It bucked me harder and harder each time, every attempt coming at me like a tidal wave that I had to brace myself for. I pulled my legs in and tried to close them on its massive wings, but it folded them back and my legs only slid down its body to where they had been previously. We went through this violent dance several times until I finally managed to hook one wing against the heel of my boot. This elicited another energetic response from the gryphon as its other wing kicked up a storm of dirt, fallen leaves, and twigs.
Slowly, my vision was returning to me, at least enough that I could squint through the pain and see what the beast was doing. I had to redouble my efforts to avoid each successive clod of dirt that it flung my way.
“Troy!” Helen shouted.
“Yeah, Babe?” There was not much I could do to hide my frustration. I knew she wanted to help, but I really needed to focus if I was going to prevent the thing from flaying me.
“Please, allow me to assist you! You are blinded!”
You think I don’t know that? “No, Helen. It’s too dangerous right now! Just stay back. Please.”
I closed my leg around its wing as forcefully as I could, not sure where to go from there. Its other wing pushed against the ground in unison with its hindleg on the same side, and it managed to flip itself over, much to my surprise. In the next instant, I was pinned to the ground, pressed in place beneath its back. My grip still held strong as it continued to flail its free limbs skyward. If only Helen had a knife on her, she could use her assassin’s aim to gut its exposed belly from a distance.
Its decay stench invaded my nostrils with each breath, choking me as much as my arm was choking it. I coughed but to no avail. The assault on my senses was becoming more intense with every moment; I was sure that it would rival the physical aspect of my battle with the creature any minute.
“Troy, it is emitting a foul odor!”
Yeah, I noticed, Helen.
“It is doing this because it is scared! You need to finish it quickly because if there are more gryphons in the area, they will flock to the scent!”
That was helpful to know. I was suddenly able to place the smell’s vague familiarity, knowing what she’d just told me. I had a dog that used to stink like that when it was afraid, only the gryphon smelled ten times worse. It was similar to how dogs smelled in heat, now that I thought about it in that light. The thought that more might be on the way any second frightened me, and I was sure that if I had the means I would have emitted a similar stench at the notion. It was time to take risks.
I released its foreleg and grabbed its throat with my newly freed hand. I would have preferred to get a firm grip on its beak, but it was too large for me to feel confident in doing that. My fingers closed on its windpipe instead, and in the same instant, its talons reached up and tore a gash in my arm. I grunted at the sudden pain as blood spilled from the 3 fresh cuts in my forearm. My heart was pounding against my chest like a hammer, and I tightened my grip as much as my prosthetic appendage would allow. There was a sound like a tree branch snapping, followed by a pained squawk from the bird-monster. It let loose several final spasms and fell limp. I did not release my hold until a minute later, not wanting to risk lowering my guard too soon.
I got to my feet and finally managed to pull my pants back up where they belonged. Helen got dressed and brought me my shirt.
“I was frightened for you for a moment, Love,” she whispered.
I laughed with relief. “That’s the last time I go anywhere without my sword.” I sniffed the air. “Whew!”
“Whew, indeed!” She was holding her nose and fanning the stench away. She turned to me and jumped. “You are injured!”
“It’s not as bad as it looks.” I waved her concern away. “We don’t have gryphons around here, do we?”
“I have never seen them in all my time here. There were several kept by the pharaohs as pets, but I do not know where they originate from.”
“Are they organic then?”
I looked to the creature’s body. All mechanical beasts I had faced had been created by the Egyptians, but if gryphons originated outside of Egypt, it would stand to reason that they were actual living creatures and not some kind of machine or clay-made golem that the desert people had a penchant for constructing.
“I believe so . . .” Helen said.
We stepped closer to it. I would have to cut it open to know for sure.
“This one is smaller than the ones I have seen,” Helen said.
“Oh yeah? How big were the ones in Egypt?”
“When walking on all four legs, their heads would have stood higher than yours.”
Yikes. This one came up to my navel on all fours. I could only imagine having to duke it out with one the size that Helen described. Ignoring the smell, it was really an attractive creature. I felt a pang of guilt for killing it, especially since it might have only been a child, but it left me with no alternatives.
I took Helen in an arm, but she suddenly jerked her head up, looking to the trees ahead of us. There was more rustling coming near, but I could not see anything yet.
“There may be more, after all,” she said in hushed tones. I saw her instinctively reach for her belt even though her knives were back home.
“Maybe we should just take off that way,” I suggested, pointing my thumb over my shoulder.
She shook her head. “They are too fast to outrun. Turning our backs to them will only make it easier for them to overpower us in an attack.”
We stood there and watched, bracing ourselves as best we could for whatever was about to come. The rustling grew louder with each passing second. Whatever was coming for us was either much larger than the monster I’d just killed or there were multiple on the way. My first thought was that we were about to be face to face with an angry mother who just lost her child.
