The Dark Griffin

by K J Taylor

  “They will not break,” said a voice.

  The black griffin looked up. The voice had come from somewhere to his left, but he couldn’t see anyone there. He got up and made a lunge in that direction, only to hit the rock wall of his prison. The collar drove into the tender flesh around his neck again, sending fresh waves of pain through his body. He screeched his rage and despair, and slumped down onto his stomach, tail twitching convulsively.

  “They will not break, fool,” the voice resumed. “You cannot escape.”

  The black griffin looked up. “You . . . griff?” he managed.

  There was a weary chirp from the other side of the wall. “You chick?” the voice mocked.

  The black griffin didn’t understand. “Where you?” he said.

  “I am in the cage beside yours,” said the voice. “My name is Kraee.”

  The black griffin listened. “What this place?”

  “The Arena,” said Kraee. “We live here.”

  “I want . . . fly,” said the black griffin.

  Kraee hissed. “You will not fly again, black griffin.”

  The black griffin got up suddenly and hurled himself toward the door at an angle. The chain snapped tight again and he fell hard, sending up a cloud of dust. “Want fly!” he screamed, struggling to get up. The chain on his forelegs had tangled itself up in his talons, and he fell again and rolled onto his side, thrashing wildly to get free. His wings jerked clumsily, unable to unfurl properly because of the manacles holding them together. His hind legs, still free, scrabbled at the dirt, the claws scraping on the iron plate beneath. He began to screech, again and again, his rage reverberating out into the enclosure beyond his cage. It roused the other griffins, and they began to screech back at him, their voices high and mocking. They only encouraged the black griffin ; he found his feet and reared up, screaming as loudly as he could. He kept on and on, while the others continued to scream, too, by now half-hysterical with pent-up rage.

  There was another screech, barely audible above the cacophony, and Sefer arrived. The red griffin entered the enclosure via the archway, opening the gate that now blocked it by lifting a lever with his beak. It closed behind him and he came to the centre of the enclosure and screeched again. The sound cut across the others, and many of the caged griffins fell silent and sullenly lay back down. Others, though, continued to screech, and many threw themselves at the bars as the black griffin was doing, their chains clanking loudly.

  Sefer looked around sharply, and quickly identified the black griffin as the main source of the disturbance. He darted over to the cage and bit him through the bars. The black griffin lashed out, nearly hitting him, but Sefer darted back out of the way. He lowered his head, hackles raised and tail swishing. “Be quiet, or you will suffer,” he warned.

  The black griffin only paused a moment before he resumed his struggle. “Kill! Bite! Tear!” he threatened.

  Sefer screeched at him. “Idiot humanless beast! I will rip out your eyes!”

  “Kill!” the black griffin replied, eyes mad. There was blood all around the edges of his collar, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  “He will not listen,” Kraee volunteered. “He does not know griffish.”

  Sefer paused, apparently deep in thought, and then opened his beak and breathed a beam of red light. Where it struck, flames erupted. It hit the bars of the black griffin’s cage, turning them red-hot, and burned the feathers on his face. He screeched again, this time in pain and fear, and lurched toward the back of the cage. Sefer closed his beak and the fire disappeared, but the black griffin stayed where he was, hissing to himself and rubbing his beak on the ground, trying to dispel the heat.

  The screeching had stopped, and all was quiet in the enclosure. Apparently satisfied, Sefer turned and loped back toward the gate. He poked a foreclaw through a gap in the bars and hooked the lever. It moved, and the gate swung open with a faint creak. Sefer slipped through, pulled it shut behind him and was gone.

  Silence reigned for a long time after he had left. The black griffin continued to hiss, but it seemed his defiance had been knocked out of him. Eventually he got up and drank deeply from the trough of water provided for him. That made him feel a little better.

  As he lay down, sides heaving, he felt the strange feeling in his throat again. It was even more powerful now than it had been before, heavy and burning and awful, fighting to escape. This time he breathed in deeply and tried to let it out, but it would not come. His voice died inside him, leaving him mute and exhausted, and his head slumped to the ground.

