by A Corrin
All five tree spirits bowed and curtsied at me. The little old man shakily bent forward with support from his staff.
“Then may you go without hindrance, and the Golden Griffin with you,” he said. “Journey northeast and follow the path. You should reach the bog by tomorrow evening.”
Peter thanked him and ordered the squadron to make ready. One of the younger male tree spirits took a hasty step forward and outstretched a halting hand.
“Forgive me, Prince, but I must ask, if only to settle my foolish curiosity, how go things in your reality?”
My face fell, and I tried to find something to say that wouldn’t seem too morose or depressing.
“Well,” I began lamely, “things are…changing. That’s for sure.”
“Ah, yes,” broke in Oakpaen, “things are forever changing; I can feel it in the wind. But ’tis true, the change you mention, sire, is a cold and foul breeze indeed.”
“We’re ready to leave, Peter!” Kayle called over. He shook his black feathers, eager to move on.
Oakpaen noticed the crestfallen look on my face, and the way my tail drooped, the tuft of feathers at the end slapping dismally against the ground. A warm breeze stirred up, nudging me beneath the chin like a grandfather chuffing his favorite grandson, and I looked up at him again.
“Do not abandon hope, young prince,” the elderly man murmured, “for through the thorns of sorrow and strife emerge the most beautiful blossoms.” I caught a whiff of spring in that breeze, not the kind of spring a jungle might have but the smells of spring that I remembered from my childhood back home: roses, lavender, barbecues, and the fresh, clean rain misting down from the mountains. My heart swelled in my chest, and a powerful swing of homesickness almost knocked me over. But I felt bolstered too, comforted.
“Good luck. We of the jungles and forests wish your journey to be a success,” Oakpaen said.
I was sincerely thankful to him. What he had said had been wise, kind, and encouraging. I don’t know even now where the words came from, but I found myself saying, “And may your life branch long and full of splendor, King of Trees.”
Peter gave me a mildly surprised look out of the corner of his eye. The tree spirits’ faces lit up with pleasure.
As one, they bowed their heads, and Oakpaen cried out in a voice stronger than what he had used before, “Come, my sons and daughters; the tree folk must meet and discuss these new events.” And with another invisible breeze, the spirits dissolved into clusters of flowers and vanished among the trees.
Peter and I stood there together and let ourselves be filled with that weird emotion the tree spirits had given us. Finally, Peter turned around and strode to the head of the patiently waiting squadron. I followed but stopped.
Kayle and Mariah shot me cold looks, and the soldiers were all talking among themselves. I didn’t want to be a third wheel, but I didn’t want to walk by myself and pout either.
So, as our sore feet returned to the endless pattern of marching, I trotted past everyone to the fore of the column and tentatively joined Peter’s side. He didn’t acknowledge me except for lazily arching his tail and turning one ear toward me.
“Is—” My voice came out sickeningly high-pitched, so I tried again. “Ahem—is this spot taken?”
“No one’s name is on it,” Peter said with the hint of a smile.
I matched his stride, and for a while we listened quietly to a pair of samurai arguing behind us about whose sword was sharper.
Then Peter asked, “Any idea where that came from back there?” In response to my confused look, he explained, “That poetry that you impressed our friendly tree spirits with?”
“Oh,” I mumbled. “That. Yeah, I don’t know…”
Peter’s smile stayed frozen on his beak, his silver eyes twinkling, but he didn’t say anything more. I followed his lead and fastened my eyes on the trail ahead with a firm determination.
We made camp that night off the trail in a lush nest of vegetation. I felt miserable as I nibbled at my watermelon, rubbing my scaly talons together, trying to relax my sore and cramped muscles. Wincing when I accidentally jabbed a claw into my palm, I stretched out and fought long and hard to fall asleep.
Chapter Twelve:
I Find Out My Wings Work
The next morning I was still very achy, but loathe to admit it. I had to remind myself that I was doing this for my friends. For Nikki. Answers, I thought, I need answers. I once more joined Peter’s side, and, in silence, we resumed marching after a quick breakfast of dried meat strips and nuts one of the warriors was packing.
