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TWO HEARTS
by
Peter S. Beagle
MY BROTHER WILFRID KEEPS saying it's not fair that it should all have happened to me. Me being
a girl, and a baby, and too stupid to lace up my own sandals properly. But
I
think it's fair. I think
everything happened exactly the way it should have done. Except for the sad parts, and maybe those
too.
I'm Sooz, and I am nine years old. Ten next month, on the anniversary of the day the griffin came.
Wilfrid says it was because of me, that the griffin heard that the ugliest baby in the world had just been
born, and it was going to eat me, but I was
too
ugly, even for a griffin. So it nested in the Midwood (we
call it that, but its real name is the Midnight Wood, because of the darkness under the trees), and stayed
to eat our sheep and our goats. Griffins do that if they like a place.
But it didn't ever eat children, not until this year.
I only saw it once — I mean, once
before
— rising up above the trees one night, like a second moon.
Only there wasn't a moon, then. There was nothing in the whole world but the griffin, golden feathers all
blazing on its lion's body and eagle's wings, with its great front claws like teeth, and that monstrous beak
that looked so huge for its head.…Wilfrid says I screamed for three days, but he's lying, and I
didn't
hide
in the root cellar like he says either, I slept in the barn those two nights, with our dog Malka. Because I
knew Malka wouldn't let anything get me.
I mean my parents wouldn't have, either, not if they could have stopped it. It's just that Malka is the
biggest, fiercest dog in the whole village, and she's not afraid of anything. And after the griffin took
Jehane, the blacksmith's little girl, you couldn't help seeing how frightened my father was, running back
and forth with the other men, trying to organize some sort of patrol, so people could always tell when the
griffin was coming. I know he was frightened for me and my mother, and doing everything he could to
protect us, but it didn't make me feel any safer, and Malka did.
But nobody knew what to do, anyway. Not my father, nobody. It was bad enough when the griffin was
only taking the sheep, because almost everyone here sells wool or cheese or sheepskin things to make a
living. But once it took Jehane, early last spring, that changed everything. We sent messengers to the king
— three of them — and each time the king sent someone back to us with them. The first time, it was one
knight, all by himself. His name was Douros, and he gave me an apple. He rode away into the Midwood,
singing, to look for the griffin, and we never saw him again.
The second time — after the griffin took Louli, the boy who worked for the miller — the king sent five
knights together. One of them did come back, but he died before he could tell anyone what happened.
The third time an entire squadron came. That's what my father said, anyway. I don't know how many
soldiers there are in a squadron, but it was a lot, and they were all over the village for two days, pitching
their tents everywhere, stabling their horses in every barn, and boasting in the tavern how they'd soon
take care of that griffin for us poor peasants. They had musicians playing when they marched into the
Midwood — I remember that, and I remember when the music stopped, and the sounds we heard
afterward.
After that, the village didn't send to the king anymore. We didn't want more of his men to die, and
besides they weren't any help. So from then on all the children were hurried indoors when the sun went
down, and the griffin woke from its day's rest to hunt again. We couldn't play together, or run errands or
watch the flocks for our parents, or even sleep near open windows, for fear of the griffin. There was
nothing for me to do but read books I already knew by heart, and complain to my mother and father,
who were too tired from watching after Wilfrid and me to bother with us. They were guarding the other
children too, turn and turn about with the other families —
and
our sheep,
and
our goats — so they were
always tired, as well as frightened, and we were all angry with each other most of the time. It was the
same for everybody.
And then the griffin took Felicitas.
Felicitas couldn't talk, but she was my best friend, always, since we were little. I always understood
what she wanted to say, and she understood me, better than anyone, and we played in a special way that
I won't ever play with anyone else. Her family thought she was a waste of food, because no boy would
marry a dumb girl, so they let her eat with us most of the time. Wilfrid used to make fun of the whispery
quack that was the one sound she could make, but I hit him with a rock, and after that he didn't do it
anymore.
I didn't see it happen, but I still see it in my head. She
knew
not to go out, but she was always just so
happy coming to us in the evening. And nobody at her house would have noticed her being gone. None
of them ever noticed Felicitas.
The day I learned Felicitas was gone, that was the day I set off to see the king myself.
Well, the same
night
, actually — because there wasn't any chance of getting away from my house or
the village in daylight. I don't know what I'd have done, really, except that my Uncle Ambrose was
carting a load of sheepskins to market in Hagsgate, and you have to start long before sunup to be there
by the time the market opens. Uncle Ambrose is my best uncle, but I knew I couldn't ask him to take me
to the king — he'd have gone straight to my mother instead, and told her to give me sulphur and molasses
and put me to bed with a mustard plaster. He gives his
horse
sulfur and molasses, even.
