The Care and Feeding of Griffins (49 page)

60.  Letters From Arcadia

D
ear Mom and Dad and Rhiannon,

Here I am getting caught up on my letter-writing.  I wish I could say I was working so hard the thought of letters never entered my mind.  I wasn
’t.  Quite the social butterfly is your girl Taryn, but I think I’ve got all that homesick-and-lonely worked out of my system now.  Tonka or some of the other Farasai (did I tell you I was made an honorary member of the tribe?  I was made an honorary member of the tribe.) come by almost every day to escort me on a little walk around the Valley, and every now and then, Tilly wanders by to have tea and share a dinner.  I’m not sure, but I think we may have even gone on a date, although I know we can’t exactly take it any further than that.  For a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that he’s kinda sorta the king and I’m the helpless little American lady living in a tent on his property.

The tea here is actually incredibly good, and Tilly
’s blend is my favorite.  It’s sweet and dark and good as a whole bottle of No-Doze.  Unfortunately, being as it’s coming on to winter here, I have to drink needle tea (mmm, vitamin C!) most of the time, and it’s pretty bitter. 

I have enclosed some seed roots of the tea plants in Tilly
’s blend for Dad’s herb garden.  He says he uses equal parts of all of them, so assuming you can get them to grow at all, you can all kick back on the porch this summer, drink tea and think of me kicking back by the river drinking tea. 

Incidentally, I had to swear the solemnest oath I know
—to be pecked to death by killer snipes—to get Tilly to release those roots, so please, Dad, keep them to yourself.  These guys are tremendously paranoid about people tromping in here, burning their crops and slaughtering people to find the herbal equivalent of the fountain of youth.  It’s happened before and not too long ago, so if it cures cancer, no one here wants to know about it.  I assured Tilly as to your honorable intentions for tea, and he’s chosen to believe me.  So no pressure or anything, but this is probably the first time he’s even trusted anyone he hasn’t met.  Be good to that tea, Dad, and keep it under wraps.

T.

Dear Granna Birgit,

I know Mom and Dad have been bringing you the letters I write, but I wanted to send one out that was just for you, to let you know I was thinking of you and to send you all my ‘get well’ wishes and stuff.

I just got the sweater you sent!  Thanks so much!  I
’m the envy of everyone who sees it!  Well, actually, since no one else who’s seen it wears clothes, I’m not sure if they really envy me or not, but they’re all incredibly impressed by your knitting.  The Farasai have to have sheep somewhere, because they have a lot of horse blankets made out of wool, but knitting is apparently a new thing and nobody wears clothes.  Still, I’m grateful for it.  It’s been getting colder every day, it seems, and I know I’m going to see some snow before too terribly long.  The last time I had visitors, I asked if they ever got cold.  The answer I got was this long, convoluted and tremendously funny story about some girl named Hilf and how she draped herself in the hides of animals one winter and ended up having to get married to one of them following a particularly dark night when she’d been drinking.  So I asked again, and got another long story about some legendary winter that was so cold, people’s dreams froze in the air above their heads at night, and they had to thaw them out over fires so they could get a decent night’s sleep.  So I asked again, and was told that the only reason turtles have shells is because they got so cold that their skin froze on their bodies.  I quit asking at that point.

My visitor that day was Morathi, and this is a picture of him and his lecherous wink.  He then retaliated by taking the next picture of me, and my unexpected sneeze.  You know, it just occurred to me that I
’ve been snapping pictures all up and down this valley, and Morathi is the first guy who ever asked to use the camera.

Okay.  Granna, I don
’t know how to say this, but I’ve been meaning to say it for a while now.  I gave away your wedding ring to pay for some things that the Farasai gave me.  I’m sorry.  I didn’t have anything else to give them.  I can’t even say I got a couple of geese out of the deal, but I did get things that I needed.  And you can tell Aunt Janet that it wasn’t drugs, although somehow I doubt her opinion of me would be a whole lot higher if she knew I traded it for a bed and some big old jars full of trail mix.

Anyway, I do hope you get better soon.  Please write to me.

