Pegasus by Robin McKinley

Author:Robin McKinley
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Body, Mind & Spirit, Magick Studies, Pegasus (Greek mythology), Girls & Women, Mythical, Nature, Juvenile Fiction, Fantasy & Magic, General, Fantasy, Royalty, Magic, Princesses, Biography & Autobiography, Animals, Fiction, Science Fiction, Human-animal communication
ISBN: 9780399246777
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2010-11-02T04:01:02.652000+00:00

CHAPTER 12

When she woke the next morning she couldn’t imagine where she was. She was lying on a mattress on the ground, which should have been cold and uncomfortable, but was not. It was a feather mattress, and as she slept, it had shaped itself under and curled itself around her like a friendly animal, or animals; she thought of the way her father’s dogs lay together in sinuous heaps. There was another, lighter feather mattress or feather-stuffed quilt over her, and pillows beneath her head, and sunlight dappling her face through leaves. She didn’t want this mysterious idyll to end, but as she turned her head she saw a bright rufous pegasus walk past, in the clear daylight beyond the tree shadows, and it all came back to her in a rush.

She sat up with a sigh, and thrust her feet out from under the coverlet. She’d somehow managed to get herself into her nightgown—she didn’t remember this at all—but she knew she needed a bath. She stood up, waveringly.

A pegasus she didn’t remember meeting before appeared almost as if by magic, briefly touched her cheek with a feather-hand, nodded and turned away from her, looking back over her shoulder to see if she would follow. She did, bemusedly stroking her cheek where the pegasus had touched her. The pegasus led her toward a sound of running water and then Ebon emerged from the darker tree-shadows.

Clear morning and clear sky to you all day, he said. And it looks like we might get them. You humans like privacy for bathing, don’t you? Straight through there, then, there’s a pool, and it’s yours while you’re here. Someone even thought of, uh, towels. When you’re done rattle the bushes and I’ll come for you.

I’ll need some clothes, she said.

Right away? Surely it’s warm enough in this sun even without any hair? Never mind. I’ll get your dad to show me what to bring, and I’ll leave it here.

She had a glorious bath, made only slightly less glorious by an ignoble fear that some pegasus or other would forget that humans like privacy while they bathe and interrupt her; there was nothing (she decided) like being entirely surrounded by pegasi to make a human feel stringy and pathetic, naked as a rat’s tail. She wondered what the towels were for when there weren’t any humans to use them as towels—since there never were any humans to use them as towels, and they felt soft with some kind of use. Perhaps the pegasi had other things that needed drying. Maybe baby pegasi had baths; perhaps they dried the dishes after a banquet. She looked at the towel she wrapped herself up in: it had the same kind of soft, close, near-invisible weaving that all the pegasus fabric she’d ever seen did, but it was thick and heavy, like fine wool, but smoother than any wool she knew.

Her bag of clothes was hanging on a branch as promised and, assuming she’d be warned in

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