Harpy’s Flight. Megan Lindholm

was still too long for him; it flapped behind him, snapping in the wind they created.

      ‘For a moment, Sven pulled Rom up. “Shall we show her how a horse ought to move?” he asked rhetorically. The children shrieked their encouragement. Rom was off like the wind. The grays snorted in disgust.

      ‘Their pale hair blew behind them,’ Ki was moved to say. ‘Drink with me to this sorrow.’ Someone mumbled a response to this. In another place, another Ki raised a tiny cup and tossed it off. It tasted like nothing now. She watched them go, Sven and Rissa laughing, Lars bouncing on the shining black haunches of the horse. Rom’s hooves threw bits of road up behind him. The grays plodded on. The wagon swayed and squeaked.

      ‘Over the hill the three rode,’ sighed Ki. ‘Drink with me to this sorrow.’ A far wind sighed in the trees. A dampness in Ki’s throat. The presence watched with Ki as Rom disappeared over the long rise of hill. The blue sky rested on the hill top, empty. They were gone. ‘I came behind, too slow,’ grieved someone. ‘Drink with me to this sorrow.’ The wind stirred the tall grasses by the road and they rustled dismally. But the day was bright, and Ki on the wagon smiled and swallowed. There was a warm patch of air beside her, warning her that this was enough. Time to come back now. Time to stop. Ki ignored it. There was something she had to do. A task, a chore not to be neglected. Suddenly she was seized by a compulsion to see the other side of the hill. She wanted to whip up the team, shake them into a trot, a ponderous gallop, to crest that rise. But she did not. On they plodded, the wagon creaking cheerfully. Ki could not understand why she smiled, why she did not stand and lash the team into action. Someone was tugging at her, dragging at her arm. There was no one there. The wagon creaked on, inexorably. Hurry, hurry, hurry. Clop, clop, clop, slowly on the rocky road. She crested the rise.

      Ki screamed, wordlessly, endlessly. She could not draw a breath for words. The howl of her grief rushed out of her. She heard that howl bounce back to her, an echo careening back from nowhere.

      Suddenly another Ki was aware and fighting. This was hers, hers alone to bear. They must not see, she must not see. She must not think of what she saw. Harpies take the softest meat. Cheeks of face and round child bellies, buttocks of man, soft visceral tissue, haunch of horse. Don’t see, don’t hear, she begged. Harpies, two blue-green, flashing. Laughing, screaming, tumbling in the air above Ki. Beauty keen as a knife, cold as a river. Whistling their mockery at her loss. Ki could not comprehend her own pain. Not again, not again, someone screamed. The closer she moved to the bodies, the fiercer came the pain, like a heat radiated by a fire. To scream was not enough. She could not cry. She howled like a beast. She must not let them see the Harpies, see how they circled above her, screaming with laughter as she howled.