The Gargoyle Overhead Page 8

  While Cassandra was loading the van, Katherine phoned her parents and left a message on her mom’s cell phone.

  “Hi, Mom. Hope you’re having fun with your cousin…and her daughter. Is she married yet? I think today is the wedding. Uh, just letting you know that Cassandra and I are fine. I mean everything’s fine, but we have to take a little trip. We…um…have to find Gargoth. Who, uh, is missing. But we’ll find him! Don’t worry. Maybe you’d better phone Cassandra as soon as you get this! Bye!”

  She hung up quickly. She knew her mom and dad would want her and Cassandra to go looking for Gargoth, but she also didn’t want them to worry. There really wasn’t any easy way to tell them that he was missing. And that she and Cassandra were driving off to New York City in an ancient van to try to find him. With Ambergine.

  As Cassandra was getting ready, Katherine stayed on the rooftop with Ambergine. She comforted the little gargoyle by telling her everything about Gargoth’s life with them for the past year.

  “Well, he was really naughty at first. We got to know him after he destroyed our flower garden and damaged a dwarf statue.”

  Ambergine used a claw to stop a tear trickling down her face. She said shyly, “Yes, he left a trail of broken statues in his wake. I was always fixing them.”

  Katherine smiled. “Sounds familiar. But he became really good friends with us eventually. In the end, he fixed the flowers and grew a magical apple tree. He even became great friends with our calico cat, Milly.”

  At this, Ambergine sat up straight, and her dark eyes grew wide with surprise. “Did you say Milly?” she asked.

  “Yes, our cat’s name is Milly.”

  Ambergine smiled. I knew it. I did find you. She was pleased for a moment.

  “I like his beacon,” she said, smiling faintly and waving her claw over the expanse of the rooftop. “Our stonemason’s mark. One hundred and forty-eight candles, too. That’s one candle for each year that I have searched for him. Well, not including the few hours we were together in the box last spring, after I found him in New York. They don’t really count, since we were separated so soon afterward. And right here, in this very store...”

  Katherine had tried not to remind Ambergine of that fact. She almost hoped the gargoyle hadn’t recognized Cassandra and Candles By Daye at all. But she had.

  The little gargoyle broke down and cried again. It took a long time for Katherine to calm her down enough to get her into the yellow canvas backpack, and into the back of the van.

  One hundred and forty-eight years. Katherine couldn’t imagine looking for someone for that long. That would be more than two lifetimes. That would mean that when Ambergine had started looking for Gargoth, there were still slaves in America. There was no such thing as electric lightbulbs. No one had ever seen a movie or heard the radio or used a telephone.

  It was a long time to miss someone.

  Soon Cassandra, Katherine and Ambergine were on the road, heading out of Toronto and south toward New York City.

  Before they got on the highway, Cassandra stopped the van and bought street vendor hot dogs (a veggie dog for herself) since it would be some time before they had a chance to eat again. For the first little while, the inside of the van was silent as they ate their hot dogs.

  Even Ambergine tried one (she was unusually curious about what hot dog tasted like) but immed-iately spat it out and said she’d prefer to stick to apples. She took a crabapple out of her pouch and ate that.

  Katherine found that interesting. Gargoth kept tobacco in his pouch. Ambergine kept apples. She asked the little gargoyle about this.

  “I always have a few apples and a water jug in my pouch. I never liked tobacco, anyway.” Ambergine curled up her nose.

  It was a long, dark, boring drive, so there’s no point in telling you too much about it. Only three remotely interesting things happened.

  The first thing occurred just outside of Toronto, on the highway. Cassandra’s cell phone rang, and Katherine had to dig in her huge bag to find it. On the seventh ring, she found it and snapped it open…

  “Hello?”

  “Katherine!” Her mother’s voice sounded very far away. “Katherine? Is that you! It’s Mom! Where are you? What’s going on? What do you mean you’re driving to find Gargoth? What’s happened?” In the background, Katherine could hear loud party music.

