Fish Tails (42 page)

Abasio slept the sleep of an exhausted man. He half wakened once, thinking he had heard the frantic whinnying scream of a panicky horse at some distance, but all was utterly silent except for two owls, talking over a considerable distance. Hoo. Hoo? Who? Who? Who indeed?

W
HEN MORNING CAME,
X
ULAI WAS
first up to prepare breakfast so that Kim could get on his way with the horse. He was as eager to get started as they all were. Abasio rose, went into the woods with the latrine shovel, and returned to lean it near the wagon door.

Xulai called to him. “Wake the children, will you? Willum's usually first up!”

Abasio pulled the curtain aside from the wheels and leaned down. “They're up,” he called. “They're not here.”

She turned from the fire, suddenly alert. When the children were awake, they were inevitably audible and, usually, visible. Kim rose and came to stand beside her. “No, they're not up, Abasio. I would have seen them.”

Xulai bent over to stare under the wagon. The bedding was disturbed. Their clothes were still hanging on the hooks. She knew at once they were not merely
up.
They were gone! There were footprints near the wagon, large ones that had not been made by Abasio or Kim. There was the sign of a very small struggle at the place the canvas skirts reached the ground. There was no sign of Willum or of Needly.

When they pulled the children's bedding out, a note came with it, a piece of heavy paper, somewhat wrinkled, as though it had been clutched in someone's hand.

Our children are at risk. It is only fair that your children should also be at risk. I would have taken your own had they been older and other than they are. These are not born to you, but they are dear to you, nonetheless. They are hostages being held against your word that you will do for ours what you have done for yours.

There was no signature. The writing itself was . . . clear but clumsy, written by someone who did not write a lot. Its provenance was made clear by the tiny bronze feather, half the length of Xulai's smallest finger, threaded through two slits in the paper—­which wasn't really paper. It was the skin of something: maybe a lamb; maybe something else. Xulai sat quite still upon the wagon step, white-­faced, while Kim and Abasio trailed the footprints back into the forest a bit, then up the hillside toward the road above, where they joined the hoofprints of two horses, hoofprints that wandered into the forest, headed south. And shortly after that, disappeared entirely!

And there had been that frantic whinny in the night!

“Lifted,” Abasio whispered to Xulai when he returned, ashen-­faced. “Two horses, two riders, two children lifted, carried through the air: gently no doubt. The Griffin may have made several trips. They were set down somewhere else . . . I think I heard one of the horses last night. It screamed as it was hauled into the air, no doubt. I should have, should have . . .” He should have nothing! It had been too late even then.

“Another Griffin may have helped her,” said Xulai hopelessly. “She spoke of others, Abasio. She may not have planned this alone.”

He went on, doggedly. “Whether the children are with the men or with her, we don't know. Where they may be, we don't know.”

“Where
she
may be, we will know,” grated Xulai. “She will be following us!”

A
T THAT MOMENT THE
G
RIFFIN
was not following anyone. She was poised on a ledge above a canyon, her back to the cave behind her, from which two voices continued to speak as they had been speaking querulously for far too long a time. Her command to her two prisoners that they lie down and go to sleep had not been obeyed.

“ . . . and just shows you don't know much about humans if you think we can sleep on that rock! You better figure some way to soften it, then, 'cause if we try to sleep on that, you might just as well kill us and get it over with. Without some kind of mattress we're already so sore we can hardly move,” said a small female voice.

Another, slightly louder, continued another plaint. “ . . . and what in all that's holy do you expect us to eat—­raw rabbit?”

“There's firewood there,” the Griffin muttered, turning to stare at the lump of fur Needly was confronting.

“There's nothing to start a fire with,” Willum replied, with scornful indignation. “An' I didn't notice you breathin' fire. Griffins don't do that anyhow. Dragons do. You got a pet one hid somewheres? There's no pot to cook anything in even if we had a dragon. There's no knife to skin a rabbit, supposing there is any rabbit flesh on that particular carcass, though it looks to be mostly bones.”

