by A Corrin
The trees swallowed us up with bony branches, their whitewashed bark dyeing the surrounding atmosphere greenish-blue. No animal made any sound from the shadows. No wind brushed away the clogging humidity.
In time, a tall fence came into view. When we were closer, I was able to see that it was made of a row of logs stuck close together with no gaps and the tops sharpened into points. The wall was too high for someone to climb over, not that they could get a hold in the damp, moldy wood anyway.
“There.” Peter pointed at a thin break in the fence some distance to our right. We made for it slowly, looking around us at the too-quiet landscape. Peter looked back and transformed into a man.
Kayle nodded and followed suit, looking made for the environment in his dark clothes, and then Mariah, after shaking the mud from each foot like a cat. I tried hard to transform but couldn’t quite get it. One samurai gave me a sympathetic shrug, a hand ready at the hilt of his katana.
“Just follow along,” Peter ordered.
We slunk to the tall break in the fence. Through it, we saw a moss-covered gravel road. On either side of it were buildings shrouded in mist, and shadows that were people shuffling dismally through the fog. Peter took a confident step forward.
From around one side of the fence strolled a tall man clad in black armor with a billowing violet cape. His helmet had a pointed chin and three horns. One spike-knuckled gauntlet rested on the ruby-encrusted pommel of a long sword.
My first thought was that this was a Dark Knight, one of the first creatures posted in Peter’s book, loyal to the highest bidder and willing to sell their own grandmas up the river if there was a profit in it, so my second thought was:
This guy’s going to ask for money.
Everyone gasped at the same time, and hands flew to weapons. The only thing holding them back was a look from Peter.
The knight looked every one of us up and down, like a farmer studying a choice stallion. Turning his head, he asked Peter in a gravelly voice muffled by his helmet, “Where do you and your patchwork collection of comrades think you’re going?”
The warriors of the squadron were so stone-faced a poker player would’ve been green with envy, but Mariah was fretfully fingering her necklace, and Kayle had an incredulous sneer. His knuckles were white as if he were fighting the urge to pull out his lighter.
Peter kept his tone steady as he explained, “We seek lodging and food for a brief reprieve. We are on our way to sell this beast. We found him in the valley.”
What? I glared at the hand Peter was pointing at me.
The knight’s helmet tilted down at me. “That’s not a beast,” he said, in a guarded voice, “That’s a griffin.”
“Well, then he must be a dream-created one, because he hasn’t transformed or spoken in the days he’s been with us.”
The knight made a sudden move forward; there was the scraping sound of metal being unsheathed. Before I understood what had happened, the knight’s sword point was at my throat, holding up my new coral necklace so he could see it better.
As one, the militia reached for their own weapons, but once more, Peter stilled them.
The knight pretended not to notice the threat and asked shrewdly, “And where might this ‘beast’ have found such a fine collar?”
Peter had an answer. “Maybe it’s a collar. We suspect he is tamed. He doesn’t seem to understand the situation.”
The knight and I both noticed that as Peter implied my stupidity, my eyes flashed red. He was staring into my face when I saw a dull crimson glow form two rings on the sleek blade of the sword at my neck.
“Well, he understands us,” the knight mused. He pressed the blade harder into my jugular and leaned forward to add, just for me to hear, “Don’t you?”
Panic for my life made my heart beat faster, the blood raced through my veins. Some feral instinct to defend myself took over, and I opened my beak to shout at the guy to back off, but my mind blanked. What came out was a vicious hawk shriek. My head flicked bird-like to the side, and I snapped at his hand. He stepped back, almost fell, and leaned against the fence for support. The squadron laughed.
The Dark Knight composed himself and jabbed out an open hand, palm up. “Currency,” he demanded shortly.
Peter extracted some gold coins from a pocket, still flaunting a small smirk. The knight grabbed them, and stomped inside the fence, vanishing around the corner. After a few moments of preparing ourselves for entering the bog, we fixed our eyes straight ahead and moved one muddy foot in front of the other.
