The Orphan's Tales

by Catherynne M. Valente

  The Griffin folded his wings swiftly and leaned forward, his face suddenly soft and eager as a chick’s.

  “Giota? Giota sent you to me?”

  I was forgotten. The two creatures were suddenly intent on each other, and on the ghost of this third creature who was not on the mountain. I could have sunk my knife in the Griffin’s emerald flank then, and had my choice of his body or his nest to make my eye. But I did not; I was merciful; I was, I admit, curious.

  “Yes, yes, she sent me; she said that you would help me. Please—I must have a talon of yours, so that I may kill a thing and save my beloved.”

  But the Griffin was not listening. He beckoned Chayim to him and allowed the Monopod to awkwardly climb into his nest, so that the excited, reedy voice of the bird-beast, now soft with wonder, could be heard easily above the wind. I strained forward to hear, and Chayim lay like a babe cradled in those iridescent wings.

  “Little lumpish man, Giota brought my sister into this world…”

  SHE WAS THE RUNT OF OUR LITTER—THE SMALLEST egg, last laid, white beryl with stripes of cobalt and a cord of quartz streaking through the curve like a splash of milk. My mother feared that it would not hatch at all, and she would be left with a dead rock to nurse. But she sat on it all the same, sharing the warmth of her hindquarters with three other eggs, all much grander and larger than the white one. They were her real hope—the violet, the flame-colored, and the deep blue.

  Of course the Arimaspian horde came when the greedy Oluwas needed another bushel of gold. They were de lighted to find my mother had laid her eggs; the yolk of our agate eggs is the purest ore of all. Though she screamed and slashed at them with her forepaws, the men dashed my siblings against the rocks and scooped up the precious stuff. The indigo Griffin squeaked and died, half-formed, in a puddle of golden yolk, and the flame-bright brother I might have had did not even manage so much—his skull was cracked when the egg burst. Only I survived, who was laid first, for we are not birds: we give eggs one at a time, during each moon of the mating autumn. I was large enough that I tumbled out, a bundle of screeching feathers and fur streaked in ropy gold. But Arimaspians have no use for live Griffin chicks; our beaks are too small to yield much metal. They made their escape, baskets brimming, though a handful met my mother’s claws.

  My sister’s egg was so small that they had not even noticed it.

  In her grief, my mother could not accept that all her children but one had perished, and with me clutched to her back and the unhatched egg clasped in her talons, she flew from the heights of Nuru into Shadukiam, where all manner of secret things are known. It is said that in Al-a-Nur all the wisdom of heaven is kept, but if you seek the dank, reeking magic of the underworld, if you want real power, to Shadukiam you must go. My mother was wise; she went directly beneath the Rose Dome and ensconced herself on the roof of the Basilica, among the waving branches of the Door-Tree, where she sent up her mourning cries like bells tolling the hours. So it went for a full fortnight, and the city could not sleep for the noise.

  Giota was young then, and she alone was brave enough to answer my mother’s cry. She climbed the walls of the Basilica like a little monkey, her short braids swinging. In those days she did not wear her gown of hair, but dressed as any of her kind would, and kept her locks cropped and knotted like a penitent. She crawled over the arched cupola painted with silver stars, and crouched before my mother, panting. Her face, of course, was smooth where her lips should have been, but she pulled open her tidy black vest to show her belly-mouth, and called out:

  “Mother Griffin, cease your cries! Giota is here, she will mend your egg.”

  “How can you know that it is my egg which wounds me?” My mother beat her rose-gold wings impressively, to instill the proper fear in a flightless creature. I chirruped beside her, eager to help.

  “Giota knows much. She can hear your wails—and would never mistake a mother’s grief for any other kind. Give over the egg; I will quicken it.”

  My mother was desperate, and she knew no other would come clambering up the cathedral walls. “These are the last, little Giota. My bright blue son and this stunted white egg. The last Griffins in all the world. The one-eyes have slaughtered all the rest, and the next time one of their Princes itches for an eye, they will slaughter me. Save my egg and you will have gold, more than you could wish for.”