Needly remarked, “If those two sneaks and villains had brought my pack, I'd have what I need, but they didn't bring anything at all useful.” This was not quite true. The sack containing the Griffin's tear and all the little bottles was still tied around her waist, under the loose shirt Xulai had given her to sleep in. Following Grandma's precept, sleeping or waking, she kept it always with her.

“I've got a little knife in my nightshirt pocket,” said the sullen voice from the back of the cave. “But I can't start a fire with it 'less I have tinder and a piece a flint, which I don't! 'Less maybe the lady has flint claws? That'd help. What I want to know is where do we go when we need to go. I'm not goin' to hang my bottom out over that edge and let the wind blow me off! An' Needly can't piss off the side neither.”

She, the Griffin, had never considered pissing. She and her like did it catlike, first digging a hole. Obviously, the stony ledge would not be suitable.

“ . . . and besides, if you give us nothing but meat,” Needly continued, “we'll get sick. Humans have to have roughage. Grandma insisted on it!”

“Roughage?” the wholly carnivorous Griffin muttered. “And that is . . . ?”

“Whole grain! Fibrous fruits and vegetables! Oats and rice and wheat and corn stuff. And grain has to be cooked. That's what. And what are we supposed to drink? That water back in that cave stinks . . .”

“It's pure rainwater,” insisted the Griffin.

“It may have started out as pure rainwater before it got a whole lot of something dead in it,” snarled Needly. “You go take a sniff of it! I'd say it's pretty good rotted-­bat soup by now.”

The Griffin went to the edge of the precipice and dropped into the canyon below, snapping her wings open at the last moment. She often slept on ledges! She scorned such things as mattresses! So did her little one! She found herself wondering, however, whether having an exceptionally thick coat of fur on belly and sides might not serve the same purpose as a mattress. The children did not have a thick coat of fur. They did not even have adequate clothing. She had not considered that when they were sleeping, they would be largely unclothed, that they might wear only thin little garments, without shoes. Whenever had Griffins had to consider clothing? Her little one had kept the children warm last night. Both the children cuddled with the little one, but neither of them would come near her, the little one's mother, even though she had not hurt them. Except that she had not thought to tell the men to bring their clothing or bedding. She had had enough trouble getting the men to write the message correctly!

She circled, climbed, landed once more on the ledge, in time to hear Needly saying, “You know, I don't think your mama figured out this hostage business in advance!” The little Griffin had come out of the cave and Needly was sitting on one of her front legs combing her mane. When the big one landed, Needly turned toward her, stared upward into her right eye, and said in a pathetic little voice, “You really should have figured it out in advance, Lady Animal.” She turned her face back into the baby's mane and began to weep, heartbreakingly.

Willum came out of the cave with tears in his own eyes. He put his arm around Needly, and the Griffin child snuggled up to them both, giving her mother a very angry and puzzled look that said, “Why are you being so mean to my friends?”

“Ax,” muttered the Griffin to herself. “Knife. Clothing. Mattresses. Blankets. Pot. Food supplies.” Her eyes raked the surroundings, looking for any diggable surface. None. Only rock. “New location where they can dig holes. Something to dig with! ”

Her angry soliloquy was interrupted by a sound from the sky: a scream, as of tortured metal, rent into shards. A shout as of a monstrous ripping of the very firmament, shrill and deep at once, a sound that cut into ears, pierced brains. It hurt. The children cowered as the sound neared from behind the peak above them.

The big Griffin's head snapped back, and she hissed, her voice full of barely suppressed panic. “Into the cave, quickly! Quickly, or he'll kill you!”

The little Griffin was already up, butting Needly with her head. Willum stood, peering up.

“Now,” the Griffin hissed, in a voice that allowed no dissent, bowling Willum through the cave entrance with one vastly outstretched and very muscular wing.

