A Gathering of Wings (37 page)

“Dried seaweed,” Honus says. “It’s nutty and quite good.”

Orion asks Duna polite questions about her hobbies (embroidery,
sand rally, stringing shells) and interests (the sea, the stars, the clouds), while Zephele and Malora help themselves to what is on the plank tray.

“I’ve quite gotten used to the taste of dried fish,” Zephele says, chewing a piece. “Do try it.”

Malora shakes her head. Dried fish reminds her of Lume. She wonders how Lume’s audience with the Apex went, if he has even had it yet, or whether more Leatherwings waylaid him. She wonders why Lume isn’t here. Lume should be here with me, she thinks.

After they have eaten, they walk up and down the shore collecting more wood for the bonfire. Orion and Duna wander off together so far down the shoreline that Malora can no longer see them. They reappear some time later with the lowering sun at their backs, without so much as a stick of wood. They are holding hands.

“I can see you didn’t need our help,” Orion says, gesturing to the pile of driftwood towering high above the dunes.

“We managed somehow without you two,” Zephele says with that same wicked smile.

Just then, five little centaurs tumble before Zephele in a giggling pile.

“Hooray! It’s Aunt Moonbeam!” they cry. They push at each other and roll and wrestle in the struggle to be the first in line to greet her.

“The Beast didn’t eat you all up!” says the first in line.

“No, he didn’t, Fin,” Zephele says. “I am quite alive and happy to be so.”

Fin is shampooing sand into the hair of the little female he has clasped tight between his legs.

“Let your sister be. Pay attention. I want to introduce you all to Archon’s little brother.”

They giggle and punch each other as they stare up at Orion.

“What’s so funny?” Zephele asks.

The little girl who has gotten up to shake the sand from her hair says, “Because he’s not little.
We’re
little.”

“But not for long!” one of the boys boasts.

“What is your name?” Orion asks the little girl with the sandy head.

“I am Sandy,” the little girl says.

“How very fitting,” Orion says, helping her brush out the sand. “Are you the eldest, Sandy? You seem very grown-up to me.”

“I
am
grown-up,” Sandy says. She has fair skin and hair so pale it is almost white, to match her creamy white flanks. “And this is my little sister, Plum. But we call her Plumkin.”

Plum has sea-green eyes and a wild thatch of black hair and black flanks speckled with gold. “I am the smartest,” she says gravely.

The others shove her hard into the sand.

“Are not!” Fin says.

“Am too,” Plum says, scrambling to her feet with dignity. “I can read.”

“You can?” says Orion.

“Like Duna, I can read the
stars
!”

“Oh!” says Orion, nodding solemnly. “And who are you?” he says, turning to the next little centaur.

“I’m Bark, and I can run the fastest.” He is small and wiry
with light brown hair and flanks and fierce gray eyes like the Apex. “Want to race?”

“In a bit, perhaps,” Orion says. “But I want to meet your little sister first.”

The others push the little one forward as if she were a special offering.

“This is Rose,” Sandy says. “She’s shy.”

Orion kneels in the sand so that his face is level with the little centaur’s. Rose has a wild thicket of black curls that escape from her ponytail, and rosy cheeks. She sucks her fist and stares at Orion out of big, startling blue eyes that are a match for her uncle’s. “Is it true?” he whispers. “That you’re very shy?”

She nods, drool dripping down her wrist from her chubby fist.

“Well, Sandy, Fin, Plum, Bark, and Rose, how would you like to come with me and Duna and look for seashells?”

Rose holds out the slimy fingers she has just been sucking. Orion accepts them as the gift that they are. Duna claims his other hand. The others trip along behind.

Zephele says, “I thought
I
was smitten. And wait until Herself gets her hands on them. She will spoil them rotten.”

