Griffin of Darkwood

by Becky Citra

  Favian was dusting shelves in the bookstore. His eyes glowed with excitement. “I’ve made tremendous sales all morning. There’s a lull right now. I’m hoping some tourists will stay for Vespera’s reading tonight. We’re having warm apple cider and your cream puffs, Thom. We're going to serve them with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce.”

  Thom groaned.

  Favian put down his duster and listened while Will told him about Mr. Barnaby and The Magical Night.

  “You must write a letter to this Mr. Barnaby,” he said. “It’s the only thing to do.”

  “What would I say?”

  “Take the positive approach. Tell him the Ex Libris bookstore would like one hundred copies! That’s sure to make him think.”

  One hundred copies! “Are you serious?”, said will.

  “Absolutely. ASAP. That’s just for a start. I have total faith in your mother’s book.”

  Favian burrowed into his desk and produced a sheet of thick cream-coloured writing paper. “Be courteous but firm,” he advised. “You can do it. You’re the writer.”

  Favian continued with his dusting and Thom read books while Will composed his letter. After much sighing and lip chewing, he was ready to read it out loud.

  Dear Mr. Barnaby.

  I am writing to you regarding my mother Adrienna Poppy’s book The Magical Night.

  Mr. Favian Longstaff, a successful bookseller, would like to place an order of ONE HUNDRED copies. I told him that you said that The Magical Night will be a best seller. He promises to order more copies in the future. He asked me to tell you that he would like to receive the copies AS SOON AS POSSIBLE as he has many eagerly waiting customers.

  Yours truly,

  William Poppy

  P.S. What happened to the money?

  P.P. S. My mother and I believed in you.

  When Will got to the end, Thom said, “Perfect! You are a good writer. I wouldn’t have known what to say.”

  “It’s just a letter,” said Will. “It’s not like real writing.”

  “It needs an envelope and a stamp.” Favian rifled through a few more drawers, humming. “Here we go.”

  Will wrote Barnaby Book Publishers Inc. and the address on the front of the envelope.

  “I’m going to the post office at noon,” said Favian. “I’ll put it in the post box for you.”

  Favian sounded so optimistic that Will cheered up. He and Thom left the bookstore and headed to The Winking Cat.

  “Here comes Peaches,” said Will, watching the dog, his mouth full of frothy pink lace, trot up the road. When they opened the shop door, Peaches slipped in behind them.

  Emma was at the counter, busy wrapping a large turquoise stone in tissue paper. She glanced up and frowned. “Now what?” She pried open her dog’s mouth and pulled out the pink lace and held it up. “It’s a BRA!”

  “Emma!” said Thom.

  “Well, it is,” said Emma.

  “Maybe it’s Star’s?” said Will.

  “No way,” said Emma, stuffing it in a drawer. “He's raiding clotheslines again! I can’t exactly go around asking people if they’ve lost a bra.”

  Her face brightened. “Thom told me you’re a Moonstone! That means that you’ll stay in Sparrowhawk!”

  Had she been worrying that he would leave? Will felt his cheeks turn hot.

  “It’s amazing! It’s the best news ever!”

  “Not everyone’s going to think so,” said Will. He still felt sick when he thought of the words GO AWAY on the castle door.

  “Phooey to them!” Emma rang up a purchase of purple candles for a big woman in a flowered dress.

  “Do you have to work here all day?” said Thom. “Will’s going to help me with the cream puffs. You could help too.”

  “Can’t. I’m still officially grounded.”

  “What exactly did you do?” said Will.

  “I used Peaches’ clothesline to make a tightrope from the corner of our roof to the shed. Dad said I could have broken my neck!”

  Will thought Emma was the most daring girl he had ever met. “What about the poetry reading?” he said.

  “Don’t worry. I’m allowed to go.”

  Will and Thom left then, squeezing past customers. When they got back to Thom’s, Will weighed flour and cracked eggs while Thom dropped bits of butter into a pot of boiling water and stirred.

  This time, while the cream puffs were baking, they both stayed glued to the glass window in the oven. “They’re getting bigger,” said Will.

  “And golden,” said Thom.

