Wings of Change

Flight

Elder Mam, Mam and Pap, and all the rest of my clan leave Leòdhas a day after the Gathering ends. We spend that last day together, Biré, me, and both of our families. We are bound together now, all of us. Handfasting is not just a life-bond between two people. It is a way to connect our clans, to give Alba our strength as a people. And since I will remain with the Epidii, at least for now, Mam and Pap take the measure of Biré's family, to be certain that I will be safe.

After meals shared and assurances made, and seeing the joy on Biré's and my faces, they make their way down the path away from the broch and cross the island to the shore where boats await. My man and I raise our hands in farewell as the boats slide into the sea, then turn for home. My new home, until winter comes.

My lessons with Elder Mam must continue. I will return to the crannog, with Biré at my side. But for now, we remain here, to know each other better, without prying eyes to watch our every step.

We hoist bundles of our own, left behind after the boats set off across the sea loch. "Where is this secret place you want to show me?" I ask, as he leads me south, away from the landing place and the path that leads to the broch.

"Far," he says, laughing as he pulls me by the hand. "Very far, on two legs. But we'll soon remedy that. I'll teach you the way of changing, and we will fly together as far as we please."

We follow the shoreline south. After two days' walk, the path twists inland and upwards, where Biré tells me that we are crossing onto another island, although the two are connected. The path continues south, and west, and eventually we come to a place where the water is soft green, lapping gently against white sand. The air is soft as well, as we lie together in the night. In the last days of summer, we play together on the sand, and swim in the sea, and come to know each other well.

"How did you learn the Change?" I ask one night as we twine together beneath the stars. Our small fire flickers on the sand near our furs, and I watch the way orange light reflects from Biré's smoothly-muscled chest.

He smiles, and turns to me, sliding down until his face is even with mine. He wraps his arm over my shoulder and cups the back of my head in his hand. "I didn't have to learn," he says. "My mam had the way of it. She passed it on to us when we were born. But she had to teach my pap. He came from another tribe, and they don't have the changing in them."

"Then our children will have it, the change?" I ask. "But you will teach me?"

"Aye," he says. "We'll start tomorrow."

*

When I wake the next morning, Biré is up already, stoking the fire and steeping leaves in a small clay pot. I quickly pull on my tunic and join him by the fire. It is starting to grow chill as the summer dies. Not long from now we'll have to start for Damnonii lands, my home.

Cupping the pot of steaming herbed water in my hands I sit cross-legged on the ground. I sip slowly as it cools, feeling the heat seep into my bones from the inside. The beverage has a sharp taste, green, yes, but somehow blue, also, like the sky, and clouds...

"How will you teach me?" I ask, looking across the fire to my mate. "Is it magic? A spellcasting? A ceremony?"

Biré tucks a few more dry sticks into the hollows of the fire, and nods at the vessel cupped in my hands. "That," he says, "is the catalyst. The herbs open your mind to the changing. Once you've Changed, it's in your blood, in your bones. You just need to think of it and it happens."

Now that he's said it I can feel the pathways of my mind stretching, opening, expanding in ways I never thought possible. Some of Elder Mam's potions for the Seeing, and the Dreaming, have properties somewhat like this. But my mind has never felt so...so wide, before. I down the dregs of the herbal brew and set the clay pot aside.

Biré reaches out a hand to lift me to my feet, and I need it, to steady myself. I can feel my mind stretching wide, expanding to fill the sky. My feet feel barely connected to my legs. He takes my hands in his and leads me up a pile of rocks to the top of a small cliff above the sea.

"You must think now of flying, of feathers sprouting from your shoulders, of feeling the sky beneath your wings. Close your eyes," he says, turning me to face outward, to the open waves and the horizon beyond. "I'll be with you, guiding you. Don't be afraid."

I could never be afraid, not with his hand in mine. Not with him here beside me.

"Keep your eyes closed," he says. "Feel the air around you, lifting you, supporting you. Slowly, now, slowly...lean into the wind."

Behind my closed eyelids I see orange, the sun. I see red, my blood flowing. I feel blue, the sky, the wind. I feel the stretching out of my arms into it, into the void. And with a sharp, sudden wrenching I am free of the ground. I am falling free into the air above the green, green waves, and—

I am flying!