Chapter Twenty-Three: Flight
"...and then we entered your valley, and you scared the daylights out of me when all your people jumped off the cliff."
"We frightened you?" Rhye exclaimed happily.
"Completely," I replied, speaking for myself and Phillip and laying it on a bit thick since it seemed to amuse her so. "I couldn't imagine what was so horrible that would make a whole herd of horses run off a cliff. But it was very surprising and beautiful when you all flew."
I could tell she was pleased at being called beautiful and I wondered if no one had ever called her that before. I added more wood to the fire, for the night was cold. Rhye watched everything with interest, gathering her energy before she started a new barrage of questions.
"What does a lion look like?"
I lifted Rhindon and showed her the hilt. "Like this. This is a lion's head. A male lion, I should say. The females don't have a mane like this. They all have long, smooth bodies shaped more like you than me. Their tales are long and bare except for a tuft at the end. Their legs are shorter and thicker and they don't have hooves. They have paws."
"Paws?" She found the word funny. "What's a paws?"
I spread out my fingers. "Paw. Like this, only broader. They can be soft as your nose when the lion wants, or they have claws sharper than this sword."
She sniffed at the ornate sword. "Are they all silver?"
"No. Mostly they're brown and gold. Aslan is all golden, with yellow eyes."
"I like the way you say Aslan," the mare abruptly said, staring into the embers of the fire. "It's different from how our storytellers say it or I say it. From you, it makes me want to run and fly fast and far on a cold wind. Say it again."
"Aslan!" I cried.
"Again!"
"Aslan." This time in a whisper.
She whinnied and shivered in delight and I laughed along with her. Phillip chuckled. She was charming beyond telling.
"Why do you say it so much better, Peter High King?" asked Rhye.
I leaned back against Phillip's warm side, considering. "Maybe it's because Aslan knows me so well." She shimmied her wings again on purpose at the mention of his name, just to make me smile. "He chose me and he blessed me and it's such an incredible and ... well, transforming thing for anyone to experience that I suppose you carry it with you."
"I would like to meet him some day."
"I think he would like that very much, Rhye."
She cocked her head, gazing at me with an assessing gleam in her brown eyes. Finally she said, "I think you'd have to groom me again before I met him, though."
"I will," I promised.
OoOoOoOoOoOoO
When I awoke the next morning the sun was up, the dew was dry, and Rhye and Phillip were industriously eating the grass all around me. I sat up with a groan, my body stiff, looking at them as I tried to remember how to be alert and aware. They gazed at me with interest, their mouths full of grass and green foam.
"You should have woken me up," I muttered and yawned hard enough to split my face.
"Why?" asked the mare. "Phillip says you haven't been sleeping. So sleep."
"We have to get to the Garden."
"We will. It's not far, King Peter. Just over those mountains."
So casually she said that. Everything was relative, I told myself as I smiled and made myself stand. I was very tired. I had set a pace I would not be able to keep up with for much longer and fatigue was creeping up upon me. When it pounced, I would go down, I knew. Breakfast was cold hare and some oxalis and plantain greens growing within reach. My own comb was not to be found at the moment and I so I used Phillip's curry comb to straighten the mop atop my head. To my private horror I had enough hair hanging down my neck to tie back. Edmund would savage me for this. Finally I stood up and shook out the blankets, rolling them up and breaking down camp. I stacked everything by the saddle and turned to Phillip.
"You'll be all right here?"
"I'll wait exactly here," he promised.
I patted his shoulder and turned to Rhye, who seemed extremely excited for some reason. I smoothed her mane and said, "I have to get on your back. It might feel strange to be carrying me. Can you hold still a moment?"
She struck a statuesque pose, freezing in place. It was tight, but I seized a handful of mane and swung up onto her back with my legs snugly in front of her wings. She blinked and shifted a bit, then walked around to get herself used to carrying a person, stretching out her wings and flapping them experimentally..
"It's not so strange," she decided after a minute.
Philip, who stood a bit higher than Rhye, leveled a hearty glare at her. "Do. Not. Drop. Him."
"Hm." She snorted and tossed her head. "Don't wander off, Phillip," she countered brightly, "you might get lost. Peter High King, are you ready?"
I smiled despite myself. "Ready, lady."
The title seemed to please her and she turned, facing the plain. "Hold on!" she called, and started running.
