He put the flute to his lips and began to play. First he played a slow, stately dance, while Pamina looked upward over the peaks, remembering the garment which had flown away like a bird. To be a bird, it seemed, was the only way to get out of here. Trapped high in these elemental cliffs, what other escape could there be?
Tamino had said his folk had no magical powers, that none of his kin were of wizard-kind. But she was daughter to the Starqueen, and her father the most powerful sorcerer of Atlas-Alamesios.
The music of the flute had shifted. It seemed to be answering the spiraling currents over the peaks, shifting and changing with the airs that Pamina could see, floating, almost visible. She stretched out her arms and was not at all surprised to see long pinion feathers sprouting from the fingers. Her body seemed clothed in black feathers; her talons clung to the rock. Tamino recoiled as she stretched her talons toward him.
She looked out over the almost visible airs, the columns of wind, the updrafts of warm air, the scattered flying clouds over the peaks. Now I can fly free, and why should I burden myself with a weaker? In her mind she lifted and soared; the wind lifted her free of the ledge and she was off down the wind, with the dizzying joy of mastering the Air. If he could not follow, that was his misfortune, but he would not be the first to fail the Ordeals.
And then a purely human memory struck at her.
I pledged myself to walk these Paths at his side, and he has not forsaken me. A memory was in the bird-mind: Tamino, thrusting her frail human form into the safety of the niche, so that she would not be blown to the distant rocks, and smashed living into fragments.
Yet her mind was filled with the fickle ecstasy of the winds, her wings ached for the freedom of the sky. She knew she must act quickly, or the mind of the bird-form she had taken would overpower her human memory and she would not be able to remember Tamino. She opened her lips—her beak?—but all that came out was a high eagle scream. She flapped her wings in frustration. She had lost the power of human speech. She opened her talons to clutch at him and he moved back in sudden terror, so that she feared he would fall off the ledge. They could not communicate in this form, and the ledge certainly was not large enough for both of them for more than a moment.
If he would only remember to trust the flute again. ..
Almost as if in answer, Tamino raised it to his lips and began to play. To her sharpened senses it seemed very loud; and then, astonished, she heard words in the sounds. But she should not be surprised, she thought; the flute was the magical weapon of the element of Air.
"Pamina, my beloved, is it you, really you? Fly to safety, then, my love. I have no such magical powers, but at least, if I must attempt that terrible climb down the rocks, I need not be hindered by fears for your safety. And perhaps you should take the flute; if I do not come safely to ground, at least the flute will not fall with me and be destroyed."
"No!" It came out in a long shrieking cry. She dared not flap her wings again or she might startle him right off the ledge. She stretched her wings, felt them grow longer, longer, felt her body swelling, and with all her heart, in a fury of frustration she willed the words toward him.
"Tamino! Hold me, clasp me round the neck, tightly."
Did the words reach him? He was bending, tearing a strip from his tunic; like herself, he had lost his cloak to the winds. Quickly he knotted it round the flute and tied it securely at his belt. Then, although he looked frightened, he stepped toward Pamina and clutched her around the neck. She could not feel his hands through her feathers, but when she judged he was securely holding her, she stretched out her long wings and raised herself into the sky.
He was heavier than she had believed. She felt herself sinking down, down, and frantically flapped her wings to gain height. Then a current of air caught them in an updraft and they soared higher and higher, clearing the peaks. She looked down for a moment and with monstrously amplified vision, saw all of the countryside of Atlas-Alamesios lying spread out before her. It lay there, from her mother's city to the Temple of Sarastro, to the burning deserts of the Changing Lands where she had never gone.
At first she thought it was cloud which lay across the sky, a long, dark cloud like trailing wings. She flew toward the cloud which lay stretched across the city of Sarastro like some long vulturine shadow, now almost heedless of the weight of Tamino clinging to her throat. And then she heard the voice.
"Pamina, Pamina, my darling child..."
Her mother's voice; and now she saw that the cloud was like a dark robe stretched that away behind the paler nimbus that was formed into the well-loved features; that her mother was flying beside her. They flew side by side.
"You have learned to fly; you have taken up your heritage as my daughter and my heir, my most precious one. Come, together we will fly to my city."
Long habit of obedience made Pamina turn her wings in that direction.
"What is that wretched burden you carry round your neck? Drop it now, my child, you will not need it in my city. But give me the flute first. It was mine; I was tricked into giving it to that false young man who swore to rescue you and restore you to me. Sarastro has no shadow of right to it."
'Wo? But he fashioned it, Mother, as the magical weapon it is. And it was you who stole it from his temple when you departed." She did not question how she had come to know this. She heard an eagle scream, but it was her mother's voice, filled with rage, and the next thing she knew, she had turned and was fleeing down the wind, cowering in the shadow of the monstrous cloud-bird which followed on the wings of the storm. Tamino's weight still clung to her body, weighing her down, and she could not move and fly as freely as she would because of that weight.