The entrance was so narrow that we had to file in, in pairs. It was a clever setup. If we were an enemy, we could have been cut down easily from inside. The gravel, packed into the muddy soil beneath us, crunched loudly. It was an almost homey sound—like walking up my driveway. The soupy fog wrapped itself around us, patching up denser in some places more than others, so that, at times, we had glimpses of something in perfect clarity: a pile of rocks, puddles of water, or little street urchins pausing briefly to stare at us.
We eventually came upon buildings lined up one after the other on either side of us. Dull yellow, grimy lights were suspended from above doorways, shedding minor radiuses of brightness upon us as we passed and throwing shadows into the already dark alleys.
I tried to play the part of the stupid animal while at the same time inquisitively taking in my new surroundings. There were shops: a blacksmith’s forge, its entryway lit with a red heathen glow. I saw an apothecary, its walls covered in some thick sort of ivy, and a butcher’s displaying hunks of bloody meat in its windows.
The few people wandering the street were cowed and draped in ragged cloth. Old women hobbled witchlike on knobby canes. Bearded men stared fiercely, their stiff demeanors cold and unfriendly. Some people looked innocent enough, fearfully meeting our eyes only to totter off with lost and terrified expressions. I wondered if these were the people in the world having nightmares, and the other grumpier, mean-ish looking citizens were the results of the darkness in peoples’ minds. Like Rankers, but not as bad.
We were halted by Peter. His thumbs were hooked in his suspender straps, and he was looking at a large building on our left with something close to satisfaction. “Here seems decent enough,” he said.
I wondered who he was kidding, as this place appeared to be just as ramshackle as everything else. It was around three stories tall and just as wide and deep. A sign hanging from a post suspended out next to the doorway displayed a chipped painting of a thick worm twining itself in the words: “The Grub’s Haven.”
Promising, I thought sarcastically.
We entered cautiously into fuzzy yellow light. Two thin wrought-iron stands were positioned on either side of the door. Candles were set in branches at the top. The floor was coated in grime and cluttered with toppled chairs and rickety tables that gave the appearance of a recent bar fight. The stained-glass windows randomly interspersed in the walls would have been pretty if: they were actually clean, there was any light outside to shine through them, and if they didn’t depict dark, haunted forests and creepy little demons and ghosts. Candles, wax clotting the wicks and dimming their feeble flames, were stuck in brackets in the walls, leaving the corners in shadow.
A trio of Dark Knights leaned casually in their chairs off to one side, hands curled around tankards of foaming beer. I think it was beer. I actually hoped it was, for their sake. I didn’t want to know what the soda tasted like in this filthy, slimy, swampy place. Probably flatter than a sheet of paper. The knights stared at us coldly, their conversation cut off. A black cat sitting at their boots arched its back and hissed at me.
We approached the bar at the back of the room next to a flight of stairs leading up into the ceiling. The marines and sailors had removed their hats upon entering out of habit, eyeing the ceiling as if expecting hungry spiders to plop down into their crew cuts.
A man
covered in coarse hair stood behind the bar, drinking deeply from a mug and watching us come closer with eyes curtained behind knotty brown-black bangs. He finally pulled his mouth away from his drink, set it down with a large hand, and smiled greedily.
I quickly looked down at my talons so no one would see my eyes flash white with fear. His teeth were sharply pointed, like fangs. He tossed his hair out of his stubbled face to clear his eyes. The irises were a deep green ringed with black and let off what seemed to be a faint glow.
In a feral, growling voice, he asked, “Can I help ye gentlemen?” Catching sight of Mariah, he added, “And lady?” His grin spread.
Mariah scowled. Kayle and some of the other more chivalrous soldiers glanced at Mariah and then glared at the bartender with barely concealed revulsion.
“We’re just passing through here, sir. Do you have adequate rooms for all of us?” Peter asked courteously, though his eyes were stormy.
The bartender nodded slowly, taking all of us in with his tongue poking from a corner of his mouth. “Sure. Upstairs to the highest level, the four rooms across from each other.” He rummaged under the bar for a roll of keys and handed them to Peter. The jingling of the metal reminded me of the key I held from the package. I wondered, not for the first time, what it opened.
