Of Gryphons and Other Monsters (Taryn's Journey Book 1)

by Shannon McGee

  I grinned, leaning around the doorframe, to grab my belt and crook. I spoke to the ground as I cinched the belt around my waist. “I was going to go to town this morning. Are you going?”

  “No dear.” She spoke over her shoulder on her way towards the kitchen. “One of the geese got out yesterday, and I’ve a mind to find out how he managed it. I was hoping to get your help with that.” Her tone implied she had expected my help.

  I followed her as she walked, and I accepted a plate of eggs when she took it off the kitchen counter and handed it to me. “I won’t be gone long. I promise.”

  Her mouth twisted as she thought about that, and for a moment I feared she’d ask me to stay, but then she smiled. “All right. Tell Nai I said hello, won’t you?”

  It figured mother would guess that it was her whom I needed to speak with. When I had agreed to her request, Mother left me alone to begin her own task. I waited until she was out of sight before I shoveled the eggs into my mouth in a manner she most certainly would not have approved of, still standing and barely chewing. Then I raced to the barn to saddle Hale.

  Riding to town was a shorter trip than riding to the field and before long, the brick and stucco wall that surrounded it came into view. It was twice my height and about three feet thick, with two entrances—one on each side of town. It was possible to bypass the town and rejoin the Great Road on the other side, but it meant traversing the woods, which was old growth, and that meant leaving any horses or caravans behind. Typically, that was far too inconvenient for anyone with good intentions.

  “Miss Taryn, this is a surprise!” A man’s voice greeted me from within the guard’s post. The face that poked out the window was beaming from ear to ear. “How are you today?”

  Both the north and south entrances were manned by a guard. These men and women were allotted to us by King Lionel and his lady, Queen Amane. They were trained at the capital and sent to the far corners of the kingdom to keep some semblance of order, and to collect taxes. Some guards came and went quickly, and others decided they liked their station enough to settle down there. William, or Willy had been at his post for the past twenty years. He was a good man, who often felt more like an uncle than a guardsman.

  “I’m all right,” I responded to his question. “And yourself?”

  “I can’t complain. Where’s your mother?

  I dismounted, tying Hale to the hitching post. “She’s tending to some things at the house. I’m sure she’ll be here later this week though. I’m only staying a little bit.”

  “Well, mark it up, miss.” He offered me the log, a small chalkboard that was made to keep track of the comings and goings of people in and out of town.

  I did as I was told, exchanging a few more pleasantries with the older guardsman before I went on my way. Hale whickered softly as I left, but I didn’t pay her any mind. I trusted Willy to look after her as well as anyone.

  Nophgrin was not large, by any stretch of the imagination. There were no extravagant perfumeries or instrument shops, and you could go from one side to the other in under ten minutes if you ran—I knew, because racing back and forth had been a common pastime when I was younger.

  For me, its size was part of its charm. If you needed something Nophgrin didn’t have you could do what the merchants did. They wrote letters to distant relations in the capital, and waited for one of the guards, or their counterpoints to have occasion to go there. A trader would come through every few months in the summer with great wagons full of parcels for them. For the most part though, the rest of us made do on our own.

  The only thing I was looking for right now was my best friend. She would know what had happened with Michael, and truth be told she might even know it better than he did. Sometimes I could find her at the washing well, but as early as it was I was willing to bet she was still at home, helping her mother and father with the baking.

  I was a few blocks shy of my destination when someone called for me to stop. “Taryn, I thought that was you!” A head with a soft bob had popped out of an upper-story window to my right. The head belonged to Beth, a girl only a few years my junior who had recently attached herself to Nai, and me by extension. “Hold on a moment, would you?” Without waiting for my reply, Beth disappeared, and in a few moments the front door to the house flew open.

  “Morning Beth.” Carefully, I smoothed the laughter from my voice as Beth tugged at her skirt, which she had shut in the door. “How are you?”

