Dream

Finally, as the eastern sky began to lighten and the stars faded, they came to the end of the marsh, and a river. Beside the river was a hill, one great grey stone that rose above its surroundings. The top was flat, ringed with  trees that formed a living henge, and covered with oak leaves and thick moss. They landed there and crept into the shelter of a fallen live oak. They lay there, numb with exhaustion, seeing the sun's edge at the horizon grow into light.
Finally she made the effort to look at him. "Why wouldn't you let me land?"
He sighed. "At the Tower? You don't always fly. Sometimes, often, when you jump from the Tower, you just fall. There's no way to know which it'll be, you just have to do it and hope. Or stay in the Tower. But if you do that, you'll starve. No way around that. Sooner or later, you escape or you die."
 

Port

They drifted over the upper city and the lower city, past the Bridge of Virgins, following the river down to the harbor. War galleys slept there, and merchantmen with lateen sails, feluccas and fishing boats and dragon ships from distant lands. They flew over a proud ship lit with lanterns, where slave girls danced on the decks to the music of pipes and tambourines. They turned south, skimmed over the dunes of the shore and on across the marshes, flying high enough to see a swath of white sand on their left and the Bay of the Moon dark beyond. They flew, and the sky began to lighten and the stars faded, and still they flew. The marshes stretched out ahead of them to the horizon. Her body ached, and her eyes were sore from the constant wind. They began to pass over clusters of stilted huts. There were men in long narrow canoes, casting nets, who paused to look up as they flew.

Dream time

She clambered onto the parapet wall and looked down, eighty, ninety feet, to shadowed stone. She took a deep breath, and jumped. Oh shit I'm falling I'm going to die! Her body clenched from groin to throat. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't throw up. I did it wrong why did I trust him I'm sorry I'm so sorry help me oh God please help me--

And then her wings opened and caught the wind.

Thank you, thank you....wow.

She tossed her head back and thought Up! and the wings beat, lifting her. She thought about landing on the roof she'd just jumped from, at least long enough to steady herself--she was still shaking, and nauseous--but the owl man cried "No, don't land! Rise up, rise up!" She rose, suddenly weary, and followed him.
As they floated over the city's towers, he named them for her. The one that looked like a half-melted white candle was the Tower of Art. The slim brown one, atop which sat a man with a long sword laid flat across his wrists, was the Pillar of Autumn Mandolins. Soldiers paced on the dark square walls of the Fortress of Night.

Dream time

She fell sleep in her tight little bedroom, to a long steady drumming rain. She woke slowly, drifting up from the depths of a dream. Her eyes opened and she saw the moonlit white wall for a long time before consciousness crept in and she remembered her room's walls were beige, not white. And her ceiling wasn't that high. And....there was a man sitting on the end of her bed, perched on the footboard, watching her, with only the faintest motion of his chest to show that he wasn't a statute carved. "Who are you? And where am I?"

"You know who I am," he said quietly. "You called me out of shadow. You are in the Tower of the Distant Lover, in the Dream Quarter of Umbalek, the city of a thousand spires." He smiled suddenly. "Eight hundred ninety-two spires, last time I counted." He rocked forward and backwards and was suddenly standing upright in the center of the room. "You have come to find my place. Come up with me."

He walked out of the room without looking back, and it was only as he passed through the arched doorway that he realized he wasn't wearing anything. She couldn't think of him as naked, or nude; he seemed to be wearing what he usually wore, which happened to be nothing. When she got out of bed, she realized she wasn't wearing much more. She'd gone to sleep in jeans and flannel shirt and wool socks. What she had now was a sideless tunic, or tabard, of thin natural linen, its border intricate with Celtic knotwork in burgundy thread, and a gold chain belt low on her hips. There was no other clothing in the room that she could see, no slippers or underwear or robe. She shrugged and followed the man.

Outside the room, stairs spiraled up the tower to a broad flat roof eighty feet in the sky, encircled by a parapet of quartz. The man dipped his fingers in cinnamon and pollen and painted symbols on her brow and eyelids, forearms and feet. He gave no explanation, working in silence. When he was done, he put a feather cloak on her shoulders, although the night was warm. The wind smelled of wood smoke and the sea. The horizon beyond the parapet showed towers, in all directions, stone spires white or grey or dark under the moon. He took two quick steps and dove over the edge of the parapet. An icy shock went through her, but before she had time to gasp, he spread his arms and his shape changed to a cloud-colored owl. He dipped and rose in the wind and circled to hover over her, wings tilting. He spoke, and his voice was still his own. "You are robed in swan's wings. Rise up, and come with me."