  Katherine looked at Cassandra. “It’s my mom,” she whispered.

  “You better talk to her,” Cassandra said. “I’m driving. Let her know I’ll call her as soon as I can stop safely in a few minutes.”

  Katherine took a deep breath and said, “Mom, Mom! It’s okay. Yes, we’re driving to find Gargoth. No, we don’t know where he is, exactly. Well, a man stole him. Yes, stole him. We know who he is, and Ambergine knows where he lives. Ambergine. She’s a gargoyle. Yes, she’s here. She found Cassandra’s rooftop. Just after Gargoth vanished. Yes, it’s kind of a long story. Okay, I’ll start at the beginning…”

  That was a very long conversation, but eventually Katherine was able to convince her mother and father that she and Cassandra and Ambergine had everything under control. She agreed to phone every hour on the hour after that (which turned out to be rather annoying but helped calm her mother down). Her parents were going to leave the wedding to take the next flight back to Toronto, but that wasn’t going to help them very much on the road to New York. Still, it was reassuring to know that as soon as her parents were back in Toronto, they would be following in their own car.

  The second interesting happening came in the darkest hours of night and was rather sad. Ambergine was fast asleep.

  When Katherine heard her snoring gently, she turned to Cassandra and spoke quietly. “Cassie, do you think we are actually going to find the man in the white straw hat?”

  Cassandra hesitated. “I don’t see why we wouldn’t be able to find him. Ambergine seems fairly sure that she knows how to find the mansion again. We’ll have to trust her.”

  Katherine bit her lip and said, “But what if he hurts Gargoth? For running away? Or what if he hides him somewhere so that we can’t ever find him?” She couldn’t help it; she started crying. “What if we never see him again?” She was sobbing now.

  Cassandra put her hand on Katherine’s arm. “We’re not going to think like that, Katherine. Not yet. We have to believe we’ll find him.” She nodded toward the yellow canvas backpack. “Ambergine hasn’t given up looking for almost a hundred and fifty years. I think we can look for him for a few more days…”

  At that moment Ambergine woke up with a sigh. “Where are we?” she asked sleepily as she climbed out of the backpack.

  “Not too far now, another few hours,” Katherine answered back, handing her a map and pointing out where they were on the snaking highway.

  Katherine watched the little gargoyle as she carefully looked at the map and cleared her throat. “Ambergine, there’s something that I’ve been wanting to ask you…”

  “Yes?” Ambergine answered without looking up.

  “Well, Gargoth has told us all about his early life, and how he found his friend Philip, and how he found you. Well, I guess really you found him. And then how the two of you lived in a little French village for years, then in Paris and that you were somehow separated at Notre Dame.” Katherine hesitated, because she really didn’t want to say the next part, but she finished quickly. “And I know that you were separated again in Cassandra’s store last year. But, well, I’m just wondering how you found him at all? I mean, how on earth did you find him in New York City? It’s so big, and you looked for so long…and how did you help him escape the place he was in?” Katherine looked at Ambergine with huge eyes, begging her to tell the final piece of the story.

  The gargoyle was thoughtful. “It’s kind of dull, Katherine. I just kept looking, that’s all there is to it. Not very strange or interesting, I’m afraid. But all right, if you want to know what happened in New York City, I’ll tell you.”

  Ambergine’s story w
as the third interesting thing to happen on that long journey. She made herself comfortable in the back seat of the little van as it sped along the highway and shared the final chapter of Gargoth’s story with his old friends and her new ones.

  Gargoth’s Story, Last Year

  The Great Reunion

  Ambergine stepped out of her hiding place and shook her wings to wake herself up. It was a beautiful spring night, and the air was clear and warm.

  She was looking toward New York City from the top of the city’s largest cathedral. She stayed here from time to time, since it was a peaceful green place in the huge city, and because it reminded her of her home in Paris, so long ago.

  She was perched between two statues of a small dog and a donkey, both a warm golden colour as the sun set in the west. It was almost time for her to begin her night-time search.