  “I told you that you could not get free,” Kraee said in weary tones.

  The black griffin said nothing.

  “What is your name, black griffin?” another voice asked, this one from the cage on his other side.

  The black griffin raised his head slightly. “No . . . name,” he mumbled, and let it drop again.

  “My name is Aeya,” said the other griffin, who sounded female. “Do you not have a name?”

  “No name,” the black griffin said again.

  “Why can he not speak?” Aeya said.

  “Perhaps his mother died,” Kraee answered. “Where is your mother, black griffin?”

  “Mother die,” said the black griffin. “When chick. Human come kill.”

  Aeya shifted in her chains. “Humans killed your mother?”

  “I live in mountain,” the black griffin managed. “No—chick die.”

  “I had chicks once,” said Aeya. “Humans took them. So I killed them. Until the griffiners came for me and brought me here.”

  “Want fly,” the black griffin said again, in a hopeless kind of way. “Want . . . home. Want hunt.”

  “We all want that,” Kraee interrupted. “But we cannot have it. We cannot leave here. But we can hunt.”

  “Hunt human!” another griffin yelled. “Kill human!” it screeched, and bashed its beak against the bars in front of it. Others hissed and snarled their agreement, but the sound died down before it became another bout of savage hysteria.

  “Kill human?” the black griffin repeated.

  “Yes,” said Aeya. “In the pit. We kill them. Make them die.” Her voice became low and bloody. “Break their bones. Tear them apart. Make them bleed.”

  The black griffin hissed. “Want human.”

  “And you shall have human,” said Kraee. “They give us that.” He hissed to himself. “I want to taste their blood again.”

  There was silence, broken only by a savage muttering from several of the griffins who were within earshot. The black griffin lay with his head on his talons and thought about one human in particular. The tall one with the cold black eyes and the black fur on its head. The one called Arren. That human had run from him in fear at first, but later—later it had spoken to him. None of the others had, but it had, and it had shown no further fear of him, only hatred. When he had attacked it, it had fought back. It had conquered him.

  He hissed to himself and dug his talons into the dirt.

  “I am bored,” Aeya said suddenly. “Black griffin?”

  The black griffin moved his head slightly in her direction. She must have heard the rattle of his chains, because she went on, “I want someone new to talk to. If you would like, I shall teach you griffish as your mother would have. Do you wish me to do that?”

  “You . . . teach?” the black griffin said blankly.

  “I will teach you how to speak,” said Aeya.

  Comprehension of a kind dawned on the black griffin. “Want speak,” he said eagerly.

  “Then I will help you,” said Aeya. “Listen . . .”

  She spent much of the rest of that night teaching him new words, saying them slowly and making him repeat them. He quickly grasped this notion and recited strings of new words over and over again until he could say them properly. It was so strange, but he found he liked it. He liked talking to her, and he liked learning.

  He spent the next few weeks in his cage, unable to move far or st
retch his wings. The black-eyed human did not come to give him food any more, but now other humans did instead. They brought meat, plenty of it, and he ate it voraciously even though it tasted unfamiliar. It helped to restore some of the strength he’d lost during the journey.

  He made several more attempts to escape, and whenever a human ventured too close to his cage he rushed at them to attack. But the chains always pulled him back, and the bars were in the way. Infuriatingly, the humans seemed to know this would happen and passed insolently close to him, barely even bothering to glance in his direction, let alone show any fear.

  Once every few days he was taken out of the cage and forced to walk around in the enclosure, pulled along by the chains around his neck. The first time, he immediately tried to fly away, but his wings wouldn’t open and the chains weighed him down. And even if he had been able to take to the air he would not have got far. The enclosure was open to the sky, but a huge net of steel cables had been stretched over it, preventing anything as big as a griffin from flying in or out.

