The sun had not risen. A gloomy twilight hung over the land as the companions struggled on. Beak and muzzle chattered, feather and scale were stiff, fur and skin were frosty. Hours trudged. Every step more difficult, every breath clammier and every word stuttered. Only the lantern lit the way. Its light tired and grey. The lantern illuminated the gloom with an arc but only the featureless ice stared back at them, it continued onwards, the endless horizon was no longer taunting them, but this conveyor of ice seemed worse. The air was soundless now. Only their light chattering accompanied them. They felt travelling not only through land but also space. As if they were sliding. Down a great incline into a dark sea. One-way. The drake never looked beneath. Despite the reflection smothered by lack of a sky. Still, their shadowy forms flickered.
The drake appeared a face of pale death. But his resolve held. The Griffon was the more wretched. Her face hung low in defeat. She halted. The drake almost tripped and left her in the dark. Her gaze was on him. Sad, tearful. 'It's not here,' She whispered. 'Not here, not here.' Among the sadness hanging over her heart like a weight, was a mocking confusion. 'It was supposed to be. The phantoms. Myself. Where is it.' She looked at the dark. It was forlorn and distant. Then she stared at the deep scar on the side of his head, the stale smell of sizzling scales and his roaring scream echoed inside, his single frill moved with emotion but was incomplete. She was guilty. A victim and a perpetrator. 'Lusik. I'm sorry.' She sat down, ignoring the cold on her haunches. 'I'm a fool of fools.'
He came over to her, his pack and lantern clanking. 'Yes, that may be.'
She looked up at him.
'But we are fools two. I, the cowardly. I left you alone to die in front of me. A horrid act.' He said.
'But you came back.'
'I care about you.'
Her beak curved upwards, 'As I you.' The cold for a moment was warm. 'I shouldn't have made you come out here. It was a fool's flight.' She said. 'I wouldn't think you cowardly. To leave.'
'No.' He said, anger sharpening his voice. 'Don't say this about yourself. I came after you. Don't cast my act in vain. Would you have me trudge back whilst you freeze?'
'This isn't your quest. I manipulated you. You don't deserve this.'
'Deserve what?'
'To suffer.'
'I'd suffer with you.'
The Griffon stood up before him. She brought her talon. And touched his scar. His scales were rough and hewn, cragged and burnt. He didn't wince. 'In pain, in misery. Together – to suffer?' She asked.
'With you, since I found you. And to the end, we will still. Your myths are real, Griffon.' He said, smiling.
'You believe them?'
'You know yourself. Birds are a thing of evil? Not you, not here. Your city is somewhere. And we will find it. And you will be home.'
Her eyes were thoughtful. 'And what of you?'
'Then.' He said. 'We may part.'
To this, the Griffon was silent. Her gaze solemn. She stared at the ice beneath the edge of darkness. She tried to spy malevolent shapes pacing below, with crooked talons and long beaks, reaching up to snatch them away with Lusik's screams echoing on the wind. In a place where they'd remain forever. Mummified in ice. She shivered. 'What did you see?' She said.
Lusik's countenance dropped. His muzzle turned from a defiant grin to a bared snarl. A snarl in fear. His eyes darted around. His frill flared. 'I don't want to speak of it.' He said hurriedly, as if a wraith might leap from the dark at its mention. 'No, no, I can't.'
She clasped his talon, 'I'm here, tell me. The lore of my city never spoke of its malevolence. What did you see?' She pressed.
'Let me forget.'
'Lusik.' She said, her voice firm. 'If we are beset by some force of the looking-glass ice. Then what it looks like is the least of my fears.'
He growled. It was low, almost imperceptible and for a moment she feared his anger. But saw none on his face, only a fearful glint in his eyes. It was a weak whimper. Then he spoke. 'Eyes. Eyes white like coins, or little, mean stars. Or grains of snow on a blanket.' He stared forward unfocused. 'They looked at me.' Then he looked at her. 'And they were. Sad and angry. There was pain in them, and regret. Then a blackness enveloped them, darker than dark. And.' He touched his scar. Despite his alabaster scales, he looked pale.
'And they were grey. But they were bird eyes. Griffon eyes. Like yours, but not orange with life's fire. Grey with death.'
It seemed just outside their globe, that millions of eyes were looking in. The companions were oddities in a snow globe. Being shaken up. Perhaps they were trying to break it. To get in. Fear crept into her heart. Yet her mind tolled. She was too intrigued to be scared, yet the emotion was there, frothing and simmering away, awaiting an opportunity to rise. 'What fate befallen the Griffons,' She muttered. The riddle was deeper. 'How was I borne away?' She asked.
He relaxed, recalling a warmer memory. 'You were just an egg. Crimson like a drop of blood against the snow.' He laughed, it was a sound like honey. 'You were so heavy.'
She giggled, 'And to think I was once taller than you.'
'Oh, how people change!' He said.
Their brief mirth seemed to make the darkness shrivel back.
