Princess Ahira (14 page)

             
“Wait up!” Kohath shouted
a
s he jogged to catch up to me.
To my complete surprise he walked along s
ide of me, reached out, and grabbed
my hand.

             
I glanced from our hands that
were clasped together
to him. “Excuse me?
What do you think you
’
r
e
doing?” I asked. 

             
Kohath smiled, his white teeth flashing as he led me into the forest, his hand still holding on to mine. “It’s
dark and you
,
being a
girl
,
probably can’
t find your way around at night,” he said in
a
charming voice. It was almost like he hoped if he said it nicely I wouldn’t notice what offensive nonsense he was dribbling.

             
“One day a woman is going to murder
you
, and when that day comes I’m going to stand by and laugh,” I said as I pulled on my hand. He didn’t
let go. I grumpily glared
but followed him deeper into the forest.

             
I have to
admit it.
His
night vision was far superior to mine. He kept me from tripping at least twice.

             
The
Endless
Forest
was
peaceful and ca
lm, even though the sun had
all b
ut disappeared in the horizon.
The night creatures were beginning to come out
,
and little lightning bugs glowed and flew around the forest. 

             
Kohath broke the
enchantment,
however, by unconsciously rubbing his thumb against the back of
my hand in a soothing movement. A
t least it would have been soothing if the thumb didn’t belong to
a certain egotistical male
. 

             
“N
ight griffons are fairly common,”
Kohath whispered in my ear,
bothering me when his breath tickled my ear.
“However
,
the bigger the
griffon the better the feathers.
S
o we’ll be searchin
g for a while before we find a griffon
that is worthy of Lord Azmaveth,” he informed me. I wondered if Kohath was
the cause
of
Azmaveth’s
vanity
.

             
“
Very well.
When I get tired I’m go
ing back with or without you,
”
I
said.
 

             
“Feisty aren’t we?” he retorted
with a smug
grin
. 

             
When I groaned he ignored it and instead tromped forward, tugging me on by my hand. We stopped when we crept into a tiny meadow.

             
A small, scrawny, red griffon sat on the ground, w
atching us. It was clearly shuddering in terror, and
it wasn’t much bigger than a house cat.

             
“
Oh look, there’s your night griffon. G
rab a feather and
let’s
go!” I urged.

             
“That’s not a night griffon.
A nig
ht griffon is either white,
black, or midnight blue. And like I said before
, we need a
big
griffon!” Kohath argued,
dr
agging me away from the meadow.
As I glanced
back
one last time at the griffon I could see
Tuggles standing
next to him
, blinking
and snorting as he watched Kohath pull me away.
I waved as Kohath
,
completely oblivious to the small unicorn, rambled
about griffons. 

             
For the next hour we peer
ed into caves, tramped through
stream
s
, fell down a hill, and walked in
to so many
meadow
s I lost count halfway through.
We still hadn’t found
the “perfectly perfect”
gr
iffon. And through
out this WHOLE trip
Kohath bossed and dragged me around,
still
holding
my hand. 

             
I collapsed in the meadow.
“That’
s it, I can’t go another step,”
I said as Kohath settled down by me. 

             
“We’ll rest for three minutes
and then
we’ll get moving again,” he said
. Did I mention that
he bossed and dragged me around
? 

             
“Thank you, your highness,”
I said, sarcasm dripping from my voice. 

             
“You
’
r
e
welcome
precious!” Kohath replied
with a grin as he lea
ned in closer to me. D
isturbed, I leaned away.

             
I lifted my eyes to gaze up at the heavens and I felt a smile creep across my lips.  Whenever I looked at the sky it always se
emed to make my problems shrink. Amazingly enough it was
working with the
trouble
that
held my hand
. 

             
Or
it
appeared to
, until the
said
problem opened up his big y
ap. “So, what’s new with you?”

A
pparently he couldn’t stand peaceful silence.

             
I dropped my gaze and turned to face him with the idea that I would sock
him in the nose
when I saw a huge white blob land in the meadow behind him. “Dfkea
gp!”  I stammered as I pointed—with my free hand—
to the huge
,
white night griffon that was settling down in the grass. 

             
“Huh?” Kohath said as he turned around and stared at the great griffon. “Okay, he hasn’t seen us yet, which is a good thing because night griffons tend to get a little violent,” he whispered as he lay down and flipped over onto his stomach, effectively pulling me on top of him. I rolled off his back and righted myself when he released my hand for the moment. As soon as I was situated he snatched my hand back and parted the grass with his other hand to stare at our target.

