The gryphon broke away from the chase and began to descend. A green plain appeared below. Now he would land and feast. On Fiona’s flesh and bones! He wondered if there would even be bones left of her when he was sated. Though why bother? She hasn’t any kin who’d look for her. If she goes missing, no one will even notice. Except the farm boys who liked her would miss her. And it is not for long. After all, there were plenty of pretty girls in the village.
The valley below was not strewn with skeletons left over from the griffins’ meals, but Fiona was still worried. The gryphon carried her over the plain, the woods, and the marshy lowlands where the reeds rippled. The land approached menacingly. Now the gryphon would wire its prey over the great boulders. Fiona squinted in fear. Suddenly the claws around her waist loosened.
The gryphon threw her down onto a rough, moss-covered mound like a thick carpet. Fiona fumbled for the stones beneath her – these were steps! They were scratched and old. They looked like the carcass of a ladder.
Fiona looked around. Gryphon had carried her into the ruins. He had disappeared somewhere. She hadn’t even heard him fly away. The clapping of its enormous wings was like the sound of a whip. She could not help but hear them.
«She is one of ours! She’s definitely one of ours!» The voices echoed from everywhere, but who had said so?
Fiona looked around.
«She is one of us! She was just lost!» The echoes in the ruins sounded like recitatives or prayerful chants. It was as if witchcraft had been wrought in the place. Echoes of laughter and hymns to the darkness were heard.
It was getting dark. Fiona struggled to her feet and walked a little. Her whole body ached. Scratches and abrasions could not be counted. Yes, the griffins had taken their toll on her. She really did feel like a big rag doll, played with and discarded. Right on the road! Or rather, it was in the ruins.
Even to be in the ruins is dangerous. Everything here is fragile, already partially destroyed and ready to collapse again. The remains of walls and towers reminded her of the castles of feudal lords. Apparently it had once been a castle, but now there was moss between the stones. The ruins of the walls themselves were gnarled and crooked. What had happened here? Was it a earthquake or a war? Could cannons and battering ram have done such damage? In the village, they’d say witches and fairies had had a hand in it. But the village was so far away that no locals would get here. The ruins were in a deserted area.
«Don’t worry, they won’t get in here!»
Fiona turned around at the voice. Something motley was looming in the shadows of the ruins. The figure of a jester! What was the jester doing in the ruins of the castle? Is he a remnant of the old masters? The castle had been destroyed, the owners slaughtered, and somehow the jester survived. He must be a friend of the fairies, if that’s what happened. He has the face of an inhuman, like an elf or a nix. His cheekbones are pointed, and so are his ears. Silver bells were dangling from the horns of a jester’s cap.
«Who are you?» Fiona moved toward him and found that there were already several jester figures on the ruins. They were multiplying, like reflections in shards of mirror.
Was this a mockery or some kind of trick? Everywhere Fiona went, all she found was a void instead of a jester. And the jester figures themselves were already multiplying in other places: on the walls, on the carcasses of towers, on the scratched staircases. In general, it was away from her.
«I don’t like jokes!» Fiona pouted angrily, stomping her foot. «If that’s the way you are, I’m going.»
Her stomping caused the ground to sink in, creating a hole. Inside the hole something sparkled enticingly. It looked like a jar of gold pieces! Was it a fairy joke? Fiona was afraid to bend down and check. It might be some kind of trap.
But a clear voice commanded:
«Take it now that you’ve found it!»
What was she to do? Fiona opened the hole with her bare hands and pulled out a pile of gold coins mixed with colored stones and jewelry. It looked like real gems! What luck! And there’s no one to thank. The jester figures had all disappeared, as if they had never existed.
Fiona was intrigued by one pendant in the shape of a sickle. It was certainly gold. A peasant girl would draw unnecessary attention to herself if she wore it around her neck, but Fiona couldn’t resist. The thing drew her like a magnet. She hated to part with the pendant now. Pity the chain was too short to hide it behind her corsage. The glitter of gold on a deserted road can only attract burglars.
