Griffin

The bull came through the wrong end of the trap.

Teti saw the horns first, low and wide, then the black forehead driving between the screens of reeds. Her brother was still inside, lifting the last of the slack rope out of its path.

“Iru. Leave it.”

He looked back at her. That was all the time he had.

The bull struck the post beside him. Wood cracked; a screen folded into the dust. Iru disappeared under it, and the great animal shouldered through the gap where he had been standing. Its flank brushed Teti hard enough to spin her. She caught a hanging rope and tasted blood where her teeth had closed on her cheek.

Beyond the broken screen, Iru was crawling. Alive. His hands were moving.

Then something spread its wings above the bull.

For a moment Teti could not fit the parts together. The head belonged over an open sky: hooked beak, hard eye, a pale throat turning with the bull’s movement. Below it, a lion’s shoulders rolled under the roots of the wings. Its forepaws struck the sand, and the impact came up through the soles of her feet.

The griffin had driven the bull back through the beaters. Now it stood at the mouth of the place the men had built to catch it.

“Hold your lines,” the captain said.

Teti looked at the broken post. The upper net sagged from it, no longer spread evenly above the narrow passage. Three weeks of her work hung there in a loose belly. The lower net lay hidden in the sand, its closing ropes running out to the men on either side.

“Get him out first.”

“Hold.”

The captain’s hand closed on the rope beside hers. He wore a strip of red cloth around his wrist. Even now, with the bull’s hoofprints between his feet, the cloth was clean.

The net had been ordered for the king. Teti had been paid half in grain; the rest would follow when the creature reached the river alive. A lion net beneath it. A bird net above it. She had knotted both, then joined their edges so that nothing could slip between them.

Iru had worked beside her every evening, pulling each finished knot tight with his small, strong hands.

Across the passage he pushed the fallen reeds off his back.

“Stay down,” she told him.

The bull tried to turn. One horn caught in the standing screen. The griffin moved before the reeds had stopped shaking.

The Joined Nets

“Now!”

The men hauled. Teti hauled with them, because the lower net was already rising and Iru was on the far side of it.

Sand spilled through the mesh. The griffin struck the bull, and the two bodies drove against the lifting cords. Teti’s rope burned through her palms. She bent her knees and gave ground, letting the strain pass through her instead of pulling her over.

Above them, the damaged post snapped.

The wing-net fell crookedly.

One side dropped across the griffin’s back. The other swept low over the broken screen and caught Iru before he could flatten himself. Teti saw his raised arm go through a square of mesh. Then the griffin opened its near wing.

Every loose loop became a straight line.

Iru slid across the sand on his side. His mouth opened, but the noise of the wings swallowed his cry. Long feathers pressed through the net in close ranks, their pale edges trembling. A rope tightened under his arm. His feet scraped for purchase.

“Slack!” Teti shouted. “Your side—give slack!”

The man beyond him obeyed.

Freed of that pull, the wing rose higher. Iru rose with it.

Teti dropped her own line and ran into the passage. She caught his ankle with both hands. His weight hit her shoulders; she staggered, then held him, his heel braced against her chest.

“Take it back!”

The man hauled again. The wing lowered. Iru’s knees struck the sand.

For a breath nobody moved.

The griffin crouched over the bull. Beneath the layered feathers, its back worked against the mesh. Its forelegs were still tangled in the lower net. When it pushed down, the upper cords slackened; when it tried to lift its wings, they pulled tight around Iru.

Teti could feel the pattern through his leg.

She had made this. Every line that kept the creature down held her brother in place.

“Can you get your arm out?”

He tried. The rope rose into his armpit, and he stopped with his teeth bared.

“No.”

“Look at me.”

“I am.”

He was not. He was looking past her at the beak.

It hung less than an arm’s length away, hooked tip dark against the pale feathers of the throat. The eye moved from Iru to her hands. Teti forced herself not to jerk backward.

She took her cutting flake from the fold of her belt.

The captain stepped into the passage behind her.

“Not the net.”

She set the stone against the cord holding Iru’s arm.

“If I cut this one, it takes the strain on the next. I need to open the side.”

“You will let it out.”

“Yes.”

He caught her wrist.

The griffin shifted. A forepaw came free of the sand, larger than Teti’s head, with three cords stretched across it. Claws slid into view. The captain’s grip loosened just enough for her to pull away.

