Royal Beaftly Caretaker

Originally posted here on April 16, 2024: 

writing-prompt-s:

You were the caretaker for the mythical beasts of the royal family. Yesterday they decided to replace you with some incompetent noble, before kicking you out of the castle. You then spent the night in a nearby forest. However today you were awakened by the beasts who chose to follow you.

I’m not good with people.

I never have been. I’ve tried, but I’ve never been good with people. I’m always saying the wrong thing, and usually I don’t know what the wrong thing was until a lot later, until I’m thinking about what I said. In the town I grew up in, I was known for being simple.

I don’t think I am, but I understand why they think that- I’m not good at making the words in my head match the words I say.

But I am good with animals. Always have been. Lots of people are, I’m not special, or anything. Mam taught me.

Animals speak their own language, and it’s a lot simpler to figure out. They’re not people, they don’t understand us. A lot of people who are bad at animals expect that. They think an animal should understand them perfectly. They think animals have human impulses, human urges, a human understanding of the world.

And they don’t.

There’s some that think animals are simpler than people, and that’s not quite right, either.

I’ve heard a lot of people say ‘animals can’t lie’ and if you’ve ever had a cat, you know that’s not true. Cats can lie.

People said that about me, too, growing up. “Mallory, that boy of yours is too simple to lie.”

I think I had a lot of fellow feeling with the animals in my care, if that makes sense. Not a lot of people really take the time to figure us out. Maybe that’s why I got so good at it- I took the time, because I knew what it was like when people didn’t.

Animals are just different. More complex in some ways, more straight forward in others. You gotta learn.

I think Mam and Da were relieved when the circus scooped me up. I was kind of embarrassing to have around, even if you’re someone who’s pretty patient.

They came through town with a pair of griffins that nobody was taking proper care of.

Sickly and thin, molting feathers like crazy, their fur was falling out. I chewed out their 'lion tamer’ and the ringmaster up one side and down the other. They weren’t feeding them right, reckoning them to be like songbirds, and not eagles.

They needed meat, not seed.

The ringmaster hired me.

Not to do shows, no, but just to care take. I didn’t want to do shows, the idea gave me the collywobbles. My job was just to keep them fed and sleek and groomed, help the 'lion tamer’ work with them.

The ringmaster was alright.

About the third big fight I had with the 'lion tamer’, when I threatened to horsewhip him, the ringmaster let him go, let me pick out someone new, who I could trust not to hurt the animals that I’d worked so hard to get to trust me. The ringmaster liked me okay, he believed me. Trusted me.

The new beast master was good, though, and the circus didn’t really need me anymore. They kept me on for a while, anyway- I could help the beast master, and when the griffins had hatchlings, I could help show case the babies for the crowds. I think it was just a kindness. A circus becomes kind of your family, and we were far enough from the place I’d called home- we’d crossed at least one sea- that going back wasn’t practical. They were stuck with me, but they were kind about it, and took care of me.

When we showed the king the animals, our circus, the acts, his daughter fell in love with the hatchlings, she simply had to have one.

The ringmaster and the beast master both thought they could solve two problems with one fell swoop, and managed to convince the King to hire me on to care for all three hatchlings, who by that point were gangly adolescents, and seemed to view me as a parent as much as their own flesh and blood.

They were all lovely, rich browns, with beautiful and striking patterns around the eyes, and lovely tawny fur. Their eyes, rather than bright yellow, were more closely matched to the tawny of their fur, and they were all very curious and interested in things- they could do wooden puzzles, and I had to be careful about locking them up, because they learned how to open simple latches very quickly. Bright, bright things.

The King had many fine beasts, though not many in good health. The unicorn needed a diet change. They eat flowers, not straw. Scrawny and in poor health, but easy to fix- she gorged on roses, and her horn gleamed like a pearl in the sun. She was a black unicorn- you don’t see those often- and had a white blaze where the horn came out. One of the most beautiful beasts I ever have seen, once she was cleaned up fed well.

The pegasus needed regular preening. They’re really flock animals, if you have one, you ought to have two, so they can clean each other’s wings.

But hands can clean, as well.

The pegasus had glorious wings. Dull gray when dirty, but a soft dove gray and shining in all colors of the rainbow, once they were properly clean. And a proper blue roan for a coat- he was a gorgeous fellow. It was a shame to keep his flight feathers trimmed, really.

I convinced the King to let me grow them out, convinced him that I could teach the pegasus to return- but they need to fly. They need it for their hearts and minds, to stretch their wings and soar. The first time I saw him soar, my heart soared with him.

