feathers. The child in his arms seemed to sense his emotions because she began waving her hands again, a cry building in her throat. “Hush, little one,” Tacitus said in a shaking voice, drawing his fingers over her forehead, soothing her as best he could. “It will be alright,” he crooned. To the healer, he said, “What happened? She was fine!”
“I don’t know,” the healer said. “I would say that there was some internal tearing. She bled profusely during the birth as well. But it could just as easily be that she died of grief and shame.”
“The Queen will have to be told,” Tacitus said. The healer nodded. “But not tonight,” he continued, brushing dark whorls of hair back from the child’s forehead. The healer nodded again.
Tacitus turned away from the dead sylph and carried the child back to his chambers. Warm milk and some blankets were already waiting. Sighing, the scholar sank onto his simple wood-frame cot, spreading his wings and cocooning them over his head. At the warmth and change in light, the child hiccoughed and wriggled. She stilled, then opened her eyes, and Tacitus had to fight not to reel back in shock.
Instead of the fiery amber that all sylphs had, her eyes were icy blue. Her pale skin and dark wings could have been put down to a one in a million trick of nature. But the blue eyes spoke so much more than that. Her blood-father must…but that was a question impossible to answer. Not only did their society not acknowledge such things as fathers, but her mother was dead. Tacitus pressed his lips to the child’s forehead before she could sense his alarm and start crying again. His resolve strengthened. He would take care of her. He would do his best to raise her and to teach her to be a sylph, despite whatever problems her wings gave her or how the others treated her. She would be his heart-daughter.
“It will be alright, dear child,” Tacitus said. He scoured the records in his mind to find a suitable name, hoping it would give her strength when his own faltered. “You will be a great sylph, my Ravenna. And you are going to stand this world on its head.”
Ravenna cooed and wriggled in his arms.
“Dalketh is more than a means of learning how to control your limbs and your wings,” Kratos instructed, pacing back and forth before the line of sylph children. He held himself straight despite his impressive girth, his golden skin gleaming and healthy. Two sylph children of about seven cycles at the end of the line, a girl with golden colouring and a boy with the charcoal skin and golden wings, snickered between one another when the older sylph was at the other end of the line. “It’s a way to achieve the inner peace necessary to fly.”
“He can’t even get off the ground, he’s so fat,” the boy whispered to the girl.
She widened her eyes and shrieked in glee, earning a scolding glance from Kratos.
“Desarra! Crispinus!” Kratos snapped, striding over to the two of them.
Crispinus straightened, his golden-brown wings flaring out slightly.
“Sorry, Kratos,” he said contritely, though his hands shook with suppressed laughter. “We just didn’t think Ravenna was going to make it through the Owl Swooping Down motion.”
Ravenna, next in line to her sister and the bane of her existence, glowered at the ground. She tightened her black wings in close to her tunic and hoped that Kratos would not call her out like Crispin had. She was trying, really, but she was two years younger than Desarra and her wings were not as strong. Tacitus had told her she might not be able to keep up with the other children, but Ravenna was determined to try.
Kratos took a breath in through the nose and let it out before shaking his head. “None of you made it through the Owl Swooping Down motion,” he informed the class. The several sylph children grumbled in annoyance. “Now do it again. The whole exercise, mind. And I want not one word between you, or I’ll assign another lesson before you can even think about flying.”
There was a collective groan, but the children dutifully began the Dalketh exercises again. Ravenna glared at the two next to her. Desarra was having a hard time controlling her giggles as Crispin made his way through the exercises with funny faces for each new stance. At least Ravenna knew the entire set. She had even been praised once by Kratos for being able to do the movements with the proper breathing. It was the only reason they let her train with the other children, given her age.
Ravenna took a breath from her stomach and tried to ignore the others. If she could make it through the Dalketh lessons every child had to take with the Intellecti, then she would be permitted to learn how to fly. Her wings stretched eagerly at the thought, almost throwing her off balance. Ravenna set her jaw and focused. One breath in from the stomach, step out to the side. Arms up and then down. Another breath.
The other children were being alternately praised or scolded by Kratos, their stances corrected or observed silently. Ravenna held in a smirk when the scholar told her sister that her wings were inches away from dragging on the ground. Desarra squeaked and immediately lifted her wings, a blush tingeing her golden cheeks a ruddy orange. Ravenna received neither correction nor comment from Kratos but did not mind. She knew her stance was perfect, her wings positioned correctly. The gentle smile on the scholar’s face told her so.
