The Care and Feeding of Griffins (46 page)

“
Oh aye?”  He straightened up and watched her go, looking surprised.  “Should you not wish to have your hair cleaned?”

“
Smoke is my friend, remember?”

“
For another time, aye, but you shall stay with me this night.”

“
I shall?”  Taryn blinked at him, feeling that damned blush creeping back in on her.  What had she just been thinking about how he’d just ask if he wanted something?  Hesitantly, she said, “It’s not that late.”

“
It will be by the time we manage our descent,” he pointed out.  “Come, Taryn, let me help you.”

Oh sure, just go stand up real close next to the naked, wet minotaur.

“I don’t…really need, um, help with—”

“
Come
here
, Taryn!” he snapped, and punched the fist of one hand into his hip.  His naked hip.

She went and stood with head bent and cheeks burning as he heaped a few palmfuls of water onto her hair and started working the last of the slimy soap into it.  He grumbled under his breath as he did it, but she didn
’t think any of it was in English, so she couldn’t feel that bad.

“
There,” he said curtly, and poured the rest of the hot water over her head in a single splash.  “Now stand where you are.”

He stomped over to the little pile of possessions that had come out of his satchel and picked up a currying brush.  He fit this over his hand and came back, a steely glint in his eye. 

“I can do that,” Taryn said.

“
Just be still.”  He turned her around and started brushing her hair.

Since the bathing part was clearly done, Aisling finally emerged from his hiding place and came to watch.  The sight of Taryn being groomed like that apparently hit some deeply-rooted chord in the young griffin.  He circled them several times, his eyes staring and his feathers puffed fully out from his head, before finally lying down sphinx-style where he could watch.  There was an air of solemnity to Aisling
’s expression that made it look like he was watching a punishment. 

Taryn didn
’t feel very much like she was being punished.  Despite her situation—standing before him with head bent, much like a small child being chided—the sensation of being brushed was an intensely appealing one.  One might even say erotic.  The little tugs and pangs as he sorted out her snarls were soon supplanted by long, slow passes of the brush that began at her scalp and traveled lazily all the way down to her hips.  She could feel the heat rising off his body, burning all along hers.  She could feel his breath blowing soft and steady on the back of her head.  His hands were sure and gentle and in no hurry to send her away now that her tangles were gone. 

The thought came to her that this was not normal behavior for him.  Oh, sure, maybe he stepped out all the time with Tonka or whoever else it was that he chummed around with out here, and maybe they even topped off a hard day
’s chumming with a dip in the river, but she doubted like hell that Antilles had ever offered to brush Tonka’s hair for him. 

She wanted to turn around, to see the look in his eye and be sure about what he was feeling.  Failing that, she wanted to just ease back a step, to lean against his chest and see what he did next.  Or maybe just to reach up and take his hand, slip the brush from his fingers and guide him someplace else. 

Wow, how had she ever thought it was cold out here?

“
There.”  One last slow, stroke with the brush and then Antilles moved back a step.  Only one.  He said nothing for a while, and Taryn stayed facing away from him as she patted down the slick length of her hair. 

“
Should I braid it?” she asked, and then wondered why on earth she was asking him.

“
Nay.  Leave it.”  He stirred and then added brusquely, “Or not, as you please.”  He stomped over to get the rest of his things and repack his satchel.  “You’ll want to be dressed again, I suppose.”

“
I thought about it.”

He grunted, still busily packing.  He really didn
’t have that many things.  “You’d best be about it, then.  The sun is sinking, and though the way down is fairer than the way up, ‘tis a perilous climb to make in the dark.”

“
Am I still going home with you tonight?”

He paused and looked at her, his ears forward. 
“Aye.”

There was no
‘as you please’ tacked on the end of that, no invitation to debate.

Taryn could feel a strange, fevered little smile twitching at her lips. 
“‘Kay,” she said, and went to get dressed.

55.  Storytellers

“
W
ell, here we are again!”  Taryn set Aisling on the floor of Antilles’s cave and moved to the wide hearth, holding out her palms for heat.  “I see you left the homefires burning.”

“
It would take a terrible span of days to heat this room if I did not,” he replied, pouring a cup of mead for himself.  “But hear how warmly the mountain does receive your voice.  It had missed you, Taryn.”

The smile that spread across her face seemed to begin somewhere in her heart.  Taryn blushed, hiding in the firelight, silently scolding herself for going so gushy over a little light flattery.

Antilles stepped out of his hoof-caps and lay himself down in the furs that made his bed.  He stretched hugely and then made room for her, waving an invitation she was happy to receive.  She stepped into the deep fur, feeling the warmth and give of the layered pelts beneath her feet as she lowered herself. 

“
This is so much nicer than mine,” she remarked, stretching out with a few cozy wriggles.  “Nice and big.”

Antilles grunted and looked away.  After a moment, he turned back with horns raised and good humor in his eyes. 
“Shall we trade stories, you and I?”