Taryn

p.s.  I finally put those
‘good Irish potatoes’ of yours into the ground.  They tried to kill me.  That’s the Irish for you
. 

Dear Rhiannon,

I showed Tonka that picture you sent of yourself just like you requested.  Three things:  First, you may have noticed in the photos I
’ve sent that the Farasai wear a lot of makeup.  Tonka would like you to know that the amount, color, and placement of your eye makeup would tell any of his tribesmen that you are a ‘gong-farmer’ (look it up).  He recommends that you either wear a little more or a lot less.  Secondly, he said that he liked your bellybutton paint very much (boy, that better be paint, because I know you’re too young for a tattoo!), and that any man should consider himself lucky to catch the eye of a young, healthy girl like you who’s given birth eight times already.  And finally, he said that he thinks your face is very pretty.  You remind him of several of his daughters.

Hope that was the reaction you were going for
, Little Bit.

Dear Mom and Dad and Rhiannon,

We got the cactus you sent
, Dad, and Tilly is quite impressed by it.  And touched, I think, although he puts on a good gruff face.  He’s going to call it the Spiny Father Plant and would like to offer his sincerest and most humble approval of the name Tilly Tea for the roots I sent you.  Tilly takes things like that extremely seriously.  Extremely.  Enclosed, please find a photo he condescended to let me take.  That’s him in his bull mask.  I apologize for the bad lighting, but to get an idea of just how tall he is, that’s my tent he’s standing next to.  Mom, you are under strict orders not to let Rhiannon steal that photo and blow it up into a poster or anything else perverted.

I
’m also sending you a picture of my new and improved campsite, particularly the winning view of the garden and some of the presents the Farasai sent me.  Nice plow, huh?  I haven’t gotten around to asking how I’m supposed to use it all by myself.  That next picture is one of Morathi (tell Granna that he got the sweater she made him and he even wore it for a day.  I tried to get a picture, but his little apprentice-girl, Shard, kept it.  I took more pictures, but more Farasai kept keeping them.  The good news is, they all gave me a little something or another to pay for the photographs, so I am extremely well off for snacks and things.  The bad news is, I’m out of film). ‘Morathi’ means ‘wise man’ in their language, which is fitting, since he’s kind of the tribe’s teacher, storyteller and shaman.  An all-around good egg, in other words. I think he adopted me when my back was turned. 

That
’s okay, I’ll be the first to admit I probably needed adopting.  But I’m okay now, I really am.  Tilly comes around to check on me every so often, and it seems like every time I go for a walk, I bump into a Farasai.  The fish kind of all up and died (I hadn’t realized it happened that fast, but it does), but there’s still plenty around to forage, and I’m developing some wicked mad aim with my slingshot.  I also have a standing invitation from Tonka to come and stay at the kraal if things get too tough, but you know, I’m feeling pretty good about myself.  I’m settled in, I’m making friends, Aisling’s growing like a weed, and I’m finally at the point where this is starting to feel like home.

Don
’t worry about me, guys.  Everything here is just fine
.

The sound of singing began to come through the omnipresent drone of wind and water, and Taryn automatically reached for an envelope and started addressing it.  In her lap, Aisling stirred and shook out his wings before bounding out to meet Romany in the tall grass.  The sight of him, golden in the autumn sun, took hold of her heart and filled it with new warmth.  She took a deep breath, smiling around at the plains, the mountains, the river—her home. 

Her eyes came to rest in the west.  Thoughts of the magus and his cozy cabin in the woods tickled up and her heart lifted even further.
  She looked back down at her letter, suddenly so much less important than it had been at its writing mere moments ago.  The magus was waiting, the poor lonely magus, and why shouldn’t she go see him anyway?  What chores she had would wait, just like the problem of what to have for dinner would wait, just like winter blowing in from the very near future would just have to wait.  She would send off her letters and then she would go see him and everything— 

“
Everything is fine,” she said, and waved Romany a hello as her griffin came pouncing at her feet, but her thoughts were already elsewhere and her eyes were back in the west. 

