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“Can you not see? The Griffin are all dead There is no hunt, whether I declare it or not But if you would argue with eas my father If I do not fear to sink my knife in his back, please believe I will not hesitate to bury it in yours” The man fell into sullen silence, and Oluwafunmike shook her head in sorrow “They are all dead, son of the Ofira Dead and cold as winter in the great desert The Eye blessed us, yes, but we have not been worthy of its Gaze”

As if to answer her, a cascade of sound echoed suddenly over the beach A quick, rustling noise could be heard, and it deepened into a cracking, clawing cacophony, like wood splintering under a silver axe Tomomo and the princess started like pheasants in an autu to discern the source The Arimaspians looked

suddenly ashen and fearful, as though they expected the ghost of their King to appear and punish therid understood iolden nest, were hatching, and all at once, first of all the things which should not have been Their marbled blue and white surfaces fractured like sapphire bones, and the last of the glittering golden yolk dribbled out

Out of the cerulean ruins of the eggshells rose shakily three infant Griffin—two so deeply blue they were almost black, and one whose feathers shone whiter than the first snow in the first winter of the world They were the size of wildcats, and power already rippled beneath their colored skins They shook the yolk droplets There was no sound on the ept beach, no sound but the wind battering the shoulders of a dozen people, none of whom dared to move or speak The silence was unbroken, untouched, a block of obsidian

Then the keening began The newborn Griffin turned their delicate heads to the brooding sky and shrieked, their throats ululating with a terrible cry, like claws rending a mirror into ribbons None could bear the sound—the Ari at their aching ears Sigrid alone was not afraid, and the sound which to the others, even Tomomo and her princess, was a horror, was to her the si up the sun She crawled to the howling children and tentatively put out her arms to them They quieted immediately and curled the at her to catch her scent, and still weeping softly

It was then that Sigrid saw it, and heropen like a broken door in dismay and wonder

The Griffin were deforer of the two blue lion-birds had no eyes where they ought to shine—they blinked instead from his downy chest The chest of the sle And the white had no beak Sigrid gently touched the pale bird’s breast, in which a hu with golden tears

“What’s wrong with the forward to study the bizarre arrangement of their features Tomomo inched tentatively forward beside her friend

Sigrid shook her head softly, and for a mo hair in golden yolk She spoke in hushed tones, almost in the tenor of a prayer “They are the Sorella The new Sorella Don’t you see? When Giota carried the Griffin within her, she must have passed her sisters, and some sliver of herself, into the White Beast And now the last Griffin are bound to the last Sorella—and Griffin are bound to humans”

The birds rid’s lap The blue siblings began to pick at her vest, pulling at the rough stitches with their beaks They tore at the cloth eagerly, in a fury, and soon Sigrid was left in the dead Griffin’s nest with no s she had used to bind her breasts She began to cry in sha to cover her deformity with her thin arms But the Griffin were not satisfied The white infant pushed her head under Sigrid’s arms—patiently, without violence—and severed the leather straps with a single pass of her glittering talon

Sigrid suppressed a wracking sob; her three breasts were suddenly exposed, and all the unfortunate spectators of the Griffin’s beach itness to her freakish body There was nowhere she could look where she did notat her bare flesh She pulled at the ruined wrappings uselessly Yet even then, she was not afraid of the clustered birds They pressed nearer to her, cooing affectionately, even purring with pleasure Her breasts were suddenly heavy, and she could feel the skin which had never seen the sun stretch and tighten strangely

The white Griffin laid itself against her and nuzzled her ear, clucking and chirruping gently She wrapped her long neck around Sigrid’s, and with infinite gentleness, her huhtrily followed suit, fastening their beaks onto the second and third breasts They were too rough at first, unused to hureedy beaks

Sigrid put her ar like streale with the blood the starving beasts had drawn, and finally with the milk which rushed freely from her body to feed the last of all Griffin

Quietly, like a clock beginning to chih

“THAT WAS THE FIRST MIRACLE OF SAINT SIGRID,” the great bald wo blood into the horizon The light see her tattoos and puddle on her broad face “The others you will learn as you ascend the Tower—the Miracle of the Beard, the Miracle of the Waterless Sea, the Miracle of the Sacking of Amberabad”