Do you feel better now, Jael? Highwing asked, in a whisper so quiet she almost didn't hear him.
Yes, she thought, not answering aloud. Yes, I feel better. And she blinked and looked away as the dragon craned his head and gazed at her. His eyes glowed, and she sensed him peering into her, trying to probe what had just happened. She let him; she was too weary to try to understand it herself.
She scarcely noticed as Highwing took her away. As they flew out of the cave, the cool night air of the mountains flowed past her cheeks, billowing her hair; but her thoughts were blurred, confused, leaden with weariness. Time strained against itself, shifted, and finally seemed to slip by unnoticed.
Eventually her wits began to return to her, and her strength. What was happening in her ship, in the "real" world outside of the Flux, while all of this was going on? she wondered. The real Mogurn had not died just now—at least, she didn't think so—but she knew that something had changed in her as a result of what Highwing had done. She realized she didn't really care what Mogurn was doing, or thinking. Or where his pallisp was.
The dragon was flying her through a steep-walled and heavily misted vale; they were still climbing upward through the mountain maze. She felt a chill on her skin, but didn't feel cold. Absently, she stroked his scales, relishing the physical feeling, the sensation of touching another. She wondered, as they flew, why she should have feared this dragon—indeed, why the two of them should ever have thought themselves enemies. An image flashed in her thoughts, a memory she'd not known she possessed. It must have come from her soul-link with Highwing: a glimpse of a wave of power passing through this world like a seismic tremor from one end of the realm to the other. She had felt it before, but not understood it; she sensed that it had started when a dragon had befriended a rigger. She was puzzled by the image, but was too tired to speak to Highwing of it now.
She rode the dragon in silence, content not to think or to speak.
After a time, Highwing banked suddenly to the right. He dropped through a shallow layer of mist and descended rapidly. He swooped into a bowl-shaped dell, flared his wings, and landed. Jael rose up on his shoulders and looked around wonderingly. The dell was a small, wooded place, a tiny grotto of life in the midst of starkness. The flow of time had indeed shifted during their flight, because twilight was just fading here, the sky a patch of deepening blue. Highwing and Jael sat in silence, watching night settle in around them and among the trees. As the darkness deepened, hundreds of gnat-sized fireflies appeared, darting and corkscrewing through the air like so many fiery atoms. At first, Jael found them amusing. But hundreds more continued to stream in from the surrounding darkness, until a cloud of whirling sparks filled a large open space between two of the largest trees. What now? What are we going to see? she asked.
Highwing hesitated, before admitting, I'm not sure.
Jael felt a tingling at the edges of her mind. She was about to speak again, when the whirling sparks coalesced into a blurred nimbus of light. And from that pale light stepped a young man. Someone she recognized.
It was Dap.
Jael's breath stopped in mid-exhalation. She tried to suppress a shuddering confusion of anger and happiness. Dap looked exactly as Dap always had, handsome and mild-mannered and gentle. But—in the shimmering light of the dragon magic, she saw something else, something astonishing. Dap was frightened. Not of anything visibly near, and not so frightened that one would see it immediately; but beneath his calm and gentle exterior, illumined somehow by the power that brought this image, there was a simmering anxiety. Dap's brave expression disguised a terrible fear.
He was standing near the dreamlink machine, the sunglow of the dreamlink field warming him. Nearby, she imagined, an invisible Jael was being warmed, as well. She felt her humiliation rising again like bile as she recalled the experience. But as the dreamlink field grew, Dap's anxiety became even stronger, though thinly veiled by his cheerful exterior. How could she have failed to see it before? Had she been so self-absorbed? Images of Dap's flights danced around him like tiny sunbursts: the rigging, the companionship with Deira, the sheer joy of the net. But was it such a single-minded joy as he had portrayed it to Jael? There shone the warmth of his companionship with Deira, and there smoldered his sorrow, his hurt at her leaving again, leaving him behind. How had Jael failed to notice that hurt? Because he had hidden it so well? Or because of her own blindness? Dap, she began—and then stopped, because she knew he could not hear her.
And then her own memories sprang to life in the field, crowding out Dap's—her memories dancing and bursting about Dap's head: images of her father opaquing doors behind him, leaving Jael in openmouthed pain as he retired with his women and his boys; and her brother, before the groundcar accident that took his life—bitter with the rejection and disillusionment that he never allowed expression, though it tore him apart; and Jael's frustration at their father's careless neglect, shutting out all of their pain, teaching them how to make walls but never windows.
All this Dap caught—without warning—in a tidal wave among Jael's other memories, or fantasies of memories: flights and friendships and loves that might have been, desperately lonely fantasies, unfulfilled rigger fantasies. They were all suspended in the dreamlink, where Jael had let them free. Jael, it doesn't have to be that way! he whispered aloud, frightened by the enormity of her pain. And she remembered her answer, all too well. Just fantasies, she'd lied, even as she tried desperately to sweep them away, to hide them where Dap couldn't see them, where no one would see them again. But Dap had known better—the truth could not be hidden from the dreamlink, once it was out—and she saw it now on Dap's face as he drew back from his unseen cousin sharing the field with him. And Jael started to hate him all over again now, as she saw the horror on his face, and she felt again the betrayal and abandonment as Dap shrank away from her.
