On The Wings of a Griffon by Gabrielle Danielle Burnett (novel books to read TXT) 📖

Chapter 1

I fell back on my bed, still angry about being treated like a child. Of course, I could’ve reasoned if I felt like it, I was a child, physically. Mentally, though, I was smarter than the oldest of my sisters.
Unfortunately for me, wits didn’t hold much ground for a five year old, especially a girl. I’d done my best not to get angry, but I had. I’d insulted my mother’s guests, who had been treating me like a simpleton. I had attempted to explain to mother that I was only trying making them feel stupid like they were making me feel. She didn’t want to hear it.
I’d been sentenced to my room for the rest of the night. It was almost as bad here as it had been back in the great hall. Except here I was unoccupied, I didn’t have to avoid people who might pinch my cheeks and tell me how cute I was, but at least nobody was talking about me as if I wasn’t there.
I spent my time thinking of more insults for the guests, insults that I would most likely never speak. They had no ground on which to treat me like I was stupid. I was smarter than them!
That was when I thought of something. Why did I put up with this, why didn’t I just leave for a while? It was not any lack of wit that made me decide to leave, thinking that a girl with no experience would be able to survive in the woods for even a small amount of time after dark; it was a lack of experience.
I took off my fancy clothing, wrinkled after me neglecting to take it off before lying down, and put on my least attention-grabbing robes, hoping that the black and browns would make me appear more like a commoner.
It wasn’t hard to sneak out of the palace dressed like that. No one noticed a poorer nobleman’s daughter leaving like they would have a princess. I was lucky that my white-blonde hair was hidden by a hood, though, because that was a dead giveaway of my identity. I was the only girl in the city with hair that fair, although a few came close.
I breathed deeply when I exited the castle doors, glad that nobody had noticed such as small figure darting about. My robes must have just made me appear short, and hid the fact that I was but five years of age.
The guards, if anything, seemed mildly surprised to see me run away from the palace as quick as I could. I’d decided to let them see me do something out of the usual so that when mother or father discovered my absence, they’d know where to look. I hadn’t known exactly why I did this, but I’d decided, in later years, that it was some instinctive yearn for safety that could only be received by a subtle hint.
I was a small, willowy five-year-old, but fast, and I flew down the road a ways before cutting off of the lightly paved, mostly-dirt road. I’d decided to go into the forest, for some reason that I couldn’t fathom. It was almost like I was being unconsciously called for.
The impossibly tall trees didn’t look promising, or the leaves that, in the pale moonlight appeared to be little less than pitch black. But I continued. I had never been one to be afraid, or to show fear, at least.
Once I entered the line of trees, the call became stronger. I couldn’t make out anything but an impossibly lonely feeling that radiated throughout the woods. I had an overwhelming urge to turn around at that feeling, but for some reason I didn’t. I kept going.
My footsteps were usually very quiet, but seemed loud in the serene, eerie quiet of the wood. I randomly wondered how loud my sisters’ footsteps would sound. They were often much noisier than me.
I soon realized that when I walked in a certain direction for an amount of time, the call either grew stronger or weaker. It didn’t take me long to figure out that it was leading me to something. I wasn’t sure if that idea appealed to me, but I continued on my walk.
I wasn’t sure how long I’d been hiking through increasingly difficult ground when I heard a sharp cry, like a bird’s, but deeper, and more of a roaring cry than a shrill song. It came from a distance away, and from my left.
I stood still and listened, but I did not hear it again. When I turned that way, and took a step forwards, the draw I felt intensified, something I’d been afraid that it might do. I sighed walked onwards, my curiosity getting the best of me. Sometimes I wished that I shared the same disdainful personality of my sisters’, the one that meant that I wouldn’t have run away in the first place because the guests’ comments wouldn’t have bothered me as much.
I was too smart for that, though. At the moment, I didn’t feel smart. At the moment, I felt like the biggest simpleton in the kingdom. How could I have followed this strange cry without thought?
An errant thought drifted across my mind like a loose leaf blowing lazily in a breeze. I wonder what could let off a signal so strong that it reached me all the way back at the palace. I immediately dismissed the thought, not wanting to know.
A moment later and I found myself stepping into a clearing. At first I thought that everything was blurry, that I was losing my sight. Then I realized that it smelled so bad that my eyes were watering. I held my breath and wiped a hand across my face, dismissing the tears.
