by K Vale Nagle
Jonas took a line of tiny, metal beads and paid the butcher. He returned with two salty, warm plates of meat for himself and Zeph. Zeph did his best to smile. Smiles were equally important among friends and adversaries, and there was no way to know which Jonas was.
Zeph winced a little at the salinity of the first bite. Between the salted tuna bars and the butcher shop’s meat-of-the-day, he’d be crying out this salt all day tomorrow.
“So, lived here long?” he asked.
Jonas was startled by the question, piquing Zeph’s curiosity. “Yes, for maybe two years now. You’re from the Hatzel…eyrie?”
Zeph’s interest grew. “Yep. My mother was from the taiga prides, but I never had the fur for the heavy winters up there, so I stayed with father’s pride. What brought you here?”
Jonas sawed through a piece of gristle. He enjoyed himself so thoroughly that Zeph suspected the funds for dinner had come from the reeve and not Jonas himself.
“I grew to hate the water,” Jonas said at last. “The Crackling Sea is beautiful. At least, in the summer it is. When the thunderstorms cross the water, the crackling jellies that give the sea its name light up in response to the lightning. There’s nothing like it in the world. But the Crackling Sea Eyrie is a quarter of the size of this one, the inland sea is frozen all winter, and I hate fish. Eating fish, catching fish, smelling fish, fish oil: all of it. I guess, like you, I wasn’t cut out for the environment I was born into. I used to lead the goliath birds along the trail to trade with the Redwood Valley Eyrie. When my mate died, this was the first place I thought to come.”
“I’m sorry for your loss. It’s nice to see the world, though,” Zeph agreed. He was trying to enjoy his meat now that he knew it wasn’t meant as a slight. “I still go to the mountains sometimes when it starts to warm up. Though I’m still discovering a lot of interesting things in the weald I’d never have guessed at.”
Jonas and Zeph traded travel stories into the night. Jonas spoke of the domesticated goliath birds, flightless like ground parrots, but much larger, who pulled supplies through mountain passes to reach new eyries. Zeph talked about the mountain goliaths that stood three gryphons tall and were all white and fuzzy. He talked about how the alpine pride dug up large frogs from the permafrost during exceptionally warm summers. The frogs normally tasted like, well, frogs. But when they froze solid, they turned sugary sweet. The taiga pride dug them up before they defrosted and ate them. He talked about how a hatchmate, Mignet, had once waited so long to eat hers that it defrosted and hopped away and into the forest. It was going well until the last question.
“You seem different from the other gryphons I’ve met,” Jonas confided.
“What’re the gryphon prides like by your eyrie?” Zeph asked.
“There are no gryphons by my home eyrie anymore.”
The next morning, Zeph wiped the crusted salt from around his eyes. Jonas had excused himself, citing the late hour, when chimes played from the center of the city. Louder chimes played during the day at set intervals, but the opi trick to keeping time eluded him.
When Zeph could help it, he’d often come into the eyrie in the morning and leave in the afternoon. The few times bad weather had caught him off guard, he’d stayed in a hotel off the market. He was always given the same room—was in that exact room even now—which made him suspect that it was reserved for the few gryphon guests who showed up.
Despite his deep-seated suspicion towards the opinicus currency, he always made sure some of his payment for the parrots he traded came in the form of a string of beads. Hatzel disapproved, but Zeph worried that a time would come when they would need supplies or medicine and not have ground parrots to trade for them. It also helped on the occasions when he was stuck in the city. If he’d brought a bracelet of beads with him now, he’d be searching out the least salty breakfast in town. Since he hadn’t expected his journey with Kia to last this long, he hadn’t thought to bring beads with him. He stretched, confirmed with the hotel owner that his stay had been paid for, and wandered out into the city.
Lacking direction and trade incentives, he decided to get a feel for the layout of the eyrie. He saw opinici flying up towards a platform above him and assumed it must be open to the public. The top of this platform was less like a mushroom and more like a sinkhole. From the center of an amphitheater, a red-plumed opinicus was shouting. Zeph stayed behind the crowd and hung upside-down from the shadows of a higher platform to watch the proceedings.
“While we’re starving, they grow rotund on the weald’s bounty. While we struggle to find food, they let it rot in their larders, forgotten.”
Zeph wondered at all the salted meat being processed at the butcheries. Was that not going to feed the eyrie? He had to hunt for his game. These people picked off pieces of jewelry and traded them. How did they earn their beads?
“The fault doesn’t lie in the forest. It lies with us. We let them come here and trade their fish and parrots. They bring disease and spread it to the populace. They unleash their bloodlust on the eyrie. Do we really believe the missing guards and rangers were killed by opinici? They steal our loved ones and take them to the ocean to live like heathens. They don’t mate for life. They don’t mate for love. They put the eggs into a communal pile because they can’t figure out who the parents are. Is that any way to live?”
Zeph began to realize that coming here might have been a mistake. Surely these opinici had been warned about gryphons skulking under every branch, ready to eat chicks and steal spouses. The more he stayed out of sight and eavesdropped, the more he fed into the myth.