  In the end his spirit died down and he stopped trying to attack or run. He would lie in his cage, eyes dull, and thump his beak on the wall over and over again, not even fully aware of what he was doing. His mind slowly turned into a blank sea in which he was unable to think about anything much or even really be aware of his situation or his surroundings. Sometimes he would doze and remember his old life, back in the mountains, when he had still been able to fly. The dreams were so vivid that he would believe they were real, before he was woken up by the pain in his wings and realised that he had been trying to beat them in his sleep.

  The only relief he had from the monotony and despair was Aeya. She talked to him often, teaching him new words and phrases, and when he was bored he would mumble them to himself, trying the sounds. It helped him to get by.

  One night, when his speech was a little better, she told him a story.

  “Long ago,” she said, her voice soft but clear, “the eagle and the lion were enemies. They lived together in the land, and both of them wanted to rule it. They fought day and night, but neither one could win. The eagle could fly but he could not run, and the lion could run but could not fly. The eagle had powerful sight and a sharp beak and talons, but the lion could climb and he had strong teeth and talons of his own. One day the eagle swooped down on the lion and carried him away. He wanted to drop him into the sea and make him drown, but the sea was a long way away and he soon became tired.

  “He began to fall from the sky, but he could not let go of the lion because his talons were tangled in the lion’s mane. They fell very far, because in those days the eagle could fly as high as the sun. They fought as they fell, trying to kill each other, and when the eagle tried to fly away, the lion bit his tail and held on to him. But when they fell, they fell into a great hole in the ground. The hole was very deep, so deep it had no bottom.

  “The lion and the eagle fell into the shadow that lived there, and both of them were afraid, when they were not afraid of anything else in the world. They clung to each other like chicks in a nest, and they could not see each other then, or the sun or the moon or the sky. They fell for years and years and did not stop, until they reached the light that was on the other side of the darkness in the hole. The light took them, and it wrapped itself around them until they were both flaming with it. After that they were lifted out of the hole together, and when they flew up and into the sky they saw that they were not themselves any more. They had become one. The wings and the talons of an eagle, the paws and tail of a lion. One creature with the strength of both. They were the first griffin, and they flew and screamed with the eagle’s voice and proclaimed that they were lord over the land and would be forever, for the light had given them magic and wisdom, and no creature would ever be stronger or wiser than they.”

  The black griffin listened. He understood only part of the story, but he took it all in anyway, occasionally repeating the odd fragment.

  “My mother told me that story,” Kraee remarked. “It was almost the same.”

  “What did you think of it, black griffin?” said Aeya.

  He concentrated. “I . . . like . . . it.”

  “Well done,” said Aeya. “You are quick to learn.”

  “Why do you teach him, Aeya?” said Kraee.

  “Because I am bored,” Aeya said. “And because . . .” She trailed off, unable to express what she was really thinking, which was that, to her, the black griffin’s clumsy speech made her think of him as a chick. Like those she had lost. And a chick needed teaching. Yes. He needed to be taught. She sat back on her haunches and rustled her wings. “I have nothing to do. I may as well teach him.”

  The next day they were visited by Orome. The black griffin knew him by sight; he’d come to the enclosure several times, always with Sefer beside him, and had shown a fair amount of interest in the black griffin. Now the human approached his cage and stood a short way back from the bars. The black griffin stood up and started to walk toward him, but then changed his mind and lay down again, watching him listlessly.

  Orome scratched his chin. “Seems you’re starting to lose interest in living,” he said in griffish. “Don’t worry, you’ll be able to leave there soon. It’s time for you to go into the pit. We have some people for you to chase.”

  The black griffin said nothing. None of the griffins ever did speak to Orome or his fellow humans, except to scream curses and threats at them.

  “I have a name for you,” the man went on. “Sefer thought of it.” He moved a little closer, taking in the black griffin’s silver feathers and black fur and his mottled wings. “We’re going to call you Darkheart,” he said. “Darkheart, the black griffin. Be proud of it. Your name is all over the city. Hundreds of people are coming to see you.”