  “I’m all right. Are you going to visit Nai?” I covered a smile with one hand. Beth was cute, in a disheveled sort of way. She had rosy cheeks, and large pretty brown eyes, that made her look like a doe. Two thin braids pinned back artfully kept the rest of her bob from getting into her face. Beyond that she did not seem to have much going on. I was pretty sure Nai let her hang around because she enjoyed being idolized—and Beth did idolize my friend.

  “I was,” I told her. “I wanted to ask her if she saw Michael yesterday.”

  Beth bit her lip, the picture of guilt. “Um, about that…That is to say, I suppose I should talk to you about that.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Did you see him?”

  She was wringing her hands now, and her words came in a rush, “I did, and I swear I told Corey to stop, but only he wouldn’t listen to me—you know how he is. You aren’t upset with me, are you? I told him after that there was no reason to be jealous and that he can’t just do stuff like that, and he did say he was sorry. Please don’t tell Nai!” When she finished her voice had gotten so high and fast that I could barely follow what she was saying.

  Irritation flickered in me for a moment. It was too early for her carrying on. Taking a deep breath, I let it out slowly, reining in my patience. “All right, Beth, I’m not mad. I just need you to tell me exactly what happened. Slowly.”

  Unfortunately, it was in that moment that the other person apparently involved in yesterday’s encounter showed up. Corey, a tall young man who could be described as surly at best, ambled around the corner and stopped short when he saw me. He glared.

  “I wanted to see if you felt like going for a morning walk around town,” he said to Beth, without so much as a hello to me.

  That shortened the discussion considerably. Beth had been forthcoming, if a little flighty in the way she first told the story. With Corey looming, she became evasive and less critical of her beau’s part in yesterday’s events. She was either eager to go for a walk with him, or unwilling to upset Corey by bringing up what had happened.

  Corey didn’t seem to care either way. He waited for Beth to finish, slumped against the wall of her home. His arms were crossed over his chest, and he glowered, mostly at me. Which just figured. Every time Michael got into a fight people acted as though I had been in the thick of it too—as though I wasn’t the one who was always smoothing things over.

  Once Beth told me everything she was willing to, I rode straight to the field. My blood was boiling with impotent frustration. If I had been there I would have stopped it before it had begun. Beth ought to have known better. Frankly, they all should have known better—brawling in the streets like a couple of hedge-born lackwits. Mostly I blamed Corey and Beth. She was a flirt, and Corey was always ready for a tumble. However, I couldn’t even say as much without them thinking I was taking Michael’s part in it all. Which I wasn’t. He had been wrong too.

  At the field, I reined up beside Michael in record time and dismounted, still seething. Brooks stood as if to greet me, but I signaled for him to sit back down, and he did, though his ears drooped mournfully.

  “You’re early.” Michael greeted me without looking from his book.

  “You want to go for a ride around the field?”

  He squinted at the page he was reading and flipped between it and another a few times before responding. “Right now?”

  “We can talk about it here, just as well as in the saddle,” I said trying to keep my tone light and amiable.

  “Talk about what?”

&n
bsp; I did my best to keep my voice from sliding towards accusatory. “You went into town after you left the field yesterday.”

  He did glance up then, marking his place in his book with the black ribbon that was connected to the binding. “I needed to get some things for Mother’s birthing day gift.”

  “You ran into Beth.”

  “Yes.”

  “And Corey.”

  His expression soured. “Yes.”

  “Want to tell me about that?”

  Carefully Michael slid the book into his satchel. “Like I said, I was looking for a gift for mother. Beth was there, and I asked her about some ribbons that were for sale. Corey showed up. Corey is a moron,” he said succinctly, as though that explained everything.

  “Beth says he thought he had something to be jealous of?”

  Michael let one shoulder rise and fall. “Like I said.”

  “She said that you told her in front of Corey that she could find a better purpose in life than marrying the pig farmer’s son?”

