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Remembrances at a leisurely pace; it was a three-day flight from Castle McDaniels to the first landfall on Oklahomah, and since I’d done Castle to coast in about fourteen minutes flat I had time to make up over the ocean.
    I cut the Mule back to half her regulation speed, and I balanced a very small dulcimer—all I’d been able to fit in my saddlebags, but not all that bad—over her broad neck, and I sang my way dry through a steady wind and plenty of rain by way of a Weather Transformation that it was fully illegal for me to know. Sterling disliked the dulcimer, and she probably disliked my voice even more; it was a good deal like her own. Just as I was never called upon to dance at parties, I was never called upon to sing (anywhere), and I reveled in my opportunity here at a height where there was nobody to clap hands over their ears and beg me to leave off tormenting them. I do know a lot of ballads, not to mention every hymn in the hymnal, and I enjoyed myself tremendously.
    There is some inconvenience, of course, to making any lengthy ocean voyage by Mule, our oceans being almost completely empty of islands or reefs. A person could get through one day without too much hassle, provided you neither ate nor drank the day before nor during the flight itself. But once you went beyond that single day the inevitable happened, and considerable gymnastics were required of both rider and Mule. (This was not the least of the reasons why Ozarkers for the most part went by boat from continent to continent, and it made it unlikely that I would meet any other citizen on Muleback as I went along, which was all to the good in the interests of modesty.) Only for the sake of a symbol would anything so unhandy be undertaken by a reasonable person, and few had that sort of symbol to deal with.
    I had ample time to think about the distances and times of flight that would be expected of me, when my throat and my fingers got tired. Brightwater to McDaniels, one very long day, and then three more to Oklahomah. Three days roughly for each leg of the triangle from Castle Clark to Castle Smith, Castle Smith to Castle Airy, and back again almost to Clark for the best take-off across the channel to Arkansaw— that a day’s flight only, and a short day. Three days’ travel for Castles Farson and Guthrie, a day’s flight to Mizzurah; two days there and two to Castle Puroy Four days across the Ocean of Storms to Kintucky, provided the ocean didn’t do too much living up to its name and force me to put in an extra day for the benefit of the population. Ten days from Kintucky to Tinaseeh. Then the longest leg over water ... the McDaniels children had not been too far off in their estimate of the flight time from Tinaseeh’s southeast tip back to Oklahomah; it was a good five days, even with fair weather and a tailwind. And then four days home. Fifteen days, even cutting it very close, I’d be expected to spend flying over water. And far more than that for the land distances, with stops at the same intervals expected of anyone else.
    Since I was all alone I indulged myself, and turned the air blue to match the stripe between Sterling’s ears, which were still laid back in protest against my concert. I could of done the whole trip , the actual flying time, in about an hour total, just the amount of realtime involved in take-offs and landings, and there was no time to spare with the Jubilee coming in May, and February almost over. But whereas a Magician of Rank could have done it that way and nobody would of done more than maybe fuss mildly about people that felt obliged to show off, having a woman do such a thing would cause about the same amount of commotion as a good-sized groundquake. And the damage would not be repairable by stone and timber: I could shave an hour here and half an hour there and get away with it, but not much more, not without causing more trouble than I could conveniently put an end to. The word would be well out by now,