The Care and Feeding of Griffins (14 page)

23.  The Storm of Griffins

T
aryn emerged from her tent into a clear, cold morning.  She put Aisling down and he pounced off into the tall grass.  By habit, she glanced around to see where her escort was at as she went to use the bushes, but she couldn’t see one.

That was unnerving.  Why were they hiding all of a sudden?

So she went into the copse alone, took care of business, and came out with an extra armload of firewood.  Still no Farasai.  She uncovered her coals, blew up a new fire, and picked up her cauldron (her hands ached, she shifted the handle of the heavy thing down to the crease of her knuckles without thinking about it), then paused again.  She searched the plains and they were still empty, apart from a distant black stripe of those cattle things.  She’d asked one of her guards about them, and had eventually managed to wrestle free a description in bits and pieces that made her think they might be buffalo-like, but they were supposedly pretty mean.  When she’d asked how easy it was to hunt one, the horseman had replied they were the only grass-eater he knew of that would trample a hunter, come back to gore it, and come back again to stomp until “its sides and hooves and burning eyes are painted ‘round with blood”.  So although the shadow of cattle on the plains might be good camouflage, she doubted there were any Farasai hiding among them just to spy on her.

Aisling came over to pounce on her foot while she was considering the lack of a visible stakeout and, when she didn
’t respond, he sat down on her toes.  He looked up at her, then peered out into the grass in an attitude of intense alertness, mimicking her.

“
Hello?” Taryn called, and Aisling peeped loudly.

There was no answer to either of them.  She was beginning to think no one was there.

Taryn gave Aisling a nudge to get him off her sneaker, deciding that this had to be a good sign and she’d finally won them over, or at least, convinced them that she didn’t need constant staring at.  It was a victory of sorts, and if nothing else, it was one less thing she had to worry about.  There were plenty of other things that could be opened up for her worrying attention now, beginning with breakfast.  She headed down to the river to fill her cauldron.

The quiet was deafening.  Not that the horsemen were prone to chatter, but she
’d gotten used to the sound of hoof-beats following her every time she moved.  Not having that anymore produced a noiselessness that went all the way in, muffling even her thoughts.  Where were they?

Never mind.  There were fish in her baskets, four of them.  She let two go and tossed the other two up on the bank, where Aisling immediately pounced on them.  He wasn
’t quite brave enough to bite the flapping things under his talons, but he peeped at them impressively before bounding away to rally for another attack.  His peep was growing up, she thought.  It was almost a squawk, really.  Watching him menace the fish made Taryn wonder just how soon she should be teaching him to hunt.  She’d been here for a pretty impressive span of days—at least ten, maybe more—but she’d only managed to skim a few pages out of Bancha’s book, and that only in her tent at night.  She wasn’t comfortable letting the horsemen know how ignorant she was about how to care for the little life she was keeping.

But the horsemen weren
’t here, for whatever reason, and that made today a good day to catch up on her griffin-reading.  She could always go back to baskets and stone-knapping (and potato planting, she had to plant those damned potatoes) when the Farasai came back from vacation.

Taryn hugged her fish to her chest and got her cauldron in hand, again moving the handle down to her curled fingers at the first dull throb from her palm.  The blisters that pulling the grass had raised were finally healing up, the scab
s just beginning to flake away and show healthy, pink skin again, but they ached like a rotten tooth and she didn’t want to open them up again.  Unfortunately, a cauldron full of water couldn’t be anything but heavy; her fingers were in knots after just a few steps and her shoulder was in agony.  She had to stop twice on the way back to juggle fish and cauldron from one arm to the other, and she felt oddly wiped out and flushed by the time she finally made it into camp.

She set the cauldron on her boiling stone
—a nice flat one in the middle of the hottest flames—and sat down with a groan, letting the fish spill into her lap.  God, she stank.  Stank like sweat, stank like fish, stank like…stink.

Well, the horsemen weren
’t here.  She could take a bath once her water was boiled and she’d made her tea.  It wasn’t like she had anything else to do with her day.

Where were they?

Taryn didn’t have the energy to stand up and look again, but she sure couldn’t see them from where she was sitting.  After craning her neck to no result for several minutes, Taryn sagged back down and brought out her multitool to clean her fish.  Aisling was right there in an instant.  Funny, how he couldn’t seem to stagger on his own all the way out of the tent in the morning, but he could be across the whole camp in the blink of an eye if there were fish guts at stake.

She took the heads off her fishes, convinced Aisling they were not for eating with no small amount of effort, and set them aside.  Her book on primitive technologies mentioned that the American Indians used fish heads for fertilizer.  She
’d mush them up, mix them with her dirt, and use it when she planted her potatoes.  Which she was going to do.  Right at the top of her list, even. 

With Aisling
’s bottomless stomach placated for a few minutes, water working toward a boil, and breakfast spitted over the coals, Taryn was free to take a little break.  She rubbed her hands in the dirt to get fish off them, and then wiped them down on her jeans to get the dirt off them.  Bancha Sorefoot’s book was just inside the mouth of the tent, and she didn’t even have to get up, just lean in and out again.

Once again, she was in Bancha
’s world (poor little one-eyed lady with her busted legs and nothing but paper and pen and plenty of time), and griffins were all around her.  She started with the dedication again (she loved that page a little more with every new reading), turned to
Chapter One: Griffin or Gryphon
?, and dove right in.

There is no such thing as a griffin
.

Taryn glanced over the top of the book to look at Aisling.  He peeped at her and came to sit on her foot.  She looked back down at the page.

