The Care and Feeding of Griffins (15 page)

Taryn picked up the book, then sighed and tossed it back into her tent.  Her fish was done and it was time to make her tea.  When breakfast was over, she needed to take her bath and then fetch and boil more water.  After that, since it was so dry, she
’d have to gather her basket full of grain and then knuckle down and pull more grass.  She could bandage her hands with socks to cushion them, but that grass just had to go.  And the bottom line was, there just wasn’t time to sit around reading.

But what else was she doing wrong?  And how much else could she blunder through before she made an unforgivable mistake? 

“If only I had some sort of sign,” Taryn said dispiritedly.  She dipped her cup and added her last tea bag for its third use.  Its last use.  The water barely discolored at all.  She took the fish off the fire and picked at it with mournful fingers, opening the skin so it would cool faster.  “I need to know I’m doing the right things with you,” she told Aisling.  His eyes were riveted to her fish, but he whispered a peep.  “And I need…damn it, I need a reason to keep trying.”

He peeped again and she pulled him onto her lap. 
“It’s too hard,” she said, cupping his beak as he tried doggedly to scramble out and snap up some steaming fish.  “I’m hungry, Aisling.  Even after I eat, I’m hungry.  I’m tired.  I wake up tired.  I’m hurt.  I’m…I’m always hurt.  And I don’t know what I’m doing, and every time I try to learn a little more…”  Her eyes went toward the tent, to the little corner of Bancha’s book that could be seen.  She sighed again and looked away.  “…all I manage to learn is what I’ve already fucked up.  The people here pretty much either hate me or ignore me and…and I want to go home.”

A piercing bird-scream sliced the air.

Taryn looked up, curling around Aisling even though no eagle she knew of would ever try to pick off its prey from a person’s lap.  But these weren’t birds.

Overhead, in six neat Vs formed of exactly nine individuals each, as precise in their formation as the Blue Angels, were griffins.  She didn
’t know which kind, was too stunned to even try and figure it out.  There were griffins in the air above her, moving west just as straight as arrows in flight.  Heading for warmer climes, perhaps, or maybe going to join up with the other griffins to lay their eggs and raise their young.

She felt Aisling poke his head out under her arm and she leaned back to let him look, to let him see the flight
—no, the
storm
of griffins as it finished soaring overhead and continued on.  His feathers puffed forward and he crawled a little ways out to stare.

“
Those are griffins,” she said, mesmerized by the play of sunlight on the false metals of their feathers.  “Just like you, baby.”

He peeped, just once, and it was a breathy, amazed sound.

Taryn stood up, Aisling in her arms, and walked out around the tent to watch the griffins until they were nothing but streaks of black on the horizon.  A reason to think that she could really do this, huh?  Did she really need a reason more compelling than the one dangling from her arms?  Well, if she did, there it went.  There was the majesty that could come of this miracle she’d been given.  If she needed a sign, there it was, flashing neon.

That was what the sky looked like with griffins in it.

Taryn returned to her breakfast, smiling.  She sat down, fed Aisling a bite of fish and pulled Bancha’s book back out of her tent.  She opened it, found her place, and started reading as she ate.

24.  Promises to Turtles

S
he came out of the tent the next morning to see one of the horsemen down by the river.  The big one, she thought it was.  Tonka.  He was bent at the waist, or at the shoulders, depending on one’s perspective, and he was prodding at something in the water with the butt of his runka.

Taryn let Aisling down in the tall grass and waited while he scratched out a good peeing-place, keeping her eyes on the horseman.  Tonka remained occupied by whatever he was doing.  It was possible (albeit unlikely) that he hadn
’t even noticed she’d left her tent.  She ought to just leave him alone.  Whatever he was doing, at least he wasn’t doing it up here while trying to menace her at the same time.

But curiosi
ty got a grip on her and wouldn’t let go.  Taryn picked Aisling up when he came scampering back to her and went down to see what Tonka was doing.

She didn
’t have to go very far before she realized he was poking at her fish-catchers.  She took a moment to explore how that made her feel and decided that as long as he wasn’t breaking them, she didn’t care.  All the same, she stopped while she was still well back from the water’s edge.

He glanced at her after a few seconds, proving that he had in fact heard her approach and was letting her know that he knew she was there.  Then he swung his runka around and hooked a fish-catcher with the curved end, bringing it out of the river.  He watched, his tail flicking, as water poured out between the reeds, and then he reached in and pulled a good-sized fish out of the empty basket.  He held it flapping in his hand. 
“This,” he said finally, “this is clever.”

His expression (what there was of it) didn
’t change, but the admission sounded like an uncomfortable one.  “Thanks,” was her non-committal reply.

“
My hunters have told me that you are struggling with hunger here.”  Tonka dropped the fish into the river and pulled another one from the basket.  This one was even bigger than the first.

