Fish Tails

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “If any of the females have eggs, he wants to break them because they might be males. If they have young, he wants to see them to be sure they are not males. Mama says they are far from here, Mama says they have no eggs, no young ones.”

  “She’s trying to delay him?”

  “So there haven’t been any baby-­boy Griffins?”

  The little one wept crystal tears. “There have been, yes. Despos kills them. It takes a long, long time for the egg to hatch. After it hatches and when it gets a lot bigger, the mother has to build a nest for the little one, because she can’t hunt if she’s carrying the baby. She plucks her neck feathers to keep the nest warm. But Despos, he follows the females to the nest. Sometimes he kills female babies by mistake. And we cannot kill Despos, for if he dies, Mama says, so do we all.”

  All sound had ceased upon the ledge. Then an enormous blast of air laden with dust and rock chips buffeted them. The huge wings outside had flapped, down! Again and again, and the black bulk before the cave opening lifted with a tumult like a hurricane. The sound lessened, lessened, and was gone. The she Griffin had lured him away, somehow. The children crawled from the horizontal slit. Needly took her comb from the shirt pocket, and began to comb the little one’s mane, snarled and tangled from being caught on the rough stone. The individual filaments emerged from the flesh as quills, feathered at the sides, gradually lengthened into thick hairs, still with tiny feathery protrusions to either side, and at last thinned into real, silky hair that was very like human hair.

  “First thing,” said Needly. “First very important thing: we need to know your name.”

  “I don’t think we have names,” whispered the little one. “Mother calls me ‘little one,’ or ‘wing child,’ or things like that.”

  “Well, we need names to call you by. So you know who we mean when we speak and do not think we are impolite. You must have a name. And your mother must have a name. Grandma and I, we saw both of you first at sunrise, you know. I saw your mother unfold her wings against the mountainside with the sunlight all around her. We will call your mother Sun-­wings. And as we stood there, the wind brought your voice. So, we will call you Dawn-­song.”

  “Her ma should be a queen,” said Willum. “Queen Sun-­wings. And she should be Princess Dawn-­song. Like Xulai is really a princess, you know.”

  “And Despos is the king of them all, I suppose,” said Needly, frowning. Then silently, only to herself: We should be very sure to do something about that! No wonder the Griffin mother is so frightened. She is threatened on all sides! Even by her own kind!

  “Poor thing is probably just worn out,” muttered Willum, as though he had read her mind, which, he would have been somewhat surprised to know, they had both been doing to each other since the morning they had met.

  Needly knew it already. She had chosen not to tell him, as he might be embarrassed at her knowing some of the thoughts he had had. Needly had been astonished how anticipatory they had been. No. Not anticipatory. Presumptuous! What boy of eleven or so goes about thinking what names would be best for his grandchildren?

  KIM, ALONE AT THE HEAD of his herd, was surprised to receive a visitation. His surprise came mainly from the fact that the horses did not stampede when the creature landed on the road before them. The Griffin said something to them, however, something slow and sinuous to the ear, which made the horses lower their heads and fix their eyes upon their hooves, as though contemplating grass. The only one who still moved, and he only slightly, was Blue, who had joined the herd this morning so he could get to know the other horses. He swiveled his eyes, focusing on the great female where she crouched on a spur of stone above them.

  “Your name is Kim?” she said.

  Kim nodded, that being all he was capable of.

  “The child, Needly, tells me I did not think things through well enough,” said the Griffin. “I neglected to take clothing and mattresses for them—­the cave is of stone—­and blankets, and what she calls a latrine spade, and food, and a fire lighter, and roughage. I understand this means grain or something similar. I will hunt meat for them, so you need not provide that, or firewood. I will find a place with firewood. If you will tell the others to assemble the things they feel the children will need, packed in a bundle, well tied, so I can carry it. They can leave it on the road behind them; I will pick it up and convey it. It would be well if I could provide some comfort for them before tonight. I do not wish to harm the children unless it becomes necessary . . . to show that we mean what we say.”

