by Anthology
***
A small crowd around the manhole erupted in cheers when Ramona brought the girl up, unconscious and glistening with sweat.
Kora Gillespie was severely dehydrated. She was feverish, weak from over two days without food. But she was also apparently a little invincible. Three days of Jell-O and rest found her sitting up in bed staring inscrutably out her window.
“It’s good to see you awake,” Ramona said. “How are you feeling?”
Kora turned, unsmiling. “I don’t know,” she said, though not sullenly.
“I’ve brought you something.” Ramona produced two fistfuls of yellowed, now sweat-wilted pages, spreading them out on the bed. There they were, every one of Kora’s hard-won treasures, staring up at her through masses of eyes and masses of tentacles. Pages of everything from Saint Augustine's De Civitate Dei, to an illustrated biography on the early life of the historical Merlin. “I thought you might want them back.”
Kora looked at the heap of illustrations but didn’t stir. “What I saw…” she said slowly, “was that really how it was?”
“I don’t know. What did you see?”
“The dream you had, of when I was born,” Kora said, unrelenting, “is that how it was?”
“That was a nightmare, Kora, you should know that.”
“But it’s how it was in your head.”
Ramona paused, searching for words that would mean something to Kora. “There’s a difference between how something makes you feel, and how it is. Incubi are known to cause people to feel fear, even if they’re not being hurt by them.”
Kora nodded, as though making a mental note, and turned again to look out the window. “And so they can be afraid, even if you don’t look like one?”
Oh. Ramona blinked her eyes clear. Oh. “Kora…”
“Do they like hurting people? They have to like it, don’t they? That’s how they live and make babies.”
“Kora,” Ramona waited a few moments to speak, but her voice was still hoarse. “Did you ever read what Malleus Maleficarum—that’s the book you took those two pictures out of—did you ever read what it had to say about incubi? Do you know where an incubus gets the sperm to fertilize a human mother’s egg?”
Kora shook her head.
“Well you know that a female of the species is called a succubus. An incubus must retrieve sperm from the pouch of a succubus. Many Parazoologists even theorize it’s one androgynous organism doing both jobs. Do you have any guess as to where the succubus gets the sperm she stores in her pouch?”
Kora turned to look straight at Ramona as the new thought struck her. “But that’s just a baby, isn’t it?”
“It’s a human baby, made from the same stuff as other human babies.”
The Cambion girl’s puddle-gray eyes blinked, and she managed to slap away the one sudden tear, though not the furrow it left on her cheek.
“Kora, very little is known about how incubi or succubi reproduce, how they make more of themselves. But that wasn’t what was happening when they made you. You’re something nobody quite understands. But there are plenty of humans that nobody will ever quite understand…”
Kora tried a smile.
“Let’s hang your pictures,” Ramona decided.
***
They did hang the pictures, all in a row, with clothespins, so Kora could take them down and look at them whenever she needed. When they were finished, Kora was too afraid to ask her about Sant Ramon.
Ramona would be here a little while, anyway. And then…Kora supposed she’d really have to be a grownup.
***
“You wanted to see me?” Ramona poked her head in the open door of Bernadette’s tiny closet office.
“Oh, yes. Come in.”
Ramona took two steps inside. “Have you had the chance to look over my program design for Sant Ramon?”
“I have.”
So this would be a short discussion, then. Unless she made it an argument. “I’d love to know what your thoughts are.”
“I suspect you know what my thoughts are, Ramona.”
“I don’t, actually! I never do, about anything! Please enlighten me!”
Bernadette sighed a decidedly frustrated sigh. “It is a very good proposal, as was your commune hospital for the Trauco’s victims in Chiloe, as was your day care center in Vatican City for the mothers of Nephilim children. I have no doubt you could do it. But it would be a shameful waste.”
Ramona opened her mouth to speak, then shut it.
