The Griffin's Feather Read online

  Ben saw that Hothbrodd was not the only one up and about already when he stopped beside the troll. A dozen little nisse children were sitting rapt at his feet, admiring his skill with his enormous knife. Hothbrodd was always surrounded by nisse and impet children – an alarming sight in view of the troll’s gigantic boots – but so far none of those tiny creatures had come to any harm.

  ‘Hi, Hothbrodd,’ said Ben, while Twigleg, sitting on his shoulder, politely hid a yawn behind his hand. ‘Do you know what’s happened? The mist-raven who sent us here looked suspiciously happy.’

  Hothbrodd frowned, and scraped raven droppings off the nose of a carved impet. ‘News of some kind from Greece,’ he grunted. ‘And yes, I think it was indeed rather bad news.’

  Ben exchanged an anxious glance with Twigleg. Greece… Vita and Barnabas had discovered a Pegasus couple there just under a year ago. And the other day Vita and Guinevere had set off to see how they were doing.

  Ben left his muddy boots with the leprechaun who lived in the coat cupboard beside the front door, and went into the house that he loved more than any other in the world.

  The portraits and photos on the walls of the entrance hall showed friends and colleagues of the Greenblooms. Some of them had creatures of legend and fable among their own ancestors, although it often wasn’t obvious. Suspiciously pointed ears, a cow’s tail, webbing between the toes… all those features were easily hidden. Even a hint of fur on the face could be explained away as an annoyingly strong growth of stubble. Accounting for the beak of Professor Buceros and Dr Eel’s gills was more difficult, and so those two turned up only for meetings of the inner circle of FREEFAB (the name that Ben and Guinevere had given their parents’ organisation; Vita and Barnabas preferred to describe its members as ‘protectors’ of fabulous species). Under Dr Eel’s photos, a family of flying Watobi pigs that a friend of the Greenblooms had rescued from poachers in the Congo were asleep in a dog’s basket. The scaly tail of a photomeleon showed under the coat cupboard, and two feathered frogs were looking down at Ben from the chandelier. How could anyone fail to love MÍMAMEIĐR?

  ‘Control Centre’ – Barnabas Greenbloom disliked the term that the mist-ravens used for his library, although in many ways it deserved the name. It was the largest room in the house, and two walls were covered with books right up to the ceiling, which was exactly right for a library. The outside wall, however, was glass, so that you felt as if the books were standing among the trees outside. In winter you could look through their bare branches and see the nearby fjord, but on this rainy May morning the branches bore the fresh green leaves of springtime, and they were teeming with crow-men and tomtes who built their dwellings among the nests of buntings and leaf warblers.

  The smile that Barnabas gave Ben was as warm as ever, but Ben could tell just from looking at him that something really bad must have happened.

  A dozen screens hung on the fourth wall, and the films on them showed the protectors of fabulous creatures from all over the world, talking about those that they had entrusted to the care of the Greenblooms. All the screens were dark except for one, which showed Guinevere in the remote Greek valley where her parents had discovered the two Pegasi. The sound and picture were so bad that, yet again, Ben wished Barnabas would invest one of the jewels still remaining from the dwarves’ gift in new cameras and computers. But Barnabas always pointed out that it was better to go carefully with the money from the jewels, in view of all the refugees that came to MÍMAMEIĐR, and he was right. All the same – ‘frogspawn and bird poo!’ as Hothbrodd would have cursed – the picture was so poor that Guinevere might have been standing on another planet. What she was saying, however, drove away all thoughts of better cameras, and reminded Ben that there were much worse things to worry about.

  ‘We’re assuming it was a horned viper,’ she said. ‘It’s dreadful, Dad! Synnefo may well have trodden on its nest by mistake. The venom worked much faster than with humans. Ànemos is beside himself!’

  Ben looked at Barnabas in dismay. Synnefo was the Pegasus mare, Ànemos was the stallion. The two of them were probably the last of their species, and everyone in MÍMAMEIĐR remembered the excitement when Lola Greytail, their best news-gatherer (and the only female rat aviator in the world) came back from Greece with photos of a nest and three new-laid Pegasus eggs. Hothbrodd made his way through the door and looked anxiously at the screen, which now also showed Vita. Ben didn’t call Vita Greenbloom Mother, any more than he called Barnabas Father, although he loved them dearly. But they both seemed to be so much more than parents: they were his friends, teachers and protectors.

