Windhaven

age. By then Coll had been strong, healthy; still too small to bear the wings, but they would be his on his coming- of-age day. Maris had no claim, no right at all. That was the law of the flyers, stretching back through generations to the star sailors themselves, the legendary wing-forgers. The first-born child of each of the flying families would inherit the wings of the parent. Skill counted for nothing; this was a law of inheritance, and Maris came from a fishing family who had nothing to leave her but the scattered wreckage of a wooden boat.

'Fair or no, it is the law, Maris. You've known it for a long time, even if you chose to ignore it. For years you've played at being a flyer, and I've let you, because you loved it, and because Coll needed a teacher, a skilled one, and because this island is too big to rely on only two flyers. But you knew all the while this day would come.'

He could be more kind, she thought wildly. He must know what it means, to give up the sky.

'Now come with me,' he said. 'You'll not fly again.'

Her wings were still fully extended; only one strap was undone. 'I'll run away,' she said madly. 'You'll never see me again. I'll go to some island where they don't have a flyer of their own. They'll be glad to have me, no matter how I got my wings.'

'Never,' her father said, sadly. 'The other flyers would shun the island, as they did after the mad Landsman of Kennehut executed the Flyer-Who-Brought-Bad-News. You would be stripped of your stolen wings no matter where you went. No Landsman would take the risk.'

'I'll break them, then!' Maris said, riding the edge of hysteria. 'Then he'll never fly either, any more than… than…'

Glass shattered on rock and the light went out as her father dropped the lantern. Maris felt his grip on her hands. 'You couldn't even if you wanted to. And you wouldn't do that to Coll. But give me the wings.'

'I wouldn't…'

'I don't know what you wouldn't do. I thought you'd gone out to kill yourself this morning, to die flying in the storm. I know the feelings, Maris. That's why I was so frightened, and so angry. You mustn't blame Coll.'

'I don't. And I would not keep him from flying — but I want to fly so badly myself — Father, please.'

Tears ran down her face in the dark, and she moved closer, reaching for comfort.

'Yes, Maris,' he said. He could not put his arm about her; the wings got in the way. 'There is nothing I can do. This is the way of things. You must learn to live without wings, as I have. At least you've had them for a time— you know what it is like to fly.'

'It's not enough!' she said, tearful, stubborn. 'I used to think it would be, when I was a little girl, not even yours yet, just a stranger, and you were Amberly's greatest flyer. I watched you and the others from the cliff and I used to think — if I could have wings, even for a moment, that would be life enough. But it isn't, it isn't. I can't give them up.'

The hard lines were all gone now in her father's face. He touched her face gently, brushing away tears.

'Perhaps you're right,' he said, in a slow heavy voice. 'Perhaps it was not a good thing. I thought if I could let you fly for a while, a little bit — that would be better than nothing, it would be a fine bright gift indeed. But it wasn't, was it? Now you can never be happy. You can never be a land-bound, really, for you've flown, and you'll always know how you are imprisoned.' His words stopped abruptly and Maris realized that he was talking of himself as much as her.

He helped her unstrap and fold the wings and they walked back home together.

Their house was a simple wood frame, surrounded by trees and land. A creek ran through the back.

Flyers could live well. Russ said goodnight just inside the door and took the wings upstairs with him. Has he really lost all trust? Maris thought. What have I done? And she felt like crying again.

Instead she wandered into the kitchen, found cheese and cold meat and tea, and took them back into the dining room. A bowl-shaped sand candle sat in the center of the table. She lit it, ate, and watched the flame dance.

Coll entered just as she finished, and stood awkwardly in the doorway. ' 'Lo, Maris,' he said uncertainly.

'I'm glad you're back. I was waiting.' He was tall for a thirteen-year-old, with a soft, slender body, long red- blond hair, and the wispy beginnings of a mustache.

' 'Lo, Coll,' Maris said. 'Don't just stand there. I'm sorry I took the wings.'

He sat down. 'I don't mind, you know that. You fly a lot better than me, and — well — you know. Was Father mad?'

Maris nodded.

Coll looked grim and frightened. 'It's only one week away now, Maris. What are we going to do?' He was looking straight down at the candle, not at her.

Maris sighed, and put a gentle hand on his arm. 'We'll do what we must, Coll. We have no choice.' They had talked before, she and Coll, and she knew his agony as much as her own. She was his sister, almost his mother, and the boy had shared with her his shame and his secret. That was the ultimate irony.

He looked up at her now, looking to her again as the child to the mother; although he knew now that she was as helpless as he, still he hoped. 'Why don't we have a choice? I don't understand.'

Maris sighed. 'It's law, Coll. We don't go against tradition here, you know that. We all have duties put upon us. If we had a choice I would keep the wings, I would be a flyer. And you could be a singer. We'd both be proud, and know we were good at what we did. Life will be hard as a land-bound. I want the wings so much. I've had them, and it doesn't seem right that they should be taken from me, but maybe — maybe the tightness in it is something I just don't see. People wiser than we decided that things should be the way they are, and maybe, maybe I'm just being a child about it, wanting everything my own way.'

Coll wet his lips, nervous. 'No.'

She looked a question at him.

He shook his head stubbornly. 'It's not right, Maris, it just isn't. I don't want to fly, I don't want to take your wings. It's all so stupid. I'm hurting you and I don't want to, but I don't want to hurt Father either.

How can I tell him? I'm his heir and all that — I'm supposed to take the wings. He'd hate me. The songs don't say anything about flyers who were scared of the sky like I am. Flyers aren't afraid — I'm not meant for a flyer.' His hands were shaking visibly.

'Coll, don't worry. It will be all right, really it will. Everyone is frightened at first. I was, too.' She wasn't thinking about the lie, only saying words to reassure him.

'But it's not fair,' he cried. 'I don't want to give up my singing, and if I fly I can't sing, not like Barrion, not like I'd like to. So why are they going to make me? Maris, why can't you be the flyer, like you want to be? Why?'

She looked at him, so close to crying, and felt like joining him in tears. She didn't have an answer, not for him or for herself. 'I don't know,' she said, her voice hollow. 'I don't know, little one. That is the way things have always been done, though, and that is the way they must be.'

They stared at each other, both trapped, caught together by a law older than either and a tradition neither understood. Helpless and hurt, they talked long in the candlelight, saying the same things over and over again until, late, they parted for bed, nothing resolved.

But once in bed alone, the resentment came flooding back to Maris, the sense of loss, and with it, shame.

She cried herself to sleep that night, and dreamt of purple storm-skies that she would never fly.

The week went on forever.

A dozen times during those endless days Maris walked up to the flyers' cliff, to stand helplessly with her hands in her pockets looking out over the sea. Fishing boats she saw, and gulls, and once a hunting pack of sleek gray seacats far, far off. It made her hurt the more, the sudden closing of the world she knew, the way the horizons seemed to shrink about her, but she could not stop coming. So she stood there, lusting for the wind, but the only thing that flew was her hair.

Once she caught Coll watching her from a distance. Afterward neither of them mentioned it.

Russ had the wings now, his wings, as they had always been, as they would be until Coll took them.

When Lesser Amberly needed a flyer, Corm answered the call from the far side of the island, or gay Shalli who had flown guard when Maris was a child first learning simple sky sense. As far as her father was concerned,