The griffin looked into my eyes. That was the worst of all, worse than the pain where the claw had me, worse than not seeing my parents and stupid Wilfrid anymore, worse than knowing that I hadn’t been able to save either the king or Malka. Griffins can’t talk (dragons do, but only to heroes, King Lír told me), but those golden eyes were saying into my eyes, “Yes, I will die soon, but you are all dead now, all of you, and I will pick your bones before the ravens have mine. And your folk will remember what I was, and what I did to them, when there is no one left in your vile, pitiful anthill who remembers your name. So I have won.” And I knew it was true.
Then there wasn’t anything but that beak and that burning gullet opening over me.
Then there was.
I thought it was a cloud. I was so dazed and terrified that I really thought it was a white cloud, only traveling so low and so fast that it smashed the griffin off King Lír and away from me, and sent me tumbling into Molly’s arms at the same time. She held me tightly, practically smothering me, and it wasn’t until I wriggled my head free that I saw what had come to us. I can see it still, in my mind. I see it right now.
They don’t look anything like horses. I don’t know where people got that notion. Four legs and a tail, yes, but the hooves are split, like a deer’s hooves, or a goat’s, and the head is smaller and more—pointy—than a horse’s head. And the whole body is different from a horse, it’s like saying a snowflake looks like a cow. The horn looks too long and heavy for the body, you can’t imagine how a neck that delicate can hold up a horn that size. But it can.
Schmendrick was on his knees, with his eyes closed and his lips moving, as though he was still singing. Molly kept whispering, “Amalthea… Amalthea….” not to me, not to anybody. The unicorn was facing the griffin across the king’s body. Its front feet were skittering and dancing a little, but its back legs were setting themselves to charge, the way rams do. Only rams put their heads down, while the unicorn held its head high, so that the horn caught the sunlight and glowed like a seashell. It gave a cry that made me want to dive back into Molly’s skirt and cover my ears, it was so raw and so… hurt. Then its head did go down.
Dying or not, the griffin put up a furious fight. It came hopping to meet the unicorn, but then it was out of the way at the last minute, with its bloody beak snapping at the unicorn’s legs as it flashed by. But each time that happened, the unicorn would turn instantly, much quicker than a horse could have turned, and come charging back before the griffin could get itself braced again. It wasn’t a bit fair, but I didn’t feel sorry for the griffin anymore.
The last time, the unicorn slashed sideways with its horn, using it like a club, and knocked the griffin clean off its feet. But it was up before the unicorn could turn, and it actually leaped into the air, dead lion half and all, just high enough to come down on the unicorn’s back, raking with its eagle claws and trying to bite through the unicorn’s neck, the way it did with King Lír. I screamed then, I couldn’t help it, but the unicorn reared up until I thought it was going to go over backwards, and it flung the griffin to the ground, whirled and drove its horn straight through the iron feathers to the eagle heart. It trampled the body for a good while after, but it didn’t need to.
Schmendrick and Molly ran to King Lír. They didn’t look at the griffin, or even pay very much attention to the unicorn. I wanted to go to Malka, but I followed them to where he lay. I’d seen what the griffin had done to him, closer than they had, and I didn’t see how he could still be alive. But he was, just barely. He opened his eyes when we kneeled beside him, and he smiled so sweetly at us all, and he said, “Lisene? Lisene, I should have a bath, shouldn’t I?”
I didn’t cry. Molly didn’t cry. Schmendrick did. He said, “No, Majesty. No, you do not need bathing, truly.”
King Lír looked puzzled. “But I smell bad, Lisene. I think I must have wet myself.” He reached for my hand and held it so hard. “Little one,” he said. “Little one, I know you. Do not be ashamed of me because I am old.”
I squeezed his hand back, as hard as I could. “Hello, Your Majesty,” I said. “Hello.” I didn’t know what else to say.
Then his face was suddenly young and happy and wonderful, and he was gazing far past me, reaching toward something with his eyes. I felt a breath on my shoulder, and I turned my head and saw the unicorn. It was bleeding from a lot of deep scratches and bites, especially around its neck, but all you could see in its dark eyes was King Lír. I moved aside so it could get to him, but when I turned back, the king was gone. I’m nine, almost ten. I know when people are gone.