  Ben had seldom seen Vita looking sadder. Her eyes, like Guinevere’s, showed that she had been crying, and Vita didn’t cry easily.

  ‘We can hardly persuade Ànemos to eat, Barnabas!’ she said. ‘He’s half-crazy with grief! And he knows, as we do, that he could lose his children as well. It won’t be simple to keep the eggs warm in the Norwegian spring, but I think the only hope for the foals is for us to bring the nest and Ànemos to MÍMAMEIĐR. Guinevere agrees with me.’

  Guinevere nodded vigorously. Many people were surprised to find how much the Greenblooms valued the opinions of their children. ‘Remarkable, isn’t it?’ Barnabas had once commented. ‘As if it wasn’t obvious that a person’s age often has little to do with their intelligence. I might even claim that in many cases, unfortunately, stupidity and pig-headedness get worse with every birthday!’

  The Greenblooms set so much store by working with their children that Ben and Guinevere were taught at home. And they had wonderful teachers: Twigleg taught them history and ancient languages (a very important subject if you are dealing with beings who could easily be thousands of years old). Dr Phoebe Humboldt, who taught them about the nature of fabulous creatures, had spent four years in a sunken ship off the Ligurian coast, studying sea-nymphs and mermen. They learned geography from Gilbert Greytail, a white rat whom Barnabas had persuaded to leave the city of Hamburg with its warehouses, and move to MÍMAMEIĐR to make maps showing the original homes of all known fabulous beings. One of Ben’s few human teachers, James Spotiswode, tried to teach them mathematics, biology and physics – about as easy as convincing wolves that it is a bad idea to gobble up impets – but as Professor Spotiswode rewarded Ben and Guinevere for every natural history problem that they solved successfully by giving them lessons in robotics and telepathy, he had two very enthusiastic students. In short, the pair of them were learning what they needed to know in order to devote their lives, as their parents did, to conserving all the creatures who, without their help, might be in danger of existing only in the pages of books of fairy tales.

  ‘Keeping the stable warm won’t be a problem.’ Hothbrodd took a piece of wood out of his pocket and began carving a lizard from it. ‘The woolspinner oaklings can pad the nest and the stable walls.’

  Barnabas nodded, although he didn’t look entirely convinced.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Hothbrodd will get the stable ready, and I’ll ask Undset to be here when you arrive. I shouldn’t think she’s ever treated a Pegasus before, but maybe she can at least help to keep Ànemos alive.’

  Holly Undset was a young veterinary surgeon from the neighbouring village of Freyahammer, and she had already given medical treatment to countless guests at MÍMAMEIĐR. It hadn’t been easy to find someone who could be relied on to keep silent. Many hunters would have paid a fortune for the information that there was a hidden place in Norway where such rare prey as water-horses and dragons could be found. But Holly Undset was such a passionate opponent of wolf-hunts and bear-hunts that one day Barnabas had invited her to MÍMAMEIĐR.

  When the screen on which Vita and Guinevere had given their bad news went black, there was a depressed silence in the library. Even Hothbrodd had lowered his knife. Photos of the Pegasus nest were propped against the backs of the books on one of the shelves. Ben went over and looked at the three silvery eggs. They were smaller than hens’ eggs. It had s
eemed to Guinevere that the newly hatched foals would be tiny, until Vita explained that Pegasus eggs didn’t stay so small, but began to grow larger after two months.

  ‘We could keep the eggs warm with electric blankets,’ suggested Ben. ‘Or in the incubator that we used for that abandoned clutch of wild goose eggs.’

  But Barnabas shook his head. ‘That could be risky. Not just because, as you know, technology often fails in the presence of fabulous creatures. The eggs of certain winged species break if they come into contact with plastic or metal. That’s a risk we can’t possibly run. Twigleg, you were instrumental in putting this library together, and unlike the rest of us you’ve read every single book in it. Can you help us here?’

