Wednesdays in the Tower (15 page)

She turned to run out of the tower, but stopped when she saw Flat Squirrel on the floor. She scooped it up and wrapped it around her left arm like a fur muff. On her way out of her bedroom she grabbed up her cloak, grateful that she had taken the time to put on Rufus’s harness before she went to her lessons.

Out in the courtyard she looked around. Everyone was going about their usual business, and she knew that they wouldn’t have been if they’d seen something the size of Rufus flying overhead. The sunlight was pale, but he would still have cast a rather large shadow. She turned and went around the side of the Castle. The tower windows looked out over the courtyard on one side and the stables on the other.

Hoping against hope, she headed for the stables. The grooms looked at her curiously as she walked through the warm, straw- and horse-scented room. She swept her
hand along the soft noses of a few curious horses who hung their heads over the stall doors, but she kept moving. She needed to find Rufus before someone else did.

Through the stable and around to the new stable. As soon as she walked through the door she heard Rufus give a cry of welcome, and Celie furiously hugged him. He caught sight of Flat Squirrel and tried to pull away, but she wrapped a hand in one of his harness handles and shook the hated toy in his face.

“You are so naughty! Don’t ever do that again!”

She heard the scrape of a boot at the door, and tried to shove Rufus into a stall.

“It’s just me,” Pogue called out. “I saw you run out the door with Flat Squirrel on your arm and thought you might need a little help.”

“What am I going to do with him?” Celie wailed to Pogue as he came down the aisle.

“I don’t know,” Pogue said. He stood in front of them, arms folded, and rocked back and forth on his heels. “I just don’t know. I don’t understand what the Castle is doing at all. Most of the court has now traipsed through the tower where he hatched and fingered the pieces of shell there. And he just flew in broad daylight, didn’t he? Do you think it’s time to show him to the king and queen?”

“I’d like to,” Celie began, doubtful.

As if in answer, the door to the stable blew shut.

“See!” She pointed to it. “That happens every time!”

“That was the wind,” Pogue said.

“It wasn’t,” Celie insisted. “I felt that funny twist in my brain.”

“What?”

“When the Castle does something, I feel a funny little twisting inside my head, like a headache is going to start but doesn’t.” Celie had only recently figured out the connection.

Pogue looked at her in astonishment. “I’ve never felt anything like that,” he said, and she thought she detected envy in his voice.

“Perhaps it’s just a Glower family thing,” Celie mumbled, embarrassed. “But I just started noticing it, since the Castle’s been going crazy.”

“I’ll have to ask Bran if he gets it, too,” Pogue said. “But anyway, we’ve got to get Rufus back inside the Castle somehow, and apparently you’re still not allowed to just walk him right out of here.” He sighed.

“I guess he’ll have to fly back,” Celie said. “Thank goodness it’s starting to get dark out.”

“Plus your cloak is dark blue,” Pogue said, coming closer. He cupped his hands like he was going to help her mount a horse. “That will help a bit.”

“What are you doing?” Now it was Celie’s turn to stare in astonishment.

“Do you honestly trust him to fly straight back to his tower?” Pogue raised one eyebrow. “You’re going to have to ride him back, and guide him.”

“Absolutely not!” Bran had come into the stable, and
now he slammed the door shut behind him, glaring at them both. “Are you mad?”

“We can’t walk through the doors of the Castle with a griffin,” Celie said, warming to Pogue’s idea. After all, Rufus was wearing a harness. And he’d clearly gotten the hang of flying. She pointed out these things to Bran.

“When did you cook up this little plan, Pogue?” Bran frowned at his friend, as though Pogue were deliberately leading Celie astray.

Pogue began to argue with Bran, telling him how the Castle had slammed the door at the very mention of revealing Rufus, and using the tapestry cushions as proof that it could be done. Meanwhile, Celie put her knee into Pogue’s cupped hands, and he boosted her easily onto Rufus’s back. She sat up straight while Rufus shifted under her and tried to look poised, as though she rode griffins all the time. The truth was that she hardly even rode her pony anymore, and Rufus was not as much like a pony as she’d thought.

