The Gargoyle Overhead (11 page)

The End and the Beginning

Cassandra followed the Collector into the dark hallway. There was no light at all. It was almost pitch black.

“How can he see anything, with no lights on and wearing such thick glasses?” she thought.

Cassandra had the sense that there were creatures all through the gigantic house, but as she got closer to the “animals”, she realized they were statues, hundreds of them. As she walked past each one, a different face jumped out of the darkness at her. An elephant. A leopard. A goddess. An angel. A satyr.

And in the centre of the hallway was the largest statue of all: a gigantic Gargoth, with his pipe clenched in his teeth. He was easily ten metres tall, his wingtips just brushing the ceiling of the cavernous, creepy hallway.

“So, as you can see, I have quite a large collection,” the man was saying. “I collect beautiful statues, and interesting…specimens.”

Cassandra shot back, “Even if they are alive? Even if they’re not yours to collect?”

The Collector smiled. “Yes, yes, Ms Daye, I thought you’d say that. I know your love of statues and…beings like the one you search for. I’ve watched you and your friends for months, The little female gargoyle was most helpful there. She’s a very persistent creature. Do you know, she’s never stopped looking for the other one? It’s been over one hundred years.”

“For one hundred and forty-eight years, actually,” Cassandra said, with a hint of pride in her voice.

“Anyway,” he continued, ignoring her, “she led me right to you. And to your friend, the young Newberry person…the girl from the soccer game, the one staying at your store….” Here he shook his head and tut-tutted. “Most unfortunate that she had to get involved… Where is she, anyway? I’m sure she’s around here somewhere…”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Cassandra shot back. But she was suddenly very nervous about her decision to bring Katherine to this place. This man was dark and dangerous, and clearly obsessed with Gargoth.

People who are obsessed are often very reckless, and they don’t care who they hurt to get what they want.

The Collector lead Cassandra into a green room looking out over a dark pool with a huge statue of a Greek god in it, its merman tail silvery in the moonlight. Beyond it, she could vaguely see the vast garden through the gloom, filled with hundreds of pale, shadowy statues.

Cassandra spoke. “Okay. So you know who I am. That’s fine. I know who you are, too. You stole my friend Gargoth, and I’m here to get him back. Where is he?”

The Collector smiled darkly. “Oh, he’s quite safe. He’s the most valuable piece in my entire…collection. There’s nothing else like him anywhere in the world. Except for that little gargoyle right there. And as luck would have it, you’ve brought her right to me.” He pointed out the window toward the statue in the pool. At that moment, Cassandra saw Ambergine hovering above the water, looking stricken. She shot out of sight above the window as quickly as she could. But it was too late, the vile man had seen her.

But he did not see Cassandra Daye as she stood behind him. Her cane quite mysteriously (and expertly) jabbed into a huge statue of a dancing dog. She was quite clumsy that way.

Several things happened at once.

The dancing dog statue tottered then fell with a great smash into the windows of the sitting room, but not before it banged into several other statues on the way.

As the dancing dog statue fell, it hit another statue, which hit another, then another. It was a domino cascade of statues! For a few moments, Cassandra could see nothing but slowly tottering statues as they fell banging into each other, crashing with gigantic thuds to the marble floor. As the dust rose, Cassandra heard a shout and saw the Collector entangled in the arms of a falling angel, slowly pinning him to the ground as it fell.

Katherine, who had seen it all happen from just outside the broken window, yelled into the room, “Hurry, Cassandra! Out here!”

Cassandra climbed through the window into the hot damp night air, just as they both heard a shout from the rooftop. “Up here! UP HERE! HURRY!”

It was Ambergine.

They needed to get to the roof somehow. Katherine looked around. Her eyes fell on the Greek god, whose trident rose thirty metres into the air, just short of the roof.

“Come on!” she cried.

They ran to the statue. “Climb, Cassandra!” Katherine yelled. The two clambered up the side of the Greek god. Cassandra was surprisingly graceful as she scampered up the god’s scaly tail and slippery body. There were plenty of footholds and handholds to grasp, and once or twice she could have sworn that the statue itself helped her along, although she couldn’t be completely sure.

Just as she was about to reach the roof, Cassandra heard stirring beneath her. Someone was moving in the green sitting room below them.

“Hurry! Climb, Katherine!” she gasped.

They struggled their way to the roof, using the ancient ivy as a ladder for the last few metres to the rooftop.

But they made it. And across the roof was Ambergine, waving at them frantically to hurry.

She had found Gargoth.

He was trapped in a cage, hanging from the end of a long pole sticking out over the edge of the rooftop. He was dangling over the valley with nothing but empty air beneath him. There was another cage beside him, hanging open and empty.

He was shivering and frightened and utterly desperate. “Don’t come any closer, I beg you,” he called. “Please. My friends, I have caused you enough trouble. You don’t know, he will be here…you must flee…” Gargoth’s voice was full of despair.

“We came for you, Gargoth. We would always come for you,” Katherine shouted back. She wanted nothing more than to climb out onto the pole and hug him, to save him and take him home. “We’ll get you out of there somehow…”

Ambergine was slowly edging out to the end of the pole. Katherine and Cassandra stood impatiently at the edge of the roof.

“Hurry, Ambergine!” Cassandra urged, banging her hands on the wall.

“I wonder why there are two cages? What’s the empty one for?” Katherine asked.

A voice spoke. “Why, it’s for her, of course.” The Collector stood on the rooftop a few metres away.

Katherine gasped. Cassandra spun around to look at him. He was covered in statue dust, his white straw hat battered and squashed, his thick glasses askew.

