Windhaven

The torch-bearers, flyers all, were ready. They left the lodge, Coll in a place of honor between his father and the Landsman, the flyers close behind with the torches. Maris and the rest of the party followed further back.

It was a ten-minute walk, slow steps in other-worldly silence, before they stood in a rough semicircle on the stage of the cliff. Alone by the edge, Russ, one-handed and disdaining help, strapped the wings onto his son. Coll's face was chalk white. He stood very still while Russ unfolded the wings, and looked straight down at the abyss before him, where dark waves clawed against the beach.

Finally, it was done. 'My son, you are a flyer,' Russ said, and then he stepped back with the rest of them, close to Maris. Coll stood alone beneath the stars, perched on the brink, his immense silvery wings making him look smaller than ever before. Maris wanted to shout, to interrupt, to do something; she could feel the tears on her cheeks. But she could not move. Like all the rest, she waited for the traditional first flight.

And Coll at last, with a sharp indrawn breath, kicked off from the cliff.

His last running step was a stumble, and he plunged down out of sight. The crowd rushed forward. By the time the party-goers reached the edge, he had recovered and was climbing slowly up. He made a wide circle out over the ocean, then glided in close to the cliff, then back out again. Sometimes young flyers gave their friends a show, but Coll was no showman. A winged silver wraith, he wandered awkward and a little lost in a sky that was not his home.

Other wings were being broken out; Corm and Shalli and the others prepared to fly. Shortly now they would join Coll in the sky, make a few passes in formation, then leave the land-bound behind and fly off to the Eyrie to spend the rest of the night in celebration of their newest member.

Before any of them could leap, though, the wind changed; Maris felt it with a flyer's perception. And she heard it, a gale of cold that screeched forlorn over the rocky edges of the peak; and most of all she saw it, for out above the waves Coll faltered visibly. He dipped slightly, fought to save himself, went into a sudden spin. Someone gasped. Then, quickly again, he was back in control, and headed back to them.

But struggling, struggling. It was a rough wind, angry, pushing him down; the sort of wind a flyer had to coax and soothe and tame. Coll wrestled with it, and it was beating him.

'He's in trouble,' Corm said, and the handsome flyer flung out his last wing struts with a snap. 'I'll fly guard.' With that, he was suddenly aloft.

Too late to be of much help, though. Coll, his wings swaying back and forth as he was buffeted by the sudden turbulence, was headed toward the landing beach. A wordless decision was made, and the party moved as one to meet him, Maris and her father in the lead.

Coll came down fast, too fast. He was not riding the wind; no, he was being pushed. His wings shook as he dropped, and he tilted, so one wingtip brushed the ground while the other pointed up toward the sky.

Wrong, wrong, all wrong. Even as they rushed onto the beach, there was a great spraying shower of dry sand and then the sudden horrible sound of metal snapping and Coll was down, lying safe in the sand.

But his left wing was limp and broken.

Russ reached him first, knelt over him, started to work on the straps. The others gathered around. Then Coll rose a little, and they saw that he was shaking, his eyes full of tears.

'Don't worry,' Russ said, in a mock-hearty voice. 'It was only a strut, son; they break all the time. We'll fix it easy. You were a little shaky, but all of us are the first time up. Next time will be better.'

'Next time, next time, next time!' Coll said. 'I can't do it, I can't do it, Father. I don't want a next time! I don't want your wings!' He was crying openly now, and his body shook with his sobs.

The guests stood in mute shock, and his father's face grew stern. 'You are my son, and a flyer. There will be a next time. And you will learn.'

Coll continued to shake and sob, the wings off now, lying unstrapped at his feet, broken and useless, at least for now. There would be no flight to the Eyrie tonight.

The father reached out his good arm and took his son by the shoulder, shaking him. 'You hear? You hear! I won't listen to such nonsense. You fly, or you are no son of mine.'

Coll's sudden defiance was all gone now. He nodded, biting back the tears, looked up. 'Yes, Father,' he said. 'I'm sorry. I just got scared out there, I didn't mean to say it.' He was only thirteen, Maris remembered as she watched from among the guests. Thirteen and scared and not at all a flyer. 'I don't know why I said it. I didn't mean it, really.'

