falling
from a great height
Andalee
knew descent, and she knew falling; and this was falling.
It
wouldn’t have done, in a decision like this, to have simply descended. For
this, you fell, and you fell long. There
was a moment, right after she pushed off the precipice, when her gut was
wrenched by the irreversibility of it, but it was followed by a heady mix of
exhilaration and resignation as she felt her fall pull her on its inexorable
course down, down, down. And
the world, in its stately and graceful way, spiraled upwards to meet her.
There
was probably a moment, some time past now, when she could have changed her mind.
But the others were too stubborn, too callous, too set in their ways. She
would be happier. It was really
decided in the moment she knew the council had turned against her, those cold,
impassive faces, all full of the rightness of their power and their sick pride.
Power? What kind of power? A terrible joke, almost, the way they bound it up in
their laws and codes and in their joyless music, instead of really changing
things. Well, she’d show them what could really be done.
Only
the one they called Magister Blood, because his name was said to be too terrible
to speak even among his own kind, had smiled at her; a cold smile, and it had
chilled her deeply as he looked at her from his great seat with his long sword
like a scepter in his hand, but it had given her just enough courage to take the
next step.
“Fine,”
she’d said, barely able to restrain her rage, “I’ll go, then.
I’ll leave the council and the Hall. I’ll go into the world and do
what I can. And if none of you will stand with me, I’ll do it alone.”
It
was then that the Highmost had spoken, as he rarely did, in his dry, terrible
rasp, his lips just seen moving in the shadows under his yellow cowl:
“Andalee, are you decided on this course?”
“Yes,”
she’d said, and her voice had barely broken at all.
“Go,
then,” said the Highmost, “go, and take no blessing with you, but live in
the world and be of its corruption. You leave behind all trappings, all offices,
all rights to voice and to Council. Let
emptiness be your legacy in this place. This
shall not be undone.”
And
then she’d swept away, before any of the others could have a chance to turn
their backs on her, and left the Hall to go prepare herself.
So
now it came to this, this fall, and she would allow herself to take no shape
that would ease the pain of it for her, but let the world do what it would when
she came into it. And as it came
closer, she could see in her mind the Magister’s grim smile, and wondered for
the first time if she had it in her to do what she set out to.
She
hadn’t expected the rush on her senses, though; the brightness of its greens
and blues, the sharp, sweet smell of it: the strange music of its sounds all at
once, louder and louder as the vast, voluptuous roll of its landscapes careened
up to welcome her. Teeming life in forests and deep pools, in shadowed crevasses
and running over huge plains, all of it, all together, a song and a great work
to welcome her with jubilation as well as pain.
The earth, when she struck, was hard; but she’d known harder.