In the Night Garden

My mother held out her massive paw and relinquished the snowy egg into the hands of the strange-mouthed woman, whose blank face showed nothing. She held it for a moment, as if measuring the heft of the beryl, and then, without warning, she opened the mouth in her belly and swallowed my sister whole.

Mother and I howled together in rage and betrayal, and we lunged at the little woman, blue cub and crimson dam. But Giota held up her hands, her eyes flashing warnings no mouth could utter. Her voice was choked by the egg, and it took all her strength to speak around it.

“Giota has not hurt the egg! How do you expect a woman to quicken an egg if not in her belly? I will carry it until it is ready to hatch—alone of all Griffins it will be born of woman, not of hen, not of lioness. See? Already it has begun to grow! Ah, my jaw! Have no fear, Giota is a good house for your baby.”

Indeed, her belly had swelled, and her mouth now stretched over a little paunch, a firm moon-shaped bulge that increased in size even as we watched her, in mixed horror and hope. She patted the bird-swell with satisfaction.

“Giota is hungry. You must feed us until the egg is ready to crack.”

And so my mother swept down from the turrets of the Basilica each day to hunt for her surrogate, bringing her strips of nameless meat and branches dripping with fruit. I worked the meat around the corners of the egg, into her throat. I trickled water past the shell into her parched belly. She ate a horrifying amount of food—my mother could not keep her full. From dawn to eventide she ate, and grew, and ate again. After a single day she could no longer speak. After a week she could not walk. But while my mother combed the city for sweetmeats, Giota and I played in the strange nursery of the many-towered, many-branched church roof—she tousled my fur and groomed my feathers, leaning weakly against the spires. I picked flies from her hair with my beak. I was sorry she could not wrestle with me, but her belly made her tired, and I did not want to hurt the chick inside. A baby Griffin is not small—I was already the size of a young horse, and before long, the paunch of Giota’s stomach had grown so massive she could not move at all, and her mouth was pulled into a continual grimace by the growing flesh. She never cried out in pain, and she was always ready to stroke my tail. I was sorry she could not play anymore, but I lay down and let her prop herself up against my flank where the feathers meet the fur—a thing which is almost never done between Griffins and humans, even humans as inhuman as Giota. But I did not know about propriety then. I knew only that I loved Giota, and inside her was my sister, and I wanted her to be comfortable.

Finally a day dawned when Giota was so large that her belly dwarfed the rest of her body, as though she had become a snail, and her shell was made of skin. She gave one long sigh, and the mouth crowning her monstrously stretched womb gaped open further than I could have thought possible. I admit that I turned away from the sight—I was a child, and easily disgusted. But I peeked through my feathers and saw an enormous white egg emerge from Giota, perfect and round, its color no longer sallow and opaque but lustrous as a pearl, shot through with delicate blue veins of cobalt and amethyst.

My mother crowed and nuzzled the egg tenderly, rubbing her body over it to give the gem her scent. She clucked and preened in delight, and as she wrapped her long rose-colored wings around her egg, a deep cracking sound filled the windswept towers. The t

op of the orb split, much as Giota’s belly had split, and my sister Quri emerged, pure white, blinking her deep black eyes at the sudden sun.

She pecked her way out of the shell with an almost dainty fastidiousness, and my mother, seeing that she had produced a daughter and that the race of Griffins would survive, began to weep in relief, her golden tears dripping onto the dome of the Basilica and mingling with the painted silver stars. My sister fluttered her pale wings and stumbled from the wreckage of her egg into Mother’s wings. I crooned and cleaned the last of the yolk from her feathers with my beak. We were a family, happy and whole.

Into this new nest came Giota, who extended her hand and gingerly stroked her adopted child’s fur. We had, of course, forgotten her entirely in our bliss. She was whole, as well, and showed no sign of the strange birth, save that her belly was worn and loose, like any woman who has just given birth. Her weary mouth smiled.

“Giota has done well,” she said roughly. “Griffins will live, and keep their gold. For a while, anyway.”

