“That’s right, at least.” She rose and entered the kitchen.
“Why don’t you stay to supper? Make up some for all your trouble,” she called into the other room.
“Oh, I don’t want to be any bother.”
“No bother at all. My kids’ll be home soon. I’d have to get supper for them in any case. Besides, around here there’s always plenty.” She laughed, as if at a private joke. “You know, that Finn—one of his problems was that he was just too damn hasty. He never did let me finish telling him about my cooking pot.”
“He seemed to think there was something unusual about it.”
“Oh, there is, though no one believes me.” She paused, musing. “Maybe that’s why I let him in. He believed me.”
Anne came in to stand beside her. “Can I help? Cut vegetables or something?”
“No need. The pot does everything.”
“Sort of a medieval crockpot.”
Maddy laughed. “It’s been in my family a long time, but it ain’t that old. But I never got a chance to tell that Finn.” She fished around in the cupboard above the stove. “Ah, here it is. This old pot ain’t worth nothing without its stone.” To Anne’s puzzled look, she brought out a flattened stone, about as big as her hand, variegated like agate or marble, and worn smooth. “You ever heard of stone soup?”
Anne nodded, smiling. “Soup from nothing.”
“Well, that’s what this is. You put the stone in the bottom,” she explained as she did so, “put the lid on, and start the fire under it. That’s all you gotta do, and you get supper. Stone soup. Soup from nothing.” She smiled at Anne’s doubtful look. “Sometimes it’s a microwave, sometimes it’s a slow cooker. You’re looking at me kind of funny, Anne.”
Anne smiled. “If you heat that pot up, you’ll get a hot rock, nothing more.”
“I suppose if someone had told it to me, I’d find it hard to believe, too. But I learned about this pot standing in front of my mother’s stove when I wasn’t even big enough to see the stove top. She learned it from her mother the same way. And her mother’s mother was a slave on a plantation, and she didn’t even have a stove. There are some things you just have to accept.” She turned to look at the iron pot. “Sometimes I’m afraid that if I stop believing, it’ll stop happening.”
Anne’s look was doubtful, kind, and a little pitying.
“It was Shakespeare who said, ’There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio—”’ Maddy stopped to sniff the air.
“‘Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ Yes, I know the quote.
“Why, I do believe it’s going to be a microwave today,” Maddy said. “Maybe it knows there’s an unbeliever in the room.”
Anne was sniffing the air in astonishment. She smelled food, coming from the pot.
With a wooden spoon, Maddy lifted the lid and set it aside, then spooned some of the brimming stew out and tasted it. “Mm. Excellent. As usual.” She offered some of it to Anne, who tasted.
“Unbelievable! and I was standing right here.” She looked at Maddy as if she might be a sleight-of-hand artist.
Maddy laughed and tasted again. “Beans and barley. I guess it was good I didn’t tell that Finn about the stone, or he would’ve taken it, too. This old pot has fed us well for four generations, but I do wish it would get off this kick of beans and barley.”
About Barbara Rosen and “The Griffin”
According to the scribbled biographical information she sent, Barbara is “cosily married to my Griffin” (I’m fairly sure I’m deciphering her handwriting correctly.… ) and rescues abandoned animals. She says that Hawk was one of her strays, now placed in a loving home, and she thinks her characters’ bios are more interesting than hers.
The Griffin
Barbara Rosen
The birds hadn’t awakened yet. Mariellen fumbled for her key, her breath drifting away in white clouds on the cold air. In a month it would be daylight when she got off the subway; in a month she wouldn’t be half-frozen by the time she got to work. She pushed open the door and flicked on the lights, blinking in the sudden fluorescent glare.
Inside it was comfortably warm. A racket of excited barking met her ears before she was halfway down the stairs.
“All right, all right, take it easy.”
She unlatched the door leading to the backyard and turned to survey the kennels. The Jefferson dog was crowding the front of his cage, eyes pleading. Too well housebroken for his own good, poor thing.
