On dealing with gravity.

I've posted this bit before, but it's one of those weeks when the boys that I teach start doing their impersonations of gravity (its only job is to get you down). It is OK. I 've been dealing with gravity my whole life. It stops your body from flying, which could be a good thing, but it can't stop your mind doing it. Here's a place where my mind can fly.

There was a large cloak room just before the front door of East Gard’s Hall, the place I’d woken up in. The two long walls had lines of hooks with cloaks on them. I found a hook with Malaika’s name and picked up the cloak.

I knew about this bit and was half looking forward to it - half afraid I’d wee myself. I put on the cloak and fastened it with the shiny brass clasp. It slightly hugged my shoulders when wrapped around me, but I could throw it over my back and get it out of the way. Tell the truth, I wanted a mirror, to see how it looked on, ‘cos Malaika looks serious good in a cloak, but there wasn’t one around.

I walked out through the door. It was like the DIVs.  There was a gravel driveway going to a gate in the distance, with gardens on either side. I knew people did drive up that gravel, in carriages pulled by draft beasts or riding on runners, but I was going to use it for my runway, just like I’d seen Malaika do. I wondered about flying wearing a sanitary pad. Maybe I should be using tampons? No one tells you that sort of thing, do they?

It’s lucky there’s a long bit about this in Book One, where Brendan and the other Apprentices are taught to fly - you don’t see it in the DIV though. I was still quite little when Dad read it to me, and I can remember practising take-offs in my bedroom with a towel over my shoulders.

Well, no one was watching, so… I re-slung the cloak and held it out like bat wings. It wrapped neatly around my arms and gripped them, like it was holding them up. It was much longer than my arms, but the end part still stuck out like there was something underneath it. I walked forward to let it billow out behind me and then ran, flapping, just like I did when I was little. You see some of them just sort of leap and take off in the DIVs, but I wasn’t ready for that yet, so I took a long run-up.

I was feeling far gone harpic, but suddenly the cloak took over the flapping and I was struggling to run fast enough. I think I might have shrieked when the ground fell away from me, but the cloak just kept on doing the flying, flapping my arms for me. In less than a second, I seemed to be higher than the trees. Two seconds later I knew for surely, ‘cos I was at the end of the driveway and was flying over the trees.

It still felt a bit low, so I just thought about going faster and the cloak flapped harder. I angled myself a little steeper and shot up into the sky. It tells you in Book One that East Gard is at the top of a steep-sided valley on the road to the coast. Well, in a few seconds, I was high enough to see that. I was heading north, with the road running west and east below me. The cloak felt to be stuck to my back and down my legs as far as my ankles and was holding all of my body up. I felt like I was lying on some enormous swing fastened tight to the sky, and falling out of the sky was like...like no chance; I was far away secure. I stopped pumping my arms for a minute and did a gliding turn. And there was the city, with its wall and castle. There was the river, with the bridge and boats.

I can’t describe the feeling that filled me then. It was like last year when Sara and me went on a roller coaster. We squealed and screamed all the way through the ride; not ‘cos we were scared, but just ‘cos we were so excited. I squealed and screamed again now and pumped myself higher and higher into the air, then swooped down and up again until I looped overhead in a circle. Then I corkscrewed down towards the ground, pulling out into another rising glide.

I don’t know how long I flew. I was a bird, I was just pure flight, and I was strong. The cloak was doing all the work. It lifted me up into the sky with just me thinking about moving my arms, but when I pulled hard I felt myself rocket through the air. And when I glided… I could just close my eyes and feel the wind against my hands, knowing the littlest movement of my fingers would send me swooping in a great circle.

The world was beneath me and I was above all of it. I could see forever and there was nowhere I couldn’t go. I felt… I felt…there’s no words for what I felt.

I got up above a cloud and wanted to just fly all day exploring the top of the clouds. I think I would’ve done too, ‘cept I flew over a gap in the clouds and saw the city again. Black River Bridge! I knew what it looked like from Jack Hughes’ illustrations in the Encyclopaedia of The Land, and I couldn’t wait to walk on its streets for real. And I’d get to meet Senior Ferguson, my favourite character in all of the books, more even than Brendan Earle really. I just had to go there!

I swooped down to be well below the clouds, and then started to fly with what Book One called, ‘the slow, steady beat of someone going somewhere distant’. I aimed for the north of the city, following a road to where the meadows were and where the Seekers would be brought for the Initiation. I could land there, check the time and maybe wander a little before the ceremony started. 

Aron the Vish

The Mage did not see us. Not too high above, but thoughts elsewhere, I gauged. She did not see the Shedu either, as it flew behind and towards her - her eyes were on the City whence she travelled.

We saw the evil beast from afar, and the Duergars called to her in warning, but to no avail. The Duergars depend overly on their Mages, and think for themselves in small matters only. We Vish have always looked to ourselves, in everything.

I had my bow strung and an arrow nocked, while they still wrung their hands. A truth I would never tell them is I led the target overly far. My arrow took it in its throat - I had meant for the chest. It fell, silently, horned head flailing, blood-red talons clutching at the arrow, leather wings flapping like torn sails, cloven-hoofed legs kicking as if to run itself back into the sky. Then it crashed to ground nearby.

I regained my arrow and we threw the corpse off the road and into a ditch. Big, the thing was, and heavy enough to need all of us. Its skin, so close, was more brown than red, the dart on the end of its tail sharper than the barb on my arrow and its horns shorter than I’d expected. I had not seen one so near before.

The Duergars wondered aloud at one so close to the City and so far from Maldon’s lands. They speculated on the identity and importance of the dark-skinned Mage it had pursued, and why a Shedu would come for that Mage.  Mayhap they told someone of this at our next stop, but it was below me to boast of the deed. It is not the Vish way. It was enough to know I had saved the girl’s life. I need no thanks from a Mage, even one coloured as I am.

Bugger!