So I went to bed early that night, and I waited until everyone was asleep. I wanted to leave a note on
my pillow, but I kept writing things and then tearing the notes up and throwing them in the fireplace, and I
was afraid of somebody waking, or Uncle Ambrose leaving without me. Finally I just wrote,
I will come
home soon
. I didn't take any clothes with me, or anything else, except a bit of cheese, because I thought
the king must live somewhere near Hagsgate, which is the only big town I've ever seen. My mother and
father were snoring in their room, but Wilfrid had fallen asleep right in front of the hearth, and they always
leave him there when he does. If you rouse him to go to his own bed, he comes up fighting and crying. I
don't know why.
I stood and looked down at him for the longest time. Wilfrid doesn't look nearly so mean when he's
sleeping. My mother had banked the coals to make sure there'd be a fire for tomorrow's bread, and my
father's moleskin trews were hanging there to dry, because he'd had to wade into the stockpond that
afternoon to rescue a lamb. I moved them a little bit, so they wouldn't burn. I wound the clock —
Wilfrid's supposed to do that every night, but he always forgets — and I thought how they'd all be
hearing it ticking in the morning while they were looking everywhere for me, too frightened to eat any
breakfast, and I turned to go back to my room.
But then I turned around again, and I climbed out of the kitchen window, because our front door
squeaks so. I was afraid that Malka might wake in the barn and right away know I was up to something,
because I can't ever fool Malka, only she didn't, and then I held my breath almost the whole way as I ran
to Uncle Ambrose's house and scrambled right into his cart with the sheepskins. It was a cold night, but
under that pile of sheepskins it was hot and nasty-smelling, and there wasn't anything to do but lie still and
wait for Uncle Ambrose. So I mostly thought about Felicitas, to keep from feeling so bad about leaving
home and everyone. That was bad enough — I never really
lost
anybody close before, not
forever
—
but anyway it was different.
I don't know when Uncle Ambrose finally came, because I dozed off in the cart, and didn't wake until
there was this jolt and a rattle and the sort of floppy grumble a horse makes when
he's
been waked up
and doesn't like it — and we were off for Hagsgate. The half-moon was setting early, but I could see the
village bumping by, not looking silvery in the light, but small and dull, no color to anything. And all the
same I almost began to cry, because it already seemed so far away, though we hadn't even passed the
stockpond yet, and I felt as though I'd never see it again. I would have climbed back out of the cart right
then, if I hadn't known better.
Because the griffin was still up and hunting. I couldn't see it, of course, under the sheepskins (and I had
my eyes shut, anyway), but its wings made a sound like a lot of knives being sharpened all together, and
sometimes it gave a cry that was dreadful because it was so soft and gentle, and even a little sad and
scared
, as though it were imitating the sound Felicitas might have made when it took her. I burrowed
deep down as I could, and tried to sleep again, but I couldn't.
Which was just as well, because I didn't want to ride all the way into Hagsgate, where Uncle Ambrose
was bound to find me when he unloaded his sheepskins in the marketplace. So when I didn't hear the
griffin anymore (they won't hunt far from their nests, if they don't have to), I put my head out over the
tailboard of the cart and watched the stars going out, one by one, as the sky grew lighter. The dawn
breeze came up as the moon went down.
When the cart stopped jouncing and shaking so much, I knew we must have turned onto the King's
Highway, and when I could hear cows munching and talking softly to each other, I dropped into the
road. I stood there for a little, brushing off lint and wool bits, and watching Uncle Ambrose's cart rolling
on away from me. I hadn't ever been this far from home by myself. Or so lonely. The breeze brushed dry
grass against my ankles, and I didn't have any idea which way to go.
I didn't even know the king's name — I'd never heard anyone call him anything but
the king
. I knew he
didn't live in Hagsgate, but in a big castle somewhere nearby, only nearby's one thing when you're riding
in a cart and different when you're walking. And I kept thinking about my family waking up and looking
for me, and the cows' grazing sounds made me hungry, and I'd eaten all my cheese in the cart. I wished I
had a penny with me — not to buy anything with, but only to toss up and let it tell me if I should turn left
or right. I tried it with flat stones, but I never could find them after they came down. Finally I started off
going left, not for any reason, but only because I have a little silver ring on my left hand that my mother
gave me. There was a sort of path that way too, and I thought maybe I could walk around Hagsgate and
then I'd think about what to do after that. I'm a good walker. I can walk anywhere, if you give me time.
Only it's easier on a real road. The path gave out after a while, and I had to push my way through trees
growing too close together, and then through so many brambly vines that my hair was full of stickers and
my arms were all stinging and bleeding. I was tired and sweating, and almost crying —
almost
— and
whenever I sat down to rest, bugs and things kept crawling over me. Then I heard running water nearby,
and that made me thirsty right away, so I tried to get down to the sound. I had to crawl most of the way,
scratching my knees and elbows up something awful.
