THE GRIFFIN

Yes, I’m a griffin – want to make something of it? Or gryphon if you want to be picky or historical. What am I doing sitting in this bar? Why don’t you mind your own business? I can sit where I like, thank you very much. Yes, I drink beer. No, the beak isn’t a problem. Yes, my wings fold away. Any other stupid questions? What’s it to you, anyway?

Oh, you’re a journalist and you need a good story. So what makes you think I’m it? Yes, I’m thousands of years old. So what? I must have seen a lot of interesting things? What if I did? Has it occurred to you that I might just want to drink my beer in peace?

No, I don’t want to be famous. I’ve been famous; it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. And there are bound to be people who read your story and decide a nice griffin head on the wall is just what they need to complete their collection of dead animals. So, no.

Yes, I’ll have another beer. Thank you. No, I’m not that interested in you saving your job. If you’re about to get fired because you haven’t provided a decent story in weeks – how’s that my problem?

Yes, another beer would be good. Have you noticed that after about the third beer you don’t notice the taste? A whiskey? Well, if you’re paying . . .

Yeah, first time I’ve tasted whiskey. I’ve never been to Scotland or Ireland. Is that right? They spell it differently in Ireland? Well, what do you know. Another? Don’t mind if I do.

Yeah, never been to Scotland, though I’ve heard it’s very beautiful. A griffin could get to like it there – mountains, lakes. Nice. No, I come from the Middle East. They call it Iran, now, but back in the day it was called Persia. Oh, yes, I met Cyrus the Great. Nice fellow. Clever, tolerant, good soldier, too.

Well, of course I lived in the mountains. Good flying there, you can take advantage of the air currents, soar around for hours without getting tired. But I got around – we all did. Greece, Egypt, Crete. Met the Sphinx, or course. Well, the Egyptian one - he’s male, of course. I helped them lift the rocks for his statue. But the Greek one – his wife - was all caught up with being mysterious and deep. Too much time with those philosophers, I reckon. And talk about crabby! Do you know she would stand in the middle of a narrow opening in the hills and anybody who wanted to get past had to answer a riddle and if they got it wrong she’d eat them? What kind of behaviour is that, I ask you?

There were lots of us back in the day – you could hardly move for mythical creatures. The sphinxes of course, centaurs – I had quite a few friends among the more civilised ones – Chiron was a good buddy, and very smart. Pegasus, the Colossus of Rhodes, the satyrs, the Minotaur, Cerberus, the Chimera. You never see them any more, do you? Whatever happened to them all? And dragons, and basilisks and unicorns – and the Roc bird, and the phoenix of course. And all the others that nobody even remembers! What about the bonnacon – better than a skunk – it shoots burning excrement at people – talk about laugh! Or the pard? Or the leucrota? Hey, I had a very good friend among the Sciapods – you know the men with a single giant foot that they put over their heads for shade? Long time – centuries - since I’ve heard any news of him.

There’s a few survivors – the cameleopard – now there’s a mythical animal for you – half camel, half leopard. Somehow it’s survived, but now they call it a giraffe. But how long has it been since bears stopped having babies that were shapeless lumps of flesh and had to lick them into shape – literally? Or pelicans stopped feeding their babies with their own blood? Used to happen all the time. And the poor old Hydra – used to be this enormous monster with lots of snake heads. Now it’s microscopic, just another anomaly in the list of small animals. How have the mighty fallen! Sirens have turned into mermaids, and now people think they’re the same things as dugongs.

Some of it I blame on the Heroes, especially Hercules. He wiped out a whole lot of us. Bastard. But that was a long time ago, and plenty of us survived. But now, how many do you see? Hardly any. I’m the only surviving griffin I know of. And once I’m gone, that’ll be it. No more griffins.

What happened? I’ll tell you what happened! People stopped believing in us, that’s what happened. Humans have lost their sense of wonder, they’ve become cynical, they’ve stopped believing in magic – even if it’s just the everyday magic of nature – the wonder at a sunset, or the leaves of a birch-tree quivering in the breeze, dewdrops like pearls on a spider-web. You humans were never perfect, but you had great possibilities, great vision. The ideas you came up with! Truth, Justice, Hope! The idea of noblesse oblige – that being in a privileged position gave you responsibilities – that to lead is to serve. But that all seems to have vanished, or at least it’s vanishing. Now people in positions of power seem to be in a competition to see who can rip everybody off as much as possible and to hell with the victims.

And just because something is mythical doesn’t mean it’s not real. The only thing that keeps Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny going is that kids believe in them. But then when they grow up they get told they don’t exist, that only idiots still believe in them. Unicorns are only still around because of little girls – otherwise they’d be long gone.

Yes, I’ll have another. Thanks. I have to say, a lot of our kind survive because of sailors, though even they’re dwindling. The kraken’s a good example. That pirate movie helped a lot – gave the poor guy a new lease on life. People pretend to themselves that it’s fiction, but there’s something in the back of their minds that says - well, just maybe he does exist. And then there was that other one, about the dwarves and the dragon. A few dragons still around because of that, but they keep themselves to themselves. Why wouldn’t they?

And a few in isolated areas – Bigfoot, the Yeti, Australia’s Yowie and Bunyip, and of course the drop-bear – he got a whole new lease on life because of American tourists.

I don’t know Back in the day everything was so mysterious it was easy to believe in supernatural beings messing things up for you - harpies or trolls or goblins. And then science got in on the act and said we didn’t exist – there was no physical evidence for us. No need to blame supernatural beings for catastrophes. You couldn’t examine us in a laboratory, so people stopped believing in us and we started vanishing.

Another whiskey? Don’t mind if I do. No, we can’t breed up new mythical beasts. Yes, we have male and female, but that’s not how we multiply. It’s about belief – the more people who believe in us, the more there are of us.

No, I don’t know how long I’ve got – nobody seems to talk about griffins any more. When the last person stops believing in me – poof! – that’s it.

Well, maybe you’re right. Getting my story into the newspaper might help get me better known – more believed in. And that might give me a bit more life. All right, I’ll let you publish my story. What do you want to know?

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Well, you know the rest. How the newspaper article, after a fair bit of disbelief and ridicule, led to the griffin appearing on TV talk shows and going viral on the internet. And the more people believed in him, the more he glowed golden, the mightier he became. Then other mythical animals began coming out of the woodwork – which is why we have unicorns in the streets nowadays. And why somehow we seem to have started recovering our innocence and our sense of wonder. Perhaps everything will turn out okay after all . . .