             
It
was enormous! Kohath, Aaron, and I could have all ridden him together with extra room to spare! He was preening himself, completely oblivious to our presence as he ran his yellow beak through his fine, white feathers.

             
“Okay, how are we going to do this?” I asked. I always liked
a good plan
.

             
“Um…I’ll try attacking him with magic,” Kohath decided.

             
That didn’t sound like a very good plan.

             
“I don’t think that’s a very good idea, WAIT!” I hissed as Kohath completely ignored me and threw a flaming fireball at the griffon. 

             
The griffon saw it
and screeched. Instantly a white wall of light surrounded the griffon, effectively shielding him from the flames.  

             
“What a brilliant plan!
I can’t believe it didn’t work!
” I sarcastically observed, poking my head up over the grass. The griffon saw me and shrieked again. 

             
“What are you
nuts
?”  Kohath said pulling me back down into the grass. “Now you’ve given our positio
n away!” he angrily whispered.

             
“Oh, and your idea to torch him
didn’t do that already?
” I huffed as the griffon stood up and started to walk over to us. 

             
Kohath stood, heaving me up with him, and starting running. The griffon screeched and plodded after us as Kohath switched escape plans. He released my hand, ran at the griffon, jumped on his head, and leaped very, very high into the sky.

             
Kohath did a flip in mid air as he soared back down to Earth. He tried to grab a tuff full of feathers from the griffon’s wings, but the griffon batted him away with a paw.
Not at all disappointed with his failure,
Kohath continued to do all sorts of interesting/difficult but useless moves.
He did lots of high jumps, backflips, and cartwheels, not that any of them helped at all.

After it finally seemed to occur to him that th
is wasn’t going to work, Kohath
unsheathed his sword and battled the griffon for about twenty minutes. After a particularly impressive blend of
parries
and blows, Kohath and the griffon stopped, panting heavily.

I glanced up at the night sky and broke away from my spot, moving toward
the squabbling duo
.

             
Kohath was bent over, breathing hard, and the griffon had collapsed on the ground. Kohath would probably best the griffon in another twenty minutes, but I wasn’t exactly willing to wait that long. I passed
Kohath and continued
toward
s
the griffon.

             
“Ahira, he’s not safe!” Kohath panted as he stumbled after me. I ignored him and walked up to the griffon.

             
“Good evening. Look, we don’t want to fight, we just need some of your feathers!” I told the griffon with the upmost politeness.

The griffon looked clearly unimpressed.

I smiled as I sifted through stable memories. Drat my mother for not letting me go visit animals more! I recalled the words of a particularly young boy who
worked in the mews. He told me skinship
and common knowledg
e was very important to animals when he
made me introduce myself to the hawks under his care.

If it was good enough for hawks
I could only hope it would be good enough for griffins. “My name is Ahira,” said with a smile, raising a hand in hopes that he might sniff me or something.

Instead, to my utter surprise, the griffon froze before bowing and untucking his wings. Carefully the griffon groomed a few feathers from his wings and let them fall to the grassy ground before nudging them in my direction.

I made a mental note that the young hawker boy deserved a cookie, and carefully bowed at the griffin before bending over to wrap the feathers up in my white apron.

“Thank you ever so much
,
kind griffon,” I said with my best courtly manners. 

             
I curtsied before making a quick getaway, passing by Kohath. “Let’s go Mr. Hot stuff,” I barked as I walked toward the edge of the meadow.

             
“Oh, so you think I’m handsome,” Kohath called, sounding extremely pleased with himself. I groaned and turned around to glare at him, catching sight of an odd situation.

The white griffon was still in the meadow. He was looking down at Tuggles with someth
ing akin to reverence
. Tuggles was watchin
g me, tossing his head
when I met his gaze.

             
I smiled and turned back around, Kohath’s stupid comment forgotten. Sadly, within a few minutes Kohath
got
his second wind. He ran up to me and reclaimed my hand.

             
We returned to the cave at all speed and without any problems.

             
“Thank you for coming with me,” Kohath generously said, as if I was the one saying thank you to him.

             
“Hm,” I
said
as I walked past him, reaching for the door. 

             
“Aren’t you going to say your welcome?” Kohath asked, sounding incredibly confident. 

             
“No,” I said, shutting the door in his face. I walked into sitting room and set the feathers on the table before shuffling into the kitchen. I yelped when I set my sights on the sink. There
,
sitting in MY chair
,
was Kohath, unconcernedly eating an apple.