  Kim did not look up to see her fly, he merely stayed absolutely still, right where he was, not moving a muscle until Blue raised his head and peered into the sky, now empty, saying, “Kim, she’s gone.”

  The herd was already nervous. They had been disturbed all during the morning by distant sounds of conflict, screaming, tearing, metallic clanging and ringing sounds mixed with organic bellowing and screams of pain and anger. It was as though some titanic argument was taking place among minor gods, somewhere in the atmosphere, invisible but clearly audible. The sounds had come from a distance but were still loud enough to stop every living thing where it was, as it was, perched, crouched, grazing! During that time everything alive was petrified. Before noon, the noise had stopped as abruptly as it had started. Then, not very long later, the Griffin had arrived.

  Blue had heard something in the Griffin’s voice that reminded him of the morning tumult. Her voice, multiplied, deepened. Perhaps . . . no, probably a male? Something had been bothering Abasio lately. A male Griffin might be very bothersome indeed! Blue came to himself and followed the herd the very short distance to the next switchback, where they waited until the wagon arrived, as it did very shortly. Kim was barely able to speak; he had been frightened into a state of sustained terror. Blue butted Abasio away from the others and spoke more to the point. He and Abasio had been through things like this before. He hoped this would not end as that other time had ended, with one of their group gone. Or even two of them. Willum was what Abasio called a brat (which, thought Blue, Abasio ought to recognize, having been one himself, even when much older than Willum). The little girl, though. Oh, she was something. Blue very much wanted to hear what they made of her, down in Artemisia. What his speaking friends, Coyote and Bear, might make of her . . .

  While Blue ruminated, a flurry of packing went on: three straw-­stuffed mattresses, two small, one larger—­the children’s and a spare—­Xulai had a very strong mental vision that included the little Griffin. Young things tended to group, even those from varying species, for company if nothing else. They would need blankets and foodstuffs and clothing and various small tools: knives, a small bucket, a pot, a spit, and a grill for cooking, a pan for water; rags for cleaning bodies, soap; two water bottles—­filled. They would need a fire-­starter and a supply of tinder; a roll of strong twine. Needly would need her pack, and they would pack another one for Willum, including combs, brushes. They would include the little hatchet for firewood and one of the thick-­bristled brushes used for currying horses—­probably that would feel good to a Griffin child: large combs, same idea. The whole made up into a single bundle, wrapped in canvas, roped with loops on top that the Griffin could seize in her claws.

  “She will want to move the children as we move,” Xulai snarled under her breath. “We must make a package that will be easy for her to carry.”

  “And one easy for the children to repack,” growled Abasio. “I’m using knots I’ve already taught Willum to use.” He felt strongly that the children were in no immediate danger. All morning he had been having one of those premonitory notions that sometimes came to him, out of nothing much. The current notion was that this particular incident could prove to be, in the long run, a good—­or at least workable—­thing. Building on the basis of such notions had never harmed him in the past. Some had alerted him to coming danger, others had warned him not to react violently if it merely seemed so.
It was much the same kind of feeling that had carried him all the way from Artemisia to Woldsgard.

  Xulai, however, was not at the moment of a mind to hear any such notions. She was too busy excoriating herself for not having protected the children better. He asked, “Why the third mattress?”

  “To show her we care for her child better than she cares for ours! Besides, I have the idea the three young ones will become friends.”

  When the package was ready, Xulai stood on the road, looking at all of it, the rocks at the side, the view east from it down the canyon below them, forests, glades, the road running east. She would come back here to make sure the bundle had been picked up. She took ul xaolat from her pocket, spoke into it, and held it above her head while she pushed a button to record the destination before restoring it to her pocket. Neither she nor ul xaolat would forget this place.

