The Care and Feeding of Griffins (50 page)

He was dying.

Morathi couldn’t die.  Not here.  Not right in front of her.  He couldn’t just lie down and die like a…like a lamed horse!

“Please get up,” Taryn whispered.

Morathi smiled at her.  He tried, bracing one hand on the ground and gripping her arm, but his pull was feeble and his weight too much.  He fell again and lay gathering his breath, his eyes shut.  “Do not…grieve for me.  Ah, do not.  This…is a fine day.”

“I’ll go get help!”  Taryn sprang up and then stood quivering, looking out over the plains.  Fellcats could be anywhere.  Even the grass ponies might come at Morathi if they sensed he was vulnerable to them.  The kraal was so far away.

“Sit with me,” Morathi whispered.  His eyes were still shut.  “It shall not…be long.”  His wrinkled hand groped in the air and Taryn sank down in a swell of tears to take it in both of hers.  “I…am glad…I lived to meet…you.  Tis always…difficult…to be the first, but…”  He lay panting for several minutes as Taryn curled around his hand and rocked.  One of his hooves dug at the ground and he drew in breath to say, “…but others will follow.  And they may…know welcome.  That is…a good…thing.”

Taryn sobbed.  He fumbled blindly to pat her cheek.

“Ease…thee.  I am not…ending.  Nothing…ends.  Taryn.”  He opened his eyes, hunting for her in an unfocused way, then gripped her hand lightly.  “My name…Eliudhah.”

“Eliudhah,” she said, and he smiled for her.  On impulse, she blurted, “My grandmother says you’re a handsome old man and she’d like to get to know you better.”

“Oh aye?”  He rallied himself one last time, real light and pleasure coming into his fading eyes.  He winked one of them and fell back, gasping, or maybe only laughing, it was hard to tell.  “I…should like that.  Tell her…when she comes…I…”

His ears rotated away from her, like his gaze that abruptly drifted to a point beyond her shoulder.  His smile broadened.  “Aye, old friend.  I see thee.  I…see…”  The smile slipped and suddenly there was a weight to the slack hand in her grip.  His eyes were still open, but the soul that had looked out from them was gone.  He was still.

Taryn reached with trembling fingers to close the staring eyes and then she sank back in a  storm of grief.  She lowered herself atop the warm, soft side of him, breathing in horse-smell to let out as tears.  Aisling crept against her thigh after a while, and she scooped him up in one arm, holding him too tight perhaps, but unable to have him close enough.  Morathi was dead.  She’d never again see his smile or his wickedly lecherous wink.  She’d never hear the dry creaking voice tell her stories or meet those clear, piercing eyes.  He was gone.

Taryn rested with him long after her tears dried.  The body began to cool.  The sun went behind the clouds as it moved overhead.  Shivers passed through her, the only markers of time’s passage.  Aisling was chirring at her, preening the neck of her sweater as he tried to soothe her.  He was shivering too, and that, at last, was what stirred her.

Taryn rose.  Her fingers stroked down the soft, pale coat of her friend once more and then she straightened up and started walking.

The sun came and went, but the warmth was gone.  Aisling was there in her arms, but she couldn’t seem to feel him.  There was nothing for her to feel except loss.

She was crying again when she came to the kraal.  She didn’t know the horseman who reached her first, couldn’t bring herself to even look around and find someone she did know.  She said, “Morathi is dead,” and then just stood there and cried some more.

Eventually, Tonka came to her and led her away to his lodge.  “What happened?” he asked.

“I don’t know.  He was on the ground when I found him.  He said he went numb and…and he died.”

“You were there?” 

Taryn nodded, hugging Tonka and crying into his chest.

“Good.”  Tonka’s hand rubbed down her back.  “Was there aught else he said?”

Taryn nodded again.  “He told me his name and he…he said it was a fine day.”

Tonka laughed, a small and weary sound.

“Are we…are we going to go get him?” Taryn asked.  She didn’t look up to see his reaction.  She knew that if the Farasai buried their dead, they’d have gone out to get Morathi already, but she couldn’t be okay with that.  Her voice cracked as she tried to explain.  “He shouldn’t…he shouldn’t just
lie
there.”

Tonka held her a little longer, silent, then sighed.  “Aye, Taryn,” he said.  “We’ll have a cart drawn.  Take us to him.”

