by K Vale Nagle
“Other than me.”
He thought back. It was uncommon to see opinici in the forest, but this year had been an unusual one. Usually, they would fly overhead and arrive at a pride’s camp before descending. Opinici inside the weald were more unusual. There was forest land around the eyrie before the grasslands began, but it was well-cultivated and sparse, making it easy for opinici to fly through it. It had started out just as untamed as the weald, but the reeve had created rangers to manage it. Now it was considered the reeve’s hunting grounds, by appointment only. But he was sure he’d heard opinici in the weald several times this year. He hadn’t thought anything of it. His predatory instincts often warred with his desire to stay out of trouble. What had they been doing here? Gryphons kept away from the contested areas between prides, which was where he’d heard the opinici.
“There have been several groups of opinici in the forest since spring, but I don’t know why. I’ve heard others say the same.”
Kia looked incredulous but made a note. “So, you attacked your ground parrot here, then followed it to the grasslands?”
“I killed one here, then followed another.”
She made him reenact the whole thing, taking out her other notebook to draw how he looked upside-down, stalking his prey from the tree.
Zeph and Kia came out from the forest and into the late afternoon light. Having kept her wings tight against her body after the incident with the vines, she took a moment now to stretch them out and give her feathers a cursory check.
“You’re sure this is the exact spot?” she asked.
He’d stopped being offended by her questions when she asked him about the history of monitor attacks and he realized he’d started forgetting how many there’d been. Instead, he just pointed at one of the massive redwood trees. Twenty feet up the trunk was a scratched circle with wings and the number eleven.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“In the fog, fledglings can’t always see their way back. The markers help them figure out where they’re at. The numbers start closest to Crater Lake and count up from there.”
“What happened there?” She pointed her beak towards another tree further down. The winged circle with a thirteen next to it had been scratched out. An angry beak and ear tufts with the number one had been drawn above it.
“Merin disagrees with where our hunting grounds end and his begin,” Zeph said.
“I didn’t realize anyone in the Merin pride could read or write,” she said with a sniff. “Next thing you’ll tell me is that they’ve developed manners and scholars.”
“I wouldn’t go that far, but no pride shares all the same plumage. Askel and Triddle helped us out a few years ago when there was the terrible flooding. They’re smart when it comes to rivers and diverting water. Especially Triddle. Askel is more of a forest fire kind of gryphon.”
Kia’s feathers ruffled. “They’re the ones who flooded the grasslands that summer! They caused a lot of irreparable damage. They’re criminals.”
“Criminals? They saved our nesting grounds from being flooded. Eggs are irreparable. Grass is not. No one lives in the grasslands.”
That wasn’t necessarily true. The growth of the livestock trade had drawn a few permanent residents and one makeshift group nest along the plains. To Kia’s credit, she didn’t speak what was probably on her tongue. Opinici were often of the opinion that gryphons bred too much. In fact, he would guess that there were fewer gryphons than opinici. No weald pride had a hundred gryphons in it. They maintained genetic diversity by interbreeding with other prides. Only half of the gryphlets grew to adulthood. Forest life was full of danger. That’s why culling the snake population now was so important, before they grew large enough to feed on hatchlings.
The year Hatzel was born, a slow-gestating disease from monitor meat killed every hatchling save three. What was dangerous in adults had been fatal to the youngest. It was one of the few times the deep mountain gryphons, with their spotted white coats, had come down and sought help. Hatzel still sent gifts to them in the fall out of a survivor’s bond that had formed between her and one of their gryphlets that had also survived that year. Even today, a gryphon would have to be starving to eat a monitor, though there were no cases of the strange disease after that year.
But the opinici couldn’t see the gryphon population. They were mysterious forest creatures living in the untamed wilds. Who knew how many there were? Since destroying some of the shared forest to create the grasslands, the opinici had whispered of a possible gryphon retaliation. Their justification had been that no one owns the forest. After that, gryphons started putting up wooden banners and marking trees.