«You’d be better off hiding in the ruins. No one will find you there,» the voices whispered in chorus. But since the voices were out of sight, Fiona decided they were not to be trusted. She could not trust the voices! To be alone in the ruins was frightening. She wondered if there were bandits nesting there at night. The jester costumes might be a good disguise for them. There’s a reason there’s gold hidden here. It could only come from the old owners of the castle or from the bandits who buried the treasure. But it was buried too shallow. But who knows, maybe if one dug a little deeper, one might find an entire gold mine under the ruins.
It was time to get out of here. The ruins stretched like a labyrinth. It took some time to find the way out of them. They were not too far from the road, as it turned out. If you look at them more closely, the ruins resembled a spiral with many twisted staircases, leading into the void and ending, as if they had been built on purpose into the sky. How convenient for those who want to land on the ruins from above. For the birds!
She shouldn’t have turned around before she left. Fiona noticed the brightly colored robes and bells again. There was a jester standing by the ruins, and in the ruins themselves there were many figures in motley jester outfits: both male and female. Are there women jesters and what are they called? If the jester’s outfit is the same cut as these, they could also be mistaken for colombina. She was not in the legendary Sickle of Mockingbirds, was she? It’s not in ruins, but in a closed ring of mountain ridge, and the way there can be found only at the full moon, and not everyone, but only those who are attracted to the spirits.
Motley figures soared over the ruins like a flock of colorful ghosts. How silent they were! They were bright but ominous. It was time to run away from here. No one tried to detain or catch Fiona. Only an echo of many voices echoed everything in her wake:
«She is lost!»
It was not until morning that she reached the road that led past the mountains to familiar places. Fiona was tired and out of breath. Her disheveled red hair was like flaming yarn, tangled with twigs and dry leaves. Her dress was torn, her skin scratched by bird claws. She looks like a beggar! But she had a pile of real gold coins with her! Fiona didn’t even know what she was going to spend them on. She had to put the coins in her pockets and throw the pile away. Carrying it was inconvenient.
At night Fiona snoozed by the side of the road and had a dream. The jester’s spirit assured her that the sickle around her neck and the month were almost the same thing, that it would always lead her to buried treasure. With the money she finds, she can buy an entire estate, not just a new mill or farm. And if she keeps looking for treasure, she could become queen herself.
«There is so much treasure hidden in the earth! Only spirits can see them, but they can’t use them, and you can! You have a special gift! We need you! But many others, alas, need you too!» The jester whispered. His face had a chalky hue, but his features were beautiful. It was only the laughing, snide eyes that spoiled the whole impression. They made it seem like he was mocking her.
The dream did not last long. Waking up, Fiona set off again. The road was dark, but she walked at random. Strangely, the pendant around her neck glowed like a yellow fire, helping her to navigate. Did gold have the property of glowing in pitch-black darkness?
They say that in the big cities at night they fasten torches in brackets on the walls so that the noblemen can walk in peace. But on the country road at night, you can’t see anything further. You can’t see further than your nose. So Fiona didn’t walk at night. This was an exception, and it was only the fault of the griffin that had led her nowhere. Fortunately, at least the direction in which to go, she guessed correctly, or else she would go to another village or even in another country.
Seeing the luxurious carriage left by the mountains with no servants, no coachman, and even no horses, Fiona was wary. She even rubbed her eyes, just in case. The carriage had not disappeared. So she had not imagined it!
Such fancy carriages she had only seen from afar. And here she could even touch it. Coats of arms gleam on the sides and top of the carriage. The frames of the doors and windows are gilded. The velvet curtains are purple to match the velvet upholstery of the carriage. On the fenders and inside the carriage were piled sacks of costly fabrics, or… Fiona was dumbfounded. Corpses! They were corpses! Brutally mutilated and even dismembered. From a distance they looked like large rag dolls, covered in red paint. Horse carcasses were lying in the mud on the road near the carriage. The human remains, judging by their clothing, belonged to noble and wealthy gentlemen, as well as their groomsmen.