  The homunculus obviously felt flattered. ‘I think I remember that we have the facsimile of an Italian manuscript mentioning Pegasus eggs, among other things,’ he said as he looked along the shelves. ‘Where was it? Just a mo. Ah, yes.’

  He clambered nimbly down Ben’s arm and made his way over tables and the backs of chairs until he reached his own computer, which was no larger than a matchbox. Ben and Professor Spotiswode had built it for him. The manikin had learned to type on it as quickly as he picked up everything else that he was taught. He had even developed his own software, which no one else could understand.

  ‘Yes, here we are. Pegasus eggs, special features of, see seventeenth-century Italian alchemists’ manuscript, page 27, line 16.’

  Twigleg closed the computer and climbed one of the tall bookcases as effortlessly as if he had been a fly. The homunculus loved his miniature computer. He wrote a blog on it, entering the name and species of every recent arrival in MÍMAMEIĐR, together with endless files of information about its description, origin and nutritional preferences, and he spent hours recording every new item of information about fabulous creatures and other rare beings. His great love, however, was still books. Twigleg’s sharp-nosed face lit up with childish delight when he was leafing through printed pages, and the older they were the more reverently he handled paper and parchment. Ben had already found himself fearing that one of the heavy volumes the homunculus took out of the shelves would squash him some day. And once again, the volume that he found after a short search was much larger than Twigleg himself.

  ‘Can I help you, my dear Twigleg?’ Barnabas obviously shared Ben’s concern. He took the book and the homunculus off the shelf, and put them down on a desk sheltering a hobgoblin who played his mouth harp, tunelessly, far too often for Ben’s liking.

  ‘Wait a moment… I’ll soon find it…’ Twigleg turned the parchment pages as carefully as if they might crumble to dust under his tiny fingers. ‘25, 26… yes! Here it is. The Italian is very old-fashioned, so I’ll give you a modern translation.’

  He cleared his throat, as he always did when he was about to read something aloud. ‘“The egg of the winged horse, Pegasus unicus, is one of the greatest wonders of the world. Its shell, originally silver, becomes increasingly transparent as the foal grows, until it resembles the most valuable glass. Yet it is as hard as diamonds. Its most wondrous quality, however, is evident only when the foal reaches the age of six weeks, and the shell restricts its growth. At this point, the mare starts licking the shell, whereupon the egg begins to grow, while remaining as hard as ever. Although,”’ Twigleg raised his head and exchanged glances of dismay with Ben and Barnabas, ‘“only the mother’s saliva has that effect. If she comes to any harm, the egg will not grow, and the foal will stifle in the unbreakable shell.”’

  Hothbrodd drove his knife so far into the desk under which the hobgoblin was sitting that its mouth harp fell from its furry fingers. Rain had begun to fall. Barnabas went over to the glass wall, where a dozen crystal snails were licking the raindrops running down, and looked out.

  ‘Hothbrodd, can you send a mist-raven to Undset telling her what’s up, and fixing it for her to be here when the Pegasus arrives?’

  The troll nodded in silence, and disappeared outside, treading heavily.

  The last Pegasus, here in MÍMAMEIĐR… Ben was glad that they could trust Undset. He dared not think what would happen if the world knew about the existence of a winged horse. In the past Barnabas had openly admitted to believing that fabulous creatures really did exist, but by now the Greenblooms were convinced that secrecy gave those beings their only chance of survival – secrecy, and a network of initiates who weren’t accepted into it lightly. These days FREEFAB consisted not only of those who protected Great Krakens, sphinxes and stone-dwarves, but also many men and women who campaigned for the conservation of other threatened species – whether those were gorillas, grey seals, lynxes, sea turtles, or one of the countless other extraordinary animals that now risked extinction.

  Hothbrodd returned. The troll had to stoop to fit through the doorway. When Twigleg had once asked him why, in view of the very different sizes of all the inhabitants of the house, the door frames were designed for human dimensions, the troll had only growled, ‘Not human dimensions, homunculus. They’re designed for Barnabas.’ Guinevere suspected that Hothbrodd owed his life to her father, but neither of them could be induced to say exactly how they had met one another.

