“He told me you thought you saw a gryphon,” I said cautiously. Brooks snapped at a sheep attempting to break for the tree line a few feet off the road.
“I was right! I had my boy out getting kindling and I’ve got markings now—on the northeast side of my property!”
I grimaced. That was the side that bordered our own property. “You haven’t had any losses, right?”
“Not as yet, but I expect it’ll happen any day now,” he all but wailed. “And me, short-handed as I am, I’ll be pulling double shifts until the season ends unless I pay for help. Where am I to get the funds for something like that?”
“I appreciate the warning, and I’ll let my father know. My brother didn’t say he saw any markings when I arrived, but we’ll check again in the morning.” I clasped arms with him in polite thanks. I winced; his grip was too tight. “When the gryphon sees our animals are well-guarded, it may well move off to the coast.”
“I’d have your father go out tonight and check,” Glenn insisted. “If you went out in the morning to find a gryphon napping in your tree, it’d be more than a disaster. You, or your brother.” He added the latter hastily.
Another sheep tried to move forward, and I gave Glenn a hasty wave. “Absolutely. I’ll tell him you made the suggestion. I must get the flock home now, and I’m sure you want to get back to your herd. I’ll see you in temple.”
“Of course, Taryn. You be safe, and I’ll see you at temple.” His smile looked strained as he turned to bolt off in the direction he had come from, and I pitied his horse.
He would likely come calling again before temple, as unpleasant a thought as that was. Still, I hadn’t lied. He had probably given us a warning that would save a sheep in the next month, and for that I was grateful. There were ways to deter a gryphon, and it was best to do them as soon as possible. If a gryphon was marking our territory as its own, we would all do best to quickly prove it had made a mistake. I took a moment to peer at the tall pines surrounding us. My stomach did a nasty flip, and I shook myself.
“Brooks, come-by.” Brooks, who had been towards the front of the flock, made his way clock-wise back to me. His movement caused the sheep he passed to move into a more orderly shape. When he reached the right side of the flock, I gave Hale a gentle nudge. “Brooks, walk on.” At that command, we moved forward.
Gryphons didn’t hunt at night. It was one blessing bestowed by their bird-like eyes, but dusk and dawn were fair game for them, and true darkness had yet to fall across the land. The red light of the setting sun filtered through the pines, casting a bloody glow on the white of the sheep, and Hale must have sensed my mood as she set the pace a hair faster than it had been before Glenn stopped us. Periodically I glanced at Brooks, gauging his mood, trusting his superior senses would pick up on a predator. He seemed attentive to his task, but not nervous.
When the barn and paddock came into view a half hour later, I spurred Hale a little faster as the road widened so I could reach the gate first. Using my crook, I hooked the latch and pushed my way through as Brooks drove the sheep in behind me. When I had left back through the gate, I secured the latch.
“That’ll do Brooks.” Brooks, who was in a stalking position by the sheep, glanced at me and then abandoned them to run to his water dish.
By the time the animals had been put away and seen to, it was solidly dusk, and the brightest light was the one shining out of the kitchen window in the house. It was too dark for gryphons, greater or lesser, but I knew that didn’t mean there weren’t other predators roaming the woods. I kept a firm grip on my crook and hurried from the barn to the house, shivering without my blanket to protect me from the chill of the evening.
The kitchen door creaked as I opened it, and my mother glanced up from her place by the cauldron on the fire. “Taryn.” She smiled warmly, setting down the wooden spoon she had been stirring with to come and embrace me. She was warm and she smelled like lye and baking bread. Her normal bun had loosened over the course of the day. She leaned back from me, hands on my forearms, her kind eyes—the gray-green eyes my brother and I had been passed, searched my face.
“How was watch? No, wait. Is something the matter?” Her brows drew together softly, as she pressed a warm, rough hand against my cheek.
I grinned ruefully. “I’m in the door two seconds!”
