{"id":5212,"date":"2022-08-07T19:47:09","date_gmt":"2022-08-07T19:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=5212"},"modified":"2022-08-08T15:24:16","modified_gmt":"2022-08-08T15:24:16","slug":"nest-egg-by-john-morressy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=5212","title":{"rendered":"Nest Egg by John Morressy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Nest Egg<\/em><\/strong> by John Morressy (F&SF<\/em>, October-November 1995) is one of his \u201cKedrigern the Wizard\u201d series, and this one sees him receive a summons from a \u201cfriend and comrade\u201d called Lord Tyasan to de-spell his household griffin, Cecil. After Kedrigern complains at some length to his wife, Princess, about how it isn\u2019t a job for a wizard, and that he doesn\u2019t like Tysan\u2019s tone, etc., she eventually convinces him to take the job, and tells him she is coming too.
When they finally arrive at the castle, Kedrigern and Lord Tyasan catch up (in what is probably the best passage in a weak story):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow old are [your children], Tyasan? They weren\u2019t even born when I was here last.\u201d
The king beamed upon them. \u201cI remember the occasion well. I had only recently wed my fair queen Thrymm. She was sorely afflicted, but you came to her aid, old friend.\u201d
\u201cWhat was her problem?\u201d Princess asked.
\u201cSpiders.\u201d
\u201cIsn\u2019t it customary to call an exterminator?\u201d
\u201cThese spiders popped out of Thrymm\u2019s mouth every time she spoke,\u201d Kedrigem explained.
\u201cIt was especially unpleasant when she talked in her sleep,\u201d Tyasan said with a slight shudder of distaste. \u201cA single oversight in drawing up the guest list, and it caused us no end of inconvenience and distress. You can imagine how punctilious we were in sending out invitations to the royal christenings.\u201d  p. 190<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Seven pages in (about half way through the story), Kedrigern finally inspects the cantankerous griffin and finds it hasn\u2019t been spelled but he still cannot work out what ails the creature. Then, when Princess starts stroking the griffin\u2019s neck feathers, the creature starts to recover and asks for some broth. Kedrigern realises that (spoiler), while Princess was stroking the griffin, her gold necklace was touching its skin.
The story ends with Kedrigern giving Tyasan some blather about griffins needing gold for their nests before realising that Cecil must now be old enough to mate. Tyasan doubts he can find enough gold for the griffin (and doesn\u2019t want to give what he has) but Kedrigern points out that his gold will still be there in the nest, and that griffins are good at finding the material for themselves\u2014so Tyasan and his family will be rich.
This piece is typical of the other series stories in that it is pleasant enough light reading, but is also contrived and padded, and has a weak plot (which, when it finally gets going here, pivots on Kedrigern noticing something and then explaining the solution based on information only he could know).
* (Mediocre). 6,050 words.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nest Egg by John Morressy (F&SF, October-November 1995) is one of his \u201cKedrigern the Wizard\u201d series, and this one sees him receive a summons from a \u201cfriend and comrade\u201d called Lord Tyasan to de-spell his household griffin, Cecil. After Kedrigern complains at some length to his wife, Princess, about how it isn\u2019t a job for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1220],"tags":[21,5,25,1223,1221,12,1222],"class_list":["post-5212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-john-morressy","tag-21","tag-5","tag-fsf","tag-griffins","tag-john-morressy","tag-short-story","tag-wizards"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5212"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5246,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5212\/revisions\/5246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}