After traversing nearly two miles in mutual silence, eavesdropping on a pair of Amazons chatting behind us about what the Rankers’ key might open, Peter casually asked me a question.
“How much of my books did you read, Jonathan?”
I was a tad taken aback and struggled to force my face into a serious expression before answering, “Everything.”
“How much have you taken to heart?”
“Everything.”
Peter made a contemplative noise in the back of his throat and shouted behind him, “Sergeant Flaherty!”
A stocky marine appeared beside us. He removed his hat to reveal a neat crew cut and waited politely to find out why he had been summoned.
“Keep the men in this direction. Make sure Kayle has everyone covered in back. Jonathan and I will return by evening.” Peter veered off the overgrown trail. The marine gave a snappy salute and took his place.
I ran to join Peter, grimacing every time my sore feet pounded the ground. “What’s going on?”
Peter was smiling at me. “We need to practice, son, for what lies ahead.” He started to lead me deeper into the jungle.
I followed reluctantly, stubbing my talons and paws on stumps hidden beneath a carpet of ivy and moss. “Yeah, but where are we going?” Was he taking me away somewhere to kill me? My steps faltered at the thought.
“Guess you’ll have to wait and see,” Peter called back. From his tone of voice, I could tell he was grinning.
Getting my dander up, I shouted back, “But why all the secrecy? Don’t you think I deserve some clarity?” I hurried to get closer to his side in case he wasn’t catching my drift. “I mean, any more being kept in the dark, and I’ll have an aneurism.”
Peter said, “I sure hope not. That would be terrible. Besides, you know what they say, actions speak louder than—”
“Than words, yeah, yeah…” I groused angrily, my low eagle brow furrowing over my flickering red eyes. Peter just threw back his head and laughed heartily.
In about ten minutes, I was able to see clear blue sky through the tree trunks ahead. Five minutes more, and we were out of the claustrophobic jungle and perched on a rocky cliffside.
I inhaled deeply of the fresh, salty air, eyes closed to the sun. An immeasurable drop below us, ocean waves slapped the sandy base of the cliff. I felt free and strong, high above the world.
Presumably, this cliff was an extension of the hill we had climbed back at the beach. Far to my left, it continued as far as my eagle eyes could see. It was an ominous marker to the long distance we had traveled. But to my right, the cliff gradually sloped down and broadened into a vast forest punctuated and ringed by snowcapped mountains.
“Is this an island?” I asked, my words almost tossed away by the fierce wind.
“In the same way that Australia is an island,” Peter said in a distracted way. “I’ve traveled far and still haven’t seen all of it.” He was studying the insides of his cream-colored wings, neatly straightening crooked feathers and flexing the powerful muscles. When he was done, he locked eyes with me and asked fiendishly, “Are you ready?”
I looked at him uncomprehendingly, a stupid smile still plastered on my beak. “What?”
Peter flapped his wings feebly. “Are you ready?”
I started to back off, my heart doing flips and my breath coming in short bursts. “Awwwwww—no!”
Peter gave me an oh come on look. “Jonathan, you’ll have to do it sometime, and this is the easiest way to teach you.”
“Fly?” I squeaked.
“Well, you’re a griffin, aren’t you? Ya got wings!”
I frowned at him, something that was becoming a habit, and fumed, “Alright, first of all, I am not a griffin, I am a kid, a hu-man kid! Second of all, I cannot fly. Just because these huge, feathery things pop out of my back, it doesn’t make me Orville!”
Peter grew more serious as I became closer and closer to losing it. He said gently, “There will be times when you will have to fly. It’s easy, it’s fun… You aren’t scared, are you?”
To be honest, it had been a dream of mine to fly someday. I squirmed and inched closer to the drop-off, completely terrified of it now that I was supposed to jump off it.