By the time the sun has set and the moon has risen, the fire is blazing, giving off sparks of bright blue and green and pink that break loose and rise up to mingle with the stars. The centaurs have given their guests the place of honor. They sit with their backs settled comfortably against the dunes directly in front of the fire. Archon sits next to them, along with his
children and their mother, Tam. Malora recognizes, with a mild jolt, that Tam is the same fair-haired centaur who suggested selling her to the scouts. When Malora reaches down to draw up her outrage, she no longer finds it in her.

While the food is cooking in fire pits nearby, they sit and watch two male centaurs, their muscular bodies oiled, moving gracefully in the firelight, to the accompaniment of musicians on drums and pipes and stringed instruments. They are like mirror images of one another. They lock arms and appear to be struggling. Then they break their hold on each other and circle, first one way, then the other. Malora is hard-pressed to understand whether they are fighting or jubilating.

Archon leans over and explains. “They are dueling for the hand of their ladylove across the way.” He indicates a red-haired female centaur standing on the other side of the fire. “The winner will walk off with her tonight.”

“And the loser?” Malora cannot help but ask.

“Will live to duel another day,” Archon says. “I know what you were thinking, that they were going to fight each other to the death. No, it is a civilized competition. Each is simply showing himself off to his best advantage. At the end of their exhibition, the lady will choose.”

“I see,” Malora says.

After the blissful couple has wandered off into the moonlight, three centaurs on one side of the fire and three on the other tug at a rope in an attempt to pull the opposite team into the fire. But the fire burns through the rope, and in the end all of them fall backward into the sand, laughing and kicking their hooves. A female centaur runs forward with a skin flask and squirts ferna into each centaur’s open mouth.

“Is anyone ever burned playing this game?” Malora asks.

Athen says, “Rarely. As you can see, it is all in good fun. There was so much darkness in our lives, I felt it necessary to legislate good times whenever I could.”

“Very sensible,” says Honus.

Malora wonders whether, with the darkness now gone, the good times will be as much fun.

Later, everyone lines up beneath the canopy. Malora doesn’t realize how hungry she is until she discovers all there is to eat. There is sea chicken and boar sausage baked in seaweed. There are crabs and clams and mussels and at least fifteen varieties of fish, which Honus is at pains to name. Malora fills her seashell plate three times over. Neal, awake from his rest and freshly bandaged, nestles in the sand next to Zephele. The color has returned to his face. Zephele feeds him with her fingers. Tam is with Archon, Duna is with Orion, Zephele is with Neal, Najeeb is with Nakira. Honus is conducting a spirited conversation about religion with Mather. Even Sky and Baby have wandered off together. Everyone seems to have paired off with someone, except for her. She lies alone in the fire-toasted lee of the dunes and stares up at the sky, wishing Lume would come. Is this the way it is going to be from now on? Will she spend the rest of her life staring up at the sky and pining away for him? If this is the case, then she would just as soon not care for him quite so much. She was better as she was before: single and happy to be that way. Someone handles her a skin of ferna and she squirts some into the back of her mouth. She chokes a little. It burns like fire.

“I’d watch that stuff if I were you, pet,” Neal says from the cozy circle of Zephele’s arms.

Awash in self-pity, she allows herself another squirt, and another. When the flask is empty, she finds another.

She awakes at dawn. Above her, seagulls wheel and dive, picking at the remains of last night’s feast. The fire has burned down to embers. Her head half-buried in the sand, she has a vague recollection of dancing with Honus around the fire, along with a bunch of stomping, singing wild centaurs, some of whom were laughing when Malora kept falling down. The affront to her dignity is nothing compared to the pain in her head, which feels as if it were writhing with poisonous snakes. Around her, centaurs sleep, including her friends from Mount Kheiron. Honus has a smile on his face.

She wants to shake him awake and say, “What are you smiling about?”

Instead, she staggers away from the fire and finds the water bucket she filled for Sky and Baby sometime last night. She remembers Duna leading her to a well and giggling as Malora leaned over it and called out, “Lume! Are you down there?” This morning, the bucket is half full. She lifts it and tips it into her mouth, swirling the water around and spitting it out. Then she pours the rest of it over her head.

