The Care and Feeding of Griffins (5 page)

Romany was studying her with a distinctly hurtful scrutiny.  It was not contempt she showed, exactly,
as there was nothing deliberately unkind in her eyes, but all the same, Taryn knew the gypsy thought she was looking at a fool.  She didn’t have to say it, but she sure didn’t bother to hide it.

“
What?” Taryn stammered, her excitement ebbing.

“
Where will thee take him now, Romany wonders,” the gypsy said mildly.  Her dragons raised themselves in a sudden gust and blew out from her in a cloud.  Romany did not even blink her knowing eyes.  “Where will thee take him to feed him what thee now knows thee must?”

“
Home, I guess.”

“
Home is where for thee?”

Taryn could feel herself blushing. 
“It’s, um, an apartment down in Oregon.  It’ll do for now, though.  I mean—”

“
Aye,” Romany said simply.  “For now.”

Silence.  Taryn shifted on the steps of the library, looking down at Aisling when she could no longer meet the gypsy
’s eyes.  “I know it won’t be easy,” she said.  “I know it’ll take more than a book, but…”

Romany said nothing.  Her dragons continued to circle and spin and sing in the air above her.

Taryn made herself look away from the crown of her sleeping griffin.  “I’ve got to try,” she said.  “He’s a miracle.  I’d do anything.”

“
Ah.”  The gypsy’s eyes, black and wet as ink, sought Taryn’s.  They showed no reflection.  “Would thee give him up?”

Taryn shut her eyes against the pain that lanced through her.  She couldn
’t answer right away, but no amount of anguished debate could produce a different answer than that which had first come to her.  “No,” she said.  “If…If there was no other way to save him and someone else could, then maybe…but I would have to be sure that he would be all right and I don’t think I can be sure.  He’s a baby.  He’s just a baby.  How could I give him up to anyone?”

“
And to keep him, to raise him rightly, what would
thee
give up?”

Taryn shook her head,
stepping away in confusion.  “I don’t know how to answer that.  Do you want money?”

“
I want naught.  What would thee lose, to have him?”

Taryn looked down into Aisling
’s sleeping face.  Her own crumpled.  “Anything,” she said, aching.

“
Mean thee this generous boast?”  Romany’s voice was sharp.

“
Yes.  I don’t have much, but…I’ll do whatever I have to do if you’ll help me.”

“
I?  Nay, my help must be limited.  I cannot take him and I cannot take thee.  But I can render thee some small aids, aye, and that I will do if thee can only answer me.  How shall thee save him?”

Taryn stared into the implacable face of the gypsy. 
“What do you mean?”

“
How shall thee save him?” Romany asked again, her voice hardening.  “If thee should raise him to mastery, how shall that save him?  How shall thee teach thy charge to hunt?  To fly?  Where shall he lair?  What shall be his territory?  What, his prey?  His mate?  Come, ‘tis a measure of shortest time to answer.  How shall thee save him?”

“
I—”  Taryn fell helplessly silent.

“
Thee cannot keep him.”  Romany’s face softened.  Her hand came out to brush lightly at Taryn’s windblown hair.  “Kill him,” she said.  “Tis kindest.”

“
I won’t!”  Taryn’s arms tightened protectively, rousing the griffin from sleep. 

“
He will always be a secret thee must keep.  And thee cannot keep such secrets here.”  Romany’s gaze drifted, looking out over the empty lot, to the tops of city-trees and the outlines of buildings beyond.  Grown-up Redmond.  She shook her head, looking faintly pained, and then returned her attention to Taryn.  “Thee could never keep such secrets.  Would thee have him suffer captivity all his long days?  Kill him.”

“
No!”  She didn’t even know how to argue with something so wrong.  It took several seconds before she could even try, and Romany watched her with open pity all the while.  “He has to live,” Taryn managed at last.  “I won’t kill him just to…to keep my apartment!  That’s obscene!”

“
Is it?”

“
Yes, it is!  How could you even suggest it?  It’d be like…like selling him or…It’s just wrong!” she finished desperately.  “There has to be another way.  I’ll…I’ll go someplace else.”

Romany was silent for a long time, silent and very still.  Her eyes were somehow very deep, bright as wet ink, but filled with warning thoughts.  She watched Taryn pace up and down in the shadowed overhang, and nothing moved apart from the tips of her hair where dragons shifted.  Finally, haltingly, in a voice scarcely more than a whisper, she said,
“Would thee leave this place?  To raise him?”

