Nebula Awards Showcase 2008 (23 page)

Molly held me at arm’s length, and she shook me a little bit. She said, “Sooz, if you can tell me that your parents have given their permission, then you may come. Have they done so?”

I didn’t answer her. She shook me again, gentler this time, saying, “Oh, that was wicked of me, forgive me, my dear friend. I knew the day we met that you could never learn to lie.” Then she took both of my hands between hers, and she said, “Lead us to the Midwood, if you will, Sooz, and we will say our farewells there. Will you do that for us? For me?”

I nodded, but I still didn’t speak. I couldn’t, my throat was hurting so much. Molly squeezed my hands and said, “Thank you.” Schmendrick came up and made some kind of sign to her with his eyes, or his eyebrows, because she said, “Yes, I know,” although he hadn’t said a thing. So she went to King Lir with him, and I was alone, trying to stop shaking. I managed it, after a while.

The Midwood isn’t far. They wouldn’t really have needed my help to find it. You can see the beginning of it from the roof of Ellis the baker’s house, which is the tallest one on that side of the village. It’s always dark, even from a distance, even if you’re not actually in it. I don’t know if that’s because they’re oak trees (we have all sorts of tales and sayings about oaken woods, and the creatures that live there) or maybe because of some enchantment, or because of the griffin. Maybe it was different before the griffin came. Uncle Ambrose says it’s been a bad place all his life, but my father says no, he and his friends used to hunt there, and he actually picnicked there once or twice with my mother, when they were young.

King Lir rode in front, looking grand and almost young, with his head up and the blue plume on his helmet floating above him, more like a banner than a feather. I was going to ride with Molly, but the king leaned from his saddle as I started past, and swooped me up before him, saying, “You shall guide and company me, little one, until we reach the forest.” I was proud of that, but I was frightened too, because he was so happy, and I knew he was going to his death, trying to make up for all those knights he’d sent to fight the griffin. I didn’t try to warn him. He wouldn’t have heard me, and I knew that too. Me and poor old Lisene.

He told me all about griffins as we rode. He said, “If you should ever have dealings with a griffin, little one, you must remember that they are not like dragons. A dragon is simply a dragon—make yourself small when it dives down at you, but hold your ground and strike at the underbelly, and you’ve won the day. But a griffin, now…a griffin is two highly dissimilar creatures, eagle and lion, fused together by some god with a god’s sense of humor. And so there is an eagle’s heart beating in the beast, and a lion’s heart as well, and you must pierce them both to have any hope of surviving the battle.” He was as cheerful as he could be about it all, holding me safe on the saddle, and saying over and over, the way old people do, “Two hearts, never forget that—many people do. Eagle heart, lion heart—eagle heart, lion heart. Never forget, little one.”

We passed a lot of people I knew, out with their sheep and goats, and they all waved to me, and called, and made jokes, and so on. They cheered for King Lir, but they didn’t bow to him, or take off their caps, because nobody recognized him, nobody knew. He seemed delighted about that, which most kings probably wouldn’t be. But he’s the only king I’ve met, so I can’t say.

The Midwood seemed to be reaching out for us before we were anywhere near it, long fingery shadows stretching across the empty fields, and the leaves flickering and blinking, though there wasn’t any wind. A forest is usually really noisy, day and night, if you stand still and listen to the birds and the insects and the streams and such, but the Midwood is always silent, silent. That reaches out too, the silence.

We halted a stone’s throw from the forest, and King Lir said to me, “We part here, little one,” and set me down on the ground as carefully as though he was putting a bird back in its nest. He said to Schmendrick, “I know better than to try to keep you and Sooz from following”—he kept on calling Molly by my name, every time, I don’t know why—“but I enjoin you, in the name of great Nikos himself, and in the name of our long and precious friendship…” He stopped there, and he didn’t say anything more for such a while that I was afraid he was back to forgetting who he was and why he was there, the way he had been. But then he went on, clear and ringing as one of those mad stags, “I charge you in her name, in the name of the Lady Amalthea, not to assist me in any way from the moment we pass the very first tree, but to leave me altogether to what is mine to do. Is that understood between us, dear ones of my heart?”