His back was narrower than her pony’s, and bonier, and the muscles that moved his wings rolled under his hide in a way that made her feel like he could slide her right onto his rump and then to the floor if she didn’t hold on carefully. She wrapped her legs around his middle, tugging up her skirts and wishing that she were wearing her divided riding skirt, though she’d hardly thought she would be riding Rufus when she left her rooms earlier.

“It’s all right, Bran,” Celie said. “Let’s just do this and get it over with.”

“It doesn’t need to be gotten over with,” Bran protested.

“The Castle wants me to raise this griffin properly,” she said, though really she didn’t know how far the Castle wanted her to take Rufus’s training. “And he needs to be trained to carry a rider. You’ve seen the tapestries: griffins are being ridden in them!”

“I’ll fix your cloak,” Pogue said, adjusting the fabric to cover as much of Rufus as possible. “Sorry, Bran. I’m not trying to pick a fight with you, or endanger your little sister. But if we’re going to do this, we need to do it fast. The guards will check in here when they come on evening duty.”

“Bran, can you make us invisible?” Celie asked.

“No,” Bran said sourly. “It takes far too much preparation, and it wears off too quickly. And if I could make Rufus invisible, I would insist that we walk him into the Castle anyway.” He sighed heavily.

Celie’s heart rose. “So you’re going to let me fly with him?”

“I don’t see how I can stop you,” Bran said. He rubbed his face with both hands.

“Thank you,” Celie said. “Now … how do I get him to walk?”

But as soon as the word “walk” left her mouth, Rufus moved forward. Celie grabbed for the handles. They were located just in front of the widest, most saddle-like part of the harness, which meant that her hands were gripping just in front of her thighs, with her skirts tangled around them. Her legs were hanging down in front of Rufus’s
wings, which made it very hard to squeeze with her knees the way she would on her pony. But still, she managed to find her balance as he went toward the door of the stable. To her relief, he moved so smoothly that it felt as if he were flowing like water rather than walking, all of his usual awkwardness gone. It made staying in place easier than she’d feared.

At the door, Rufus came to a halt. Bran stepped around him and peered out the door, looking carefully into the growing darkness.

“It’s clear,” he whispered. “And thank the powers it gets dark so early in the winter. Go now! Hurry!”

Celie took her hands off the harness just long enough to pull up the hood of her cloak. Hood in place, she grabbed the harness handles again and leaned close along Rufus’s neck.

“Rufus,” she said in a low, commanding voice, “fly up to the tower! Fly!” She clucked her tongue.

Rufus didn’t move.

Bran started to say something, but Celie shook her head frantically. Rufus wasn’t moving, but that was because he’d gone very still when she told him to fly. Every muscle that she could feel beneath her had locked into place, and his head was no longer moving from side to side as it usually did while he took in his surroundings.

“Rufus, fly,” she whispered.

So suddenly that it took her breath away, Rufus launched himself into the air.

Celie’s stomach stayed on the ground. She screamed, but the wind took her scream away. Her hands slicked with sweat, and she had to shove them under the harness itself to stay on his back. Rufus shot into the sky like an arrow, and Celie wondered when he would stop. Could they actually touch the clouds? The thought exhilarated and frightened her at the same time.

High above the Castle, Rufus snapped his wings out wide like sails, and they stopped moving upward. He circled in the cold air, Celie clinging to his back, laughing and crying at the wonder of it all. Below them were the lights of the Castle, beyond the high outer wall she could see the glowing windows of the village, and far above them the stars appeared like gleaming chips of ice.

She was trembling all over from nerves and cold. The air above the Castle was even more frigid than that near the ground, and when Rufus flapped his wings it funneled more cold air around her. She had to lean in close to his neck to keep the wind from tearing her off his back, which gave her the added benefit of feeling the warmth from his neck on her cheeks.