“While we live in the slums of the underbough, the beautiful lands have been taken. Gryphons rut in the great forests, denuding them of their game through irresponsible population growth. The corpses of parrots and monitors litter the forest floor, picked clean by starving gryphlets forgotten by their parents, if they even know who their parents are. Meanwhile, responsible opinici worry about the future for their chicks. Will there be enough food in five years’ time? Ten? If we don’t do something now, will it be too late?”
Zeph hissed a little against his better sense. While some of the crowd seemed disinterested, fully half of them were leaning forward, engaged. They were worried about their children and had probably never chirped a single word to a gryphon. He knew relationships had long been strained, but he didn’t know things were like this.
“It’s not a question of if. It’s a question of when. Do we wait until our children are starving and dead? Do we wait until the gryphons decide they’ve ruined the weald and need our lands, too? If we double the size of the grasslands, we double the future for our offspring. The reeves don’t want you to hear me saying this. They want peace. They’ve already grown fat like gryphons, preying upon their own people. They’re okay watching the rest of us starve, knowing they’ll be fine, their offspring will be fine. But I don’t say this to spite them. Not at all. They’ll get their comeuppance when the gryphons run out of food and come after ours. No amount of beaded wealth will save them then. No, I say this for all of you: the reeves cannot save you. The future is bleak. Only by acting now can you save your children. We must act while there is still time to act.”
Zeph decided it was time to leave. He needed to get back and let Hatzel know how bad things were here. He was no longer willing to believe that the opinici coming into the forest were simply tourists hoping to take in a bit of nature. Hatzel’s pride included a pond, the river, excellent ground parrot hunting grounds, and formed the northwestern border of the grasslands. If the eyrie was looking to expand, Hatzel’s pride were a prime target. He wondered if Kia knew about this but couldn’t believe she’d be ignorant of it. And he’d told her about the markings along the trees. Only now did he realize his mistake. Gryphons would need a language of their own and not just a simulacrum of what the opinici used. He’d leave a note for Jonas and fly back to the pride.
“Look at the Crackling Sea opinici,” the orator’s words com
manded. “They’ve already purged the gryphons from their lands and live a life well beyond our meager existence. You want proof? They are the proof! They had the strength to do what was necessary for their future.”
Zeph crawled along the platform and away from the crowd before leaping and gliding away.
Kia, Jonas, and Reeve Brevin had all flown to a higher elevation when they’d left Zeph. He decided to fly into the depths of the eyrie and find a route out from there. What he’d come to think of as the middle of the city had open spaces around a market, university, public area, and other places of interest. Above were several nicer nests. He wasn’t sure what was lower, but he’d always felt more comfortable below the canopy line.
As he left his perch, he caught sight of Jonas entering the inn. Zeph ducked behind some boxes marked with circles. Jonas left a few minutes later, feathers puffed up in annoyance. He whistled, and two opinici wearing official-looking gold and blue vests flew down. Together, they went off in the direction of the amphitheater. Zeph waited until they had passed his hiding place, then ducked under the market.
His eyes adjusted to the dimmer light. Below the market was another market without the glitz and bright colors of above. A disheveled opinicus purchased squirrel meat. Two chicks followed behind him, chirping with hunger. There was a smoked meat butchery down here, too, but this time several large opinici stood guard to dissuade theft. Zeph did his best to stay out of sight. The pattern-recognition center of his brain noted that even in the sublevels, all opinici wore harnesses. He pulled some of the vines—no one seemed to care enough to clear them out—and did his best to wrap two around himself. At a distance, at a glance, maybe no one would notice his ears or forepaws.
Everyone kept to themselves. Few were in the company of others, and so far, no one gave him a glance. He descended further. He hoped deeper meant safer, but this underbough raised many questions. These opinici were emaciated. They were eating squirrels. Did the smoked meat just feed the heights? They were starving down here.
Light played on a glittering harness and Zeph ducked behind an abandoned nest stuck to the side of a tree and peered out. The sparkle was coming from a polished pink medallion with a fish on it, similar to the one Jonas had worn. Its owner was a gryphon, not an opinicus, with yellow and brown feathers. The gryphon, along with two opinicus guards, was making her way to the bottom. With no other gryphons around, she stood out. She was making no effort to hide her forepaws, despite the stares of opinici as she passed. The gold spot on her head made her easy to follow. She didn’t seem to be escorted by the guards but also didn’t seem to be free to divest herself of their company. Zeph’s hunting instincts kicked in, and he followed the trio down.
For the last twenty feet before arriving at the ground, the underbrush was even more congested than the weald. Dried vines draped over rotting vegetation and the beams connecting each redwood to the others in its support network. He’d seen this before.
If a long period of time passed without a forest fire, the next time it happened would be significantly worse. This year, it seemed like every time lightning struck, the flames would give up within an hour, leaving behind strange white ash. If this summer passed without a fire, there was already talk of setting controlled burns. The only concern was that it might be too late. Hatzel’s pride had a winter nesting site along the western edge where the weald met the mountains, but most prides lived in the redwood forest during the winter and had no place to evacuate to if a wildfire got out of control.
