The Last Inn

by Rachel Gay

  With no time to think, Erin swerved toward the nearest cover – the forest. She had barely made it to the shadow of the trees when the back wheel of her bike jerked and flailed underneath her, caught on the claws of the griffin, and then flipped over entirely.

  Erin sat up and saw the starved creature shaking its huge paw fiercely, all of its attention devoted to freeing its claws from the rubber tire. It snarled and bit the wheel, with no success.

  Erin’s hand touched the bundle she had retrieved from under the floorboards, still wrapped tightly in the faded cloth, and she snapped out of her daze and grabbed it before running into the trees. Behind her, the griffin roared again and there was a scream of metal that suggested Erin’s bike had met its untimely demise.

  She darted around trees and through bushes, trying to pick the most narrow openings in the hopes of slowing the griffin down, but by the sound of wood tearing and brush snapping, it didn’t seem to be working.

  Unfortunately, it did slow one of them down when Erin’s foot caught a root sticking up out of the ground and she was going too fast to stop herself from hitting the ground with what sounded like a crack from her ankle. The bundle hit the ground and rolled away while Erin curled in on her own personal world of pain that only doubled when she frantically tried to get back up.

  The griffin pounded up toward her and stopped, its chest, caved in as it was, unable to fit into the haphazard ring of trees that surrounded Erin. She gasped and leaned away from the gnarled paw that slashed the air, and the griffin snarled again as it began to pace the trees, looking for any way in.

  “Oh, you did make this so much harder than it needed to be, didn’t you?”

  Erin groaned and looked for a way to stand up as Lani approached the trees. How had she even caught up with them, Erin wondered as she gave up on a branch to support her weight and picked up a stone that looked heavy enough as she said, “What do you want?”

  “I told you, that,” Lani said, and pointed at the bundle that lay just out of Erin’s reach. She stepped into the circle and just barely avoided the rock Erin threw at her. “Really? You’ve gone and broken your ankle. I think you might want to rethink fighting me on this.”

  “You still haven’t said why you want it,” Erin said, risking the pain to move forward and grab the bundle. “Do you even know what it is?”

  “Do you?” Lani leaned over Erin and gently placed a foot on her ankle. “I was hired to do a job, and you’re getting in my way. Please, hand it over.”

  Erin did not even have time to respond before Lani applied pressure, just for a second, and the pain nearly caused her to black out. She grabbed the tamer’s leg and pushed as hard as she could, sending Lani stumbling backward.

  A growl came from beyond the trees, and Erin had just enough time to realize that it did not come from the griffin before Kota, as a wolf, came darting through the opening in the trees, narrowly avoiding the griffin’s slashing claws and beak.

  “Look who’s come to the rescue!” Lani laughed, and did not seem fazed at all by the snarling wolf that stood in front of her. “You think that’s going to scare me?”

  The wolf stopped growling and its ears went back, but Erin realized that it wasn’t the tamer’s reaction that surprised Kota, as he suddenly reared back onto two legs and took on the form of a young man. She looked up at the thin cloud that had, however temporarily, overshadowed the sun.

  “No, I don’t think I’m going to scare you,” Kota said, and smiled. “You want this, right?”

  Lani looked at the bundle and nodded, matching Kota’s smile with one of her own. “That’s a good boy. You hand that over, and my new pet and I will let you two leave. Promise and everything.”

  Kota knelt down in front of Erin and glanced at her ankle before he said, “Well?”

  “Kota,” Erin protested. She noticed that the bandages on Kota’s hands were stained red and she swallowed before dropping her voice to a whisper that she didn’t think Lani would be able to hear. “I think this is the key, the one Mr. Sollis wrote about. What if it could break your curse?”

  His smile failed to change. “I know, but we can’t exactly take it out of here, can we?”

  “You know?” As soon as she said it, Erin remembered Kota staring at the floorboards back at the inn, when she thought he was falling asleep. He had put it together just as fast as she did, and had even given her a hint. “Then why didn’t you say something?”