The unicorn stood over King Lír’s body for a long time. I went off after a while to sit beside Malka, and Molly came and sat with me. But Schmendrick stayed kneeling by King Lír, and he was talking to the unicorn. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I could tell from his face that he was asking for something, a favor. My mother says she can always tell before I open my mouth. The unicorn wasn’t answering, of course—they can’t talk either, I’m almost sure—but Schmendrick kept at it until the unicorn turned its head and looked at him. Then he stopped, and he stood up and walked away by himself. The unicorn stayed where she was.
Molly was saying how brave Malka had been, and telling me that she’d never known another dog who attacked a griffin. She asked if Malka had ever had pups, and I said, yes, but none of them was Malka. It was very strange. She was trying hard to make me feel better, and I was trying to comfort her because she couldn’t. But all the while I felt so cold, almost as far away from everything as Malka had gone. I closed her eyes, the way you do with people, and I sat there and I stroked her side, over and over.
I didn’t notice the unicorn. Molly must have, but she didn’t say anything. I went on petting Malka, and I didn’t look up until the horn came slanting over my shoulder. Close to, you could see blood drying in the shining spirals, but I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t anything. Then the horn touched Malka, very lightly, right where I was stroking her, and Malka opened her eyes.
It took her a while to understand that she was alive. It took me longer. She ran her tongue out first, panting and panting, looking so thirsty. We could hear a stream trickling somewhere close, and Molly went and found it, and brought water back in her cupped hands. Malka lapped it all up, and then she tried to stand and fell down, like a puppy. But she kept trying, and at last she was properly on her feet, and she tried to lick my face, but she missed it the first few times. I only started crying when she finally managed it.
When she saw the unicorn, she did a funny thing. She stared at it for a moment, and then she bowed or curtseyed, in a dog way, stretching out her front legs and putting her head down on the ground between them. The unicorn nosed at her, very gently, so as not to knock her over again. It looked at me for the first time… or maybe I really looked at it for the first time, past the horn and the hooves and the magical whiteness, all the way into those endless eyes. And what they did, somehow, the unicorn’s eyes, was to free me from the griffin’s eyes. Because the awfulness of what I’d seen there didn’t go away when the griffin died, not even when Malka came alive again. But the unicorn had all the world in her eyes, all the world I’m never going to see, but it doesn’t matter, because now I have seen it, and it’s beautiful, and I was in there too. And when I think of Jehane, and Louli, and my Felicitas who could only talk with her eyes, just like the unicorn, I’ll think of them, and not the griffin. That’s how it was when the unicorn and I looked at each other.
I didn’t see if the unicorn said goodbye to Molly and Schmendrick, and I didn’t see when it went away. I didn’t want to. I did hear Schmendrick saying, “A dog. I nearly kill myself singing her to Lír, calling her as no other has ever called a unicorn—and she brings back, not him, but the dog. And here I’d always thought she had no sense of humor.”
But Molly said, “She loved him too. That’s why she let him go. Keep your voice down.” I was going to tell her it didn’t matter, that I knew Schmendrick
was saying that because he was so sad, but she came over and petted Malka with me, and I didn’t have to. She said, “We will escort you and Malka home now, as befits two great ladies. Then we will take the king home too.”
“And I’ll never see you again,” I said. “No more than I’ll see him.”
Molly asked me, “How old are you, Sooz?”
“Nine,” I said. “Almost ten. You know that.”
“You can whistle?” I nodded. Molly looked around quickly, as though she were going to steal something. She bent close to me, and she whispered, “I will give you a present, Sooz, but you are not to open it until the day when you turn seventeen. On that day you must walk out away from your village, walk out all alone into some quiet place that is special to you, and you must whistle like this.” And she whistled a little ripple of music for me to whistle back to her, repeating and repeating it until she was satisfied that I had it exactly. “Don’t whistle it anymore,” she told me. “Don’t whistle it aloud again, not once, until your seventeenth birthday, but keep whistling it inside you. Do you understand the difference, Sooz?”
“I’m not a baby,” I said. “I understand. What will happen when I do whistle it?”