  As long as she had lived among the stone gargoyles of New York, she had never really liked them. They were odd and difficult, nothing like the graceful stone statues of her days in Paris with Gargoth. They were strangely dressed people, or dogs (too many dogs, she thought, rolling her eyes), or fat, comical-looking animals from distant parts of the world.

  But like every other place she had ever been, none of the gargoyles of New York was alive, like her.

  Or Gargoth, wherever he was.

  She drummed her claws against the stone turret and looked out over the city. In the distance, she could see busy people rushing home in cars, taxis, buses and trains. Millions of cars. Millions of people. She was glad she was too far from the city to hear much of the noise from it. She’d been there too long to really notice much of the goings-on in it, anyway.

  Ambergine had been there long enough to see horse-drawn carriages give way to cars, gas street lamps turn into electric lights, and the streets fill with more than eight million people from all over the world.

  She waddled to the edge of the turret and leaned against the pedestal of an enormous angel. She had lived among many angels, but none had answered her prayer, at least not yet. She ate an apple to give her some energy for the long night ahead then lifted her weary wings to the skies.

  As she flew, night after night, searching and search-ing, she would let her mind wander.

  This night she was thinking about the last time she had seen Gargoth on that terrible night in Paris. She had carefully followed the thieves and discovered they were going to somewhere called “New York” on something called a “ship” across something else called an “ocean”. She smiled despite herself. That took some courage, finding out that a “ship” was a tiny piece of wood crossing an “ocean”, which turned out to be an impossible amount of water. She didn’t even want to think about how wretched she was as she hid away on that terrible ship so long ago, drenched with salty water which stung her poor wings, and no sunlight or apples to eat or water to drink.

  And no Gargoth.

  New York she understood. It was a great city, much like Paris, only angrier and louder somehow, with more huge buildings and people moving by quickly on the dirty streets below.

  As she was thinking of this, she adjusted her flight to climb a dark road, through a large forest which wound up a hillside. New York City was falling behind her. She was going to search a new neighbourhood with huge homes, with statues and fountains in the rolling gardens behind them.

  Ambergine found it odd that humans were so interested in statues and gargoyles. During her many years of searching, she’d had no problem finding yards filled with angels and cherubs and statues of all kinds.

  But of course, it hadn’t made any difference where she looked. Not so far, anyway.

  She was flying just above the treetops. It was quiet, and very still. She decided it must be about two o’clock in the morning. Suddenly a huge mansion loomed out of the dark ahead of her, with a gigantic garden full of statues. She could see them glowing and pale in the moonlight.

  It was too dark to see anything very clearly, so she took a moment to land on the wall near the garden and rest before going further. She took an apple from her pouch and ate it slowly as she looked over the huge garden. Her eyes slowly passed over the statues near her, when two things happened.

  The first thing was she realized that the statue in front of her was an exact replica of Gargoth, carrying a fishing rod. Another figure of Gargoth holding an apple was chained to its side.

  The second thing was that the chained statue took a bite of its apple.

  It wasn’t a statue! It was Gargoth himself!

  Ambergine squeaked. Her voice was gone. She spat her own apple out of her mouth and spluttered, trying to speak, but nothing would come out. She fell off the garden wall and rolled into the grass, helpless.

  Her wings failed her. Her voice failed her. She found she was sobbing, lying foolishly in the grass.

  But Gargoth had seen her fall from the wall and turned toward her, straining at his thick chain. “Who are you? Who is there?” his growly voice called.

  She was at his side in a second, hugging him with all her might. It took only a moment for her to fly to the top of the next statue and release him from his heavy length of chain.

  In a second he was free.

  They fell and stumbled and cried. They joined their claws together and skipped and whooped, breathless, across the huge walled garden. Gargoth howled at the moon and picked up rocks and threw them as hard as he could at nearby statues, breaking off many stone noses and wingtips. Both gargoyles crowed and laughed, giddy, like little children.

  Beside a pool with a gigantic statue of a Greek god, Gargoth and Ambergine danced and danced, splashing in the water as moonlight sparkled off the shimmering pool, gracing them with shadow and light.