Schmendrick hated it. You didn’t have to be magic to see that. It was so plain, even to me, that he had been planning to take over the battle as soon as they were actually facing the griffin. But King Lir was looking right at him with those young blue eyes, and with a little bit of a smile on his face, and Schmendrick simply didn’t know what to do. There wasn’t anything he could do, so he finally nodded and mumbled, “If that is Your Majesty’s wish.” The king couldn’t hear him at all the first time, so he made him say it again.

And then, of course, everybody had to say goodbye to me, since I wasn’t allowed to go any further with them. Molly said she knew we’d see each other again, and Schmendrick told me that I had the makings of a real warrior queen, only he was certain I was too smart to be one. And King Lir…King Lir said to me, very quietly, so nobody else could hear, “Little one, if I had married and had a daughter, I would have asked no more than that she should be as brave and kind and loyal as you. Remember that, as I will remember you to my last day.”

Which was all nice, and I wished my mother and father could have heard what all these grown people were saying about me. But then they turned and rode on into the Midwood, the three of them, and only Molly looked back at me. And I think that was to make sure I wasn’t following, because I was supposed just to go home and wait to find out if my friends were alive or dead, and if the griffin was going to be eating any more children. It was all over.

And maybe I would have gone home and let it be all over, if it hadn’t been for Malka.

She should have been with the sheep and not with me, of course—that’s her job, the same way King Lir was doing his job, going to meet the griffin. But Malka thinks I’m a sheep too, the most stupid, aggravating sheep she ever had to guard, forever wandering away into some kind of danger. All the way to the Midwood she had trotted quietly alongside the king’s horse, but now that we were alone again she came rushing up and bounced all over me, barking like thunder and knocking me down, hard, the way she does whenever I’m not where she wants me to be. I always brace myself when I see her coming, but it never helps.

What she does then, before I’m on my feet, is take the hem of my smock in her jaws and start tugging me in the direction she thinks I should go. But this time…this time she suddenly got up, as though she’d forgotten all about me, and she stared past me at the Midwood with all the white showing in her eyes and a low sound coming out of her that I don’t think she knew she could make. The next moment, she was gone, racing into the forest with foam flying from her mouth and her big ragged ears flat back. I called, but she couldn’t have heard me, baying and barking the way she was.

Well, I didn’t have any choice. King Lir and Schmendrick and Molly all had a choice, going after the Midwood griffin, but Malka was my dog, and she didn’t know what she was facing, and I couldn’t let her face it by herself. So there wasn’t anything else for me to do. I took an enormous long breath and looked around me, and then I walked into the forest after her.

Actually, I ran, as long as I could, and then I walked until I could run again, and then I ran some more. There aren’t any paths into the Midwood, because nobody goes there, so it wasn’t hard to see where three horses had pushed through the undergrowth, and then a dog’s tracks on top of the hoofprints. It was very quiet with no wind, not one bird calling, no sound but my own panting. I couldn’t even hear Malka anymore. I was hoping that maybe they’d come on the griffin while it was asleep, and King Lir had already killed it in its nest. I didn’t think so, though. He’d probably have decided it wasn’t honorable to attack a sleeping griffin, and wakened it up for a fair fight. I hadn’t known him very long, but I knew what he’d do.

Then, a little way ahead of me, the whole forest exploded.

It was too much noise for me to sort it out in my head. There was Malka absolutely howling, and birds bursting up everywhere out of the brush, and Schmendrick or the king or someone was shouting, only I couldn’t make out any of the words. And underneath it all was something that wasn’t loud at all, a sound somewhere between a growl and that terrible soft call, like a frightened child. Then—just as I broke into the clearing—the rattle and scrape of knives, only much louder this time, as the griffin shot straight up with the sun on its wings. Its cold golden eyes bit into mine, and its beak was open so wide you could see down and down the blazing red gullet. It filled the sky.