“
I thought you’d never ask.  Ever since I spent the night last time, I’ve had one in mind.  I think you’ll like it.”

“
Aye?  Then I am certain to.”  Antilles began to settle himself, distracted once when Aisling leapt unexpectedly onto his stomach, but soon he lay back with the griffin trapped in his arms, his large hand working expertly at all the goody-spots on Aisling’s body.  “Storyteller, begin.”

“
All the world is made of earth and water and fire, and then there was Ireland, which is land surrounded by sea, and the fire was placed in her people, to burn in all our hearts.”  It was a damn good beginning, and Taryn enjoyed watching Antilles’s eyes spark with interest as he heard it.  “Many kinds of people lived in Ireland in the ages when gods still walked among them.  But the old gods slept and the people grew apart.”

Antilles uttered a low, bullish rumble
—a thunder of contentment—and then shifted in the bed so that he better faced her.

“
The island where my people came from had once been home to the Fair Folk, who were as treacherous as they were beautiful, but the Fair Folk had followed the gods into sleep, or so the men of Eire believed.  People still told their stories, but they stopped believing.  They knew that there were only Men on their world.  And then one day, a fisherman coming home from the sea spied the body of a woman on the rocks by his house.”

“
Was she winning?” Antilles asked.

“
Oh yes,” Taryn said with a smile.  “Very pale, but then, that’s nothing strange for the Irish, as I keep trying to tell you people.  But she was fair and slender and when our fisherman saw that she was breathing, he took her into his house.  He found no clue as to her identity, for nothing had washed up with her except an old sealskin.  So he made her warm and fed her and finally she began to respond.”

“
She woke to him?”  Antilles straightened slightly, his gaze intent.  “She woke from death to his nursing?”

Taryn hesitated, unsure what hidden meanings would be inferred if she answered.

“We Cerosan know this to be a sacred thing,” he told her, turning his attention back down to Aisling.  He tickled at the griffin’s hind paws and Aisling’s feathers came forward with a warble of sleepy delight.  Antilles tossed his horns gently, his voice wistful as he went on, “Death is no enemy to us, but a welcome friend at the end of what is often a difficult road.  It takes a powerful love to turn one from the Riverman.”  He met her eyes again.  “Did she wake to him?”

Taryn nodded. 
“And they did fall in love,” she said, and Antilles sighed and settled back, his eyes closing.  “The fisherman didn’t want to take advantage of her, but even after she was well, she didn’t seem to want to leave.  When he realized he’d won her heart, he asked her to marry him.”

Antilles rumbled again, looking pleased.

“She refused.”

“
Oh aye?”  Antilles looked at her hard, as if to gauge her honesty.  “Why?”

“
She wouldn’t give a reason, but she swore she loved him.  She didn’t want to leave, she said.  She wanted to be with him, but she wouldn’t marry him.”

“
Such arrangements,” Antilles said slowly, “were not viewed as honorable in ancient times, in your world.”

“
No, they weren’t.  And the fisherman was an honorable man who wanted to do right by the mysterious woman.  Every day, he asked her to marry him and she refused him.  Every night, she came to his bed and he refused her.  This went on for many days, and then one night, he gave in, and that was it.”

“
But they were happy.”

“
Yes, for many years.  She bore him twins in time, a son and a daughter.”

“
But happy tales do not stand the test of time,” he said, and met her eyes again.  “What happened?”

“
The twins became very ill,” Taryn said.  “And no amount of medicine or care could seem to help them.  Every day, they worsened, and the grieving father could not see that their mother grew increasingly despairing and sorrowful as well.  One day, he wakened to find them gone, all three of them.”

Antilles only searched her eyes, silent.

“The fisherman ran from the house, calling for his family, and there on the waves, he saw them—three seals, two small and one large.  They called to him in the way of seals, but with such an urgency that he had to stop and really see them.  And then he recognized them for his mate and their children.”

“
He recognized them?”

“
For some things,” Taryn said, “form doesn’t matter.  The fisherman dove into the sea, but he couldn’t reach them.  They swam away, and he was forced to return to his empty house.  For many years, he grieved.  And then one day, returning from a day of fishing, he saw the woman he loved waiting for him on the rocks by his house, wrapped in a sealskin.  She was as young and beautiful as he remembered.  She told him that she could not be happy without him.  Their children, who did not belong fully to his world, must remain with her people, but she would stay with him forever.  And he told her that his heart had been broken once already, and if she stayed, she would have to marry him.  With tears in her eyes, she told him she would.”

Antilles faced the high ceiling again.  Aisling on his chest rose and fell with every steady breath, and his hands were gentle as they smoothed down the griffin
’s fur.  He did not speak.

“
He took her to the church that day and then he took her home and loved her as husband and wife.  But that night, he was awakened by an eerie crying, and when he went outside, he found his wife standing on the shore, holding her sealskin in her arms as it turned to foam.  The waters were filled with the shapes of seals, crying to her and beckoning.  ‘Never,’ she said, over and over.  ‘I love him.  I will never regret.’”

