Wednesdays in the Tower (13 page)
And if Rufus did learn to fly.
She knew she was fussing unnecessarily, but she just couldn’t stop. If Rufus didn’t learn to fly on the first try, he’d be dashed to bits on the stones of the courtyard at Pogue’s feet. Birds did it all the time, but many of them died trying. Her stomach clenched, and she wished she hadn’t eaten so much winter apple pie for dessert.
Her baby. Her little griffin. If he fell …
“Celie,” Bran said. “Look at Rufus: he’s ready.”
“
I’m
not ready,” she muttered. “Hey, now!”
She yanked on the harness as Rufus tried to tip himself out the window.
“Celie,” Bran said, laying a hand on her shoulder. “If he falls, I will catch him. With magic. I promise.”
She looked at her eldest brother, searching his face for signs that he was lying to make her feel better. “Promise?”
“Yes,” he said. “I can make a sort of pillow of air under him,” Bran assured her. “Also, I wonder if the Castle won’t help. It’s obviously eager to keep Rufus alive, and it caught you once, after all.”
“That’s true,” Celie said.
With both Bran and the Castle (she hoped) ready to break Rufus’s fall, Celie felt a lot calmer. She let go of the harness and took a step back.
“Go ahead, Rufus,” Celie said, around the lump in her throat.
Bran flipped the shutter on their lantern so that the light wavered. It was their signal to Pogue, who raised his lamp high in answer.
Rufus didn’t need any further urging. He leaped into the air, his wings extended, and soared into the night. Celie’s heart was pounding, her knees weak, and she half fell against the window as she leaned out as far as she could to watch.
Rufus glided for a moment, and then began to sink and flap his wings. But his wing movements weren’t coordinated, and he started to sink even more rapidly, listing to the right as he went. Celie’s mouth flew open to scream, but she managed to get it closed and just whisper to her brother.
“Bran, Bran,” she said, her throat dry. “Catch him.”
“I will if he … before he hits,” Bran said. He was crammed into the window beside her, face white with tension.
Then Rufus got the hang of it. His wings started working together, and he rose up a little. Then a little more. Then his wings cupped and he beat the air with powerful strokes, rising higher and higher. Celie let out a yell of delight, and Rufus screamed in triumph.
“Okay, Rufus,” Celie said, trying to coax him back in. “That’s enough for now.”
“He looks like he’s getting tired,” Bran said. “Probably using muscles he didn’t even know he had.” He clapped his hands. “Come here, Rufus! Good boy!”
Rufus cawed and turned again, his wings still beating hard. He started away over the courtyard, occasionally dipping down but then frantically bringing himself up again. But with every passing moment he seemed to get more confident, more graceful, though Celie agreed that he was starting to look tired.
She called to him again, but he ignored her. He looked like he was going to try to fly out of the Castle entirely, going over the stables and the wall. But he wasn’t going to make it. Despite his more confident flying, he was weakening and starting to sink lower. If he kept descending at that rate, he would run right into one of the crenellations at the top of the eastern wall.
Far below him, Pogue waved his lantern and whistled piercingly. Rufus looked down, and then slowly circled to land with a bump beside Pogue.
Celie collapsed on the floor of the tower, feeling a bit of the scattered eggshell crunch under her weight. She put
her head on her knees and tried to get her heart under control.
“He did it,” she chanted. “He did it. He did it.”
“He did,” Bran said, sounding just as relieved as she did. “He really did.”
Her brother reached down and took Celie’s arm, helping her to her feet. “Let’s go down and congratulate him.”
“All right,” Celie said, still feeling shaky.
In the corridor outside the hatching tower, Bran stopped short. Holding his lantern high, he squinted at the tapestries on the wall. They were a different style from the others they’d found. Celie had passed them many times, but she was always in such a rush that she had never stopped to consider them. They were filled with griffins: Griffins hatching from flame-colored eggs. Griffins playing together in a forest, chasing after a ball. A small griffin taking flight from a tower while a dozen people below watched and applauded.
