Windhaven

"Russ, of Lesser Amberly," he began. His tone was gentle. "My friends, Maris is right. We have been fools. And none of us has been so big a fool as I.

"Not long ago, I stood on a beach and said I had no daughter. Tonight, I wish I could have back those words, I wish I still had the right to call Maris my daughter. She has made me very proud. But she isn't mine. No, as she said, she was born of a fisherman, a better man than I. All I did was love her for a bit, and teach her how to fly. It didn't take much teaching, you know. She was always so eager. My little Woodwings. There was nothing could stop her, nothing. Not even me, when like a fool I tried to, after Coll was born.

"Maris is the finest flyer on Amberly, and my blood has nothing to do with it. Only her desire matters, only her dream. And if you, my flyer brothers, if you have such disdain for the children of the land-bound, then it is a shaming thing for you to fear them. Have you so little faith in your own children? Are you so certain that they could not keep their wings, against a fisherchild's hungry challenge?"

Russ shook his head. "I don't know. I'm an old man, and things have been confused lately. But I know this much: If I still had use of my arm, no one would take my wings from me, not even if his father was a nighthawk. And no one will ever take Maris' wings until she is ready to set them down. No. If you truly teach your children to fly well, they will keep the sky. If you have the pride you boast of, you'll live up to it, and prove it, by letting the wings be worn only by those who have earned them, only by those who have proven themselves in the air."

Russ sat down again, and the darkness at the top of the hall swallowed him up. Corm began to say something, but Jamis the Senior silenced him. "We have had enough from you," he said. Corm blinked in surprise.

"I think I will say something," Jamis said. "And then we will vote. Russ has spoken wisdom for all of us, but one thought I must add. Are we not, each of us, descended from the star sailors? All of Windhaven is family, really. And there is none among us who cannot find a flyer in his or her family tree, if we go back far enough. Think of that, my friends. And remember that while your eldest child may wear your wings and fly, his younger brother and sisters and all their children for generations after will be land-bound.

Should we really deny them the wind forever, simply because their ancestors were second-born, instead of first?" Jamis smiled. "Perhaps I should add that I was my mother's second son. My elder brother died in a storm six months before he was to take his wings. A small thing, that. Don't you think?"

He looked around, at the two Landsmen who flanked him, who had sat silently through all the proceedings, quieted by flyers' law. He whispered first to one, then to the other, and nodded.

"We find that Corm's proposal, to name Maris of Lesser Amberly an outlaw, is out of order," Jamis said.

"We will now vote on Maris' proposal, to establish a flyers' academy open to all. I vote in favor."

After that, there was no more doubt.

Afterward, Maris felt slightly in shock, giddy with victory, yet somehow not able to believe that it was really over, that she did not have to fight anymore. The air outside the hall was clean and wet, the wind blowing steadily from the east. She stood on the steps and savored it, while friends and strangers crowded about her, wanting to talk. Dorrel kept his arm around her, and did not ask questions nor express amazement; he was restful to lean against. What now? she wondered. Home again? Where was Coll? Perhaps he'd gone to fetch Barrion and bring the boat.

The crowd around her parted. Russ stood there, Jamis at his side. Her stepfather was holding a pair of wings. "Maris," he said.

" Father?" Her voice was trembling.

"This is how it should have been all along," he said, smiling at her. "I would be proud if you would let me call you daughter again, after all that I have done. I would be even prouder if you would wear my wings."

"You've won them," Jamis said. "The old rules don't apply, and you're certainly qualified. Until we get the academy going, there's no one to wear them except you and Devin. And you took better care of these than Devin ever did of his."

Her hands went out to take the wings from Russ. They were hers again. She was smiling, no longer tired, buoyed by the weight of them in her hands, the familiarity of them. "Oh, Father," she said, and then, weeping, she and Russ embraced each other.

When the tears were gone, they all went to the flyers' cliff, quite a crowd of them. "Let's fly to the Eyrie,"

she said to Dorrel. Then there was Garth, just beyond — she had not noticed him in the crowd before.

"Garth! You come too. We'll have a party!"

"Yes," Dorrel said, "but is the Eyrie the place for it?"