Kia picked up a fallen black notebook next to the marker on the tree. Several golden feathers stuck out from the blood caked on its cover. Some of the pages had been pulled out. She shivered.
“Can Merin read?” she asked.
“Yes,” Zeph replied.
She looked into the thick underbrush of the woods, then up to the tops of the trees two hundred feet in the air.
“I need to get back to the eyrie. This is important. Will you come with me?”
He cocked his head to the side but assented.
“We need to hurry,” was all the explanation she gave.
As out of place as Kia had been under the tree line, Zeph felt even more out of place in the sky. She flew effortlessly, aided by her slight build and long hours of past flights. He was muscular and used to running, climbing, and gliding. He was designed to wait and pounce, not to fly long distances. He found himself annoyed at being asked to tag along on this errand because it made him feel unfit.
She seemed unaware of his discomfort and kept looking below or behind them. What she was looking for he did not know, but she wasn’t looking at him. When they stopped to drink on the other side of the grasslands, she stayed away from a group of fisherfolk.
He found this incredibly rude and was careful to chirp a happy greeting at them. For all their strange, sandy homes, they were social while on vacation, their term for coming to the Redwood Valley Eyrie to trade. This group was particularly brave, having several children who lacked ear tufts or non-avian forepaws. Opinici and gryphons were not as distinct as politics may lead one to believe. When they interbred, the children were defined by which characteristics they had. Ear tufts and non-avian forepaws meant the child was clearly a gryphon. If it only had ear holes and taloned foreclaws, it was clearly an opinicus chick.
The confusion came from individuals who had one and not the other. In most eyries, one needed to have talons that could grip a pencil and write in order to be an opinicus. Amongst gryphons, a lack of ears made it hard to tell emotion. Many bonds were formed over annoyed flicks of ears. Where tone and stance didn’t change, being able to see someone’s ears full back served as a warning. Gryphons weren’t used to opinicus mannerisms and their strange lack of ears.
For the gryphon-opinicus offspring that had forepaws and no ears, the fishing villages were the only places they’d be accepted without challenge. To a fisherfolk, everyone was a gryphon and everyone was an opinicus. It made them exceptionally cheerful and happy to talk to anyone when they traveled. While it seemed like a recipe for disaster, the one thing that triumphed over the bigotry of gryphons and opinici was both sides’ deep love of fish.
“Hello!” chirped a tall fisher from across the fountain. Her beak was black, her face a light blue, and her feathers were a grey that resembled the blue in her face and blended in with her fur. She left her compatriots and flew over to them.
“Hello, yourself!” replied Zeph. Kia added something noncommittal but polite.
“I’m Gressle, but call me Gress. Would you be heading into the city to trade, by chance?”
“I’m Zeph, and this is Kia. We’re actually on official business, just heading back to report in. Did you happen to see anything suspicious in the grasslands this morning?”
Gress’s eyes widened in surprise. Kia’s did similar
in annoyance. Not many people outside of his pride were aware of his propensity to take a small amount of adjacent authority and apply it to himself.
“No, no we didn’t. We’ve been in the city all day. We’re just getting ready to head back. Is it safe?”
He did his best grin, careful to keep his ears happy. Gress may lack ears, but she’d certainly been around enough gryphons to recognize what friendliness looked like.
“I’m sure it’s perfectly safe. Right, Kia?”
Kia was caught off guard. “Yes, yes, I’m sure it is.”
“But to be extra safe,” Zeph continued, “they should probably cut southwest instead of straight south on their way home, shouldn’t they?”
Kia caught on and rolled her eyes but agreed. “Yes, when you hit the end of the grasslands, look for a mark on the tree line with a circle and wings. You’ll want to follow that to the violet clearing.”
“I hear they have ground parrots to trade,” he added.
Gress perked up. “Thank you for the information!” she chirruped.
She started to turn away, but then fished two salted tuna bars from her vest and gave them to him. He had to sit back to hold them in his forepaws.
“For you and your pretty mate,” Gressle said and flew back to her people.
“Wait, what did she say?” Kia asked, but Zeph was already scarfing down his fish.