It wasn't much of a stream — in some places the water came up barely above my ankles — but I was
so glad to see it I practically hugged and kissed it, flopping down with my face buried in it, the way I do
with Malka's smelly old fur. And I drank until I couldn't hold any more, and then I sat on a stone and let
the tiny fish tickle my nice cold feet, and felt the sun on my shoulders, and I didn't think about griffins or
kings or my family or anything.
I only looked up when I heard the horses whickering a little way upstream. They were playing with the
water, the way horses do, blowing bubbles like children. Plain old livery-stable horses, one brownish,
one grayish. The gray's rider was out of the saddle, peering at the horse's left forefoot. I couldn't get a
good look — they both had on plain cloaks, dark green, and trews so worn you couldn't make out the
color — so I didn't know that one was a woman until I heard her voice. A nice voice, low, like Silky
Joan, the lady my mother won't ever let me ask about, but with something rough in it too, as though she
could scream like a hawk if she wanted to. She was saying, "There's no stone I can see. Maybe a
thorn?"
The other rider, the one on the brown horse, answered her, "Or a bruise. Let me see."
That voice was lighter and younger-sounding than the woman's voice, but I already knew he was a
man, because he was so tall. He got down off the brown horse and the woman moved aside to let him
pick up her horse's foot. Before he did that, he put his hands on the horse's head, one on each side, and
he said something to it that I couldn't quite hear.
And the horse said something back
. Not like a neigh,
or a whinny, or any of the sounds horses make, but like one person talking to another. I can't say it any
better than that. The tall man bent down then, and he took hold of the foot and looked at it for a long
time, and the horse didn't move or switch its tail or anything.
"A stone splinter," the man said after a while. "It's very small, but it's worked itself deep into the hoof,
and there's an ulcer brewing. I can't think why I didn't notice it straightaway."
"Well," the woman said. She touched his shoulder. "You can't notice everything."
The tall man seemed angry with himself, the way my father gets when he's forgotten to close the pasture
gate properly, and our neighbor's black ram gets in and fights with our poor old Brimstone. He said, "I
can. I'm supposed to." Then he turned his back to the horse and bent over that forefoot, the way our
blacksmith does, and he went to work on it.
I couldn't see what he was doing, not exactly. He didn't have any picks or pries, like the blacksmith,
and all I'm sure of is that I
think
he was singing to the horse. But I'm not sure it was proper singing. It
sounded more like the little made-up rhymes that really small children chant to themselves when they're
playing in the dirt, all alone. No tune, just up and down,
dee-dah, dee-dah, dee
…boring even for a
horse, I'd have thought. He kept doing it for a long time, still bending with that hoof in his hand. All at
once he stopped singing and stood up, holding something that glinted in the sun the way the stream did,
and he showed it to the horse, first thing. "There," he said, "there, that's what it was. It's all right now."
He tossed the thing away and picked up the hoof again, not singing, only touching it very lightly with
one finger, brushing across it again and again. Then he set the foot down, and the horse stamped once,
hard, and whinnied, and the tall man turned to the woman and said, "We ought to camp here for the
night, all the same. They're both weary, and my back hurts."
The woman laughed. A deep, sweet, slow sound, it was. I'd never heard a laugh like that. She said,
"The greatest wizard walking the world, and your back hurts? Heal it as you healed mine, the time the
tree fell on me. That took you all of five minutes, I believe."
"Longer than that," the man answered her. "You were delirious, you wouldn't remember." He touched
her hair, which was thick and pretty, even though it was mostly gray. "You know how I am about that,"
he said. "I still like being mortal too much to use magic on myself. It spoils it somehow — it dulls the
feeling. I've told you before."
The woman said "
Mmphh
," the way I've heard my mother say it a thousand times. "Well,
I've
been
mortal all my life, and some days.…"
She didn't finish what she was saying, and the tall man smiled, the way you could tell he was teasing
her. "Some days, what?"
"Nothing," the woman said, "nothing, nothing." She sounded irritable for a moment, but she put her hands
on the man's arms, and she said in a different voice, "Some days — some early mornings — when the
wind smells of blossoms I'll never see, and there are fawns playing in the misty orchards, and you're
yawning and mumbling and scratching your head, and growling that we'll see rain before nightfall, and
probably hail as well…on such mornings I wish with all my heart that we could both live forever, and I
think you were a great fool to give it up." She laughed again, but it sounded shaky now, a little. She said,
"Then I remember things I'd rather not remember, so then my stomach acts up, and all sorts of other
things start
twingeing
me — never mind what they are, or where they hurt, whether it's my body or my
head, or my heart. And then I think,
no, I suppose not, maybe not
." The tall man put his arms around
her, and for a moment she rested her head on his chest. I couldn't hear what she said after that.