  Emma arrived, breathless, when they were just about done. “Lukas took over for me and I snuck away. I figured you’d need my special touch.” She peered over their shoulders. “Hey! They look perfect!”

  “They are perfect,” declared Thom a few minutes later, while they cooled on racks.

  But when he cut into one with a knife, he cried, “SOGGY! They're SOGGY!”

  “You were supposed to puncture them to let out the steam,” said Emma, checking Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

  “It’s too late!” wailed Thom. He sank down on a chair and buried his head in his arms. “I’m not going to the poetry reading.”

  “You have to,” said Will.

  “No I don’t! I'm staying right here until it’s over. Go away and leave me alone!”

  Emma flipped pages in the cookbook. “What does Reine de Saba mean?”

  “I don’t know,” mumbled Thom. “And I don’t care.”

  Wait a sec.” Emma ran into the living room and then came back. “Your dad says it means Queen of Sheba. We’ll make a Queen of Sheba cake for the poetry reading!”

  Emma shouted out ingredients. “Butter, eggs, flour, sugar, baking chocolate!” Will opened cupboards and drawers and hunted.

  Thom said nothing, his face still buried.

  In a few minutes, Will and Emma were weighing and mixing and stirring.“Almond extract,” said Emma. “Do you have almond extract, Thom?”

  Thom groaned.

  “We’ll use…let’s see. We’ll use grape jelly instead.”

  Thom bolted upright. “NO! You can’t just change ingredients like that! Grape jelly isn’t anything like almond extract!”

  He jumped to his feet and produced the almond extract from a cupboard above the fridge. He grabbed the mixing spoon from Emma and said, “That’s not how you cream butter and sugar! I'm going to have to start all over again! You'll have to go! Get out of my kitchen! I can't concentrate!”

  They left Thom poring over the recipe, muttering, “Four ounces of melted semi-sweet chocolate…”

  When they got outside, Will said, “See you tonight at Vespera’s poetry reading.”

  He headed up Black Penny Road. When he got to the castle, he had a tremendous shock.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The Secret Passage

  A new sign had been nailed over the SOLD sign on the oak tree.

  FOR SALE BY OWNER

  INQUIRE WITHIN

  So that’s what Aunt Mauve meant when she said the sooner they were out, the better! He couldn’t leave Sparrowhawk, not now. So many mysterious things had happened and the answer to them was somewhere inside the castle.

  Will stormed through the door and marched directly to the Red Chamber. He found Aunt Mauve in bed under the crimson canopy, surrounded by a sea of tissues.

  “You can’t sell the castle!” shouted Will.

  “Ah-ah-choo!” sneezed Aunt Mauve.

  Will leapt back.

  “I’ll do what I please!” snapped Aunt Mauve. “Now go away and tell Mrs. Cherry I want my dinner in bed.”

  “Forget it! I’m busy.”

  Will shot out of the room and ran back to his tower. He lay on the four-poster bed and stared miserably into space. He had a sudden very creepy thought. Maybe Hannah had died in this very bed.

  His eyes flickered to the ornate twisted posts at the foot of the bed. The right post was made of some kind of dark wood; th
e left was lighter and the swirls in the wood went up and down instead of sideways. What about the other posts? He turned to look at the head of the bed, and a tingle went through him. They were dark wood too. Why was one post different?

  He stood up on the bed, grasped the light-coloured post and twisted it. Nothing. A harder twist and the top of the post popped off, revealing a space inside. His heart pounding, he pulled out a folded piece of paper and opened it. Someone had printed The hungry sparrowhawk guards the secret.

  Did Hannah Linley write the note? The hungry sparrowhawk. What did that mean? What secret?

  Will ran his eyes along the frieze of stone sparrow hawks. They all looked exactly the same. He slowly studied them, one by one, comparing. That one next to the window. Was its beak slightly open?

  He jumped off the bed and dragged it across the room until he was right underneath the bird. Then he hopped up on the bed and put his hands on the bird’s face. He could make out faint lines in the stone that traced a big square with the sparrowhawk in the middle. He pushed on the bird’s curved beak. Then he tried to pull it but the stone was smooth and slippery and he couldn’t get a good grip. His fingers slid off.