“These people in these faraway places you propose to help…there are people for them. The books in the libraries already know them as victims and beautiful wonders. I would have hoped that someone such as you would be able to see victims where others do not.”
Ramona stepped back, and stood in the doorway.
“‘Salus pro totus creatura prognatus.’ Health, safety, salvation for all creatures born, is that not what we have learned to say in this place?” Bernadette handled her Saint Raymond medal; there was a plain silver cross there, too, that Ramona had never noticed. “The ones we hate and fear, Ramona, the ones we do not even want to try to understand, these are truly the least of our brothers. The Cambion must have someone to study her, someone who wants to help her understand herself.”
“Is this coming from the Dean?”
“If it must.”
“You can’t keep me here,” said Ramona. “I’m a certified, experienced midwife. I could go get a job at any maternity ward in New York handling their Superum babies for them. I don’t need your contacts for that.”
“I believe that you could,” said Bernadette, “but we are all three praying that you won’t.”
When Ramona reached her own office, she sighed into her chair, head in her hands.
After a moment, she stood up and rifled through the bookshelf for something Kora might like to read. Finding a nicely illustrated compendium of infernal creatures, she sat back down, smiling, and waited for her office hours to start.
In the Woods Behind My House(Short story)
by Nicolette Barischoff
Originally published in audio format by Podcastle
They were just some seventh grade kids who hung around the handball court and pretended to be playing all the time so no one else could use it. Nate had no idea why he’d told them about his griffin.
He just said it, out of nowhere, like it was something he had just remembered. “So, in the woods, behind my house? There’s a griffin.”
That was how these guys talked, Eric and Dash, and Jackson and all of them. They just started right in with anything that happened to them like it was something they’d just now found in their pocket : “I smoked the fattest fucking blunt yesterday…you guys should see the lazer tag arena I built in back of my dad’s house…you know I already got my pilot’s license? I don’t even need to learn to drive.” And then they’d smash a cigarette under the toe of their shoe, waiting to be challenged.
He had never talked about the griffin out loud before. He didn’t even think he’d had words to talk about her. She had always been something he’d go into the woods to watch, this silent, padding thing that sometimes stopped to cock her head at him, if he stood still enough, or took something he fed her into her curved black beak.
He had only touched her a handful of times, on the smooth, downy part at the top of her head, and she had watched him every time with hunting gold eyes, her lion’s tail lashing patiently. He’d never even tried to bring home any of her old scattered feathers or broken-off claws. He hadn’t even known, until he talked about her, if he thought she was real.
But he’d been hanging out at the handball court for two weeks, and Eric had started making jokes about how creepy it was that Nate just stood around laughing like an idiot and never saying anything. And Nate just didn’t have a story about how he had set fire to a car, or put out a car that someone else had set fire to, or made his parents buy him a glock…he’d never been that interesting.
&nbs
p; So it was desperation that made him do it, mostly. Well, desperation and panic, because Princess Zelda had been walking toward them.
Zelda was a thin pale girl, with thin pale hair, and thin pale eyelashes, and no eyebrows, and fingernails she chewed down to the bloody quick. She smelled like Carmex, and like the Ricola throat drops she ate like candy. She had a spooky way of going too many seconds without blinking. And sometimes, when people called her Princess Zelda instead of just Zelda, she made a weird little sweeping bow.
Nate had never really minded her that much before. But one day, she lent him three dollars when he lost his lunch ticket, and Nate made the mistake of saying he’d buy her a Haagen-Dazs bar as soon as he found another one in the cafeteria freezer. She had shrugged, unblinking. “Whatever,” she said, and walked away.
But Jackson and Dash both decided this meant Nate wanted to stick it to her. And so now, whenever she walked by, they all did long, loud impressions of what Nate supposed it must sound like to stick it to someone, and Eric patted him hard on the back like he’d just put out a flaming car. Princess Zelda always turned her head to look, locking spooky eyes with Nate and smirking like she was in on the joke and the joke wasn’t all that bad.