“The king’s beast,” he said, “does not go back into the hills because a boy was careless.”

Iru made a little sound. Teti felt him trying not to cry.

“The boy tied your knots.”

She saw the answer forming on the captain’s face: then the boy could untie them.

Before he spoke, the griffin heaved.

What the Rope Held

The lower net lifted clear of the ground. Men lurched forward on both sides. Someone fell. The captain planted the butt of his spear and leaned back against the closing rope, which he had caught in his other hand.

Iru’s knees left the sand again.

Teti slashed the cord above his arm.

The flake scraped without cutting through. She had used its best edge on the reed screens that morning. She turned it, sawed, and felt one strand part.

A second cord caught Iru across the chest.

She stopped.

His face was changing. He could not take a full breath.

The captain’s spearhead was beside her, a long sharp edge at the end of the shaft. She reached for it.

He pulled it away.

“Give me that.”

“Finish what you started.”

Teti looked down the passage. Beyond the men, beyond the trampled screens, the road to the river lay empty and bright. She had imagined walking it beside a cage, Iru riding on the back of the sledge, both of them too proud to show how tired they were. At home, the second payment would fill the bare corner where the grain jars stood.

Iru’s heel slipped from her chest.

She caught it under her chin.

“You can have the grain back.”

The captain glanced at him. Then his boots began to move.

Two furrows opened in the sand. The griffin had found its feet beneath the lower net. It was rising, drawing the captain toward the beak one slow step at a time.

“Drop the rope,” Teti said.

He opened his hand. The rope whipped free, tearing the red cloth from his wrist. He stumbled backward and thrust the spear shaft toward her.

Teti took it before he could change his mind.

“On your belly,” she told Iru. “When you fall.”

She laid the cord against the edge and pulled.

It parted with a crack. Iru dropped a hand’s breadth. The next cord tightened, but she was already drawing it across the blade. The griffin’s wing shuddered above her head. Dust fell from the feather tips into her eyes.

She cut again.

This time Iru fell.

Teti shoved him down and threw herself over him. The wing passed above her, dragging torn mesh across her back. For one breath she thought she had done enough.

Then the lower rope caught her ankle.

The joined edge had swept beneath her as she covered him. Now the griffin’s free wing was drawing the whole torn bag out of the passage.

It pulled her backward from Iru, turning her onto her hip. Ahead of her, the griffin’s free forepaw dug into the sand. The other was still caught. It hauled against the net, and the rope drew tight enough to grind the bones of her ankle together.

The spear was under her shoulder. She rolled onto it, dragged the head down to her foot, and put the edge beneath the cord.

She could not get room to pull.

“Iru.”

He was crawling toward the gap.

“Iru!”

He turned. Saw her. Came back.

“Push the shaft.”

He put both hands against the wood. She held the blade under the rope while he pushed it away from her, sawing the edge across the taut fibres. Once. Twice.

The cord broke.

They tumbled into the hollow left by the fallen post. A wing struck the reeds above them. Sand burst over their heads.

Teti covered Iru’s neck and waited for the weight to come down.

It did not.

When she looked up, the griffin was climbing the opposite bank. Strips of net slid from its feathers. At the crest it stopped and shook itself, first the shoulders, then each wing. Her knots fell around its paws.

Its head turned toward the open desert.

It never looked back at them.

Short Lengths

The captain took the spear from Teti without speaking. A strip of red cloth lay trodden into the sand behind him. He gathered his men and set them to dragging the dead bull out of the passage.

No one offered to help with the net.

Teti sat beside Iru until his breathing steadied. There were red lines beneath his arm and across his chest. She touched the one nearest his collarbone; he caught her hand.

“Don’t.”

She let him hold it.

At last he asked, “Do we have to give it all back?”

Teti looked at the captain. He was watching a man bind the bull’s legs.

“I think so.”

Iru lowered his head.

Then he picked up a length of cord from the sand and began working a knot loose with his thumbnail.

“That one’s cut,” she said.

“I know.”

He freed it anyway and coiled the short piece around his palm.

Teti found another. There was enough sound cord here for small nets, if they took the time. She drew it toward her, testing the fibres between finger and thumb. Beside her, Iru began the next knot.

High on the ridge, the last pale edge of a wing slipped out of sight.