“
I had a rough start, but I’m doing okay.”

His eyes narrowed.  His tail was snapping out at his flanks in short, curt slaps. 
“They tell me you mean to grow a crop,” he said, and gave her a hard look, as though waiting for something.

“
Eventually,” said Taryn. 

He stared at her.  She looked back at him.
  Aisling, dangling from her arms, peeped.

Tonka released the second fish, too
.  He watched it swim away and then turned his attention to the fish-catcher, fingering the woven reeds and grasses.  “There are those of my kind who do…something similar,” he said, and hooked the basket back onto the end of his runka.  He bent to carefully replace it in the water exactly as it had been before continuing.  “Reeds and branches are placed in the shallows so as to make a kind of cage.  It traps fish.  Turtles.”  He looked at her.  His eyes were guarded.  “I could tell you how it is done.”

The offer astonished her, however reluctantly it seemed to have been extended, and she felt a smile spreading with delight across her own face. 
“That would be nice, but there aren’t really any shallows handy,” she pointed out.  “And I could never eat a turtle.”

“
It is not difficult to open the shell.”  His tail swished again.  “I could show you.”

“
I’m sure you could, but it’s not about that.”  Encouraged, she came the rest of the way out of the plains to stand beside him on the riverbank.  “See, when I was little, I read a story about the Great Turtle who carried the world through its creation.  He sheltered the first humans in his shell when they were alone and vulnerable.  I vowed then never to hurt a turtle.”

The horseman finally showed expression
—a faint frown.  He was silent for a time, but not still.  His tail kept snapping and one hind hoof had a habit of rising and then relaxing, as though he wanted very much to stamp.  “Foolishness,” he said at last, hammering the word out.  “A story.  Nothing more.”

“
I know that now.  I said I was little.”

The horseman
’s flanks shivered.

“
That’s not the point, anyway.  The point is, I made a promise and just because I know better now isn’t a good enough reason to break it.”

“
I should think that starving would be.”  Tonka’s words were harsh enough, but the anger in his tone was worse.  Perhaps he knew it.  He took a moment, looking down at the fish-catchers in the water.  His chest was still, but his sides were heaving.  He looked at her and his flank shook again.  “The fish will soon be gone from the river.  Turtles can be found throughout the winter, if one knows where to seek them.  You made a foolish promise,” he added, more calmly.

“
That’s not the point,” she said.  “I made a promise, and maybe it was a foolish one, but I still gave my word.  I believe that a person’s word isn’t something that you can go out and get back once you’ve thrown it away.  I’d like to think that—”

Without warning, the horseman reared, a ragged cry ripping from his chest, and the runka he had been holding loosely in one hand suddenly split the air as he threw it.  It cut through the air over her shoulder, close enough that she could feel the tugging of the hairs it parted and hear the low howl of its wake, and then it slammed into the ground behind her.  Taryn
’s legs elected to leap away without informing the rest of her, to the effect that she fell in a convulsing heap on her back.  Her head whacked into the butt of the spear, still quivering from its impact.  Her legs came up fast as she tried to curl around Aisling, knowing that the hooves were coming next and it was going to hurt, he was going to pound the life right out of her and it was going to hurt a lot.

Sand and river rock chipped at her as the horseman spun.  Tonka thundered away, knocking clods of earth back behind him.

He was gone.

Breath came back to her first as a gasp, then a scream, and finally, in sobs.  She rolled onto her side, only dimly aware of Aisling struggling and squalling in her arms.  She thought she might have wet herself.  She couldn
’t make herself care.  She tried to stand and couldn’t; her bones were water and she couldn’t stop crying.  She crawled instead, all the way back to her tent and fell inside it, yanking her sleeping bag over her head.  In the dark, protected by her own soft shell with Aisling held at the heart of her, she lost herself to tears and terror.

25.  Tonka

T
onka ran, but there was no release for him in running.  The freedom he had always found in the pounding of hooves and the rush of wind would not come to him.  He ran, his breath burning and sweat foaming from his sides, and there was no peace but only the stink of him.  He passed a blur of kindred, alarm stamped on their faces and in their voices as they called after him.  He did not stop or even slow.

He ran to his lodge and what damage he did to his door in battling it open, he did not care.  Across the wide floor to the hide curtains, he still ran, and his hooves dug furrows from the hard-packed earth when he finally stopped.  His hands tore at soft leather and he flung the curtains aside.

The sight of the trappings of slavery struck him for the first time as a comfort.  He stumbled within, panting, his hands seeking and finding harnesses, bridles, whips.  These were real.  These were truth.  Their voices were the voices of ancient pains and wrongs that no smiling female, however sincere she might seem, could undo.

Hoof-beats behind him.  Tonka turned, blinders still in his hands. 
Morathi stood in the light from the broken door, and with him, Shard, who would come after.  Tonka saw wonder in his daughter’s eyes as she gazed at the artifacts he had always kept at the hidden half of his lodge.  Disgust filled him.  He threw the blinders down and pulled the curtains with a curse, and then stood, heaving, before them.

