Antelmu rode in front this time, which he’d never done. Typically he was content to sit right behind Dirt resting his arms over his shoulders, or stretch out and lay down on Socks’ back and watch the sky.
Not now. He was more anxious than Dirt or Socks had ever seen him, his mind sparking with a hundred jumbled thoughts. He sat up a bit and held his face sternly against the wind, feeling like a horseman, and thought aloud, “Dirt, can you get ready to make some hot lights? We’ll need to warm it up if it’s alive. Once it’s warm, we can cover it with more of Biandina’s clothes. Although, I don’t know how big it will be. And Socks, can you make sure there’s nothing else that’ll come get it? Everything eats eggs so we might have to fight. And I only have one good arm right now. Please?”
Dirt and Socks agreed to basically anything he asked, more amused at how serious he was than anything. And it was an intriguing idea, certainly, trying to raise a gryphon.
Socks followed the trail easily enough and could have found the nest by sight even if he didn’t have the scent to follow. That sled left a track of flattened snow big enough it might as well have been a paved road.
The run was not a long one; just around five or six tall hills. Socks was hardly panting by the time they got there. The nest was clearly visible, a giant pile of twigs and grass and all sorts of things, atop flat rock outcropping big enough for Socks to lay down on.
The scene around the nest was a violent one. There had been a bigger fight than the men had let on, although it didn’t look like the humans were involved in most of it. The snow was torn up all around the nest, with stray feathers of red and gray and white and smears of darkening blood.
Antelmu tried to jump down to run up to the nest faster while Socks looked around, but the pup grabbed him and put him back, then jumped up himself. He landed with his front paws on the rim of the nest and grabbed Antelmu to put him down gently, right next to an enormous white egg, at least two feet across at the widest, decorated all over with spots of red and gold.
“It’s alive!” shouted Antelmu, and he was right. All three of them saw the tiny mind of the poor little creature, just a spark. The only thing its semi conscious mind perceived was that it was cold. Antelmu recognized that at the same as the others and shouted, “Hurry, warm it up! Warm it up!” He stood and raced back to beckon Dirt more directly.
Dirt hopped down, twigs and branches crunching loudly beneath him, and knelt to get a closer look. The egg was cold, but cold was relative; the spot was still noticeably warmer than the rest of the landscape. The egg rested on a comfortable padding of soft down and grasses mashed into a cushion, and from the shape of the nest, Dirt figured the mother would rest with it under her chest, not the middle of her stomach. And now that he thought about it, gryphons did have a bigger tuft of feathers there than other places.
-I smell rucche here as well as gryphon and human. I think the nest got attacked, and the humans killed the mother after the fight was over.-
“That would explain the mess,” said Dirt. He snapped his fingers a few times to summon lights, then turned them quickly into warming embers and had them hover near the shell.
Antelmu rested a reverent hand on the egg and stared so intently it looked like he could see inside. And in a sense, he could; Dirt quickly realized he was watching the egg’s mind, waiting for it to stop feeling cold. Dirt joined him and kept a careful eye.
Socks suddenly stood straight and wagged his tail, ears twitching. His entire demeanor changed to pure excitement, such that both boys looked up at him, confused. Before Dirt even asked he said, -It is Mother! She is no longer resting and is watching me again. She says Father already returned to the den and left for the mountains.-
“Oh, that’s nice. How long has it been? A few months?” asked Dirt.
-Since it started cooling off after summer.-
“That long? I didn’t realize.”
-You do not talk to her as often as I did.-
“Does he mean his mother? One of the giant ones you told me about?” whispered Antelmu aloud.
Dirt nodded, a sly grin breaking out on his face. He wasn’t sure whether Mother or Father was more likely to warn Socks about any serious trouble he came across, but it was nice to know they were watching. And Socks really did look pleased now. He practically radiated happiness, head dipping up and down and tail wagging like he wanted to go for a run.
