He paused a long time and turned to look at Milly, who had joined the family on the back porch, sitting at her owners’ feet. She kept her distance.
“No, sadly Katherine, there is no other who can help me. I have waited. I have watched. Your mother spoke to me without greed or malice in her heart, and so I believe only she can help me find my way again.”
Katherine was thinking hard. “Do you mean, because Mom said “Hi there” to you that day on the street, that you are somehow connected to her? Like a servant, or something?”
At the word “servant”, Gargoth flinched and hunched his little shoulders even more deeply. A dark frown was upon his face. “No, not a servant as you know it. But I am indebted to her in a way you may not ever understand. She saw me. She spoke to me. I am hers until I find my way again.”
With that, Gargoth turned his head away and would speak no further despite Katherine’s attempt to continue their conversation.
Katherine’s mother walked slowly across the yard. She stopped in front of the little gargoyle, who had his back to her, and reached out to him. Gently she stroked Gargoth’s leathery wings with one hand. Gargoth turned his face to her.
Hot gargoyle tears were streaming down his cheeks and splashing with a “hiss” onto the cold stone pedestal beneath his feet.
Chapter Nine
House Guest
After that, Katherine and her parents left Gargoth alone for the rest of the day. He seemed content to sit on his pedestal and stare gloomily at the tree.
Katherine and her mother spent most of the rest of the morning sitting at the kitchen table, trying to explain to Katherine’s father what the gargoyle had said.
As far as they could figure out, they explained, Katherine’s mother had been the first adult to speak “without malice” to Gargoth in ages, maybe hundreds of years.
This made Gargoth want to speak to her. This also somehow made him “hers”, but not in a servant-like way. Her father wanted to know everything that was said at this point, particularly about being “hers”, but this had them as lost as he was.
Clearly Gargoth was very sad and had talked about being “lost”, but in this first conversation they didn’t really have the chance to clear that up. How was he lost? Who had lost him? Were there other gargoyles like him somewhere in the world? Was there any way to help him? He didn’t seem to think anyone could help but Katherine’s mother.
And he didn’t seem very interested in going away.
On the plus side, he hadn’t stuck his tongue out at them since they had started talking to him, so maybe they had won a very slight victory on that count. Katherine’s mother still thought the gargoyle stuck his tongue out as a kind of downspout reflex, but Katherine wasn’t totally convinced; she thought he was just being rude.
Rude or not, they decided that he was going to have to stay in the backyard until Monday, then they would make a clear plan about what to do with him.
Katherine caught her mother stealing glances out the back window at the gargoyle all day. Finally, at dinner time, her mother went out to the backyard alone and talked once more to Gargoth, then returned and started putting apples into a basket.
“What are you doing, Mom?” Katherine asked.
“He’s hungry,” she said simply, and with that emptied the fridge of all the apples they owned and slipped back outside.
She didn’t come back in for a long time.
Chapter Ten
The Golden Nautilus
Katherine and her parents spent that weekend trying hard to act as though nothing odd or unusual was going on. They had decided not to mention Gargoth again until Monday, so the rest of the weekend came and went as normally as possible, considering the events of Saturday morning. Katherine found she didn’t even want to look out the back window, and she and her parents were really, really polite with each other.
Her dad was quiet all weekend, but her mother seemed unnaturally chatty and perky, doing the talking for all three of them at every meal. She got like that when she was especially nervous about something.
Milly didn’t want to go out the back door.
Oddly, Katherine found she didn’t want to leave the house either. When her friend Rubie invited her over on Saturday night for a sleepover, she didn’t want to go anywhere. She made up an excuse and stayed in.
The only tricky bit of the weekend came on Sunday night. The family was invited to the neighbours’ house for Sunday night dinner, and her mom and dad couldn’t think of a good enough reason to say “no” on such short notice.
The McDonalds were probably the best neighbours anyone ever had, anywhere, in the history of neighbourly kindness. They were quite a bit older than Katherine’s parents, and they had no children of their own, so Katherine was always terribly spoiled when she went to their house. Mr. McDonald always gave her a special treat, and often Mrs. McDonald had rented a new movie or game for her to play while the adults were talking over dinner. It was always a highlight of the week for Katherine. They had babysat her often when she was little. She got to stay up late, snuggled warmly on the couch between these two fine people, and watch late night TV, which was strictly forbidden when her parents were home.
They were the kind of neighbours who watched the house when Katherine and her parents went away on holiday. The kind of neighbours who took Milly into their home on short notice. They were, in fact, the kind of neighbours you could call on any time of the day or night, and they’d be happy to help.
They were her second family.
But for the first time in her life, Katherine found herself being shy when Mr. McDonald asked if the asters were still in bloom.
Later, when Mrs. McDonald asked if she could come and see the flowers because she liked them best in their final blaze of glory, both of Katherine’s parents yelled, “No! It’s not a good time right now.” Then they had to apologize and explain they were just a little on edge because it hadn’t been a good growing season for them, and they had been hoping to win another “Small Garden” award this year.
Katherine caught her dad mopping his brow with a napkin after that little lie.
They left early, as their good neighbours stood bewildered in their doorway, waving goodbye.
For his part, Gargoth had stayed motionless on his pedestal almost the entire weekend, occasionally discarding apple cores, which slowly piled up around his feet.
Finally, Monday came, and the family was able to get back to some degree of normal life. At breakfast, Katherine’s mother said she was going to visit The Golden Nautilus after work and see if she could find out anything about Gargoth, such as where he came from. It was the first time in two days that any of them had mentioned him.
“And Katherine, I want you to come. When I get you from school, we’ll go straight there.”
Katherine’s dad shot her an “I’m sorry” look, then bolted for work, clearly glad to be out of the world of gargoyles and back into the world of science and students. This was likely because there was little risk of anything inanimate coming to life in the safe, predictable world of his classroom (with the possible exception of some senior students at the back of the room who hadn’t said a word all term).
It was possibly Katherine’s longest day in school ever. It seemed like it would never end. In history class, the last period of the day, Mrs. Glean droned on so long about the prairies and pioneer life, that Katherine decided it must have been the most boring time in Canadian history. She jumped when the boy sitting next to her hit his head on the desk with a loud “thud”. Asleep.
After what seemed like