“
Have you,” he began, and was appalled to hear how unevenly his words came.  “Have you ever heard a tale, Morathi, of a great turtle who sheltered Man in their first days?”

The old mystic
’s eyes grew misty as he searched his memories and then sharpened.  “Aye.  An ancient tale of foreign making.  The Great Father of all the universe was this turtle, who made the world of Man’s birth and sheltered the first within his shell until the world grew green and light came to it.”  He studied the effect his answer had upon his chief, concern drawing lines upon his aged brow. “Where heard you this tale?”

He had to say something.  He had to try to explain.  He could not simply order them from his lodge.  Even a chief must bow to the gods, and who knew what insult the gods might take if both the now and future
Morathi were abused by him?

“
She…swore an oath on hearing it never to harm a turtle.”  Tonka tried to spit, tried to laugh, and could do neither.  “She swore an oath as a child and now
starves
but will not harm a turtle!”

Morathi
came a pace forward, his ears high and interest evident.  “Indeed?”  He did not ask what ‘she’ Tonka spoke of.

Young Shard looked from one to the other, her chief and then her teacher. 
“Why are you so angry?” she ventured.  “What matter is it if she will or will not eat turtles?”

“
It matters
!” Tonka roared.  His daughter scattered back from him; the old Morathi was still.  “It matters for the oath she swore!  Because if she can make such an oath, if she can keep it—”

He could not finish.  Bile bit at him; he tried to kick it away and beat dust from the thatch and rafters a
s his hooves struck again and again and again.  Shard had never seen her father rage.  She broke and fled, and even seeing that was not enough to bring him back his control.  It was only one more heartbreak, one more wind to add to the storm that whipped at him. 
Her
storm.

“
I let fly to silence her,” he said and kicked again.  “I meant to strike her dead for such a lie!”

“
Why?” Morathi asked softly.

“
I need no reason!”  Tonka swiped the curtains open and thrust an open hand at the evils they concealed.  “This is the work of Man!  Let her say what she will of turtles and griffins and any other lie that pleases her, but this is truth!  She
does
lie, damn her!  She
lies
!”

Morathi
did not look at the relics of this clan’s time under the yoke of humans.  His eyes on his chief were still and deep as pools, and they saw all.  “And did you?” he asked.  “Did you strike her dead for her lies?”

Tonka twisted, his empty hands fisting on the air as though they longed to have their spear back to throw again.  He said nothing.

The silence built between them, a heavy and an ugly swelling that sent Tonka back first one step and then three.  Morathi’s calm and knowing gaze pursued him, pierced him.  He could hear, beyond the crushing stillness of this room and the pounding of his blood, the human’s voice, still see her hesitant smile…a welcoming smile, even for him.

“
Then why,” Morathi said, very quietly.  “Why did you throw at her?”

The storm of uncertainty and shame and confusion came together into bolts of rage and he shouted,
“To kill her! 
Damn
her!  I would rather she be
dead
than honest!”

There.  Spoken.  The ugliness of the words consumed him and he staggered back under their weight, shivering.  They wormed into his mouth again, a broken echo born of horror:
“I would rather she be dead…then honest.” 

He covered his face and buckled, falling forward onto his knees and then was down, weeping. 
Morathi’s aged hands came to rest on his shoulders, pulling him against his softened belly.  Tonka wept, a chieftain to none, but only a lost and baffled foal, struggling with shadows and with shame.

“
I believe her!” he cried, and that shattered in him as awfully as his hatred.  “Ah gods!  It is all true!”

Morathi
held him and said nothing.

“
It is all true,” Tonka whispered, and pressed his face to the smooth man-like skin of Morathi’s belly.  He shuddered.  “It is all true…and I have wronged her.”

“
What will you do?”

“
I…I must speak with our lord at once,” Tonka said wearily.  For if Antilles had been watching the human’s camp, he could not have helped but see Tonka’s flight.  He shook himself into a stand, every muscle aching with tension, and every hurt went deeper than flesh.

“
And if he chooses to slay her?”

Tonka turned his face skyward, wishing for the coolness of rain to wash him magically clean of this nightmare. 
“I cannot allow that,” he said, anguished.  “She is…innocent.”

“
Aye.”  Morathi stepped away, his voice low but hard as flint.  “And remember that.  Remember for all your life that you stand as chieftain of us, remember this spear that sunders your heart.  Remember that for eleven days and nights, you have been wrong in your judgment and an innocent suffered for it.”

Tonka could not meet those clear, uncompromising eyes.  He nodded once, a stiff gesture that was nearly a bow, making an obedience not only to his
Morathi, but to the gods he represented.