After another half-hour of Dalketh, the children were released from their exercises to go play until the adult sylphs came to fly them back to the Aerial City. Ravenna was the only one who lived in the Tower on the ground with the Intellecti, but she did not mind. She got to play with the other children when they came for their lessons and, occasionally, Tacitus flew her up to the stone aerie that was the city so she could see her grandmother, the current Chosen Queen.
That day, t
he children ran from the stone courtyard to the forest with gleeful abandon. Ravenna always marked the moment her thinly clad feet moved from the moss and stone to the undergrowth of the forest. The pine trees lay down light blankets of needles and the hardwood trees covered that blanket with their leaves. A few ferns and grasses poked up from between the layers, but mostly it was clear for the young sylphs to run.
Crispin and Desarra ran to the gully that bordered the creek separating the Tower from the path to the Aerial City.
Ravenna, desperate to be included, followed.
Crispin’s longer legs meant he got to the edge of the gully first, sliding to a stop, using his wings to back flap and keep him from going over the edge.
Desarra was less graceful and stumbled towards the edge, giggling wildly as Crispin pulled her back.
“Geez, Des, you have to be careful,” Crispin teased.
Ravenna came up behind them, taking great lungfuls of air.
Crispin turned and sneered at her. “Oh, look, the runt followed us.”
“Why can’t you just stay away, Ravenna?” Desarra pouted, flaring her wings. Ravenna’s own black feathers tightened behind her. The older sylph glared at her sister. “You ruin all the fun.”
“I just want to play,” Ravenna said.
Crispin and Desarra exchanged a glance and the unspoken words between them seemed to amuse them both.
Crispin stepped forwards and fisted his hands on his hips. “We weren’t going to play,” he said. He, too, flared his wings and took a few experimental flaps. “We were going to practise flying.”
Ravenna’s jaw dropped open. “You can’t!” she protested. “Kratos says we’re not supposed to start flying until next moon!”
Crispin tossed his head, “Yeah, well, that old bird wouldn’t be able to tell that we’re ready if we were flying right in front of him.”
Ravenna burned inwardly at the insult to her friend and caretaker. She wished Tacitus were here to tell them off. Kratos was a good sylph, a good teacher. He was living on the ground in the Tower with the other Intellecti because he chose that life, not because his weight kept him from flying, or some sort of punishment that forced him to separate from the other sylphs, as Crispin and Desarra seemed to believe. Furious, Ravenna folded her arms. “Yeah, well, prove it.”
Desarra faltered, looking at her friend. Crispinus laughed and folded his arms, mimicking Ravenna. “I don’t need to prove anything to a pipsqueak like you,” he said slowly. He tossed his head and the sun caught his hair, turning his streaks a copper gold. “We’re not going to do anything until you can prove that you’re worthy of practicing with us. Isn’t that right, Des?”
Desarra nodded eagerly, grinning at Crispin. “Exactly. We don’t want you making a fool of us.”
Ravenna bristled, “I can too practise flying!”
Crispin stepped closer to the edge of the gully. “Oh, yeah? Prove it.”
The black-haired sylph gulped and inched closer to the edge of the gully. It was not a sheer drop, but it was sloped enough that falling without flying would hurt. A lot. At least the rocks were covered in moss and didn’t look too sharp. But she had wings. She was a sylph. All it would take was a few powerful down strokes and she would fly gently to the bottom. Sylphs were meant to fly.
Ravenna steeled herself and nodded. She inched closer. Her heart started hammering in her throat and a voice in the back of her mind told her, desperately, not to do this. Ravenna was just about to turn and beg that Crispin or Desarra show her how to do it when something hit her in the centre of her back, right between her wings. Hard.
Ravenna did not have time to scream before she was falling down the gully. Her arms wheeled and her wings strained. She flapped instinctively, the muscles in her back straining as she tried to gather the air as Kratos had said. Ravenna moved into the Dalketh motion he’d said was the best for flying: Eagle Catching Prey. She angled her wings just as she did during practise. She beat the air. Once. Twice. The air caught beneath her wings. She could feel it!
And then, it did not matter how hard Ravenna tried to fly. Her wings strained and her back ached. Still she fell. The sides of the gully were sharper than she had thought; they sliced into her fragile skin with ease. Ravenna managed to stay upright and keep from crushing her wings beneath her, but barely. All she knew was that she was falling, not flying. That she should have been catching the wind and flying gently to the ground, but she was not.
Finally, Ravenna’s foot caught on a particularly large boulder. Her frantic wingbeats couldn’t compensate, and she tumbled head over heel, landing on her wings in the stream at the bottom of the gully. The cold water startled her into sitting upright and she let out a cry of pain. It hurt everywhere. But that was immaterial. What Ravenna could not get out of her head was that she had not flown even though she should have. Maybe Tacitus was right: she was just too young. But she knew the Dalketh!
