In the August before her twelfth birthday Blix Summerland won a phone-in contest on her local radio station. The prize was a trip to London for the whole family, to visit the zoo in Regent's Park. The schools were out and Blix’s parents were getting on, so the family made a trip of it.
It was the first time in London for Blix and her twin sister, Katy. London, from their perspective, was another world - a faraway place where things happened. Nothing ever happened in the North.
The day lived in her memory. They got the train down and stayed over in a hotel the night before. In the morning, they got up early and did some sightseeing - Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, the Houses of Parliament - the usual landmarks, which Blix hadn’t realised were within short walking distance of each other. Further downriver they saw Tower Bridge, then visited the Tower of London. They met some Beefeaters, saw the ravens and climbed the walls, because that's what you did at the Tower of London and they’d never been before.
They went into the jewel room, after standing forever in an enormously long queue. The crowns of state were pretty and seeing the Koh-i-Noor was cool, but the gold plate was underwhelming. It looked sad and cold and dull. Blix wasn’t the kind of girl who played princesses and couldn’t imagine herself using such things. There were a few jewels that the signs claimed had once been magical, but all that nonsense was in the distant past. Blix wasn’t the kind of girl who played magicians either.
The zoo was much more Blix's thing. The prize included a personal tour guide for the whole afternoon. Just a student zookeeper, who seemed more interested in the fact that Blix and Katy were identical twins than in the animals she was showing them, but Blix learned a lot.
They had lions and bears, great apes and monkeys. They had African and Asian elephants, Bengal tigers and Hyrcanian tygers, and a pool of hippos which obligingly gaped their jaws wide as she stared at them, their yellow tusks giving ample evidence for the guide’s claim that they were the most dangerous animal in Africa. There was a small herd of bonnacon which you were only allowed to see from a distance behind a tall glass screen. They could spray their dung for a dozen or more yards and it was like acid on human skin. They were in a big enclosure with the Indian rhinos, imperious militant unicorns for whom acid poo was a matter of no concern.
They had a Catalan drac, a species related to classical dragons. It turned out to be tiny, the size of her arm. It scudded back and forth in its bathing pool, singeing unwary fish. Much more interesting were the Komodo dragons, which stalked regally through their enclosure as though the glass was the only thing separating them from world domination. She'd also liked the meerkats, although it was a bit disconcerting the way they watched you and squeaked all the time. She thought they were talking about her. Her mother had told her not to be silly. Blix didn’t see why that was silly and said so, so they had a row.
There was a special behind-the-scenes bit at the end of the tour, only for the competition winner. Katy, not at all jealous, disappeared with Dad to find an ice-cream. Blix and her mother were taken to the animal hospital. Mum decided to have a smoke; Blix went in by herself.
With Blix watching, the head vet sedated one of the gryphons, so he could extract a broken blood feather which had become infected. When the beast was asleep he allowed her to touch it. It was wonderful. She'd expected it to be majestic and terrible and gigantic, and it was. But she hadn't expected it to be so soft. From a distance the feathers looked a bit grubby. The gryphon was moulting and was getting on a bit. Up close though they were beautiful. Iridescent and almost dazzling as the afternoon sunlight coming through the window played across its chest.
Blix ran her fingers through them, brushing the vanes and sliding her fingers into the downy afterfeathers. She followed the line of rich blue amid the rusty brown from the gryphon's beak down to the tip of each wing. She traced the contour where the feathers gave way to fur as the eagle merged with the lion. She put her head on its chest and rose and fell with each breath.
'Beautiful, isn’t she?' said the vet. He was an old man, maybe as old as sixty, with a bald head and a grey beard worn without a moustache. His hands were huge and covered with old scars and healed bite marks. He had a kind face and spoke in a light, reassuring Irish accent.
Blix nodded, her face buried in fur, lost in wonder.
'Isn’t she just,' continued the vet, giving the sleeping animal an affectionate thump on its flank. 'I'll miss her when she's gone.'
Blix jerked upright. 'Gone? She's not ill, is she?'
'No,' said the vet, 'just old. Older than me. Her and the old boy, they're the last. The last two gryphons in the world. Got another few years in ‘em maybe, but once they're gone, that's it. That'll be a sad day.'
This made Blix sad too, but it also made her think.
'I thought you could make more,' she said. 'Like, get a lion and an eagle and, um.' She stopped, not quite sure of the mechanics.
The vet shook his head. 'You could, but we won't.'
'Why not? Otherwise they'll be... extinct? Is that the word?'
The vet smiled. 'Yes, that's right. We won't because it's cruel.' He rubbed the gryphon again, and it stirred. 'This old girl, she's a proper gryphon. They look like half an eagle and half a lion but they’re not. They're gryphons, Gryphus gryphus, a true liminal species. They evolved this way. The other kind, the griffins... You can make 'em, if you have the right animals, but they have problems. They aren't happy.'
Blix saw the look on his face and decided not to ask why griffins weren't happy or what their problems were. Instead she said, 'Why aren't there more real gryphons?'
The vet stroked his beard, thinking with his fingers. 'There weren't ever many. Hunted, until the ban. And all magical creatures are in severe decline now that there isn't magic anymore. My old grand-dad, he was born in eighteen seventy, he saw proper magic. He used to tell me stories about the great magical creatures. The ones that died.’ His eyes went far away for a moment as he remembered. ‘He was a good storyteller. That's why I became a vet, I suppose.’ He patted the gryphon.
‘It’s a shame there’s no more magic,’ said Blix, examining the gryphon’s beak as closely as she dared.
‘Is it? I suppose so, in some ways. I would have liked to have seen a real unicorn. But mostly, it’s for the best. Sixty-five years since it stopped working and we’re only just beginning to trust each other. The old days weren’t-’
There was a sharp rapping sound. Blix's mum peered around the door. She tapped on her watch.
‘Amelia.’
Blix scowled. ‘Blix. In a minute.’
‘The train won’t wait, Amelia.’
‘Blix.’
Her mum sighed, and retreated.
The vet smiled, and raised an eyebrow. ‘Blix?’
‘Yes.’
‘Mmm.’ The vet teased a stray feather back into place. ‘That doesn’t sound like a girl’s name.’
‘It’s not a girl’s name. Or a boy’s name. It’s my name. One I chose for myself.’
‘Mmm.’ The vet stroked his beard again. ‘Everyone should be who they are,’ he said. ‘Or someone, anyway. It’s a good name. Names have power. Well. It’s time to go, Blix.’
Blix didn't want to let go of the gryphon in case it died there and then. 'Are you sure these are the last?' she said. 'Maybe there are more we just haven't found, like in Africa or somewhere?'
The vet smiled his kind, sad smile. 'There might be,' he said. 'Not in Africa, but where they came from. The other world. But we can't go there anymore, so we'll never know.'
Blix's mother tapped on the door again.
'It’s time to go,' said the vet again. He saw that Blix had her hand on the gryphon’s talons. 'Do you know what they’re made of?' he asked.
Blix looked down. She hadn't realised she was clutching the bird-like front feet. She shook her head.
'Keratin. Same as your fingernails, more or less.'
Blix looked down again. She touched the talons on the gryphon's front legs and the lion claws on its rear legs; they looked different, but felt the same. She stared at her fingernails, right up close. Then she looked back at the vet and said, 'How do I get to do what you do?'