Molly smiled at me. She said, “Someone will come to you. Maybe the greatest magician in the world, maybe only an old lady with a soft spot for valiant, impudent children.” She cupped my cheek in her hand. “And just maybe even a unicorn. Because beautiful things will always want to see you again, Sooz, and be listening for you. Take an old lady’s word for it. Someone will come.”
They put King Lír on his own horse, and I rode with Schmendrick, and they came all the way home with me, right to the door, to tell my mother and father that the griffin was dead, and that I had helped, and you should have seen Wilfrid’s face when they said that! Then they both hugged me, and Molly said in my ear, “Remember—not till you’re seventeen!” and they rode away, taking the king back to his castle to be buried among his own folk. And I had a cup of cold milk and went out with Malka and my father to pen the flock for the night.
So that’s what happened to me. I practice the music Molly taught me in my head, all the time, I even dream it some nights, but I don’t ever whistle it aloud. I talk to Malka about our adventure, because I have to talk to someone. And I promise her that when the time comes she’ll be there with me, in the special place I’ve already picked out. She’ll be an old dog lady then, of course, but it doesn’t matter. Someone will come to us both.
I hope it’s them, those two. A unicorn is very nice, but they’re my friends. I want to feel Molly holding me again, and hear the stories she didn’t have time to tell me, and I want to hear Schmendrick singing that silly song:
Soozli, Soozli,
speaking loozli,
you disturb my oozli-goozli.
Soozli, Soozli,
would you choozli
to become my squoozli-squoozli…?
I can wait.
GIANT BONES
Boy, call me in to you just once more, and you will regret it until you’re very, very old. I’ll not tell you again, the jejebhai’s due any hour now—twins, by the look of it—and if I’m not with her she’s like as not to smother one while she’s dropping the other, crazy as she is. So I haven’t the bloody time to tell you tales, nor smooth your blanket, nor bring you water. If your mother were here, as she bloody should be, instead of being off in Chun nursing your aunt because the idiot woman didn’t have sense enough to leave red kalyars alone in the wet season, then she could play games with you all night, for all of me. But if I climb up to this loft again tonight, it will be with a willowy switch in my hand. Do you understand me?
What? What under your bed? Rock-targs? There’s never been a single rock-targ in this flat-arse farmland, you know that as well as I do. They’re mountain creatures; they won’t come below the snowline to feast on a fat caravan, never mind squeezing themselves under one scrawny little boy’s bed. There aren’t any even in our high country, come to that. The giants ran them all out. They’re still afraid of the giants, even now.
What? No, there aren’t any giants under your bed, either. The giants are gone, too, long and long since. Haven’t been any since your great-great-great-grandfather’s time, I can tell you that for a fact. Go to sleep, if you know what’s good for you.
Now what’s he crying about? Because there aren’t any giants? Is that it? Boy, there are times… what? Oh now, don’t you start that again, do you hear me? You are not too small, I never said that, that was your Uncle Tavdal, and he’s a fool. But a tall fool, just as you’ll be, stop stewing over it. You’re small for your age, yes, but so were your sisters Rii and Sardur, whatever they say now. So was Jadamak—he didn’t even start getting his growth until he was well older than you, there’s another fact for you. And I’ll tell you something more—
What? Be quiet, I thought that was the jejebhai bleating…. No, I guess not. Not that it would mean much if it were—she’s just like you, call and call and carry on, and when you get there, nothing but big eyes and feeling a bit lonesome. Wouldn’t surprise me at all if she decided not to drop them till dawn, like last time. Spiteful animal, always was. Like your aunt.
How do I know you’ll be tall? Well, let me ask a question for a change—have you ever seen a short one in our family? Think about it, name me one—uncles, cousins, second cousins, distant as you like. No? Hah? No, and you won’t either, I don’t care how far you look. Every one of us is big, man or woman, wise or brainless. It’s how we are, the same as those Mundrakathis down by the canal, all with those pale, pale skins and the men with their extra little fingers. Only with us it’s a bit different, there’s a bit more to it. Ask your mother sometime, she’ll tell you.
