Song of the Wanderer

by Bruce Coville

  When Cara reached the far side of the tree, she slid to the ground and curled herself into a small, miserable ball. Her flight into darkness, being lost, the strange moans in the night, and, most of all, the vision of Beloved — it was all more than she could take.

  As she huddled there, trying not to cry, she heard the moan once more. It was low and sorrowful — sounding, in fact, much like she felt. It roused a kind of pity in her, and she began to wonder if she should go in search of the sound to see if she could offer some help.

  Don’t be stupid! she told herself. Stay right here until sunrise. If the moaning is still going on when it gets light, then you can go look.

  But her heart wouldn’t listen to her mind, and as the next moan came shuddering out of the night, she found herself forgetting her own problems and wondering what would cause anyone to make such a mournful sound.

  For a long time after that she heard nothing. The sudden silence frightened her almost as much as the moaning had.

  What if whoever it was has died? she fretted. She lay in an agony of indecision, unwilling to venture into the darkness, knowing she couldn’t see to find anyone anyway, and yet still feeling she ought to do something.

  After what seemed like hours, she heard another moan. She was almost relieved. Pulling herself to her feet, she started toward the sound. She moved slowly, both because she could not see, and because she wanted to remain silent in case whoever was making the sound was dangerous after all.

  She stumbled twice within the first few steps she took and realized that getting to her feet had been a bad idea. She dropped back to her hands and knees. Putting her right hand ahead of her, she swung it from side to side, then lowered it gently to the ground, trying not to snap any twigs or rustle any leaves as she did. Then she moved her right knee forward as well.

  She repeated the process with her left hand and knee.

  Her progress was excruciatingly slow. But then, she was in no particular hurry, her concern about whoever was moaning being nearly balanced by her fear.

  Wings fluttered overhead, and she wondered what kind of animals flew at night in this forest. In the distance she heard a howl — like a wolf’s, but lower and deeper.

  Realizing again how little she knew of Luster and its wildlife, she shuddered. But she also continued her forward motion.

  Suddenly, as if announced by the howl, the moon appeared. Though its silver-blue light was mostly blocked by the forest above, her eyes were now so dark-accustomed that even these shreds of light allowed her to move more easily.

  Another moan told her she was off course. She adjusted to the left and continued forward.

  A few feet more brought her to a large boulder — so big that as she worked her way along it she thought at first it was a cliff. But soon enough she felt it curve, and could see by the faint dapple of moonlight that it was only a stone after all.

  Now she moved more cautiously than ever. Even so, when she put her hand down onto a thick stack of feathers, she shrieked and scurried backward.

  At the same time, a harsh voice cried, “Gaaahhh! Don’t kill me!”

  Cara pressed herself against the rock, trying not to betray her position by so much as a breath.

  After a moment of silence, the voice cried, “Well, if you are going to kill me, stop fooling around and let’s get it over with, gadfound you.”

  “I don’t want to kill you,” said Cara softly. She felt braver now, thinking that anything so afraid of getting killed was unlikely to be out to hurt her.

  “Then what are you doing here?” asked the voice suspiciously.

  “I heard you moaning and came to see what was wrong.”

  “I was not moaning!”

  This remark startled Cara so much that she said, “If it wasn’t you, then who was it?”

  “I don’t know. But Medafil does not moan.” The voice hesitated a second, then added, “Besides, wouldn’t you moan if you were trapped, and had probably broken a wing, and you figured the delvers were going to come and kill you at any moment?”

  “Yes,” said Cara. “I would. Definitely.”

  “Well, there you go,” said Medafil. “It wasn’t me. But it would have been all right if it had been.”

  “How are you trapped?” asked Cara.

  “Why don’t you come around and see?” asked the voice wearily.

  “How do I know you won’t eat me if I do?”

  “What would I want to do that for?” replied the voice, sounding shocked beyond belief.

  “Because you’re hungry?”

