On the Subject of Griffons

by Lindsey Byrd

  Kera thought she might need to pry the thoughts from her, but once Faith was well and truly asleep, Aurora asked, “Is it . . . only boys and girls?”

  “What’s that?”

  “The foundlings, is it only boys and girls? Only, there’s a Ruugian boy who says he has a boy at home and . . . and of course there are women who engage in, well, relations with other women. Only. I wonder if it’s only boys and girls who get their foundlings with each other. Well, the opposite of each other. You understand what I’m saying?” Aurora sighed. “Is it only boys who find their foundlings in girls and the reverse?”

  Understanding pierced through Kera quick and sharp. She reached out and placed her hand on Aurora’s. It jumped sharply beneath her palm, but then settled, shy as a rabbit in a hunter’s gaze. “No, Aurora. It’s not only boys who find girls. Life is a god, and Sera was a human soul. Devoid of a body, there is nothing to differentiate male and female. Their love is simply love. Even before Its time in that body faded, Life had loved Terentheen just as It had loved Sera. Some even say that Life hunts for both Sera and Terentheen, and I have known men who have men as their foundlings . . . and . . . and women who have women as theirs. When true love is found, it’s merely found. The rest . . . the rest is just . . . what it is. Gender hardly matters when you find your love.”

  Aurora nodded, her dark hair falling into her eyes, shielding her expression from view. “You should sleep.”

  “I don’t believe I can,” Kera said. She leaned forward, trying to see Aurora’s face. She wanted to know what was there, what was being hidden from her. There was a feeling, something nameless yet strong, urging her forward. A kind of intuition that niggled relentlessly at the back of Kera’s mind. Her fingers twitched, temptation urging her to move that curtain aside and peak at the dawning emotions on Aurora’s face. Just this once. Just to be sure.

  But her fingers stayed in her lap.

  Dawn couldn’t come fast enough, and Aurora’s questions about the foundlings continued to echo between Kera’s ears long after they’d both fallen quiet.

  She thought back to Cirri and the way Junior had teased her about finding someone at university. There hadn’t been any time then, but Kera felt the overwhelming need to discuss the topic with her daughter. Who had she found? What were they like? Why hadn’t she mentioned finding someone before?

  Kera was hyperaware of Aurora’s presence at her side. She’d even trembled when the thoughts started to build up into a cacophony.

  Aurora responded by shifting closer. “Are you cold?” she asked quietly.

  Kera couldn’t trust herself to respond. She shook her head, nervously adjusting Aiden where he lay against her chest. Then she reached for her Herbalism book, praying daybreak would come sooner rather than later. Then they could separate, and perhaps the burning feeling in Kera’s chest would alleviate just enough that she could convince herself she’d never felt this way before.

  Even if it was a lie.

  Even if she’d felt it exactly once, for a boy who had smiled and wished her all the happiness in the world.

  Shivering again, Kera licked her lips. She forced the book open on her lap, searching desperately for anything that could substantiate Aurora’s theory. Good will or not, wishes or not, the thought of endangering others set heavy in Kera’s heart. But it had been days since they left Ship’s Landing, and neither she nor Aurora had fallen victim to the sickness. Their health faded with the sun, growing stronger in waking hours only to seem worse as shadows cast over the land, and as the night persisted, Kera wasn’t sure if tonight might be the final tilt that sent both children to oblivion.

  More than anything, that was the most frustrating part. The part that made staying calm and not doing anything to stress their children that much harder. She didn’t know if she’d wake up one day to her son dead in her arms. She didn’t know if she was squandering the last few moments she had with her boy. All she knew was that the stress of the day’s riding made the nights worse, and there was no way to make it easier. No way to help, save to rub eucalyptus on his body and pray he made it through another night.

  Sharp noises cut through the air, and with each one, Kera flinched. She cast her eyes outward, inspecting the fire circle for breaks. None magically appeared. They were safe, even if Kera did keep seeing something fluttering like a cloak on the edge of her vision. But whenever she tried to focus on it directly, the figure was gone. Vanished in the smoke.