I let out a loud whoop of anticipation and delight as she kicked off the ground and launched herself into the air. It would have been frightening if it wasn't so thrilling. The earth dropped away like a stone. Phillip galloped across the field after us, growing smaller and smaller as we ascended. He was the size of a dog, then a toy, then Rhye wheeled away as she caught the cold wind beneath her wings and I lost sight of the good Horse.
Huge, silver-gray wings stretched out wide on either side of me as she raced towards the west. I laughed and shouted at the sensation of being so high and moving so fast on the warm back of a living, breathing legend. I was the first person in over seven hundred years to see a Winged Horse and not since the dawn of Narnia had anyone ridden one. The sun beat down on us, its heat snatched away by the bitterly icy winds off the mountains. I didn't care. For this feeling, this freedom, I would have endured far worse. The miles melted under her wings as she angled ever upwards towards the tallest of the mountains, following the Great River. The ground rushed by, the mountains passing more slowly. She seemed to know the way and we saw none of her people, though at one point I spotted an eagle far below us. For an hour or more she flew, her mighty wings pumping, keeping us apace with the winds. No plants were visible now, just barren rock and ice and snow. Even with her claim that her people were not as mighty as they were in days of old I could easily see how Fledge flew this distance in a mere two days.
"Through that pass, beyond that mountain lies the Garden," she called loudly. "The glaciers ring it completely. You would not have been able to cross."
I gazed down. She was absolutely right. We were approaching a vast, thick sheet of ancient ice that draped and dragged on the mountain like a heavy cloak. She swooped low to show me and I let out another excited yell as my stomach seemed to drop at the sudden motion. I could feel the chill of the ice, a different kind of cold from the wind. She could sense my joy and she tossed her head, letting out a shrill neigh that echoed off the mountains. I held on tightly as Rhye put on a burst of speed for the soul purpose of hearing me shout with pleasure. We both laughed, and as she found a steady rhythm with her wings I recalled one of Phillip's chants to fit the long beats. It was very simple, the Horse equivalent of a nursery rhyme, and I called out loudly enough for her to hear:
"Hey whinny high stride
Hey whinny low,
Hey whinny bide
In the green field below."
"What is that?" Rhye shouted above the wind. She sounded as excited by the chant as I was by the flight. "What are you saying? How do you say it like that? What does it mean?"
"It's a song!" I called back. "Phillip taught me. It's to teach foals how to tell the seasons. Listen!
Hey whinny north gust
Hey whinny low,
Hey whinny bring us
Ice and snow.
Hey whinny high stride
Hey whinny low,
Hey whinny bide
In the green field below.
Hey whinny stars shine
Hey whinny low,
Hey whinny for the south
Sun bends low.
And hey whinny calling
Hey whinny low,
Hey whinny falling
Leaves do blow.
Hey whinny Horse runs
Hey whinny low,
Hey whinny seasons
'Round do go!"
She listened breathlessly, and when I was done she seemed to shiver with emotion. I don't know if she even had a name for what she felt, but I realized she had never heard anything like it before in her life.
"Song! Song! It's a song! I want that!" she cried. "I want that for my own! That's better than all the stories Cloudburst has ever told! Say it again!"
I obliged. By the fourth time she had figured out how to keep the beat with her wings and she had the words down. It was wonderful to be witness to her joy in the simple gift of music and it made me forget how frightfully cold I had become and how breathless the thin air made me. We sang it together twice.
"Teach me more!" begged the mare.
By the time we reached the last pass, she knew the words and pace of my converted version of "Long, Long Trail." I noticed she could hit more notes than Phillip, but she couldn't hold them any better. Whether that was because she was a Winged Horse or female I couldn't say, but once I explained what a nightingale was she was very satisfied with my song. It took a dozen tries for her to get it right and then we sang it together until she was satisfied. She learned it just in time, because even as she was getting the rhythm of the chant correct in her head we burst through the last mountain pass.
A ring of towering mountains surrounded the valley, glaciers nestled between them and filling the gaps. In the center of the valley all was green and lush, a vast plain of emerald grass. In the center of the plain rose a sharp, steep hill, crowned by a circular wall on top and encircled by a blue moat of water below. The warmth of the valley was amazing, given its altitude and the glaciers surrounding it. The glaciers, I realized, were the source of the Great River, constantly melted by the beautifully warm Garden in their midst. Rivers of ice converted to rivers of water that brought life to Narnia hundreds of miles away.
I took a breath, startled by the change in temperature. The air smelled sweeter than summer. I stared, unable to speak, overwhelmed by the moment and the rush of warm air.
I had made it to the Garden. The quest was halfway done.