“
Of course I would.”  Taryn kept pacing, hoping the kinesis of motion would magically transform itself into thought.  Granna Birgit’s cabin.  That was all she could think of.  Out in the wilds on the edge of Yellowstone.  No neighbors to speak of, but there were hikers, and she had no idea what she was going to do for money.  Still, it was the best she had, and she was sure Granna Birgit would let her stay.  She’d have a harder time keeping the other relatives away once summer rolled around.  Her Aunt Janet’s kids were going to be the worst of them.  They were pretty evil anyway, and they’d been using the cabin for their own personal Spring Break hangout for so many years—

“
There is a place I could take thee,” Romany said.  She did not flinch when Taryn swung around, but neither did she try to disguise the unease her face revealed.  “A place where thee could raise him, aye, even for so long.  It is no little distance, no small hardship.  Is thee willing?”

“
Yes,” Taryn said unhesitatingly.  “When do we leave?”

Romany
’s eyes dipped down to Aisling and showed that uncertainty again.  “Very soon, aye.  Two days, I could give thee,” she continued in a low, musing tone.  She didn’t bother to look up and gauge Taryn’s reaction.  There was no room for debate in her offer.  “Time to render thy possessions to be taken or abandoned.  Time to will farewell to kith and kin.  And I shall make arrangements here, that there should be letters sent, if thee should wish it.”  Her eyes burned out with that pained, tentative emotion, and she added, “I would carry letters for thee, aye.  I could do that much.”  Her voice turned sharp again.  “And then return to me, thee and thine.  I shall take thee to a place where thee can keep him, if thee does desire it, but there must be great danger.”

“
I understand,” Taryn said.

Romany merely looked at her and shaped a crooked sort of smile. 
“Thee doesn’t,” she said gently.  “Thee can’t.”

“
Okay,” said Taryn.  “But I’m going anyway.”

The gypsy
’s smile faded.

“
He’s a miracle.”  Taryn wrapped her arms a little tighter around her backpack, cradling the unseen griffin it carried.  “He needs me and I’m going to save him.”

Romany pulled her shawl closer around her shoulders and the dragons nestling there rose in frantic funnels before setting again in her hair. 
“Go,” she said quietly.  “Return swiftly as thee is able, and I shall take thee to Arcadia.”  She turned and began to make her way down the stairs, glancing skyward as she came out of the shadowed overhang.  “I do not trust even the wind of this world,” she muttered.  “Go, thee.  Soon all the storms that come will be for thee.”

9.  No Good Bye

“
M
om, Dad, I’m joining the Life Corps.”

“
What’s that?” Rhiannon asked.

Taryn drummed her fingers nervously on the tabletop of the booth they occupied at Potato Jacket, her parents
’ favorite buffet restaurant.  She had a plate of food in front of her that she couldn’t even remember getting.  Her mind was on the car, where Aisling was curled in the backseat, hidden under a blanket in a tall box and sleeping off a bellyful of rabbit entrails (finding the rabbit farm had been relatively easy, steeling herself to watch the necessary killing and cleaning only somewhat more difficult.  Taryn had been feeding Aisling every few hours, trying to make up for the starvation he’d suffered during her initial ignorance with extra servings of stomach and liver.  His little tummy had been bulging when she poured his sleeping body into the box where he now hid).  The box was also under a blanket, this one taped down to keep it from sliding free and showing off a griffin to any passers-by.  Then, of course, she’d cut a hole in the blanket so he’d be sure to breathe easy.  Now she was worried about the car being stolen.  No one on God’s green Earth would want to steal her rusted-out patchworked piece of surely-a-quality-automobile, but knowing that rationally did nothing to assuage her fears.  Most of that had to do with sleep-deprivation, she knew.  She didn’t think she’d closed her eyes since before the egg had hatched.

But this was still the easy part.  Taryn stared in to the open and politely-inquiring faces of her family and tried to draw strength from them.  Failing that, she tried to remember the lie she
’d concocted with Romany’s help the day before yesterday.

“
It’s kind of like the Peace Corps,” she said.  “I’m going into the wilderness somewhere to help…people.”

“
Is it a Christian thing?” her mother asked, alarmed.  “Are you running off to be a
missionary
?”

“
No, no.  There’s no religious backing at all.”  Taryn chewed her lip.  “Tell you the truth, I’m not sure what I’ll be doing at first.  Probably building me a place to live.  The Life Corps isn’t what you call an established project.”

“
Where will you be going?” Rhiannon asked.  She was picking the spinach out of her mixed-greens salad and even her curiosity had a distracted sound to it.

“
Not sure.  Africa, maybe.  Or maybe South America somewhere.  It depends on where they decide they need me.”

“
Well.”  Her mom and dad exchanged glances and then her father casually addressed his potato.  “I’m sure you’ll do a lot of good.  When are you leaving?”