Tossing the empty bucket aside, she heads for the ocean, her body knowing what it needs before her mind knows what she is doing. As she walks, she strips off her clothes and drops them behind her. The water surging around her bare legs is so cold, she stops and for a moment thinks better of this idea. Then she recalls how the wild centaurs charged straight into the waves. With a quick shake of her head, she faces the sea and runs in. The sea here is colder than it was in Kahiro. It
boils all around her, so freezing cold that it feels hot. The waves are bigger, too. The farther out she goes, the more monstrous they seem, bellowing like something alive as they plow their way shoreward. A particularly monstrous wave rises up and charges toward her. She looks to the shore. Everyone is still asleep. No one will see her if the wave knocks her over and dashes her to a pulp. Her heart races. Then she remembers what the wild centaurs did. She pinches her nose and down she goes, beneath the crashing wave. The underwater world is eerily peaceful: pale green and as sudsy as soap foaming beneath the roaring tap of her tub. She hears the wave that she has just evaded crashing like a thunderclap on the shore behind her. The wave sloshes back out toward her, its power spent.

Malora bounces back to the surface. Grasping for breath, she finds that she is grinning. What is more, her headache is gone! She swims out behind the line of crashing waves, paddling with arms and legs. Then she lets the rolling waves carry her back in, nearer to where the waves are breaking. Just when the waves seem to be collapsing over her head, she begins to swim with all her might, racing to stay ahead of the cresting wave. She feels the wave scoop her up and nearly swallow her, bearing her high above the land and then speeding her toward it. She is as weightless as a bird in flight. Then, just as she is about to tumble face-forward into the rattling pebbles, the wave spits her out and sends her stumbling and splashing and laughing up onto the shingle.

No sooner is she up on the shore than she is running back into the surf. This is far too much fun to do only once. She wants to do it a hundred times more.

She swims out in search of the next wave to ride. She has just spotted a nice plump one rolling her way when there is a tremendous splash in the water nearby. She lets out a startled shriek and looks around. The water seethes with froth.

“Sharks!” she gasps.

Suddenly, something big breaks the surface.

It is Lume, his silver hair spangled with droplets.

She smacks the water near his head with the edge of her hand. “You frightened me half to death.”

He shakes the water from his hair. “Not half as frightened as I was when I saw you courting death
again
. There happen to be at least a dozen sharks circling, just over there.” He points out to sea.

She yelps and leaps into his arms, wrapping her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck. “Where?” she says, head swiveling, searching for the deadly fins.

He smiles lazily. The dimple pops out.

And that’s when she knows. She narrows her eyes at him. Her hands curl into fists. “There aren’t
really
any sharks in this water, are there?” she says.

“Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say
none
. It’s a fairly large body of water and I’m sure there are quite a few … for instance, down the shore a ways, where the nets are.”

“But none here,” she says.

He frowns and nods. “None whatsoever. I checked very carefully.
Someone’s
got to look out for you. You certainly don’t do a very good job of it. Swimming alone by yourself
again
.”

When she tries to pull away from him, he holds her even closer. His storm-washed aroma mingles with the scent of the sea and makes her want to lap the seawater from his skin. And
yet she braces her hands against his chest. “You tricked me,” she says.

“You have to admit …,” he says, his voice trailing off as he bends his head and begins to plant small kisses down her neck.

“What?” she says with a small shiver as her neck arches and her wrists collapse against him. “What do I have to admit?” she says faintly.

“That my trick worked awfully well.” He kisses her along her jawline, where he nearly kissed her once before, where ever since she has imagined him kissing her. “Now that you’re here, where both of us want you to be, I hope you’ll stay.”

“I just might do that.” She settles into his embrace with a happy sigh as they drift off together into the undulating swells of the wine-dark sea.