The children had been virtually launched into the cave. The little Griffin righted herself, opened her own wings, and pushed them farther back, hissing with alarm. There was a place, there, where the roof went straight back only a few feet from the floor, making a long, low, horizontal niche mostly hidden behind a litter of fallen stones. They squirmed into it, scratched by the floor of it, bruised by the walls of it. Once inside, they were hidden, the little Griffin in the middle where the roof was a bit higher, a child pressed tightly against her on either side, their heads invisible behind the stones in front.

“Who's up there?” whispered Willum.

“It's the male Griffin. He is named Despos,” whispered the little one in return. “Little things stay hid when Despos comes.”

“Why?” whispered Needly.

“He kills things. He wants to kill all mankinds now, before the waters come. Mama and the other Griffin mamas say no. Mankinds can help us live, but Despos says no, vengeance now, no waiting. He is very angry.”

“He'd kill us if he saw us?”

“He kills everything,” said the little one. “He was made very angry, you see. He did not get that way. The ones who made him, they made him terrible to begin with. So he would kill, without thinking, without considering . . .”

“If you have lots of female Griffins, I should think they could conquer him,” said Willum.

“Oh, no, no,” cried the little one. “To conquer Despos they would have to kill him. There is no conquering unless it is to kill Despos, and if he is killed, then we would be no more!” She began crying, crystal tears, falling onto the stone like shards of tinkling glass.

Needly stared. “Child, tell me about the ­people who made the Griffins. Did they make many female Griffins?”

“They made several, not many. One time I have seen ten in one place. Mama said that was more than half.”

“How many male Griffins did they make?”

“They made several, but Despos has killed all the others. Despos is . . . never thinking of tomorrow. For Despos, everything is now.”

As she whispered, the cave went dark as something moved before the entry. They could detect the glitter of dark, almost black scales edged in bronze. Scales the width of a human head, as long as a forearm. They could note the expanse of a shoulder that blocked out the sun. Limbs as thick through as great trees! Needly shivered and put her hand over Willum's mouth, all in one motion, for he had been about to make an unconsidered sound out of sheer surprise.

“Shhh,” she whispered. “It's bigger than the female one.”

It was bigger . . . and louder; and more violent; and more vehement. The muscular arm that blocked half the cave entrance reached out. They saw it grasp something, heard the sound of an avalanche, saw the claw come back holding an enormous boulder. A moment later came heard a thunderous crash from the forest below. Voices roared. His deep, so deep it was like listening to thunder talk. Hers softer, higher, submissive. Too submissive.

Came a questioning roar, verbal but unintelligible. “Not here,” replied the female. Another roar. “Far from here,” came the answer.

Needly threw her arms around the little one's neck, put her face against that much larger face, her cheek against the smooth beak, her hands stroking behind the ear, as one might a cat, along the jaw, as any self-­respecting cat would demand one to do. She whispered, “What does he want?”

“If any of the females have eggs, he wants to break them because they might be males. If they have young, he wants to see them to be sure they are not males. Mama says they are far from here, Mama says they have no eggs, no young ones.”

“She's trying to delay him?”

“So there haven't been any baby-­boy Griffins?”

The little one wept crystal tears. “There have been, yes. Despos kills them. It takes a long, long time for the egg to hatch. After it hatches and when it gets a lot bigger, the mother has to build a nest for the little one, because she can't hunt if she's carrying the baby. She plucks her neck feathers to keep the nest warm. But Despos, he follows the females to the nest. Sometimes he kills female babies by mistake. And we cannot kill Despos, for if he dies, Mama says, so do we all.”

All sound had ceased upon the ledge. Then an enormous blast of air laden with dust and rock chips buffeted them. The huge wings outside had flapped, down! Again and again, and the black bulk before the cave opening lifted with a tumult like a hurricane. The sound lessened, lessened, and was gone. The she Griffin had lured him away, somehow. The children crawled from the horizontal slit. Needly took her comb from the shirt pocket, and began to comb the little one's mane, snarled and tangled from being caught on the rough stone. The individual filaments emerged from the flesh as quills, feathered at the sides, gradually lengthened into thick hairs, still with tiny feathery protrusions to either side, and at last thinned into real, silky hair that was very like human hair.