by K Vale Nagle
The adult hissed in rage. Hatzel flapped her wings and landed a short distance away. The plan for dealing with a large monitor was to sneak up on it when it was asleep and kill it in one blow. Actually facing off against one was ill-advised. Being stronger was not always better when the opponent was venomous. She slashed out with her claws to get its attention and feinted towards its throat.
The monitor swung its tail faster than she could register and hit her square in the chest. She tensed and fell back a few feet. The front half had teeth, the back half was a whip. Perfect. This was why she never let the monitors in her hunting grounds get this large. She’d have to have a word with Merin if she could ever explain why she’d been in his territory without his knowledge.
The monitor moved closer, and Hatzel flew up to a low branch of a tree. It slammed the tree with its tail in annoyance. It could climb up after her, but she’d just fly to a new perch. It hissed and spat, but only enough to keep the saliva flowing. It wouldn’t do to bite with dry mouth and not get venom all over its target.
Hatzel weighed her options. She might be able to get the branch to fall on its head. It seemed pretty limber for a lizard, however. Maybe she could tire it out. Or convince it to go elsewhere. She looked back at its dead child. No, probably not.
She heard a crack and worried it might be her branch. Then she looked down and saw the monitor turning to look behind itself. Off in the distance, on his boulder, was Cherine, throwing rocks at it. The first one had skipped off the rocky ground near it. The second hit its flank. It hissed and turned around. It started to move towards him.
Hatzel jumped off the branch and this time the crack was the sound of the branch giving way and crashing to the ground. Caught between a rock to the face and the sound of a branch crashing to the earth, the monitor was a moment too slow to move out of the way. She landed on its back and bit down on its neck as hard as she could. It thrashed around, managing to catch her once or twice with its tail, but the jagged nature of her beak helped her hold on. It stopped moving.
“So…is that dinner?” Cherine rasped.
At some point during the scuffle, the monitor with the tendency to flee had circled around and absconded with the body of its sibling. That left Hatzel and Cherine to split the large one. She felt as hungry as he looked, but when she opened her mouth, her beak refused to close on the meat. Some diseases, once survived, gave the survivor a defense against them in the future. Others worked like wasp stings, deadlier with each recurrence. Even having pulled Cherine from the river and killed two monitors, she couldn’t make herself eat the lizard.
“Did you know that monitors aren’t actually venomous, they just have really bad germs in their mouths?” he said between mouthfuls. He had mistaken the reason for her hesitation.
She motioned towards the mother’s severed head with her beak. “You can clearly see the venom sacs.”
“What? Oh, yeah, I guess.” He seemed disappointed to have been proven wrong so quickly. The fact that he was well enough to show disappointment was heartening.
“Wait, so is this poisonous?” he asked. He didn’t stop eating but looked alarmed.
“No, it’s just…the prides were hit hard by the monitor plague. Among all the local prides, I was one of perhaps three gryphlets who survived.”
He nodded. “That’s when the university began its own research. I lost a brother. While the reeve’s hunting grounds claim they’re for turkeys, the few remaining birds attract monitors that are killed and processed for food. I started working at the butchery. Headmaster Neider, then just a scholar, came and taught us to cook and salt meat to keep it safe to eat. The next year, on a scholarship he arranged, I joined the university. That’s how I got assigned to the grasslands.”
“You’re a food scholar, then?” she asked.
“Yes, that’s right.”
“So, you were looking for new foods in the weald when you were caught and held prisoner? What did you do, steal some eggfruit from Merin’s hunting grounds?” Just mentioning eggfruit made her stomach grow. Eggfruit trees grew wherever light slipped past the redwood canopy. Its name came from its size and shape, which resembled that of goliath bird eggs.
“Oh, didn’t Triddle tell you?” he asked.
Hatzel rolled her eyes. Triddle had not been forthcoming on details. “He just said he needed help.”
“I’m surprised you were willing to risk betraying Merin.”
Her hackles rose. “I am not one of his pride.”
He looked closely at her for the first time, noting how the shape of her beak formed two saber-like fangs. “You’re muscular in the same way. Actually, I think you’re bigger than he is. I just assumed you were related. Who did you say you were again?”