Taryn took a deep breath. 
“After lunch.”

Now she had all their attention.  Three thunderstruck faces stared back at her.  Taryn made herself eat a radish.

“So soon?” her mother said, just as her father said, “You just signed a lease, didn’t you?”

“
I need someone to put my stuff in storage for me,” Taryn said.  “I’ll be carrying everything I pack for a while, so I didn’t take much.  I tried to put everything in boxes, but I ran out of boxes.  I’m going to write you a check—”

“
You can’t rush something like this, honey.”

“—
to cover my next two months’ rent and the landlord says he’ll let you sign me out after that.  Also, I’m going to give you a little extra to cover the cost of a U-Haul and a Stor-Box for a while.  In fact, maybe I better just give you my pin number and let you have everything.”

“
Taryn, please!” her mom said, loudly enough to make the surrounding tables fall silent.  “You haven’t thought this through!”

“
Yes, she has.”  Rhiannon was staring at her with an expression that was almost horror.  “She’s really going.”

“
I have to do this,” Taryn said helplessly.  “I know it’s sudden, but this is when it has to be.  I…I don’t know how long I’ll be gone.”  Tears pricked at her eyes and she stared down at the tabletop.  “A few years at least.”

“
Years?” her mother gasped.

Her father was still perfectly silent.

Taryn wiped her eyes and dug in her pocket for a folded sheet of paper.  “Mail is going to be pretty sketchy,” she said.  “But I have someone who’ll come by once in a while and deliver stuff.  This is the address for a P.O. Box for the Life Corps office up in Washington.  You send any letters or stuff to me care of them and I’ll get it.  Eventually.  Just, um, you know, nothing perishable or heavy.  No…reverse combine engines or anything.”

“
Oh baby.”  Her mom began to cry.

Taryn pushed the paper out into the middle of the table and then immediately wished she hadn
’t let it go just yet.  She needed something in her hands for this part.  She picked up her baked potato and gripped it tightly.  “This…this could be a little dangerous,” she began.

Her mother
’s tears were nearly soundless, but the table was shaking with the force of them.  Her father put his arm around his wife’s shoulders, but he never took his eyes off Taryn.  His expression was unreadable.  Rhiannon was still staring at her, pale and silent.  She was leaving these people, and she was hurting them first.  Taryn tried to think of some way to prepare them for some very bad possibilities, but in the end, she only dropped her eyes and moved on.

“
I bought a Polaroid camera, so I’ll send you lots of pictures,” she said.  She dragged her gaze up, tears spilling down her cheeks.  “Please, don’t be mad at me.”

“
We’re not angry, Taryn,” her father said.  “But I’d be lying if I said we were happy.”

“
This isn’t like you,” whispered Rhiannon.  There was a distance in her voice, now and for the first time, and that hurt worse than anything Taryn could have imagined.  They’d always been so close.  They’d always told each other everything.  The lie that now lay between them was suffocating.

“
I know, but I have to do it,” Taryn said. She couldn’t meet her little sister’s eyes. “And I have to do it now.  I’m sorry.  I hate springing it on you like this.”

“
Are you in trouble?” her father asked quietly.  “Are you running away?”

She looked at him, startled at first and then helplessly loving him. 
“No, Dad,” she said.  She thought of Aisling and smiled through her tears.  “But I suddenly have a chance to do something so wonderful and so huge that I can’t say no.  I just can’t.  I don’t want to hurt you.  I don’t even want to leave, but I will.  Because I have to go.  I have to help and this is the only way.”

Her eyes pulled toward her car, to the precious thing hidden in the backseat, and her smile lingered. 
“I wish I could think of something to say to convince you,” she said.  “I think it’s like falling in love or dying.  Sometimes you don’t want to, but when it happens, you have to go where it takes you.  And I have to go.”

Silence.  When she turned around, she saw her family looking back at her without understanding, but with a kind of acceptance.

“You’ll write,” her mother said, and Taryn knew it was okay.

“
As often as I can.  You’ll probably get them all at once, but I’ll write every chance I get.”

Her father
’s hand closed over hers and squeezed.  “I think if I knew the whole story here, I’d be very proud of you,” he said softly.  He reached under the collar of his shirt for a silver chain, and the St. Christopher’s medallion that hung on the end of it, and pressed it into Taryn’s palm even as she shrank back.

“
Dad,” she began, shaking her head.

“
Don’t argue with me, daughter,” he said, and curled her fingers firmly around the silver.  “If it’s lost, it’s lost.  But while you have it, you’ll wear it, and you’ll remember that somewhere in the world, the people that you love are missing you and waiting for you to return with honor.  Take it, Taryn.  I won’t ask you to explain, but I’m telling you to take it.”