Look for
Lords of Arcadia: Book II

THE WIZARD IN THE WOODS

Available now

THE WIZARD IN THE WOODS

1.  Morathi Crosses

I
t was another postcard-beautiful autumn day in Arcadia, or maybe it was winter now, it was getting hard to tell.  The leaves had turned, died, and fallen away, making the largely alien trees even harder to recognize.  The tall grass that had given her so much life-sustaining, if tasteless, grain now lay in rounded heaps all around her, soggy and brown.  There were no more wild grapes to be found in the copses that dotted the plains, no more bushy-tailed hoppers with finger-sized trunks bouncing around, no more fish swimming in and out of her basket-traps in the river.  Life did not surround her the way it had when Taryn MacTavish had first come to this world with her new-hatched griffin, but it was still here to be seen if one knew where to look.  Its spirit was always with her.

Its spirit.  She had to laugh at herself, going all new-age hippie the way she so often did these days.  Morathi, the shaman elder of the nearby clan of horsemen, had been coming out to see his “two-legged daughter” every day for weeks now.  It was inevitable that his otherworldly way of putting things should rub off on her a little.

Taryn glanced skyward, guessing at the time by the sun’s place behind the clouds.  Nearly noon.  Morathi should be here any second now.  She was glad, grateful as always for whatever company she had.  If there was one thing she missed about Earth, one thing she now knew she’d taken for granted, it was all the people.  Not just family or friends, but neighbors, passers-by, waitresses and store clerks, people driving cars and riding bikes and strolling on the sidewalk, giggling teens and screaming kids and old men who wore their pants too high, and pretty much everyone.  Everyone.

Taryn was alone so often.

Right on cue, Romany’s song came like a second dawn, pale and blushing at first, but swiftly and easily strengthening into melodies (impossibly many melodies) of golden sound.  Taryn, doing her best to whittle out a pole from a long branch, immediately stopped what she was doing and turned around, grinning from ear to ear.  Aisling, napping in a cold patch of autumn sun nearby, uncurled and uttered an angry squawk at the interruption, then a delighted chirp as recognition took hold of him.  Before Taryn had even managed to put aside her would-be pole and her precious steel axe, the baby griffin was bounding away and into the tall grass that surrounded her camp.  Taryn rose to follow with considerably less urgency.  The gypsy’s song was still well off; although Romany could step out practically in Taryn’s lap if she wanted to, she had taken to ending her Road some distance away, so that she could walk a while in the Valley to which she had finally been given some welcome.

Taryn didn’t know what terrible thing had happened to put this rift between Romany’s people and the lords of the Valley of Hoof and Horn.  She’d asked Tonka, who, as chieftain of the Farasai, was responsible for keeping his people’s histories, but Tonka had only changed the subject.  She’d then asked Antilles, the current lord of the Valley, and he had muttered something mean-sounding in another language and then gruffly reminded her that ‘your damned Romany’ was welcome before stomping off.  She’d finally asked Morathi, who, as his tribe’s storyteller, probably stood the best chance of knowing the reason, and as the eldest and most respected Farasai, also was likeliest to ignore the disapproval of others and actually tell her what it was.  But Morathi had merely shrugged his thin shoulders.  “War happened,” he’d said.  “And wars build towers a thousand times more enduring than their foundations.”  Perhaps someday she’d get up the nerve to ask Romany herself, but until then, Morathi’s answer was certainly good enough.

And it would be a long time before Taryn would dare to attempt anything that might damage her relationship with Romany.  It had such a tenebrous feel these days.  Oh, Romany didn’t avoid Taryn’s eyes and there was nothing in her attitude to suggest that she even remembered that day when she had tried…well, what she’d tried, but her sly smile had a sorrowful twist to it that was difficult to ignore.  It hurt to feel that distance between them. 

Not that they’d ever had a sister’s close relationship, but Romany had been the one to bring Taryn here to Arcadia, the one who had secured this lifeline of communication between her and her family back on Earth, and that gave the gypsy a special place among all the others whom Taryn considered her friends.  She wanted to have a closeness, especially a human and feminine closeness (she was intensely aware that, however Romany may look, she could not truly be human, but the appearance was there, and what the eyes saw, the heart craved), someone to sit and giggle with and maybe even talk about boys, like she’d done with her little sister, Rhiannon.  There was nothing about Romany that had ever indicated an urge to giggle and boy-talk, but still, there was only one other human face that Taryn had ever seen in Arcadia, and it belonged to the magus.

