The Care and Feeding of Griffins (31 page)

He grumbled.  No, he made himself grumble.  There had been no sting in the human’s words.  Yes, she had been fevered, but it had made her loose in speech, not devious.

She
was
winning him over, curse it.  Gods, what an aggravating thought.

He wondered if she were well yet.

42.  A Visit From Mr. Sunshine

T
aryn followed the foals around, doing foal work and keeping her hands occupied.  They itched like mad bastards in their bandages, but Ven kept saying that was a good thing, that they were healing.  Not enough to let her go home, of course, as much as Taryn kept trying to wheedle in that direction, but enough to allow Taryn out of bed.  And once out of bed, there was no way to avoid seeing all those horsemen out toiling efficiently in their fields, no way to avoid thinking of her own pathetic little patch of neglected ground.  If she’d thought for one second that she could slip away home, she’d have done it, but no matter which way she turned, there was a horseman staring at her.

So she fed pheasants and geese and collected eggs.  She fed cows and sheep and brushed them down.  She couldn
’t help wash blankets, but she hung them up afterwards and folded them when they were dry.  She tried to carry food platters with the other foals for mid-day meal, but Ven refused to allow her, saying she was too underfed.  Then it would be off to one of the little barns to help toss grain free of chaff and jar it up for the winter, a nice boring job that perfectly suited itself for telling riddles and Disney-fied fairy tales to the other foals until evening meal was called.

After so much time alone, it felt simply wonderful to be a part of a community, even one in which she was the outsider.  It helped that the Farasai were so stoic.  When she made her first hesitant offer to help with the chores, they simply found work for her to do.  They didn
’t stare at her (they very pointedly did not stare at her, in fact, which often only underlined how desperately they wanted to) and they limited themselves to talking about her in their own language so she couldn’t feel bad about what she was overhearing.  As time went on, more and more of them came to call her by her name instead of just, “human,” and gradually the sense that they were relaxing in her company began to grow.

She knew she
’d really arrived the day that she learned what Morathi had meant by ‘brazen’.  She’d been working in the commons early in the morning, helping to harness up farmers to their threshers and carts—a job to which she was uniquely qualified, seeing as she had such little hands and could kneel down, hop up, and slip in and out of tight spaces so easily—listening to the good-natured morning gossip of the Farasai when it happened.  She’d been aware, of course, that two of the farmers waiting to be harnessed had started making out a little, and she’d been doing the polite thing of not looking, even after the stallion had lowered his lingering kisses to the mare’s bare breasts.  After all, no one else was looking.  Well, and that wasn’t completely true, because there were one or two glances in that direction, but no one seemed to be scandalized, so Taryn just ignored them.

When the two had first linked hands and stepped away, she
’d thought they were finally heading off to find a room somewhere, but no.  They were just getting out of the crowd a little, and the most room to be had in the hitching barn just happened to be right next to Taryn.  To her utter astonishment, the horsewoman stepped up directly beside her (when Taryn had to kneel to check a cinch-strap, her foot actually bumped at the mare’s forehoof), and lifted her tail, panting, “Have me, Falbi!  Ride, my stallion!”

Taryn managed not to burst into a pillar of flames
, and she even managed not to turn around and stare, but she could hardly not be aware as the stallion reared up and mounted, right there in the hitching barn.  His arms slid tenderly around the mare’s waist and they kissed passionately over her shoulder in time with his powerful thrusts, and the whole time, Taryn was kneeling in easy reach of them, hooking up farmers.  She had no idea how long it lasted.  Long enough for her to send two threshers and a cart out into the field, so it couldn’t have been too long, but it felt like whole hours with all that groaning and grunting right in her ear.  When they were finished, they moved aside for one last loving kiss, and then the male stepped around and stood to be hitched.  Taryn had to harness his still-heaving sides, and kneel down to buckle the cinch-strap with his unsheathed phallus hanging wet before her eyes.

And that was just the first time it happened.  Now that she was apparently made welcome in the kraal, the Farasai went freely about all sorts of things, and by the end of that day, she
’d seen more furry sex than she’d seen in a whole lifetime of watching the nature channels on TV.  And much as she tried not to let it show, when she went to stand at the high table for dinner that night, Morathi took one look at her face and burst out in a wave of the most lecherous laughter Taryn had ever heard. 

And that was how the days passed.  It made her feel a little better to know that, even if she wasn
’t doing anything constructive around her own campsite, at least she was working.  She was able to crawl back up on the high table in Ven’s lodge at the end of each day knowing she hadn’t been a total load (just most of one) and fall asleep with her body pleasantly exhausted.  And it must have been good for her, because each day, Ven allowed her to do a little more.