Girls are immune to this sort of thing. All they ever do is hang around other girls. They never know how bad the joke really gets.
So this time, Nate had changed the subject before she came too close. “So, in the woods, behind my house, there’s a griffin. Like, a real one.”
Eric’s head turned, startled and lazy. “What?”
“I have a griffin. At my house. You know, like part lion, part eagle.”
“What in the hell are you talking about?”
“They’ve got a body like a lion, right?” said Nate. “And a head, and talons, and wings like an eagle.” Jackson and Dash stared. Eric stared. “And no one thinks they really exist. But mine does…mine does.”
“So it’s like a dragon?” Eric said after a blink. Dash started to chortle and snort, but Eric threw back an arm and smacked some part of him. Eric never let anyone shit on you until he’d decided to, and he hadn’t decided to, yet.
“No…” said Nate, “she’s feathered. She’s got feathers, and fur.” It was strange describing her like this, dissecting her into her “look-alike” parts, without any of the things that made her alive. The musk of her big cat haunches, the oily brightness of her black feathers, the soft tap-scrape of her talons when the ground was dry.
“She?” said Jackson with raised eyebrows. Dash started to laugh again. Eric smacked him silent.
Princess Zelda passed by, looking straight at Nate. And Nate looked straight at Eric. Nobody did any impressions.
Instead Eric said, “What’d you say this thing was called, a…?”
“Griffin.”
“And you said the thing…. this giant fucking lion-bird thing lives at your house? Just lives there?”
“Yeah. In these woods in my yard.”
The wire-thin smile that Eric more or less always wore spread itself a little thinner. “Bullshit.”
“I swear. To God.”
“Total bullshit.”
“It’s not bullshit. I swear to God.”
The older boy paused, blinked, stuck out his chin “What do you feed it? Her?”
“She hunts. Moles and rats and possums and birds, and things. She ate a dog, once.”
“A dog? Nah-uh. Nothing eats dogs,” declared Jackson suddenly, with aggression. Nate ignored him.
“And I bring her steak, sometimes.”
“You cook her steak?” said Eric. His eyes had narrowed to go with the smile.
“No. Bloody. Raw, I mean. She won’t eat cooked stuff.”
Another pause “Ever ride her?” he asked.
“What…?”
“She’s got wings, right? She can fly around? You ever ride her?”
Dash piped in, gave an exaggerated pelvis thrust. “Yeah, Nate, you ever…riiide herrr?”
Jackson deadened his friend’s arm, and laughed. But Eric waited for Nate’s answer.
“No,” said Nate firmly, “No.”
“Why not?”
Nate blinked. What a strange, what a meaningless question “You don’t ride griffins. That’s not what they’re for,” he said.
“What are they for, then?”
“They guard things. Treasure.”
“What kind of treasure she guarding?” asked Jackson. He talked almost more than anything else about being the only kid in his family who knew how to use his uncle’s metal detector.
“I didn’t say she was guarding anything. She’s not guarding anything. She just hangs around in the woods behind my house.”
“I’ll bet you could ride her if you tried.” said Eric. He was suddenly wearing the same expression he wore whenever he thwacked Nate on the back to congratulate him for doing something he had never actually done. “I bet you could make her give us a ride if you worked her a little.”
Sniggers.
“No, I couldn’t.” said Nate, “not even close.”
“Why? What would she do?”
“She…just wouldn’t come near. She’d hide.”
“Then we’ll hunt her down and surround her, right? She can’t go anywhere without us if she’s surrounded.”
“Except ‘up’.”
“Right. Well, you hold her, and we’ll all jump on.”
More sniggers. Nate licked his lips. Eric licked his, his eyes incredulous and shiny. “So, what about it, Safari Man? When do we go hunting?”
“I don’t…it’s not…”
“Tomorrow?”