  “Wasn’t sure,” he said with a shrug. “Didn’t want to disappoint you then, don’t want to see you get hurt now. So please?”

  Erin stared at him and fought the urge to yell at him. How could he be so calm, so willing to just give up the one thing he had come here for? Finally, after an internal struggle not to throw it at his head, she passed him the bundle, which he immediately turned around and gave to Lani.

  “Beautiful,” she said as she pulled away the faded cloth and dropped it on the ground, revealing a perfectly round orb the size of her palm that glowed with a fiery light which flickered and burned like the sun had been sealed inside of it. “Every bit of what I imagined. Pleasure doing business with you, Kota. Don’t suppose you would be willing to rethink my other proposition?”

  Kota glared at her and she shrugged before raising her free hand in the air and snapping her fingers. Almost immediately, her griffin stopped its restless pacing and sat with the same upright bearing as a statue.

  “If you ever rethink it, I’ll be glad to come back around,” Lani said, patting Kota on top of the head before walking away, the griffin obediently shadowing her steps.

  Kota waited until Lani was out of eyesight before stooping down to look at Erin’s ankle again. He hissed and said, “We’re going to need a doctor for this.”

  “And how do you think we’ll get to her?” Erin asked. She reached out and picked up the cloth that was all she had left from Kota’s one possible cure. It was old and faded, but she thought she could just make out a starry pattern on what may once have been some kind of scarf or handkerchief. “It’s not like anyone from town is about to come this far into the forest–”

  She stopped, her breath catching at the words as her heart started pounding. They were in the forest. She had run straight in without thinking, and now her wide eyes stared around, terrified at what might be lurking just out of sight.

  Kota noticed she was starting to panic and tried to distract her. “That stone, why do you think it was hidden in the clock tower?”

  “No one in town likes magic,” Erin said, as her fingers dug into the ground. “You heard my dad, it always causes trouble. And that thing had to be magic.”

  “It’s okay,” Kota said when Erin jumped at the sound of something stirring. “Why hide it though? Why there?”

  “In case they needed it? I don’t know, how are we going to get out of here?”

  “So they left signs,” Kota said, his eyes scanning the area as he came up with a plan, or at least that’s what Erin hoped he was doing. “Sun and moon. Like that story you told the wayfarers.”

  “You remember that?” Erin asked, her face flushing red for a different reason now. “Yeah, that’s just a story Wen told me when I was little.”

  Kota started and looked at her, but his gaze soon went up to the sky and he had just enough time to say, “Wait here,” before the sun came back out and the wolf took over.

  Erin gasped and cried out, but that was because the wolf turned and ran off, leaving her alone in the forest.

  Entry 69: Trees

  Erin sat huddled over, her arms wrapped around her leg to try and fight off the throbbing pain emanating from her ankle, and stared at the last place she had seen Kota. Her hands trembled as she held onto the ragged piece of cloth that had covered the stone as if it could fight off whatever monsters lurked beyond the trees and asked herself, again and again, what she had been thinking when she ran into the forest.

  A branch cracked and Erin moaned. “Just a squirrel, just a squirrel, just a squirrel.
..”

  She trailed off when an old, crackling voice that came from somewhere far too close said, “Hope not. I hate squirrels.”

  Erin slowly turned her head, but whoever had spoken failed to show themselves. All that she could see were trees and the scraggly plants that grew in the light that managed to filter through the overgrowth.

  “Tell me about it. Birds now, birds I like,” said another voice that creaked and groaned with every word.

  “Had a raccoon once,” rumbled a third, low voice.

  The voices continued to go on about animals, but Erin stared up and around and wondered if she was going crazy when there was still no sign of the speakers.

  The first voice chuckled and the tree nearest to Erin swayed as if caught in a breeze she could not feel. “Oh, now that’s good. Can you feel it?”

  After a moment or so, Erin did feel something, a steady pounding coming up through the ground that turned into hoofbeats, steadily coming closer. She nearly screamed when the wolf burst through a nearby bush without warning, soon followed by something she had only seen pictures of.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Erin said, and the unicorn snorted and shook its head.

