On the Subject of Griffons

by Lindsey Byrd

  “You must have been a very brave child.” Kera had no idea what she would have done to one of her children if she discovered they’d spent their days with beasts. Likely place them in permanent house arrest. That Curtis Sarren had allowed the behavior to continue showed remarkable leniency on his part. Then again . . . “You traveled abroad for your schooling, didn’t you?”

  John nodded. “I left for Ruug when I was ten . . . There’s an academy in their port city: Silex. It’s where I met my wife . . .” He shook his head, as if trying to dislodge an image that settled before his eyes that he had no desire to see. “But the griffons, I’ve seen them more recently than that. I saw them before I left for the war.”

  “You seem to care a great deal for them. I’ve never met someone speak so fondly of griffons before.”

  “My father sent me to Ruug to study law, but if I’d had a choice in the matter, I’d have preferred to study beasts. Our current bestiaries are woefully inadequate.”

  Kera felt her lips twitch as she shared a fond look with Aurora. In unison, they replied: “We’ve noticed.”

  “I wish I could show Circe them . . .”

  A shout echoed in the woods, and his head snapped about to listen. His soldiers all came to an abrupt halt, each one of them holding their guns at the ready. John trailed his fingers down to the hilt of his sword. He continued to scan the horizon.

  “Is there a problem?” Kera asked, even as her heart beat faster beneath her ribs.

  Adrenaline pumped through her body. The roots of her hair prickled as her ears turned outward. Desperate to hear something.

  Anything.

  A bullet cut through the night and John’s horse reared. He handled it expertly, not flinching in the slightest as he forced his stallion to back down. There on the horizon was a lone Trent soldier . . . and as they stood clumped together . . . he multiplied. One by one a small contingent began to approach. All flickering blue.

  Kera met Aurora’s eyes.

  The final moment of John’s death march had started, and they had waited too long to escape.

  Bullets flew in all directions. Kera screamed as a soldier fell not far away. Aiden woke up and whined loudly against her. He clutched at the saddle and let out a terrible sound that reminded her far too much of their flight with the wraith. John looked at him, then at Kera. He grit his teeth and pulled his horse around to face his enemy with steely-eyed determination. “Go,” he ordered Kera and Aurora. He pulled his sword from its sheath with his right hand. His reins were in his left. He nodded his head toward a perpendicular tree line. “Go, and do not stop running. Not for anything.”

  Despite her recalcitrant behavior prior, Aurora kicked her horse into action and did as he commanded. She raced headlong toward the woods, but Kera stayed. She couldn’t help herself; she hesitated and watched as John shouted for his men to form lines. The teasing boy she’d always longed to meet now rallied his troops with single-minded focus. He screamed for his soldiers to prepare for the fight, ducking as a new volley lobbed toward them.

  It was different now than in reality. Kera knew that over twenty years ago John had led this fight. Had started it, even. He had ordered his troops to attack the Trents, and he had lost badly. They’d counterattacked and slaughtered each member of John’s party. But his death march had been interrupted, and the events were perverted. Now the Trents were chasing them, brandishing their weapons and preparing for the slaughter.

  “Kera!” Aurora screamed. Her voice was fractured porcelain falling through the night, a stained glass window shattering. Colors and lights flickered across Kera’s vision even as a gentle trickle of shards struck the earth. Kera looked over her shoulder. Aurora was already on the other side of the field. Kera looked back to John—he was managing as best he could.

  He was twenty-seven years old and far too young to be facing death like this, riding his stallion as though it would protect him from all the dangers of the world. He was far too young to be scared of dying alone, heart and mind full of dreams that he’d been trying to pretend he didn’t want to achieve. Kera knew, she knew that John would find no peace in this place. In this fight. He would wake up tomorrow, then the next day and the day after. He would keep dying over and over, and it was breaking her heart to think about it.

  John met her eyes. He froze. His lips trembled. She was staying still when she should be riding as fast as she could go. She should have been setting fire to the earth beneath her horse’s hooves as she fled in haste; she should have left with Aurora just after he’d given his first command. But she hadn’t been able to kick her horse into action. She sat and stared, and realized, with mounting horror, that unlike Mori, she was going to see John fall and carry the sight with her for the rest of her life.