  Giota shook her head ruefully. “That is the other Shadukiam, the one which does nothing if it does not bring them jewels and silver. I will do this because I wish to. If reward comes to me, it will come in its own time, and in its own way. Giota does not bargain for lives. Only pray that the egg contains a hen.”

  My mother held out her massive paw and relinquished the snowy egg into the hands of the strange-mouthed woman, whose blank face showed nothing. She held it for a moment, as if measuring the heft of the beryl, and then, without warning, she opened the mouth in her belly and swallowed my sister whole.

  Mother and I howled together in rage and betrayal, and we lunged at the little woman, blue cub and crimson dam. But Giota held up her hands, her eyes flashing warnings no mouth could utter. Her voice was choked by the egg, and it took all her strength to speak around it.

  “Giota has not hurt the egg! How do you expect a woman to quicken an egg if not in her belly? I will carry it until it is ready to hatch—alone of all Griffins it will be born of woman, not of hen, not of lioness. See? Already it has begun to grow! Ah, my jaw! Have no fear, Giota is a good house for your baby.”

  Indeed, her belly had swelled, and her mouth now stretched over a little paunch, a firm moon-shaped bulge that increased in size even as we watched her, in mixed horror and hope. She patted the bird-swell with satisfaction.

  “Giota is hungry. You must feed us until the egg is ready to crack.”

  And so my mother swept down from the turrets of the Basilica each day to hunt for her surrogate, bringing her strips of nameless meat and branches dripping with fruit. I worked the meat around the corners of the egg, into her throat. I trickled water past the shell into her parched belly. She ate a horrifying amount of food—my mother could not keep her full. From dawn to eventide she ate, and grew, and ate again. After a single day she could no longer speak. After a week she could not walk. But while my mother combed the city for sweetmeats, Giota and I played in the strange nursery of the many-towered, many-branched church roof—she tousled my fur and groomed my feathers, leaning weakly against the spires. I picked flies from her hair with my beak. I was sorry she could not wrestle with me, but her belly made her tired, and I did not want to hurt the chick inside. A baby Griffin is not small—I was already the size of a young horse, and before long, the paunch of Giota’s stomach had grown so massive she could not move at all, and her mouth was pulled into a continual grimace by the growing flesh. She never cried out in pain, and she was always ready to stroke my tail. I was sorry she could not play anymore, but I lay down and let her prop herself up against my flank where the feathers meet the fur—a thing which is almost never done between Griffins and humans, even humans as inhuman as Giota. But I did not know about propriety then. I knew only that I loved Giota, and inside her was my sister, and I wanted her to be comfortable.

  Finally a day dawned when Giota was so large that her belly dwarfed the rest of her body, as though she had become a snail, and her shell was made of skin. She gave one long sigh, and the mouth crowning her monstrously stretched womb gaped open further than I could have thought possible. I admit that I turned away from the sight—I was a child, and easily disgusted. But I peeked through my feathers and saw an enormous white egg emerge from Giota, perfect and round, its color no longer sallow and opaque but lustrous as a pearl, shot through with delicate blue veins of cobalt and amethyst.

  My mother crowed and nuzzled the egg tenderly, rubbing her body over it to give the gem her scent. She clucked and preened in delight, and as she wrapped her long rose-colored wings around her egg, a deep cracking sound filled the windswept towers. The t
op of the orb split, much as Giota’s belly had split, and my sister Quri emerged, pure white, blinking her deep black eyes at the sudden sun.

  She pecked her way out of the shell with an almost dainty fastidiousness, and my mother, seeing that she had produced a daughter and that the race of Griffins would survive, began to weep in relief, her golden tears dripping onto the dome of the Basilica and mingling with the painted silver stars. My sister fluttered her pale wings and stumbled from the wreckage of her egg into Mother’s wings. I crooned and cleaned the last of the yolk from her feathers with my beak. We were a family, happy and whole.

  Into this new nest came Giota, who extended her hand and gingerly stroked her adopted child’s fur. We had, of course, forgotten her entirely in our bliss. She was whole, as well, and showed no sign of the strange birth, save that her belly was worn and loose, like any woman who has just given birth. Her weary mouth smiled.

  “Giota has done well,” she said roughly. “Griffins will live, and keep their gold. For a while, anyway.”