Words were said in Far-speak when Tonka ordered the cart, but not many, and no one showed disapproval openly.  Taryn left Aisling with Shard and went with Tonka and the black-coated stallion who pulled the cart back across the plains.  She found the place where Morathi had fallen, but there was nothing in the trampled place except a bloody patch of grass.  She didn’t search for him.  She didn’t want to find anything else.  Tonka stepped away into the dying grass and came back several minutes later with Morathi’s saddle bags.  No one spoke on the walk back to the kraal.

It was getting dark when they arrived.  The empty cart was unhooked without comment.

Tonka’s hand fell on Taryn’s shoulder and she walked numbly beside him for a while before she realized they were heading for the Jiko lodge.

She stopped.  “I can’t eat,” she said bleakly.

“Taryn, we are mourning,” Tonka told her.  He rubbed her back, drawing her close against his side as fresh tears came.  “Come and share his day’s last labors with us.”

So she went, but her stomach was a stone inside her.

The mood in the lodge was a somber one.  At the high table, Shard stood in Morathi’s place.  The red bar that had been painted across her eyes had been replaced by a black one.

The trenchers were passed and halved for all to share, but no one touched theirs.  All were silent.

At length, Tonka said, “There is no absolute in life except death.  Some may think that this makes the condition of death the strongest that the natural world may offer.  It does not.  For no matter how permanent death may seem to the living, it cannot separate those who have crossed the River from those who wait on the shore.  Love is not an absolute in life, but ‘tis stronger yet than death.”

He lowered his hands and the Farasai all broke off bread and ate.  Taryn took a bite; the bread was ashes in her mouth.

“The name of Morathi passes, as his wisdoms do,” Tonka said, and looked at Shard.  “Morathi, will you speak?”

“Aye,” said Shard.  She looked out over the lodge, her gaze grieving but strong.  In her piping, child’s voice, she said, “Those who live deeply have no cause to fear the Riverman.  Morathi-that-was understood that very well.  He lived as deeply as many never do.  Therefore, grieve for ourselves if you must, but do not grieve for him.  His is a life worth rejoicing as much as remembering.”

They ate again.  It was easier the second time.  The ritual of bread grounded her, a physical sign of taking the words in, accepting them.

“He gave his name before he crossed the River.  He gave it to Taryn.”  Tonka laid his hand on Taryn’s shoulder.  “Will you speak?”

She didn’t want to, but every eye was on her and bright with pain.  “I don’t know what to tell you about his death,” she said haltingly.  “And I don’t think…that that’s what I want to remember anyway.”  She couldn’t look at them anymore.  She stared down at the table instead, tracing the grain of the worn wooden table and thinking of his smile, his old-man’s wink.  “Someone on my world once said that as a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a well-spent life brings a happy death.  His had to have been a well-spent life.  He spent his last moments trying to comfort me.”

There was some quiet laughter.  Taryn was silent for a bit, toying with her bread, but not lifting it to eat.  She said, “The last thing he said to me was that nothing ends.  I guess that’s not surprising, because a soul like that has to go somewhere.  And the last thing he said in this life, he said to someone else, someone he called friend.  And that’s what I’m going to remember.  That we all go on, and we go in the company of a friend.”

Now she ate, and so did they.  Tonka patted her shoulder again before taking up his bread.  “We lament a loss today,” he said.  “Never a life.  Who will speak to lessen this grief?”

A horseman far down the left row of tables raised his voice, sharing his memory of Morathi bringing the clan ‘with patience and wisdom through the year of no foaling’.  Then there was an older stallion who spoke of being foals together, of Morathi as a yearling who kept him entertained with stories day after day as he recovered from a broken leg.  Hearing that, Taryn could only remember lying with her fever in Ven’s lodge, hearing Morathi’s mellow voice recounting the myths of Arcadia for her while she drifted in and out of sleep.  After him, a horsewoman spoke fondly and without shame of Morathi guiding her through her first pleasures, ‘his gentle hand and knowing ways as equal to flesh as to spirit’, and Taryn had to smile again.  He really did have an evil wink.  There were others, too many to count, but all of them left the air a little lighter than when they had first spoken, and when their bread was nearly gone, Tonka raised his hands again.

“For each of us, the supreme triumph lies not in living longest, but in living well,” he said.  “Let kraal-Rucombe grieve its fallen, but know, my kinsmen, the River is not wide and its crossing is always peaceful once the weight of this world is set aside.  With the guardian of that crossing, I share the labors of my body.  With Anu, I share my bread.”  He turned away from the table and tossed the last bite of his trencher into the cookfire.

Several horsemen followed his example, some murmuring last words before letting the coals take their bread.  Taryn copied them.  She didn’t share their faith, but the spirit that moved it struck a resonance in her that was impossible to ignore.