Ultimately, she was permitted the task of carrying water through the fields for thirsty farmers, a job she accepted which Ven had vociferously declared too difficult for her only the day before, and which she accepted now with real pride.  While she was there, walking up and down the ruler-straight rows with the yoke heavy on her shoulder, Taryn happened to glance around and see Antilles coming into the village.  She waved.  He stopped and then started walking again, now moving in her direction.

Taryn handed out dippers of water to nearby workers, listening as the hooves came steadily toward her.  “Nice to see you again,” she said.

He grunted.

“Jerk,” Aisling muttered and sat down to preen his featherless wings when Taryn shot him a dark look.

She offered him a dipper of water. 
“I think I dreamed about you when I was sick,” she said.  “I imagined I heard you talking, at any rate.”

He had been eyeing the dipper, making no move whatsoever to accept it, but now he looked up and cocked his head. 
“So you did, for I was here,” he said.

“
You were?”

“
Aye.”  He paused, his nostrils flaring, and then said, “I wrote for you at your behest, to send word to your family.”

Taryn felt herself pale. 
“Oh dear God, no.”

“
Ease thee,” he said dryly, and took the dipper at last.  “I said nothing of your griffin, of Arcadia, of horsemen or Cerosan.”  He drank, considered, and handed back the dipper.  “Nor that I am a nudist,” he added, tossing his horns a little.

“
I don’t remember any of this,” she said, startled.

“
I do not wonder.  I knew you were not of sound mind when you first called me your sunshine.”

“
I did what now?”

He tossed his horns again.  There was something curiously good-humored in the gesture. 
“I met with her whom you call Romany.  Your letters, human.”

She hadn
’t noticed them until he held them out, but then, she avoided looking any lower than his neck out of respect to his unconcealed nakedness.  “Thank you,” she said, accepting them.

He caught her hand and turned it up, pulling the bandage away from her skin to see the healing scar. The wound was puckered, pink around the edges, but no
t swollen.  The open air tickled, and she grit her teeth against the urge to scratch while Antilles had his look.  At last he grunted and released her.  “Two days, I should think,” he said.

“
Gosh, I hope so.”  She sighed, suddenly hugely depressed.  “My potatoes have probably gone to rot.  I’m going to have to start all over again.  You realize I’ve been here a whole week?”

“
A whole weakness of what?”

“
A whole…er, seven days, I mean.”

“
Ah.  Aye, I did know.”  He glanced skyward, then turned around.  “Time well spent, for you are rested.  Guard your health, human.  Someone is depending on you.”

“
Right,” she muttered, watching him walk away.  Leave it to Chuckles to remind her of the seriousness of her obligations.  And she’d called him her sunshine?  Yeah, she
must
have been feverish.  Shaking her head, Taryn turned herself back to the business of dipping out water for thirsty horsemen, and put the matter of the minotaur and his perky good nature completely out of mind.

43.  Kinswoman

G
alloping hooves caught up to her at the pump as Taryn was topping off her buckets later that afternoon.  The filly Shard, out of breath, took the water yoke from her and shouldered it.  “Mother is wanting you,” she panted.

Taryn didn
’t ask who ‘mother’ was.  Even if Shard’s sleek black fur and piercing eyes weren’t the spitting image of Ven already, everyone called Ven ‘mother’, especially when the circumstances were at all formal ones.  So Taryn went back down to the Jiko lodge, nervously straightening her bandages and hoping she looked colorful enough to satisfy the horsewoman’s critical eye.

Ven met her at the door and gave Taryn
’s face a penetrating once-over in the natural light before checking her bandages.  “Two days,” was her verdict.

“
That’s what Antilles just said.”

“
Was he here?  Odd that he would not stop to speak to our chieftain.”  Ven stared out into the plains, her tail swishing, and then waved Taryn into the lodge.  She looked about to speak, then caught sight of the wrapped box and accompanying letters.  “What have you there?”

“
This?  Just some stuff from home.”  Taryn hopped herself up on the table nearest Ven’s command center and let her legs dangle as she opened her mail.  She started with the box and wasn’t disappointed.  “My gardening gloves came,” she said, pulling them out with a laugh.

Ven left her hearth and came to the table, taking the leather gloves and peering at them closely. 
“Gods, such excellent stitchery,” she said admiringly.  Her eye went to the box’s other contents.  “Be that thy sire and dam?”

“
Yep.”  Beneath the gloves had been a small photograph in a handy little frame, and Taryn brought it out to show.  “And that’s me with my little sister, Rhiannon.  This was taken, what, three years ago?  She’s dyed her hair since then.”

“
Oh aye?  I wondered if it should truly be green.”

Taryn laughed. 
“Well, it’s hard for a kid to be a red-head.  Other kids, er, other children make fun of you.  Rhiannon took that pretty hard.  I don’t think she’s ever gotten all the way over it.”