She put it on and felt the heavy drag of the little medallion bowing at her neck and burning like a stone in her heart. 
There was no celebration left in lunch, but Taryn ate anyway, painfully aware that it would be the last time she tasted these foods for a long, long time.

Afterwards, there were hugs all around and nothing else to say but
“I love you,” and that couldn’t be said enough.  She popped the trunk and endured an examination of her camping gear by first her father and then her mother and finally Rhiannon.  “It’s not enough,” her mother kept saying, a little more desperately each time.  “It’s nowhere near enough.  How will you live?”

“
I have to carry everything,” Taryn reminded her.  “I’ll be okay.  And I have to go, Mom.  I want to say goodbye to Granna.”

“
Then you’ve already told John?” Rhiannon asked.

Taryn winced, closing up the trunk of her car. 
“And John,” she said heavily.

“
You’re leaving tonight and you haven’t even told your boyfriend?”  Rhiannon shook her head again, hard, not merely negating Taryn’s behavior but actually seeming to try and throw it off like water.  “W-What is the
matter
with you?”  She started to cry and ran off in the direction of her own car across the parking lot.

Taryn watched her little sister go, feeling the weight of her parent
’s stares itching between her shoulder blades.  She knew she wasn’t handling this parting very well.  She supposed there might even be a better way out there somewhere, but she doubted it.  Some goodbyes were never going to be good ones, no matter what a person did.

The drive to the retirement village where Granna Birgit lived felt easily twice as long as it should have on a sunny autumn day.  She was too much aware of all the
‘last times’ she was having.  She couldn’t pass a UPS truck without thinking that it would be three years at least before she saw another one, or received a package in the mail, or took anything to the post office.  She walked into the home under a fugue of this depression and called out to her grandmother’s cabin with a voice that was already on the edge of fresh tears.

If her grandmother was surprised to see her visiting on a Tuesday morning, she did a good job of disguising it, welcoming Taryn with the same Irish cheer that she always did.  Taryn collected a kiss and a hug and a cup of cocoa and sat with it in her grandmother
’s window, trying to stammer out the same story she’d given her folks while the echoes of Rhiannon’s tears did their best to bore into the very soul of her.  Granna Birgit sat and rocked and knitted without interrupting, but the aged head came right up when Taryn got to the part about settling in a wilderness.

“
What are you taking?” she asked then, her eyes bird-bright and piercing.  She’d listened closely through about half of Taryn’s clumsy checklist, but then she’d thrown down her knitting with an unladylike snort and plucked the cocoa out of Taryn’s hands.  “What garbage!” she chuckled, shaking her head.  “Air mattress, ha!  The ground is good enough for your young bones.  It’d spring a leak in a week’s time anyway, and there you’d be.  Collapsible chairs and camping stoves!  Sit on a rock and learn to cook on coals, girl!  There are things you can learn to live without, aisling,” she said gently, squeezing Taryn’s hands.  “And things you can’t.  Come with me.”

Taryn went, bemused, and watched with no small amount of awe as her grandmother reached into the cupboard in her little kitchen and took down a cast iron cauldron easily large enough to boil a whole turkey in.

“Cliodhna,” Granna Birgit murmured, her gnarled hands stroking the dull black rim.  “A wedding gift for my mother’s mother, and old even then, I’d warrant.  It came west with her, oh, 1843, that was.  Cliodhna and a set of sewing needles was her only dowry, and with them, she was one well-made bride, ha!”  The old woman laughed, then sighed, and turned to face Taryn with a broad smile.  “It’s been pot and kettle, oven and, aye, bathtub and baby basin in its day.  And now it’s yours.”

“
I’ll lose it,” Taryn said, backing away.

“
So lose it.”  The aged shoulders rose and fell nonchalantly.  “But use it first, aisling.  It has a noble history.  Let it have a noble legacy before it becomes just another tired antique for my grandchildren to squabble over.”  Granna Birgit curled her lip to expose, for a moment, the perfect white teeth of a denture-wearer, and then she smiled again.  “So come and take it, aisling.  If nothing else, you can sell it when you get to where you’re going for a mated pair of goats or geese or whatever they have.”

Taryn reached out reluctantly and closed her hands around the curved handle, feeling the awesome weight of the cauldron dragging at her already.

Granna Birgit gave her an old woman’s sunny grin, the sort that said plainly that she saw her granddaughter’s lack of enthusiasm well enough and chose to ignore it.  “And now to fill it,” she said, and headed for the door.