I said your mother. No. No, absolutely not, I’m going back down to the barn this minute. Besides, your mother’s the one to ask about things like that. She’s the one who tells stories, sings the old wisdom songs, passes things on when it’s time. I’m just the one who takes care of the beasts. Fair enough—we both push the plow. I’m going now, that’s all.
No, I said no! Give it up, boy, before you really rouse me. I can’t afford to lose even one jejebhai kid, let alone two, not with the price of vegetables gone so low it’s hardly worth hauling them to market. Good night, good-bye, and go to bloody sleep!
Because I do know, there’s why! Because of your three-times-great-grandfather and the giants of Torgry Mountain, there’s why! Nine years old, she should have told you by now, and I’ll tell her so when she comes home, if she ever does. Instead of leaving it for me.
All right. All right, then—but one squall from the barn and your mother tells you the rest, is that a bargain? And you’ll keep to it, like a grown man? No fussing, no sniveling? Mind, now.
Well. I’ve not told stories much—I don’t know where you’re supposed to start, or what’s important to put in. So I’m just going to begin with your great-great-great-grandfather, only I can’t keep calling him that all through, so I’ll call him Grandfather Selsim. That was his name, or close enough to it.
Now. Grandfather Selsim was the first of our lot to come into this country. He didn’t mean to, not as far as I ever learned, being no farmer but a coppersmith by trade aye, a tinker if you like, and horsedealer as well betimes, tell the truth. But he was living in the north, beyond the mountains, when times were hard and land was dear. And that was good for the tinker, you see, because folk were mending and making do in those days, not buying all new like your aunt in Chun and that fat maggot she married. But it wasn’t such a fine thing for the horsedealer, no, nor for anyone with even a few dreams of settling somewhere and might be starting a family. I was up north myself one time, working, before we had this place, before you were born. Never liked it much.
So one morning Grandfather Selsim just up and says, “Well, that’s it, I’m surely done here,” and he jumped on that ugly-tempered, leg-biting churfa he always rode and headed straight south. No notion where he was
bound, no friends or relations beyond Rhyak, everything he owned sold fast and cheap to feed him along the way. Just going south, traveling by the sun and the mountains dead ahead. And that was your great-great-great-grandfather Selsim.
Did you hear anything just then? Tell me if you did, mind, because I’ll know. There’s a sound she makes when the kid… no, no, nothing yet. All right. I hate this. Where was I?
Right, so. Grandfather Selsim, he’d been here and there enough to know that mountains aren’t ever as close as they look, but for all that he was near to being out of food by the time he reached the northern foothills. Oh, he did some tinkerwork along the way for a meal or two, and he likely even begged when it came to it. There’s those in the family wouldn’t ever admit to that, but I say you do what’s to do. All we know, we mightn’t be here tonight, you and I and them, too, if Grandfather Selsim had been ashamed to beg. And maybe he was thinking about us all, that far back, hey? Who knows?
You’ve never been anywhere near a mountain, so I suppose I’d better tell you about being in the mountains. It’s cold, that’s one thing—maybe not all the time, but most always. And the roads are bad, when there are any roads, and you spend hours just crawling, scrambling, scuttling along on all fours. And all the while you’re doing that, the air’s growing thin and thinner, till you feel too weak to scratch your head and breathing doesn’t do you any good at all. And there are the rock-targs.
You don’t even know what a rock-targ looks like do you? All that carrying on about them being under your bed, and you don’t even know…. You remember when your cousin Bai killed that lourijakh that climbed on the roof, trying to get in? Well, those are a little like rock-targs, only not as big, of course, not nearly as big. And the rock-targs’ faces look more human somehow, and they can almost talk—not really talk, but it makes it worse. You don’t ever find many of them in one spot, but in those days they were still scattered over Torgry Mountain and that whole northern range. Because of the kagi, there used to be a lot of wild kagi up on the high crags. But it doesn’t matter—they’re always hungry, always hunting. And they’d rather eat people. Your lourijakh doesn’t care, he’ll eat anything, but a rock-targ can smell you a mile upwind, and he’ll leave a fresh kill to come after you. No, I can’t tell you why, how do I know? It’s just the way they are.