Griffin is nothing but a meaningless word naturalists have coined to refer to the four individual species of gryffyn, griffawn, gryphon, and gryphen, as a means of keeping them distinct from the so-called “sub” species, such as hippogriffs and the like.  As I look down from my tent, I can see representatives of all four species gathered in what’s known as the “protective clutch” as they stare back at me, so it would seem clear that they all consider themselves close-knit enough to help raise each other’s young.  But there is no such single animal as a griffin.  There are instead characteristics of a griffin, and any critter that doesn’t meet all of them is, by definition, a subspecies.

The predominant defining mark of a griffin lies in its appearance.  They are
sextamelods, which is to say, six-limbed, being quadrupeds with feathered wings.  The body of a griffin must be feline, excepting the head and forefeet, which are avian and raptor-like. 

Less tangible but still physically-apparent is the matter of a griffin
’s beak and claws, which harden as the griffin matures.  By the time the griffin is three years old and has achieved his or her adult size, its fully-hardened claws will be capable of scoring even obsidian like it was wet clay.

All griffins are highly intelligent and capable of speech.  Most speak and write in several languages.  But griffins aren
’t known for their trusting natures.  I can only assume the monarch of this storm is letting me stay this close because it’s so obvious that I don’t present any real threat to them.  Also, I’m writing a book.  Griffins have a strong drive for higher learning, as well as great intelligence and well-deserved racial pride.  I think I appeal to the monarch’s sense of collegiate vanity.  Certainly, it’s her chick who’s been the most visible specimen for my studies, and now that the chicks are three months old, they’re coming out of their dens almost every day.

Three months?  Aisling wasn
’t supposed to leave the tent for three months?

But I
’m getting ahead of myself.  Before we explore the courtship, denning, and hatching of the eggs, let’s have a look at each of the four species that are collectively known as griffins
.

The next several pages were taken up by careful drawings and length
y descriptions of ears, beaks, coats, feathers, and tails.  Aisling didn’t have visible ears, so he couldn’t be a gryffyn.  He didn’t have tiger stripes, so he wasn’t a griffawn.  He did have those little bony nubs on his brow, and so that made him absolutely a gryphen, who were, according to Bancha, not as visually impressive as the other griffins, but they made up for it with a reputation for the greatest fighting prowess.  In the ‘storm’ she was studying, gryphens were used exclusively by the ‘monarch’ as guardians.

Taryn skimmed through the rest of the chapter, which looked interesting enough, but had to do with the egg, not the chick.  She picked up again in Chapter Three.

For the first few months, the chicks are kept in their dens and watched over by the crown while the cob hunts for all his mates and offspring, but towards the end of this time, they’ll start to be introduced to the rest of the storm.  By the end of the third month, the chicks will be in the habit of being taken out to a central area where they will be kept together under the watchful eyes of the gryphen warriors while the remainder of the storm goes about their business.  The chicks are understandably distressed by this sudden emergence into a much wider world, and they spend most of their time huddled silently together in the danger drop
.

Taryn raised her eyes from the page to frown at Aisling, who was busy stalking a chunk of rock from her stone-working exercises.  He pounced, growled ferociously, and let out a hoarse peep of victory.  Well
…maybe three months was a lot shorter on Bancha’s world than on Earth.

Every so often, an attempt is made by one of the guardians to engage a chick in some sort of activity, but the only one I
’ve seen met with any sort of response came from a little gentle preening.  This defense of stillness and quiet is encouraged by the adult griffins, who often bark out alert-cries, apparently just so the chicks will practice their danger drop.  Until the chicks are two to three years old, they’ll have no defense of their own from predators, so the danger drop, while creepy to sit and stare at day after day, does serve a valid purpose
.

Dismayed, Taryn closed the book and called Aisling over.  He came, peeping and squawking and flapping his naked wings, to pounce on her hand. 
“Be quiet,” she told him, trying to place him in the flat, splayed position Bancha had so carefully drawn out in her book.  “Quiet now.  Hsst!  Danger!”

Aisling goggled at her, his tail lashing.  He
chirped and threw himself at her foot, savaging her shoelace and growling through his peeps.  Taryn gave up and lifted him into her lap, petting him until he stopped trying to get his beak on her hand and just lay happy.  Bancha’s book didn’t say just how the griffins taught their chicks to assume the drop, since she hadn’t been welcome to peek in any of the dens during those first few months, but however it was managed, Taryn had good-n-screwed her opportunity.

It was the stimulation, she was sure of it.  The constant toting back and forth as she went for firewood, went for water (hers had done its boiling; she paused to remove it so it could cool), went for supplies to test her feeble primitive skills.  But what else was she supposed to do?  She didn
’t have another parent to stay with him while she worked.  She had to take him with her.  And her arms were full most of the time.  She didn’t know he wasn’t supposed to even be walking for three months!

But she should have known.  She
’d had the book all this time.  She should have made it her job to read through it that first day.  All of it, not just the part she’d wanted to know the most. 

But there had been so much to do.  She
’d had to pack, to tell everyone she was leaving.  And then she’d had to walk and set everything up, and there’d just been so much to make ready.  Plus, the Farasai came along, and they were upset enough just that she had Aisling, she didn’t want them to know how little she knew about raising him.

The excuses felt hollow, no matter that it was all true.  What if she was letting Aisling in for health problems down the road by making him walk so early?  And even if she wasn
’t, what if he was in danger because he didn’t know how to act around a predator?  On the other hand, Bancha’s book had been dealing with different predators.  If Aisling were to drop around a grass pony and splay himself out, Taryn had no doubt the pony would just mosey over and eat him.  And leaving Aisling alone in the tent all day while Taryn was foraging in the copse for grapes or whatever was simply out of the question.  So in the end, it really didn’t matter, did it?  Even if she had known better, Aisling would be getting exactly the same treatment and she just had to live with that.  Besides, it was only that the young griffins were coming out of their dens at three months.  For all Bancha knew, they were running around like Pre inside the den all day.