“Sleep with me tonight,” Tonka said quietly, and she nodded and followed him to his lodge.

“I liked him a lot,” she said, once the door was closed.  “I didn’t know him well, but I liked him.”

“Come here, Taryn.”

She went, folding into his embrace easily and letting the tears come.  “I’m sorry!” she sobbed.  “I know I’m not Farasai and I only had a few days with him and I shouldn’t feel like this—”

“Ah Taryn,” he sighed.

“I just left him there!  I couldn’t do anything for him!”

“Taryn.”  Tonka caught her chin and forced her eyes up to meet his.  “You were there to hold his hand, to hear his name, and to give him into the Riverman’s keeping with kindness.  He who was Morathi had great affection for you, Taryn, and great respect.  If it lay within his power to choose the friend to see him to his crossing, I have no doubt he would have chosen you.  The gods delivered you to him.”  His voice roughened, though his gaze never faltered.  “And I will thank them for it with smoke and prayers, for I have been fifteen years a chieftain and have seen many hardships, but never a blessing so obvious as this, that you were there to be with him in his leaving.”

There were still tears falling from her eyes, but she was scarcely aware of them.  She tried to sum up the awfulness of having to leave that kind old man’s body behind to be taken by animals like it was only meat, and could say just, “I couldn’t help him,” in a tiny voice she couldn’t even recognize as her own.

“Because you could not make him live?”  Tonka smiled; it had a crippled shape to it, but there was still genuine humor in the expression.  “Ah Taryn, there are more kinds of help than that.”

She ducked her head and hid against his chest once more.  “I’m so confused.”

“Is thee truly?”

Taryn thought about it.  “No,” she admitted.  “But I’m sad.  Do you know what I keep thinking?”

“Tell me.”

“That he said it was a fine day.  He said it twice.  And it must be, because I don’t think he’d ever lie.”

“Nay, never would he.”

“But he was alive and then he was gone.  And we didn’t have enough time.”

“Aye.”  Tonka’s hand stroked down her hair and patted once.  “So it often seems.”

Taryn was quiet.  Tears traced soundlessly down her cheeks to drip from her chin.  She said, “Will you hold me tonight?”

“Aye.”

He lowered himself to his oddly-shaped bed and drew her down with him.  It was an awkward fit for her, there against the padded support, and it had to be even less comfortable for him, but she didn’t care.  His arms were strong and solid as they closed around her and that was good enough.

2.  The Riverman

S
he had come to dread sleeping.  Even though she seldom remembered her dreams, she knew that they were horrible.  But tonight, when she opened her eyes on dreamspace, it was peaceful.  Tonight she only dreamed of what she was this instant doing, sitting curled in Tonka’s arms.

But it was time to go.

Taryn stood up, moving right through Tonka’s encircling grip to do so.  This didn’t seem strange, for some reason.  Dreams could be like that.  She started walking, through the wall and out into the commons, then away through the kraal and over the plains.  The ground seemed to move very fast under her feet, and soon she was standing on the bank of the river.

And this was a very odd dream, because although the land behind her was the Valley, and every stalk of grain and standing tree exactly where it stood in real life, the river was different.  Just how it was different, she couldn’t tell, but it was.  And although it was a clear evening, indefinably lit with the glowing coals of sunset, the far bank was hidden in a thick fog.  She could hear voices on the other side—laughter, music and singing, joyful cries—and she could hear them very clearly.  The River wasn’t wide.

The sound of lapping water turned her attention around.  There was a raft coming downriver toward her.  It was a pale raft (not white or grey or yellow, but just…pale) and she couldn’t make out just what it was made of.  But then, the raft itself wasn’t the focus of her stare.  Her eyes were fixed on the man who ferried it.

His was a shape that, like a minotaur or centaur, she recognized from the legends of her world, and she knew him at once, if by another name.

He stood tall, perhaps as much as twelve feet, although the nearer he came, the smaller he seemed to become and in the way of dreams, she understood that he was always meant to tower over her, but he was also meant to be approached.  His body was that of a perfectly-formed man, clad only in a simply-wrapped white skirt, very stark against his jet black skin.  But where there should be a handsome face to stare down at her, there was instead the long neck and thin head of a canine.  It didn’t really look much like a jackal’s.  That was probably just as close as the Egyptians could come to naming it.

His eyes were glowing crescents, pale like his raft, and Morathi was right, his was a kind face for all its strangeness.  She couldn’t be scared of him, not even when he calmly poled his craft close to the bank and stopped before her.