  Kera had never been in a fire circle this small before, and the smoke was suffocating. It clung to their skin and their clothes, seeping into their hair, lungs, and eyes. She could breathe, but the air felt thick and threatening. A balm and a poison in one. At least the horses weren’t panicking. They seemed to decide that as much as they hated Kera and Aurora for putting them in this predicament in the first place, they would rather be behind the fire line.

  Shivering against a chill that couldn’t exist in this environment, Kera trained her eyes on the pages of Mori’s book. Her husband’s notes curled in and around the texted print of the pages. They were comforting in their own way. A little bit of her brave soldier standing there beside them.

  “It’s not good for both of us to be awake,” Aurora prodded again.

  Kera’s thumb slid between the pages, marking her spot as she closed the cover. “Holly will follow wherever you lead,” she murmured. “You get some sleep now. I’ll sleep tomorrow, and she’ll lead me along after you.”

  “Your horse don’t follow—she sleepwalks, and having you both sleeping at the same time ain’t gonna make it better.” Aurora had an outstanding talent for ruining Kera’s plans. She moved her hand and placed it on Kera’s knee. “It’s gonna be all right, all right?”

  Kera tried to believe that. She did. She pushed the corners of her lips upward, and leaned a little closer to Aurora’s arm. A loud creak cracked through the woods, and Kera flinched. Aiden mumbled against her neck, and she shifted him so he was more secure. Aurora turned her hand over. It was quiet, polite, and timid. Kera could ignore it and no offense would be given. She didn’t ignore it. She clung to it. She squeezed her fingers around Aurora’s palm and leaned closer. With each screech and strange cackle the woods produced, they squeezed their hands tighter together. Squeeze and release. Squeeze and release.

  “Tell me about them other things you got at the quack. Wasn’t all you-kah-lip-tus,” Aurora took her time on the word, sounding it out even though Kera was certain she had heard her say it right before. It was almost funny how fear made one hypervigilant of their failures. Kera wished she knew how to make things easier for Aurora. She would offer to help Aurora speak better if she wanted, but Kera didn’t know if the question would offend her either. A lady never causes offense.

  Now wasn’t the time, in any case. Maybe later. Still, she slowed down to emphasize the pronunciation of her inventory and enunciated each consonant and vowel with care. “Yarrow, peppermint, ginger, and fennel seed,” Kera listed.

  “Don’t do that.” Kera flinched at the command. It came harsh and abrasive, and she met Aurora’s eyes with apprehension. Aurora’s fingers still held hers. They didn’t let go. But she scowled at Kera as if she would very much like to do more and knew she couldn’t. “I’m not stupid. I can understand them just fine. I get it when you read your book.”

  Her words were flat. Accent-less. They sounded just as normal as anything that Kera would have said herself, even if the diction left something to be desired. Aurora spoke without care, as though she had been waiting until this moment to reveal herself. Hiding the knowledge she could speak quite well enough so she could shame Kera’s prejudiced belief. Kera wished she could pull her hand away, but she feared doing just that. Instead, she stayed still. She continued to meet Aurora’s eyes, though her heart hurt and her breath felt tight.

  “You’re doing it ’cause I don’t talk as good as you always,” Aurora informed her. Some of the tension faded. The accent returned, and settling like it had always
belonged on Aurora’s voice. Squeeze and release. “I get you’re trying to help, and that’s fine if you wanna speak like you speak. I ain’t gonna fault you for that. But I’m me. And I’ve been me my whole life. And I’m not gonna stop being me because you come along with your books and your practices. So long as you understand me, there’s nothing that needs changing.”

  “I . . . I’m sorry. I’ll do better.”

  “Thank you.”

  Kera cleared her throat, and started once more from the beginning. “The apothecary gave me yarrow, peppermint, ginger, and fennel seed.” Motioning to the book, she flipped it over and with one hand started pulling pages back. Yarrow was easy to find since it was so close to the end.

