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Yara muffled her face with a scarf. The head wind burned her cheekbones, brought tears to her eyes. Yara knew that a little longer and she would feel like a piece of ice, which was set crookedly on the horse. Everything would fuse into a frozen mass: thoughts, happiness, love for Ul, and even fear. Only the desire for warmth would remain. De
The sky in the east was crimson-striped like a treacherously killed zebra. Yara kept the course directly to these stripes, anxiously examining them. Suddenly something changed in the sky, and above them hung a large cloud, dazzling-white on the edges and rather soiled in the centre. Wisps separated from the cloud. Imagine a cat hidden inside ripping it up with its paws. Yara looked down and estimated. Still low. Must get higher for the dive. She waved to De
De
Knowing how much energy a horse needed to gain altitude, Yara let Eric fly to the south, keeping it along the dark edge of the lower cloud. The sky here had no clear boundaries. A large cloud dropped off like a mountain. At the base of the mountain smaller clouds were joined by limp beards. From where the sun’s rays got tangled in the beards, four points, like hay in the horse’s wings, suddenly appeared. With each second the points became larger. Soon Yara distinguished dense, leathery wings exactly like that of a dragon. These were hyeons. Tiny figures pressed onto their backs. “Hell! Trouble!” thought Yara.
At this moment four winged points broke apart into two teams of two. One team stayed circling below, the other dived for the cloud. “Look! Warlocks!” she shouted to De
Yara did not pack much power into this second shout, knowing that the wind would nevertheless carry away three quarters of it. After ascertaining that De
She hardly touched its neck with the reins and Eric responded. It leaned forward, pointed its snout to the ground and, accelerating, flapped its wings vigorously several times. After the fifth or sixth stroke it folded up its wings; however, because of Yara and the saddle it could not do this as in the stable. It turned out that it held her with the base of its wings at their widest part. Yara found herself between two shields protecting her all the way to her chest. Now and then it came to her mind that only this makes it possible to dive. Just have to understand: either by chance or deep thought-out regularity.
The horse gained speed. Gravitational force drew it to the ground. Yara leaned down, trying to take cover behind the horse’s neck. The wind was whistling keener and shriller all the time. The free end of the scarf whipped the back of her head painfully.
Yara attempted to look around in order to determine where De
Making use of the fact that Yara carelessly turned her body and removed it from under the protection of the wings, the wind hit her chest and cheek, almost knocking her off the saddle. Yara clung to the front pommel, perceiving herself not simply as a pitiful teapot but also a grotesque samovar. Likely trivial, but she lost several valuable seconds. When Yara again saw the ground, it was abruptly close. The silvery box of a trailer crawled on the grey loops of the highway. Yara understood that Eric could no longer lift up with its wings: the speed was too great. But Eric also did not intend to do so.
For a brief moment next to her flickered a dark side in stripes, a flat snout with protruding lower jaw, and closely planted eyes. The person pressed himself so close to the hyeon that they seemed like a two-headed essence. Yara understood that she had run into one of those two warlocks that dived for the cloud. The rider did not manage to turn the hyeon around: the speed of a taking-off hyeon was too incomparable to that of a winged horse almost going into a dive. Understanding this very well, the warlock on the off chance jerked up a hand with the dim half-moon of a crossbow. Eric twitched from the pain. Its elongated neck oozed a long ribbon of blood, as if the horse had been cut by a razor. “He thought that he couldn’t hit me and fired at the horse so that we would crash together,” Yara determined.
The horse rushed towards the ground, acquiring impossible strength with each instant. It was impossible to look at its wings. They did not become white or radiant, but they were blinding all the same and stinging the eyes, becoming too bright for them.
As Eric was transforming, everything around it paled. The hills, the pine trees, the highway were covered by a haze, watered down. At the same time Yara realized that the world remained the same as it was: completely substantial and not spectral. Simply Eric no longer belonged to this world, in which it was nevertheless a guest, although it was old and born here. Repeatedly Yara and other hdivers tried to describe the crossing to novices, but words were insufficient to explain how it was possible to become more real than reality itself despite that it would remain unchanged also.
Yara looked askance at her own hands. This was the dispersion test well-known to hdivers. Next to Eric’s mane the hands seemed flat, cardboard-like. Much less real than Eric. Because of this a
Yara acted instinctively. After realizing that it would be hopeless if left behind, she leaned down and clung to Eric’s neck as tightly as she could. Her cheek was buried in the stiff brush of mane. “Don’t leave me behind! All the same I won’t let go of you!” she whispered soundlessly, knowing that even if Eric heard, it would not be in words nevertheless.
And it did not leave her behind. It closed up base and changed the incline, after wrapping Yara up with its wings like dense sails. Time stopped. The small hill, no more than fifty metres away from Yara, blurred, as if water was splashed from a jar onto fresh watercolour. It did not make room, did not disappear, remained where it was, but Eric and Yara pierced it like a soap bubble, which closed up after them. Yara felt the tension of her own world sliding down along the horse’s wings shielding her. She took a risk and again looked around. Her world slowly floated back, screened off by invisible glass. Somewhere there the trailer was moving and birches grew. Ul also remained there. “Thank you!” Yara whispered. It became clear to her that at the last minute Eric dragged her, the perpetual latecomer, through to become the same as it.