  But suddenly Gargoth froze. A second later, one of the mansion windows flew open, and a man with a white hat and thick glasses thrust his head out.

  “What are you doing? Where are you?” came a loud, ugly voice.

  Before she understood what had happened, Gargoth shoved Ambergine to the ground behind an angel statue, and whispered, “Shhhh. Be still!” his voice breaking with fear.

  Ambergine looked into Gargoth’s terrified face and up at the face of the man in the window.

  She snarled, and her ears flattened against her head. She was reunited with the only thing that mattered to her in the entire world, and she was not going to let anything happen to him, ever again.

  One thing that Ambergine was really good at was hiding. She’d made a career of it, hiding among humans in busy cities for hundreds of years. So she did the one thing that made sense; she grabbed Gargoth by the claw, and together they hid in that gigantic walled garden of stone and grass and water.

  And no one was going to find them.

  Gargoth’s Story, Last Year

  T-O-R-O-N-T-O

  Ambergine and Gargoth crept silently away from the statue of the Greek god, skirting the nearby statues, and moving as quickly as they could. They waddled and ran, Ambergine in the lead, urging Gargoth along.

  The man in the white straw hat slammed the window shut and vanished, but they knew he was coming. He would soon be out on the grounds among the statues, trying to find them.

  “Where should we go?” Ambergine gasped frantically. Gargoth seemed unable to answer her.

  She shook him and looked into his face. “Where? Gargoth, quickly! Where should we hide?”

  But he barely seemed to notice her. His eyes were suddenly sullen and clouded, and he would not look at her. She dragged him to the back of a giant rearing horse and rider statue, which blocked them completely from the mansion. She gained them a few moments’ time.

  “Gargoth! Look at me,” she began. But he would not. Instead he stared at the dark grass. “We don’t have much time. Gargoth, please!” she whispered. “You must tell me what’s wrong? Why won’t you run?”

  He looked at her evenly. “You can’t be real,” he said. “You simply cannot be here. It has been too long. One hundred and forty years, or more? I’ve los
t count. I have been abandoned alone for too long to believe it is really you.” He turned away from her. “I have finally gone mad. Or perhaps I’ve died at last.” He squatted on his haunches and refused to move. Ambergine grew desperate.

  “No! No, Gargoth. You cannot give up now! You must believe it’s me!” She positioned herself directly in front of him and held his face next to hers. “You and I share the mark of the stonemason Tallus. I know your first human friend was a boy named Philip. I know you left your tiny English village with him to go to France. I know you loved Mozart, and you fed apples to beggar children, and I know…” she hesitated, “and I know you can’t fly.”

  Gargoth snorted with disgust. “Well, you seem to know much about me. I suppose you are Ambergine, after all these years. But…”

  He was interrupted by a low laugh. He spun around to see the man in the white straw hat standing in the grass behind him.

  “So, you have a friend, do you? How nice of her to drop in!” the man said.

  Gargoth shook with fear, but Ambergine was already tugging at him, urging him to run. The gargoyles turned and fled, moving as quickly as they could along the dark grass. They darted behind statue after statue as the man stumbled after them. They hid and ran off in a different direction each time he fumbled past them in the dark. Despite his thick glasses, he really did not see very well at all.

  Once the man came upon them, but they both froze so still that he didn’t see them. He saw only statues.

  Another time he found their hiding spot and reached down to grab Gargoth, but Ambergine flew up in his face and spread her wings, screaming. He was so surprised that he jumped back, and Gargoth escaped.

  All that long night, the two gargoyles eluded the man in the straw hat, again and again, in an endless game of cat-and-mouse through the huge walled garden. It was an exhausting, terrifying chase, and by dawn Ambergine wasn’t sure how much longer she could run.

  As morning came, they were hiding beside a long, low building. They were weary and nearly out of places to hide. The man was once again slowly working his way toward them, looking behind each statue then creeping along to the next.