Page 39 of Lion's Share
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.