“Okay, you first.” She released the catch and the cage door swung wide. The dog bolted into the yard, stopped outside the door, and cocked his leg against the fence.
Mariellen watched until he was finished. Then she filled her bucket, pulled the paper lining out of his cage, and began her morning cleaning.
* * *
By the time Dr. Saunders arrived all the boarding animals had been taken care of and Mariellen was halfway through the hospital ward. The doctor didn’t usually disturb her when she was working, but today he came downstairs, pacing restlessly and peering into the cages.
“The Roth cat had diarrhea again,” she reported. “Should I run another fecal?”
“Might as well.”
“And the Feingold dog still won’t eat.”
He nodded. “Let’s wait another day; that one can afford to lose a little weight.”
“That’s for sure. Okay, oh, yes, the Johnson dog. Do you want to keep her on fluids?”
“Yes.”
“I need to start another bag, then.”
“Fine.” The vet hesitated. “Anything else?”
“Not so far.”
“Let me know.” And he left.
That was odd, Mariellen thought. Why didn’t he wait for me to come up today? Wonder if there’s some animal he’s especially concerned about. No, he’d’ve mentioned it. She leaned down to open the next cage.
“What the hell—!?” Her hand jerked back involuntarily and she dropped the sponge. There was something really disgusting here. She squatted on her heels and took a good look.
Pink. Pink and—stubbly? Was that stubble? Or.… Mariellen leaned closer. No, not stubble. Pin feathers, maybe. Yes, there was the head: it was a bird, all right. But enormous, ungainly… A huge hooked beak, dark eyes showing through translucent lids … The skin was translucent too, with branching blue veins beneath the pink. Whatever it was, it was awfully young.
Mariellen opened the cage and extended her hand.
The eyes opened slowly, obsidian eyes rimmed with blue. For a long moment the bird studied Mariellen’s hand, turning its head to look first with one eye and then the other. Mariellen held still. The head came closer, bobbing a little on the scrawny neck. Huge, taloned feet shuffled as it stood upright; naked wings flailed for balance. And then the head came to rest in Marielien’s outstretched palm and the shining eyes closed contentedly.
She flexed her fingers, stroking the hot skin at the huge bird’s throat. It snuggled closer.
“What happened to you?” she crooned. “Why aren’t you with your mama?”
She slowly withdrew her hand and the nestling, disappointed, opened its eyes again and got up on all fours to follow her.
All fours?!?
Mariellen blinked. It couldn’t be! There must be two animals in that cage. But Dr. Saunders wouldn’t put a cat in with a baby bird and besides—besides, it wasn’t exactly a cat.
The—the thing—had come all the way to the front by now. And behind the wings it wasn’t a bird at all, it was fuzzy and golden and flecked with brown. It had sturdy hind legs and a tasseled tail.
Mariellen felt as if she were going to vomit. For a moment she was so angry that her vision blurred.
To do this! To stitch together two unrelated species, to put animals through this kind of agony so some damned arrogant scientist could play God!
The monster teetered at the edge of its cage and squalled at her.
Mariellen sat down on the floor, gathered it int
o her lap, and wept.
She didn’t hear Dr. Saunders on the stairs.
“Mariellen?”
She lifted her head and glared at him. “What sonofabitch did this?”
“Did what?”
“This! This—graft, this obscenity!”
“Oh. Nobody.”
“Nobody?” Don’t give me that, her tone said.
Dr. Saunders sighed. “The Tsantes family brought it in last night. They found it when they were vacationing in Greece. That is, they found an egg.”
“An egg?”
The doctor nodded. “They thought it was an ostrich egg,” he continued. “They took it home for a souvenir.”
“There aren’t any ostriches in Greece,” Mariellen protested.
“I know that, you know that…” He shrugged. “They found this enormous egg, they figured it had to’ve come from an ostrich. So they took it.”
Mariellen was silent. She could just picture it: the careless tourists on their holiday, the thoughtlessness with which they would rob a nest, break off chunks of living coral, carve their initials in the skin of a cactus that would still be quietly bleeding to death when they were safely and ignorantly home.… She held the creature in her lap more closely.