“So salty,” he said with watering eyes, “but so good.”
Kia’s tears also flowed, and she nodded. “We need to get back. It’ll be dark any time now.”
2
Redwood Valley Eyrie
Opinici had once lived in small nests called eyries built on the tops of trees. As their population grew, the border between one family’s eyrie and another’s disappeared. Then, as their ability to use tools improved, they began to expand above the tops of trees and build higher, sometimes securing dead trees to live ones to serve as supports. Their cities now reached into the skies. While there were several of these mega-eyries in the world, Zeph had come to think of the Redwood Valley Eyrie in the forest as the eyrie. He’d never had reason to travel across the mountains to see the others. He understood that the eyries had trade amongst themselves, but he had never personally met an opinicus from another eyrie, though it was said the fisherfolk were made up of gryphons and opinici from across the world.
Even having seen the Redwood Valley Eyrie before, he was still faced with a feeling of danger and awe when he looked up at it. It was three, four, maybe five times as tall as the tallest trees. Wind chimes hung from family domiciles and created a constant music that interfered with his instincts. It was all noise, pretty noise. He also hated the feeling that the ground beneath his feet wasn’t the ground but just another platform. He’d learned to guess the strength of branches, but he had no idea how the platforms were built or how safe they were. He maintained a level of stress that enabled him to leap into the air and glide to safety if it all fell apart. Someday, he was certain, it would all fall apart.
From a distance, the platforms resembled a colossal mushroom forest. Homes existed on the underside of platforms and along the edges of the city while shops, schools, and other things he had not identified were on top. Some system that Askel and Triddle might understand, but Zeph did not, pulled water up from Crater Lake and created bathing pools on top of one mushroom cap. While the city center stood proud and clean, things became dirtier the further one traveled from the center. Lizards of the non-gliding variety and pigeons infested the city. There were no snakes to keep them at bay—opinici hated snakes. He shuddered to think what the ground level looked like. He’d never seen it, never asked what was down there. A twenty-foot-high fence kept it from view as he flew closer. Maybe that’s where the few gryphons lived.
Kia brought him to a building near the market. It was meant to look like a tree, but no trees grew this high. The craftsmanship was impressive. He looked at his paws. No matter how much practice he put in, he’d never be able to craft something like that.
She chirped a greeting and short message to an opinicus whose only job seemed to be to relay messages to opinici who were more important, leaving Kia and Zeph waiting outside.
Zeph’s ears twitched. “What’re they waiting for? Did we interrupt dinner?”
“I’m sure they’re wondering why I brought you along and trying to figure out what to do about it,” she said.
He wasn’t sure if she was joking or not. “Why did you bring me?”
“It seemed important that this not be about opinici and gryphons.”
He weighed her words. “What is this about?”
“I don’t know. Something bigger or smaller than that.”
He ruffled. “It’s always about gryphons and opinici. There’s no getting around that. You think gryphons killed and ate all your herd. I could hear it in your questions. Gryphons know that strange groups of opinici are coming into the forest. If you want gryphons and opinici living in peace and laying gryphon-opi eggs together, you’ll have to catch up with Gress’s band of fisherfolk and fly all the way to the ocean to make that happen.”
She bristled at his choice of the word opi, but he felt confident she’d heard and said far worse at his expense inside the city.
“There are gryphons here,” she retorted. “And I’m sure they’re quite happy to stay in the city.”
“You’ll have to show me these gryphons,” he said. “I’ve been here many times and never seen an eyrie gryphon.”
“I will tomorrow.” She stretched her neck up and cocked her head to the side like she was listening for something, but without ears it was difficult for him to be sure. The eyrie was full of so many sounds, he couldn’t tell what she was listening for.
After a moment, she continued. “Look, if we get separated and you get sent home, you should probably know this. Normally, I work for the university. We’ve been working on keeping different types of livestock. That’s why I got sent out. They thought it might be an animal attack.”
He nodded his head, unsure why he was being entrusted with this information.