I gasped at what I found once I could see. A large form was fallen in the middle of the small meadow-like clearing. I could see wings as clear as if it were day, and a beak that pointed outwards, away from the body, as if the beast had turned its head to look for help.
It was a pitiful, horrible sight. That was when I heard another vocal cry. Aarokk! It cried in that too-deep bird voice. I hesitantly stepped closer to the corpse, sure that I had not seen the beak move, and wondering if I were simply hearing things.
It sounded like it had come from the stomach of the beast. I walked as close to the beast as I could bear, but I still wound up walking a far arch to go around it. I nearly puked when I saw the cause of its death.
Its stomach was gone. It was as if someone had simply cut it out. There was a large lump a little away from the puddle of blood that had formed around this side of the beast, and I was suddenly frightened to see it move, to breathe.
I realized that this is what had made the call. A young griffon, probably younger than me, if he was still with his mother! I sighed as conflicting emotions stirred within me.
Disgust at the body, and fear of the baby griffon that was still big enough to kill me easily, since I lacked any self-defense training whatsoever. But also affection, and sympathy for the cub that hadn’t actually made any move to harm me.
I stepped closer and the griffon cub raised its head and stared at me with big, moonlight pale eyes, flecked with gold and scarlet. It was an eerie gaze, leaving me near paralyzed.
Then the cub broke off the connection and stood, as if it were unused to its legs. I held out its wings as if to balance itself, and I saw that they were each about as long as he was.
I flinched as he walked towards me, but held my ground. When its beak came threateningly close to my leg, I considered jerking away. But before I could move my leg to safety, the creature’s head butted against it.
It was rubbing the top of its head against my hip, and making a rumbling sound that resembled roughly that of the palace mouser cats. On an unthinking whim, I reached down and stroked the soft, down feathers that ran down his neck, chest and a little farther down his back, like a mane of feathers.
He suddenly tilted his head up and stared into my eyes. I caught one word in his gaze: Allásso̱n. I didn’t know how I heard it, or if I even did…it was like it was put into my head by…by the griffon cub.
“Allásso̱n?” I asked in a near silent voice, “Is that your name, little one?” I’d heard of griffons having magical powers, since they were the blood-form of air.
The cub gave a short cry in reply, but, underneath the cry, I heard, “Yes.” I gasped for breath. Not only could the creature put words—maybe more—into my head, but I could understand him too!
I swore in a way that would make even the most experienced guardsman blush with shame, a gift that came with being small enough that the gatemen didn’t see you when you listened in on their conversations.
I sat down heavily in mud that would stain even the brown on my robes, and sighed. This was getting weird even for me. I might have been five, an age of belief in the impossible, but I wasn’t suicidal or crazy, and being here, next to a dead griffon and a cub, wasn’t the safest thing to be doing.
I decided that I needed to get home. Suddenly I groaned. Where was home? I was only vaguely aware of the creature butting his head up against my knees when I didn’t move.
I did feel, however, when a sharp pain erupted in my knee. I glared at the cub, whose face read surprise, as if he didn’t know he could make me bleed by only nipping at my leg. “Sorry.” He said with one of his strange cries.
That was when the idea struck me. “Can you understand me?” I asked, still not able to believe that it was possible. The griffon cub looked insulted.
“Of course.” He replied, seeming less and less mysterious every moment and more like a…a human. I couldn’t bring myself to forget all of the things that I’d heard about griffons that quickly, though.
“Can you help me find my way back to the palace, Allásso̱n?” I asked, hardly daring to use the cub’s name. Now that I actually heard him, now that he let himself be heard, I’d found that he sounded older than me, somehow.
Allásso̱n studied me for a moment before saying, “Yes.” Apparently I’d passed some sort of test he’d set up. I suddenly realized that Allásso̱n was the only person…well, creature that could talk, that had ever treated me like I wasn’t five years old, despite the fact that I was.
I suddenly found myself warming up to the griffon cub, despite the worries and fears that I still had. My frown had disappeared at his response though, and I dared to smile at the creature that was going to, supposedly, lead me to safety.
“Thank you.” I said, although I was still nervous about the strange way that I could understand him and he could understand me. It was odd talking to something