The eyrie was a city that had forgotten it used to be a forest. What would happen if someone knocked a brazier off a platform and it reached these depths? The whole place would go up.
It took too long for him to prowl through the dried tangle. When he looked up, he’d lost the gryphon and her escort. He glided to where he’d last seen them and looked around. Vines, angry pigeons, a tree infested with ants.
Ah, a break in the undergrowth. He slid into the path like he was tracking a ground parrot. The smell of opinicus was cleaner here and included the spice of gryphon. No, gryphons. He followed it until he heard noises. He recognized an opi trill, but there were also familiar sounds. He flattened himself against the ground and crawled around the corner.
Several opinicus sentries talked amongst themselves. He could see the back of the gryphon’s head as she entered the compound. There were thick, wooden walls blocking Zeph’s view. Painted against a section of tree in red juice was graffiti of a gryphon, wings not yet filled in. He shivered and backed around the corner. His hackles prickled. Whatever was going on here, it was time for him to leave.
When Zeph reached the wall that circled the eyrie, he worried he would have to ascend to a higher level to scale it and escape. He’d never had a good look at it when flying to the market but had assumed it existed to discourage ground-bound predators from getting inside. Every decade or so, a large number of lace monitors, having grown to an enormous size somewhere to the north, would migrate south across the Redwood Valley and pose a danger to anyone caught on the ground. With the wall looming before him, he understood that whatever its previous purpose, it existed now only to hide the lower levels from view.
It’d probably been solid when it was built. It was made from thick, treated planks that were covered in hanging moss, vines, and dirt. The wood was too old to have come from the trees cleared to make the grasslands. Rickety gates appeared at set intervals. Perhaps, in better times, there had been a path for goliath birds to carry goods into the city from the shore. There was an overgrown trail and bridge that wound through the weald to the southern shore that made little sense for airborne inhabitants.
Most of the gates were now in a state of disrepair. The one in front of him showed signs of scorch marks, and the door itself was in shambles. The pieces of metal had been pried off and stolen by some enterprising thief. He pushed aside the vines, disturbed a nest of leaf-nosed snakes that rattled their tails angrily in the dry leaves, and pulled himself out of the city. He was still feeling nourished from the meal the night before, though tear stains cascaded from his salt glands. He decided to stay under the tree line until the grasslands no longer afforded him their protection.
He’d heard the eyrie’s forested area called the reeve’s hunting grounds, and it was preternaturally quiet. Forests of all types offered several levels of silence, based upon what predators made themselves known. A mature monitor would silence the skraarking of ground parrots until it passed. The glided flight of a snake leaping from one tree to another might silence the squirrels. When Hatzel struck, it silenced all prey larger than a squirrel, but the buzzing of insects would continue. He wondered if this forest had predators he was unaware of, or if starving poachers had killed anything large enough to be eaten. It was impossible to guard an entire weald, as the recent opinicus infiltrators attested to. Maybe the university scholars had scared off the game with their food experiments. Maybe it was something else. All he knew was that this section of the forest should be full of turkeys but was empty.
A scream cut through the silence, followed by laughter. Zeph stopped at a tree. He needed to get word back to Hatzel, but he’d never heard an opinicus scream for help before. What if it was Kia? He climbed higher and glided from tree to tree until he reached the sound.
An opinicus, grey except for her red beak, crest, and sections of her wings and tail feathers, hung by a wing in a large net spread out between the trees. Four other opinici looked on from the ground. One, crane-like and still laughing, was wearing the same gold and blue harness as the guards from the market. The other three had pins of a matching color. These must be the rangers, hunters and trappers under a reeve’s employ. They resembled falcons.
“Such a pretty voice!” the guard crooned. “We were hoping to catch a fat bird for dinner. You’re large enough, but you look like you haven’t eaten for a week. Come onto the reeve’s land to steal away a few turkeys for yourself? These are the eyrie’s turkeys. When you steal one of them, you steal
from all of us.”
Two of the guards were throwing lassos in an attempt to catch her forelegs before she freed herself from the net. Her talons had been sanded down and were struggling to saw through the rope.
“If these are the eyrie’s turkeys,” she snapped, “why have I never had them? Do you think any of us have ever eaten turkey?”
The guard laughed again. “Such a beak! How could I eat such a loquacious songbird such as yourself? You must go and explain yourself to Reeve Brevin. I’m sure she’d love to hear your plans for food distribution. It would be a shame for you to take those with you to the grave.”
The two trappers were good at what they did, and the lassos soon caught her foretalons and hind legs. The trappers started to untie the net.
For Zeph, the calculation was simple. The rangers were not necessarily military but were more likely to be skilled fighters than the guard was. It would be dangerous and require a lot of effort to incapacitate all four opinici. They’d likely remember who he was when they awoke. The question, in his mind, was this: was he willing to kill four opinici to save one? It felt overly altruistic, but this songbird may be able to provide answers about the eyrie if he helped her. She might have context he lacked to understand what he’d seen in the underbough. The world did not seem like it would be a worse place if it lacked these four. He’d seen lizards with better personalities.