The door was still open, banging against the side of the pilothouse as they rocked over the waves. Lucy looked out, looked all around, and took a few cautious steps onto the deck.
The tiger's claws had left deep gouges in the boat's paint. She shuddered. At least Hendricks and the others were well and truly left behind; the mainland was only a dark line on the horizon now.
A shadow swept over the boat.
Lucy looked up.
There was definitely something flying up there, and it was big. Eren was right. But it wasn't airplane-big, and it wasn't making any noise. In fact, if she hadn't known better, she would have thought it was a giant bird.
But it didn't reallylooklike a bird.
Lucy shaded her eyes from the sun just as it swooped over again, much lower. This time she got a better look at it, but she couldn't believe what she had seen.
Well, why not? She had just watched two men, one of them her protector, change into animals.
"Eren?" she called through the open pilothouse door. "I see it, but I'm not sure if you'll believe me."
"Try me," Eren called back.
"It looks like a griffin."
"No, it was bigger than that," he called.
"Not the seagull griffins. This is a real one. Full-sized."
"What?" Eren said.
A moment later he had throttled the boat all the way to a standstill. As it wallowed on the waves, he came out to join her on deck.
The griffin swooped over again, and then it spiraled down to land on the back end of the boat.
It was definitely a griffin, and it was huge.
Unlike the trash griffins, which were decidedly non-majestic, it looked exactly like the illustration of a griffin in an old storybook. It had the body of a lion, with a cascading mane and tawny fur. Its head was that of an eagle, with a massive curved beak and sharp yellow eyes staring at them as if considering whether they might taste good as a snack. The wings were probably eagle's wings as well. It rustled them and then folded them.
Eren moved so that he was between Lucy and the creature.
The griffin snapped its beak. There was an impatient tone to it, as if it was exasperated with both of them.
Lucy stared at it. Once again that strange sense of familiarity nagged at her. She had seen something like this before, a very long time ago.Notin storybooks, but in real life. It felt to her as if some sort of vastly important revelation was buried in the back of her mind, wanting to get out.
Then her gaze dropped to the griffin's front leg, and she sucked in her breath.
Her uncle had a dramatic scar on his left arm. It wrapped all the way around his arm and had always looked to her as if something had clawed him there. Her father had had a similar scar, but she had never had a chance to ask him about it, and her uncle would never have answered a question like that.
This griffin had a scar in the exact same place, creasing its tawny fur.
Lucy looked up to its head again, shocked. Was there human intelligence in those gold eyes?
"Uncle Rodric?" Lucy breathed out.
A gust of wind ruffled its fur, a damp cold wind with a promise of rain. The griffin abruptly beat its wings and took to the air.
Lucy looked up as it circled above them, flying higher and higher. Eren relaxed a little now that it was off the boat, but continued to watch warily until it vanished into the gathering clouds.
"I had no idea there were big ones too," he said. "Did you call that griffin by your uncle's name?"
"I—I just felt like it was the right thing to do," Lucy murmured. She still stared upward, although there was no longer anything to see.