  As with everything else, the page was annotated. Yellowish white by nature, stalk is of a chartreuse. Bears resemblance to Queen Anne’s Lace. Leaves are clustered in alternate arrangement. Note the yellow center of the flower.

  Kera had seen this page in particular before, and recognized the name when the apothecary had offered it to her. When their children fell ill, as children did, Mori had consulted this book with much dedication in hopes of finding a way to ease their ailment. Yarrow had been one of many plants Mori had become quite an authority on over the years. He had made this particular note when she had asked how to find it herself. She was embarrassed that she couldn’t tell the difference between it and Queen Anne’s Lace. He hadn’t mocked her confusion. He’d agreed it was hard.

  “That’s odd,” Aurora mumbled. Startled from her musing, Kera looked to her companion.

  “What is?”

  Aurora pulled her arm up from around Faith’s body. She pointed to a note that had been tucked into the corner of the left page. Kera had been so distracted by the sketch and its reminders, she had failed to notice it. Or, if she’d seen it, she had discounted it as unimportant. The penmanship was poor. Although unquestionably Mori’s, there was something hasty to its quality. Something that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. There were a few streaks along the page. As though he’d inked his shirt sleeve and not noticed, dragging the mess across parchment as he scribbled in his notes, unaware of his molestation. Even the words he intended to write seemed half-scrawled and fragmented.

  She tried to recall his shorthand and what he used for abbreviations. Most of his personal writings had included a barely legible set of stunted letters that meant much to him, though little to anyone else. Sp. Amit temp only no terminus?

  “He must have spoken to Amit about yarrow at some point.” The timing was strange though. Thinking back, Kera was certain that the entry was recent. Perhaps added sometime during the scant few months prior to Mori’s death. She had seen this page before without this entry. Its hastiness seemed bizarre and out of place. Mori was far more careful with his books.

  All of his other notes were clear and concise. Even if they didn’t always understand the teasing jokes he had with his fellow researcher, his words had been insightful. He added clarifications and additional knowledge that aided in greater understanding. But the note here seemed to be unrelated to anything. Yarrow did cure fever. And the medicinally trained True Lord Amit san Ruug would have known that.

  Further, Mori was persnickety when it came to his books. He avoided damaging them like he avoided damaging his horse. He would have been furious with the streaks he left behind. Kera couldn’t remember him ever complaining about the ruined page. “Why’s he say it’s temporary?” Aurora asked.

  Oh! Kera squinted at the word. Perhaps temp had meant temporary. So what would only temporarily respond to yarrow? Except for Aiden’s current predicament, Kera couldn’t recall the last time that someone in their household had need of it. She scowled and shook the thought from her head. Mori was not leaving her messages from beyond the grave in his Herbalism book.

  Something fluttered just outside her field of vision and she looked up. A black cloak hovered beyond the fire circle. Squeeze. Squeeze. Squeeze. Squeeze.

  Kera didn’t dare breathe. Her throat constricted. The workers went on strike and the manager took a sick day. Her teeth chattered and each individual hair on her head felt electrified. Aurora’s fingers squeezed her palm and didn’t let up. They stared at the figure and the figure stared back. It reached forward, skeletal hand attempting to breach their ring. It flinched when the smoke and light crackled toward its bony protrusions. It screeched loud enough to rouse both children from their slumber, then disappeared back into the darkness.

  Little wonder she was imagining ghosts when ghosts were all around.

  “Mama?” Aiden asked. She stared after the creature. The thing. It was gone, but it wasn’t. It was there. It was there and she was there, and all that kept them from the—the thing was a line of fire that could go out at any time.

  “It’s okay,” she lied. “Go back to sleep.”

  Aiden squinted. Suspicious.

  “Ma?” Faith asked Aurora.

  “It’s fine,” Aurora lied too. “Don’t worry about it.”

  The children were smarter than them. Neither went back to sleep. They snuggled close to their parents, pressed in tight. But Kera felt her son’s heart against her breast. She could see Faith’s eyes staring out into the darkness. Kera shook her head. “I don’t know where it’s from,” she told Aurora. She wanted a distraction from the wraith. She wanted to think about anything else. Please, gods, anything else.

