Read Online No Present Like Time by Steph Swainston - Free Book Online

loaded onto the coach. Mist had said we could bring no more than one sea chest each, but my rucksack and Wrenn’s small knapsack were so meager—since I travel light and Wrenn was poor—that Lightning allowed himself more luggage.
    The coachman stooped to check the bits in the mouths of the dapple gray mares and ran the reins through brass rings on the center bar. His scarf and thick buttoned coat made him look portly. He held the coach door open; Wrenn jumped up and struggled inside. Wrenn obviously didn’t know about the steps, which Lightning kicked out from under the polished splashboard. Wrenn settled himself on the seat and removed his woolly liripipe hat. He was obviously feeling self-conscious; I doubted that he had ever been in a coach before. He had changed his clothes—the ones he wore in the ceremony were discarded to show his entrance to a new life. The coachman slammed the door and pulled a leather strap to lower the window. He leaned in, exchanged some words with Lightning, then climbed up to his bench, took the whip in his left hand and flicked the reins. “Hoh!”
    The whole heavy rig rolled forward with the clop of clean hooves, a hiss of water from the wheels. The mares with braided manes shook their heads trying to see around their blinkers. They walked to the gates; I saw their six broad backs, then the dark red shining lacquer of the coach’s roof loaded with wooden chests pass beneath me under the arch. The wheels sucked up sleet from the ground, spraying it into the air above them, leaving two tracks of paving clear from slush.
     

    W renn twisted around to stare at me through the back window, one elbow on the tan leather. I wished that I could hear their conversation on the journey. Lightning paid Wrenn more attention than he paid me, offering the same time-refined advice. But I wanted to reach Awndyn before the coach did. I jumped off the clock tower.
    My wings’ muscular biceps, as thick as thighs bunched together, creasing the middle of my back, then separated as I pulled my wings down in the laborious effort of sustained beating. My long wings are pointed and fairly narrow, good for gliding but taking off is as hard as sprinting. I can usually settle into a rhythm that uses less energy but it’s still like running a marathon.
    I love long-distance journeys; I can stretch out along the route. I relaxed and leaned into the first of the long kilometers. The coach-and-six sounded hollow over the stable’s wide drawbridge across the second moat and out of the Castle’s complex. They passed the paddocks with steaming dung heaps and soggy plowed fields, joined the Eske Road and entered the oak forest that comprised most of that manor.
    I flexed my wings in and rolled once, twice, risked a third although I fell fifty meters each time. I opened my wings hard against the rushing air. High above the coach I rolled wing over wing, watching the even horizon turn a full three hundred and sixty degrees.
    Then I set out for the coast. Diagonal lines of sunlight slanted down, patchily highlighting the level, loamy fields of the plains around the Moren. When flying from manor to manor I find it useful to follow one of the straight military roads that the Castle commanded to be built between towns for the movement of troops. But to fly cross-country I pick a point on the horizon, a notch or a hummock, and head directly toward it. The notches become vales, the hummocks turn into hillsides. When I become tired I fly a more convoluted route to find and climb onto thermals to rest.
    At a height of two hundred meters I don’t see individual tree tops, just a mass of twigs and pine needles. The slate roofs of the towns are scaly patches that look flat among the forest’s green-brown froth. The houses built from local stone were camouflaged in the landscape, and I passed over hunting lodges without seeing them. Towns all seemed the same from the air; I hardly distinguished between them. My travels have taught