As always, the faintest thought of him took an immediate and wistful root in Taryn’s mind.  She stared away into the west, although the woods in which the magus lived in his cozy cabin with his evil cat was well out of eyesight.  She didn’t even look around to watch Romany enter her rough little camp, or to see all the little dragons spinning and singing and diving around the gypsy’s hair.  Things had a way of becoming so much less important when the magus was on her mind.

“Hail, thee.”

The sound of Romany’s voice broke the dreamy hold the western woods had on her, and Taryn turned around at last to greet her friend.  Romany’s colorful clothes were soaked with rain, although the skies were clear (the Arcadian skies, anyway), but she seemed neither to notice nor care.  She went directly to Taryn’s firepit and bent to inspect the contents of the cauldron (plain hot water, boiled earlier for Taryn’s morning tea), then rose to smile her sly and sad smile at Taryn.

“Will you stay?” Taryn asked, as she always asked.

“Nay,” she was answered, as she was always answered.  Romany reached into her sleeve and produced the mail she’d carried all the way from Earth.  Now Taryn was supposed to take it, and then Romany would turn around and walk away in a glittering cloud of dragons while Aisling leapt and too-ra-looed her goodbye.

Taryn said, “Please.”  She said it softly, in the tone one might use to coax a deer to eat from her hand.

Romany’s smile faded.  Her outstretched hand seemed to tremble once.  And her eyes, as black as the bottom of the sea, turned briefly to pools of flame.  “Nay,” she said again, and she said it softly too.

“I’ve missed you,” Taryn told her.

Romany bent and placed the letters on the ground.  She turned around, took one step, and stopped.  Her head bent.  The little dragons that were her constant companions began to settle, and then all at once burst away, funneling out in a multi-colored ribbon and vanishing into the nearby copse of trees.

Steam was rising from the gypsy’s wet clothes.

“Please stay,” Taryn said.  “Just for a little while.”

“Ah, my fool.”  The tone was a fond one; the voice, inhuman.

“Just sit with me,” Taryn said.  “We’ll have tea.”

Romany lowered herself again and took up the letters.  She turned back to Taryn, and her face was the same fox-sly and smiling face that she had always worn.  She moved close, took Taryn’s arm, and placed the letters into her hand.  “I will not stay,” she said, “until I can look on thee and see no gold.”

Taryn drew back in bewilderment, one hand rising to touch hesitantly at her flame-red hair.  Romany laughed at her, then turned around and began to walk away, her voice rising in its own impossible harmonies.  The dragons came swarming back, and Romany raised one hand without looking behind her.

Taryn watched as the gypsy sang her way out into the plains to vanish.  Someday, things would have to be right between them again, but Taryn wasn’t sure just how to go about it.  Time, she guessed.  Time was always a good place to start.

The first letter she opened was from Granna Birgit and it was still on hospital stationary.  All temporary, she was assured.  Every day for a week, the nurses had promised her that ‘maybe tomorrow’ would be the discharge-day.  She wasn’t too unhappy about it, really.  The food wasn’t bad, despite what people said.  If only the good folks there weren’t so keen on sticking things into her every ten minutes, she’d be right at home.  She asked after Aisling and then after Taryn’s “young chappie” (which gave Taryn something of a puzzled turn until she realized with a blush that Granna meant Antilles), acknowledged the latest batch of carefully-cropped photographs and then coyly remarked (and not for the first time) that Morathi was a right handsome old dote and she wouldn’t mind taking a wander out Africa-way if it meant catching the eye of a gentleman like him, “especially those as wears no britches!”