  My mother turned to the little Witch and enfolded her entirely in her wings, an embrace I never saw her grant again until the night she died, when she held my sister and me thus. When she pulled back, both mothers were weeping.

  It was much later that Giota became the Anchorite of Shadukiam, and wove a dress from her hair. My sister was with her the day Giota forged her chain—she helped her fix it to the Basilica wall. Since our mother was killed, as she knew she would be, by an Arimaspian Prince, Giota has been the beloved friend of my sister and me—though she and Quri have always been the closer pair. They share the womb bond, and I cannot touch that, born as all Griffins but one are, from egg and never flesh.

  Alone of flightless things, Giota is loved by the Griffin. We miss her, both of us. We miss her so.

  I WAS UNIMPRESSED BY THE GRIFFIN’S DISPLAY OF sentiment. But Chayim had tears in his eyes, and the two were clearly tight as a King and his eye over the memory of this village Witch.

  “Jin, the Anchorite must have known you would re member her; she must have meant for you to help me. Give me your talon, so that I may kill the Yi that possesses my love and give her peace. I beg you—take it from your hind paw, so that you are still fierce, but give me a talon!”

  Jin cocked his head to one side, for a moment ridiculously like a chicken contemplating strewn corn in a yard. “Why should I sever a piece of my own body so that you can borrow it? I do not grow new talons if one is ripped from my footpad. Would it not be simpler for me to carry you on my back to Shadukiam? I will kill your Yi for you myself—a claw through the eye is easy enough. And I will see Giota again—my heart longs to see how long her dress has grown.”

  The Monopod leapt to his foot and shouted his assent over the howl of the mountain wind. The two were quite prepared to disembark at that very moment, without a thought for me, who had carried the selfish cripple all the way to the summit! I cleared my throat loudly, and both fools turned to stare at me, as though I had suddenly appeared in a puff of magic smoke. For a moment the three of us simply stood, blinking stupidly.

  Finally, Jin—for I suppose, since I know the mangy bird’s name, I should use it—rose to his full height and shook his feathers clean of gold fibers from his nest. He was larger than I had suspected, dwarfing the elephants I had killed with my hunting mates, and his feathers were so blue they seemed to leech the color from the sky.

  “Take it from the nest, Arimaspian dog. Take it from the nest and I will not stop you. But swear to me that you will never return to the Red Mountain, and that your people will never again trouble me for my gold. Swear it on your Ocular, on your rheumy, stinking World-Eye, and you may have my nest.”

  I smiled, beautifully, and my teeth glistened in the sun.

  “I swear it by the Ocular and the World-Eye: Neither I nor any of my race will come near to you again.”

  Jin nodded curtly and seized Chayim by the grimy collar of his vest and swung the poor man onto his broad turquoise back. Snorting in derision, he leapt from the peak and I was left alone, with Chayim’s ecstatic farewells echoing in the fierce wind.

  I knelt and began to collect the glittering straws of the Griffin’s nest, but my mind was full of the White Beast, Quri, and visions of my sons festooned in her gold.

  OLUWAKIM GRINNED HUNGRILY AT ME.

  “This is where we steer your ship now—to the White Beast in the center of the Boiling Sea, the Searing Sea, the last of all the Griffin, and we will take all the gold we need. I will forge a new Ocular for my heir and we will have victory, finally, over those not blessed by the World-Eye.”

  Sigrid sat back, stunned. She pulled nervously at the frayed ends of her hair.

  “What happened to Chayim? Did he and Jin kill his Yi? I hear the Yi are terrible creatures—they have never come to Ajanabh, thank all the Stars in the sky.”

  The King of the Arimaspians shrugged impatiently. “When I forged my Ocular in the fires of Ob, I glanced towards Shadukiam—out of curiosity, no more—and saw the rotting body of his Tova safe in the earth. I suppose they must have done as they planned. It matters nothing to me what a chicken and a cripple accomplish. Jin is dead—this I saw as well, with some satisfaction. Chayim I have not bothered to seek out again. Only the White Beast matters. Only the gold.”