  Its beak was open just enough for Will to put his finger inside and wiggle it around. Was that a bump? He pressed down. To his shock, the stone moved. Just a little. He pushed down on the bump, as hard as he could. He grunted and pushed even harder, and all of a sudden, something gave way. The square of stone swung backwards with a grating sound, revealing rusty hinges, and a black hole appeared.

  Will grabbed his torch and shone it into the hole. The light picked out a flight of rough stone steps that descended into the darkness. A musty smell drifted up. He stared down the stairs, stunned. He had found the secret passageway!

  He hoisted himself through the hole, scraping his stomach on the rough stone, and found himself on a small stone landing. Step by step, he inched down the stairs, brushing aside the thick cobwebs. At the bottom, one brick-lined tunnel led to the right, one to the left. Will frowned. Which way should I go?

  He picked the tunnel to the right. It seemed to go on forever, twisting and turning, so low in places that he had to bend over. He turned a few corners, climbed up four shallow steps cut out of rock and then made his way down a long slope. He tried to keep track of where he might be in the castle, but soon he was completely mixed up. Water seeped from the ceiling and cold drops splashed on his head. Something skittered past him in the dark, beady red eyes frozen in the beam of light.

  The tunnel finally ended in another set of rough-cut stairs, this time going up. Will shone his light up but couldn’t see the end. The stairs were uneven and very steep. He climbed carefully. The steps ended at a small wooden door with a heavy iron handle. He turned the handle and pushed the door. It refused to budge. A harder shove and it gave way.

  Before him stretched an enormous room bathed in light that streamed through the tall narrow windows. At one end was a fireplace as big as a cave, with a massive smoke-stained beam above it, and at the other end were two great wooden doors with black iron rings. Will’s mouth dropped open. Huge blue and crimson and gold tapestries, bigger than the biggest carpets and glowing like stained glass windows, hung on the walls. I’m in the keep, he thought. This must be the great hall!

  In a daze, he walked to the nearest tapestry and stared up at it. It was a scene of a hunting party woven in brilliant colours. Men in tunics, horses with handsome saddles and glittering bridles and lean greyhounds gathered in front of a big stone castle. Behind the castle was a forest filled with fantastic trees and flowers and all kinds of creatures – rabbits, frogs, a deer with silver antlers and a golden pheasant.

  “It’s Sparrowhawk Hall!” said Will.

  But it was the words woven out of fine gold thread at the top of the tapestry that took his breath away.

  The Hunt for the Griffin of Darkwood.

  “The Griffin of Darkwood,” Will whispered. A prickle ran up his spine. He was sure that the letters were the same as the letters on his piece of tapestry.

  He ran to the next tapestry. It was a picture of a magnificent griffin, backed up against a cliff and circled by hunters with spears. The delicate gold letters at the top of the tapestry said,

  The Griffin of Darkwood is Captured.

  Will rushed to the last tapestry. Twelve black horses dragged the chained bloodstained griffin through the forest. Spears protruded from its bowed neck. Will read,

  The Griffin of Darkwood is

  Taken to the Castle.

  The tapestries told a story. Will paced back and forth between them. Who had woven them? Was it Morgan Moonstone? Were they magic tapestries? And where did his piece belong? If only he had brought it with him!

  He studied each tapestry one more time, standing longest in front of the griffin in chains, its eyes blazing with rage and pain. The story couldn’t end just like that. What had happened to the griffin after it was taken to the castle?

  “There’s one more tapestry,” he said. “There has to be. And somehow I’ve got a piece of it.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The Poetry Reading

  Will tore himself away from the tapestries and walked over to the huge wooden doors. With both hands he grasped one of the iron rings and turned it to the left. The door groaned and opened slowly toward him. On the other side was a wall of rubble and broken stone. That meant there was only one way into the great hall – through the secret passage. He turned back into the room. He wanted to gaze at the magnificent tapestries forever, but it was getting late, and there was no way he was going to miss Vespera’s poetry reading. He went back through the little door, taking one last look around before he closed it.