One corpse appeared to be female. It was a girl. She was a redhead just like Fiona herself. Only, unlike Fiona, she was dressed in an expensive velvet gown. She could not be mistaken for a peasant girl. She was an aristocrat. Only her high position did not save her. Someone had strung her up like a puppet, placing her palms on sharp staples on the ceiling of the carriage. Her dainty hands were torn in places where there appeared to be jewelry. Her fingers were missing. They must have had rings on them, which could only be removed with the fingers themselves at the same time. If they were torn off by birds, those birds have the instincts of magpies. Except the magpies weren’t so big and their claws weren’t sharp enough to disfigure a corpse like that. It looked like it had been run through a grater. The eyes had been pecked out of the pretty maiden’s head. A necklace of scratches was left on her neck. There was a mark on her forehead, placed by a bird’s paw. Apparently it had been played with, too. The victim had simply been blinded.
Fiona shuddered involuntarily. The same thing could have been done to her, after all.
No doubt the griffins had killed everyone in the carriage, and the bodies all bore the marks of birds’ claws. The bodies had been ripped to shreds. One man’s body was crucified at the milepost. Feathers had been thrust into the deep wounds. Fiona walked over and touched them with her fingertips. There was no golden feather among them. But the corpse bore a striking resemblance to the body of Lady Eveline de Joel, smashed against the castle walls. That was the name of the noblewoman who had jumped from the castle roof. Fiona already doubted that she had jumped by herself, not without the help of birds.
Her touch made the body on the pole twitch. The dead man’s eyes fluttered open. They were rotten, but not torn out.
«You are the redheaded spirit!» The dead lips whispered.
«So you are not dead?»
«How could you tell?» The empty eyes, without pupils, were dead for sure.
She wondered if the corpse had come back to life and spoke to her. More like another dream.
«What happened to you all?» She asked. It was foolish to speak to a dead man. She wondered what kind of trouble it would lead to. That it would drag her back to the other world. But she was used to getting into trouble.
«The birds have flown in!» whispered the crucified corpse, whose hands and feet were pinned to the pole with what looked like shards of claws. «They were crowned birds! Run from them! And no, it’s too late to run! You have a mark on your forehead! They’ll find you anyway!»
Fiona touched her forehead. There was blood running down it. The bird’s claw had left a deep wound there. It was strange that the wound had opened now.
«Get the witch!» There was a shrill cry from behind her.
She turned around excitedly, and this time she didn’t think so. A group of men, including uniformed guardsmen and inquisitorial robes, were rushing toward the carriage. She was in trouble.
«Tell them that I am not a witch, but that you yourself have come back to life to denounce the culprits!» She turned to the dead man, but once again he was nothing but a silent corpse. No matter how much she shook him, he wouldn’t make a sound.
And if he had, it might not have saved her. There is a belief in the Inquisition that at the sight of the culprit the corpse may come to life and reveal the name of the murderer. Stop! It was at the sight of the culprit. He did come to life at the sight of her. Of course, she is by no means the culprit of his death, but his gesture can be interpreted in two ways. Suddenly the witnesses did. At their head was a lady in a splendid gown and ermine robe, which only royalty have the right to wear. It was this very lady that Fiona had recently met in a cave high in the mountains and had almost fallen prey to her.
«Seize her like a witch!» Ornella commanded, pointing a finger in a gleaming ring at Fiona. «It is her handiwork.»
Does she believe it herself, or is she still expressing her displeasure that all her brothers have a crush on the village girl. Fiona heard something about not messing with powerful people or they’ll find a way to get even with you. You’ve annoyed them in a trifle you can’t punish, so they’ll accuse you of something serious later, and everyone will be on their side and not yours.
Ornella was clearly proving how true these warnings were. If you can’t feed Fiona to the griffins, you must accuse her of witchcraft.
«I’m not a witch!» Fiona screamed, but her shouts were as useful as the squeak of a caught sparrow. The guardsmen grabbed her tightly.
