The black griffin listened. He understood only part of the story, but he took it all in anyway, occasionally repeating the odd fragment.
“My mother told me that story,” Kraee remarked. “It was almost the same.”
“What did you think of it, black griffin?” said Aeya.
He concentrated. “I . . . like . . . it.”
“Well done,” said Aeya. “You are quick to learn.”
“Why do you teach him, Aeya?” said Kraee.
“Because I am bored,” Aeya said. “And because . . .” She trailed off, unable to express what she was really thinking, which was that, to her, the black griffin’s clumsy speech made her think of him as a chick. Like those she had lost. And a chick needed teaching. Yes. He needed to be taught. She sat back on her haunches and rustled her wings. “I have nothing to do. I may as well teach him.”
The next day they were visited by Orome. The black griffin knew him by sight; he’d come to the enclosure several times, always with Sefer beside him, and had shown a fair amount of interest in the black griffin. Now the human approached his cage and stood a short way back from the bars. The black griffin stood up and started to walk toward him, but then changed his mind and lay down again, watching him listlessly.
Orome scratched his chin. “Seems you’re starting to lose interest in living,” he said in griffish. “Don’t worry, you’ll be able to leave there soon. It’s time for you to go into the pit. We have some people for you to chase.”
The black griffin said nothing. None of the griffins ever did speak to Orome or his fellow humans, except to scream curses and threats at them.
“I have a name for you,” the man went on. “Sefer thought of it.” He moved a little closer, taking in the black griffin’s silver feathers and black fur and his mottled wings. “We’re going to call you Darkheart,” he said. “Darkheart, the black griffin. Be proud of it. Your name is all over the city. Hundreds of people are coming to see you.”
The black griffin looked up at that. “Dark . . . heart?” he said, puzzled.
Orome nodded. “Your name: Darkheart. I give it to you. Soon you’ll have humans to hunt again.”
After he had left, the black griffin lay and thought for a while, and then got up to have a drink. “Aeya?”
“Yes?”
“What is Darkheart?”
“You are,” said Aeya. “That is your name now. The human gave it to you. Darkheart—a strange name. Not a griffish one.”
“Darkheart,” the black griffin said again. He repeated it several times. It sounded strange, but he realised eventually that he recognised it. It was two words, not one. “Dark . . . heart. What . . . dark heart?”
“It means a heart that is dark,” said Aeya.
He couldn’t remember what a heart was. “What . . . heart?”
“Your heart is inside you,” said Aeya. “In your chest. You can feel it inside you, clicking its beak.”
The black griffin had a vague idea of what she meant. He touched his beak to his chest, and felt his heart thudding gently beneath the feathers. “Heart,” he said, half to himself.
“Your heart is where your magic lives,” said Aeya. “It is precious.”
“Magic?”
Aeya sighed. “Magic is our power. Humans do not have it. Every griffin has their gift. You would have found yours one day. Mine was to create the wind. My breath could make a tree fall. Who knows what you could have done, Darkheart.”
He felt the imprisoned scream again. “Magic.”
They were silent for a time.
“So, you will go into the pit,” said Kraee. “I hope I will go with you, Darkheart. I want to hunt.”
Darkheart perked up at that. “We hunt?”
“Yes. Hunt humans. Sometimes three of us, sometimes more.”
“We . . . hunt human?”
Kraee’s chains clinked. “Yes. Many humans.”
Darkheart lay down to think. Did that mean he was going home? Were they going to let him fly back to his valley, where he could fly and hunt again?
Joy flooded into him. He was going home. He was going to hunt again. He knew it. And he had a name now. It was all his, all his own, just for him.
“Darkheart,” he said. And then, again, “Darkheart.”
He looked up at the sky. It was evening, and the sun was sinking below the horizon. Time to fly, time to hunt. Time to call. He remembered his valley. The wind in the trees, the rich scent of the earth, the