  “Gaaaah! If I wanted to eat you I would have come around that dadgimbled rock and done it by now. At least, I would have if I could move.”

  This didn’t entirely make sense to Cara, but she pushed herself to her feet anyway. Still somewhat wary, she stepped a few feet away from the rock before she continued around it.

  What she saw in the dim moonlight filled her with wonder, terror, and pity.

  16

  Medafil

  The creature was magnificent, even in distress. His head was that of an eagle, or would have been if not for the tufted ears that rose from its sides. His wings, too, could have been those of an eagle, except that they were vastly bigger than any eagle’s had ever been. But there the resemblance to an eagle ended. From the shoulders down, Medafil’s body was that of a great, tawny lion — though twice the size of any normal lion.

  “A gryphon!” Cara whispered in awe. “You’re a gryphon!”

  “Well, what’s so surprising about that?” the creature snapped. “You’re a girl. Very unusual around here. Even so, you don’t see me lying here with my mouth hanging open, gawping at you about it.”

  “But I’ve never seen a gryphon before.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twelve.”

  “Well, it’s been longer than that since I’ve seen a girl. So who’s the more surprised, eh? Now, if you want something really surprising, consider the fact that a gryphon let himself be trapped like this. Gaaaah! It’s . . . humiliating.”

  Looking more carefully, straining to see in the dim light, Cara realized that the gryphon’s right front leg was held by a thick snare. Walking cautiously to him — she wanted to trust him but she also knew that his beak could take off one of her own legs with a single snap — she knelt to examine the snare.

  It was made of many strands of wire, woven together to form a cable as thick as her thumb. One end of it was anchored under the boulder, though how that had been done, she couldn’t imagine. The other formed a loop around the Gryphon’s leg that had been pulled so tight it nearly disappeared beneath his fur. That the fur was wet with blood testified to his struggles to break free.

  “Who would have done this?” she asked, horrified and outraged all at once.

  “Delvers,” replied the gryphon, his voice filled with disgust. “Who else?”

  “But why?”

  Medafil shrugged one of his wings, creating a small breeze. “Why do birds fly? That’s the way they are.”

  “How did they capture you?” asked Cara, trying to work her fingers into the wire loop to see if she could loosen it.

  “I’d rather not say,” replied the gryphon. He sounded embarrassed. But before Cara could press the point, he added, “Oh, all right, I’ll tell you. They cheated. They played on my weak point.”

  “What’s that?” she asked, still working at the wire.

  The gryphon clicked his beak in annoyance. “I like shiny things. I collect them. Old family habit. Can’t help myself. The delvers have lots of shiny things, of course. Bladratted creatures rooting around in the ground the way that they do are always coming across gold and jewels. So they made this.”

  “What?” asked Cara.

  “This,” he said impatiently, moving his front leg. She gasped. Hidden beneath his enormous paw had been a gem-encrusted sphere that would have been worth a fortune back on Earth. “They left it out here
for me to find, knowing I wouldn’t be able to resist it. And they set that snare to catch me when I went after it.”

  “I would have thought they’d have been watching to see when you got caught,” said Cara, glancing around nervously. “Why haven’t they come to get you yet?”

  “They’re in no hurry. The trap may have been here for weeks already. They probably check it every other night or so.”

  “Weren’t they afraid that someone would steal the . . . the bait?”

  “Well, anyone who tried would have been trapped just like me. Besides, who else would there be to take it?”

  Given the fact that they were in a deep, nearly uninhabited wilderness, Cara could think of no answer for that question.

  Turning back to the snare, she said, “I’d better go look for the others. I don’t think I can do this by myself.”

  “Gaaaahhh! Don’t go. If the delvers come while you’re gone, they’ll kill me. Gadbingled things will probably eat me, too. Very undignified way for a gryphon to die.”