  “Go!” John shouted at her, desperate, eyes wild. “Go! Lady Montgomery, go!”

  He’s scared. Aiden sobbed in her arms. She squeezed him to her. Oh gods, he’s scared.

  Her breath caught as bullets cut through the air. Soldiers were already starting to die on all sides. Aurora kept screaming her name. She was far too sensible to return for Kera now. With Faith in her arms, it was too dangerous for her to ride back.

  “Go!” John shouted again.

  Kera could hear the Trent commander ordering his men back into position. John whirled about and raised his sword, shouting, “Fire!” as he slashed it down through the air.

  Across the field the Trents were falling too. “Fire!” sounded another volley. Riders burst from the undergrowth. John looked like Mori. Like her first Aiden. He looked like both of them in their final moments right before death took them. Eyes wide, face pale. Fear and uncertainty coiling about his body as he attempted to make sense of his life up until that moment.

  John begged her one last time. “Please, go!”

  She went.

  Najah’s mare flew across the field. Her legs reached out before her and her hooves dug into the earth. The gallop was a delicate seat. All four hooves left the ground at one point before the back hooves landed and carried them forward. It was a matter of riding out each footfall, of joining body and soul with the creature between her legs and trusting that she knew where to go.

  John was shouting orders behind her. The Trents kept advancing. His men wouldn’t know where to go. They were going to be flanked. Bullets hailed down upon John’s forces. Kera could hear their screams as their souls reenacted deaths long since set in stone. John shouted a command, something about a pincer, and only moments later, he shouted his frustration. The formation never completed itself, and it never would.

  “On your right!” Aurora screamed. Kera looked to her side. Two Trent horses were attempting to intercept her. She jerked on her reins, one arm steadying Aiden as she dug her heels into her mare’s body. The mare startled and jolted, turning hard to avoid getting cut off, but still struggling to find an opening.

  They were not trying to shoot her, not yet, but she could see the guns and the swords. Steel flashed in the moonlight, and she kicked her mare again in an attempt to just get her to go faster. Unlike Holly, this mare wasn’t used to battle conditions. She was flailing her head in startled terror, and it took everything in Kera’s body to keep her steady and on point.

  One of the soldiers rode up alongside her, trying to pull her reins from her hand, but Kera removed her foot from her stirrup and kicked the other rider’s horse in the rump. It bucked. Kera threw herself forward to avoid getting a hoof in her face, and the other rider sailed from his saddle. Another rider came alongside, but when she went to deliver the same punishment, she stopped. John was already there. He’d slashed his sword through the man’s body, disintegrating him into a scatter of blue blood as the long-dead steed galloped riderless into the woods.

  Kera was breathing hard, but John was gasping far worse. There was blood splattered on his face, though she couldn’t tell whose it was. “Ride!” he shouted at her, and she did. She forced her mare to keep moving, and John abandoned his losing battle
just to make sure she and her child survived the melee.

  She couldn’t hear the rest of his men. Are they already dead?

  Another shot sounded through the air, a loud volley that had her ducking over Aiden. John cried out, and for a moment, he sounded like Mori. His horse slowed. Another volley cracked through the night.

  Twisting about, her heart skipped a beat. John was leaning over his horse’s neck, bleeding with one hand pressed to his chest. The other was struggling to maintain a grip on his reins. He looked up to her, tears in his eyes. He was a child. He was a child and he was terrified. He was terrified of what was going to happen, even though they both knew it was a fact now. There was no stopping this.

  Kera reached Aurora. They could disappear into the night, leaving the death march behind. Another bullet struck John in the back. His horse let out a mighty scream and it collapsed. John was thrown. Long limbs rolled across the ground like a ball of yarn. Curled up to start with, then unraveling faster and faster until it sprawled in a long line of wrinkles in the dirt. Except, even when he landed . . . he didn’t stay still. He was trying to push himself up, struggling to draw his knees underneath him. He choked on his air.