And King Lir, astride his black mare, filled the clearing. He was as huge as the griffin, and his sword was the size of a boar spear, and he shook it at the griffin, daring it to light down and fight him on the ground. But the griffin was staying out of range, circling overhead to get a good look at these strange new people. Malka was utterly off her head, screaming and hurling herself into the air again and again, snapping at the griffin’s lion feet and eagle claws, but coming down each time without so much as an iron feather between her teeth. I lunged and caught her in the air, trying to drag her away before the griffin turned on her, but she fought me, scratching my face with her own dull dog claws, until I had to let her go. The last time she leaped, the griffin suddenly stooped and caught her full on her side with one huge wing, so hard that she couldn’t get a sound out, no more than I could. She flew all the way across the clearing, slammed into a tree, fell to the ground, and after that she didn’t move.

Molly told me later that that was when King Lir struck for the griffin’s lion heart. I didn’t see it. I was flying across the clearing myself, throwing myself over Malka, in case the griffin came after her again, and I didn’t see anything except her staring eyes and the blood on her side. But I did hear the griffin’s roar when it happened, and when I could turn my head, I saw the blood splashing along its side, and the back legs squinching up against its belly, the way you do when you’re really hurting. King Lir shouted like a boy. He threw that great sword as high as the griffin, and snatched it back again, and then he charged toward the griffin as it wobbled lower and lower, with its crippled lion half dragging it out of the air. It landed with a saggy thump, just like Malka, and there was a moment when I was absolutely sure it was dead. I remember I was thinking, very far away, this is good, I’m glad, I’m sure I’m glad.

But Schmendrick was screaming at the king, “Two hearts! Two hearts!” until his voice split with it, and Molly was on me, trying to drag me away from the griffin, and I was hanging on to Malka—she’d gotten so heavy—and I don’t know what else was happening right then, because all I was seeing and thinking about was Malka. And all I was feeling was her heart not beating under mine.

She guarded my cradle when I was born. I cut my teeth on her poor ears, and she never made one sound. My mother says so.

King Lir wasn’t seeing or hearing any of us. There was nothing in the world for him but the griffin, which was flopping and struggling lopsidedly in the middle of the clearing. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for it, even then, even after it had killed Malka and my friends, and all the sheep and goats too, and I don’t know how many else. And King Lir must have felt the same way, because he got down from his black mare and went straight up to the griffin, and he spoke to it, lowering his sword until the tip was on the ground. He said, “You were a noble and terrible adversary—surely the last such I will ever confront. We have accomplished what we were born to do, the two of us. I thank you for your death.”

And on that last word, the griffin had him.

It was the eagle, lunging up at him, dragging the lion half along, the way I’d been dragging Malka’s dead weight. King Lir stepped back, swinging the sword fast enough to take off the griffin’s head, but it was faster than he was. That dreadful beak caught him at the waist, shearing through his armor the way an axe would smash through piecrust, and he doubled over without a sound that I heard, looking like wet wash on the line. There was blood, and worse, and I couldn’t have said if he was dead or alive. I thought the griffin was going to bite him in two.

I shook loose from Molly. She was calling to Schmendrick to do something, but of course he couldn’t, and she knew it, because he’d promised King Lir that he wouldn’t interfere by magic, whatever happened. But I wasn’t a magician, and I hadn’t promised anything to anybody. I told Malka I’d be right back.

The griffin didn’t see me coming. It was bending its head down over King Lir, hiding him with its wings. The lion part trailing along so limply in the dust made it more fearful to see, though I can’t say why, and it was making a sort of cooing, purring sound all the time. I had a big rock in my left hand, and a dead branch in my right, and I was bawling something, but I don’t remember what. You can scare wolves away from the flock sometimes if you run at them like that, determined.

I can throw things hard with either hand—Wilfrid found that out when I was still small—and the griffin looked up fast when the rock hit it on the side of its neck. It didn’t like that, but it was too busy with King Lir to bother with me. I didn’t think for a minute that my branch was going to be any use on even a half-dead griffin, but I threw it as far as I could, so that the griffin would look away for a moment, and as soon as it did I made a little run and a big sprawling dive for the hilt of the king’s sword, which was sticking out under him where he’d fallen. I knew I could lift it because of having buckled it on him when we set out together.