I didn't think I'd made any noise, but the man raised his voice a little, not looking at me, not lifting his
head, and he said, "Child, there's food here." First I couldn't move, I was so frightened. He
couldn't
have
seen me through the brush and all the alder trees. And then I started remembering how hungry I was, and
I started toward them without knowing I was doing it. I actually looked down at my feet and watched
them moving like somebody else's feet, as though they were the hungry ones, only they had to have me
take them to the food. The man and the woman stood very still and waited for me.
Close to, the woman looked younger than her voice, and the tall man looked older. No, that isn't it,
that's not what I mean. She wasn't young at all, but the gray hair made her face younger, and she held
herself really straight, like the lady who comes when people in our village are having babies. She holds
her face all stiff too, that one, and I don't like her much. This woman's face wasn't beautiful, I suppose,
but it was a face you'd want to snuggle up to on a cold night. That's the best I know how to say it.
The man…one minute he looked younger than my father, and the next he'd be looking older than
anybody I ever saw, older than people are supposed to
be
, maybe. He didn't have any gray hair himself,
but he did have a lot of lines, but that's not what I'm talking about either. It was the eyes. His eyes were
green, green,
green
, not like grass, not like emeralds — I saw an emerald once, a gypsy woman showed
me — and not anything like apples or limes or such stuff. Maybe like the ocean, except I've never seen
the ocean, so I don't know. If you go deep enough into the woods (not the Midwood, of course not, but
any other sort of woods), sooner or later you'll always come to a place where even the
shadows
are
green, and that's the way his eyes were. I was afraid of his eyes at first.
The woman gave me a peach and watched me bite into it, too hungry to thank her. She asked me,
"Girl, what are you doing here? Are you lost?"
"No, I'm not," I mumbled with my mouth full. "I just don't know where I am, that's different." They both
laughed, but it wasn't a mean, making-fun laugh. I told them, "My name's Sooz, and I have to see the
king. He lives somewhere right nearby, doesn't he?"
They looked at each other. I couldn't tell what they were thinking, but the tall man raised his eyebrows,
and the woman shook her head a bit, slowly. They looked at each other for a long time, until the woman
said, "Well, not nearby, but not so very far, either. We were bound on our way to visit him ourselves."
"Good," I said. "Oh,
good
." I was trying to sound as grown-up as they were, but it was hard, because
I was so happy to find out that they could take me to the king. I said, "I'll go along with you, then."
The woman was against it before I got the first words out. She said to the tall man, "No, we couldn't.
We don't know how things are." She looked sad about it, but she looked firm, too. She said, "Girl, it's
not you worries me. The king is a good man, and an old friend, but it has been a long time, and kings
change. Even more than other people, kings change."
"I have to see him," I said. "You go on, then. I'm not going home until I see him." I finished the peach,
and the man handed me a chunk of dried fish and smiled at the woman as I tore into it. He said quietly to
her, "It seems to me that you and I both remember asking to be taken along on a quest. I can't speak for
you, but I begged."
But the woman wouldn't let up. "We could be bringing her into great peril. You can't take the chance, it
isn't right!"
He began to answer her, but I interrupted — my mother would have slapped me halfway across the
kitchen. I shouted at them, "I'm
coming
from great peril. There's a griffin nested in the Midwood, and
he's eaten Jehane and Louli and — and my Felicitas — " and then I
did
start weeping, and I didn't care. I
just stood there and shook and wailed, and dropped the dried fish. I tried to pick it up, still crying so
hard I couldn't see it, but the woman stopped me and gave me her scarf to dry my eyes and blow my
nose. It smelled nice.
"Child," the tall man kept saying, "child, don't take on so, we didn't know about the griffin." The woman
was holding me against her side, smoothing my hair and glaring at him as though it was his fault that I was
howling like that. She said, "Of course we'll take you with us, girl dear — there, never mind, of course
we will. That's a fearful matter, a griffin, but the king will know what to do about it. The king eats griffins
for breakfast snacks — spreads them on toast with orange marmalade and gobbles them up, I promise
you." And so on, being silly, but making me feel better, while the man went on pleading with me not to
cry. I finally stopped when he pulled a big red handkerchief out of his pocket, twisted and knotted it into
a bird-shape, and made it fly away. Uncle Ambrose does tricks with coins and shells, but he can't do
anything like that.
His name was Schmendrick, which I still think is the funniest name I've heard in my life. The woman's
name was Molly Grue. We didn't leave right away, because of the horses, but made camp where we
were instead. I was waiting for the man, Schmendrick, to do it by magic, but he only built a fire, set out
their blankets, and drew water from the stream like anyone else, while she hobbled the horses and put
them to graze. I gathered firewood.
The woman, Molly, told me that the king's name was Lir, and that they had known him when he was a
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