  “Which is true, and I’ll tell you, it never fails to please me that you aren’t interested in the men in town. They’ll live and die here doing nothing more than their fathers before them. It’s sad.”

  “Michael, you can’t say stuff like that to people!” I exclaimed, exasperated. I purposefully ignored his attempt at turning the conversation towards my feelings about the men in town. “And you know when you do they get mad at me too. It’s me they gabble at about it—like they think being twins means we’re one gods-cursed person! You should have seen the way Corey was looking at me!”

  Michael did appear repentant then. “I’m sorry. I didn’t even mean to get into it with him. It just happened. The guy is a brute. No finesse. No self-control.” He scratched the back of his head. The movement of his arm reminded me why I had gone into town to begin with.

  “So, he punched you?” My tone was gentler this time.

  He blinked at me and then looked away. “Yeah. He got a hold of me before I could get out of the way.”

  “He left your face alone,” I pointed out. “Where did he get you?” After a moment’s hesitation Michael lifted his tunic to reveal a goose egg-sized bruise on the side of his gut. I gasped in sympathy. “Oh, Michael…”

  He let the tunic fall back down. “It’s fine. It won’t be long before people like him won’t be able to come anywhere near me.”

  We talked for a while after that. Mostly Michael talked —he had much to say about going south and becoming someone’s apprentice—while I listened. Michael had been hinting at these thoughts for a few months now, probing for my opinion, but he had become more irritable about it lately.

  When he had first asked what I’d thought of both of us leaving I had told Michael in the simplest terms that I couldn’t fathom it. I had hoped this was a fancy he would get over, but I was slowly realizing it wasn’t going to be that simple.

  “Michael,” I said, as he paused for a breath, “a great city won’t be any kinder to you than Nophgrin. No one in big cities know their neighbors enough to even wish them a happy birthing day. Cities are dirty and cramped.” I tallied on my fingers. “Not to mention that the lands surrounding the capital, for example, are clear-cut and ugly. I’ve seen the sketches. Some of them are from books which you own. There aren’t any forests to get lost in or secret places you could have all to yourself.”

  Michael listened in stony silence. When he replied his voice was as earnest as before. “But there are more opportunities for us there. Ones we could never even dream of here in the mountains.”

  I frowned. He had said ‘we’ again. “Like what?”

  “Libraries full of knowledge, for one. The capital is home to the mage university and it has the greatest library in all of Somerlarth.”

  “Yes, but you’re not a mage,” I pointed out.

  His eye flashed dangerously. “Trust me, I’d be allowed to look.”

  “If you say so,” I said dubiously, unimpressed by his display of temper.

  His expression lightened as he waved aside my dismissal. “Anyway, it wouldn’t matter if people were more or less kind in the city. The point is, there are ways in which someone who was clever could rise through the ranks in big cities, and become someone with power to throw around.”

  I scoffed. “What more “power” could we ever need?”

  “I mean power to have whatever we want, when we want it. Power so that if someone irritates us then we can remove them, so that we never have to see them again. Who couldn’t use power like that?”

  “All I want is for the four of us to be happy, and safe,” I said firmly. It was mostly true, and there was no way I was giving him even the slightest indication that I would be understanding if he abandoned us.

  Of course, the conversation didn’t end there. Perhaps he thought he could make me understand, but no matter how much he talked, nothing he spoke of appealed to me like it did to him. His head was filled with thoughts of the architecture, the foods, and the wells of knowledge just out of his reach here in the mountains. By the time he had run out of steam, his shift in the field had ended, mine had begun, and we were no closer to an agreement.

  I was shamefully relieved when he rose to go. I had thought to bring along my harness, which had the canteen attached and Michael still had some jerky which he let me have, so he wouldn’t have to bring me anything back from the house. All that was left was to hope Mother wouldn’t be upset about my missing out on helping her with the geese. Before he left, Michael promised to make my excuses, and to help her if it turned out she had not been able to solve the mystery on her own.