Why is he drawing back? she heard, and it was the dragon whispering the question.
Why? Because he thinks I'm . . . because he's a lousy . . .
But the expression on Dap's face was not revulsion, she realized suddenly, though it had been staring her in the face all along. It was fear. Fear and shame: fear of his own needs, so terrifyingly like hers, and shame for his utter helplessness in the face of hers. Just as she had tried to hide her terrible desperation from him, so had he hidden his own.
And so afraid of the pure naked hurt was he that even now, in the sight of Jael and Highwing, he fled. And as he ran, back into that nimbus of ethereal light between the trees, Jael heard Highwing's voice, asking softly. Shall I burn him, like the other? The dragon drew a deep breath.
No! she cried, startled by her own vehemence. Don't hurt him! I didn't know—I never realized! And suddenly she was quaking with shame, shame at her own anger. She should have seen that Dap had abandoned her out of . . . cowardice, perhaps, or inadequacy—but not out of malice, or in judgment. She'd thought him steady as a rock, unshakable, older than she and wiser. But he was not a rock, he was just a rigger, her cousin. No better than she; no worse.
Highwing sighed, and the image of Dap and the pale light vanished in a cloud of sparks. Highwing's nostrils glowed a dull red. Did you remember it that way? he asked, rumbling throatily.
No, Jael whispered. No, I didn't. And she fell mute, remembering the abandonment she had felt, thinking that Dap loathed her as everyone else did, for things that weren't her fault, and remembering how she had vowed never to let anyone touch her soul that way again.
But that came from your own memory, Highwing murmured. A part of you knew the truth. You do not always see clearly in your memory, do you?
Why no, I . . . she began, and hesitated, because she had no idea how to explain.
Well, then, Jael—look up. I see something else happening. The dragon lifted his head and snorted sparks into the air.
Reluctantly she lifted her gaze. For a moment she couldn't see anything except the dark shape of a cliff overlooking the glade. And then, high atop the cliff, i
n a sheltered aerie, illuminated by she knew not what, she saw the dark figure of another man.
Who is that? she hissed. Highwing didn't answer at once, but a suspicion was already growing in the pit of her stomach. There was something familiar about the shape.
Don't you know? Highwing asked finally. Without waiting for an answer, he sprang aloft and beat into the wind toward the aerie. Rather than flying directly to it, however, he veered to one side and alighted upon a high ledge from which they could look across and see the place clearly.
But Jael already knew. The man was her father. He was a cold-eyed, stiff-limbed man, exactly as she remembered him. He looked perhaps a little older, a little wearier, a little more dour. He was gazing outward from the aerie, as though expecting a caller; but the manner of his stance suggested defensiveness, retreat, as though he feared to leave this shelter. His eyes stared, his mouth curled with distaste, as they had on other occasions, when he'd wondered aloud why he had saddled himself with two former wives, an unhappy son, and a self-pitying daughter. His eyes shifted then, and seemed to light upon Highwing and Jael. Upon Jael. And that gaze was the same look of contempt he'd lavished upon her for as long as she could remember. She remembered her own rage, which had been building for years.
Kill him, she said softly, loathing rising out of the depths of her heart. Burn him!
She waited for the explosion of fire from Highwing's throat, the lance of flame that would destroy her father as it had destroyed Mogurn. But the dragon made no move to carry out her command. Highwing?
And then she knew why the dragon hesitated. He'd seen the answer in her soul. It was not because he was protecting her father, but because her father was already dead. He'd died three years ago, at the hands of a slighted lover, while Jael was still in rigger school. What point was there in burning him now? Jael cursed futilely, squinting across to the aerie where this man stood, hopelessly cold and desperately alone, this man who had turned his shipping company into a den of thievery and abuse, who had turned two wives against him and taught a son and daughter how not to feel. Jael pressed her forehead against the dragon's scaled neck, weeping inwardly. And then she felt something . . .
She looked up and saw a change in the light that illumined her father's face, a deeper, softer glow. And she realized that he had changed, too. She was seeing him at an earlier time, a happier time. Behind him, she glimpsed her mother's face, just for an instant, but it was long enough to see that she was gazing at him with genuine love. Love, but pain too. Was it a happier time? His mouth was tight with indecision. But about what?
Jael drew a breath, and then she knew. She had been young then, too young to really understand; but this was the turning point, her father's business fortunes at their lowest ebb, the family-owned shipping firm teetering at the brink of collapse. It wasn't his fault, his mouth seemed to say. The registry had turned against him, and his own colleagues, and now he'd lost the passenger license, and there were incompetent riggers, as well, who had cost him two ships and plunged him into debt. And now he had to make a choice. A shipper on the edge could survive a lot more easily flying unregulated. Hang the registry. The quality of the riggers was a lot more uncertain, but how could it be worse than he'd seen already?