Their voices died away. Both sat thinking. They began to move when the cold wrapped its icy fingers around their bones. Despite fur and cloth and lantern, she shuddered. How terrible unfurred skin must be. They walked. Time ran on. Without dawn and day hours and minutes lost meaning. She glanced at him. His white scales were mixed with blue splotches and under the light of the lantern he looked more akin to marble than to a living creature. No fur. Nothing between him and the icy air but cloth. 'Are you cold?' She asked.
'Colder-than, I've, ever-been.' He stammered.
'We'll stop. Here light the burner, I'll warm you up.' He withdrew the burner with shaky talons and lit the switch. The pyre flashed into life and the darkness shrieked back. They huddled. Upon the iceshelf their tiny light flickered like a beacon. A star bobbing in darkness.
Seven pale lights stopped swinging and stooped. Lights made by seven lanterns, held by seven spectres. They arched their long necks and spied. The white pyre. There he was. It was weak and dull, but alive. Their path changed and they marched onward to the beacon, their covers clicking and tails sliding – their lanterns swung and the icy air parted before them. The ground warmed and hardened. Speeding their movement and thawing their chilled muscles. The land itself pushed them to the white pyre. To Lusik and the Red Griffon. Wrath flowed about them like a red mist. Hazy and blinding and bloody. Wanton. The writhing cries of their brothers and their splashed blood still played vividly in their minds. Driving them forward.
The wind reared up. It hummed and growled. Concealing their clicking covers and icy stamps. An ashen fog corrugated in the darkness. Hiding their pale lanterns too. Lusik may have heard or seen them. But the land was against him. And he never did. Till they were upon him.
They trudged onward. An arrow of malevolence flying toward the companions.
He held her close, her fur warm like a blanket. The drake stayed like that for a time, not speaking but steadily breathing. The blue leaving his body. The pale white turning bright and lively. 'How lucky you are.' He said. 'I'd love to have a permanent blanket on my body.'
'Me?' She asked, incredulous. 'Lucky? Now that I've never been described. But it does have drawbacks. Especially malting.'
He shuddered and stuck out his tongue, 'I forgot that!' He said. 'Your cottage is like a haystack in warmer months.'
'Ho, now! It's not that bad.' She laughed. 'Makes good quilt stuffing though.'
'Horrid.' He cringed.
She rested against him and felt a lidded sleep creep up on her. She listened to his thumping heart. The blood coursing through him. No matter their species, they all bled red. She thought this last and fell asleep. A quiet snore snuck out of her beak.
He couldn't guess how long they'd travelled for. It didn't seem to matter. His scar still throbbed with a stabbing pain. She was a marvel. He regarded her sleeping face. She had recovered strong. Still limping and wincing but travelling alongside him, though he greatly slowed his pace for her. She was tiny and weak, defenceless but for her hex. Yet her soul was strong and adamant. He longed to have such will. It seemed they were mirror opposites. He plucked a broken feather from her cheek. Little icy flowers bloomed in its spine. Cold, beautiful. Glinting too. He held it as he started to drift.
The drake was wrenched from his drowsiness. His eyes opened. He clutched his stomach. It growled. He moaned as he realised the extent of its emptiness, all other senses dulled as his body cried out for food and his stomach churned. It felt like an airy boiler. He pulled off the Griffon and laid her against the pack. She struggled, grasping at the air before going still. Rummaging through his stores he brought out bread. It was stiff. Akin to a cement block than a cube of wheat. Carving a chunk free with his claws he popped it into his mouth, it was chewy and gooey, hard and stale and the taste was foul on his tongue. However, hunger made the best flavouring. He devoured his slice. She slept heavy, not doubt she'd too would be starving. But she was resting. The drake didn't have a mind to disturb her peace.
He washed the food down with his waterskin. Sliding his tongue between the gaps in his teeth he laid down next to the Griffon. The meagre ration heightened his hunger. Now his desire to be in his warm hut, laden with succulent pheasant and juice was at its most potent. He sighed. Imagining its taste. Dripping with fatty juice, and spice. Sleep hung over him like a blanket then silently drifted down.
The two sleeping forms were wretched and ruined, but peaceful and unaware. Doom loomed over them. Seven pale lights. Like cycloptic eyes floated around their globe. Watchful, hateful. The wind wheezed once and silenced. Only the slumbering breaths of the companions were audible. The drake's slumbering tail twitched, and a single icy feather fell from his sleepy grasp. His talon opened and closed. Rapidly. The lights enclosed around them. Arching up like axes waiting to fall.
Lusik groped for the feather. His throat rumbled. The lights halted. In his dream, he lost something. Something precious. He floundered in the dark, calling for something lost that he didn't know the name of, calling for it desperately, stumbling and droning, his dream turning into a vivid nightmare. The eyes were back. The eyes.
Lusik woke. He startled with a gasp and the ice pricked his scales. For a moment he was ignorant of where he was and who he was. The nightmare tinged his brain. His talon fell on the Griffon. He gazed down at her and sanity returned.
Sanity replaced by petrification as his nightmare replaced life. Seven glaring eyes stared down at him from the dark. Their gaze open. It was evil and hating. He knew the light. It was light from the lanterns back home, and these denizens were not shadows of the looking-glass plain, but scorned brothers who didn't fear the white pyre.
Lusik screamed.
You are reading the story above: TeenFic.Net