“The notebook I found comes from Cherine. He was working out there, taking notes, doing research. The eyrie can’t sustain much more population growth if we don’t find better ways of raising food.”
Zeph remembered the blood on the journal. “I’m sorry. Was he a friend?”
“No. Yes. It was complicated. I liked him. He chose to be kind when it was not easy. But this is important: from what I read on our flight back, he was trying to follow the opinici sneaking into the woods to see what they were doing. There’s a note in here about pressure from someone to increase the size of the grasslands.”
“That would require cutting down—”
She silenced him with a hiss. Whatever she had been listening for earlier, she must have heard it because a moment later several opinici descended to their level. A tall one with a circlet and more jewelry than he’d ever seen—metallic jewelry, not beaded—spoke first. She had a long, thin neck and green feathers. She was flanked by a military-looking opinicus in a faded army harness and a duck-shaped opinicus with a pink harness. To his surprise, she recognized him.
“Zeph Parrotbane,” she said. He prayed no one ever called him that again and was thankful Kia was too awed by the peafowl-opinicus to laugh. “You’ve provided the meals for my table many times in the past. We’ll make sure you’re settled in for the night and comfortably fed before you leave in the morning.”
“Thank you,” he replied.
“Apprentice Kia,” the reeve continued, “you’ll be coming with us.”
“Yes, Reeve Brevin,” Kia said.
Zeph stiffened. While the reeves ostensibly served at the behest of some leader far away, in reality, they were the monarchs of their eyrie city-states. He didn’t know the proper way to address a reeve, but his response had not been it.
Kia flew off with the reeve and her assistants, leaving Zeph alone with the opinicus who resembled a duck.
Zeph relaxed once the reeve was out of sight. “So, what’s for dinner?”
For all the talk of fish and parrots, dinner turned out to be less exciting fare. Zeph’s guide, Jonas, took him to the far end of the market where several braziers were lit. While Jonas’s plumage reminded Zeph of the ducks that migrated through the weald in winter, his beak was closer to a crane’s. It was a common face for opinici, but less so for gryphons, fisherfolk offspring being an exception. His back half was grey with circular designs in the fur. His harness had a pink fish on it and seemed to be made of a nicer material than what most merchants wore. The symbol meant nothing to Zeph, but it made him wonder where Jonas fit into the pecking order of the eyrie.
The wind changed, and the smoke stung Zeph’s eyes. It struck him as foolish, or perhaps arrogant, to leave braziers around on a city built on the tops of trees. When they landed, he pushed his claws into the flooring. They stuck to the special coating before retracting.
“What do you do if someone knocks over a brazier?” Zeph asked.
Jonas pointed to bags the same color as the ground coating placed conspicuously close to each brazier.
“They’re filled with a powder that chokes the flames out,” Jonas replied.
Zeph looked up and followed the lines of the aqueduct overhead. The waterworks pulled water in and up from a large lake created by the dam at the Snowfeather River that Triddle was always going on about. While the dam itself had statues of a peacock and a cobra, Triddle was more impressed by the waterworks. Zeph could only imagine the trouble Triddle could get into here.
“Why not just put a spigot on that?” Zeph asked.
Jonas made a tsk sound with his beak. “Because the braziers have mostly oil in them. The water is as likely to spread the fire as put it out. It’s leftovers from the butcher’s shop.”
Zeph could smell their destination from here. The butchery was a large building with braziers made for cooking instead of illumination. Processing meat had started as a way of transporting goods across the goliath bird pass to other eyries, but when word of the monitor disease killing hatchlings had reached the eyrie, the popularity of cooked meat grew exponentially. The butchers cooked, salted, and stored the meat here for later. It was large enough to be a factory instead of a store, but it kept a shop front. A generation of opinici grew up with a taste for cooked meat and a love of salt, hence the healthy trade with the fisherfolk, who set up a saltworks to capitalize on the trend. While the flickering lights interfered with his normally excellent night vision, he thought he saw several other columns of smoke across the market he hadn’t noticed in past visits. Other butcheries processing and storing capybara meat? he wondered.