A Wild Ride Through The Night Read Online Free PDF

But he was compelled to lower his gaze, overwhelmed by a sensation that forbade him to feast his eyes on the helpless girl’s form any longer.
    Gustave had just fallen in love for the very first time, and that emotion, which is granted to every human being only once, was unlike any he had ever experienced before.
    At last he ventured to look up again. There was such a strange expression in the girl’s sea-blue eyes that he couldn’t immediately interpret it. Gratitude? (She seemed to be struck dumb.) Timidity? (She seemed unable to look him in the eye.) Eternal love? (Her ecstatic gaze seemed focused on the far distant future.)
    ‘I thought the boy was meant to wind up dead,’ she said at length in a cold, sarcastic voice. She was, in fact, addressing the gryphon, for her eyes had really been focused on the mythical beast hovering in the background.
    ‘What’s the meaning of this idiotic business?’ she went on. ‘He’s killed my pet dragon. Who’s going to replace it? I’ve hung around here in the spray for hours on end. My skin has gone all soft, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m suffering from sunburn.’ She slipped out of her chains with ease and covered her nakedness with her flowing tresses.
    ‘You’ll receive compensation,’ the gryphon told her in a coolly condescending tone. ‘Events took an unforeseen turn. I can’t help that, I’m just a servant of Death.’
    ‘Aren’t we all?’ The girl gave a disdainful laugh. Without sparing Gustave another glance, she proceeded to clamber nimbly up the rocks.
    Gustave’s heart broke. It broke into two precisely equal parts, the one that belonged irrevocably to the lovely damsel, and the other that was all he had left. An icy void seemed to open up inside him. It was worse than any physical pain he had ever endured.
    The gryphon glided down and rested one wing on Gustave’s shoulder. ‘I told you, didn’t I?’ it said. ‘There are worse things in life than dragons. Falling in love, for instance.’

WHEN THE GRYPHON bore him away from the Island of Damsels in Distress, Gustave was in a condition resembling rigor mortis. White as a sheet and glassy-eyed, he sat astride the creature, heedless of the cold air rushing past, even though he had few clothes on and his hair was still wet with sea water.
    ‘You’d welcome Death in your present state,’ remarked the gryphon, which occasionally turned to give its passenger a look of concern and tried to cheer him up. If it hadn’t been for the gryphon, Gustave would probably have sunk down on the damsel’s rock, consumed with despair, and been devoured by the next dragon to come along. As it was, the creature had eventually convinced him that it would be smarter to climb aboard and let himself be conveyed to the scene of his next task. There he would be provided with fresh clothes and equipment and a suitable means of transportation.
    The sea displayed scarcely a ripple as they sped across it to a peninsula not far away, which itself formed part of a largish land mass. Gustave could see from above that the peninsula was densely wooded, and that looming in the interior was a bleak mountain range. The gryphon glided down and landed on the very tip of the tongue of land. Gustave dismounted and listened apathetically to its instructions on his future movements.
    ‘From here on, you can only proceed by land. Flying is impossible in this air space, and I’m not designed to travel on foot. You’ll be wondering why on earth a forest reputed to be swarming with goblins and other horrific creatures could be less of a threat than the sky above it.’
    Gustave did not pursue this point, so the gryphon went on, ‘I’ll tell you why: because that air space up there is full of appalling dangers! There are holes in the sky that are said to lead to other dimensions. The ethereal ocean above this territory is dominated by flying serpents and other malign creatures.’
    ‘I can’t see any,’ said Gustave,