“The beast can stay in the stables,” the bartender added when we all began to inch toward the stairs.
Peter came to my rescue by warning, “I think you’d rather have him stay up with us. Griffins tend to get lonely and nasty in dark places.”
The bartender sneered maliciously. “I’ll send out one of my men to…keep him company. He touches so much as a keg of my ale, I’ll have him whipped into submission.”
“I don’t think your ‘man’ would appreciate assisting you in the keeping of this inn with one arm,” Peter replied.
“Fine!” the shaggy man snapped. “But if I find even one feather, you’re out.”
“Fair enough,” Peter said with a slight bow.
We trundled up the stairs, then down a hall lined with thick doors, behind which we heard no signs of life. At the end of the hall, we turned right, up some more stairs, and faced down another hall. Mariah whimpered. Compared to this level of the inn, the second story was as homey as the Four Seasons.
Up here, the long red carpet extending from beneath our feet to the far wall was tattered and filthy. A fat, mangy rat chewed on an edge of it, but skittered off noisily when it saw us. Dark, creaky rafters dripping with moisture showed through a hole in the ceiling. We avoided the doors closest to us and made our way to the last four, careful not to fall through the floor in any places we suspected might collapse right beneath our feet.
Peter whispered to the marine who had led the squadron in his place when we’d been flying earlier, “Me and the kids will stay in one room. Divide the men into the other three. Be careful tonight, son; eat that bread we packed. Be ready to wake up early.”
The marine nodded, saluted, and turned around to face the rest of the militia. Mariah, Kayle, and I joined Peter before the door to our room. Peter took out our key, inserted it in the lock, and turned it. With a heavy clunk the lock slid aside, and Peter pushed the door open.
It was almost pitch-black inside. The only light came from the lit candles out in the hall and Kayle’s lighter.
“If you would, Kayle,” Peter invited jovially.
Kayle shouldered his way through, the tiny flame he held in his hand dyeing his face orange, giving his eyes an inhuman glow, spreading shadows on his cheeks and hat. Cupping one hand around his lighter, he closed his eyes tightly in concentration. He parted his lips and blew out softly, caressingly. The flame flickered madly.
What happened next took place so fast I almost didn’t see it. Kayle extended his cupped hand; I saw a ball of fire writhing in his palm. Then he closed it and clicked shut his lighter, at the same time curving his hand in an arc from his chest straight out, as if throwing a Frisbee. The fireball flew into the room and soundlessly exploded into tinier sparks, each zipping to a candle and curtaining the room in new light.
I found myself smiling. That had been the coolest thing I’d ever seen.
“That never fails to amaze me,” Mariah said as Peter shut the door. Kayle shrugged but looked pleased and sort of out of breath, like he’d just parachuted out of an airplane.
I grimaced at our new, measly surroundings. At the left wall stood two beds covered in patched and wrinkled quilts. The colors had bled out of them, leaving them bleached white. The pillows were stained in places a dull brown color and ripped through. The faces of snarling beasts, writhing serpents, and other such cuddly things were carved intricately into the headboards. Three cockroaches clung to the bedposts, just sitting there…waiting…
One stained-glass window was set in the wall in front of us. The multi-colored panes glowed eerily in the new candlelight, showing the form of a beautiful girl on her knees, her head in her hands and her gown’s sleeves and hem torn. Towering behind her, black wings outstretched, stood the Angel of Death, his hood covering his face, one skeletal hand reaching down to touch the crying woman.
The only decorations in the whole room were a vase of dead flowers on a simple table and a cracked mirror beside the door. I jumped when I saw myself in it; I still wasn’t used to seeing that I had a beak and feathers. I hugged my wings snug to my sides for warmth and tucked my tail closer to my legs, the feathery tuft at the end brushing the floor and the inch-thick coat of dust layering it.
“What do you think?” Peter asked at length.