“Hatzel.”
He took a moment and seemed to be reading through a mental guide of the weald. “Oh! I’m so sorry. You own the tiny strip of forest south of the Snowfeather Mountains, between the taiga and the grasslands.”
She used the same tone she normally saved for scolding gryphlets. “No one owns the weald. But yes, the section with the best ground parrots and access to clean water.”
“I didn’t mean to offend.”
“You are terrible at being rescued. Of course, I end up with the rude opi. I bet Zeph is having more fun with Kia.”
“Kia!” Cherine said. “Is she okay? Did she come looking for me?”
Hatzel filled him in on what she knew, the little she’d already told Triddle and Xavi. “So that brings us back around: why were you prisoner?”
Cherine preened at his muddy feathers, realizing for the first time that the tip of his beak was broken. “I’ve been out here helping raise capybaras.” Her eyes showed no recognition to the word capybara, so he continued. “The rodents about twice the size of a gryphon that graze on the grasslands.”
“Oh, the herds.” She thought of how she’d describe them to another gryphon. “The large, chunky squirrels.”
“Yeah, that’s about right. We’ve been importing them to feed the eyrie. It’s growing too fast. There’s only so much meat you can raise when a city is growing up instead of out. We tried keeping goliath birds like the other eyrie, but that didn’t work out.”
Hatzel recalled the stampede of goliath birds that crashed through the weald years ago. “So Merin’s pride stole the herd squirrels and kidnapped you at the same time? They’re behind the massacre at the grasslands?”
“Yes. No. Sort of. So, they did kidnap me and—Wait, what massacre at the grasslands? Are my capybaras okay?”
She chewed on some mint growing from a crack in the boulder, careful to avoid the red fern next to it. She needed a clear head. Her grandfather had complained about the squirrels first appearing when he was a fledgling. The prides would not be happy to find out the furry animals wandering the grasslands were just incredibly large squirrels. Gryphons and opinici both liked being the only fuzzy thing for miles. It’s why they didn’t get along with each other.
“Zeph said he found a lot of blood and no herd,” she said at last.
“Did he find my journal? Merin didn’t have it. I thought I left it in the grass by the herd.” She shook her head, and he sighed. “I put it down because I’ve been watching opinici in ranger harnesses wander into the forest all season long. Most of them are Crackling Sea opinici who showed up to serve Reeve Brevin last year. They’ve been carrying crates, not easy to do over long distances. They’ve been hiding the crates in the forest along the borders between prides, in the grey areas gryphons avoid. I thought maybe it was related to agriculture, but when I asked the university if they’d share their data with me, the headmaster’s assistant said he didn’t know what I was talking about. So, I went out to find the crates on my own.”
Hatzel bristled a bit at the thought of things being hidden in the weald. None of the hunters had mentioned it, but Merin’s volatility over borders meant both of their prides gave each other a wide berth, creating a no-gryphon-zone around each hunting grou
nd. The large monitor had likely been nesting in the same safe area the rangers were using.
“What did you find?” she asked.
“I opened one up, and I think it’s saltpeter.”
She shrugged at him. First capybara, then saltpeter. Like all opinici, he was full of words she’d never heard.
“One of the scholars, Felicio, found it while searching for new caves. If you add a small amount of heat to it, it explodes.”
“I don’t get it,” she said.
“I don’t, exactly, either. But I think you could use it to start and spread several fires at once in the forest. I had a flint and tinder I use sometimes while watching the herds. I wanted to be sure, so I took some of the powder and, well, it’s saltpeter all right.” He held up a talon that was scorched black.
“We need to get you to a medicine gryphon.” She just remembered why they’d come out this way instead of going back to the nesting grounds, other than the fact that she didn’t want Merin to find Cherine there. She prayed Xavi had taken charge in her absence. He was smart enough to deflect questions if someone came looking for her.
“No. I mean yes, but I need you to know that I didn’t know what was going on. I still don’t know for sure. But Merin’s gryphons were watching me. When they saw what happened, they took me prisoner. They didn’t know that I was just finding the crates. They thought I was with the rangers.”
