attempts to escape, and whenever a human ventured too close to his cage he rushed at them to attack. But the chains always pulled him back, and the bars were in the way. Infuriatingly, the humans seemed to know this would happen and passed insolently close to him, barely even bothering to glance in his direction, let alone show any fear.
Once every few days he was taken out of the cage and forced to walk around in the enclosure, pulled along by the chains around his neck. The first time, he immediately tried to fly away, but his wings wouldn’t open and the chains weighed him down. And even if he had been able to take to the air he would not have got far. The enclosure was open to the sky, but a huge net of steel cables had been stretched over it, preventing anything as big as a griffin from flying in or out.
In the end his spirit died down and he stopped trying to attack or run. He would lie in his cage, eyes dull, and thump his beak on the wall over and over again, not even fully aware of what he was doing. His mind slowly turned into a blank sea in which he was unable to think about anything much or even really be aware of his situation or his surroundings. Sometimes he would doze and remember his old life, back in the mountains, when he had still been able to fly. The dreams were so vivid that he would believe they were real, before he was woken up by the pain in his wings and realised that he had been trying to beat them in his sleep.
The only relief he had from the monotony and despair was Aeya. She talked to him often, teaching him new words and phrases, and when he was bored he would mumble them to himself, trying the sounds. It helped him to get by.
One night, when his speech was a little better, she told him a story.
“Long ago,” she said, her voice soft but clear, “the eagle and the lion were enemies. They lived together in the land, and both of them wanted to rule it. They fought day and night, but neither one could win. The eagle could fly but he could not run, and the lion could run but could not fly. The eagle had powerful sight and a sharp beak and talons, but the lion could climb and he had strong teeth and talons of his own. One day the eagle swooped down on the lion and carried him away. He wanted to drop him into the sea and make him drown, but the sea was a long way away and he soon became tired.
“He began to fall from the sky, but he could not let go of the lion because his talons were tangled in the lion’s mane. They fell very far, because in those days the eagle could fly as high as the sun. They fought as they fell, trying to kill each other, and when the eagle tried to fly away, the lion bit his tail and held on to him. But when they fell, they fell into a great hole in the ground. The hole was very deep, so deep it had no bottom.
“The lion and the eagle fell into the shadow that lived there, and both of them were afraid, when they were not afraid of anything else in the world. They clung to each other like chicks in a nest, and they could not see each other then, or the sun or the moon or the sky. They fell for years and years and did not stop, until they reached the light that was on the other side of the darkness in the hole. The light took them, and it wrapped itself around them until they were both flaming with it. After that they were lifted out of the hole together, and when they flew up and into the sky they saw that they were not themselves any more. They had become one. The wings and the talons of an eagle, the paws and tail of a lion. One creature with the strength of both. They were the first griffin, and they flew and screamed with the eagle’s voice and proclaimed that they were lord over the land and would be forever, for the light had given them magic and wisdom, and no creature would ever be stronger or