Mo and Flo and the Gryphon Library
© 2008 by Sarah Matanah
The trees in this forest were bigger than any Mo had ever imagined. They had to land outside the forest and then hike around each massive tree. Finally they saw white stone gleaming between the mossy green trunks, a magnificent building sunk partway into the earth. Next to the giant trees it looked like a toy.
“There it is—the gryphon library,” said Mama G, looking around with satisfaction. “Famous in legend and history. Hardly anyone knows how to find it anymore. I was last here twenty-five years ago. Maybe no one has been here since.”
Mo held his breath as he and Flo followed Mama G through the doorway. Inside it was quiet and cool. It smelled of stone and earth and paper.
Inside, there were books everywhere. They lined the walls, filled mazes of bookshelves, and were stacked up on top of the bookshelves and in the aisles. Doorways led out of the first room into others, also filled with books.
Mama G paced among the bookshelves, peering at all the titles, running her wings over any that seemed dusty, and often stopping to open a book and read a few pages. She moved toward the back of the library, clicking her beak and muttering to herself as she went.
Mo wandered through the aisles picking up books and trying to read bits of them. Many of the books were written in Gryphon. Mama G had been teaching it to them, but he could only recognize a few of the words.
Mo soon got bored with looking at books that he couldn’t read. None of them even had pictures. He built a tower out of some of the thicker books. It was six stories high before it toppled over with a loud rumble. The crash startled him. He jumped back and started replacing the books as quietly as he could, but Mama G had already come running.
“Mo, what are you thinking?” she whispered furiously, glaring at him from one yellow eye and then the other. “These are rare books. This one,” she held up a book bound in red leather, with purple edges, “might be the only copy left in the world. You can’t build with them as if they were rocks and sticks in the forest!”
“But I can’t read any of them—they’re all for grownups,” Mo complained.
“Well, find some other way to entertain yourself. Go see what Flo is up to.”
Flo was lying on the floor reading a book with gold edges on the paper. He tried to read over her shoulder for a while. It was the first book he’d seen in Dragon, but the sentences were so complicated that he couldn’t tell what it was about.
“You can read this?” he said, finally.
“No,” Flo admitted, “but look.” She opened the book to the first page, where there was a picture of twenty dragons fighting on and around a ruined tower. “I wish I could read it.”
“You know what this place would be good for?” Mo asked. “Hide and seek.”
“You’re right,” Flo said. “It’s ideal.”
“One, two, three, not It,” Mo said.
He ran through the library, darting around piles of books. He could hear Flo counting behind him, and Mama G muttering nearby. He slowed down then, peering around the bookshelves and into corners. There were plenty of good hiding spots, but none as good as he wanted.
“Ready or not, here I come,” Flo called. He darted behind a dust-covered hill of books. Behind them was a bookshelf, pulled away from the wall. He squeezed behind it and, to his surprise, saw an opening in the wall. Through a short tunnel, Mo saw daylight. He squeezed through, and found himself in a sort of a room. The roof had fallen in, and saplings grew out of the floor. There were books, though, packed into glass boxes with padlocks on them.
Flo came running out of the tunnel. “Found you!” She said. “I could see your footprints in the dust. Hey, you found a secret room. Wait till we tell Mama G!”
“Do you think we could break open one of these bookcases?” Mo asked.
“We don’t have to—look,” said Flo. One of the boxes was open. The books were covered with moss and mold. There were even small plants growing out of some of them.
Mo pulled out a book that looked relatively clean. While Flo leaned over his shoulder, he opened it to a picture of a crowd of gryphons on a sailing ship, one of them at the wheel while others adjusted the sails, swabbed the deck with mops in their beaks, and just looked over the railing. Mo had never imagined so many gryphons together. In another picture the moon had a beaked face. It was talking to a small gryphon who sat awake between two older sleeping gryphons.
Then, the twins heard Mama G calling very faintly, “Mo... Flo...”
“We’re in here!” Mo shouted. He ran to the tunnel’s entrance holding the book. “Mama G, we’re in here!”
Mama G looked through the book that Mo held out to her and at each of the other bookshelves. “What a discovery! You’ve found the children’s section. I didn’t even know it existed.”
She opened the locked bookshelves with the point of her beak and sorted through them using both her beak and the tip of her tail. “The Fall of the Empire. I told you that story at dinner last week, remember? And Grandfather’s Eagle—we did that one at bedtime. But oh, I forgot this one—The Fish That Wore a Ring—and look at this one....”
Soon Mama G had a stack of long-forgotten favorite books. Flo and Mo sat on either side of her. She put a wing around each of them and read out loud until the light faded and it was time to fly home.
Copyright © 2008 by Sarah Matanah. Published by Rainbow Rumpus. All rights reserved.
 Sarah Matanah likes to write fantasy and science fiction. She is learning how to play the guitar, but so far she can only pick and not strum. She works in day care and lives in Minneapolis with her wife, children, and adorable Houdini-like mutt. She has told many stories about Flo and Mo, but she can’t remember most of them.
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