“What did she mean, Isatha? I didn’t ask any questions in there, did I? And neither did you. Isatha?” Rethia bombarded the owl with questions as they left the cave.
“The Great Sprites sometimes answer our deepes and most hidden questions. Questions we may not even know about. I… I’ll bring you to the training grounds now. Since you went and forgot everything I painstakingly taught you about flying.”
Isatha led the way again through the maze of bridges, leaving Rethia with no time to ask further questions, as she had to concentrate on her steps – and wings, lest they got tangled up in a ladder.
It looked so much easier to just hop, flutter her wings and land on top of a platform, like Isatha did. Or outright fly, like all the others.
They reached a large platform right next to the cliffside. A large basket, using up a quarter of the platform sat there. It hung on a thick rope from the sky. A second basket was slowly lowered down to the platform.
“What is this?!” screamed Rethia upon the sight.
“These are the Floating Baskets. We use them to transport goods to and from the upper edge of the cliff. Or to get the hatchlings to the training grounds,” explained Isatha. She pointed at a thinner rope, hanging down from the middle of the basket. “You tug that rope thrice to activate the mechanism.”
“How does it work? Is someone up there, pulling the baskets up and down?” Rethia stared upwards, trying to see the end of the cliff.
“Sprites, no!” laughed Isatha. “We’re harpies! We are made to fly, not stand on the ground, waiting for people to need a lift. No. The gnomes made these magical machines for us. I’ll wait for you at the top.” She waved and jumped from the platform, opening her wings once there was enough space. Within seconds, Isatha had soared up the cliffside.
“Whoa…” Rethia watched as the owl rapidly turned smaller. It took her a moment to shake off her stupor. She climbed into the basket and tugged at the rope.
The ride was unexpectedly smooth, and she reached the top of the cliff quickly. A field of grass and a dense bamboo forest greeted her. Small brown monkeys flitted through the bamboo or lazed on the grass, not the slightest afraid of the harpies milling around the Floating Baskets, loading and unloading large packets of merchandise. At least she guessed that it was merchandise. It was hard to tell.
“This way.” Isatha pushed her onto a winding path through the bamboo. Other paths forked off, but Isatha didn’t allow for tours, bringing Rethia directly to the training grounds. A lake, surrounded by a wide field of grass and rock. Someone had set up poles in a kind of obstacle flight course.
Isatha stopped half-way to the lake. “Now, we test what your muscles remember. Copy what I do as best as you can and as strong as you can.” She stretched her wings up, as far as she could, then beat them down with gusto, raising clouds of dust. The grass swayed in the gust of wind. Then she folded them partly, pulled them up, stretched them out again and beat them down. The ensuing wind felt even stronger than the first. “Now you do it.”
Rethia gulped. Tentatively, she repeated the motion, flapping down half-heartedly.
“Hm… stronger,” demanded Isatha.
She repeated the motion, making the grass sway a bit on her second try. The muscles in her back loosened up. Growing bold, Rethia repeated the flapping motion with more and more strength, raising up dust and grass stalks. A grin spread on her face. This was fun!
Isatha prowled around her with a critical eye, stopping her right after she her wing beats had been strong enough to raise her into the air for a short distance.
“Good. At least your muscles remember what I taught you. Depending on how you angle your wings to beat them down, you will go up, fly straight or descend. You also use this motion to land slowly and talons first. Remember that. Now, I will test the rest of the knowledge I beat into you.”
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
What followed was an avalanche of questions about harpy history, traditions and rules, about plants and animals, healing, cooking, commerce, navigation, mapmaking and what not. Some questions she had to solve by drawing maps into the ground, or starting an actual fire. Or identifying the plants around the training ground.
Rethia answered most of the questions correctly, proving that she at least hadn’t forgotten common knowledge.
The day wore on, the questions interrupted with short breaks to move her wings. And move her wings, she did. Isatha was adamant on daily wing exercises, lest her muscles regressed.
Finally, as the sun closed in on the horizon, they went back to the Floating Baskets and the village, where Isatha led her into a communal mess hall, another cave in the cliff. But this one was bigger and had several entrances in the cliffside, instead of only one.
Long tables populated the cave, filled with a growing number of harpies. The end of the cave was dominated by a counter and manned by male harpies.
Rethia stared at everything, as Isatha pulled her into the waiting line in front of the counter.
“Males? uh…” looking around, she noticed that all the other harpies in the hall were female. Only those behind the counter were male. And compared to the females, they were only a handful.
“Yes, males. For every male that hatches, we have around nine females. They are precious to the flock, so they stay in the village at all times. In the rare occasion that they do leave the village, they are escorted by our best warriors,” supplied Isatha. “They take care of most of the domestic parts of the village. And they are the best weavers in the world. The Landbound pay handsomely for the cloth our males weave.”
They were each handed a bowl of soup and a plate of grilled meat with veggies. Rethia consumed it while trying to look everywhere and listen to what Isatha talked about with the other harpies, though the words that reached her were fuzzy.
The hall was warm, the chattering harpies strangely comforting and the long day finally wore her down. With her belly full, she never noticed her eyes drooping.
She couldn’t quite remember how she reached her nest, only that Isatha had shaken her awake and that she had followed the the white owl over the lamplit bridges. But she had probably stumbled around a lot, going by the scraps on her legs and her swelling cheek.
She sat at the window, staring at the nightshrouded lands below. At the first line of light at the horizon. The first rays of the sun coloring the clouds long before she herself rose above the horizon. And she wondered.
The old shaman had said strange things yesterday. That whoever was now a True Child of the Winds. Who had she meant? Her? Someone else?
But that wasn’t even the most intriguing. The message to her was what had driven her out of her nest so early in the morning. It had sounded important. The edge of the seas? Was there even something like that? Wasn’t the world round? How would she even find the edge of the seas? Or did it mean the border between land and ocean?
She didn’t even want to think about the heart of fire. It sounded too abstract to grasp. She shuddered at the thought of having to fly through fire. Her feathers would burn away and she would fall from the skies, leading to her inevtiable death.
Maybe she should ask Isatha about it. The owl seemed to be very experienced.
“Rethia! Wake up!” called the familiar voice from outside.
“I’m coming!”
And her second day as a harpy began.
It wasn’t an exciting day. She was shoved from a plattform because she was too scared to jump herself.
She learned how to glide. First a short distance, then longer distances. And she fell into the lake.
She learned how to land with her talons first, and ate dirt more times than she wanted to count, because she misjudged the angle of her tail feathers, or the force of her wings.
She learned how to hover on a spot until her wings and back hurt from the unusual exertion.
And she learned how to fly. Into large bamboo trees. Because Isatha hadn’t taught her how to make turns.
In all, it was a depressing second day, only brightened by a group of curious silk monkeys and the hearty dinner.
Rethia was so tired, she didn’t even register the other harpies in the cavern, stumbling after Isatha as soon as they had both finished their meal, to reach her nest.
The days blurred together as she gradually learned flying. Close to the ground, high in the air, where the winds changed, and through updrafts and obstacles.
Every tiny mistake could be fatal. Her wings hurt when she opened them after a nose dive, but closing them to escape the pain would mean death. Her legs ached from having to jump higher than the large bamboo stalks to reach open air. Her eyes burned from the strong winds.
And there were accidents. An updraft, taken wrongly, kicked her head over tail, but Isatha swished past her, pushing her back into a flying position before she could splatter on the ground.
The white guiding wings navigated her to the ground just before she could collapse of exhaustion so often, that she lost count.
But the exhileration, the feeling of absolute freedom, as she soared through the skies, as she cut the clouds, was worth all efforts and bruises.