Year of the Griffin Read Online Free PDF

fencing team. Lukin and Elda, who both looked athletic but were not, became members of the Chess Club and sat poring over little tables, facing one another for hours, when they should have been learning herbiaries or lists of dragons. Both were very good at chess, and each was determined to beat the other.
    In that week it became increasingly evident that Lukin and Olga were a pair. They wandered about together hand in hand and sat murmuring together in corners. Except when she went rowing, Olga gave up wrapping her hair back in a scarf. Her friends at first thought that she had simply discovered she liked running her hands through its fine fair length, or tossing it about, until they noticed that Lukin at odd moments would put out a hand and lovingly stroke it. And when Lukin was not looking, Olga would stare admiringly at Lukin’s somber profile and broad shoulders. Possibly she lent him money, too. At any rate, Lukin soon appeared in a nearly new jacket and unpatched trousers, though this did not stop Wermacht calling him “you in the secondhand jacket.”
    Wermacht, they discovered, made a point of never remembering students’ names. Ruskin was always either “you with the voice” or more often “you in the armor,” despite the fact that after the first day Ruskin had given up wearing armor. He now wore a tunic that, in Elda’s opinion, would have been too big even for Lukin but that stretched tight around his huge dwarfish chest, and trousers that seemed too small for Elda’s little brother Angelo. To make up for not wearing armor, Ruskin plaited twice the number of bones into his hair. As Claudia said, you knew he was near by the clacking.
    None of the others exactly paired up at the time, though Ruskin was known to be sneaking off to the nearby Healers Hall to drink tea with a great, tall novice healer girl whom he had met in Herbal Studies—taught by Wizard Wermacht—for which the first-year healers came over from their hall. Ruskin admired this young lady greatly, although he hardly came up to her waist. And for two days Felim took up with an amazingly beautiful first-year student called Melissa, whom he had met in Basic Magic—taught by Wermacht again—until the outcry from the others became extreme.
    â€œI mean to say, Felim, she is just totally dumb !” Olga exclaimed.
    Lukin agreed. “Wizard Policant’s statue has more sense.”
    â€œShe just stands and smiles,” Elda said vigorously. “She must have some brain, I suppose, or she wouldn’t be here, but I’ve yet to see it. What do you say, Claudia?”
    â€œI’d say she smiled at whoever admitted her,” Claudia answered, thinking about it. “Wizard Finn probably. He’s a pushover for that kind of thing.”
    â€œTruly?” Felim asked Claudia. “You think she is stupid?”
    â€œHorribly,” said Claudia. “Hopelessly.”
    Everyone tended to follow Claudia’s advice. Felim nodded sadly and saw less of Melissa.
    Everyone learned the gossip around the University, too. Very soon it was no secret to them that Wizard Corkoran was obsessed with getting to the moon. Elda took to stationing herself where she could see Corkoran rushing to his moonlab with the latest lurid tie flapping over his shoulder. “Oh, I wish I could help him!” she said repeatedly, standing upright to wring her golden front talons together. “I want to help him get to the moon! He’s so sweet !”
    â€œYou need a griffin your own age,” Olga told her.
    â€œThere aren’t any,” said Elda. “Besides, I couldn’t pick a griffin up.”
    For a while they all called Corkoran “Elda’s teddy bear.”
    As for Corkoran himself, that week went past at the usual pace, or maybe faster than usual. There were so many crucial experimental spells going forward in his lab, and the construction of his moonship was going so