“I think that was his first flight,” Celie said, stunned that she hadn’t noticed it before. “These all seem to be … griffin nursery scenes, don’t they?”
Bran snorted at her description, but then he grew thoughtful. “You know, I think you’re right. These griffins are all smaller than the ones on the other tapestry. And they’re all doing babyish things.”
Celie slugged him in the arm. “That’s what I said, they’re nursery scenes,” she said. “I wonder if we can drag these down to the holiday feasting hall.”
“I don’t think we should,” Bran said. He jerked his chin, and they continued on their way to meet Pogue and Rufus.
“Why not?”
“Well, you already think that Arkwright is watching you. These tapestries … they’re not like any others I’ve seen. They’re very realistic, almost domestic. It will be hard to keep up the fiction that griffins are, um, fiction when people start seeing these.”
“That’s true,” Celie said. “I mean, writing a poem about riding a griffin could be a poet’s fancy. Making a tapestry about hunting with griffins instead of falcons, fancy again. Or even depicting parts of that poem.”
“But baby griffins going about their day?” Bran finished the thought. “That makes you wonder whether the weaver had actual experience with griffins.”
They continued in silence for a while, making their way down through the Castle without running into anyone. It was nearly midnight, and just thinking that made Celie yawn. Now that the strain of Rufus’s first flight was over, she was noticing how tired she was, and how limp she still felt, and let herself lag behind just a little bit. She followed Bran out into the courtyard and past the stables.
As they ducked into the new stables, Bran held the lantern high and they looked around. It was shaped differently than the old stables. The stalls were narrower, the partitions lower. It had a cold, unused feel, and the wood of the stalls was scarred and scraped, but the stable wasn’t dirty. In fact, there was no straw or any other debris about.
Either the grooms had cleaned it thoroughly after it had appeared, or it hadn’t been used for a long time before that.
Pogue met them at the back door of the stable, grinning broadly. He was holding his lantern with one hand and Rufus’s harness with the other. When Rufus saw Celie, he lunged forward, and Pogue hurried to pull his hand out of the leather straps.
“Ouch!”
“There you are! My clever boy!” Celie ruffled Rufus’s neck feathers and cooed to him, overcome with love and pride in her griffin. “You flew, you actually flew, Rufus!”
“That was a little hair-raising to watch,” Pogue said, shaking his head in wonder. “I just kept hoping that if he didn’t get his wings working, the Castle would catch him.”
“So did we,” Bran said. “I might have been able to do something, but …”
Celie looked up. “You
might
have been able to do something? You told me you could catch him! You promised that you could!”
Bran looked decidedly guilty. “It’s very likely that I could have,” he said. “But I didn’t need to, and that’s all that matters!”
Celie sagged against Rufus, continuing to pet him. “Uncle Bran lied,” she told the griffin in a stage whisper. “But it’s all right, because you’re such a good boy!”
“Yes, yes,” Bran said, rolling his eyes. “I lied. Now let’s get Rufus back inside the Castle, shall we?”
Rufus reached over Celie’s shoulder and began to gnaw
on the top of the nearest stall door. Celie took hold of one of the handles at his shoulders and gave it a little tug, clucking her tongue. She was trying a combination of horse and dog training with the harness, to get Rufus to obey better.
“Come along, Rufus,” she said, and gave another tug.
He sighed and stopped chewing the door, following Celie. She glanced back to see if Pogue was following, and stopped. She turned and looked more carefully at the wood where Rufus’s beak had left a strong impression. There was another mark next to it, just like the one Rufus had made, but obviously older and worn smooth.
The stall had a built-in water trough, but no manger for hay. Instead there was another bucket built into the corner of the stall, the exact size of the bowl the Castle had provided for Rufus’s food.
“Are you coming?” Bran raised his lantern and peered down the aisle at her. Pogue was staring around at the new stable, too, a line between his brows. Celie caught his eye.