  Release. Squeeze and release.

  Kera half thought that holding Aurora’s hand was the only thing keeping her sane. Aurora dipped her head closer to the page and squinted at it in the flickering light of the fire. Kera watched as Aurora’s dark eyes followed the tracks of Mori’s shirt sleeve. Watched as Aurora reached out and turned pages.

  The spine rested against Kera’s knee. Her right hand held one side while Aurora balanced the other. Turning pages with her left, their opposite hands still clasped so tight. She stopped on the page for valerian root. The same streaks were there too. The note just as haphazard. Temp. works w/ Euc. Not on own.

  “Najah Zakaria used valerian with her daughter Amani,” Kera explained. “She had the shaking illness? Najah said that it and eucalyptus would work for her. I recall speaking with her about it on one occasion.”

  Increasingly it seemed as though Mori’s notes were making less sense than they should. Why ask questions he already knew the answers to? Why make notes that contradicted facts they had embraced long before? Aurora kept flipping pages, determined in her search for more strange notes penned in tandem with the absent markings of a man too tired to realize he’d made them. Their answer, it seemed, came in the form of one sentence. One tucked in beside the title for the usnea page.

  When is a plague not a plague?

  There was no answer to his question. Nothing, except for a great dark stain that coated the page like a brand. Kera stared at the blight, imagining how Mori must have knocked his inkwell onto the book. He would have been so upset. But Aurora took the page between two fingers and flipped it backward and forward. Frowning at the book as though it had performed a magic trick.

  Perhaps it had.

  The dark ink had not seeped through the page to the other side like the rest of Mori’s notes had. His frantic annotations had left impressions on the opposite page, but the thick inky darkness of the stain had not seeped through. It stayed as a brand on one side, a haunting specter in its own right, both nonsensical and unreal.

  “He was studying the plague before his death,” Aurora whispered.

  Kera hadn’t known that. It wasn’t surprising, though. Mori always dedicated himself to learning whatever he could on anything he could manage. But he had never discussed it with her. And while the plague had existed prior to his demise, it hadn’t been as pervasive as it was after his death.

  Even without the extensive devastation that began after his funeral, Mori had tried to help them. Kera eyes prickled with tears. He’d always tried to help others, and the world always found ways to despise him for it. They
never understood that he cared too much to stop trying. “He just wanted to help them,” Kera managed to get out, dropping her part of the book and rubbing at her eyes. A great gust of wind blew hard through the trees, and Kera lifted her head to watch as the fiery circle flickered, parts almost going out from the strong gust.

  The wraith returned.

  It was back where it had been before, watching them in its thick cloak, skeletal figure glimmering beyond the flames. Kera could almost see the contours of the nothing of its face. It might have been a man once. Now, scant pieces of fetid flesh dripped from its skull. A hole set just above its left eye socket, cracking out like a spider web from the epicenter. The sockets were empty black divots. Its jaw unhinged and it screeched.

  Wind twisted around them. It whooshed over the fire. Kera’s hands slapped to her ears. Aiden did the same. He screamed in tandem with the monster; Faith and Aurora echoed it too, and Kera’s voice joined the choir. The horses whinnied, their hooves clacking against the ground. They jerked against their posts. The screeching noise never stopped.

  Kera’s eardrums threatened to burst. Her tongue shriveled in her mouth. She could feel each taste bud resonating with the screeching, screeching, screeching. The noise took her breath away. It choked and strangled. It dug its fingers into her flesh, tearing at each ant that skittered under her skin, squishing them in her muscles and leaving her breathless.

  The wind swirled around them. It blew the smoke down at their faces. Kera choked. She coughed and bent over Aiden. She tried to keep him from breathing it in, but there was nothing she could do. It had been hours since the sun dropped. Morning couldn’t be that far off. Their kindling was running low. And the wraith. The wraith was just on the other side of their fire line, screeching and willing the wind to blow out the only protection they had.