“Take us to the tower, Rufus,” she called to him.

The force of their upward flight had ripped the hood back off her hair, and she knew he could hear her. He clacked his beak in reply, but then he swooped around the Spyglass Tower and kept on until they were over the sheep meadow. She pulled at the harness, trying to find a way to guide him.

“Rufus! Take us to the tower at once,” she ordered. “The tower with your toys in it. And food. Food, Rufus!”

He wheeled, and Celie had to clamp down with her legs to keep from toppling off his shoulder. But then he flew past the Castle in the opposite direction, taking them over the village. They were lower than before, and Celie was afraid that someone would spot them, despite the increasing darkness.

“Rufus! Take us home!”

The griffin tilted back his head and let out a scream. But then he angled his wings and swung around. With only a few flaps he brought them back to the Castle. He circled around the Spyglass Tower again, and then the hatching tower, before aiming for the new tower that rose above Celie’s bedchamber. She was grateful all over again for whatever magic kept the other residents of the Castle from seeing that slender structure, jutting out at the very front of the Castle. Then she had another worry: the windows were far narrower than Rufus’s wings.

At the last possible second, he folded his wings in and they half flew, half fell into the tower. Celie was thrown from Rufus’s back, tumbling over and over on the rush matting to land in a tangle at Bran’s feet. Rufus skidded a little ways, crashing into Pogue, who fell on his backside with an oath.

“Celie! Are you all right?” Bran rushed over to help her up.

“Oh,” she said, feeling dazed. “Good, you all made it up here.”

“This was a mistake,” Bran said, straightening his wizardly robes. “You could have been killed.”

“You flew,” Pogue said. He was taking the harness off Rufus, grinning. “How was it?”

“It was wonderful,” Celie told him. “And I’m going again tomorrow night!”

Chapter
20

Celie woke up still buzzing with excitement over the events of the previous day. But her excitement was short-lived. Master Humphries had decided that he would die of shame if, as well as being fluent in Grathian, the three younger Glower children didn’t know the name of every Grathian king since Grath was founded, and be able to greet the ambassadors from Larien and Bendeswe in their own languages.

The court was still in an uproar over the queen’s discovery of the hatching tower, but all Celie wanted was some peace and quiet so that she could read the book Lulath had given her until darkness fell, and she and Rufus could take off once again.

Lulath’s book was a miracle. The author, Wizard Had-locke, was not only notable for having been a woman, but
also happened to have been Celie’s many-times-great-grandmother. And she had had a passion for uncovering the Castle’s secrets that rivaled Celie and Bran’s.

Wizard Hadlocke had scoured the countryside, collecting stories about Castle Glower, and had written them all down with notations about what elements of the story were true and what were exaggerated or couldn’t be verified.

She also recorded the story Celie had heard about Castle Glower appearing suddenly one day, though her language was considerably more poetic. Hadlocke described the griffins “swarming out of the Castle to hunt the gleaming unicorms,” and said that “Larien’s bold king, moved to tears of sorrow, did send ships for the shining beasts to convey them on their final journey.” Celie could not tell if “final journey” was a nice way of saying they died, or if it meant climbing the rainbows to some magical realm.

More fascinating even than that was talk of the people who had come with the Castle. Hadlocke called them survivors, and mentioned wounds that killed some of them after the Castle’s appearance, but Celie couldn’t tell whether the wounds were from a battle or some sort of plague. There were references to both, and Hadlocke was frustratingly vague on that point.

Rolf had joined her after their lessons, and soon read through the bestiary and the epic poetry, and even found the poems of Karksus that Arkwright had recommended, but hadn’t found anything half as interesting. The bestiary had merely stated that griffins were half eagle and half lion,
and probably mythical. The accompanying illustration had been quite rough, and Rolf had said with disgust that he could have done a better job himself. The poem that Celie had copied for Master Humphries had contained the only mention of griffins in that book, and the Karksus poetry was so dense and dramatic that even Celie thought the author was probably being fanciful.