“
How shall it matter, the color of one’s coat?”

“
I don’t know.”  Taryn sighed, taking the photograph and gloves back.  “It’s just about the stupidest thing I can imagine, but it happens more often than you’d believe.  Anyway, Rhiannon’s hair is black, now.  Shorter, too.  Let’s see, what else?  Ooo, a bag of caramels.  More candy.  Want one?”

“
Nay, though I thank thee.  And this?”

“
Huh.”  Taryn took out the bottle of chewable vitamins to which Ven had pointed and turned it over in her hands.  “It’s a kind of medicine.”  There was a note in the bottom of the box.  It wasn’t long, and she finished it with a wry laugh. “It’s from my mother,” she explained.  “I sent her a picture of myself in my last letter, so she sent this.  She says she doesn’t like my color.”

“
Ha!”  Ven gave Taryn’s shoulder a light slap and then took the vitamins from Taryn’s hand.  “I told thee.  A mother always knows and I am mother to all my kin.  Hm.  How shall this be tricked to open?”

“
You have to break the cap a little.”  Taryn opened the bottle, putting the plastic stripe, the cotton puff, and the foil seal into the shoebox.  She wasn’t sure what to do with it.  Mail it back, she supposed.  She didn’t want to start Arcadia’s first landfill.  “See?  I’m just supposed to take one of these a day.”

Ven sniffed the vitamins, shook one out and peered at it, then put it in her mouth and warily sucked.  She spat it back into her palm and tossed it into the fire dismissively. 
“What thee needs is better feeding,” she said flatly.  “And while this shall be a commendable aid owing to the distance of thy dam, thee does not require it.”

“
I’m telling her you said so.”

“
Give quill,” Ven replied, holding out her hand.  “And I shall tell her exactly my reasoning.”

Taryn dropped her teasing tone at once. 
“Please, don’t.  I don’t want my Mom to know how underfed you think I am.  She worries enough as it is.”

“
Aye, and she is wise to do so.”  Ven’s hand lowered.  “But I will hold my tongue as thee will surely be better fed from this day onward.”

“
Surely, thanks to you fine people.”  Taryn started opening her other letters.  “Did you know Tonka gave me four huge jars full of food?”

“
He mentioned gifts only.”

“
And I’m getting much better with my slingshot.  Plus, my baskets actually work at catching fish.”  She trailed off as she read her letter.  It was news from home, delivered in Rhiannon’s typically slangy and often brutally blunt fashion.  Mom cried a lot now that Taryn was gone.  John had called, he sounded weird and told her not to bother writing back.  In Rhiannon’s opinion, Africa wasn’t far enough to get from a jerk like that, and she’d never liked him anyway.  Plus, he’d come on to her once at the Labor Day picnic.  Had Taryn seen any elephants or hippos yet?  Those photos Taryn sent didn’t show any animals and they didn’t look very African to Rhiannon, but she guessed the country was pretty big and it couldn’t all look like it did on TV.

Ven
’s fingers folded down the top edge of the letter as she read along.  “Such lettering,” she murmured.

“
It’s typed,” Taryn said distractedly, still reading.

Did the shots that they gave her hurt a lot, Rhiannon wanted to know.  School wasn
’t going so well right now.  The Life Corps sounded cool.  Did Taryn think the office would send Rhiannon to live with Taryn if she joined up?

“
Damn it,” Taryn sighed.

Were there cute guys in Africa and did they all walk around naked like on TV?  And if so, were they really hung better, or was that just a myth? 

Ven chuckled.  “Thee may tell her assuredly ‘aye’,” she said, backing away.

“
Just what she needs to hear, that my new country’s full of studs.”

The two stallions helping Ven at the cookfires looked around, ears pricked forward.

“What will thee tell her?”

“
That the Life Corps only takes high school graduates.  That’ll give me one more year at least.  Maybe by then, I’ll think of something else.”  She shook her head as she put the letter in her box.  “I hate lying to her.  Even about this.”

“
Tis necessary, I should think,” Ven said with a glance at the corner where Aisling lay sleeping.

“
I know, but that doesn’t make me like it any better.”

“
And if thee has a flaw, ‘tis that,” Ven remarked, beginning to pull roasts of meat from the coals to cut up.  “Life is not for liking, and that is truth.  Follow your heart and you follow the moon—a pretty thing always out of reach, and cold illumination to light your way.”

Taryn shook her head, leaning back on her hands. 
“That’s the difference between Earth and Arcadia, I guess.  Where I’m from, we’re encouraged to follow our hearts.”

“
Of course you are,” said Ven dismissively.  “Dreamers do not care who leads them.  When one’s eyes are on the moon, one’s evil chiefs may work unnoticed.”