I sat down where I stood. “I don’t think ‘one feather’ would make much of a difference,” I replied.
Peter tentatively sat down on a mattress and said apologetically, “Sorry I treated you like a dumb beast.”
I was about to accept his apology, but Kayle ruffled my crown feathers on his way past and remarked, “He’s okay, aren’t you, birdy?” He threw himself with vigor upon the other bed, folding his arms behind his head and pushing his beanie down over his eyes with a wily smirk.
“You ever wondered if your ego would get you a black eye someday, Kayle?” I asked, peeved.
Kayle ballooned his cheeks and breathed out, “Bollocks.”
“Yeah, me too,” I muttered. I had absolutely no idea what the heck that meant. I doubt it was anything nice.
My vision blurred, and I blinked furiously, assuming my eyes were dry. Everything whipped back to clarity, but things farther away were less detailed. I looked down and saw hands instead of talons pressed onto the cold floor. I jumped to my feet happily. “Yes!”
Mariah gave Peter a worried look, and Kayle straightened his hat, biting his lower lip. “I know that at this point the shifting comes automatically, but try not to let it happen too much in public, Jon,” Peter said. “Now we have another body, and a missing griffin, to explain for.”
“We could say he was one of the soldiers?” Mariah offered.
Peter blinked sleepily and began tugging off his boots. “That’ll work for a while. Hopefully until we find what that key of ours unlocks. Still have everything, Jonathan?”
I reached into my pocket and extracted the folded recipe and mossy key. “Sure thing,” I said. Gosh, I love fingers and lips. “Do you think this opens a door somewhere?” I held out the key.
Peter took it and held it close to his eyes, running his big, calloused fingers over the teeth. “No.” He sighed, handing it back to me. “It’s too small and brittle for these heavy locks. No, this key was custom-made for someone.”
“Maybe we need to give it back to them,” I mused, looking at my familiar face in the mirror. The crack warped it in half, but I was just glad to see it again.
“Maybe…” Kayle said thoughtfully.
“The main thing to remember,” Peter said, raising his eyebrows seriously so that the firelight shone eerily off of his pa
le eyes, “is that as we try and figure out these clues, we have to also keep an eye out for any Rankers waiting to meet potential recruits here in the bog. Right now we have the advantage of anonymity, but if a Ranker catches wind of a griffin being sighted in the area, things can go south fast.”
“And if they find out that that griffin is the prince of dreams…” Mariah trailed off grimly.
After that, we all dressed down to sleep (putting on clothes that Peter had packed) and let Mariah change in the bathroom. I accepted a white T-shirt and black sweatpants and headed into the bathroom after Mariah to take a bath. We’d all agreed that she and Peter would get the beds… And the cockroaches. Of course, I didn’t care to think about what sort of creepy-crawlers made their homes in the floor.
Our small bathroom contained a hole in the floor for…you know what. A faucet suspended over a drain in the floor was the sink, and the bath was another crooked faucet over a basin with porcelain feet in the shape of animal paws. The water was cold but clean, and I stepped out feeling refreshed. Kayle and Mariah were sitting on the second bed facing Peter. I heard them pleading with him to tell them about something or other as I dried off and got dressed.
When I opened the bathroom door and reentered the main room, Peter was saying, “…can’t think of any story I’ve not told you already!” He was lying on the other bed, smiling up at the ceiling while Kayle’s and Mariah’s voices overlapped.
“Tell us of the one about the fire-bird!”
“Or when you met the dryads in the spirit pond!”
“Or how ’bout the secrets rumored to roam the capital’s sewers?”
Peter noticed me and asked, “What do you think, Jonathan? Any suggestions?”
I started packing my clothes from the day into one of the bags and offered, “How about…what it was like when you first got here?” Slowly, Kayle and Mariah looked at Peter with half smiles. Peter met my gaze uncertainly, his eyes switching from one detail of my face to the next, my eyebrows, my mouth, my eyes, trying to perceive my expression. I, however, was purposefully keeping my face stoic, blank of anything to give away my intentions.