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The Gargoyle in my Yard
Philippa Dowding
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
For Sarah and Ben,
who have a gargoyle of their own
Prologue
The year is 1604. It is a long time before our story takes place.
A tall, thin man wearing a long, dusty cloak stands up from his work and surveys the green English countryside before him. It is not his country, but he appreciates that it is a beautiful place nonetheless. He brushes his hands upon his cloak, trying to remove some of the dust. He is covered in dust. Dust is everywhere. In his hair. In his nose and mouth. In the creases of his hands and eyes. This is because he is a stonemason; he works all day long fitting stone together to make buildings and bridges and churches.
Today he is putting the last touches on the restoration of a very old English church. He has been working here for five years, and he will miss this lovely place. There are rolling green hills as far as the eye can see, beautiful old chestnut trees everywhere, and a very pretty little river running beside the church courtyard. The river runs past an ancient statue of a lion, with a regal mane and fierce stone eyes.
As the stonemason stands looking over the small church parapet onto the peaceful countryside he will soon be leaving, he strokes a small statue. He has just created this little statue, something he does at the end of every job he completes. It is his signature. And this statue is his new favourite of all the many, many statues he has carved in his long and illustrious career.
It is a little gargoyle with folded wings and a pouch at its side, perched freely and looking over the churchyard and fields below. As the stonemason pats the gargoyle one last time and turns his back to the church forever, the gargoyle gives a small shudder. And breathes at last.
Chapter One
A New Statue
Katherine looked at her homework piled up on the kitchen table.
“Too much to do,” she thought and took another bite of her apple. She munched slowly looking out the kitchen window.
A beautiful fall day was happening outside, without her.
The maple tree against the back fence was glorious with orange, yellow and red leaves gently fluttering to the ground. The warm sun shone on the still-green grass. The fall flowers were in full bloom, and her favourite flowers of all, her mother’s award-winning New England Asters, were showing their pretty purple faces to the world.
Her mother and father were really proud of their fall flowers and had the awards to prove how beautiful they were. Katherine had grown up around flowers and knew many of their Latin names: the New England Asters were called “symphyotrichum novae-angliae”.
She sighed, tapping her pencil on the table, and took another stab at math problem #6. She read: “Mr. Henry has 3,335 nails and 170 boards to nail onto the fence. If he uses 16 nails for every two boards, how many nails will he use in all? Bonus: How many nails remain unused?”
“Uggh,” she said out loud and decided to walk outside to clear her head. She grabbed her apple and said “Come on, Milly,” to the pretty calico cat. She let the screen door slam behind her as she escaped the dull world of Mr. Henry and his nails and boards.
Katherine went and sat on the backyard swing, slowly dragging her feet in the grass, the maple leaves falling on her long hair. Her green eyes took in a little statue sitting nearby.
The new garden gargoyle had his back to her a few feet away, with his head in his hands and his wings folded tightly behind his back. He was one of the many garden ornaments Katherine’s parents kept in their tiny backyard.
He looked as though he was thinking hard about something. He was sitting on a small pedestal made of stone which had once belonged to a goddess statue, now long gone. This little gargoyle was brand new to their garden, and he was now her favourite.
There were plenty of statues to choose from. Even though their backyard was small, it was definitely full of interesting things to look at. You might say her parents, well, her mother really, were statue-freaks. And they gardened constantly. For such a small piece of land, her father liked to say their backyard got more attention than Casa Loma.
Their garden already had six statues: a little faun with the body and face of a man and the legs of a goat; a small cherub with an angelic, baby face, perfect wings and a little harp; three bearded, pointy-hatted dwarves; and a water fountain with a unicorn in the middle. The water splashed out of the unicorn’s long, curly horn.
But she liked the gargoyle the best. He had a thoughtful sort of face (for a gargoyle) and folded wings that looked leathery and real. He also had a small pouch at his side, bulging with something she couldn’t make out.
Katherine wondered what a gargoyle would keep in a pouch like that?
“What do you have in that pouch, Mr. Gargoyle?” she asked. Katherine was reading The Hobbit in school and wondered if the gargoyle was anything like a goblin. “Do you have some snails, and wet string and a sharp stone to gnaw? Why I bet ...” she was going to go on, but stopped when she heard her mother call from the kitchen.
“Hi, Katherine! I’m home...”
“Hi Mom!” she yelled back and hopped off the swing. She ran past the gargoyle, dropped her half-eaten apple in the grass, stroked Milly, who was sunning herself on the porch, and disappeared back into the house with a slam of the screen door.
Katherine didn’t see what happened next, but Milly did.
Slowly, a small, leathery claw reached out and closed around the apple Katherine had dropped. The gargoyle was hungry.
Chapter Two
The Sign of
the Broken Dwarf
That night when Katherine was brushing her teeth, she remembered to ask her dad something.
“Hey Dad, when did we get that new gargoyle?” she yelled down the hall, through foamy toothbrush spit. She spat it out.
“Gargoyle? What gargoyle?” he asked, sounding puzzled as he walked into the bathroom. Her dad was really tall and skinny, with frizzy white hair that made him look kind of like a clown, especially when he was wearing his pajamas as he was now. Her dad was a high school science teacher, and his students liked to call him “Einstein” because he looked a little like that famous scientist.
“Don’t tell me your mother bought another garden statue?” he moaned. “What is it this time?”
“A gargoyle. He’s really cute, too. For a gargoyle, I mean. And he’s real-looking. You know? I mean, you can tell the faun, and the cherub and the dwarves aren’t real. And the unicorn is really pretty fake-looking. But the gargoyle has this look on his face, like he’s thinking about something really hard. Or maybe he’s a little sad. And he’s got a pouch bulging with something, but you can’t see inside.”
Katherine got quiet. “Yeah. He really does look sad about something.”
Her dad laughed. “You must have been looking at him pretty hard. I hope he doesn’t get into any fights with the dwarves! Gargoyles and dwarves are sworn enemies, you know. They’ll fight over nothing and hold grudges for ever. Or almost for ever.”
He smiled, leaned down and kissed her on the top of her head.
“G’night, honey. Sleep tight, sweet dreams, don’t let the gargoyles bite!” he teased.
“G’night Dad.” Katherine yawned as she headed down the hall.
Katherine’s bedroom was at the back of the house, closest to the