"Pamina, let him go! Let him fall! This is between us now, mother and daughter, he has no part in our quarrel —"
"But he is my promised husband," she tried to say, and heard the words only in the eerie birdlike scream. She could not face and fight her mother in the Star-queen's own realm of the Air. She must somehow carry herself to safety.
Swiftly she turned, fleeing back into the shadow of the cliffs, trying to take shelter there. Down, down into the gorge between the mountains, seeking landmarks which would carry her into Sarastro's realm, with her mother's despairing voice in her ears.
"Pamina, Pamina, my darling, why have you betrayed me?"
Her wings were tiring, beat upon beat, with every movement sending stabs of pain through her heart. Tamino's weight was an agonizing burden, and there seemed something else. The flute which weighed her down, the flute—giving off painful sparkles of light— heavy, heavy, a stone, heavier than all of Tamino's body. She shook herself in pain, and heard Tamino's cry of terror. No, she dared not try to free herself, she must bear this burden which would weigh her down, that she would fall like a stone into the sea. She could see the sea below her; would she fall there and drown with Tammo in the depths?
Now she flew in the shadow of the long cloud which had borne her mother's face, a dark cloud darkening her eyes and she saw little flecks of pale light inside her eyes and brain. But a light shone before her, the light of Sarastro's temple. Her wings beat with desperation; the shadow was almost covering her fleeing form, and she knew that if she came wholly within that shadow she would never escape again. The shadow stooped over her, poised to pounce on her. She flew over the band of light, and suddenly the shadow was gone.
She flew down and her talons touched the rooftop where she had stood once with her mother's dagger in her hand and looked down on the sacrificial processions in the Starqueen's city. The bird-form dissolved, and Pamina slumped down on the roof, strengthless, Tamino's body cushioning her fall. She did not even feel the priest's hands catching her, lifting her up.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
He had rested and recovered from the Ordeal. Tamino was half afraid to face Pamina now; in his mind he saw again the terrifying change that had come over her, when she spread her wings and became the great bird, changing again, larger and larger, till sh
e was large enough to sweep him away, carry him down the cliffs to safety. At this very moment he did not know how he had had courage to cling fast to her during those dreadful moments when he clung, not to Pamina's body, but the terrifying shape of the mighty raptor.
Looking at her now, it was impossible to think of her in that frightful way. As masters of two of the four elements, they had been told, they were no longer required to wear the robes of neophytes, and Pamina had bathed and been dressed in a heavy garment of coarse white silk, belted with a plaited cord of brown woven with blue; colors which, he had been told when the priest girdled his waist with similar colors, were those appointed to the elements of Earth and Air. Her fair hair had been brushed and braided into a single plait; she looked very young, her soft features still childish. Yet, faced with the Ordeal of the Air, she had shown herself a powerful sorceress.
"I didn't know that you could do that—turn yourself into a bird," he said, uneasily.
Her smile was so faint it was almost imperceptible. "Neither did I."
"I think you must have passed that Ordeal and I failed it, Pamina. You rescued me, when there was nothing I could do."
Her fingers strayed to the cord at her waist, identical with his own. She said, "I don't think so. I couldn't have done anything, except for the flute when you played it. Without that, I would have died there with you. We came through the Ordeal together. As was right for us."
He felt humble before the innocent blue eyes. She was a mighty sorceress; and what was he? For a moment he wondered if he should be afraid of her, the daughter of the mighty Starqueen, and herself bearing these formidable powers. He had had no idea that she possessed such strength, such sorcery.
Nevertheless she was the Pamina with whom he had fallen in love before ever he laid eyes on the living girl. And if it meant that he must somehow acquire magical or wizardly powers before he was worthy of her, well, the Ordeals were the first step to that goal.
But he was frightened. The first Ordeal, that of Earth, had been so simple; but the Ordeal of Air had brought them closer to death than he had ever thought he could be and still survive. He was afraid as he had not been since he faced the dragon in the Changing Lands.
He looked at Pamina. She looked calm, but he remembered how she had trembled, in the bird-form, when he clung to her. He, at least, had been reared as a prince, taught to hunt and to fight and to face danger, and she was a gently reared young woman who, until this moment, had never had to endure even a pinprick of fear or danger. His whole heart ached with the wish to protect her.
He had offered her the chance to turn back, with the promise that he would never reproach her, and she had refused. She must, then, take her own way, and they would face the Ordeals together. He was not, after all, sorry that he would have her at his side.
He wished he dared embrace her. He had done so, to protect her against the battering winds, and again, without inhibition, when she bore him in bird-form down from the ledge. Even now the thought of that dizzying flight terrified him, borne out sickeningly over the abyss of empty space, clouds and mountaintops wheeling vertiginously below. He had clutched at her— he had an insane tactual memory of his hands filled with feathers and quills as he touched her, he wished that he could reach out and touch her warm body, her soft breast, just to reassure himself that it had been illusion, that she still possessed, in truth, the warm body of the real woman Pamina that he loved.
"What next?" he wondered aloud, and as if the question had been heard somewhere—who knows, he thought, perhaps it was—the door opened and the guide came in.
"Are you recovered, my children? You may have a little more time if you require it; it is nowhere demanded of you that you face further Ordeals until you have recovered from the last."