The big pup turned and raced up to the top of the hill and gave a long howl, even though Mother was surely too far away to hear it. Dirt and Antelmu let him be, smiling to each other. Antelmu’s smile faltered, though, and he tried to hide his thoughts for the first time. He suddenly missed his own mother, even though she had usually been mean, and all his siblings. Dirt pretended not to see it.
Once the egg stopped feeling cold, they bundled it tightly in Biandina’s coat, which was just big enough to get the job done.
“Do you know anything about raising gryphons?” asked Dirt.
“No, we don’t have them where I’m from. I’ve only ever heard about them from you. That dead one was the first one I saw,” said Antelmu. He sat with his bottom on the ground and crossed his legs, settling in while he tried to resist patting the egg some more.
“Then where did you get the idea to hatch an egg?”
“I thought of it right then,” said Antelmu, his plastered smile turning into a genuine, mischievous grin.
“Really?”
“Sort of,” said Antelmu. He shifted his weight and looked like he had more to say, so Dirt kept quiet. Once his thoughts were in order, he said, “Okay, I’m going to teach you something. Do you know the difference between tame and domesticated?”
“Is there one?”
“Yep. Tame is when you raise an animal to like you. Domesticated is different. You can tame a ragnuli, if you find a pup. But it will only ever accept you, and if you don’t treat it carefully it might turn wild again and eat you anyway. I’ve never seen anyone do it but I know people have.
“That’s different from a dog. Dogs aren’t like that. Once you train a dog, it’ll know not to bite anyone, not just you. And it won’t turn wild out of nowhere. Dogs are made to live with humans. Same as sheep. Or horses. But horses are a little different. They’re born wild, but once you train them, they’re domesticated, not just tamed. Anyone can ride a trained horse, not just its master.
Dirt wondered if Socks had overstepped and become slightly tame, against Mother’s early warnings. He wasn’t ever going to bite Dirt or attack him, and that’s apparently what tame meant. But that shouldn’t count, since if anyone asked, Dirt was the pet, not Socks.
Antelmu continued, “Gryphons aren’t domesticated, I’m sure, or we would have them already. But I bet I can tame one, if I raise it from a chick. My babbu raised quail one year and they would come when he called them. So I know how to do it.”
“It can’t be that easy, though,” said Dirt. “They’re huge. And they’re smart. Almost as smart as humans, I think, from the few times I got close to one.”
“Yeah, and do you know what the hardest thing about raising any animal is?” asked Antelmu, his eyes sparkling with boyish enthusiasm.
“Feeding them?”
“Knowing what they’re thinking, and making sure they understand you,” said Antelmu.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Oh,” said Dirt. “That seems obvious, now that you say it.” He gazed with his mental sight at the tiny little mind, safe and warm and placid.
“Yeah,” said Antelmu. “I can see its thoughts. I’m going to ride it. It’s shaped like a horse with wings.”
The older boy stretched out his hand then to stroke the egg. Dirt watched him already growing affectionate with it. In part with the thing it was, since seeing its mind made it real in a way a blank egg couldn’t be, and in part with what he hoped it would become.
“If it’s a female, then I’ll mate her somehow and help raise the chicks, and if it’s male, then I’ll figure something else out. Because if I could get a whole flock, then I could have my own warband. We wouldn’t even need Maxima to protect us then. I’ll have to teach some others how to see minds,” said Antelmu. His eyes grew distant as he talked, imagining. “I’ll have to practice my archery, but we could hunt anything. Except wolves. We could have even fought that… Eye.”
Dirt considered that. The duke’s knights were indeed an incredible fighting force, but they took a lot of maintenance. Each man needed help from several others to get his armor on and off, for instance. So he doubted it would be as easy as Antelmu thought, but honestly, that was more planning than Dirt had done for anything, so far.
Antelmu had asked earlier what Dirt’s larger plans were and how he was going to actually save humanity. Well, honestly, he didn’t know. He didn’t have plans. He had a few goals, but was hoping the goals would be clearer with time and ideas would come to him when he needed them. But here was Antelmu, acting on a whim and already thinking twenty years ahead.