“Your mother is good at sniffing out trouble. That’s why I married her.” My father spoke from our small, round table where he sat next to Michael. Both were set up with a tankard of ale and a bowl of stew, but it didn’t look as though they had begun eating yet.
My mother released me to return to the fire. “Well, what sort of mother would I be if I couldn’t tell at a glance that something was amiss?” She served me a portion of stew into a wooden bowl. I held onto it even after I had taken my place to the left of Michael, allowing the warmth of the bowl to seep into my weather-roughened fingers.
“Well, I imagine you’d be a fair bit easier to live with,” Michael joked, and I grinned at him.
She let that one pass and paused in her questions to finish serving herself dinner. She brought that, and a plate of bread, to the table, with a pat of butter and a knife. The three of us each greedily grabbed for a slice, and lathered our pieces with the butter. Next, she brought the pitcher of ale from the counter, and a mug for me and her to the table. I poured for her as she glanced about, as if to make sure there was nothing she was forgetting. Finally, clearly deciding the table had no room for ought else, she took her own seat to the right of Father and turned her gaze back to me.
“So?”
“Michael told you that Glenn visited the field this week?” I asked.
Father looked up from the spoon which was halfway to his mouth; his eyes met mine with sharp focus. He was a tall, lean man, with dark gray eyes that missed little. Where my mother was soft he was angular, with blond hair that he wore cropped too short for the customary braids worn in our part of the mountains. He had let it grow long last winter, but in the summer, he shaved close, and it had yet to grow in.
“He mentioned Glenn running his mouth, yeah,” he said.
“Glenn met me, on the way home today. He was going full tilt down the main road. He said he was on his way to the field to warn me—he has markings, towards our western border, he says.”
Michael sucked his teeth and I glanced over at him. He was looking covertly at Father, and I would have bet decent coin he was hoping Father wasn’t assuming he had overlooked something as crucial as a gryphon marking.
“Great,” was all he said, before shoveling another bite of carrot and potato into his mouth. I did the same, chewing on a fatty bit of beef as my father mulled over this piece of news.
“We’ll need to do a thorough check of our land in the morning. Taryn that means you’re up at dawn with Michael and me.”
I checked a groan at the thought of a dawn wake-up two days in a row. It would only irritate him. It was important enough that it should irritate him.
“Did Glenn say if he had lost anything?” Mother asked, grabbing a second slice of bread and smearing it with the butter.
I dipped my own bread into my stew, and paused to answer before taking a bite. “I asked, and he said nothing yet, but you know, Glenn is in an absolute panic.”
Mother nodded. She finished chewing and swallowing her own spoonful, before she addressed father. “You should ask if he’ll let you check the markings—” Michael snorted, and she cast him a sour look. “Not because I don’t believe him. It’s just that Glenn has a habit of—”
“He has the habit of flying off the handle over nothing. Do you remember two years ago Wynny?” I ducked my head to hide my amusement, directed as much at my father’s nickname for my mother as it was towards his bash on Glenn.
“Raynard.” Mother could do this thing where she pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows so high that they almost touched her hairline.
“You saw the marks, Wynn,” he insisted, around a bite of stew. �
�A lesser gryphon more likely made them, or a stray cat.”
Mother’s mouth relaxed into a wry smile. “You should hear Gladys at the washing well these days.”
“Is she still gossiping?” I asked.
“On the contrary! She’s so blissful now that she’s with Robert she has nothing to say about anyone. I lost my most reliable source of intelligence when she remarried!”
“If intelligence is what you could call it,” Michael muttered.
“Hey, I like Gladys.” I kicked him lightly under the table. “She might have been a gossip, but at least she was smart enough to leave Glenn.”
“Yeah, after she bore him two sons, and a daughter,” Michael countered. “If she was so miserable, she should have left instead of wasting her time and his.”
“They’re all more than half grown now,” I pointed out. “She waited until they were all done with their schooling.”