My mother turned to the little Witch and enfolded her entirely in her wings, an embrace I never saw her grant again until the night she died, when she held my sister and me thus. When she pulled back, both mothers were weeping.

It was much later that Giota became the Anchorite of Shadukiam, and wove a dress from her hair. My sister was with her the day Giota forged her chain—she helped her fix it to the Basilica wall. Since our mother was killed, as she knew she would be, by an Arimaspian Prince, Giota has been the beloved friend of my sister and me—though she and Quri have always been the closer pair. They share the womb bond, and I cannot touch that, born as all Griffins but one are, from egg and never flesh.

Alone of flightless things, Giota is loved by the Griffin. We miss her, both of us. We miss her so.

I WAS UNIMPRESSED BY THE GRIFFIN’S DISPLAY OF sentiment. But Chayim had tears in his eyes, and the two were clearly tight as a King and his eye over the memory of this village Witch.

“Jin, the Anchorite must have known you would re member her; she must have meant for you to help me. Give me your talon, so that I may kill the Yi that possesses my love and give her peace. I beg you—take it from your hind paw, so that you are still fierce, but give me a talon!”

Jin cocked his head to one side, for a moment ridiculously like a chicken contemplating strewn corn in a yard. “Why should I sever a piece of my own body so that you can borrow it? I do not grow new talons if one is ripped from my footpad. Would it not be simpler for me to carry you on my back to Shadukiam? I will kill your Yi for you myself—a claw through the eye is easy enough. And I will see Giota again—my heart longs to see how long her dress has grown.”

The Monopod leapt to his foot and shouted his assent over the howl of the mountain wind. The two were quite prepared to disembark at that very moment, without a thought for me, who had carried the selfish cripple all the way to the summit! I cleared my throat loudly, and both fools turned to stare at me, as though I had suddenly appeared in a puff of magic smoke. For a moment the three of us simply stood, blinking stupidly.

Finally, Jin—for I suppose, since I know the mangy bird’s name, I should use it—rose to his full height and shook his feathers clean of gold fibers from his nest. He was larger than I had suspected, dwarfing the elephants I had killed with my hunting mates, and his feathers were so blue they seemed to leech the color from the sky.

“Take it from the nest, Arimaspian dog. Take it from the nest and I will not stop you. But swear to me that you will never return to the Red Mountain, and that your people will never again trouble me for my gold. Swear it on your Ocular, on your rheumy, stinking World-Eye, and you may have my nest.”

I smiled, beautifully, and my teeth glistened in the sun.

“I swear it by the Ocular and the World-Eye: Neither I nor any of my race will come near to you again.”

Jin nodded curtly and seized Chayim by the grimy collar of his vest and swung the poor man onto his broad turquoise back. Snorting in derision, he leapt from the peak and I was left alone, with Chayim’s ecstatic farewells echoing in the fierce wind.

I knelt and began to collect the glittering straws of the Griffin’s nest, but my mind was full of the White Beast, Quri, and visions of my sons festooned in her gold.

OLUWAKIM GRINNED HUNGRILY AT ME.

“This is where we steer your ship now—to the White Beast in the center of the Boiling Sea, the Searing Sea, the last of all the Griffin, and we will take all the gold we need. I will forge a new Ocular for my heir and we will have victory, finally, over those not blessed by the World-Eye.”

Sigrid sat back, stunned. She pulled nervously at the frayed ends of her hair.

“What happened to Chayim? Did he and Jin kill his Yi? I hear the Yi are terrible creatures—they have never come to Ajanabh, thank all the Stars in the sky.”

The King of the Arimaspians shrugged impatiently. “When I forged my Ocular in the fires of Ob, I glanced towards Shadukiam—out of curiosity, no more—and saw the rotting body of his Tova safe in the earth. I suppose they must have done as they planned. It matters nothing to me what a chicken and a cripple accomplish. Jin is dead—this I saw as well, with some satisfaction. Chayim I have not bothered to seek out again. Only the White Beast matters. Only the gold.”