Chapter 12 #2
Not that I was aware of, and my mother and grandmother hadn’t kept many secrets from me.
Yes, they hadn’t said anything about the way my mother had paid for my father’s silence about the mystical beasts in the woods, and they’d also neglected to mention how much money they had sitting in various savings and checking and brokerage accounts, but they’d never hidden the truth of the forest from me, had told me from an early age that creatures out of legend sometimes appeared in the woods and that those mythical beasts were nothing to be scared of.
So I was fairly certain that if my mother and grandmother — or any of my ancestors — had exhibited a talent for reading minds, they would have told me about it.
A crunch on some dead leaves made me abandon my thoughts and turn around.
Standing a few yards away was the griffin. Its dark eyes, not really like those of an eagle or a lion but something uniquely their own, met mine for a moment. Then it made a keening sound, not so dissimilar from the kind of sound a hawk might make.
“Hi, there,” I said quietly. Although it looked fine to me physically, something about it seemed to almost droop, as if it wasn’t at all happy about its current circumstances. “Is something wrong?”
It lifted its head, and the umber-gold feathers that covered its head and chest shimmered in the pale sunlight. Then it began to move away from me, but slowly, almost as if it meant for me to follow.
Although I knew going deeper into the woods might not be the best idea, I also realized that the creature seemed to need my help, and I certainly wasn’t going to ignore it.
Anyway, I had my usual pack with me, the one that had extra water and protein bars and a first aid kit, along with a compass and my phone, so it wasn’t as if I was going off half-cocked with absolutely no forethought.
No trail here that I could see, but our passage left enough markers — broken twigs and disturbed leaves and a few snapped fronds of ferns — that I thought I’d be able to find my way back without too much trouble.
And as we went, I realized where we were going, even if I’d never come in from this direction before.
The clearing where the portal had first appeared to me.
Now, of course, it looked very different, with not even any of the little fairy-bell flowers around to show that something unearthly had once occupied this place.
The griffin stopped there and let out another of those mournful keens, and the sound hurt my heart so much that I just had to go over to it and run a careful hand over the feathers that circled its neck.
“It’s okay,” I said softly, using the same gentle tone I employed when working with injured animals. No, the griffin didn’t seem to have suffered any obvious hurt, but it still appeared to be in some kind of distress. “Can you tell me what’s wrong?”
In response, its enormous wings flapped, sending fallen leaves and loose twigs swirling everywhere. Luckily, the weather had been too damp for those wings to kick up much dust as they beat against the cool air, but I still raised a hand to shield my eyes from the debris.
And then in my head, the word “home.”
No, that wasn’t right. I couldn’t truly explain what had just happened, because I knew the griffin wasn’t thinking of the English word for that concept.
Instead, I’d seen a vast meadow in a shade of deep teal, with tall trees whose trunks were pale pink and whose crowns shimmered in silver and gold surrounding the open space.
Off in the distance had been deep purple mountains, and the sky had been painted in shades of aqua and salmon and soft lavender.
The otherworld.
“You want to go back there?” I asked.
The griffin dipped its feathered head and then looked up again, dark eyes beseeching.
“I don’t know if I can help,” I said next. It felt beyond strange to be communicating with the creature this way, but it seemed to understand me…and, wonder of wonders, somehow I could understand it as well.
Another image came to me, this time of Silver Hollow, with its tidy little streets and late nineteenth-century architecture. And although the pulse of thought I received from the griffin right then felt very different from the last one, I still thought I got the gist of it.
Safe.
“Do you mean the town is safe now?” I asked, and the griffin’s wings beat against the air.
Keep safe.
Was he trying to say he would keep it safe? Safe from what?
Keep safe until you can send me home.
This was the creature’s longest thought by far, and I couldn’t know for sure whether I’d hopelessly bungled the meaning. But if I hadn’t, it sure seemed to me as if the griffin was trying to strike some kind of bargain.