  Very softly, casting her eyes towards the floor and praying that he would not become angry with her, Sigrid ventured, “Surely you see that if you destroy this last Griffin, there will be no more Ocular for any of your sons? Why not let her live to birth chicks, and ensure the supply of gold for future generations?”

  “Ah! She has laid her eggs already, clever Sigrid! This is why we must go now, so that we may catch her before she has hatched them, and harvest the precious yolk! As for the race of Griffin—they robbed us of our horses! No longer are we a clan which can expand our borders, riding swiftly over the steppes with four legs instead of two! We must beg and steal colts from neighbors—and the colts are weak and sickly, they do not thrive! The Griffin deserves extinction. Oh, we will ration the bounty of the White Beast so that the Ocular survives—but I will not let her live!”

  “Wait—noble King of the Oluwa, why are you questing for the Griffin’s gold? If the new Ocular is for your son, why does he not charter the Maidenhead and hunt Quri himself?”

  At this, the King scowled and blushed at the same moment, his face turning purple with rage or shame—Sigrid could not tell—and within herself she quailed in fear of the giant man. But when he spoke, his voice was small and soft, almost a whisper.

  “I have no son, young Sigrid. It is the shame of my house. At first we thought it was a blessing. Since the Griffin took their revenge on our women, we have had few maidens among us. But from the day I swore to let Jin have his wretched aerie, no man of the Oluwa has sired a boy—only girls, acres and acres of daughters, each one more beautiful than the last, and none of them able to take the Ocular. We understand now that it is a curse, and our passion to destroy the Griffin has redoubled. It is against our law, the mandate of the Eye, to allow a female to rule us. We have waited as long as we could, praying and sacrificing oxen, so that the Eye would allow some lesser Oluwa at least to sire on his woman a son. And now there are no Oluwa sons—these men you see are from other families, and though they cower in my presence, if the Oluwa do not bestow the Ocular on an heir, they will seize the Kingship for one of their own. I decreed, to preserve the sacred mandate of heaven which by right belongs only to my blood, that my eldest daughter would receive the golden eye this very winter.”

  The King straightened his glossy back and spoke loudly then, his rich voice booming in the cabin. “But it is not seemly for a girl-child to Quest, or to kill—the honor of the last Griffin-Hunt must belong to a man! Thus I have taken the burden of the hunt in the name of the fair Oluwafunmike, who will be Queen. In her name I will slaughter the White Beast, and forge the golden eye—alone of all Kings I will brave the fires of Ob twice!”

  The m
en around him, with their many-colored eyes, bowed and scraped their allegiance and praised the name of Oluwafunmike. Sigrid hid her disgust and resolved silently to help the poor Griffin if she could when they arrived, even if Tommy and the rest were obligated to allow their passenger to do what he pleased.

  “Sigrid, you listen well. In a woman, this is a kind of beauty, even if you have breasts like a cow’s udder and your skin is pale and unhealthy. You will have the honor of serving me until we reach the Boiling Sea. If you perform well, I will make you a pretty trinket from the gold we harvest. You may rejoice—few who are not of the Oculos are allowed so near my person.”

  Sigrid knew not to argue, and though her stomach lurched in rebellion, she bowed low. In her heart, she fashioned a tiny prayer that Oluwafunmike was wiser and kinder than her father, and sent it up to the Stars, for she knew of no other place to aim.

  “But you may go and sleep now, girl, so that you will be fresh for tomorrow’s work. I am a good master and I do not expect my attendants to display heroics of endurance. Go and find the Satyr-woman; she will bed you well.”

  Gratefully, she left the audience of the King, still bowing as she closed the heavy door of the cabin behind her.

  SNOW HAD FINISHED HER DAY’S NETTING. APILE OF damp gray rope had risen up neatly beside her, and the foreman had pressed two coins into her hand—barely enough to fill her belly for the night. The last of Sigrid’s much larger net still trailed from her hands like silver umbilici, the knots skillful and small, catching the last light in their tight twists. But at length, Sigrid, too, finished her tasks and collected her pay—many more and larger coins than the albino child had gotten. Snow screwed up her courage and looked up into Sigrid’s creased face. “I cannot bear not to hear the end of your tale!” she cried. “Let me buy you a husk of bread or a mug of beer and tell me the rest!”