Chapter 20

“You want to try memory orb?” The voice repeated insistently in heavily accented English as I swatted blindly at the light filling my eyes.

“She’s not interested, Tallana,” I heard puck exclaim, sounding exasperated as the light suddenly disappeared, leaving me in the dark for a moment as my eyes adjusted.

“Every young girl likes the orbs!” The woman, Tallana apparently, insisted, gesticulating emphatically with one set of hands as the other planted itself squarely on her hips. “Young girls need someplace to keep their secrets. Especially someplace pretty.”

“I don’t even like pink,” I protested weakly as the orb, which was that particular nauseating color of neon pink I reserved a special hate for, made another dive at my head. I yelped and ducked as a little tendril of light snaked out towards my temple. “What’s it doing?!”

“Looking for your secrets, silly girl. Memory orbs made for that.”

I expected Puck to come to my rescue, but he seemed a little distracted by the fact that every time she saved her hands, she nearly spilled out of her bikini top. Help came, unexpectedly, from a different direction as Kiasis plucked the small orb out of the air and matter-of-factly dashed it against the sidewalk.

“How clumsy of me,” she said mildly, not sounding at all apologetic.

Tallana screeched as she dived after the pieces of her orb, now scattered all over the ground. “You stupid! Stupid, stupid Sch’silian! You know what the orbs cost?”

“My apologies. Of course, I’ll be more than willing to reimburse you for the cost. If you’ll show me the way to your booth…?”

The booth, of course, was well within sight of all of us. But as Kiasis followed a slightly mollified Tallana away, we were left blissfully free to continue on our way. Right at that moment, I could have forgiven her for being a cold hearted cunt; I’d had enough of things trying to hack into my brain to last me a lifetime.

“What were those things?” I demanded, turning over my shoulder to make sure Biv was keeping up with us. “It looked like it was going to electrocute me, or suck my brain dry.”

“They’re just cheap trinkets, nothing to be worried about,” Puck assured me. “I wouldn’t let one into my head, I know that much….c’mon, Bivvy, you can walk on my other side, okay? Kiasis would castrate me if I lost track of you.” Grinning, he looped his free arm with Biv’s as he had with mine. The fact that onlookers now probably assumed that he had two young women draped on either arm as we made our way down the walkway, and were giving us all slightly scandalized looks that made poor Biv’s cheeks turn beet red seemed to amuse him greatly. “Anyway, they’re kind of like an automatic diary. They follow you around and automatically record your memories all day long. It’s just a cheap gimmick, of course; they last for a few days, then they quit working, if they don’t end up leaving some kind of hole in your memory or scarring your brain or something nasty like that. They’re not even designed for human use anyway—Ah! Here we are..! Home sweet home!” We came to a sudden halt outside the one and only building in sight that wasn’t lit up from top to bottom. Made of thick gray stone, it seemed strangely out of place among the shiny modern structures around it, and even among the older buildings. It most definitely wasn’t in the traditional style of Acomia, I could see that from the few older buildings scattered around us. With its tall, arching windows and thick, wooden double doors, it looked like something straight out of an Earth history book. An old, faded sign hung out over the sidewalk that read “The Dragon and The Lamb”, with a weatherworn picture beneath the ornate letters of what I presumed to be exactly that, although the emerald green creature intertwined with the fluffy white lamb looked more like a snake to me. Outside the door, as I looked to my side, was what could only have been the work of a taxidermist who was well on his way to losing his mind.

Stuffed creatures weren’t uncommon, as more and more new species of animal were discovered by exploration. Illegal, yes, but not uncommon. But this was unlike any animal I had ever heard of, or ever wanted to hear of again. It was fascinating in a horrendous way, crouched by the door in a frozen lunge, like a lion getting ready to strike. A layer of golden fur covered the sinewy, catlike body, gradually giving way to fringe of pale feathers on the neck, and an armor of green scales covering the massive tail coiled around its feet. Bright, shiny gold eyes that reminded me with a chill of Tengu’s glared out above what would have been a truly ferocious snarl, had the creature been alive. Its mouth looked like what I can only describe as an eagle’s beak with rows of razor sharp teeth that gleamed ominously in the light. In fact, the whole head was rather birdlike, as I took it in as a whole.

“Hey!” I exclaimed, pleased with my deduction as I leaned closer to examine the features. “Is this supposed to be a gryphon?”

The fearsome jaws snapped shut with an audible CRACK! as the creature lunged at my outstretched hand.

Yeah, I screamed. I couldn’t help it. You’d scream too, if a gryphon tried to eat your arm. I was lucky I didn’t do anything more embarrassing….run away, or possibly wet myself.

As I stared in frozen terror at the suddenly living monstrosity that I was pretty certain was getting ready to eat me, it slowly dawned on me that the rusty, throaty sound it was making really wasn’t the vicious snarl of a carnivore about to dine on human flesh..

It was laughter.

It was laughing at me.

“Milo,” Puck scolded, although it really seemed to me that he was trying not to laugh himself. “Aren’t you a little old for that joke? You really ought to be ashamed of yourself. What if she’d had a heart attack? You’d be the one explaining that one to Oberon.”

“I can’t help it!” The creature managed between chuckles. “That never gets old, I don’t care how many times I do it. Never.”

Unwinding from his crouch, he rose to stand at his full height on his hind legs, and I suddenly rethought my urge to kick him in the shin. He towered over me….he towered over Puck….hell, he seemed like he would have towered over both of us put together.

“Milo, meet Holly, newly discovered princess. Holly, meet Milo….one of the last remaining gryphons in existence.”

“I can’t imagine why they might be an endangered species,” I muttered, mostly to myself.

Luckily, Milo either didn’t hear me or he was more concerned with Puck’s phrasing. “Don’t say it like that, son, you make me sound old as dirt.”

“Aren’t you?”

Milo ignored that. “Holly, my dear, it’s nice to meet you. Why don’t the lot of you come inside; we’ll get you some food and you can let me know how your trip went, hm? Biv, I hope you don’t mind eating your own cooking, you left me with enough food in my freezer to feed an army.”

Biv’s quiet reply was lost among the chatter. “You know, Tallana’s making a real nuisance of herself again, she almost got one of those stupid orbs of hers to stick itself onto poor Holly’s head on our way here…”

“I’ll have a word with her. I know she can be a little on the….persistent….side.” Milo held the door open for the three of us obligingly, swinging it open as if it were nothing. Either it wasn’t as heavy as it looked, or he was as strong as he looked. I couldn’t help keeping a wary eye on him as I crept past; I was still resisting the urge to count my fingers and make sure they were all there.

That was probably why Biv’s voice suddenly coming from my other side made me jump almost out of my skin.

“Don’t worry,” he grinned a little, his voice as soft as ever but definitely amused. “He got me, too, my first time here.”

I had thought I was prepared to meet a gryphon. I wasn’t at all sure I was prepared for a gryphon with a sense of humor.