“Desarra?” Ravenna called, looking back up at the path she came down. Tears were starting to fall down her cheeks and she desperately tried to wipe them away. Her sister was nowhere to be seen. “Crispin?” Ravenna yelled louder. Nothing. Maybe they’d gone to get help. Tacitus would make it here in a short flight and carry Ravenna back to the Tower where they would heal her and figure out why her wings had not caught the air. No, she shook her head. Desarra or Crispin had pushed her. Why would they help her after that?
Wincing, and rubbing more tears from her eyes with a child’s trembling fist, Ravenna pulled herself into a standing position. She stretched her wings experimentally. They were sore—as was her back—but whole. She shook the feathers to dispel the water, wishing that she could do the same thing with her linen tunic and breeches. Even her thin leather shoes were soaked through. She sniffed and finally held back her tears. Tears wouldn’t help her. Tacitus would help her.
Ravenna managed to scramble up the creek, knowing that if she followed the bed a few hundred more metres, the gully would become a gentle bank that she could climb to get back to the Tower. She did so, flapping her wings a few times in the hope that maybe she would fly up. Maybe it was a fluke, her blind panic making her think that she was doing the Dalketh motions correctly when, really, she was not. But her wings did little more than give her an extra boost to climb the bank, just as they had always done.
Ravenna was swallowing down more tears than she could contain. She ran towards the Tower, terror making her stumble more than once. But there! The comforting stone walls of the Tower rose just before her and the courtyard opened up to greet her.
Tacitus, tall and proud, was standing with fury written on his features. His fiery eyes flared as he saw Ravenna. She froze in shock at Crispin, his wing held in Tacitus’ hands. The young sylph glared up at his captor and glared harder at Ravenna. “See? There she is!” he protested, struggling mightily.
“I did not ask where she was,” Tacitus said in a calm voice, though his brows furrowed in a rare showing of anger. “I asked what you had done to her.”
“Nothing!” Crispin shouted. “Ask Desarra!”
“I have already done so,” Tacitus said in a low voice. Ravenna wilted, knowing full well that her heart-father was inches away from snapping. And that was never a good thing. Ravenna slid her feet forwards to approach Tacitus. He sighed as she got close enough to be just out of reach.
“Here I am,” Ravenna murmured.
“I can see that,” Tacitus replied. He shook Crispin. “Did he hurt you?”
Ravenna searched the face of the older boy. He was looking at her with undisguised loathing. Ravenna knew that if she ever wanted to play with him and Desarra again, that she should say nothing. The other children would ostracise her—even more than normal—if she tattled. It was hard enough given that she lived in the Tower and not the Aerial City. And if she told the truth, then Crispin would know that her wings had not worked. If she did not, then maybe he would think she just stumbled with her landing amongst the rocks in the creek. Ravenna wanted to
day to be over.
“No,” she said, looking at her water-soaked shoes. Tacitus blinked.
“Are you certain, Ravenna?” he asked carefully. Ravenna nodded, her brilliant blue eyes hidden behind her dark hair. Tacitus released Crispin, who immediately yelled and ran off to the other end of the courtyard. The young sylph glared back at Tacitus and Ravenna and she knew, suddenly, that it wouldn’t matter whether or not she had lied to protect him. He would never want to play with her again. Him or Desarra.
Tacitus saw the tears sprouting once more in Ravenna’s eyes and knelt next to her, his wings folding around them in a cocoon of warmth and golden light. “Ravenna, child, what happened?” Tacitus said, his hands hovering a hair’s breadth over her skin so he wouldn’t bump her bruises or cuts. She opened her mouth to speak. “And I would like the truth, please. Not whatever you were going to say to protect your sister and her friend.”
Ravenna scuffed her shoes on the stone and hunched her shoulders. “I fell,” she said.
“Yes, I gathered that,” Tacitus said drily, a wry smile curling the corners of his mouth. “What else.”
“We were playing at the gully,” Ravenna said slowly, watching her heart-father from under hooded eyes. “Crispin and Des were saying that they were going to practise flying.”
Tacitus remained silent, but his wings tightened closer around them. Ravenna was glad for the warmth and the secrecy. Her face flushed at what she had yet to say. She hoped that she would never have to say it. Maybe it was just because she was not ready, yet. Maybe in a moon…
“Ravenna,” Tacitus reached out to brush her hair away from her face. “Look at me, child.”
Ravenna lifted her eyes. She had expected to see the usual warmth there, surrounded by his calm expression that could soothe her no matter how bad the nightmares or her struggles with the Intellecti tomes. She saw, instead, sadness.