“
How soon,” Antilles asked softly, “before she sickened?”

“
Not long,” Taryn said.  “And when he realized what he had done, the fisherman begged her to return to the sea.  But she only smiled and kissed him.  She had married him, she said.  The sea would not receive or renew her.  She had traded her immortal life for one precious year with him whom she loved.”

“
How his heart must have broken.”  Antilles never took his eyes from the ceiling.  His hand never stopped its slow stroking of Aisling’s fur.

“
When she died, he carried her to the water, and from the waves, a young man and woman—his children—came to take her home.  They could not speak or touch him, for their lives, half-mortal, were tenuous, but in their eyes, he saw they knew and loved him.  They touched their mother and her body became that of a seal, and they bore it away with them to the land of the selkies.”

“
What became of him who loved her?”

“
He married again, eventually.  And his children’s children’s children left Eire.  One of them was my mother’s mother, who told the tale to me.”

“
Thank you,” Antilles said seriously.  “It is a very good story, and a happy one, for all its pain, because it knew nothing but love.  There are selkies in the Western Sea,” he added.  “Will you go someday to see them?”

She could not be entirely surprised, not lying here beside a minotaur. 
“I’d like that, someday.”

“
I will take you.  When this one is grown.”  He rubbed at the feathers tufting around Aisling’s nubby horns.  “And I should like to see them take their human form and call you kin.”

“
So would I, but you know they probably won’t know me from Adam.”

Aisling roused himself at last, crawling off
Antilles’s chest and briefly butting heads with Taryn before finding himself a denning place beneath a chair.  Taryn stretched out a hand, but could only just graze her fingertips across the ends of his tail, and he whisked that up close against his flanks as soon as she did.

“
Shall I entertain you?” Antilles asked.  “I, too, have had a tale knocking at my lips since last we slept aside each other.”

He began t
o relate it, and Taryn listened, recognizing the story of Prometheus expertly told, although it cast the hero’s role to a Cerosan called Faracles.  But in all other respects, the story was the same, from the daring invasion of the gods’ domain, to the theft of fire from the sun, right down to being chained to a rock while an eagle ate out his liver for all eternity.

The coals were burning low and his shape was only dimly outlined in orange light when he finished.  Taryn applauded, sleepily brava-ing, and Antilles surprised her by sitting up for a half-bow.  When he lay back down again, his arm came around her head and shoulders, not quite touching her, but cupping her in an easy manner.  Cradling her, if only casually.

“You have heard it said before, I think,” he said, his eyes sliding shut.

“
Read it in a book.  You tell it better.”

“
Do I?  Ah.  It is the pleasure of an audience, I think.  When I was very young and my clan still dwelled in the Valley, stories were all our entertainments.”

“
A lordly pursuit,” she agreed.

He chuckled. 
“Hardly, but then, if my father had a failing in his otherwise exemplary sense of moral refinement it lay where stories were concerned.  I hardly knew a night that he did not have a talesmith at the table.”  He stirred slightly.  “Did you know such moments before you came to my Valley?”

“
Storytelling?  No.  I lived alone.  I read a lot, that’s all.  When I wanted to go out with other people, I visited with my family or went dancing.”

He didn
’t answer, and Taryn had a moment to remember the last things she’d heard him say about a certain lady dancer.  Like the first breath of spring, he’d said.  Like the very act of love.

She wasn
’t embarrassed.  She supposed she should be, having brought that up, but she wasn’t.  And he didn’t seem to be, either.  He didn’t say anything, but there was nothing awkward about the way he continued to relax beside her, his arm resting around her.

Taryn rolled toward him, letting her eyes travel along the shadowed outlines of his body.  She watched the steady rise and fall of his broad chest, watching shadows climb and ebb across his stomach and sides.  Then she put out her hand and touched him, her fingers reaching through soft fur to feel his heat and the stability of his muscled form.  A working bull
’s body, that was for sure.  These were arms that worked an anvil.

The fire popped once and the light dimmed dramatically.  She couldn
’t make out more than just a pale ghost of her hand disappearing into the shadows of his dark fur and the faint gleam of his eyes as he watched her.  She could feel his heart beating under her open palm.  She could feel the weight of his breath pushing her hand up and down.  He didn’t speak.  Neither did she.

She didn
’t think about what she was doing.  She didn’t feel the need.  The rightness of him was so undeniable as to remove all need for debate and worry and planning.  She wanted to touch him and he felt so good, that was all that mattered.  She drew her hand down, feeling the broad plane of his chest roll into the many foothills of his stomach.  Her fingertips slipped into the vertical line of navel and then out again.  She felt the muscles of his lower abdomen tighten up and she paused there, feeling them.

“
Do you want me to stop?” she asked.

The coals measured out time in whispers.