Of Witches and Wind

To Angela, Dana, Ems, Kaitlyn, Katie, Martha, and Will—the friends who made middle school awesome

ou would think, if you were battling ice griffins, you would want your best fighters on your side. Or at least someone with experience. These creatures—half bald eagle, half snow leopard—weren't exactly a picnic. Most kids could avoid their giant hooked beaks, the talons on the feathery front legs, and the claws on the furry hind legs, but what you really needed to worry about was their breath. Each griffin could breathe out air so cold that it would freeze puddles into ice slicks under your feet.

But the eighth graders wanted to fight this flock all by themselves.

The ice griffins herded them together in front of the soccer goal. If an eighth grader tried to stab one, the griffin just flapped its wings a couple times and dodged into the sky. Our guys were completely trapped.

“Wow. This is going to end so well,” I said.

“We should really follow the Director's orders,” said Lena, my best friend. “You know, keep looking.”

“Just a sec. Seeing this gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside,” said Chase, my other best friend. His dad, Jack, a big-deal warrior, kept track of how many dragons, griffins, and trolls Chase slayed on every mission. So getting demoted to backup was
harder on him than it was on most of us seventh graders.

We all attended Ever After School, a program for fairy tale Characters-in-training, which met every weekday after school let out. We would all survive our own Tale someday, but in the meantime, we trained. Sometimes we even went on missions to make sure magical creatures didn't attack any innocent bystanders. Usually, that meant fighting dragons or ice griffins sent to kill some Character EAS hadn't discovered yet.

Like now. Earlier this afternoon, the Director of EAS had received a report that ice griffins had attacked an all-girls boarding school on Lake Michigan, and she'd given the eighth graders the mission. We lowly seventh graders were just supposed to find the new Character who was under attack.

Seniority was stupid.

A roar thundered across the field. The lion head of the chimera, the flock's three-headed captain, had given an order. The griffins stopped herding, but it didn't matter. The eighth graders were completely surrounded. The snake head wiggled a little, another signal—three griffins shrieked straight at the ground. The puddle underneath them turned to ice, and suddenly the tight knot of warriors twisted and wobbled like they were all simultaneously trying on roller skates for the first time.

I groaned. This was actually painful to watch.

Normally, some people from the boarding school might have come out to investigate all this noise on their soccer field, but we were lucky. Lake Michigan was extremely foggy. We only caught a glimpse of their brick buildings every few minutes. If any students or teachers heard all this shouting, then they probably just thought someone was having an extra-epic soccer game. I wasn't sure what they would think of all the roaring, shrieking, and bleating.

Two eighth graders slipped and landed facedown on the ice.

The chimera's goat head bleated. A half dozen griffins leaped into the air and swooped down at their victims, talons and claws outstretched. A few eighth graders screamed.

“Can we help yet?” Chase yelled at Hansel, EAS's sword master. He was also our chaperone for this mission, but, lounging by the bleachers, he didn't look too concerned that the eighth graders were losing.

“Bryan, you're the smallest, fastest, and tastiest. Use that to your advantage!” Hansel shouted. The eighth grader whose Tale had turned him into a fawn darted out of the ring. He squeezed between two griffins and cantered as fast as his hooves could carry him. The walking, talking venison was obviously too snackworthy for three griffins to resist. They broke rank and swooped after him, despite the chimera's protesting roars, bleats, and hisses. The eighth graders started fighting their way out.

In all the commotion, one eighth grader in a bright red blazer was too busy not slipping to get his spear up. Seeing the opening, an ice griffin closed its talons over his shoulders and lifted him bodily away from his classmates.

“Crap!” Chase said, and Lena gasped and clutched my arm. My hand closed over my sword hilt, like that would help.

“Go after Ben,” Hansel told us, pointing. The kid in red screamed as the griffin carried him across the field toward Lake Michigan. “Make sure he doesn't drown.”

And so we were demoted to lifeguards.

We sprinted forward before we lost Ben in the fog. Lena pulled out in front. The grass under our feet gave way to sand. We scrambled down a dune toward the shore.

Ben yelled again.

“Poor sucker,” Chase said. “His second day at EAS and he gets kidnapped by an ice griffin.”

The kidnapper in question glided straight past the beach and over the lake.

“We can't follow them over water!” Lena cried.

The fog was thicker here. All we could see now was a silhouette of ten-foot wings and kicking legs. Plus one long pointy thing. “Ben! You still have your spear! Use it!” I said.

“Aim for the wing joints!” Then Chase added, much more quietly, “And hope you don't break your neck hitting the lake.”

I didn't think of that. Maybe he hadn't heard—

Ben grabbed his spear with both hands and jerked it upward into the feathery chest. The ice griffin shrieked and released him. I gulped hard, watching Ben drop. I hated heights more than most people.

“He has a better chance of surviving that fall than—” Lena winced, interrupted by a huge splash. Ben was in the water. The fog made it impossible to see exactly where he fell in. “—the griffin taking him back to her nest.”

“Ben!” I said. We sprinted across the sand to the water. “Ben! Shout back if you can!”

No answer. I put a finger on my nose and glanced at my friends. I didn't want to be the one who went in after him. It was cold here.

Lena caught on, her finger on her nose. “Not it!”

“Awesome. Thanks, guys.” Chase kicked off his sneakers.

He was moving so slowly. I'd seen him muzzle dragons faster than he was unbuckling his sword belt. “Ben could drown, you know. If he's unconscious,” I said.

“Nah. He probably just had the wind knocked out of him.” Chase shoved his sword, jacket, and shoes into my hands and waded into the lake.

“I'll check this way,” I told Lena, heading left.

She ran right. “Ben!”

For anyone looking for a kid who might have swum to shore on his own, fog doesn't really help. It muffled my shouts, and every slap of waves sounded like Ben splashing back onto the beach. I nearly ran into a boulder, but I didn't find him.

I had just started wondering if the others had had any luck, when Chase called from the water, “Let me know if you've got him!”

“He's not here!” Lena shouted, so far away that I could barely hear her.

“Ben! BEN!” I hadn't meant what I'd said about drowning, but the idea didn't seem so crazy suddenly. Trying not to panic, I listened harder, past the chimera's roars, the griffin squawks, and the waves.

“Here.” The voice came from behind me. It definitely wasn't Ben—it belonged to a girl. I turned around, listening again, and the voice said louder, “Here!”

I ran back, and near a clump of stones I'd searched a minute before, I spotted two figures. But by the time I reached them, only Ben was there—his jacket covered with wet clumps of sand.

“Found him!” I shouted happily.

He vomited water, on his hands and knees, eyes squeezed shut. He had also lost one shoe. His rescuer had disappeared.

“Thank gumdrops!” Lena cried, through the fog.

“So, I got all wet for nothing?” Chase shouted, but he sounded relieved too.

Ben wiped his mouth and drew a shaky breath.

“Anything broken?” I asked him anxiously.

“My lungs, maybe,” Ben wheezed without looking up. Then he threw up some more.

Chase splashed out of the water beside us. “Sense of humor's intact. I bet this one's going to live.”