“Exactly.” Father said this sternly. He reached into a pocket on his own harness and procured a jar of tobacco, and an ornate long-stemmed pipe. The bowl of the pipe was carved with five-petal flowers, and curling vines, much like my harness. He packed the pipe as he spoke. “You take care of your family. You make a commitment, you honor it as best you can.”
Mother rested a hand on his knee. He glanced up from his task in surprise, but when he saw her look he returned the smile. Embarrassed, I tipped ale down my throat, using the mug to block my view of the two of them making eyes at one another. I caught sight of Michael doing the same across the way from me, and when he saw me he crossed his eyes and stopped drinking long enough to stick out his tongue.
When dinner was finished, Father took some of the scraps out to Brooks and the rest of the dogs. Michael and I lugged the dishes out to the pump with a couple of rags and soap as Mother took the task of tidying the house before we tucked in for bed. Michael and I talked while we washed, trying to distract ourselves from how cold the water pouring from the pump was.
“You know that talk about family having to stick to one another was tripe. Gladys didn’t stay,” he said to me. Frustration laced his voice.
“Well, no, but she stayed as long as she needed to make sure the family would be ok. Plus, she’s still there for her kids, and like Mother said, she’s happier now she and Glenn are separated. That’s probably better for them.”
Michael snorted. “You can justify anything, if you think about it the right way.”
“I hate when the gryphons come down,” I told him, trying to change the subject as I scrubbed hard at the bread board. “The road is lined so thick with trees everywhere I have to go during the day, one could skulk right up to me and I wouldn’t know it.”
“Brooks would know. So would Hale,” he reminded me, without looking up.
I rolled my eyes. “All right, so they warn me. Then what? Am I supposed to fight a gryphon?”
That made him laugh. “That is something I’d like to see. You whacking at one of those great beasts with your crook—or trying to hit it in the eye with your little slingshot!”
“Hey! You’re not much better off. Which is another thing I worry about. You, Father, Mother, and me… We all go about our days on our own, save the animals. If something were to have happened to you on watch this morning while I was in town, I wouldn’t have known for hours.” My throat felt tight, and I stopped washing at that thought.
“Unless you got a twin sense of it,” Michael said, trusting I’d understand what he meant. He nudged me with his knee. “I want to go to bed soon, so don’t stop working.” I handed off the dish in my hand for him to dry and moved on to wash the next one. “Anyway, there’s not a gryphon in the world that could sneak up on Father, nor one that’s quicker than his trigger finger.”
This was true, Father was an amazing shot with a crossbow. We got to shoot sometimes, but not as often. Though I’d never ask for so expensive a gift, I couldn’t help but secretly hope a crossbow would be my birthing gift next year.
“Well what about Mother?” I asked stubbornly.
“Mother…” Now it was his turn to pause in his scrubbing.
I poked him with a sharp finger. “Keep on.”
He flashed me a sarcastic smile, and continued. “Mother, I never thought to be worried about in the past. Gladys and her daughter and youngest boy used to walk to town with her.”
“But Gladys lives in town now.”
“Right. I have to think Mother knows enough to stay safe though. She has lived here a bit longer than we have. Still, if you want, we can ask her if she wants you or me to walk to town with her in the mornings until the season is over.”
Part of me balked at this idea. That would mean getting up at dawn whether I had first watch or not, and when it snowed the trek into town was downright miserable. Like a chastisement, Father’s words from dinner played through my head. You take care of your family.
I nodded slowly. “I’ll do it. She’s getting older, and I’ve never seen her carry so much as a knife. Maybe she’s never had to think of it, or maybe she doesn’t want to ask it of us, but we should offer.”
We lugged the dishes back inside the house, carrying the bin between us. Mother was in the main room. It was the one closest to the front door, and where we spent our evenings, doing mending, and passing the time. Father was still out in the barn. He tended to dally out there, spending time with the animals before he turned in for the evening.