  ‘Any idea how we can get those eggs to grow without the mare, Barnabas?’ The troll often said straight out what other people were only thinking. Barnabas thought highly of that quality.

  ‘I haven’t the faintest notion, Hothbrodd,’ he murmured, staring out into the rain. ‘And we can consider ourselves lucky if the stallion doesn’t die of grief as well. I admit it, I just don’t know what to do. But then again,’ he added, turning to the screens that looked down from the wall like sleeping eyes, ‘what are friends for?’

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Conservators

  The world is a dangerous place, not because of

  the people who are evil, but because of the people

  who don’t do anything about it.

  Albert Einstein

  A few hours later, a number of anxious faces were looking out of the screens in the library of MÍMAMEIĐR.

  Among those at the gathering was Jacques Maupassant, a specialist in fantastic water creatures (of course including whales, dolphins and corals). Sir David Atticsborough, one of the most highly respected makers of wildlife films in the world, advised FREEFAB on the filming of videos to put hunters and animal traders on the wrong trail and lead them away from their intended prey. November Tan organised worldwide protection patrols against poachers, and conducted research for FREEFAB on the nutritional habits of fabulous creatures. Inua Ellams, the world-famous advocate of African birds, was FREEFAB’s specialist on winged fabulous beings. Maisie Richardson had a great reputation for her work in protecting grass fairies and fern fairies, and Jane Gridall could not only converse effortlessly with any primate, but had devised a sign language that made it possible to communicate with almost every species on the planet.

  Soon a heated debate was in progress on the best way to save the foals. Maupassant suggested rubbing the eggs with dragon-spit as soon as they grew too large for their shells – all the members of FREEFAB knew that Barnabas Greenbloom had a very close relationship with dragons. November Tan wondered whether there had been any experiments with the saliva of seahorses. Maisie Richardson offered to ask the fairies in her garden to sprinkle their pollen over the eggshells in the hope that it would make them grow. Jane Gridall talked about her experience of elephant-ostrich chicks that had hatched prematurely, and Inua Ellams suggested that the song of the Healing Bird of Heaven (which he could imitate very impressively) might fortify the foals.

  Barnabas nodded with interest to all these ideas, but Ben saw that the lines on his forehead were getting deeper and deeper.

  ‘My dear friends and colleagues,’ he finally said, ‘I thank you very, very much, particularly on behalf of the desperate father. I assure you that we will think about all these proposals. We have a Bird of Heaven as one of our guests here, and there are even dragons available, but their s
aliva is so fiery that I don’t advise trying it. I’m afraid it will be impossible to break the eggshells before the foals are the right age to hatch. No, we must think of something else that will make the eggs grow. But what?’ Barnabas heaved a sigh that brought a dozen nisses out from among the books. ‘And how can we find it in less than two weeks? One thing is certain: if we don’t succeed we are going to lose the last Pegasus foals in this world, and that presumably means the end of the species itself.’

  ‘But that would be a disaster, Barnabas!’ cried Inua Ellams.

  ‘A loss to the planet of epic proportions!’ agreed Sir David.

  The cries of protest mingled until a confused chorus of voices filled the library. Then a shrill whistle abruptly halted the noise. It came from a screen that had been dark until now. The newcomer was clearly not a human member of FREEFAB. His glasses were perched on a mighty beak, and he was smoothing down the black feathers of his wings.

  ‘Forgive my late arrival, Barnabas,’ croaked Sutan Buceros, a rhinoceros bird of considerable size and legendary age who had often advised the Greenblooms on the protection of the fabulous beings of south-east Asia. Barnabas had estimated Sutan’s age as six hundred and twenty. The rhinoceros bird’s croaking voice made that seem perfectly credible to Ben.

  ‘My assistant,’ Buceros went on, ‘has told me about the problem. Has anyone yet suggested the sun-feather of a griffin to save the foals? After all, the quills of such feathers contain a substance that will make even metal and stone grow.’