Anger and pain hardened his face. Jael had no idea whether or not his anger was justified; there was so much she didn't know about how it all had happened. But the effect on him was clear, as his face metamorphosed in the dragon light. The anger was sealed up within him, and he closed himself up like a steel wall, hard with bitterness. Behind him, Jael's mother's face grew drawn and terrified. Finally she was gone, and as Jael watched she felt glad that her mother's pain had ended years ago. But her father's pain only grew, and like some tormented, twisting animal he lashed out at those closest to him.
And the family name became a badge of shame. Jael did not even know, really, all that her father did to turn the shipping community against him. She did not want to know. She knew only that his suffering, like her mother's, had ended only with his death. But Jael's hadn't. Damn him, couldn't he at least have given something to her, some encouragement to her dream?
Didn't he, Jael? Not ever? whispered Highwing.
What? Jael saw another image beginning to form, and suddenly she knew what it was, it was the rigger school, and she erupted with rage. Stop it, damn you! No, he didn't—not ever—not except by dying and leaving us for good! She bent her head to the dragon's neck and wept. For her mother . . . for her brother . . . for herself. What could possibly make it right? Nothing, it seemed. Nothing at all. Get rid of him, Highwing, get rid of him! she whispered, rubbing away her tears.
Shall I burn him? Highwing asked softly.
She almost said yes, then sighed, straightening up. I guess not. What's the point? Maybe he suffered enough, I don't know. But it's over. She drew a painful breath. Let's just get the hell out of here.
The aerie darkened, where her father had stood. Highwing glanced back at Jael, his eyes glowing. Then he spread his wings and leaped into the air. I had thought that you might—well—
What? she asked darkly.
Never mind. The dragon seemed thoughtful. But I understand now, a little, I think.
Take me out of this place! Jael snapped, as fresh anger welled up inside her. The dragon vented smoke from his nostrils in sympathy. For some reason that enraged her still further, and she hammered on his hard, resilient scales with her fists. Take me out of this accursed valley and let me finish my journey in peace!
A flurry of sparks escaped from Highwing's nostrils. Do you really mean that? he asked softly, his powerful voice trembling with dismay.
Yes! Jael cried in a whisper, knowing that it was her pain speaking. Yes, I want to leave!
You won't consider . . . you mean you don't intend to—
Highwing! she cried in torment. Take me away!
As you will, my friend, Jael, the dragon sighed. He shook his head almost imperceptibly, muttering unhappily. But with mighty wingstrokes he beat higher and faster into the night.
Chapter 11: Parting
THE DRAGON circled, climbing. The mountain peaks surrounded them like dark towers in the night, sullen shadows against the moonlit clouds. When I take you out of these mountains, Highwing said sorrowfully, we will be near the place where I must leave you, but you will be closer to your destination than you were when we met. I had thought . . . well. Never mind. There is nothing to be done, I suppose—except to say good-bye.
Jael recognized the sadness in the dragon's voice, but her mind burned with far too many images to respond. Anyway, what did it matter? It was the dragon's fault for bringing her to this place of magic, stirring up memories of pain and sorrow. It had seemed all right until the very end, when there'd been no escaping the pain, not even the satisfaction of seeing the offender's image burned by dragon fire. There was no such solution where her father was concerned. Why? Why? she whispered to herself, not meaning to speak it aloud.
Highwing seemed to understand her thought. I did not know what we would see or how it would feel, he murmured. I only showed you what was in your mind.
She nodded, grunting. She didn't know why she felt angry with him, really, but she did.
Did I do wrong, Jael? If so, I am sorry.
She shook her head and silently clung to him as he beat his wings, carrying them toward the highest reaches of the mountains. Memories continued to flash through her mind: her brother gathering his dignity, unable to share his hurt even with his sister, who loved him; Dap and the other riggers struggling with their own loneliness and fear, and the competition for jobs in which they were all victims; a rigger named Mariel who had once treated her kindly, and Toni Gilen who had innocently come to her with a message from the steward, from Mogurn; and Mogurn himself, in the deathlike oblivion of his synaptic augmentor. And worst of all, memories of a father who in the end had loved no one, least of all himself.
She clung to Highwing because she was trembling so hard, sh
aking as the feelings followed the images faster than she could respond to them. Memories of pain and anger and loneliness and frustration; they were spawning a cyclone in her soul, a storm that would probably have swept her away in the Flux if Highwing had not been here to protect her. She scarcely saw the mountain peaks passing by on either side, dark and grim in the night, or the clouds that muffled them and then opened to the sky, or the stars that gleamed like diamonds and then stretched peculiarly into spidery lines . . . in response to the sensation of speed . . . to her growing fatigue in the rigger-net.
In the rushing wind, she finally raised her head and hiked herself up on the dragon's neck, realizing with a shock that she was exhausted, that she had been flying in the net for too many hours. Where are we going? she whispered, finding herself incapable of speaking any louder.
On the way to where you wanted to go, said the dragon.
If I went away—to sleep—could you stay with my ship until I returned? Even as she spoke, she sensed the net sparkling with distorted colors. She was losing her ability to control her own presence here; she had to get out. She felt an inexplicable jab of pain, of loneliness, at the thought. She didn't quite want to leave Highwing.
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