I was right. A moment later, a much larger bird-monster pushed through the thicket, towering over the two of us. It was even larger than I expected an adult to be, from Helen’s description, probably topping off at 8 feet on all four legs. This one was mostly gray in color, with its tail and hindlegs fading to a white gradient. It looked at the little one then to the two of us with fearsome, proud eyes. There was an unmistakable air of majesty about it; I felt compelled to bow under the weight of its eminence but knew that doing so would spell my doom, as its beak would surely descend upon me like a guillotine the very moment I took my eyes from it. The magnificent creature boasted those proud traits that both eagle and lion were renowned for. It was a combination of the two animals, equaling a sum even greater than the constituent pieces. I felt like I was looking at nature’s perfect being. If it did slay me there, well, there were worse ways to go.
“Do not look away, Troy,” Helen whispered. “You must not lose face before it.”
“I wouldn’t dare.” I did not move my lips as I spoke.
More rustling soon followed behind it and soon there appeared three other little gryphons at its side. One was a brilliant mixture of red and orange, another was black and dark blue, and the third was dark and light brown. They watched us with cautious curiosity, not yet having grown to embody pride like their parent.
The red one crawled forward and sniffed its fallen sibling. It was close enough for me to reach out and grab if I wanted, but I did not dare provoke the wrath of its guardian. It let out a quiet squeak that to me sounded like a form of lamentation and then stepped back to rejoin the others.
I allowed my hand to venture out slightly to my side in front of Helen—a protective, albeit useless, gesture. The regal being stared us down for an eternity. I did not take a breath until it was absolutely necessary. It took a step forward and my nerves screamed at me to make a move, to either high tail it out of there or charge forward with everything I had, but I held myself still. My heart was pounding again, stronger now than it was while even in the throes of actual battle with the mother’s child.
Like its offspring before it, the mother bent down and sniff
ed the limp white corpse. She nudged it with her beak and, after seeing no movement from it in response, flung her head to the sky and roared to the gods. Helen and I could not help but to lurch back. I almost fell over in the booming wake of the sound. There was a lump in my throat and I felt the burning desire to mourn alongside it. In the corner of my eye, I thought I could see a tear streaming down my queen’s cheek.
The remaining children joined in with their own shrill cries of grief. I wished there was a way to bring their sibling back. I would have given almost anything to put an end to these poor creatures’ sorrow. I found Helen’s hand, and we closed our fingers around each other’s as we watched helplessly while the scene unfolded.
When the crying died away, the mother turned its attention back to us, and I thought we were about to meet our end, but instead she reared back on her hindlegs as if to jump to the sky. Her wings spread wide, each one twice as long as me, she propelled herself up and did indeed jump to the clouds. Once again, I almost fell back, this time from the force of wind pushing against me. In the next instant, she was gone, disappearing over the trees, leaving miniature tornados of wind and debris in her powerful wake. One by one, her children followed, and they were soon all gone as quickly as they had appeared.
It was another minute or two before Helen and I found our voices. She was the first to speak.
“I have never seen a creature so magnificent . . . The gryphons of Egypt had been robbed of their pride in their captivity.” She looked to the fallen cub.
I turned and saw that she was in fact weeping, so I put my arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. She buried her head in my chest and quietly sobbed. I knew how she felt. The sight was as close to a religious experience as I could remember feeling since childhood. It felt as if I had just murdered an angel, and the survivors, instead of killing me for my sins, left me to suffer in the mortal world under the weight of my guilt. I had seen many men die by then, some less deserving of death than others. Many of those deaths weighed heavy on my mind in the quiet of night, but I knew none would come nearly as close as the guilt I felt over murdering this poor creature. The sorrow I felt seemed unnatural. The gryphon was a mythical creature, after all. Perhaps its inherent regality was a part of its power, and the extreme sadness I felt was an aspect of that power working its magic on me.
“Let’s get some people to bring this poor thing to Zinni and see what she makes of it. Maybe she’ll have some ideas why they are here.”
Helen sniffled and said, “Yes, Troy. There is enough waste here for one day.”
2
Zinni was one of the younger daughters of the King and Queen of Troy, youthful and wonderfully beautiful. Most girls her age were attracted to other things, such as the flattery of attractive men or late-night parties, but Zinni was of a different breed. The life of a socialite mattered little to her. Her beauty was only a consequence of being nobly bred, and she thought little of it if she ever thought of it at all.
Upon hearing of the fabled Brethren of Stars, former residents of the city of Cannakale shrouded in mystery for centuries, moving to Port Superior after I defeated the cruel king whom they served, she wasted no time in packing up her library of arcane tomes and mystical scientific instruments and moving to my fledgling kingdom to be nearer to the legendary engineers. Over the past few months she had been around them, she had already gleaned bits and pieces of their knowledge of magic and machines, knowledge that allowed her to reach higher paradigms of her understanding of how the universe worked and various ways in which to manipulate it. Helen and I thought that she would jump at the chance to aim her magnifying glass along the fresh corpse of a magnificent creature like our gryphon.
We were not wrong.
Within an hour of leaving the thicket, we managed to find some Thirians who were not too busy to gather the creature and follow us to Zinni’s doorstep. I laid three hard knocks into the door, knowing I would likely have to wait a minute before she could pull herself away from whatever she was studying to greet us.