  Will edged down the steep steps, shining the torch ahead of him. Back he went, through the dark winding tunnel with its twists and turns. When he got to the steps to the tower, he shone his torch down the other passageway. Where did it go? Nothing could be as amazing as the great hall, but he would love to know. Next time, he promised himself, as he climbed up the steps, wiggled through the hole and dropped onto the bed.

  He pressed the bump in the sparrowhawk’s beak and the stone slab creaked back into place. You would never know it was there, he thought, if you didn’t know the secret. He dragged the bed back to its usual place and looked around to make sure everything looked exactly the same. He stuffed Hannah’s note into his jeans pocket. He had no idea if Mr. Cherry snooped in his tower but he wasn’t taking any chances.

  He sped out of the castle, stopping at Aunt Mauve’s FOR SALE sign which was tilting to one side and tugging at it until the nails popped loose. He dragged the sign into the long grass and flew down to the bookstore.

  < • >

  Will slid into the empty seat beside Thom and Emma. Peaches, curled up under Emma’s chair, thumped his tail. All the other seats were taken. Scattered among the tourists and villagers, Will spotted John Fairweather, Granny Storm – sitting with Star and all the Storm children – and Madeleine de Luca. Cups, saucers, a tea pot and a huge chocolate-frosted Queen of Sheba cake were laid out on a table.

  “Where were you?” asked Thom. “I had to keep telling people they couldn’t sit here. Did you see my cake?”

  “I’ve got big news,” said Will. “Big news!”

  “Shhh,” someone behind them said.

  “I’ll tell you later,” Will whispered.

  Favian stood at the front beside Vespera, who was seated at a small table with a copy of A Mystical Muse and an oil lamp on it. He had dimmed the shop lights and lit the lamp.

  “Tonight I’m delighted to introduce our famous resident poet,” he said. “Vespera Moonstone.”

  Vespera began to read in her soft musical voice. In seconds Will had fallen under the spell of the magical poems. Vespera was a brilliant writer, and he felt so lucky that she was his friend. After each poem, the audience applauded vigorously.

  It was over too soon. A flurry of book-buying and tea and cake followed.r />
  “Magnificent, Thom,” said Vespera, licking icing off her fingers. “How clever of you to think of a cake! Much more exciting than dull old cream puffs!”

  Will pulled Thom and Emma into a corner.

  “I found it!” he said.

  “Found what?” asked Emma, her mouth full of cake.

  “The secret passage. Hannah left a note in the bedpost. There’s a hole behind one of the stone sparrowhawks in the tower. It goes to a tunnel. I followed it all the way to the keep.”

  Will’s words tumbled over each other as he told them about his amazing discovery.

  “I wish I’d been there!” cried Emma. “Tapestries and a griffin! It’s gotta have something to do with the curse.”

  “That’s what I think,” said Will. “I’ll show you tomorrow. You’re not going to believe it!”

  “Madeleine de Luca’s staring at us,” said Thom.

  Emma and Will talked in whispers, making plans, but Thom was silent, his eyes dark with worry.

  “You three look very secretive,” said Star, coming up to them with a smile. “It’s time to go now, Emma. Granny Storm’s getting impatient.”

  John Fairweather looked exhausted and Thom said, “I better go too.”

  After his friends had gone, Will hung around until only a few people were left, looking at books and chatting with Vespera. He was bursting to talk to Favian about his discovery.

  Favian was talking to a man in a black suit. Will caught scraps of the conversation. The man said, “This is the perfect place to hold readings…tremendous atmosphere…I could organize a series of famous authors and poets…”

  When the man paused for a breath, Will said, “Favian, can I talk to you?”

  Favian frowned. “Good heavens. Are you still here? I’m busy right now. It will have to wait until tomorrow.”

  “It’s important,” said Will.

  But Favian turned back to the man. “I’m intrigued by the idea. We could start –”

  “Favian, please.”

  It was hopeless. Favian didn’t even hear him.

  Will walked through the dark village to the castle. When he got back to the tower, he scrambled up on the bed and pulled himself through the trap door and onto the roof. Stars twinkled overhead and the night air was cool on his cheeks.