“
On the other hand, if I wasn’t a dreamer, I never would have wanted to hatch the egg and befriend the killer snipe I thought it belonged to.”

“
Killer…snipe?”

“
It’s a bird,” Taryn said with a shrug.  “Well, it isn’t really.  Snipes don’t exist.  People made it up and use it to scare other people who don’t know any better.  It supposedly stalked the mountains where my dad took me camping, eating little kids who wandered off too far from their fathers, but I thought I could make friends with a baby.”  She laughed and shook her head, swinging her legs as they dangled off the table.  She felt Aisling pounce at her shoe, and she shook her foot until he ran screeching away under the tables.  “What can I say?  I was nine.”

“
Was that near the age that you swore your oath to turtles?” one of Ven’s helpers asked.

“
Yeah, come to think of it, it was.  I think the turtle thing happened the year after.”  She paused and looked around at him.  “Tonka told you about that?”

“
Nay, I heard it from another.”  The horseman shrugged.  “What is there to occupy us but talk?”

“
Work,” Ven answered with a swat to his rump, then thrust an empty water bucket at him.  “On with thee and about it, Shappa.  Read on, Taryn.”

She picked up the second letter and tore off the end to get at it.  She read to herself, kicking her legs at first, then slowing to a stop.  Aisling pounced at her again.  This time, she didn
’t play.  She flipped the page over, read, and grimaced.

“
Ill news?”

“
Not exactly.  It’s from Granna Birgit…my mother’s mother.  One of my evil cousins came to visit her.  Brought a little memo pad and a digital camera to take pictures of some of Granna’s things.”

“
To what purpose?” Ven asked, her attention wandering to the simmering sauces her attendants stirred.

“
To appraise them so they’d know what they can sell them for after she dies.”

Stillness.  She hadn
’t really been aware of how many horsemen were coming in for the mid-day meal until they all stopped moving to stare at her.

“
To
what
purpose?” Ven asked again.

Taryn sighed. 
“Yeah, that’s pretty despicable, isn’t it?  Anyway, my evil cousin found out Granna gave me her cauldron and her wedding ring—”  Taryn glanced involuntarily toward the stallion who now wore it, and he glanced down and pinched the ring up between his fingers, frowning.  “—and had a complete conniption,” Taryn finished, folding the letter up again and returning it to its envelope.

“
Is she upset?” the horseman wearing Granna’s ring asked.

“
Oh, she’s what we humans call bug-eyed batshit over it…oh, you mean Granna Birgit?  No.  Actually, she sounds just as pleased as a pickle in dip.  I can practically hear her cackling over it.  She says she’s going to send me everything else she has.  I hope like hell she’s kidding.  No way Romany could carry that harpsichord, even if the post office would hold it for her.”

“
Has it any special meaning?” the stallion asked, looking down at the ring again.

Taryn hesitated. 
“Well, yeah.  They all had special meanings.  That’s why I brought them with me.  And that’s why I used them to pay for those things you gave me.”

The stallion frowned, turning the ring between his thumb and forefinger.  He said nothing.

Nin, the horsewoman wearing Taryn’s drop-pendant necklace said, “What is the meaning of mine?”

“
Well…”  Taryn tossed her letters into the open box and slid down onto the floor so she could walk over.  She reached up for the heart and opened it.

“
Great gods, how cunning!”  Nin beamed as she turned the locket around.  “Little images.  Is it you?”

“
That one’s me.  That’s my sister, Rhiannon.  I gave her one just like it.”

“
Mine has an image.”  The horsewoman who had Taryn’s St. Christopher’s medallion came forward, drawing it from her neck to hold it out.  “What is its meaning?”

“
That’s my father’s Saint Christopher medallion,” Taryn explained.  “He was a man who lived by himself next to a stream and kind of avoided people so he could think about God all day.  One day, a small child asked to be carried across the stream, but as Christopher carried him, the child got heavier and heavier, so much so that Christopher nearly drowned.  When he got to the other side, the child revealed that he was really…well, a god, and that he was heavy because he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders.  Sainted, or rather, made holy by the experience, Christopher devoted the rest of his life to serving God and then got to kind of become a little one after he died.  He’s supposed to look out for and protect travelers.”

The horsewoman gave Taryn a hard look as the listening Farasai grunted their appreciation of this story.  Her eye
s dropped to the medallion.  The horsewoman put it on again, but haltingly.

“
Mine?”  The stallion wearing Taryn’s puka shells leaned over the table, ears forward and tail high.

“
I made that one myself.”

“
Did you?”  He fingered the shells, looking impressed.  “How did you—”

“
You have not yet told me the meaning of this ring.”