“They had it in a suitcase,” Dr. Saunders was saying, “with a lot of underwear piled up around it so it wouldn’t break. But it broke, all right.” He smiled. “When they opened the suitcase there was nothing left of it but bloody bits of shell and wet membrane. And that.” He pointed. “Mrs. Tsantes was hysterical.”
“Serves her right,” muttered Mariellen.
“Well, at least they didn’t toss it into the nearest Dumpster.” Dr. Saunders was grinning now. “Do you have any idea what kind of animal that is?”
Mariellen shook her head.
“Unless I’m very much mistaken, it’s a griffin.”
“A—but that’s mythology!” She squinted at him suspiciously. “Are you making this up?”
“See for yourself.”
It was true. There was no scar where the naked bird body ended and the fuzzy lion body began. The golden down began almost imperceptibly just behind the wings and gradually grew denser until the whole back of the body was covered with fur.
“What does it eat?” she asked.
“That’s a good question. If it were a lion cub I’d put it on kitten formula. But raptors need raw meat, roughage.…”
Mariellen considered. “I’ll try it on formula first. If it won’t accept that we can always switch over to meat.”
“Sounds good to me,” said the vet.
The griffin eyed Mariellen curiously.
“Think I’m your mother, do you?” she asked. “All right. Here comes breakfast.” Now how on earth am I supposed to get a nipple into that beak? she wondered. Do griffins nurse their young? Well, it must eat something. She sat cross-legged on the floor again and took the little griffin into her lap. “All right, now…” She nudged the nipple against the corner of the oversize beak. “Aren’t you going to open? Come on…” She squeezed a few drops of formula out, hoping against hope that some of it would penetrate. “You don’t have to look at me like that. Here, I’ll wipe it off, okay?” She decided against trying to force the beak open; all that would accomplish, she suspected, would be the donation of a couple of fingers toward this infant’s first meal.
She set the bottle down. “A bottle baby you are not,” she muttered. “Let’s try you on some meat.”
By the time she got back with the meat Mariellen imagined the griffin was beginning to weaken. How long had it been without food? Since last night, at least. There would have been some residual nourishment from the yolk sac, but surely that must be gone by now. She cut the beef into narrow strips and went back downstairs.
As soon as the griffin saw the meat it began to squall. “Got the right stuff this time, did I?” she asked it. “Okay, open wide.” She unlatched the cage and the griffin came scrambling out, not waiting to be lifted. She dangled a strip of meat. It gulped it down without hesitation, gaped for more. Mariellen laughed. “Call you anything, but don’t call you late for lunch, huh?” The griffin paid no attention; it was too busy eating. It ate three pounds of stewing beef before it was satisfied.
“Success!”
“Hm?”
“The griffin. He ate for me.”
“Wonderful!” The vet smiled. “You’d better call the Tsanteses, let them know.”
“All right.”
“What’s the matter?”
“It’s just—they don’t really want him, do they? I mean, he was an accident.…”
“They’re the ones who brought him in.”
“Well, yes, I know. But—”
“Give them a call.”
“All right,” Mariellen said again. Dr. Saunders was right, of course; the griffin belonged to the Tsantes family. But they didn’t want him. All they wanted was an ostrich egg to put on their damned mantelpiece. Just because they’d brought him to the vet didn’t mean they wanted him back. It was going to be like the time those bastards brought the ocelot in. She just knew it.
The ocelot had been a beloved exotic pet until it grew up and began wrecking the house. The owners had had it declawed—not by Dr. Saunders—and the wounds had become infected, gangrenous. The only way to save the animal’s life had been to amputate some of its toes.
And when Mariellen had called to tell the owners that their ocelot would live, all that had mattered to them was that it wasn’t beautiful anymore. It had been Mariellen’s lot to hold the warm, breathing body in her arms as Dr. Saunders put it to death.
Now there was this griffin. Hell, the Tsanteses hadn’t wanted a pet to begin with! And—Mariellen had to admit it—the griffin was far from beautiful.