And then he came right back pushing his big head into my chest, so I could scratch his ears and muzzle the way he liked. Big, silly thing.

The real pride of the collection was a stunted dragon, found when it was just a hatchling. It didn’t breathe fire, and the wings were mangled. I was told they found it with mangled wings- that it had been abandoned. I expect someone did it, though, to keep it grounded.

But I fed it and cleaned it until the green and black scales gleamed, and it sat in the sun for hours, fat and happy and looking as much like a large snake as anything that could fly.

It wasn’t to last.

As I’ve said, I’m not good with people. I didn’t mean to insult anybody, honestly I didn’t. But I guess I did, and then there was this nobleman with this son who needed a job.

I tried to talk to the King- the fool didn’t know anything about animals, and was talking stuff and nonsense about hard discipline, and all that.

But I’m bad with people. I couldn’t make the right words come.

I didn’t get much in the way of money. Mostly it was food and a place to stay, and good, sturdy leathers to wear. Kept clean, so as to not shame his majesty, but nothing fine or too dear- that would be wasted on someone who spent much of the day shoveling up what dragons leave behind, when they’ve eaten.

So I didn’t have much, when I was let go. I spent what I had on some supplies. I was ashamed, burning with it, and anger. I knew he was going to hurt those animals, but there was nothing I could do. I’d be killed for trying.

I went into the woods.

I just wanted to get away, get the castle out of sight, so I put it to my back and walked into the forest, walked until the sun began to set. Set up a little camp.

They’d taught me how, in the circus. How to start a fire and put up a tent, and I guess I mostly remembered how, though it took me a while to get the fire going.

I didn’t know where I was going to go, next. I’m not ashamed to admit that I cried myself to sleep, that night.

I woke up with a dragon on top of me. Which was not unusual, except I remembered that wasn’t supposed to happen anymore.

It took me a few minutes to convince him to get off me, and when I crawled out of the tent I’d set up (rather shoddily, I could now tell, in the morning light) there were three griffins poking through the remains of my fire, looking for bones. A unicorn grazing in the meadow I’d set up in, eating daisies.

Instead of a white horn and blaze, though, it was wearing red. The griffins had blood on their beaks, and the dragon was fatter in the middle than it had been yesterday- and sluggish, besides.

Even the pegasus- who was trailing behind the unicorn, eating the grass that the unicorn ignored- had blood on his hooves, and splattered on his chest.

I guessed that minor lordling probably was out of a job, too. Rather more permanently than I was.

I warned him that the griffins could open latches.

Probably I was going to be blamed, but I decided not to worry too much about that. Going back wasn’t an option.

A lot of boring drudgery followed. We moved slow some days, fast others. We went deep into the woods, where I’d heard a wizard lived. I knew that my animals shed things a wizard might could use, and maybe he could help us out in exchange.

And I was right. He was very kind. And, I think, glad of the company. He helped set me up with a nice place to stay near his tower, and visits most days.

The pegasus found a herd, and I thought he’d go, but he just brings everybody by to winter with us. The unicorn comes and goes as she pleases, but I see her most days.

The griffins stay close- as far as they’re concerned, I’m one of them, and as much as eagles are solitary animals, they’re also cats, and cats travel in packs. I’m their sad flightless father, with no claws or beaks- I used to take them hunting, but I guess they decided I’m too slow, because they go out on their own, now. They usually leave something at the door for me- most morning there’s a dead duck or rabbit, though once they brought me a whole stag.

I wonder if they thought I wasn’t eating enough.

The dragon, it turned out, wasn’t a runt. Dragons just take a long, long time to get big. He was still a baby, basically.

He’s going to be a baby long after I’m dead. I needed to make sure someone would take care of him. So the wizard and I started looking.

It took a lot of careful work, and some extremely cautious negotiating, but we did find the dragon’s original parent. Dragons who lay eggs only lay one egg in their lifetime- that’s what she said.

I think her son’s obvious fondness for me was what won her over- he was still too young to speak, but he tried to prevent me from leaving. She was pretty upset about his wings, and I told her how I came to the know the little dragon, and what the King’s people had told me about him.

She asked me how to find this King, and I guess I’m still too simple to lie, because I told her.

I’m not so worried, these days, about the King hunting me down.

Me and the wizard are trying to see if we can figure out some braces that’ll help straighten his wings out as he grows. He probably won’t ever fly, but we think he might be able to take some big flapping jumps, possibly even glide, if we figure this out. I still see him on the regular, that dragon child. His mam brings him by when she goes out hunting, and she even pays me to watch him.

I just don’t ask her what she’s hunting.

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