  Cara didn’t want to face the delvers again herself. Even the idea made her shudder. But she couldn’t leave the creature here to face them on his own. So she began working at the wire snare again. For a time it seemed that the more she worked, the tighter it got. Once the gryphon hissed in pain and stretched his great beak toward her as if he was about to bite her. When she gasped, he stopped and drew his head back, blinking a bit and looking ashamed. She made no comment.

  I wish I hadn’t left my sword behind when I ran off, she thought as the wire began to shred her fingertips. Her blood was matting in the gryphon’s fur, mingling with his own.

  The unicorns can heal the cuts, she kept telling herself, mostly as a way to try to ignore the throbbing pain.

  Finally deciding that she was not going to be able to loosen the snare, she groped around until she found a sharp rock and began to saw at the wire. She was working at it about halfway between where the loop of wire held his leg and the spot where the wire was anchored by the boulder. Even so, Medafil cried, “Gaaah! The way you're pulling on that is cutting me!”

  “Well, I’ve already cut myself!” she snapped, growing impatient with the creature. “Do you have a better idea?”

  “Gramding it,” he muttered, which she took to mean, “No.”

  At first she thought the rock would be no more effective than her fingers had been. But finally she felt one strand of the wire snap. Another went, and then another. It took a full ten minutes, but finally she had severed the entire cluster.

  As soon as she was done the gryphon surged to his feet, shrieked with triumph, and flapped his wings. Dust and twigs blew all around her.

  “Well,” said Cara dryly. “I guess your wing isn’t broken after all.”

  “I couldn’t tell at first,” sniffed Medafil. Tucking his wings against his sides, he sat with his tail curled around his paws, much the way a cat does.

  Cara had to look up to see his face. His eagle eyes blinked down at her, and the sharp blade of his beak made her nervous.

  “What are you doing here, anyway?” he asked.

  Cara started to reply, but realized she wasn’t sure how much she should say about her mission. She had begun to realize there was more going on in Luster than she had first thought. “I’m looking for someone,” she replied evasively.

  Medafil scowled at her. “Are you a friend of the Queen or not?”

  Cara felt herself relax a bit. The clear implication was that only a friend of the Queen would be welcome here. “Friend,” she said happily.

  “And who are the ‘others’ you mentioned earlier?”

  “I’m traveling with a band of unicorns.”

  “Then what are you doing out here on your own? Don’t you know the danger of leaving the path in this forest?”

  “I had a . . . a vision. It frightened me, and I ran away. That was pretty stupid, I suppose. But I wasn’t thinking straight. About the time I realized I was lost, I heard you moaning — ”

  “I wasn’t moaning,” said Medafil sharply. Then, letting his wings sag, he said, “Oh, all right, I was moaning. A little. And you’re not going to forget it, are you? Think you have a hook in me now, don’t you?”

  “Why are you so suspicious?” asked Cara.

  “I’m not! And never mind anyway. Now, do you want me to take you back to these unicorns of yours?”

  “That would be wonderful.”

  “All right. I owe you that much at least. But there’s no point in looking for them until morning. And there’s not much point in staying here, either. Why don’t we go back to my aerie?”

  “I don’t know,” said Cara nervously.

  “Why are you so suspicious?” asked Medafil mockingly. “If I wanted to eat you, I could do it right here.”

  “Maybe you want to share me with your mate,” replied Cara quickly, surprised at her own boldness. “Or maybe you’ve got a nest full of babies who prefer their food live.”

  Medafil turned away. “I have no mate,” he said bitterly.

  The hurt in his voice was so sharp that Cara’s suspicion was replaced by pity. “I’m sorry,” she said, stepping forward to stroke his side. “I didn’t mean to — ”

  “Never mind,” he said sharply. “Climb on my back, and let’s get out of here. No, wait. Go get that bauble they used to lure me. No sense in leaving it around here for the delvers. Unless you’re secretly working for them.”

  “Don’t be silly!”

  “Well, you can’t be too careful,” said the gryphon.

  Cara picked up the jewel-encrusted sphere, then climbed onto Medafil’s back.