The door swung open, and we were met with the stern face of a girl who did not like being interrupted, but it soon softened upon seeing who was calling for her attention. She looked around Helen and I and her eyes lit up at the sight of the lion-bird lying in the gravel behind us. Zinni rushed over to it and got to her knees to get a closer look, running her hands through the pearly feathers of its head.
“Where did you find this gryphon cub?” she gasped. “I have rarely seen a thing of such beauty.”
“It attacked us in the thicket there on the hill.” I pointed to the grouping of trees, but she paid no attention. I could already see her getting lost in the newly forming scientific obsession. “We were wondering if you could tell us how it came to be there. It’s mother—at least I think it was its mother—was there with three other cubs, but they took off. We have no idea where to.”
She looked to me for the first time since setting eyes on the creature. “You saw its parent? And you lived to tell about it? How amazing.”
I nodded somberly. “It was . . . an ordeal. We barely made it out alive.”
“And you found the cub dead like this?”
“Oh, no . . . It attacked me, and I had to defend myself.”
She gasped. “Then it is more of a miracle that the mother did not disembowel you on the spot. Gryphons are known for their extreme viciousness and their territorial mindset, among other things.”
“Yeah, I kind of got that impression. I don’t know why it spared us. We would not have stood a chance had it decided to avenge its young.”
She took in a sudden whiff of air and said, “Ew! It smells disgusting! I would rather not bring it inside, but I would hate to leave it out here.” She got back to her feet and thought for a moment. “Well, I suppose it is a necessary evil. I have a room that we can keep it in. Please, bring it in.”
I had regretted telling the Thirians that they could leave us so soon because now I had to carry the nasty thing. I hauled it in behind Zinni, Helen keeping a long five paces behind me. She led us through her living room, which was hardly discernable beneath the tables and shelves full of books, gemstones, colored powders and liquids, and bizarre instruments. I moved as carefully as I could with the hunk of dead weight slung over my shoulder, but there was little I could do to prevent a couple stacks of tomes from toppling over as I carried it past. I made a quick apology, but she waved it away. Judging by several other small heaps of books littering the floor, it was not the first time such a thing had happened.
She took us to a room in the back of her house. It was mostly devoid of any kind of furniture or topics of study, which was a shock to me because as far as I was aware until then, every room in her house had a use and was practically cluttered from floor to ceiling in a similar fashion to the entry room. The room had little more than a plain wooden table and two slate boards facing each other on opposite walls. Perhaps she had been saving the space for such an occasion.
“Drop it there.” She pointed to the center of the room, and I happily obliged, grimacing at the fresh muck now caking my arms. “I will be right back.”
She left for a minute, and Helen and I stood in silence. My wife was still in the doorway, trying to keep as much distance from the creature as possible while still being a part of the conversation. I took a few steps back myself in an attempt to escape the stench that was already radiating outward and filling the room like a putrid smog. Zinni returned with a book in one hand, of course, and a scroll in the other. She put both on the table, placing a stone in each corner of the parchment as she unrolled it. If high school history had taught me anything, I knew with confidence that I was looking at a map of the Mediterranean.
Zinni opened the book and began riffling through its pages. She had a habit of licking her finger every few turns, which always made me wonder if it was a quirky compulsion she had.
“Here,” she exclaimed, placing her damp finger on a passage in the tome.
I looked over her shoulder to see what she was indicating, but it was all words and no pictures—words that I was unable to comprehend. Even though I somehow spoke the native tongue, I had yet to lay eyes on a written word I could read in Troy or anywhere else in the land. I kept telling myself that one day I would sit in with the children on some classes at the local school and commit to learning how to read, but I just had not found the time yet.
“What’s it read?” I asked in response to her expectant look.
“Ah.” She grinned. “I forget . . . This is a compendium of rare beasts—not comprehensive by any means. It holds a lot of important information on the creatures and references other works where you can look for a more in-depth exploration on a given creature. This section, as you can probably guess, is on gryphons. It lists things such as their preferred habitats, dietary needs, mating rituals, stages of growth, and other high-level things of that nature.”
She turned back to the book to do a bit of skimming before continuing. “It says here that they are common to Thrace, which is northwest of here, and the highlands in the lands to the north where it snows almost all year round.”
She left a finger on the page and flipped to the front of the book, taking note of something on the inner flap. “This book was written less than fifty years ago, so I assume this information is still accurate, or at least it was likely still accurate until recently.”
She turned back to the original page and continued reading. “Apparently, several hundred years prior to publication, their flocks used to be more widespread, including areas such as ours, but kings and their honored warriors favored hunting them as they made beautiful ornaments. It references another book here where I can find more information on their decline . . . come to think of it, I believe Father has the head of one mounted in the palace somewhere. I think it was an heirloom gifted to him by a prince or some such nobleman ages ago. It is all featherless and ugly now if I remember. It might even be missing an eye—though any eyes it had would have been replaced by glass replicas anyway . . .”
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