  The large package was left behind on the road as the horses and the wagon went on their way down. The trees on these lower slopes were higher, thicker. The wagon was only one road below when the Griffin came, but they had gone a long way north and did not actually see her behind them as she picked up the bundle. A little later, however, Abasio caught sight of her flying south and slightly eastward, the bundle dangling from her front feet. Well, the mountain range bent eastward as they traveled. Xulai was right. The children would be kept within watching distance of Abasio and Xulai and whatever it was they might do to save the Griffins.

  SUN-­WINGS—­QUEEN SUN-­WINGS, ACCORDING TO WILLUM—­HAD moved them to a new cave immediately after the male had departed. The new place was at the top of a low rise, well hidden behind tall, old-­growth trees. It was a location the Griffins, mother and daughter, had to approach by landing well downhill and walking upward among those trees, though Sun-­wings had dropped the canvas-­wrapped bundle closer to the cave itself. The refuge was shadowed by the overhang of the cliff above it and trees grew tight around it, leaving no landing place near the opening large enough for Despos to come at them. At the bottom of the slope a tiny stream wended its way south. It was a place, so the Griffin child, Dawn-­song, told the children, that Despos did not know about and would probably be unable to find. It was the place to which Sun-­wings had brought Dawn-­song years ago, after Abasio’s friend Olly had rescued Dawn-­song near the archetypal village.

  Customarily, Griffins slept on the peaks and flew in the chasms. Typically, their nests were inaccessible to any unwinged creature, for the protection of the young. With Despos now flying in the chasms, constantly on the hunt for rivals, even those who might exist inside an eggshell, there was no such thing as inaccessible. He found the young too easily. According to Dawn-­song, her mama had been talking to the other females. They were trying to decide what to do to protect their eggs, to protect the little ones like Dawn-­song. Building nests in caves was one thing they considered.

  The cave where they were now was unfamiliar territory for the human children, and not totally familiar to little Dawn-­song. Still, by nightfall, the three of them had dragged the contents of the bundle into the cave and had made themselves comfortable. The baby Griffin had been combed and petted and given her own mattress, where she was fed bits and pieces of roast rabbit after being offered a share of the boiled grain that Needly had seasoned nicely with the herbs and salt Xulai had sent. Dawn-­song tasted politely, but refused the offer. Griffins were carnivores, the children agreed. They were definitely pure carnivores, which should make the matter of turning them into sea creatures easier.

  Willum and Needly discussed this, loudly but calmly, as though the process had already been accomplished. They had decided to speak of saving Griffins frequently and lengthily. This would put Sun-­wings—­and her sisters, if they happened to overhear at some point—­in the right frame of mind. In all such conversations, the saving should be spoken of as inevitable! There were lots of things for carnivores to eat in the seas. Omnivores could manage well, but pure herbivores might have a problem. After making sure that Sun-­wings could hear them, Willum and Needly discussed this at length and in exhaustive detail with Dawn-­song, who asked a great many questions. Sun-­wings overheard it all.

  By the time night came, Willum and Needly had set up their camp in the cave. The smoke from their fire, they told Sun-­wings, would seem no different from the smoke from many fires they had seen as they came down the mountain. They had fetched water, found a latrine ground close by, and Willum had dug a trench, heaping the earth neatly along the backside to be shoveled in as needed. Using the little hatchet, he had cut forked sticks to hold a stout crossbar as a seat and another as a back. They had washed themselves in the spring, changed their clothes, and, at Needly’s insistence, washed the ones they had worn when they were “dragged onto sweaty horses” and “bumped up against muddy places” and “made generally filthy.” All of which Needly said loudly and with obvious disapproval: “I wouldn’t have let anyone treat Dawn-­song that way!”

  Sun-­wings heard it all with a good deal of chagrin.