  The wolf walked over and nosed her hand before tugging on her jacket sleeve.

  Erin looked from the wolf to the unicorn and back again. “You know each other?”

  The wolf nodded and Erin tried to ignore the chuckle that came from one of the unseen speakers. The unicorn nodded its head as well and Erin tried desperately to scuttle backward away from the reaching horn that rapped her ankle.

  “Sh, it’s okay,” Kota said, and Erin cried out again for a different reason. He pulled up her pants leg as the unicorn stepped back and said, “See?”

  Her ankle swelling had already dropped by half, and the pain coming from it no longer threatened to overcome her. “It...my ankle...”

  “They’re healers, and this one happened to owe me,” Kota said, and showed her his hands where thin white marks had taken the place of his cuts. “Once he gets back to his herd, one of the others can help him. Isn’t that right?”

  He stroked the unicorn’s nose and rubbed the base of its horn. The unicorn snorted again and Erin noticed the jagged red line around its neck as she used the nearest tree to drag herself up onto her feet. She shuddered at the pain, but now at least she could bear it enough to stand, with Kota’s assistance.

  “Thank you,” she said and, taking the opportunity with Kota being so close, whispered to him, “I know this sounds crazy, but I think the trees were talking.”

  “Oh, good, you heard them, too,” Kota said and smiled at her expression. He glanced up at the sky and back at Erin, who clearly would not be able to get very far on her ankle just yet. “How far do you think I could stretch a favor?”

  “What?” Erin looked from him to the unicorn. “No, I am not about to get on that thing.”

  “The other female and the catbird are going that way, toward your...oh, what is it called?” asked one of the trees, and another one which sounded suspiciously like the one Erin had used to stand up piped in, “Town, dear, they call it a town. Nasty things.”

  “They went into town?” Erin asked, before she realized she was talking to a tree. “Why?”

  “How should I know?” the tree grumbled.

  “If we go now, we could probably catch up with them,” Erin said. When Kota frowned and looked at her ankle, she sighed. “It’ll be okay. Kota, this could be our only chance!”

  Kota stroked the unicorn’s nose and said to it, “She does make it hard to argue, doesn’t she?”

  The unicorn snorted and turned its side toward them. Since she couldn’t argue without risking Kota changing his mind or slowing them down, Erin bit her lip and climbed onto the unicorn with Kota’s assistance. He started to say something but groaned and dropped to all fours as a wolf. The wolf sighed and nosed the unicorn before leading the way through the trees, careful to steer them through the widest gaps. As easy as the ride was, Erin clung to the unicorn’s back and kept her eyes closed most of the way. Whenever she opened her eyes, she would see Kota keeping pace with the unicorn, either in the shape of a young man or as a wolf.

  Outside of the forest, the wolf loped away and zigzagged around with its nose to the ground until it stumbled over paws that became hands and feet. He staggered upright and waved at them. “They came this way. The tree was right, they are going to town. It doesn’t make any sense though, why would they–”

  The sun came out again and Kota turned back into a wolf midsentence.

  “Lani did say the stone was the main reason she came,” Erin said over the wolf’s grumbling. As they approached the town, she patted the unicorn’s trembling side. She suspected it felt the same way about the town as she did the forest. “I think this is close enough.”

  The unicorn stopped with a sigh of relief and Erin dropped to the ground with only the barest of twinges from her ankle.

  “Thank you,” she said again, and the unicorn nosed her face and the wolf’s before cantering back toward the forest. Erin looked at the wolf just in time to see it turn back into Kota. “Are you sure you’re okay about going into town?”

  He swallowed and nodded. “Worse comes to worst, I can always run and hide, right? It’s what I’m good at.”

  Erin smiled, even though she felt as nervous as he looked, and they walked down the street together, looking for any sign of Lani or the uproar that should have followed the tamer walking into town with the griffin in tow. Yet all they saw were the usual townspeople going about their usual business.