“
Now go.”  Morathi moved aside, his aged hand warm as it clapped Tonka’s shoulder in respect and friendship.

Out past uncountable pairs of badly unsettled and questioning eyes, Tonka was forced to go slowly through his kin until he came to the borders of his
kraal.  There, Ahm was waiting, a sentry of silent accusation.  Tonka moved past her without speaking, but then stopped, his hooves and his heart like lead.

“
There will be no further guards at the human’s camp,” he said.

Ahm raised her chin, but that was all.

And that would have to be enough.  Tonka forced himself forward into a heavy gallop, and then to a full run.  It was a punishment to his body, a spear to lance his lungs and needles for his aching legs, but it was a punishment he bore.  He would remember, he knew, all the days that remained to him.  He would remember the shy delight in her smile as she’d come to greet him.  The loneliness in her hungry words as she’d met him for chat.  And how he’d turned that look to terror with the thrust of his spear.

Tonka ran, but the weight of his sin stayed saddled to him.  After eleven days of unending menace, she had still shown him welcome and he had made to strike her dead for it.  No.  He would never forget.

The plains passed beneath him, every fleet step bringing him closer to the human’s camp and putting one more seed of dread into the burden he already carried.  He could not bear to look on her again so soon.  And he would not have to.

The lord of the Valley had indeed been watching at the moment of Tonka
’s retreat.  And he had surely come at once, for he was crossing the bridge already, making thunder of his own in a powerful run, harmonized by the singing of air that split on his axe-head. 

He saw Tonka and stopped, but there was no patience in those eyes, no mercy.  There was only death.

“You missed,” the lord said curtly.  “She crawled away as you—”

“
I know.”

Antilles shifted his axe fro
m one hand to the other, visibly tensed with the desire to move on, to get his killing done with and end the threat that laired at the foot of his mountain.  “You meant to miss,” he said.

“
I think it more accurate to say, I could not make myself strike true.”  Tonka bent his head, fighting to slow his breath still further, to show a face of some dignity for this awful confrontation.  When he raised his eyes again, he was struck by the incomprehension that marked his lord’s burning gaze and it brought him lower yet.  “I was wrong to strike at her at all,” he said.

Antilles looked in the direction of the human
’s camp, though it was too distant to be visible from the bridge.  He swung his head back, frowning.  “Wrong,” he echoed.

“
I will not send watch over her again,” Tonka said. 

“
You will not.”  The lord’s voice was still quiet, still calm.  Still merciless.  “I gave you an order, chieftain.”

“
Your command was to observe until her intent was known.”  Tonka could no longer meet the piercing steel of the lord’s steady gaze, but he kept on speaking.  “This was done.  Her intent is to live in peace.”

“
Peace!” Antilles spat.  The axe in his hand raised and sharply struck a downwards arc, no doubt without his conscious thought.  “Are you enspelled or merely mad?  They do not come for peace, horseman!  They have
never
come for peace!”

“
This one is different.”  Tonka’s voice was strengthless at the admission; he could feel his heart wilting inside him.

“
Nay!” Antilles shouted.  “She is
no
different!  Have you forgotten the life she holds prisoner!”

“
I have seen that she protects it.”

“
Aye, she does!  And why should she not, for griffins are hard to come by in any world!  But she holds it, horseman, and there stands the full face of her whom you would declare comes to my Valley in peace!”

“
You are wrong.”

Antilles rocked back as though physically struck, then came forward to shout,
“T’was
you
who threw at her!”

“
And I was wrong.”

Antilles raised his axe again and this time, threw it.  It screamed through the air and sank with a thuk into the meat of
a tieneedle tree some hundred paces away.  “Wrong!” he bellowed.  “
Now
you would be wrong?  Think!  She is not Arcadian-born!  She camps alone and in all confidence!  She has a new-hatched griffin with her!  What more proofs do you require?  Nay, horseman!  I gave you this time for friendship’s sake, but now I am done!  I will not have her in my Valley!”

“
She welcomed me,” Tonka said bleakly.

“
Ha!”  Antilles drove his hand out to hammer his point into Tonka’s chest.  “There stands her deception!  An honest human would show aggression after eleven days of watch!  Her welcome is your spy, if you had but wit to see it!”

Rage had made the roaring voice into an attack, but Tonka stood a silent target for it.  There was insult in the words, he supposed, but he could not feel offense.  Only grief, and grief alone, held the reins at Tonka
’s heart.  “You are wrong,” he said again.

Antilles took it as a blow for the second time, then set his jaw and stormed past to collect his axe from the tieneedle
’s trunk.  “If I have been wrong in any matter, it lay in granting this reprieve,” he stated.  “Now I mean to end it.”

“
Nay, lord.”

“
Aye!  Lord!”  Antilles swung back, in full voice again.  “Thy lord and thee beholden!”

“
I will not serve a murderer of innocents.”