  Now Dawn-­song was lying on her very own mattress, purring, and the two children had lain down upon theirs, one close at each side, all of them blanketed for warmth. All three were curled in earnest, whispered confabulation, making plans to save themselves, their captor, and all her fellow Griffins—­except for Despos—­and, perhaps, the world. They had even agreed upon the rules for discussion: Willum could not introduce any factor that was not achievable, including aerial bombardment by men (including Willum himself) mounted on Griffins. Needly had foreseen the difficulties presented by endless one-­to-­one argument and had made sure Dawn-­song had a vote from the beginning. Xulai, Needly knew, had foreseen their becoming close friends. The third mattress had been as good as a letter of instruction!

  LATE IN THE AFTERNOON, ABASIO turned from the now-­only-­slightly-­sloping road—­it had for some hours tended slightly east of south—­to the one below that led toward the eastern horizon: a flat horizon on a flat plain. There were still canyon walls on either side of the road, now only dwindling arms of the mountain that fingered the desert farther and farther from the road itself. The stream that had followed them the last bit of the way down had turned gently upon itself after trying a few north-­ish or south-­ish bends and deciding that running east along the road would do satisfactorily. Xulai, watching the stream burble happily along, knew they were still descending. Both sides of the stream were wooded. Among the various pines and spruces, the deciduous trees carried a few dried and no longer golden leaves that whispered together in any vagrant breeze. Still, they kept to the road for another hour or so, until they were able to see the ends of the canyon walls swallowed by the flatlands beyond. Then they moved away from the road to make their noon stop in a last outpost of the trees, a grove of towering evergreens and white-­trunked shivering gold birches, very near a pleasant pool. The whole was surrounded by grass, still green and succulent.

  “I think you can relax,” said Abasio, rubbing his thumbs into Xulai’s neck muscles, which seemed to have frozen into two solid knots of rope. “The fact that the Griffin picked up the supplies we sent, the fact that she asked for them in the first place, indicates that she has no wish to hurt the children. They are hostages, and hostages are usually very well cared for.”

  “Abasio, intellectually, I’m sure you’re right.” She drew away from him and settled her gown as she rotated her head. The neck pain was from tension, of course . . . only tension. “Emotionally, however, I want to scream. I can’t do that or I’ll upset the babies. Sun-­wings won’t want to hurt the children, but she knows nothing about children. Ignorance can hurt.”

  “You want to scream because your baby tenders are missing.”

  She gave him a look that might have charred him to his boot soles had he not been fireproofed some time ago. “I want to scream because I’m concerned about the children and I’m not sure they’re all right!”

  He put his hands on her
shoulders and shook her. “Then you’re just feeling, not thinking. The Griffin didn’t come up with that list by herself. It had contributions from both Willum and Needly. They are, therefore, in sufficiently good shape to think reasonably and sensibly. Needly is considering the whole event calmly. I believe that child was born of some very strange heritage that makes her mental age something like two hundred years, give or take a quarter century. And how long has Willum been asking whether the Griffin would take him for a ride? He has no doubt had that ride, and I cannot imagine his being anything but invigorated by it.”

  “Those men who took them, I don’t trust them!”

  “Nor do I. Obviously. It’s extremely unlikely, however, that those men are anywhere near where the children are now. If the men had been readily available, the Griffin could have sent them to round up the materials Willum and Needly needed, but she came herself. Also, the children are no doubt being kept in some very remote area. Ferrying men and horses would have required multiple trips, and I can’t see the Griffin wanting to continue providing for them. That indicates she has paid off her lackeys and sent them away. I’m intrigued by the fact she must have paid them something. What was that, do you suppose?”

  “Someone held hostage, perhaps. And we don’t know where the children are . . .”

  “They didn’t ask for firewood, so they’re in the forest, where they can find their own. The Griffin will have picked a secure campsite. They’re not on a pinnacle; they’re where a latrine shovel can be used. I’m glad we had a spare. They asked for a bucket, so I’m sure they’re near water.”

  “You’re dreadfully serene,” she snapped.

  “If I thought either of us could do any good by yelling and screaming and rushing about in circles, we could do that. I’m willing to do so if you’d like. We can do it together, hand in hand. Shall we go clockwise or counterclockwise to begin with?”