So what could Dirt do, anyway? Avitus had been the master of the Collegium Magorum, which Dirt figured was some sort of training organization for mages. But it felt like that didn’t quite cover it. He’d had prestige and respect and wealth, too. Not just students. And he’d had powerful friends who matched him in intellect, if not ambition.
Well, that gave Dirt his crazy idea, one he’d already had rolling around but never given much time to. He would start a new Collegium, but instead of the College of Mages, it would be called something else. He’d have to think about a name. Firstly, he’d have to think about exactly what it was for, and who would be in it.
That wasn’t hard. It should be for people like him and Socks, obviously. People traveling around having adventures and helping humans, slowly making the world livable again. Exploring and learning. Maybe finding old treasures and making them new again. Old places. Old ideas. All sorts of people could join, since he would have many different roles to fill. He could teach new mages, but they’d just be one part of it. Fighters like the Duke’s knights and gryphon masters like Antelmu was hoping to be, if they’d join. The College of… something. It would come to him. But he smiled to himself, because the more he thought about it, the more right it felt. He would need something to watch over when he was grown, or he wouldn’t feel like himself.
-Mother says you are not ready to hatch an egg like that, and it will likely die,- said Socks, coming back down.
“I’m trying it anyway. If you’ll let me,” said Antelmu. He showed a hint of fear on his face and leaned a bit closer to his egg.
“Don’t be too upset,” thought Dirt. “I suspect when Mother says things like that, she’s secretly hoping to be proven wrong. She told Socks I was probably going to die, too, and here I am.”
-Mother says that you have to turn the egg four times every day, or it’ll die. And you have to keep it warm, but if you get it too warm it’ll die, and the difference between just right and dead is only a little bit warmer. She says eggs breathe, so you can’t wrap it tightly or keep it covered,- said Socks. His mental voice sounded tentative, like he wasn’t fully convinced either. It did sound like more work than they realized.
“That’s nothing. I’ll do it, if you’ll help. And if you don’t want to, I understand. Maybe you can leave me with those men, and they can help me, even though I’m not from their tribe,” said Antelmu.
Socks wasn’t quite done yet, though. He said, -Mother says that it won’t hatch for two more months, and if you mess up even once, it’ll die. When it hatches, it’ll be helpless and blind, but its beak will still be sharp, and you’ll have to watch it always and keep it warm and dry. You’ll have to feed it strips of meat all day long while it’s awake, a little at a time every few minutes until it opens its eyes, or it will get sick. That will take a few weeks. Then you can feed it slower and slower until it’s every few hours, but more at once.
-It won’t fly for a whole year. It won’t even try. But all that time it’ll be a little baby with a will of its own. You’ll have to watch it and protect it. And after a year when its feathers harden, it will be hard to keep track of and probably die then if it didn’t already. It won’t fly far, but you can’t fly at all to go find it.-
Antelmu nodded, intimidated but still resolute. He could do this. He’d been watching little children his whole life, and his own horse on top of that. And helped train more than one brood of dogs.
-You will have to feed it a whole animal every day, which means you’ll have to spend all your free time hunting and hoping it stays safe. Some in the morning, and some in the evening. Gryphons store their food.
-Also, Mother says it’ll be ten years before it’s full grown. They grow faster than humans but slower than wolves. It will be able to hunt on its own after three or four years, but only safely once it’s five years old. If you can get it to be five years old, then it’ll probably survive. Once it gets close to full grown, then you can ride it, but not before, even if it looks big enough. Its bones are lighter and they will be fragile until it is an adult. Oh, and I can smell that it’s a male.-
Antelmu swallowed and nodded, his face growing paler as it sunk in. But he shook slightly and sat up straighter and said, “I can do all that. I will.”
-Mother says gryphons are smart, and that means they are trouble. He will have his own opinions about everything and you will never be his master like a human with a dog or horse. You will have to convince him and negotiate often. He will also not accept being left behind. If you raise him, you will have to keep him until one of you dies.-
“Is this even possible? Will he accept me at all?” asked Antelmu.