  “We need to go,” Aurora told Kera. She said it gently. Kindly. The most caring she had sounded since they met John hours ago.

  But John was shaking now. There was blood streaming down his face. His bushy brown hair was stained black. He stumbled and fell, legs refusing to carry his weight. He tried to rise again, but couldn’t manage the task. He crashed back to the ground and lay there trembling.

  “Take Aiden,” Kera whispered.

  “What?”

  Kera was already moving. Already dismounting and pushing her reins into Aurora’s hand. “No, no— What are you—Kera!” Aurora couldn’t hold Faith, maintain Kera’s mare with Aiden still on her back, and chase Kera at the same time. She was pinned down, only capable of riding forward and nowhere else.

  It was cruel to force Aurora’s hand, but Kera didn’t have time to wait, nor did she consider it an option. If she waited, if she analyzed, if she thought this through, she knew it wouldn’t make sense. But it wasn’t a matter of making sense. It was a matter of caring, and caring didn’t require thought. It only required action.

  John had told her to run, and Kera ran. She ran to him. She thought she heard Faith call her name. She thought Aiden screamed, “Mama!” as loud as he could. Still, she ran to John’s side and didn’t question her choice. She slid to a stop by his crumpled form. She wrapped an arm around his back and pulled his own arm over her shoulder. She lifted him as best she could and he stumbled, legs weak beneath him. She didn’t dare count wounds, though she could see them peppered along his body. He was going to die whether she helped him or not, but she refused to leave him to die alone on this field while she rode off.

  His last sight would not be her abandoning him.

  “Come on,” she told John, pulling him with her. “Come on, come on!” John gasped for air. He pressed down on her shoulders and his legs dragged. His weight made her back scream in agony once more, but she pushed it to the side. She couldn’t concentrate on it. She needed to get him moving. She dragged him when his feet failed, pulling him as far away from the battlefield as ethereal armies shot guns she couldn’t even see. She dragged him to the safety of the wood where Aurora was watching them with horrified eyes. They would be safe in the tree line.

  More shots fired.

  John screamed. He jerked in her grasp, legs going limp beneath him. He fell, and his weight pulled her down into the dirt. Her muscles howled, but she didn’t care. She put her hands on either side of his body and heaved. His blue coat was stained purple, and the white lining was now dark red.

  Trent voices called for another volley, and John’s hand snatched her around her collar. He jerked her down to the ground, and seemed to find one last burst of strength in order to bracket her beneath his body. She couldn’t fathom how many times he’d been struck by now, but pain lined his young face.

  Sweat, blood, snot, and tears mixed together and marred the angelic curves of his cheekbones and nose. He was breathing in hitching gasps. His arms gave out and he fell, lying over her in a heavy mass.

  Kera struggled to escape his weight and turn him over. She glanced all around for the soldiers that were firing at them, fully intending to kill John—to kill them. John was still alive. Awake. Alive. It didn’t matter what he was. He stared at her, mouth trembling around words he couldn’t speak. She cupped his face. “You’re going to be all right,” she promised him.

  He had the audacity to smile, to somehow manage a hitched laugh on his next inhale before his face twisted in agony and he coughed around a mouthful of blood. “No . . .You—you—you need to go,” he gasped.

  “Soon, soon, I promise. But I can’t leave you.” She just couldn’t do it. It was a simple truth. Even knowing he was going to die, even knowing that he’d lost everything that made up who he was, she couldn’t leave him.

  Her greatest failing in the world was that if someone was in pain, she couldn’t leave them to suffer it alone. She couldn’t allow them to pass on without knowing they were loved. She hadn’t been able to leave her husband and firstborn, despite the anger and hysteria she’d felt surrounding their deaths. She hadn’t been able to leave Rachel when she was washing her laundry in Doleystown, a simple ghost that didn’t know how to cross over. And she couldn’t leave John now.