“I know you,” Taryn heard herself say.

His expression didn’t change and he said nothing, but she sensed an answer anyway, like a memory of words he’d already spoken.  In that way, he told her that he was known by all.

“Why…”  Taryn stood up and backed away from the water’s edge, out of his reach.  He watched her go, unmoving.  She stood in the grass, shivering, afraid to know the answer to the question she just had to ask.  “Why are you here?”

He was here because she’d called to him.

“I never did,” she argued, stepping even further away.  “Why would I want to see you?”  Grief welled in her and she added, “You took him away before I even had the chance to know him!”

He didn’t take anyone.  He was only the Riverman.

“Don’t give me that!  You let him die!”  Taryn came back a step.  The raft was very close to the shore.  A single step into the water would bring her close enough to touch him, but she couldn’t seem to take that step.  She stood at the very edge instead and shouted, “You let him be dragged off and eaten!  Like he was meat!  Like he never mattered!”

The Riverman set down his pole and stepped into the shallow water.  He made no splash, did not seem to disturb so much as a ripple as he came to stand before her.  He wondered, would not such a one as the Morathi wish to feed others?

Taryn recoiled, then slapped him.  The sound was muted, dull and shameful.  She slapped again, and again, then balled her fists and attacked him.

The Riverman did nothing to defend himself.  He watched her as she railed against him.  His hands remained at his sides.  His gaze stayed steady and tinged with sadness. 

“How could you?”  Taryn’s voice swept up into a scream and then broke.  She stumbled back, sobbing into her hands.  “He was a good man.  How could you let him die like that?”

His arms enfolded her.  She slapped at him again, but he pulled her into his embrace and, trapped there against his broad chest, she broke.  Her hands remained braced defiantly against his chest, but she no longer struggled.  She wept. 

Taryn thought again of the feel of Morathi’s soft, wrinkled hand in hers, of how it had felt when it took on the weight of death.  He had been trying to squeeze, there at the end, trying to comfort her.  He’d known where he was going and he knew he was going in the company of a friend.  She’d said as much herself at the mourning meal.  And here she stood with that same friend, and she was attacking him. 

Attacking death.  What a pointless thing to do.  She knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that if Morathi could have seen her slapping at the Riverman’s face, he would be sorely ashamed of her. 

Morathi.  Her heart ached, but it was not the same raw and bleeding hurt.  Morathi was dead and she grieved all the harder because she knew she was accepting it.

“I liked him,” she sobbed.  “He felt like family to me.  When he died…I realized that I can lose anyone.  I can lose anyone and I’m a whole world away.  What if…what if someone dies…and I can’t even be there?”

The Riverman did not answer except to run his hand down the fall of her hair.  He held her and that felt good, to be held by someone who cared so much.  She closed her eyes, her flushed cheek pressed to his chest, and wished he would hold her tighter.  She was still arranged as though trying to push away from him, but she didn’t want to.  If she could step into the water to come even closer to him, she would.

His arms shifted.  One hand rose to cup her head, keeping her close to his heart.  The arm that wrapped her did indeed tighten slightly.  If he could step onto the shore to bring her nearer, he would.

“My Granna Birgit had a heart attack,” Taryn said brokenly.  “And I can’t go home to see her.  She could die while I’m here.  I can’t…I can’t let that be the last time I ever saw her.”  She raised her eyes to him, her fingers digging at his dark flesh.  “Promise me you won’t do that, okay?  Promise you’ll wait until I get home!”

He made no promises.

Taryn’s eyes welled with fresh tears, but only one fell.  “She’s going to die while I’m over here, isn’t she?” she whispered.

It was not for him to know the hour.  He was only the Riverman.

“How can you make me choose between Aisling and my Granna?  How can you do that and pretend to be my friend?”

He made no pretenses.  The Riverman raised his hand to catch Taryn’s tear and rub its moisture back into her cheek.  He brushed her hair back from her brow.  They were perfectly smooth fingers; his palm was unlined.

“Is he happy at least?” Taryn asked suddenly.  “Is Morathi…Eliudhah…Is he all right?”

He had seemed so as he stepped onto the far shores.  Beyond that, the Riverman could not say.  Those that crossed seldom returned to share their experiences.

“Do we all go to the same place?  Will I…Will I see him again?”

The River flowed through all worlds, but all worlds are not one.

“You don’t know, do you?”

He did not.

“Shouldn’t you?  Aren’t you a god?”