  “Ready?” he asked. Without waiting for her to answer, he began to run, flapping his great wings as he did. She leaned forward to grab his feathered neck.

  A moment later they came to a place where there was a gap between the trees. A moment after that, they were airborne.

  Cara cried out in delight as they rose into the night sky. Medafil circled higher and higher. In the moonlight she could not see details of the land, only the broad strokes of it — the forest, the mountains, and, in the distance, a glimmering body of water.

  “What’s that?” she called.

  “What’s what?”

  “The water over that way.”

  Medafil shuddered beneath her. “Gaaah! That’s Lake Death. Don’t talk about it.”

  He turned away from the lake, beating his wings harder still. They continued to rise. In the moonlight Cara saw the rocky slope of a mountain. The air was cold and thin, and as they neared the mountain she could see that they had passed above the tree line.

  “Home,” said Medafil a moment later as he settled onto a rocky ledge. Cara slid from his back onto a surface that was littered with an odd collection of items: clean-picked bones, some tiny, some nearly as long as she was tall; a scattering of shiny baubles, some of which looked quite valuable; and a dozen or so long, tawny feathers that looked very much as if they had come from Medafil himself.

  “Sorry,” said the gryphon, kicking aside a bone. “Not very tidy. Bachelor quarters, you know. View’s good, though.”

  Following the gesture of his wing, Cara turned to look out on the world below. Vast and unsettled, silvered by moonlight, the beauty of the forest that stretched into the distance was so stark it made her catch her breath. She stared at it for a time, drinking in the wonder of it, then rubbed her arms. “Cold up here,” she said.

  “Come inside,” said Medafil. “It’s warmer.”

  She followed him into the cave that opened at the back of the ledge. “Don’t you have any light?” she complained as she stumbled over more debris.

  “Why should I? I can see perfectly well in the dark.”

  “Well, I can’t,” she replied testily.

  “Well, you don’t live here,” he snapped back. “But if it means that much to you, I’ll see what I can do. Hold still. I’ll be right back.”

 
This speech was followed by the sound of him rummaging through the debris on the floor. “Drat!” he muttered. “I know that thing was around here somewhere. Ouch! Dingfangled pointy things. No, not that. Grambabbit, where is the spartbongle anyway?”

  After several minutes of this, he exclaimed triumphantly, “There you are, you splitgiddled thing. Thought you could hide from me, did you? Hah! And hah again! Now shine. Shine!”

  Nothing happened.

  “Drat!” said the gryphon. “I forgot how to make it work. Here, see if you can do anything with the dimbuggery thing.”

  He dropped a large sphere into Cara’s lap. Smooth and cool to the touch, it was nearly the size of a bowling ball. Fortunately, it weighed scarcely more than a feather.

  No sooner had Cara placed her hands on it than the sphere began to glow with a soft light.

  “Gaaah!” cried Medafil. “I forgot! It only glows for humans. That’s why I never use the spligfitted thing.”

  “It’s beautiful,” said Cara in awe. “Like a giant pearl lit from inside.”

  “Well, you can’t have it. So don’t even think about trying to steal it.”

  “For heaven’s sake! Why are you so suspicious?”

  “It’s my job. I’m a treasure guardian. I have to be suspicious.”

  “Don’t you trust anyone?”

  “Not hardly. Certainly not humans. No, I take that back. There was a human I trusted once, for a while. Until she broke my heart. A girl like you. Little older, maybe. Hard to tell with you humans. We used to call her the Wanderer.”

  “She’s my grandmother!”

  “Gaaah!” cried Medafil angrily. He stood, looking suddenly menacing in the pearly light.

  Cara shrank back against the wall.

  “She owes me something,” said the gryphon, looming over her. “An old debt. I think it’s time to collect.”

  He started toward her.

  17

  Shell and Sphere

  Cara stood and began backing away from the gryphon, holding the sphere between them like a shield. “W-what is it?” she stammered. “What does my grandmother owe you?”