Taryn was still blushing at the thought of her grandmother making Irish eyes at Morathi (and Morathi winking right along back at her) when she opened her second letter
, but her residual smile died away as she read, 
The doctors think it best if your grandmother was moved to a more intensive-care facility instead of going back to Shadow Lane.  She’s being stubborn about it, but unfortunately, I think the doctors are probably right.  It’s going to take her a while to recover, and in the meantime, she just needs more looking after.  It might help if you were to casually mention in your next letter about the importance of laying aside one’s pride and letting someone else take care of you once in a while.  If you can do it (sorry, sweetie, but it’s true), then anyone should be able to.  Love you much and will write more when I’m back at home.  Mom

After that, any attempt to concentrate on work was a bust, and when one was swinging an axe, especially one as sharp as Tilly’s hatchet, that was simply not the time to go wool-gathering.  Taryn knew that worrying about her grandmother was just about the least-constructive thing a person could possibly do, even if she was right there next to the worryee.  Here in Arcadia, it was even more pointless.  Still…she had to do something.

But shelling a tent wasn’t it, clearly.  Taryn left her day’s efforts in the pile of futility she had formed, and started locking down her camp.  Morathi apparently wasn’t coming today, so she’d go see the magus.  He’d been here for fifty years, he had to know a little something about how it felt to be far away from the ones you loved.  She could always count on him to be sympathetic.  And come to think of it, it had been a long time since she’d last seen him.  She was spending too much time with her other friends.  Poor, lonely magus in the woods.

She set out with Aisling at her heels and her slingshot in her hands. 

It was a nice day.  True, Taryn’s standards for ‘nice’ had started dropping since the weather had gotten serious about turning, but today was a truly nice one.  Clear skies, even a little warmish, and although the ground was a little damp, most of the grass was dry enough that it was just her shoes and the hem of her jeans that got soaked, not the whole of her legs.  Long walks in wet denim were not a fun thing.

But winter was getting closer and the grass was dying.  If it hadn’t been, Taryn might have walked right by him without noticing.  But with the tall stems half-bent or entirely fallen, it was impossible to miss the pool of grey lying in all this dead brown.  She hesitated before investigating, unsure what she was looking at or if it was a good thing to startle it, but curiosity got the better of her.  She took only four steps, however, before she realized with an ugly start that she was looking at a fallen horseman.

She ran forward, an involuntary cry escaping her lips, and the horseman on the ground groaned and raised his head a few inches.  He saw her.  He smiled.

It was Morathi.

She couldn’t move right away.  For a moment, and really, it was the strangest and most sickening feeling, the urge came on her to keep walking.  Like maybe she hadn’t seen him at all.  That if she just went on ahead like everything was normal, why, then everything would
be
normal and Morathi would be fine.  The magus would open his door and bring her in and there would be hot tea and happy conversation and everything would be just fine.

Then the world came crashing down into awful clarity and Taryn dropped to her knees, grabbing at Morathi’s arm.  “Oh no!” she heard herself say.  She sounded mildly dismayed, as though a light rain had opened up on her picnic.  “Oh no, what happened?”

“Tis a fine day,” Morathi told her.  “I came to have some chat with thee, my daughter.  There was…a pain in me…and then a numbness.”

“Please, God, no!”  Taryn patted at his heaving sides, able to think only that she had to call 911.  Her helplessness was a murdering stain over all her heart.

“Aye, god,” Morathi said, softly but amiably.  “Anu, the Riverman.  He is calling me, Taryn, aye.  And ‘tis time.”

“No, no.”  Her vision blurred out.  It wasn’t until she blinked them clear and felt the burn of tears that she knew she was crying.  “Oh no, you can get up.  Come on.  I’ll help.”

“Help!” Aisling urged, crouching off to one side, where he watched with enormous eyes.

Morathi chuckled, leaning back into the grass.  “Ease thee, daughter.  The pain is a small thing and soon will pass.  Anu is here with me.  His is a kind face.  The River…is not wide.”

His words had a way of swooping around her without making an impact.  She could hear them, she could even recognize their meaning, but she couldn’t take them in.  She wanted to believe he was delirious, that his talk of rivers and kindly, invisible companions was a thing born of confusion and pain, but there was nothing confused in his steady gaze.  He was hurt, and she could see that clearly enough, but he wasn’t bothered by it.  He was relaxed in the extremity of whatever had felled him.