“Maybe. If she’s not asleep. She sleeps in the afternoons, I don’t know where…”
“We’ll go at lunch, or we’ll cut last period.” Eric’s smile went wide, like a disbelieving Jack-O-lantern. “You and me. We’ll hunt her down and shake her awake.”
***
Nate didn’t wait for the return bus. He ran all the way home with the acidy taste of puke in his mouth, drops of sweat running cold off his nose. He ran straight through the house and out to where the trees grew closest, and crookedest. There, he wandered, and waited until she appeared.
She was never graceful when landing on the ground. She was never exactly ungraceful, but her bird-grace and her cat-grace always seemed to be working against each other, to make the landing sudden and hard. There was always the surprisingly hard clap of padded paws against the dirt, and the scuffling scrape of claws as she slowed herself, and the wild flap before she settled her wings down on her back. She was always stranger and wilder than Nate ever expected her to be, though he saw her almost every day.
Some days, she was coy, making him come to her, or stretching her white head around to preen with her black beak before she bothered to look at him. But not today. Today she landed close to him, stretching her neck out with extra expectancy, her gold eyes extra wide. She had no idea what he’d done to her. “You should be more careful,” Nate said to her. “You shouldn’t come running every time you hear somebody.”
The gold eyes did not blink. She made a kind of throaty cooing noise, like a dove, cocking her head invitingly. “I don’t have any food for you right now,” he said. But he reached out a heavy, shaking hand, and stroked her neck, all the way down into her thick white fur. Her black wings gave another lazy twitch, her white tail softly swatted an imaginary fly, but her powerful back muscles did not even tense with a big cat’s ordinary alertness. Nate might have done anything to her. Might’ve let anyone do anything. “Stop,” her betrayer said, kicking a little dirt in her direction, “stop.”
She backed away a couple paces, made a deeper cooing sound that had much more of a growl in it. But she did not fly away. Would she fly away, if it came to that? If other things came tromping into her woods with their metal detectors and their loud laughs and their cigarette butts, would she know to fly away?
She ventured toward him again, twisting her head, stretching her neck. “I don�
��t have any food for you right now!” Nate picked up a clod of dirt and chucked it at her, hard. She flapped backward, gave an irritable scream. “Piss off,” he said, “go back to your nest.”
***
Nate lied on top of the blankets all night, listening to her hunt. He felt every swoop, every wingbeat like she was right at his window, giving the pane an angry rattle. Go away, he telegraphed to her. Go away. Go the hell away. Only in the times when her shadow flitted across the moon, or he heard the scream of some bird in her beak, did Nate remember she was high in the sky somewhere, a white and black and moon-streaked blur, swallowing her dinner whole and not thinking of him at all.
Nate rolled over, smashed his face into his pillow. Of course she didn’t get angry, or know things. Those gold eyes only made you think she did. In reality, everything was a complete surprise to her.
They would make it a party, Eric and Jackson and Dash and whoever came with them. They’d come in a screaming caravan with jokes and wine coolers and whatever raw meat they could get, ready to thrash around in the woods looking for a thing they didn’t expect to find. And it would be fun. That was the thing. Even for Nate, it would be fun. It would be noisy and funny, and easy, like going to find a good place to set off a bunch of fireworks. It was the part after that, the part where they actually found her, or she found them, that Nate didn’t know what to do about.
He had only ever seen her in pain once, when she’d landed hard in the wrong tree, and a sharp branch behind her had gone straight through her wing. She’d screamed like nothing Nate had ever heard, a pain scream and a fear scream and a pleading scream, and a wild, wild anger scream all at once.
He’d climbed the tree in one crazy jump, but once he was up there, he hadn’t been able to bring himself to pull the branch out (was he afraid of the blood, or of making it worse, or of what she might do to him, a wild animal after all?) In the end, she’d reached back with a frenzied flapping and torn at it herself, bit by bit, with her own curved beak until it was gone, or mostly gone, and she was free. The wound had got infected for a while after that.