The redwood trees finally gave way to the rocky path leading up to a set of caverns that had once housed the gryphlets dying of the monitor plague. Hatzel had made friends with one of the two other survivors, a taiga gryphlet who’d lived atop the mountains that sealed the eyrie and weald against the ocean.
Seeing them grow to be so close, their prides had hoped that they’d pass along the gene that gave them resistance against disease. With his beautiful white plumage and black spots, she’d been more than happy to try, but it looked like the disease had left them both sterile.
The thought of bringing Cherine to a place that meant only sickness and death to her was upsetting, but she knew the entire cavern had been scoured with fire, and it’d been, well, nearly her lifetime since the last outbreak. She paused her climb and listened. He was still breathing, but no longer awake.
She pressed on. Her unfed body threatened to give out with Cherine slumped atop her, but they made it to the caves where the medicine gryphons lived. As she dropped him at the cave mouth, a familiar voice greeted her from above.
“You two make a cute couple,” Zeph teased.
“Skulking about?” Hatzel asked. “Did you track the missing capybaras here? Or did you get that poor, helpless opi girl hurt?”
He bristled. “I don’t know about any capybaras, but I got tired of eyrie hospitality. Especially the food. So much salt.”
She preened some of the salt off his face. “Are you injured?”
He hadn’t had time to clean up since the guards. Blood speckled his fur. “No, I’m fine. Tired.” He noticed for the first time that she was shaking. “Are you okay?”
“I just need something to eat and a chance to rest. There was only monitor meat, so I let him have it. He’s in worse shape than either of us.”
Zeph lowered himself in front of her and she slid Cherine onto his back. Cherine was larger than some of the songbird opinici, but compared to even a small gryphon like Zeph, he lacked the weight of muscle. Cherine’s golden wings wilted down Zeph’s sides, hiding the gryphon from view. “You go rest. I’ll bring you something tasty after he’s settled. Oof, did you have to feed him? What did he eat, the entire monitor?”
She flicked a pebble at Zeph to stop his complaining.
As they passed the arches and entered the cavern, the sounds of an opinicus crying out came from farther down the cave.
“Kia?” Cherine awoke and tried to stand up.
“Oh, parrot scat,” Zeph said. “He weighs more when he’s awake. Who is he?”
“He’s our missing opinicus.” Hatzel shook her head when Zeph started to open his beak. “I’ll explain later. Let’s get him inside before we attract the wrong sorts of attention.”
Zeph ran after Cherine, who fell into the room.
“Kia, are you—Oh. Who are you?” Cherine asked.
Orlea looked up, but she seemed more concerned with the gryphons working on her wings than with the strange new opinicus. If he’d been wearing a harness instead of mud, she might have been concerned he was from the Reeve’s Guard or rangers.
“Or…lea,” she managed between gasps.
One elderly gryphon, her eyes unfocused, monitored three younger apprentices who worked on Orlea’s wings. Like most medicine gryphons, she’d come from the Feathermane Pride. Her eponymous mane of feathers dragged along the ground when she walked.
“Please wait over there.” Her voice was honey on bark. “Hatzel, Zeph, if you would get her clean?”
“I’m a him,” Cherine protested.
“It’s tough to tell with opinici,” the medicine gryphon said.
“It’s really not,” he began, but Zeph and Hatzel moved him to a raised stone across the room. The cave was lit by a fire tended by an apprentice. The apprentice, still a fledgling, was covered in a greasy mixture to keep from catching fire himself.
“Why does a healer live so far from the nests?” Cherine asked Zeph.
“She doesn’t like gryphons stopping in with their hunting wounds,” Zeph speculated before going off to the larder to find food. There were some parrots in the corner wrapped in leaves, preserved by their own fat and marked with feathers to identify the meat.
Cherine looked confused.
“Ever since her eyes started to go, she prefers to train rather than treat,” Hatzel added.
Zeph returned with a parrot. Hatzel managed a few bites before joining Zeph in his attempts to clean the mud from Cherine’s feathers. Cherine looked embarrassed to be preened by two gryphons. He was ticklish and kept fidgeting.
