The Very Best of F & SF v1 (61 page)

Autumn comes
early where I live. The days were still hot, and the king never would take his
armor off, except to sleep, not even his helmet with the big blue plume on top,
but at night I burrowed in between Molly and Schmendrick for warmth, and you
could hear the stags belling everywhere all the time, crazy with the season.
One of them actually charged King Lír’s horse while I was riding with him, and
Schmendrick was about to do something magic to the stag, the same way he’d done
with the crow. But the king laughed and rode straight at him, right
into
those horns. I
screamed, but the black mare never hesitated, and the stag turned at the last
moment and ambled out of sight in the brush. He was wagging his tail in
circles, the way goats do, and looking as puzzled and dreamy as King Lír himself.

I
was proud, once I got over being frightened. But both Schmendrick
and Molly scolded him, and he kept apologizing to me for the rest of the day
for having put me in danger, as Molly had once said he would. “I forgot you
were with me, little one, and for that I will always ask your pardon.” Then he
smiled at me with that beautiful, terrible hero’s smile I’d seen before, and he
said, “But oh, little one, the remembering!” And that night he didn’t wander
away and get himself lost. Instead he sat happily by the fire with us and sang
a whole long song about the adventures of an outlaw called Captain Cully. I’d
never heard of him, but it’s a really good song.

We reached my
village late on the afternoon of the fourth day, and Schmendrick made us stop
together before we rode in. He said, directly to me, “Sooz, if you tell them
that this is the king himself, there will be nothing but noise and joy and
celebration, and nobody will get any rest with all that carrying-on. It would
be best for you to tell them that we have brought King Lír’s greatest knight
with us, and that he needs a night to purify himself in prayer and meditation
before he deals with your griffin.” He took hold of my chin and made me look
into his green, green eyes, and he said, “Girl, you have to trust me. I always
know what I’m doing—that’s my trouble. Tell your people what I’ve said.” And
Molly touched me and looked at me without saying anything, so I knew it was
all-right.

I left them
camped on the outskirts of the village, and walked home by myself. Malka met me
first. She smelled me before I even reached Simon and Elsie’s tavern, and she
came running and crashed into my legs and knocked me over, and then pinned me
down with her paws on my shoulders, and kept licking my face until I had to nip
her nose to make her let me up and run to the house with me. My father was out
with the flock, but my mother and Wilfrid were there, and they grabbed me and
nearly strangled me, and they cried over me—rotten, stupid Wilfrid too!—because
everyone had been so certain that I’d been taken and eaten by the griffin.
After that, once she got done crying, my mother spanked me for running off in
Uncle Ambrose’s cart without telling anyone, and when my father came in, he
spanked me all over again. But I didn’t mind.

I told them I’d
seen King Lír in person, and been in his castle, and I said what Schmendrick
had told me to say, but nobody was much cheered by it. My father just sat down and
grunted, “Oh, aye—another great warrior for our comfort and the griffin’s
dessert. Your bloody king won’t ever come here his bloody self, you can be sure
of that.” My mother reproached him for talking like that in front of Wilfrid
and me, but he went on, “Maybe he cared about places like this, people like us
once, but he’s old now, and old kings only care who’s going to be king after
them. You can’t tell me anything different.”

I wanted more
than anything to tell him that King Lír
was
here, less than half a mile from our doorstep, but I didn’t, and
not only because Schmendrick had told me not to. I wasn’t sure what the king
might look like, white-haired and shaky and not here all the time, to people
like my father. I wasn’t sure what he looked like to me, for that matter. He
was a lovely, dignified old man who told wonderful stories, but when I tried to
imagine him riding alone into the Midwood to do battle with a griffin, a
griffin that had already eaten his best knights... to be honest, I couldn’t do
it. Now that I’d actually brought him all the way home with me, as I’d set out
to do, I was suddenly afraid that I’d drawn him to his death. And I knew I
wouldn’t ever forgive myself if that happened.

I wanted so much
to see them that night, Schmendrick and Molly and the king. I wanted to sleep
out there on the ground with them, and listen to their talk, and then maybe I’d
not worry so much about the morning. But of course there wasn’t a chance of
that. My family would hardly let me out of their sight to wash my face. Wilfrid
kept following me around, asking endless questions about the castle, and my
father took me to Catania, who had me tell the whole story over again, and
agreed with him that whomever the king had sent this time wasn’t likely to be
any more use than the others had been. And my mother kept feeding me and
scolding me and hugging me, all more or less at the same time. And then, in the
night, we heard the griffin, making that soft, lonely, horrible sound it makes
when it’s hunting. So I didn’t get very much sleep, between one thing and
another.

But at sunrise,
after I’d helped Wilfrid milk the goats, they let me run out to the camp, as
long as Malka came with me, which was practically like having my mother along.
Molly was already helping King Lír into his armor, and Schmendrick was burying
the remains of last night’s dinner, as though they were starting one more
ordinary day on their journey to somewhere. They greeted me, and Schmendrick
thanked me for doing as he’d asked, so that the king could have a restful night
before he—

I didn’t let him
finish. I didn’t know I was going to do it, I swear, but I ran up to King Lir,
and I threw my arms around him, and I said, “Don’t go! I changed my mind, don’t
go! “ Just like Lisene.

King Lír looked
down at me. He seemed as tall as a tree right then, and he patted my head very
gently with his iron glove. He said, “Little one, I have a griffin to slay. It
is my job.”

Which was what I’d
said myself, though it seemed like years ago, and that made it so much worse. I
said a second time, “I changed my mind! Somebody else can fight the griffin,
you don’t have to! You go home! You go home
now
and live your life, and be the king, and everything....” I was
babbling and sniffling, and generally being a baby, I know that. I’m glad
Wilfrid didn’t see me.

King Lír kept
petting me with one hand and trying to put me aside with the other, but I
wouldn’t let go. I think I was actually trying to pull his sword out of its
sheath, to take it away from him. He said, “No, no, little one, you don’t
understand. There are some monsters that only a king can kill. I have always
known that—I should never, never have sent those poor men to die in my place.
No one else in all the land can do this for you and your village. Most truly
now, it is my job.” And he kissed my hand, the way he must have kissed the
hands of so many queens. He kissed my hand too, just like theirs.

Molly came up
then and took me away from him. She held me close, and she stroked my hair, and
she told me, “Child, Sooz, there’s no turning back for him now, or for you
either. It was your fate to bring this last cause to him, and his fate to take
it up, and neither of you could have done differently, being who you are. And
now you must be as brave as he is, and see it all play out.” She caught herself”
there, and changed it. “Rather, you must wait to learn how it has played out,
because you are certainly not coming into that forest with us.”

“I’m coming,” I
said. “You can’t stop me. Nobody can.” I wasn’t sniffling or anything anymore.
I said it like that, that’s all.

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 Lír 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 Lír 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 Lír, 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 Lír 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 Lír 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 good-bye 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 Lír... King Lír 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.”