  “Back streets,” Kota murmured to Erin as he kept one eye on the sky. “They’re keeping out of sight for as long as possible, until Lani can drop off the stone and get her pay.”

  “But who would hire her? I mean, Mayor Geld was the one who sent for her, but that was for you,” Erin started, and stopped even as Kota came to the same conclusion. “Why?”

  “I think I might know one person who would have an idea,” Kota said. “That story you told me, about the sun and the moon–”

  He groaned and pulled Erin into the nearest shop, which happened to be the tailor’s.

  “Look who we have here!” crowed Agatha, and both of them winced.

  Erin looked outside at the sunlight streaming across the street and said, “What were you saying Kota?”

  “You need to find him,” Kota said before the tailors swooped down on them. “No, I’m sorry, we’re just looking for the moment. Uh, you two haven’t seen a stranger in town today, have you?”

  “Oh, do you mean that hunter?” the other tailor said, and the two shared a look and a flurry of giggles while Kota motioned Erin to go on ahead.

  Erin nodded and went outside, but she hesitated and looked back at the shop where Kota was trying to keep the tailors talking until he could safely leave. He had mentioned the story back in the forest too, but there was only one person that Erin could think of when she thought of that story.

  Erin raced down the street as fast as her ankle would allow, darting around surprised townspeople until she reached the bridge. Sliding down the bank of the river, she waved at the old man standing in the water up to the top of his rubber boots and yelled, “Wen!”

  Entry 70: Baiting a Griffin

  Wen’s weathered, tanned face broke out into a smile at the sight of Erin. “Well, isn’t this a treat. What brings you all the way here from your inn?”

  Erin couldn’t help but smile in return before she remembered why she was here. How long had it been since she’d sat here by the river, feeding ducks while Wen told one of his stories? Well, not that long ago when she thought about it, but it felt like forever ago. “Wen, do you remember that story you told me a long time ago, about the sun and the moon?”

  The smile faded, however briefly, from Wen’s face and she thought she saw something else there before he could hide it. “Yes, I remember. What made you think of that?”

  “I saw the drawing
in Mr. Sollis’s journal,” she said. His eyebrows bunched together and she explained, or at least tried to, “The town emblem, the sun and the moon, I saw it there and above the stone from the tower–”

  Wen’s eyes widened and he stepped closer. “What?”

  Erin had not meant to say that, but now she had the same feeling as when she put together where Sollis had hid the stone. “Mr. Sollis kept writing about someone in his journal, someone who was cursed.”

  Wen pulled his wide-brimmed hat low over his face and looked away. “I think that’s enough, Miss Smith.”

  “You know something,” Erin said, undeterred. “Who was he? Why was Mr. Sollis looking so hard for a cure? Something in that clock tower hurt him, and the first thing he did was hide that stone from somebody. Why?”

  “Because he was my friend,” Wen said, and looked back at Erin with teary eyes. “Because he found out who I am, what I am, and he wouldn’t let it go. Please, don’t make the same mistake.”

  Erin stared at his back, unable to think of anything to say. Old Wen, always there. Always ready with a story and a smile. He had as been as much a constant in her life as any other member of her family after he saved her from drowning in the river when she was a kid, and in all that time she had never seen anything like the hurt in his eyes before. His curse, and she knew exactly where to find the key to breaking it.

  Wen did not turn around at the sound of Erin scrambling up the bank or racing over the bridge, but he did raise his head at the racing steps that followed a minute later and saw Kota pelting as fast as he could after her.

  Erin only ran faster when she spotted the tamer standing in the town circle, just outside of the mayor’s office. The man himself was shaking her hand, and he looked almost as surprised as her to see Erin slowing to a stop just a few feet away.

  “Oh, look who didn’t listen to my warning,” Lani said. “Good recovery on that ankle.”

  “Shut up,” Erin snapped.

  “Erin? This is a bit of a personal matter,” Geld said, his smile obviously forced. “If this is about the rent, maybe you could wait until later?”

  “The stone,” she said. “The one you sent Lani after, where is it?”