Together Michael and I put away the dishes, and then while he went to grab a pair of trousers that he needed to stitch up, I went on to join Mother. She was sitting in her rocking chair, the light of the lamps and the fireplace casting a warm glow on her as she hummed and knitted. I hesitated nervously, hovering at the edge of the sitting area.
“Mother?”
“Yes?” She was over halfway done with my skirt, and the wool draped across her lap, almost reaching the floor. She straightened her yarn as she waited for me to speak.
I spoke in a rush, “I was wondering if you wanted me to walk you into town in the mornings when you have work? I know you used to walk with Gladys, and I thought it might be lonely now. It might be nice to have company.”
Her smile deepened. “Taryn, are you worried your old mother is going to get eaten by a gryphon?” At my weak smile, she chuckled. “Well I can assure you I’ve never felt in danger walking the main road, even in gryphon season—the bigger ones don’t tend to go closer to town. Still, I know it worries your father as well.” Her gaze fell to her lap where one hand stroked the soft wool. She only contemplated for a moment before looking back at me. “I think that would be nice.”
“You’re sure?” Michael spoke from behind me, and I jumped. “I don’t know if you’ve encountered Taryn in the morning recently Mother, but she’s sort of a monster herself.”
I scowled at him. “I am no worse than you are! Just the sheep are your only witnesses.”
“I think we’ll get along fine. Come sit down you two, you’re hurting my neck.” We complied, taking our places on the long couch that sat against the back wall of the room. “Taryn, this might be a good thing. We’re so far out here, I feel like you don’t have much of a chance to spend enough time with the boys your age.”
“Such a loss,” Michael muttered under his breath, and I jabbed him with my elbow.
“It can get a little lonely with only Michael and the other animals to talk to,” I said sweetly. “But I spend enough time with them mother.”
“When I was your age I had my share of suitors,” Mother said, undeterred. “It’s important to know what you want in your partner, and you can’t learn that if you don’t talk to them.”
Michael scowled at the needle he was threading. “It’s not as though you’ll get much better conversation than what you get from Hale out of anyone in town.”
“You know Michael, it wouldn’t hurt you to come to town more often either.” Mother blithely ignored our picking. From the direction of the kitchen I heard the kitchen door open and shut wit
h a clunk. “Beth has asked about you the last two times I’ve seen her at the washing well.”
“I like Beth,” Father said as he joined us, stripping his outer coat off and hanging it on one of the hooks by the fire. “She’s smart too. I think she could give you a run for your money Michael.”
I tucked my lips between my teeth to keep from giggling. A glance at Michael killed that mirth though. He had not taken his eyes from his sewing, but his mouth twisted down at one corner.
“I’ll be right back.” I stood as I spoke and made my way to my room.
We were at a new moon, and though the stars shone brightly, my room was swathed in shadows. I lit the small lamp that sat on the nightstand by my bed; it sputtered and then shone steadily, casting relief on the small space. I looked around, trying to find something to putter about with.
As I had been gone all day my side of the fireplace was closed, and the room was chilly. Mincing on tiptoes, I went to the doors of my fireplace, and I opened them a shade so the heat could seep into my room. Under the crackle of the wood eating away at logs, I could hear Michael’s agitated voice, responding to my mother’s cajoling tone.
With a sigh, I resisted the urge to eavesdrop— I knew what they were arguing about. It was the same argument Michael and I had had not even a day ago, and it was the same argument that seemed to crop up once a week.
While it was true that I wasn’t trying very hard to find a potential match for myself, I also wasn’t opposing our parents in their quest to find me a suitable partner. Michael on the other hand… Even if he hadn’t voiced his urge to leave town to my parents yet, his mannerisms and his attitude towards people outside of our own family was telling. There had been a time when he had gotten along with the boys his age. He used to get little crushes on the girls in town. However, as his interests had changed, I had watched alongside my parents as he strayed away from those friendships, which he now determined—
Of Gryphons and Other Monsters (Taryn's Journey Book 1) Page 4
