The Griffin's Feather (Dragon Rider 2)

‘After betraying us first, you mean?’

Brownies can bear a grudge for a long time. Sorrel would never forget that the homunculus had once served her dragon’s worst enemy, even if Twigleg had helped them to defeat him in the end. Nettlebrand… anything made of gold always reminded Ben of him. The man-made monster who had killed thousands of dragons and swallowed Twigleg’s eleven brothers. Griffins couldn’t be half as bad… could they?

Firedrake made his way out of the trees and spread his wings. Ben clung to the spines on his back as the dragon rose into the air. Yes, he would even miss Sorrel. In fact he would miss her very much. The heart was a strange thing. As the dragon climbed higher, Ben felt sure, for a moment, that his own heart would break with joy. But he knew from experience that hearts are remarkably resilient in sorrow and joy alike.

CHAPTER FIVE

The Only One of his Kind

You are who you choose to be.

Ted Hughes, The Iron Man

When Ben returned from his flight on Firedrake’s back, the others were already eating supper. As usual, Twigleg sat at a little table beside Ben’s plate. Hothbrodd had made it specially for the homunculus, like the tiny chair he was sitting on (and the little house on Ben’s bedside table). Barnabas was talking to Tallemaja, their Swedish cook, whose reed-green hair showed that her mother was a huldra. Ben couldn’t hear what they were talking about, but he felt sure it was provisions for a journey. He knew the determined expression on Barnabas’s face. They would be going in search of griffins.

Hothbrodd had given MÍMAMEIÐR’s dining table the claws of a lion, but this evening Ben saw them as a griffin’s hind legs. The table, like everything that Hothbrodd made, could grow or shrink to whatever size was wanted – a very important ability in MÍMAMEIÐR. At breakfast it was usually just right for the Greenblooms and Twigleg’s table (which reacted indignantly if any nisse or impet ventured to sit at it). But this evening there were several guests eating at it too: twelve of the Spanish goblins known as duendes, three woodland spirits of the Green Man type from Holstein, two trolls who were Hothbrodd’s cousins, and an albatross who had brought Gilbert Greytail some information he needed for a map. More curses than usual were uttered in the kitchen, because naturally these visitors all needed very different kinds of food. It wasn’t easy to put the right meals on the table in MÍMAMEIÐR, but Tallemaja had eleven nisses to help her, as well as two firemanders and a six-armed Nepalese mountain brownie.

The atmosphere, as always, was relaxed. None of the guests seemed to notice how anxious the master of the house was looking, and Ben was too deep in his own thoughts to realise that Twigleg was very quiet. This evening was the three hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the fateful day when Nettlebrand had eaten his eleven brothers, and on that anniversary Twigleg’s longing for the company of someone like himself was always particularly strong.

Three hundred and fifty years, yet he couldn’t stop hoping that there was still another homunculus somewhere in the world. After all, in the Middle Ages many alchemists had tried to create artificial life. But with every lonely century that passed, Twigleg’s hope burned lower, like the flame of a candle.

It wasn’t easy for anyone to be the only one of his kind, and it was particularly hard on a homunculus because he was an artificial being. Of course, now he had Ben and the Greenblooms, but there were some things he couldn’t explain even to them. And often he didn’t even try, for fear that what he thought and felt was as strange as the way in which he had come into this world! Ben and Barnabas, to be sure, knew how he longed for another homunculus, and kept sending FREEFAB scouts in search of one, but with no luck so far.

Twigleg himself spent many nights on the Internet, looking for news of tiny men and women, but he never found anything but badly faked pictures of sprites and elves. Maybe it would be better to reconcile himself once and for all to being the only surviving homunculus.

Ben put some of his scrambled egg on the tiny plate, and Twigleg’s heart melted with love. Who needed people of his own kind if

he had friends like this? Think of the Pegasus eggs, Twigleg, he told himself sternly. Find out more about griffins, in case your master really does set off in search of them with Barnabas. But when one of the woodland spirits drinking forest soup told him about a video on the Internet showing a little man as small as a grasshopper, he forgot all his good resolutions. When Ben asked if he’d like to go and inspect the stable with him and Barnabas, Twigleg murmured an excuse and hurried off to his computer.

But the video didn’t show a homunculus, only a human being very amateurishly reduced in size.

CHAPTER SIX

Father and Son

The heart of a father is Nature’s masterpiece.

Abbé Prévost, Manon Lescaut

Hothbrodd had prepared a stable for the Pegasus and his unborn foals right behind the house. When Ben and Barnabas came in, several woolspinner oaklings were just pulling the last threads through the padding they had made to line the inside walls. Ben thought the oaklings were rather weird. They looked like big-bellied spiders with human heads, but Hothbrodd talked to them as happily as he did to the oak trees where they lived. The silvery down mixed with the straw on the floor had been donated by an Arctic chattergoose whom Barnabas had saved from being stuffed, and a dozen Finnish firemanders added to the comfortable warmth. Hanging over the stable door were two of the camouflage lamps developed by Ben’s teacher James Spotiswode to make fabulous creatures look like domestic animals. In their light, the Pegasi would look like ordinary horses to any unexpected visitors.

‘Well done, Hothbrodd!’ said Barnabas as the troll picked woolspinner oaklings off the walls as carefully as if he were collecting butterflies. Hothbrodd looked around and nodded, as if he could only agree with Barnabas.

‘I’ll go and feed the oaklings,’ he said. ‘Spinning makes them very hungry. Keep an eye on those firemanders so that they don’t set the straw alight. And chase them out before the eggs arrive.’ Then he strode away.

Barnabas crouched on the bed of down and straw, and examined the walls, which were now covered with woollen cobwebs. ‘Vita says the stallion isn’t eating,’ he said.

‘I’m sure Holly Undset will change that,’ said Ben, sitting down too. ‘Remember the water horse that wouldn’t eat? It was half dead when we pulled it out of the fjord, but two visits from Undset, and soon it got its appetite back and swam right over the fjord with Guinevere on its back!’

Barnabas nodded. ‘So it did. Thanks for reminding me. I only wish we could tell Undset more about Pegasi! No one disputes that they were born from the blood of a Medusa, but even I don’t know much more about them, in spite of all the years I’ve been studying them. They’re still shyer and more suspicious than ordinary wild horses, and they can be very dangerous if they think there’s any threat to them. We should be glad if Ànemos will let Undset examine him. It’s little short of miraculous that Vita managed to persuade him to come here. Very likely he agreed only because he’s still numb from the loss of his partner.’

Behind them, a few fungus-folk were smoothing down the straw for the Pegasus nest. Four of them looked like walking fly agarics, the other two like button mushrooms with arms and legs. The fungus-folk made no secret of their dislike of human beings, but they eagerly mucked out the stables of MÍMAMEIÐR because the dirty straw was very useful to them in their work of raising mushrooms. Fungus-folk, mist-ravens, hedgehog-men – many fabulous creatures from the surrounding forests worked at MÍMAMEIÐR in exchange for food, clothing, or accommodation. It made it easier for them all to survive, particularly in winter.

Ben pulled one of the silvery goose feathers out of the straw and stroked its shimmering down. ‘Do you know what a griffin’s sun-feather looks like?’ he asked Barnabas.

‘They’re larger than your hand, and look as if they were made of pure gold. All the same, they’re said to be as light and soft as the goose feather you’re holding. Sounds like magic, don’t you think?’

Yes, it did.