Perhaps, by Man’s reasoning, but then, it was Man who defined his power in the first age, and Man who took it away.  Humankind, in human despair, searched for gods in every corner of creation, and so named many of the travelers to find their worlds.  Names had always had power.  Had they become gods by the faith of Man?  Or had they always been gods until they were made mortal once Man’s faith failed?  His was not to answer such questions.  He was only the Riverman.

She could feel herself frowning and she glanced upwards, looking at the jackal’s head as he stared over her and away into the Valley.  “You weren’t always,” she ventured.

Something about his canine mouth took on the aspect of a smile.  It wasn’t large and it didn’t last very long, but it was there.  He admitted that he hadn’t been, no.  But then, she had not always been a guardian of griffins.  Things changed, for Men and gods both.

“There were more of you once.”

His family, yes.

“What happened to them?” Taryn asked.

She felt him sigh.  Until that point, he had not drawn a single breath.  His flesh was warm under hers, but she realized only then that she could not feel his heart beating, even though her ear lay pressed to the chest that housed it.

Did she really wish to know the fate of those that her kind had once called gods?  It was within his power to say, but it was painful.

“Then I guess I already know what happened,” Taryn said.

They stood together by the River.  She watched the fog roll and cover the far bank.  He looked out over the plains.

They were not gods, he told her.  They were only beings different from Man.  They had found Earth through the same Gates that the conquerors came through, and there they had carved out some small sense of purpose, some small measure of peace.  But it had changed.  The conquerors returned.  Earth became a killing ground in the war that followed.  And the war was lost.  Names had power on every world, and it was Man who named the gods.

“Did the other gods come here?”

Some.  Doing what they knew to do, for the most part.  And of course, they none of them used their true names anymore.  The worlds had become dangerous.  The Great God Pan was dead.

“And your family?” Taryn asked.  “Ra and Isis…Did they come here?”

No, not here.  Most had perished.  Some went mad.  All were scattered.  He had come through to Arcadia before the gate was sundered, helpless thereafter to aid his family.  He believed he was last of that pantheon.

Taryn stared at the River.  “Did you feel them die?” she asked.  “Did you feel them even from here?”

He had, yes.

“Will I?”  Her fingers curled over the dark plane of his chest.  “Will I feel it when…she dies?”

He didn’t know.

She searched the ripples on the water and felt him watching her as she stood in his arms.  “I’m sorry,” she said finally.  “I’m sorry I hit you.”

He leaned his canine chin on the crown of her head briefly, forgiving easily and utterly.

The River flowed, timeless.  The pale raft floated motionless on the dark water.  The fog held the far bank and the wind blew gentle on the plains.  Taryn stood on land, the Riverman in the water, and they held each other.

“Are you happy here?” Taryn whispered.  “Can you be happy here?  After you gave everything up?  After you knew you could never go back?  Can anyone really be happy after that?”

Happiness was an emotion inhibited by immortality.  He had too much understanding, too many memories to ever know true contentment.

“Then you don’t feel anything?”

He felt, but they were inflictions of self, not expressions.  Joy there was for such as him, but not happiness.  Pain, not sorrow. 

“What do you feel the most?”

He did not answer right away.  Without breath, without a heart to beat, the stillness had no time.  At length, and with a new hesitance, he told her.

Loneliness.

“But…all the people that die…”

Cross.  Their hearts and thoughts were for those ahead of them, and for those they left behind.  He was only the Riverman.  Seldom did they even speak to him.

“There are other gods here, you said so.  You could talk to them.”

He could not.  He could not leave the River That Flows Between, and no other god would ever come so near to the death it represented.  Once, in the new age after his coming to this world, he had known the displaced goddess from whom the River flowed and shared with her such joinings as gods could share, but she had succumbed to grief and lost all manifestation apart from the River itself.  He had known no other companionship, no other touch.

Taryn closed her mind as if to better sort out the memory/thoughts he left in her by blinding herself to all other input.  His meaning had been very clear, even if the exact words he had used were vague (some, mere impressions of haunting, second-hand emotion), but she didn’t know how she was supposed to react.  She supposed she should step back and end the embrace if she didn’t want to send mixed messages of her own, but…a sympathetic hug seemed exactly the right response.  And she had asked, after all.  Should she be surprised that he’d answered with untempered honesty?

The Riverman stirred slightly, a subtle movement of one arm, the slightest shifting of his weight.  He observed, hesitantly for him, that she had not drawn away from him.

“Should I?” she asked.