The Griffin’s Wedding Ring

  Topaz Hauyn

  The bed was soft below Isabella. The black canopy sparkled with golden stars above her and in front of her eyes. She knew there were five hundred and seventy-three stars on it. Three of them with only four startips. She had embroidered most during the year after she lost her family, when she had been sixteen. She had run out of yarn on the last tree stars, like her family had run out of luck.

  The memory of her dream faded slowly.

  She remembered soft, copper-colored fur under her fingers and against her cheek. The feeling of being safe and loved. She had dreamed this dream a lot during the past years. Never could she remember what animal the fur belonged to. She hoped, one day she would remember the whole animal and not only a feeling of softness and security mixed with metal.

  Today was her twenty-fifth birthday. A day she had planned to celebrate with a huge party. One where she had intended to invite the extended family, her friends, and her co-workers.

  Instead of checking in with the event crew she had hired, she still laid in her warm and comfy bed. Looking up at the canopy, thinking about her family. Or rather, thinking about the thick, padded letter she received yesterday, with the family stamp on its back.

  Isabella had put it on the nightstand next to her bed. Beside her address and name there were some big dark red letters saying: “Open on your birthday. Caution. Not earlier.”

  Those letters had followed her into her dreams.

  Something about the shade of red threw her back years in her life and pulled up memories she had pushed away. Memories of happy laughter, when she hadn’t had to force herself to enjoy the world.

  The birthday party today was more a show than her real will. She had to prove to herself and the world that she kept going. Kept moving forward. All the while she felt like she couldn’t move because of some unfinished business.

  A feeling of being held back. A feeling she had to finish something and didn’t know what. She had finished and embroidered that canopy for her bed, hoping it would release that feeling. It hadn’t. Every year, in the week before her birthday, she sorted through the things she had kept from her family, before moving to a new city, only bringing her bed and a few memorabilia with her.

  The feeling of unfinished business lingered. She had finished school. She had gone to university, graduated and started a job. Nothing helped. Something lurked in the past, and she couldn’t point to it.

  The letter was the first clue. It was cream-colored and nondescript. Except for the bold red letters.

  A warning she hadn’t dared to ignore.

  But why hadn’t she opened the letter already?

  Isabella tried to pinpoint the cause. She had waited for a hint for so long. She had expected herself to be joyous and happy to get one. So what was it, that made her stay put under the thick warm blanket, looking up at the golden stars and think about old memories and unfinished businesses?

  Today was her birthday! She was allowed to open the letter.

  Isabella inhaled the cool air of her bedroom. The heater got turned down centrally by the houses control system each night and in the mornings it was cool. But she was used to cold temperatures. She came from the North and had moved to the South. The heat during the summer months, when the slightest movements resulted in sweat forming beads all over her skin, was much more difficult for her.

  She exhaled.

  Whatever the reason. Lying on her back, staring at the stars, wondering if it would have made a difference to buy more yarn for finishing the last stars in the size of the others, wouldn’t change anything. Except reducing the time she had to read the letter and supervise the last details for her birthday party this afternoon.

  Isabella pushed herself up into a sitting position. The soft mattress gave way, and she wiggled, until she found a new balance. The cool air seeped through her thin nightgown and made her back shudder.

  Thanks to sleeping with the shutters open, the room was already lit up by the morning light.

  Isabella reached for the cream envelope. Yesterday it had seemed lighter. She put it on top of the blanket, that still warmed her lap. The red letters weren’t there anymore. Only her name and address, written with a blue ball pen or something similar.

  Did she imagine those letters? A hallucination or a dream?

  It hadn’t been that late yesterday, and she didn’t drink alcohol over dinner with her co-workers in the restaurant. She briefly remembered the spaghetti aglio e olio. Her favorite dish, for the garlic burnt in her mouth. Combined with the softness of the noodles it reminded her of being alive. Just like chili and hot bell peppers did, which were on her menu equally often. She even ordered chili-crackers and a bell pepper pie to be on the buffet for her birthday. The sweet candy cakes were there for her guests. She wouldn’t touch them. They were too sweet and sticky on her tongue. A taste she had always hated. Even as a child, when relatives had offered her sweets, she had just handed them over to her little sister, who had loved those stuff.

  Her eyes filled with water. Her little sister was lost to her too.

  Isabella pushed the thought away and wiped her eyes clean. She had a letter to open and a party to celebrate!

  Slowly she caressed over the envelope. It felt like the padding was there to protect something thicker than a piece of paper. She fumbled at the closing and ripped open one edge. The sound of paper ripping apart mixed with the crinkling of plastic.

  Quickly, Isabella ripped the clasp completely open.

  Her heart beat faster and her palms got wet. What if something dangerous was inside?

  The scent of dried herbs rose from the envelope. She couldn’t identify to which spice it belonged, but by the grassy smell to it was a dried leave or green.

  Isabella slowly turned the envelope upside down. She shock it a bit. Something slid over the plastic, rustling faintly.