“Let me show you,” Peter said quietly.
I swallowed and looked over at him, sitting back on my haunches.
Peter backed about twenty feet away from the edge of the cliff. Then he pushed off his hind legs, the muscles tensing. He ran swiftly toward the edge, as graceful and powerful as a cheetah on the savannah. His wings opened at a measured pace as he calculated his distance from the jump. At the last minute, he placed his hind paws right on the edge of the cliff, stood up so that his upper body was suspended above empty space…and fell, just like that, with his wings clamped close to his sides.
“Peter?” I rushed over to where he’d dropped just in time to see him snap open his wings from where he had plummeted fifty feet down. Wind cushioned up beneath him, and he teetered a bit, but steadied and quickly rose up past me.
I gasped. It was an amazing sight to see: Peter’s immense wingspan, the sun dashing white zags on his dark feathers. On land, Peter had seemed aged, if not ancient, but in the air, he was transformed. A mythical beast of legend reborn.
Peter had said in one of his books that the griffin was king of the land (being part lion) and king of the skies (being part eagle). Watching him carve intricate arcs and pirouettes in the air, I began to believe it.
He spun to face me and dove down to land next to me, a look of peace etched deeply into his features. “Do you see?” he murmured.
I opened my beak to say something, closed it again, and twitched my head by way of an understanding nod.
He instructed, “Open your wings.”
I worked the muscles in my chest and back, and with a soft rustle, they spread wide. It felt like I had an extra set of arms, but they were heavier and fingerless and huge. For the first time, I examined the insides closely. They were a warm honey color with rich brown spots and pinions.
“Wow,” I breathed.
“Indeed,” Peter chuckled amiably. “Now let’s see you flap ’em.”
I began to swipe my wings up and down, a cloud of dust billowing up around my face. Over the loud whooshing sound, I heard Peter coughing and shouting, “Stop! Stop it!”
I slowed my flapping to a stop, hacking on the dirt and blinking it out of my third transparent eyelids.
“Only in cartoons do birds flap up and down,” Peter said, shaking his whole body free of grit. “In reality, you must paddle, pushing the air beneath and behind you like so…” He demonstrated by raising his wings and performing the motion slowly. I followed his example, and he complimented my success. The motions repeated themselves in my head: forward, down, and back, forward, down, and back.
Peter added, “If a thermal, that is, a cushion of air, suspends you so that you don’t have to flap at all, that is when you glide—stilling your wings and moving effortlessly.”
“Okay.” I had seen some of the birds of prey around my house glide before.
“When diving, as I was doing, fold your wings close to you. You have deflectors in your beak that will keep too much air from being pumped into your lungs at once, but it’ll still be a bit jarring the first few times. And always clean your feathers. I cannot stress that enough! Always. Or else one of these days you’ll try flying and your dirty wing feathers will be too messy and heavy to support you.”
I gulped and pinned that little note front and center on my mental bulletin board of things to remember.
“Now, let’s try it,” Peter encouraged softly.
I sighed and stared up into the sky as if for support. Peter’s voice came again; he had moved closer to one of my ear tufts.
“Jonathan, things like this take more than willpower. They take faith…”
I backed away from the ledge until my tail brushed against a tree trunk, then gathered myself together and lunged forward, running toward the drop-off. My heart was racing like it was trying to run away from the cliff; a numbing, surreal sense stole over my brain; my body was in a state of shock, fighting mind over matter in disbelief that I was actually going to hurl myself into the abyss.
This was it! I reached out my claws, digging them around the rocky ledge. Like a rabbit, I hunched my back legs forward on either side of my talons, bracing against the ledge while I pushed forward with my upper body. My talons were curled under my chest now, my haunches slowly extending, my body parallel to the sea so many leagues below. It was too late to pull back now.
My wings were half open, but now I reeled ’em back in close to my ribs. Without their levitating stability, I suddenly nose-dived, my lion paws dragged off of the nice, safe ground.