-Mother says they are very loyal creatures. Just a lot of work. So I think if he likes you when he is little, he will like you when he grows up,- said Socks. -I think he will be your friend.-
“It sounds like she’s trying to talk me out of it,” said Antelmu. “Is this a bad idea?”
Dirt said, “No, you have it wrong. She’s telling you it’s hard, but she’s giving you directions so you’ll be ready. Mother is incredibly generous sometimes. Now you know exactly what to do, don’t you?”
-Mother thinks this is funny. She stopped watching for a short time to rest, and now we are very far away playing in the snow and the new human I picked up wants to adopt a gryphon,- said Socks. He leaned down to sniff the egg once more, then pulled Biandina’s coat away with his teeth to let the egg breathe.
“Well, exploring and causing trouble is our job, so I hope she’s happy. How are your siblings doing? Did she say?” asked Dirt.
-Big Sister is in Ogena now getting her own harness so she can have pockets. The humans are more scared of her than they were of me because she’s so much bigger than I was, but they are being friendly, and she brought them some cattle for a trade. Big Brother and Little Brother went to the mountains where Father is now. Little Sister went to the desert and is trying to find her own pet human, but there are no spare ones yet and she is afraid if she just steals one, that will make it sad.-
Antelmu snorted playfully and said, “She’s right about that. Getting kidnapped would be a bad start.” He never took his eyes off the egg, except to glance at Biandina’s coat, tempted to put it back on.
No one spoke for a time while they considered their prospects. Antelmu’s mind buzzed with all the things he’d have to do, and what it would mean. Ten years was a long, long time. Would it be worth it? Would it work out in the end? Where would he get enough food? And more immediately, were Dirt and Socks going to help him keep it warm?
-Something is coming,- said Socks.
Both boys shot to their feet and looked around. They didn’t hear or see anything until a moment later, when a bloodied and bedraggled gryphon slumped over the crest of the hill and made its way toward them, partially sliding as it came down the snowy incline. It was injured and torn and missing an entire wing, and left a trail of fresh blood. Every move it made exuded pain. It saw them with its one remaining eye and tried to give out a screech, but it was more of a haggard groan. It screeched again, a little more forcefully, and sped up.
-I think that’s the father of this egg. I said I smelled rucche here and I think it must have lost a fight. Or won, since it’s still alive. Barely,- said Socks, his mental voice somewhere between pity and wariness. The creature didn’t look like much of a threat anymore, but you never knew.
The closer it got, the more it drew on whatever final reserves of energy it had, clearly intending to give its last to fend off the threat to its egg. Dirt and Socks stepped back and got ready for a fight, but Antelmu stood and gently put the coat back over the egg, then leaned down and hugged it. He looked up at the gryphon and held his breath.
Then he gathered all his mental focus and spoke directly to the gryphon’s mind, sending the emotions of love and protectiveness, which he didn’t have to force himself to feel. He included a mental picture of himself guarding the egg, keeping it warm until it hatched.
The male gryphon didn’t quite understand, since it didn’t recognize the thoughts as coming from outside itself at first. But Antelmu repeated it even more sincerely, in a way that felt like begging. Pleading. He gently rested his head on the egg again and held it tight.
The gryphon’s walk slowed until it stopped, not even a step away. The massive beast loomed over the boy, open wounds steaming. Socks was ready to kill it the second it struck, but Antelmu stood slowly and reached his hand out. The gryphon made a gurgling sound, a gentle and plaintive call. It lowered its head to meet Antelmu’s hand, and the boy patted it gently on the enormous beak, and then the side of its head where it wasn’t injured. He sent the pure emotion of loving that egg with all his might and keeping it safe, and said, “Let me take it from here.”
The gryphon lowered itself to the ground, face only a step away from the egg, and gave one breath, then another, and died.
-Well,- said Socks, -I guess you’re committed now, aren’t you, little Antelmu?-