  I glanced at the sky, so blue it almost hurt to look at, with only a few spindly clouds sailing quickly in the wind. The trees at the end of the field were well into the business of gussying up for autumn. Pops of bright red, orange and yellow peeked between the solid rows of green pines. Muscles I hadn’t known had been held tight relaxed, and I drew my horse blanket from my shoulder to across my legs. The wool was undyed and a little dirty from use, but it was thick and cozy. I pulled a block of cedar out of my bag and retrieved my knife from my harness. I whittled away at the wood as my thoughts wandered.

  Michael wasn’t wrong, the capital had some things we didn’t, and they were nice. They were not worth leaving home for. I had my own issues with small town life, as my brother knew. We had a duty though, to our parents, and to the farm which they had dedicated their lives to. It’d be one thing if he had found love, and was leaving for that. I could understand that. But for stuff?

  The facts were that in Nophgrin we were known, and cared for. In the city, his master would only care if he could not perform his work. Here in Nophgrin, he had the status of being the only son of one of the most successful shepherds this side of the mountain. That was as much power as he could ever hope for, for all the good it did him. The moment he left the mountains, that power would vanish. In the city, the people purchased their food and clothes without ever seeing the creature it came from. Even if they did care about who produced their purchases, our father had never sold outside the mountains. They wouldn’t know or care who he was.

  Curls of cedar piled by my right leg as I shaped the wood. Though my mind whirred, my fingers moved the knife slowly, remembering how painful it was when the blade slipped. The sheep were talking amongst themselves, and moving about with the ease of creatures who had nothing to fear. Two of them were burdened with new life, and comically round and cranky. I would help them when the time came, and years from now I would do the same for their babies. So would Michael.

  I sighed, and rubbed my forehead. There was no better life in the world for us. He was smart, and sooner or later he would realize that. When one of the girls in town who were eyeing him finally caught his gaze in return he would quit his fighting, quit his talk of leaving, and that would be that.

  My shift passed without any incident. The sheep meandered, Hale cropped the grass around her, and Brooks diligently stared at them f
or the next six hours. When it came time to leave the cedar block had taken on the rough shape of a small sparrow gryphon, which I planned to sand, stain and give to my mother for her birthing day next month. Carefully, I wrapped it in a hank of cloth and tucked it and my tools into my bag.

  At my “Come-bye!” Brooks leapt into action while I untied Hale and readied her to ride. Brooks’s frame was thick, but his legs were long, and with the skill lent to him by five years’ experience, he rounded the sheep into a tight cluster with sharp barks and snapping jaws—all for show. His training assured he would never actually harm any of the sheep. By the time he had them ready for me, I was mounted on Hale, and with his help, I drove them across the field, back to the road that led to home.

  The sheep yelled their discontent at me and at Brooks, whose tongue lulled out as he grinned, happy to finally be doing real work. True to his breed, Brooks was loyal, and fearless. Some Carpathian shepherds had been known to take on bears and other giant beasts that might attack a flock, making them ideal in gryphon country. Brooks had yet to be called upon to face down a greater gryphon, but at home he took great pleasure in rushing flocks of lesser gryphons. He would sit for hours at the base of a tree if he knew there was one perched up high. Still, I was sure Brooks spent much of his work day in boredom. Sometimes he would get a chance to chase lesser gryphons away, but it was rare for lesser gryphons to come out to the field. There was little cover for them, and even less to hunt.

  We were halfway back to the farm when the clatter of hooves preceded only momentarily the sight of Glenn, riding full speed in my direction.

  “Hold!” I called to Brooks, and he moved closer to the front of the flock to keep the sheep stationary as I moved over to get out of Glenn’s way. To my surprise he pulled up short beside me. His face was pale, and his eyes were dilated. He ran a hand through his thinning blond hair, clearly trying to compose himself.

  “I hoped I’d catch you before you turned in for the evening.” His nasally voice wheezed as he spoke. “Did your brother speak to you about my visit earlier this week?”