  He was just a frightened boy, who’d only wanted to go home, to study beasts, and live near his friends. He wanted to meet his daughter and share a world he cherished with her. He wanted to live a life he would never live, and this wasn’t fair. Nothing about this was fair. And even if she’d known nothing at all about him, she couldn’t leave him alone.

  “T-tell Mor-Morpheus I’m—I’m sorry?” John asked her. Tears pressing against her eyes.

  “Tell him yourself,” she whispered. He stared at her, broken face breaking just a little more. He was blurring. Tears fell from her eyes and she lost sight of him for a moment as she squeezed her eyes shut against the pain. “Mori died, John . . . He’s waiting for you on the other side.”

  And he would keep waiting for his loved ones. He would keep waiting for them to join him, because he’d willfully chosen to die in a duel. John Sarren had died wanting to live more than anything else in the world, and Mori had decided it no longer mattered.

  Mori was going to be waiting the rest of their lives for them. But . . . he shouldn’t have to wait for John. He had already waited long enough. “I’ll show your daughter the griffons,” Kera promised. There was another command to line up. Kera didn’t know where the soldiers were, which way the guns would be fired from. “I’ll show her your book.” John smiled at her, blood streaming from his lips. It was gruesome and awful. His eyes slid to the left, and then he blinked. Hard. Like he was trying to focus on something important. His mouth opened a bit more. His left hand rose, reaching past her, almost . . . yearning. He whispered one word: “Mor . . . pheus?”

  And Kera’s breath caught in her throat. “Kera!” Aurora shouted. Kera was turning to follow John’s line of sight. There was something there, a light just out of view. She was starting to see it take shape when—

  “Fire!”

  Something sharp tore through her throat.

  Blood filled her mouth.

  Her head snapped back and she crumbled to her side. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t see. Everything was dark around her. Her back pulsated. She was going to die. She knew that more than she had ever known anything else in life.

  Cold fingered wrapped around her neck. It was useless. There was no stopping this. There was no—

  “You know your own heart. Your choices have always been your own. My beloved Kera, I wish you all the happiness in the world.” John’s voice echoed like a thought in her head. There but not there. A fantasy that she created out of nothingness. She did not know where it came from or how it entered her body, but
she accepted it as truth.

  Kera blinked hard and just managed to see his face in eerie incandescent blue. He smiled, bloodstained and covered in gore. His hand tightened on her throat, and the cold palm warmed. Warmed more and more, until it seared like a brand around her flesh. She didn’t notice the pain or anything except what was directly in front of her.

  Instead, she stared at John’s face. Watching as his eyes fluttered. He smiled as he died. His body slipped from focus, and he flickered out like a light at the end of a wick. Candle shimmering . . . shimmering . . . shimmering . . .

  Gone.

  Silence fell over the wood. John disappeared, and with him, all of the Trent and Absalonian comrades. There was no sign that they’d even been there to begin with. Kera stared at the place where John had been. Her throat no longer bled. She no longer felt her lungs choking her into oblivion.

  She heard Aurora rushing toward her. Hooves echoing like drums in her head. Aurora reached her side. She called her name, but something inside Kera felt certain that Aurora didn’t have to rush. Crystals or no, Kera knew, for the rest of the night, they would be undisturbed.

  Kera’s body didn’t hurt. Her back didn’t twinge. Her ribs no longer twinged on each breath. Her feet weren’t uncomfortable. Her throat—she lifted a hand to the wound she knew she’d acquired—had healed and smoothed over. The scar set flush with her skin, barely raised at all. She traced the phantom edges for several moments.

  Aurora was there before she could fully take stock. Hand on her shoulder, voice slashing between her ears saying, “I thought you were dead.” Kera winced. She sat up slowly, and found that she felt . . . good. Very good. The horses were nearby, and Kera almost suggested leaving now and continuing their journey. She didn’t know what else she could say. She stood, fingers still following the line of her scar, and thought.

  A bullet had gone through her. She could still taste the blood in her mouth. Speaking of . . . she spat, watching as it globbed and settled on the dirt. John’s face had been almost unrecognizable beneath her when she washed his skin with her blood.