And Maris found her voice. 'Yes, you did,' she said loudly, remembering the way Coll had sung of Raven, remembering the decision she had made. The others turned to look at her with shock, and Shalli put a restraining hand on her arm. But Maris shrugged it off and pushed forward to stand between Coll and his father.

'He did mean it,' she said quietly, her voice steady and sure while her heart trembled. 'Couldn't you see, Father? He's not a flyer. He's a good son, and you should be proud of him, but he will never love the wind. I don't care what the law says.'

'Maris,' Russ said, and there was nothing warm in his voice, only despair and hurt. 'You would take the wings from your own brother? I thought you loved him.'

A week ago she would have cried, but now her tears were all used up. 'I do love him, and I want him to have a long and happy life. He will not be happy as a flyer; he does it just to make you proud. Coll is a singer, a good one. Why must you take from him the life he loves?'

'I take nothing,' Russ said coldly. 'Tradition…'

'A stupid tradition,' a new voice interjected. Maris looked for her ally, and saw Barrion pushing through the crowd. 'Maris is right. Coll sings like an angel, and we all saw how he flies.' He glanced around contemptuously at the flyers in the crowd. 'You flyers are such creatures of habit that you have forgotten how to think. You follow tradition blindly no matter who is hurt.'

Almost unnoticed, Corm had landed and folded up his wings. Now he stood before them, his smooth dark face flushed with anger. 'The flyers and their traditions have made Amberly great, have shaped the very history of Windhaven a thousand times over. I don't care how well you sing, Barrion, you are not beyond the law.' He looked at Russ and continued, 'Don't worry, friend. We'll make your son a flyer such as Amberly has never seen.'

But then Coll looked up, and though the tears flowed still, suddenly there was anger in his face too, and decision. ' No!' he shouted, and his glance at Corm was defiant. 'You won't make me anything I don't want to be, I don't care who you are. I'm not a coward, I'm not a baby, but I don't want to fly, I don't, I DON'T.'' His words were a torrent, all but screamed into the wind, as his secret came pouring out and all the barriers fell at once. 'You flyers think you're so good, that everybody else is beneath you, but you're not, you know, you're not. Barrion has been to a hundred islands, and he knows more songs than a dozen flyers. I don't care what you think, Corm. He's not land-bound; he takes ships when everybody else is too scared. You flyers stay clear of scyllas, but Barrion killed one once with a harpoon, from a little wooden boat. I bet you didn't know that.

'I can be like him, too. I have a talent. He's going to the Outer Islands, and he wants me to come with him, and he told me once that he'd give me his guitar one day. He can take flying and make it beautiful with his words, but he can do the same thing with fishing or hunting or anything. Flyers can't do that, but he can. He's Barrion! He's a singer, and that's just as good as being a flyer. And I can do it too, like I did tonight with Raven.' He glared at Corm with hate. 'Take your old wings, give them to Maris, she's the flyer,' he shouted, kicking at the limp fabric on the ground. 'I want to go with Barrion.'

There was an awful silence. Russ stood mute for a long time, then looked at his son with a face that was older than it had ever been. 'They are not his wings to take, Coll,' he said. 'They were my wings, and my father's, and his mother's before him, and I wanted-I wanted—' His voice broke.

'You are responsible for this,' Corm said angrily, with a glance at Barrion. 'And you, yes you, his own sister,' he added, shifting his gaze to Maris.

'All right, Corm,' she said. 'We are responsible, Barrion and I, because we love Coll and we want to see him happy — and alive. The flyers have followed tradition too long. Barrion is right, don't you see?

Every year bad flyers take the wings of their parents and die with them, and Windhaven is poorer, for wings cannot be replaced. How many flyers were there in the days of the star sailors? How many are there today? Can't you see what tradition is doing to us? The wings are a trust; they should be worn by those who love the sky, who will fly best and keep them best. Instead, birth is our only measure for awarding wings. Birth, not skill; but a flyer's