He’d help to keep Silver Hollow safe until I somehow managed to open a portal for him. Never mind that I had absolutely no idea how to do such a thing.
But the griffin seemed to think I could.
I spread my hands, trying to communicate my utter helplessness when it came to opening portals or performing any other kind of interdimensional magic. “I’m not sure if I can do that.”
Home, the griffin thought at me again. Home.
All I could do was shake my head.
Then,
Protect shadow.
A chill shivered its way down my spine.
Was this the same shadow my mother had been warning me about in her note?
“What is the shadow?” I asked, knowing how desperate I sounded.
In reply, the griffin beat its wings again. This time, though, it launched itself into the air, flying away from me and the portal clearing, heading east toward the mountains. Were they its destination, or had he simply found a good hiding place somewhere in that direction?
As with so many other things, I had no idea.
When I got home, my first instinct was to reach out to Ben. However, I guessed he was probably still busy with his YouTube livestream; he’d told me those Q&A sessions could go on for some time, which was part of the reason why we hadn’t made any real plans for our Sunday evening.
Now, though, I desperately wanted him here, wanted to tell him everything that had just happened and see if he had any advice he could give me.
Although I was glad I’d been able to share some sort of communication with the griffin, I still wasn’t entirely certain of all the ramifications of our exchange.
Had something passed down to me from Mary Welling all those generations ago awoken, thanks to the shifting energies of the portal?
Did all of the women of our line have some sort of inborn ability to communicate with those legendary creatures?
Once again, I didn’t have any answers. And even if I ignored the whole talking-to-griffins element of the encounter, there was still plenty left over to be worried about.
What was the shadow? What about it was such a subject of concern for both my mother and the griffin?
I didn’t know, and I realized that brooding about it wasn’t going to help any.
Instead, I tried to distract myself by emptying the dishwasher and putting away the sheets and towels, and once those tasks were done, it was close enough to dinner that I could throw together a salad, even though my appetite had mostly deserted me.
In fact, I ended up putting half the salad in a Tupperware container in the hope that it would still be serviceable for lunch tomorrow, and then went out onto the back porch to catch the last few rays of sunset.
There wasn’t terribly much to see, though, since low clouds and fog had drifted back in, and I told myself to go inside before it got too damp.
But….
Something moved at the edges of my vision, and I turned back toward the forest, eyes narrowing.
What the hell was that?
Three dark shapes came racing out of the trees, something about them blacker than black, the sort of color…or absence thereof…that I somehow knew couldn’t be natural. The hair on the back of my neck stood up, even though I had no clear idea what I was even looking at.
More movement beyond the trees, this time silver and gold. The unicorn and the griffin emerged from the forest and bore down on those terrible dark shapes, the unicorn feinting with its horn, the griffin reaching for them with its taloned front feet.
Two of the shadow-creatures went down, but the third wheeled around and ran off toward the woods, although I couldn’t see exactly where it went, thanks to the encroaching twilight.
As I watched, the fallen whatever-they-were seemed to blur and spread out, almost like India ink dropped into a pool of water.
And then they were gone.
Shadow, I thought. Shadow.
Those…things…were what my mother and the griffin had been trying to warn me about. And one was still somewhere in the forest.
I hurried into the house and slammed the door behind me, then locked both the latch and the deadbolt.
I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d done that, but I wasn’t taking any chances…
although I had the creeping worry that a creature of shadow like the ones I’d just seen might not have to worry about deadbolts and locks and could simply seep its way past the doorjamb.
A shudder went through me, and then I realized the house was utterly dark. I’d left the light over the sink on before I left, but it was off now, as well as the clocks on the oven and microwave.
It sure looked as if the arrival of those shadow creatures must have been accompanied by a massive electromagnetic burst.
Shit.
I hurried into the living room and scooped up my purse so I could pull out my cell phone. Sure enough, all the bars were missing, and when I put it up to my ear, I got an automated, “All circuits are busy. Please try again later” message.