Page 38 of Lion's Share
Funny how I was already relying on Ben in small ways like that. True, I’d never made a daily habit of going into the woods at night, but I’d ventured out in the evening enough, driven by restlessness or a need for fresh air, or even a chance to star-watch in the deep forest, far away from anyone else.
Now, though, I knew I’d never do something like that unaccompanied, not when I had no idea how unstable the conditions there actually were.
The sun had broken through the clouds about an hour ago, not so much that the day was bright and clear, but enough to make the forest seem a little more cheerful as I approached. A fresh breeze played with the ends of my hair, and I reached into my pocket to pull out the scrunchie I always carried with me so I could pull it back.
In a way, it felt good to be out there by myself. On a Sunday afternoon, I would have normally seen some sign of other hikers around, but it seemed they were following the trails in other sections of the forest. I was glad of that, just because I could tell I needed some time to myself, a bit of breathing space to come to terms with everything that had happened during the past twenty-four hours.
The mind-reading thing hadn’t made an appearance after that one weird instance with Rebecca Morse, but I couldn’t allow myself to get too comfortable about that. If it had happened once, it could happen again.
And even though Ben had been pretty laid-back about the whole thing, reassuring me that those sorts of talents did sometimes spring up in people out of the blue, he wasn’t the one who’d experienced that utter disorientation, the sensation that my brain wasn’t quite my own.
Had this ever happened to anyone else in my family?
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?