The sudden force of falling made me dizzy and weak. The wind ripped viciously at my face and talons. The water didn’t seem to be getting any closer, but I could tell by the rocky wall flashing past me how fast I was falling. My organs felt all bunched in my stomach, my mouth was dry, and my transparent eyelids were automatically working overtime, flashing over my rapidly drying eyes, which were being pressed back into their sockets.
I had a fleeting thought about how bad it would be for me to suddenly transform into a human right then.
Wow. This is not at all fun.
Someone shouted. I wrenched my head to the side and saw that Peter was free-falling right next to me.
“Open your wings!” he bellowed, the wind almost completely obliterating his voice.
Oh, yeah. Wings.
I struggled to stick them out but found that I couldn’t. Were they stuck? Did I still have them at all? I assumed I did and cried back, “I can’t!”
“You must, Jon! Fight your velocity! Spread them wide!”
I was feeling nauseous and developing a tiny headache, but I would take that over being crushed wafer thin by the water any time. So I forced my wing muscles around. It felt like fighting against ropes that bound my arms against me.
Finally, I had opened up my wings enough so that the air flew differently over them, and was able to gain full control again. Invigorated, I burst out my wings with a soft snap and my body was yanked roughly downward by my change in direction. It was painful, the wind sharply filling up my wings and straining at the muscles. I grunted and watched the rock wall begin moving down past me.
Warm air floated me up. I didn’t even have to move my wings. I stared down at my paws and drooping tail, then past them at the shrinking sea. The adrenaline kicked in, and energy raced through my blood and nerves. But now, something was happening: My wings shook—I wobbled side to side, losing support. The air pressed into uneven pockets under random areas of my wings, threatening to collapse them.
Once more, Peter floated beside me. “Flap now,” he said, looking relieved and surprised at how well I was doing so far.
I pushed down and successfully shot up. I could look over the jungle now, hovering around fifteen feet above the ledge from where I’d jumped. Wobbling again, I flapped and rose even higher,
so that the treetops seemed to blend into a large green quilt punctured by mountains and surrounded by water.
Curious, I moved up to where I could get an eagle-eye view of the land. I saw mostly forests and mountains, but through the tops of trees, I could glimpse lakes sparkling in the sun, dry and yellow-grassed meadows, and even what I thought were modern buildings. Smaller islands were speckled behind the mainland in the north, but they were either old volcanoes coated with black rock, or sloping, barren sand dunes.
I flapped higher, wondering if I was just imagining the air thinning. Where was that Peter when I—
“Straighten out your body, Jonathan! Start flapping down and back to right yourself.”
I did as suggested, having to dive down a few paces from the stratosphere, and was soon gliding and flapping in wide circles at a more comfortable altitude parallel to the ledge.
“Wow,” I gasped, a wide smile stretching the flexible corners of my beak. I felt more blissful than I ever had in my whole life. I could sail like this forever.
“That’s the only word I can think of to explain it too.” Peter laughed. He was loftily surfing a wave of air beneath me, first rising, then dipping in a U pattern.
Within the hour, I had shaped up to be a pretty decent flier. It helped that aviation was so addicting. Peter was tracking the warriors’ progress from the air, catching them through gaps in the tree branches. My wings were beginning to get tired, and I wanted to land, but I had a feeling that Peter had me up here for another reason. Plus, this was the perfect time to ask some questions that needed immediate answers.
A crushing blow suddenly barreled into my chest, sending a sharp ache bruising through my rib cage. The breath was squashed out of me, and my wings collapsed. I started to spiral crazily downward, black splotches melding in and out of my eyes. Wind whistled through my beak, wreathed through my feathers like grabbing fingers as I tumbled and twisted. It took a lot of effort, but I sucked in a deep breath, and the dots started to fade, replaced with a nauseating sight similar to what the world looked like from a high-speed carousel: a spinning blur of color and shapes. With a determined growl, I spread my wings and flapped up, regaining my balance.
