Peter Beagle - The Line Between

Molly came up then and took me away from him. She held me close, and she stroked my hair, and she told me, «Child, Sooz, there's no turning back for him

now, or for you either. It was your fate to bring this last cause to him, and his fate to take it up, and neither of you could have done differently, being who you are. And now you must be as brave as he is, and see it all play out.» She caught herself there, and changed it. «Rather, you must wait to learn how it has played out, because you are certainly not coming into that forest with us.»

«I'm coming," I said. «You can't stop me. Nobody can.» I wasn't sniffling or anything anymore. I said it like that, that's all.

Molly held me at arm's length, and she shook me a little bit. She said, «Sooz, if you can tell me that your parents have given their permission, then you may come. Have they done so?»

I didn't answer her. She shook me again, gentler this time, saying, «Oh, that was wicked of me, forgive me, my dear friend. I knew the day we met that you could never learn to lie.» Then she took both of my hands between hers, and she said, «Lead us to the Midwood, if you will, Sooz, and we will say our farewells there. Will you do that for us? For me?»

I nodded, but I still didn't speak. I couldn't, my throat was hurting so much. Molly squeezed my hands and said, «Thank you.» Schmendrick came up and made some kind of sign to her with his eyes, or his eye–brows, because she said, «Yes, I know," although he hadn't said a thing. So she went to King Lir with him, and I was alone, trying to stop shaking. I managed it, after a while.

The Midwood isn't far. They wouldn't really have needed my help to find it. You can see the beginning of it from the roof of Ellis the baker's house, which is the tallest one on that side of the village. It's always dark, even from a distance, even if you're not actually in it. I don't know if that's because they're oak trees (we have all sorts of tales and sayings about oaken woods, and the creatures that live there) or maybe because of some enchantment, or because of the griffin. Maybe it was different before the griffin came. Uncle Ambrose says it's been a bad place all his life, but my father says no, he and his friends used to hunt there, and he actually picnicked there once or twice with my mother, when they were young.

King Lir rode in front, looking grand and almost young, with his head up and the blue plume on his helmet floating above him, more like a banner than a feather. I was going to ride with Molly, but the king leaned from his saddle as I started past, and swooped me up before him, saying, «You shall guide and company me, little one, until we reach the forest.» I was proud of that, but I was frightened too, because he was so happy, and I knew he was going to his death, trying to make up for all those knights he'd sent to fight the griffin. I didn't try to warn him. He wouldn't have heard me, and I knew that too. Me and poor old Lisene.

He told me all about griffins as we rode. He said, «If you should ever have dealings with a griffin, little one, you must remember that they are not like dragons. A dragon is simply a dragon — make yourself small when it dives down at you, but hold your

ground and strike at the under–belly, and you've won the day. But a griffin, now … a griffin is two highly dissimilar creatures, eagle and lion, fused together by some god with a god's sense of humor. And so there is an eagle's heart beating in the beast, and a lion's heart as well, and you must pierce them both to have any hope of surviving the battle.» He was as cheerful as he could be about it all, holding me safe on the saddle, and saying over and over, the way old people do, «Two hearts, never forget that — many people do. Eagle heart, lion heart — eagle heart, lion heart. Never forget, little one.»

We passed a lot of people I knew, out with their sheep and goats, and they all waved to me, and called, and made jokes, and so on. They cheered for King Lir, but they didn't bow to him, or take off their caps, because nobody recognized him, nobody knew. He seemed delighted about that, which most kings probably wouldn't be. But he's the only king I've met, so I can't say.

The Midwood seemed to be reaching out for us before we were anywhere near it, long fingery shadows stretching across the empty fields, and the leaves flickering and blinking, though there wasn't any wind. A forest is usually really noisy, day and night, if you stand still and listen to the birds and the insects and the streams and such, but the Midwood is always silent, silent. That reaches out too, the silence.

We halted a stone's throw from the forest, and King Lir said to me, «We part here, little one," and set me down on the ground as carefully as though he was putting a bird back in its nest. He said to Schmendrick, «I know better than to try to keep you and Sooz from following — " he kept on calling Molly by my name, every time, I don't know why — «but I enjoin you, in the name of great Nikos himself, and in the name of our long and precious friendship…» He stopped there, and he didn't say anything more for such a while that I was afraid he was back to forgetting who he was and why he was there, the way he had been. But then he went on, clear and ringing as one of those mad stags, «I charge you in her name, in the name of the Lady Amalthea, not to assist me in any way from the moment we pass the very first tree, but to leave me altogether to what is mine to do. Is that understood between us, dear ones of my heart?»

Schmendrick hated it. You didn't have to be magic to see that. It was so plain, even to me, that he had been planning to take over the battle as soon as they were actually facing the griffin. But King Lir was looking right at him with those young blue eyes, and with a little bit of a smile on his face, and Schmendrick simply didn't know what to do. There wasn't anything he could do, so he finally nodded and mumbled, «If that is Your Majesty's wish.» The king couldn't hear him at all the first time, so he made him say it again.

And then, of course, everybody had to say goodbye to me, since I wasn't allowed to go any further with them. Molly said she knew we'd see each other again, and Schmendrick told me that I had the makings of a real warrior queen, only he was certain I was too smart to be one. And King Lir … King Lir said to me, very quietly, so nobody else could hear, «Little one, if I had married and had a daughter, I would

have asked no more than that she should be as brave and kind and loyal as you. Remember that, as I will remember you to my last day.»

Which was all nice, and I wished my mother and father could have heard what all these grown people were saying about me. But then they turned and rode on into the Midwood, the three of them, and only Molly looked back at me. And I think that was to make sure I wasn't following, because I was supposed just to go home and wait to find out if my friends were alive or dead, and if the griffin was going to be eating any more children. It was all over.

And maybe I would have gone home and let it be all over, if it hadn't been for Malka.

She should have been with the sheep and not with me, of course — that's her job, the same way King Lir was doing his job, going to meet the griffin. But Malka thinks I'm a sheep too, the most stupid, aggravating sheep she ever had to guard, forever wandering away into some kind of danger. All the way to the Midwood she had trotted quietly alongside the king's horse, but now that we were alone again she came rushing up and bounced all over me, barking like thunder and knocking me down, hard, the way she does whenever I'm not where she wants me to be. I always brace myself when I see her coming, but it never helps.

What she does then, before I'm on my feet, is take the hem of my smock in her jaws and start tugging me in the direction she thinks I should go. But this time … this time she suddenly got up, as though she'd forgotten all about me, and she stared past me at the Midwood with all the white showing in her eyes and a low sound coming out of her that I don't think she knew she could make. The next moment, she was gone, racing into the forest with foam flying from her mouth and her big ragged ears flat back. I called, but she couldn't have heard me, baying and barking the way she was.