“This is a rather odd stable,” he said.
“That’s because it isn’t for horses,” Celie said, leading Rufus up the aisle toward them. “It’s for griffins.”
They did a quick search of the griffin stable, but didn’t find anything more interesting than the fact that it existed at all. Everything was clean and bare, and there was not a single indication that it was meant for any unusual purpose. Celie would never have noticed if Rufus hadn’t bitten the wood of the door right next to the place where some other griffin, years ago, had bitten it.
“Bran,” Celie said, her voice a little choked. “Do you understand? The tapestries of the griffin nursery—”
“What griffin nursery?” Pogue sounded almost panicky, but Celie ignored him.
“And now this,” she went on. “Don’t you see: Rufus isn’t some spell by a wizard that went awry. He isn’t some freak of nature. There really used to be griffins in Castle Glower. Ordinary, everyday griffins. But now Rufus is the last one.”
Bran just nodded. He looked like he couldn’t speak. Celie was, herself, on the verge of tears. She was so lonely for Rufus, being the last griffin. Pogue looked a little wild-eyed, and didn’t say anything either as they walked back to the main courtyard, where he nodded good night and went home to the village.
In silence Bran and Celie sneaked Rufus back into the Castle. Celie fell asleep with Rufus cuddled up against her, after telling him once more how clever he was, and taking off the harness and hiding it under her bed. She hoped to let him fly even longer the next night, and the one after that, and dreamed of sailing through the night sky on his back.
But she woke to a storm in the morning, a late-winter blizzard that brought icy winds and heavy piles of snow that clogged the corners of the windows and made the stones of the courtyard treacherous.
Rufus hated getting wet, and he certainly couldn’t make his second flight with the wind buffeting him back and forth, she thought with despair. Sitting in her lessons that day, she glumly wondered when the skies would clear, and whether Rufus would even remember how to make his wings work by then.
“You are all the best of Grathian speakers,” Lulath enthused, spreading his arms wide.
Celie snapped her attention back to Lulath, who had just finished helping them through the last page of the
Grathian primer they’d been studying. He looked like he was near tears, and his dogs, sensing his emotion, were prancing in circles around his feet.
“I never thought, that here in the Castle of Glower, I would have so many, many of friends who would come to a learning of my language!”
Lulath swooped down and kissed them all, moving down the table to smack his lips against each of their cheeks, starting with Rolf. Rolf yelled in surprise, but didn’t pull back, manfully patting Lulath’s shoulder instead as Lulath kissed Lilah, then Celie. Then, to Master Humphries’s horror, the prince grabbed him by the arms and kissed his cheek as well.
“Thank, oh so many times, for giving to me this chance!”
“You’re very welcome,” Master Humphries gasped out, straightening his robes.
“And now, the presents for my most best students,” Lulath said.
With great ceremony he opened a canvas bag that had been sitting unnoticed in the corner of the room. From it he pulled a long blue silk scarf, which he presented to Lilah.
“The finest of the silk of Grath, in the color of the beautiful eyes!”
Lilah turned bright pink and took the scarf with reverent hands. “Oh, Lulath! It’s so lovely!”
“I could not be waiting another moment’s time to be
giving it,” Lulath said, and actually blushed. “For Rolf, this best of Grathian steel,” he announced when he’d recovered a bit. And he presented Rolf with a fine dagger in a tooled leather sheath.
“Thank you, Lulath,” Rolf said in Grathian, and Lulath gave a little bow.
“For this master,” Lulath went on, turning to their tutor, “so kind to let me take his lessons away, this ink and roc quill pens!” Lulath gave the flustered Master Humphries a set of quills and ink.
Celie craned her neck to look at the roc quills. They were black and strangely dense looking, as though they absorbed light. She’d never heard of roc feathers being used for pens before, but Master Humphries took them with the same delicate awe with which Lilah was holding her scarf. Celie remembered that rocs were becoming rare in Grath, and realized that the quills must have cost a small fortune.