Tamino felt a shiver run down his spine. What further testing awaited them? Whatever it was, it would grow no easier with delay.
"If Pamina is ready, I am prepared."
He intercepted a quick glance as she raised her eyes, and saw fear in them. She had displayed so much strength and power in the most recent of the Ordeals that it had not occurred to him that she was frightened too. She had at least been able to act; he had really done nothing. He had never considered that perhaps her action had not been based in strength and confidence, but in the desperation of terror.
But her voice was as steady as his own.
"It will grow no easier with delay. I am ready."
"Then, be it so." The priest raised his hands in brief invocation. "I consign you to the Ordeal of the Waters."
Tamino tried hard not to flinch as the guide struck his hands together. But this time there was no thunderclap; only silence and a very soft sound which, hours later and in retrospect, Tamino identified as the music of falling rain.
This time he half expected it; he was floundering, awash, choked with water in his eyes, in his mouth, stunned and deafened by the battering noise of surf. Of course. The Ordeal of Air had dumped them, unprepared, to assault by winds tearing at the cliffs. Saltwater filled his mouth, and in the reflex of shock he gasped some of it into his mouth, his lungs, and choked.
He kicked out, and was swimming. Beside him Pam-ina floundered, fighting the crashing noise of the waves; by sheer reflex he reached out and dragged her head above water. She gasped, coughed, managed to kick out, then was swimming beside him. Her dank hair flopped into her eyes, and she shook it, hard, to clear it away so that she could see.
"It is only fair to warn you," she said, coughing, and he wondered, even then, that he could hear her clear voice so strongly over the noise of the waves, "that even if you play the flute, I will not turn into a fish and carry you to land!"
Tamino found himself laughing, spluttering water out of his mouth.
"It would seem to be my turn, at that, but I'm afraid I never mastered the arts of shape-changing. What is the test here? Are we to swim to shore?"
"What shore? Tamino, you know as much about it as I do. I really do wish that they would let us know what they are testing us to learn or to do!" Pamina coughed again—evidently she too had swallowed some water in those first frightening moments. "I cannot imagine that it matters to our spiritual progress whether or not we have learned to swim. Have you the flute?"
Tamino fumbled with one hand at his waist.
"It's there. But it's wet." Cautiously, turning over to float on his back, he managed to get it free. "But I thought it was the magical weapon of Air; what good would it be in the midst of the Waters?"
"I don't know. But if it wasn't intended that we should have it," she said, "we wouldn't have been allowed to bring it with us."
That, he supposed, made a certain amount of sense. But how could he play it, floating on the waters, and what would happen if he did? He hesitated, unwilling to attempt the wrong thing. Like Pamina, he could not believe in a simple test of swimming, any more than he believed that their Ordeal on the cliffs had been a test of their ability to climb mountains. Therefore there must be something more than that to this Ordeal. He could not imagine what it could be.
"But you can swim?" he asked. "Not that it matters to me if you cannot," he added, his free hand still beneath her chin, "but if in fact you can swim, it will give us a little more time to think about what it is that we are expected to do."
"Oh, yes, I can swim. When I was very little I had a dog-halfling for nurse, and she taught me almost before I could walk properly. Poor Rawa," she added, and Tamino, perceiving sadness in her face, wished that he could share her thoughts. "You don't need to hold me up, Tamino, I swim as well as any otter-half-ling or any of the Sea-folk."
He let her go, a little reluctant to take his hand away from even this fleeting and tangential contact with her body. His own mother had died before he was able to remember holding her hand when he was afraid, but he felt that some comforting communication was being denied him.
Nevertheless, if they survived this Ordeal and the others, they would have a lifetime together to share their
memories. The flute, in his hand, must somehow be the key. Once or twice, when he had used it, the Messengers had appeared. Perhaps the test of this Ordeal was merely to know when they were out of their depth—and how literally that was true just now!—and when to ask for help.
He tried to tread water, to get enough freedom from the all-pervading waves which kept breaking over him, to put the flute to his lips. As he blew across it there was a wet, bubbling sound, and he thought it was about as far from a magical invocation as any sound he had ever heard.
But he did manage to get it to him and after a fashion, to play, not even a melody, a few disjointed notes which, after a time, became a wavering little tune.
For a few minutes nothing happened. He felt very foolish, treading water and blowing into a flute out here in the middle of the ocean. The waves kept breaking over his chin, and every third one or so dunked the flute beneath the surface of the water, so that the tune was drowned in a gurgling sound.
Then, very far away, over the sound of the waves which kept breaking over him and his flute, he heard something else, a distant sound almost like voices. Singing. A whistling sound almost like Papageno's little birdcall whistle, but somehow, subtly, different. Then there was a splash and a face broke water not more than two arm-lengths away from him. A broad face, bewhiskered almost like a cat's, and softly furred except for the snub nose and the large, liquid dark eyes layered with dark and beautiful lashes.
Pamina whispered, "A seal-halfling."
And aloud she said to it, "Can you guide us to land, sister of the Sea?"
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