  The black griffin looked up at that. “Dark . . . heart?” he said, puzzled.

  Orome nodded. “Your name: Darkheart. I give it to you. Soon you’ll have humans to hunt again.”

  After he had left, the black griffin lay and thought for a while, and then got up to have a drink. “Aeya?”

  “Yes?”

  “What is Darkheart?”

  “You are,” said Aeya. “That is your name now. The human gave it to you. Darkheart—a strange name. Not a griffish one.”

  “Darkheart,” the black griffin said again. He repeated it several times. It sounded strange, but he realised eventually that he recognised it. It was two words, not one. “Dark . . . heart. What . . . dark heart?”

  “It means a heart that is dark,” said Aeya.

  He couldn’t remember what a heart was. “What . . . heart?”

  “Your heart is inside you,” said Aeya. “In your chest. You can feel it inside you, clicking its beak.”

  The black griffin had a vague idea of what she meant. He touched his beak to his chest, and felt his heart thudding gently beneath the feathers. “Heart,” he said, half to himself.

  “Your heart is where your magic lives,” said Aeya. “It is precious.”

  “Magic?”

  Aeya sighed. “Magic is our power. Humans do not have it. Every griffin has their gift. You would have found yours one day. Mine was to create the wind. My breath could make a tree fall. Who knows what you could have done, Darkheart.”

  He felt the imprisoned scream again. “Magic.”

  They were silent for a time.

  “So, you will go into the pit,” said Kraee. “I hope I will go with you, Darkheart. I want to hunt.”

  Darkheart perked up at that. “We hunt?”

  “Yes. Hunt humans. Sometimes three of us, sometimes more.”

  “We . . . hunt human?”

  Kraee’s chains clinked. “Yes. Many humans.”

  Darkheart lay down to think. Did that mean he was going home? Were they going to let him fly back to his valley, where he could fly and hunt again?

  Joy flooded into him. He was going home. He was going to hunt again. He knew it. And he had a name now. It was all his
, all his own, just for him.

  “Darkheart,” he said. And then, again, “Darkheart.”

  He looked up at the sky. It was evening, and the sun was sinking below the horizon. Time to fly, time to hunt. Time to call. He remembered his valley. The wind in the trees, the rich scent of the earth, the icy wind that blew over the mountains in winter, the snow and the rain. He stood up clumsily, the chains dragging at his limbs. The other griffins were lying down, either asleep or simply doing nothing. They were silent except for the occasional rustle of a wing or clink of a chain.

  The black griffin lifted his head toward the sky and screamed. It was the call, his call, and this time it was a true call. “Darkheart! Darkheart!” He called it again and again, breaking the depressed silence of the cages. It made his heart beat faster and put a wild and wonderful energy into him, which freed him from his lethargy and despair.

  This time no-one came to silence him, and he continued to call until he was hoarse. He drank deeply from his trough and lay down to rest. Night was falling. The collar still hurt him, but he did not care. He was going home.

  The next day came, and Darkheart spent it sitting on his haunches, watching expectantly for them to come and let him out of the cage.

  No-one did.

  They brought food at noon, as usual, but they did not give him any. Kraee and Aeya also went hungry and had to watch while the other griffins tore into the freshly killed goat meat provided.

  Darkheart began to get angry. “Want food,” he huffed. “Want to hunt.”

  “Be calm,” Aeya advised. “This is a good sign: If they do not feed you, it means you will go to the pit very soon. And Kraee and I will go with you. We can hunt together.”

  “You come?” said Darkheart, perking up.

  “Yes. Three of us together, hunting humans. You will see.”

  That made him feel better. He waited out the rest of the day, hunger gnawing at him, and when sunset eventually came he called his name again. He imagined calling it from his cave in the mountainside. Soon, he promised himself. Soon.

  And then it was morning, and he was woken up by the sound of human voices. There were many humans in the enclosure, more than he had ever seen there before. Orome was there, with Sefer. The red griffin looked wary but confident.