She sighed. Might as well make the call and get it over with.
“Manny?” Mariellen could hear Mrs. Tsantes faintly in the distance. “Would you take this call? It’s the vet.”
In a moment Mr. Tsantes was on the line. “Yes?”
“I’m just calling to let you know that the—uh—animal you brought in last night is doing fine.” Mariellen tried to sound enthusiastic. “We’ve got him eating.”
“Oh, Jesus,” said Mr. Tsantes.
“Pardon?”
“I thought the thing would die.”
“He didn’t,” said Mariellen succinctly.
“Oh, Jesus.” There was a pause. “Listen, can’t you find somebody else to take that thing? We don’t want it.”
“I see.” Mariellen thought, Why the hell didn’t you think of that before you brought it home? “We’ll do what we can,” she said.
The griffin was huddled in the back of its cage, sleeping off its meal. Mariellen squatted to peer in at it, but it didn’t move. She wondered how it would sleep when it grew up. Would it put its head behind its wing like a bird? Or sleep tail over nose like a big cat? She wondered if it would be allowed to live long enough for anybody to find out. Damn those people anyway.
She got slowly to her feet and went to give the bad news to Dr. Saunders.
The vet nodded. “Well, we expected this,” he said.
“Are you—? I mean, you’re not going to—?”
“I certainly hope not.”
Mariellen didn’t pursue it; she knew the answers as well as he did. A veterinarian’s office was not a shelter or a free boarding facility. Every charity case took up cage space that was intended for use by paying clients. But Dr. Saunders was speaking.
“What?”
“I said, I don’t suppose you’d want to take him.”
“Me?”
“He’d have to stay here for a while, of course. Until we’re sure he’s stable. But after that—” He shrugged and looked at her hopefully. “Take a few days. Think it over.”
“I—” Mariellen was silent. She was thinking of how helpless the griffin was, how dependent on their mercy. She was remembering its deep, glowing eyes, the trusting weight of its head in h
er open hand. “It’s a wild animal,” she said. “It ate three pounds of meat this morning and it’s only a baby. It’s going to be enormous, isn’t it?”
“I would think so.”
It trusts me, thought Mariellen. In this whole world, I’m all it’s got.
“Do you suppose it could be trained? Housebroken?”
“I don’t know.”
It trusts me, but can I trust it? she was thinking. What will it do to my house? What will it do to my life?
“What about Hawk?” she said.
“Oh, I don’t think Hawk would hurt him, do you?”
“That wasn’t what I meant. Hawk may be a humongous Doberman, but you know what he’s like. I could come home someday and find this cute little griffin picnicking on my dog.”
The vet snorted. “If I know Hawk, he’ll have it following him around like a puppy.”
“Well, maybe.”
“You don’t have to decide right away,” he reminded her.
“I know.” But on some level that had nothing to do with reason, Mariellen knew that her decision had already been made.
For the rest of that week Mariellen’s mood swung wildly from excited anticipation to horrified dread. Assuming responsibility for a large, carnivorous wild animal of unknown propensities was utterly insane. Whenever she allowed herself to imagine what the griffin might be like when it was full grown, she knew that she couldn’t possibly go through with it. But when the griffin squalled at the sound of her voice, when it scrambled into her lap and nestled there, she felt a wave of protective love that overcame all reason. At those times she positively looked forward to bringing the little thing home, to giving it the comparative freedom of her small apartment. She pictured it basking in the sunlight and playing with Hawk.
After all, she assured herself, he’s perfectly gentle now. Look how carefully he takes his meat from my hand.
At the beginning of the second week Mariellen took the griffin home.
By this time the tips of the pin feathers had burst and the naked pink bird body was covered with a fine golden down. The griffin’s front half looked ridiculously like an oversize Easter chick. On a diet of raw meat sprinkled with bone meal and powdered vitamins it had grown alarmingly. When Mariellen held it in her lap now, the lion half spilled over onto the floor.
Best of Marion Zimmer Bradley Fantasy Magazine, Volume 2 Page 21