Sunfall by C. J. Cherryh

Author:C. J. Cherryh [Cherryh, C. J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance, Adventure, Science Fiction, Fiction, General, Short Stories, Space Opera, Social Science, Sociology, Urban
ISBN: 9780749303563
Google: YH8gAQAAIAAJ
Amazon: 0749303565
Publisher: Mandarin
Published: 1981-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

"I have gone too far," Ilya said. "Don't look, Andrei, go back to your bed; you are dreaming. Go back."

So a dream might speak to him, his own mind's reasoning in a phantom's mouth. It made him disbelieve for a moment, and in that moment Ilya turned and walked on, toward the north. "Wait," he cried, and followed, finding it harder and harder to go, for the wind no longer carried him. "Ilya, wait."

A second time the face turned to him, still Ilya's eyes, though unnaturally calm. And now the wolves ranged themselves upon a low ridge, slitted eyes agleam. "Come back from them," Andrei pleaded. "Do you not see them?"

Ilya looked on him with that look which he must once have turned on those who loved him, which reckoned him very distantly, and dismissed him, finding all the flaws in him.

"The wolves," he wept. "Ilya, do you not see them?"

"No," Ilya said slowly and considerately, looked about at them, and turned back. "There's nothing there. Go back. I've done this so you could go back, don't you understand?"

"I'll hunt them," he vowed. "I'll hunt them every one."

"No," Ilya said softly, and behind him stood the pony with eyes full of the sun; indeed the sun was rising, a thin line and bead, with glimmerings and streamings across the ice, ribbons and shafts of light which swept the snowy plain with rose and lavenders and opal odors. Ilya looked toward that sudden brilliance, turning his back. A shape was there, one with the light, robed in light, white like the snows.

"Ilya," Andrei murmured, but Ilya walked away. Andrei caught Umnik by the mane, but no more could he hold the pony... Umnik walked too. The wolves glided and flowed to that shape, becoming one with it, which was woman or man, and intolerably bright. "Ilya," it whispered, and opened its arms.

Andrei caught at Hya's sleeve, and received another distant look, turned him, hugged him, to keep his face from that shape, which became woman, and chill, and ineffably beautiful. "It is your Wolf," he said, holding Hya's face between his hands. "No more real than mine."

"As real," Ilya said. "Never less real than yours." Ilya hugged him, slightly, and without love, with only the memory of it. "You gave it what you give to beauty, Andrei; and so do I. And so do I."

He walked away, and Andrei stood, as if there were a bond holding him that had yielded all it could: he could not go further. He watched Ilya and the pony, one after the other, reach that light, saw the semblance of arms reach from it, and enfold Ilya, so that for a moment they seemed two lovers entwined; saw Umnik blurred likewise into that streaming beauty, and saw it spread with coming morning.

Of a sudden as the light came Umnik was coming back, with a rider on his back, out of the sun which streamed about him and shot rays where his hooves touched the drifts.

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