Page 28 of Lion's Share
“Strange creatures have come and gone in these woods for more than a hundred years,” she said, her tone reasonable, even though the slightest edge to it told Ben he probably shouldn’t push her too hard. “And I saw the griffin right at the dark of the moon, which is when we thought the portal would appear. There wasn’t anything that strange about it.”
Looking at the situation that way, he supposed she had a point. Even a month ago, it had seemed as if the portal had settled back into its usual patterns. Now they knew better, of course, but to Sidney, her griffin sighting wouldn’t have meant anything except that the creatures appeared to be coming and going as they always had.
“Did your power go out at 9:47 tonight?” he asked abruptly, and she nodded.
“Yes. I remember it clearly because I’d just reset the clock again, and then boom! The lights went out. Luckily, they didn’t stay off for too long.” A pause, and her eyes narrowed slightly as she seemed to put the various puzzle pieces together. “You think the outage was caused by the griffin coming through the portal?”
“It must have been,” Ben replied, even as he wondered if he was trying to force a connection here. But no…it all made sense. Marjorie had already told him that the pulses seemed to coincide with the power outages in Silver Hollow, and he had to believe that the griffin coming through must have caused an enormous fluctuation in the electromagnetic field in the forest. “Do you know why the unicorn would have tried to fight it?”
“I have no idea.” Sidney uncrossed her arms and drummed her fingers against her jeans-clad knees. Now she looked more worried than ever, face pale and brows pulled together in a frown. “It’s not common that two different types of mythical creatures might be in the forest at the same time, but it’s not unheard of, either. I know my grandmother wrote in her journals that she’d spied the animals together once or twice. From what I remember, though, it seemed as if they got along pretty well. So why would the unicorn go on the attack like that?”
“Well, it’s not as if he’s a stranger to violence,” Ben responded, and her frown only deepened.
“He attacked Victor Maplehurst because he was hurting the forest.”
On one level, that made sense. But….
“If the unicorn’s intention is to protect the woods, then why wouldn’t he have gone after the person who’s carving up the trees? He’s causing a different kind of destruction, true, but it’s still not exactly minor.”
Since Sidney went quiet then, brow still creased with worry, Ben guessed she didn’t have a good answer to that question.
However, her expression cleared after a moment, and she said, “Maybe the unicorn wasn’t trying to actually hurt the griffin. Maybe he was trying to warn him off, trying to get him to go back through the portal.”
On the surface, that theory made some sense. Except….
“Why would the unicorn want to drive the griffin away? From what you’ve said, it’s not as if this is the first time it’s been here.”
“Maybe it was,” Sidney returned. “I know the unicorns aren’t always the same one, because I’ve seen the differences between them. This is only the third time I’ve seen a griffin, and that trail cam footage” — she inclined her head toward his laptop’s screen — “is just muddy enough that it’s hard to pick out any real details. This could be a new one, a different animal that doesn’t understand what it’s coming into. Also,” she went on, clear gray eyes lighting up as a new idea occurred to her, “it could be that the unicorn understands what’s going wrong with the portal and was trying to get the griffin to go back before it gets stuck here or something. After all, it sure sounds like the rules of the game have changed, and the creatures who are coming through the portal now probably don’t realize that it’s not appearing at the dark of the moon the way it’s supposed to. If it only appears long enough for them to come here and not go back to wherever home is, then we could all be in a world of hurt.”
Ben hadn’t even thought of that angle to the problem, but he could see that she had a point. Having mythical creatures come and go from the forest was one thing. Having them stuck here for an indefinite period…well, that could cause so many problems, he didn’t even know where to start.
“If that’s what the unicorn was trying to do, it doesn’t look as if he was successful,” he said. “So…now what?”
“Did you see any other creatures come through the portal?” Sidney asked, and Ben shook his head.
“No, just the griffin,” he replied, and allowed himself an inner grin. Only in the world of Silver Hollow would he have ever slapped the modifier “just” in front of the word “griffin.”
Some of the tension in her shoulders seemed to ease. “Well, I suppose that’s one piece of good news. Let’s hope nothing else got through…and that the portal will reappear sometime tonight and the griffin will go back whence it came. No harm, no foul.”
This was an overly optimistic view of the situation, one Ben wasn’t sure he could buy into. “And if it doesn’t?”
The corners of her mouth turned up ever so slightly. “Well, I guess you can put that footage on your YouTube channel and watch the clicks and views pile up.”
Ben knew she was joking. Or at least, he thought she was. Still, he could see her point. Once there was a griffin trapped in the woods along with a unicorn, it was only a matter of time before the public learned the truth of their existence. All the work the women of Sidney’s family had done for generations to keep the truth of the forest a secret would be destroyed.
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” he said, then closed the laptop’s lid and stood. She rose as well and put her arms around his waist, snuggling in close, telling him that while she might be worried and frustrated by the situation, she was still very glad to have him there with her.
Just as he was glad to be there with her. He couldn’t think of anyone else he’d rather have at his side while they tried to find a solution to the mess they’d found themselves in.
Even if such a solution felt utterly elusive at the moment.
Chapter Ten
Part of me had wanted to say the hell with it and close the pet shop that Saturday — it would only be open for a half day anyway — but Ben told me we needed to act as normal as possible.
“If there weren’t FBI agents wandering around and asking questions, then I’d say sure, don’t bother to go into work tomorrow,” he’d said after I broached the subject not too long before I headed home the previous night. “Right now, though, I think it’s better if we stick to our normal routines as much as possible.”
And although I’d wanted to protest, deep down, I’d known he was right.