  She held her breath.

  Then it plopped on her blanket. Hot and hard. It felt like it would burn through the tissue any second, for her upper legs heated from the item.

  It was the signet ring of her mother. The one memorabilia she had searched for and not found when leaving the house of her family forever. The ring she had totally forgotten ever since. It was a dark red, copper-colored band and on top a hexagon plate with a griffin inside and mountains as background.

  Isabella stared at the ring. She couldn’t see the image on the plate for it landed looking the other way. She didn’t need to. It surely was the ring of her mother.

  Who had kept it so long and sent it to her now? Why?

  When the ring didn’t burn through her blanket, merely stayed hot and in its place she turned the envelope around. Opened it more and searched for a letter, a hint, a piece of paper or another word. Anything that might provide an answer.

  There was nothing inside.

  Isabella replaced the envelope to her nightstand.

  Memories of griffin tales returned to her mind. Her mother usually told them during the long winter nights when they were all snuggled together in front of the open fire in the kitchen. Their favorite place. One other family members called unacceptable and expected to be welcomed in the colder but more formal rooms. She could even feel the warm, strong arms of her mother around her back, holding her. Hear her voice that sounded higher and stranger when telling stories. Smelling the smoke of dry wood burning in the fire, combined with the warm feeling of a cup of hot chocolate in her stomach.

  How could she have forgotten about the rings picture and the tales her mother had told her about?

  That was what she was lacking. What she had been searching for: The ring and the memories of her mother.

  For so many years, her mother had been a shadow in her memory, one she couldn’t even picture, no matter how hard she tried. Now it was there. The image of a tall grown lady in her favorite dark red dress, the black belt around her hips with the signet ring dangling down from it. Her usual gown when she worked in the house, mixed new spices together, mended clothes and told tales. Her red hair was braided into two braids that hung down to the ring on both sides of her head. Only on important days she would wind them up into a braided crown.

  Isabella touched her own red hair, that fell soft, curly and messy from sleep, down her back. She had cut it after loosing her family but never again afterwards. Currently, it hung all the way down her back and would be a lot of work to entangle and braid for the day. She preferred one french braid at the back.

  Would she look like her mother if she made two braids? With the image vividly back in her memory Isabella thought so. She could check later, though.

  She picked up the ring with both hands. Careful, as if touched the wrong way it might shatter into pieces and take the memory away again. The metal was still hot and seemed to glow now. Surely a reflection of the sunlight that now fell into the room and touched pieces of her bed.

  She really needed to get going.

  “The ring is the key. Use it wisely”, echoed a memory from one of her mother’s stories through Isabella’s head.

  A key. To which keyhole? Her mother always told fantastical stories, never one with a keyhole.

  At least, none Isabella remembered.

  She had searched her home back then, when she had been a girl, for keyholes which opened with a hexagon key. Of course, she had found none. At least, now she knew why she looked close at each lock she passed by. Another puzzle piece she could place now. She had searched for the lock fitting to her mothers ring.

  “So sad you can’t show me the door for the ring”, whispered Isabella into her empty room.

  A knock at the door startled her from her thoughts.

  “There is an issue with the birthday cake, something about the decorations not being the way you said they will be delivered”, said a voice she knew by phone as the one of Mrs. Smith, the party planner. “When will you be down?”

  The woman did sound a bit impatient. Thanks to Isabella insisting of ordering the decoration from the North, instead of using what the booked bakery would provide.

  Isabella checked the watch on her nightstand. It was nearly noon. She had wasted the whole morning.

  “Coming. I will just need a few minutes”, shouted Isabella, pushed the ring on her left hand ring finger and threw her blanket aside.

  Isabella wouldn’t let the signet ring with the griffin and her memory get lost again.

  Byrid stood in the middle of his room. He stared at the map of the world. War was everywhere. Peace wasn’t in sight. No matter where he turned, everyone was afraid of them and wanted to kill all griffin shifters. In essence that meant, killing all members of the royal family, extended family included.

  They didn’t understand, that without them, the world would die. The magic that ran in their lineage was the source of life. If there were no more griffins to feed the energy source of the world, there would be no more life.

  A fact the priests of the false Gods denied.

  Byrid stomped on the stone floor in frustration.

  They taught the masses about prayers and offerings. Totally useless stuff. None of those had changed anything since the harvests had turned bad a decade ago. Millions starved, and he hadn’t been able to help.

  As a griffin he didn’t need the harvest of the humans. He just drank the water from the rivers and ate the ore from the mountains, taking on the color of the metals inside. His parents, official rulers of this world, did the same. But his mother had insisted that he married.

  “The girl you gave your ring must return.” She told him daily. For nearly a decade now. “Your marriage will refill the energy sources and rich harvests will return.”

  Bad thing, she didn’t tell him, how he could make the girl come back.