“Who is Orlea?” Hatzel took another bite of the preserved parrot, but all she tasted was the mud she’d preened from Cherine.
“And what happened to Kia?” Cherine asked.
“When we arrived at the eyrie, Kia went off with Reeve Brevin. I was given lodging, but there was some kind of anti-gryphon mob outside, so I ducked out early and came back. I found Orlea in a poacher’s trap. Her wing was broken, so I brought her here. I don’t know what happened to Kia after we parted.”
Cherine tried to click his beak, realizing again that the tip had been broken.
Hatzel gave Zeph a look, but Zeph shook his head. Not in front of the opinicus.
“You’re looking pretty clean,” Zeph said. “Let’s go find some drinking water and food for you.”
“Oh, we had monitor,” Cherine mumbled. His energy seemed to be linked to his chances of seeing Kia. “It was good, if unseasoned. Did you know that mountain monitors have venom sacs? Water would be nice.”
Zeph nodded and motioned for Hatzel to follow him. As they left, they could hear Cherine saying “Do you know you’re covered in grease?” to the fire keeper.
“I can see why Triddle and him got along so well,” Hatzel muttered.
Outside the cave, Zeph opened his beak to talk, but Hatzel spoke first.
“I think they’re going to blow up the weald.”
Zeph blinked. “What?”
Hatzel’s ears were down. “Cherine was tracking several opinici. He said he saw dozens of teams take crates into the forest. They have this saltpeter stuff in them that explodes.”
“Salt…peter?” Zeph asked. “The crates I found smelled salty and like bat guano. They were bringing more crates through the eyrie. Oh! The eyrie. Look, things are not good there. They’re producing tons of food, but it isn’t getting to the poorer opinici.”
Hatzel tilted her head to the side.
“I saw starving chicks fighting over squirrel meat,” he continued. “Orlea hadn’t eaten in days, and the rangers were going to kill her for poaching. Kia
tried to warn me about something, but I don’t know what. Then I found tons of opinici who think that we’re stealing their food. There’s talk of expanding the grasslands. I thought that they might try to push into the weald a bit more, but what if they plan on burning down the forest?”
Zeph socialized with other prides and the eyrie more often than anyone else Hatzel knew, but he’d always taken a paws-off approach to the squabbles about hunting grounds. She suspected it was because he hadn’t been born in the weald. Until his mother’s passing, he’d gone to visit her every summer in the taiga. Afterwards, he’d redoubled his hunting efforts but still hadn’t concerned himself with who was in charge or where their decisions were taking him. It was why Xavi served as Hatzel’s second-in-command and not Zeph. Zeph was capable but feared interfering with the lives of others.
“They could wait until we left for the winter. We’d come home to nothing,” she said. The harsh winters had forced them to use caves along the weald’s edge or risk freezing. Some prides had cave systems in the forest. She wasn’t sure how they’d fare if the entire forest burned. Even now, she found herself thinking of all the underbrush that should have burned away before now. The redwood forest thrived on small fires, but with a wildfire large enough, she wasn’t sure anything living in the forest would survive except for the trees.
Zeph shook his head. “I don’t think they plan to wait that long. I think they want to burn the forests down with all of us in them. When I talked with an opi from the Crackling Sea Eyrie—long story, it’s across the taiga somewhere—he let slip there are no gryphons where he’s from anymore. What if they killed them? When was the last time we talked with the prides outside the weald?”
It took her a few moments to remember. “We talked with your kin,” he bristled but hopefully knew she’d meant ex-kin, “not long ago. Last year, I think. Maybe two years. Xavi spotted one of their scouts patrolling the skies along the taiga’s edge, but whoever it was didn’t come near enough to say hello. Otherwise, I haven’t seen anyone from the kjarr pride since I was a fledgling. Even then, it was several bog refugees who decided they’d rather be fisherfolk. I can’t even tell you what prides exist past the bog. We have a lot of room to spread out here in the weald. We’ve never needed to travel. Really, if it weren’t for the sickness, I don’t think we’d even know there were non-weald gryphon prides out there.”
