Fish Tails Read Online Free PDF

wondered—­only briefly—­if the sounds had been stroked into being by a particular wind or by the rays of this particular sunrise, or whether they had been uttered or created by the creature herself, and whether her own skin was reacting to sound or smell or something entirely extraordinary. That one . . . that winged one on the mountain had never been an ordinary anything. That one had not evolved, not accumulated, not adapted to become. That one had been created by someone, someone who had been striving for perfection.
    Needly whispered, “It’s turned green: the Listener.”
    â€œYes. It does that.”
    Indeed, the stone had lost its fiery glow, drifted through orange and yellow into a transitory emerald green that had almost at once become muted, faded, as though lichen had crept over it. Now anyone looking casually toward it would have been unlikely to make out its outline against one or the other of the guardian peaks. On the ledge below it, however, still shining with bronze light, the wings of the other marvel folded abruptly, like the flick of twin fans. The great, thick bronze rope of her tail, tasseled in gold, lashed against the ledge of stone, and three great cymbal crashes broke the air into shards: Gone, Gone, Gone .
    All other sounds ceased, and the echoes from those immense strokes had barely faded before the unreality opened her beak, the tongue within it quivering as the brazen throat uttered a sound of pain and sorrow and longing and timeless, universal grief: a cry that fled across the sky like a shadow only to return from the distant mountains, broken into a thousand echoes of mourning, again and again and again.
    As the creature cried, rainbows dropped from her eyes, one by one.
    â€œShe’s crying,” mourned Needly, cupping her hands to catch her own tears.
    Grandma squeezed her shoulder. She had once heard, or perhaps read, that Griffins wept crystal tears. The reason for the tears was evident as that marvelous beak dipped down between the front paws to greet another, smaller being creeping from the shelter of its mother’s body. This tiny one was more gold than bronze—­the larger creature’s mirror but in miniature—­and the watchers both knew that the mother was weeping over the child. Her child.
    Then the smaller creature also lamented, and to her, also, the echoes responded, as though the world itself grieved and could not be comforted. The mother took her child between huge, padded front paws, enormous ivory-­gold claws curving around it to enclose it safely, and launched herself from the ledge into the gulf of air above the watchers, her wings unfolding with a great crack of sound. They, mother and child, soared. They, grandmother and child, went to their knees under the buffet of downthrust air.
    The winged ones spiraled upward until they were only a golden spark in the sunrise.
    Silent time moved on, drawing no attention to itself. When it became certain the marvels would not return, Grandma showed the little girl the easy way to reach the Listener. See, she said, how the these hollows hid, how that little crevasse concealed, how this stone’s shadows disguised the simple way to reach the Listener. They followed this hidden way quite easily and stepped together through a shadow on what appeared to be a solid wall to step out upon the ledge itself. Together they found a feather the baby Griffin had lost and several crystal tears the mother Griffin had shed, each enclosing rainbow lights. Together they leaned against the Listener to feel the far-­off throbbing Grandma had felt before, as though there were a heart beating inside the stone. Their thoughts were varied and in no sensible order. Nonetheless, they amounted to a plea, which was what the Listener heard it as, yet again.
    And so, strangely, as they turned to make their way back home—­a place neither of them really thought of in that way—­both of