  Byrid remembered proud Elizabeth who had appeared out of nowhere about ten years ago. She had been equally tall as he himself, when he donned the human shape he currently wore. He needed to get comfortable in it to walk among the humans and find another way to help.

  Her hair had been as dark red as the copper he liked to eat most. Leaned against his griffin body, that was mostly dark red, her hair had blended together with his fur. Only her pale face had stood out. He had discovered the world with her that summer, and when his mother first started talking of heirs and marriage, he had gifted her with his signet ring. The day before the wedding she had vanished like she had appeared: Into thin air.

  He had wanted to search the world. Turn each of the stones upside down.

  And he did.

  After the great storm that had followed her leave had ceased.

  All the stones had been turned. Together with the fields that should have been harvested soon. That year was the start of the famine. Corn hardly grew. Trees only had a few fruits. Priests of multiple new Gods had appeared.

  Sometimes he wondered if they were from the same origin Elizabeth had been. Some of the words they used sounded similar. But so far, he wasn’t good enough in his human shape that any of those priests had talked to him more than a few sentences before unmasking him.

  A stream of wind brushed over him. Wings beat into the air in front of the huge window of his room. Instead of landing on the balcony and coming in his mother merely said:

  “Your bride arrived.”

  She turned around and left.

  Byrid stared into nothingness. He knew there were mountains in front of his open window, but he didn’t see them. Instead, he saw Elizabeth. The woman he had given his ring.

  Elizabeth came back? Did that mean the end of the famines, like his mother said for so long?

  He didn’t want to marry her. She was a fine woman, but he wasn’t in love with her.

  Additionally, he knew she had been pregnant when she had arrived for the first time. She even told him she was already married to a man. One he would never have met. Did he die? Why did she come back? Why did she accept his ring in the first place? Didn’t she know she could return to her world? Or did she not respect his world enough? So many questions he hadn't asked her back then.

  He needed to ask her. Now he got his chance.

  Byrid ran across the stone floor, out on the balcony and jumped off the handrail. Mid-air he changed and beat his wings.

  The wind blew through his fur. Wonderful. He loved it, when the wind streamed along his body. Despite loving the feeling, he beat his wings to gain height and reach the tip of the mountain with the little cave.

  His mother already waited for him, together with his father. They hovered in front of the little cave, up high in the mountains, where he first found Elizabeth.

  “Go first, my son”, said his father, as if he was only here as a witness and not personally involved. “She’s your bride.”

  Byrid nodded and flew past his parents.

  The griffins, who were stationed as guards, already left.

  Byrid landed gracefully on the rocky balcony before the small cave.

  He remembered how he first came here. He was flying and circling in the air, letting the thermal updraft raise him up, so he could float with the wind. His favorite pastime during that summer. One he had stopped doing ever since. He hated being observed. And the guards at the cave made sure there were always eyes watching up here. Sure there were other mountains in the world. But they were farther away and not as beautiful as these.

  He had smelled something that didn’t belong to the cool, fresh air up here. Searching for the source he found the rocky balcony as if it was made for a griffin to land: A wide half-circle, large enough and cut solidly into the rock, to safely hold a lot of weight.

  Now, feeling the rocks under his claws again, he did wonder again who created that balcony. He had researched in their library and found no hint of the cave, the balcony or suddenly appearing women.

  Byrids claws clacked on the raw stone. A few small pebbles rolled aside. He changed and walked the three or four steps that were possible, into the cave.

  Behind him, he heard his parents land. They stayed outside. They hated changing. Instead, they peeked inside.

  He could see her lying on the floor. Her clothes were so thin, he could practically see through them if his parents would stop blocking the sunlight from falling in. Her copper red hair curled openly around her head, instead of being braided into the two neat braids he remembered. She seemed younger than last time.

  Byrid sniffed the air.

  She smelt similar, but different. The scent of a second life was missing. Therefore, this time she wasn’t pregnant.

  There was something else that was different in her scent.

  He leaned closer and sniffed again. There clearly was the scent of Elizabeth, but there was something else, that was sweeter and softer. Something that tugged at his heart and made his chest ache. A reaction the scent of Elizabeth never caused.

  What had happened? Was it the lack of the second life? Or the time? Or the fact, that she wore his ring. On her index finger. The ring was the only source of light in the cave, thanks to his parents blocking the entrance with their heads and wide crests.

  Byrid looked at his hexagon ring. It glowed brightly red on her index finger. The place his wife would wear it.

  Why did she change its place?

  He thought back to the day, he gave her his ring.

  Laughing, dancing, not listening to him, in his opinion, Elizabeth had held out the ring, so the sun could sparkle on it, then hung it onto a keyring that always hung from her belt. She had promised to keep his key safe. A strange answer to his marriage proposal and the last words he heard from her. A guard had called him to join his parents in court to clear a complaint raised against him. He had left his room and dancing Elizabeth behind. When he returned later to get her for the quickly organized wedding ceremony, she had been gone.

  He leaned down. “Elizabeth? Are you hurt?”

 

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