“It’s perfect. I knew she’d come, if I just laid the bait. Now I have them both. For all time.” He was tossing something large and shiny up and down in his hand. It was the key to Gargoth’s cage.

“What makes you think we’ll let you have them?” Cassandra answered, angry now. She drew herself up to her full height and turned on him with real menace in her voice. Despite the fact that she looked like a crazy giant flower, the Collector drew back a step.

“We’d never leave them here with you. They’re not yours. They…they…they belong to each other, not to anyone else,” she finally said.

“Oh, I think you’ll let me keep them. Or I just toss this key away forever.” As he said this, the Collector dangled the key over the edge of the rooftop.

“Which will it be?” he asked, with a terrible grimace on his ugly face.

“You’re a monster!” cried Katherine. She tried to jump at him, but he dodged her with a wicked laugh and moved further down the rooftop, still holding the key over the edge. He was surprisingly nimble.

No one had noticed that Ambergine had made it to the end of the pole and was passing something through the bars to Gargoth.

ZING! ZING!

In a second, two well-thrown crabapples hit the Collector hard, right between the eyes. He was so surprised, he dropped the key. Katherine was beside him in a flash, and kicked the little key over to Cassandra (a perfect soccer kick, too), who snatched it up and held it out as far as she could toward Ambergine. (It helped that she was so tall and that her arms were much longer than most people’s).

Ambergine scrambled along the pole, grabbed the key, and had Gargoth’s door open in a second. The cage swung dangerously.

The Collector ran to the pole. “NO! NO! You’re mine!” he screamed, with his arms open. He was pulling at the pole, slowly dragging it toward him, while Gargoth’s cage dangled and bounced at the end. The open cage door was swinging furiously, with the little gargoyle clinging to the bars inside.

Cassandra and Katherine tried to stop the Collector, and for a long while the three figures struggled together at the end of the pole. But the more they fought, the more Gargoth’s cage bounced dangerously, and he was in grave danger of falling to his death. Cassandra and Katherine had to stop.

The friends stood, helpless. The pole slowly edged closer to the rooftop as Gargoth’s greatest enemy dragged it toward him. Ambergine was flying in front of the swaying cage, holding Gargoth’s claw, whispering something to him in urgent, low tones.

Gargoth looked back at the rooftop. He gulped. He was terrified and shook from head to toe as his cage drew closer to the man who had tormented him for so long.

But he was a brave gargoyle. There was no going back. He had waited several lifetimes for this very moment.

He drew a deep breath, then with a tremendous leap, he sprang from the cage into the night air, clasping Ambergine’s claw in his.

A long howl of “NOOOO!” went out over the night, as the Collector leapt for the cage a second too late. His arms closed around the cage at the end of the pole, and he was left hanging there for dear life, suspended and dangling over the valley, where just moments before Gargoth had been.

Katherine and Cassandra watched, breathless, as both gargoyles tumbled down, down, down through the air, end over end over end. Ambergine’s wings were beating hard and fast, and she kept them from falling too far as she clung to Gargoth’s claw. She struggled and beat her wings as hard as she could, gasping for air. She could fly for both of them, but not for long.

Suddenly Katherine leaned over the edge of the rooftop and yelled at the top of her lungs, “GARGOTH! TRY!” She couldn’t see them, the pair had plunged so far into the darkness of the valley below, but she yelled anyway.

Cassandra joined in. From far below, just above the treetops and clutching Ambergine’s claw, Gargoth heard them.

He looked at the treetops below him, then at the moonlight far above. He could faintly make out two cages dangling at the edge of a pole far above him, and the figure of a man clinging to one empty cage as it bounced and banged dangerously in the air.

Gargoth felt a sudden stab of anger. He knew two things for certain: he was
not
going back, and he would
not
be anyone’s prisoner, ever again.

With a determined growl, he stretched his leathery wings and began to beat them, harder and harder. He was clumsy and frightened, and every wingbeat drew great rattling breaths of exertion from his small chest. But he didn’t stop, and Ambergine didn’t let him go, struggling as she was to keep them both aloft above the trees.

Then it happened. Slowly Gargoth felt the air move over his wings and saw the treetops below him begin to steady and fall away. He rose into the dark, too clumsy to turn back and thank his friends. But they saw him, caught against the moon, and a great cheer went up from the rooftop.

His heart beating fast, his long-unused wings shaky and weak, Gargoth took Ambergine’s claw in his. Borne up at last, wing-tip to wing-tip, they flew off into the night, casting their shadow as one over the wide world below.

There are many adventures ahead of them, more than there are behind. They will travel to new places and encounter new friends (and I’m sad to say, foes as well). They will return again to T-O-R-O-N-T-O, to the candle-lit rooftop at Cassandra Daye’s and to Katherine’s welcoming backyard with Milly the cat.

But most important of all, you and I know that from now on in their long and eventful lives, nothing can part them ever again.

Wherever they go, they go together.

It is many years from now, a long time after our story ends.

One fine late summer day, a young boy is walking in an old English churchyard. It is a very pretty place, surrounded by rolling green hills and chestnut trees. A small, sweet river runs along beside the church courtyard. An ancient stone lion looks to the west, regal and golden, his left ear broken off and lying in the grass at his feet.

An old woman is walking nearby in the abandoned apple orchard, running her hands over the trunks of each tree as she walks by.

The boy is wondering what it would have been like to live in the village, so long ago. He is wondering what stories might have been told in the churchyard, and who would have lived here for centuries and centuries and eaten those apples.

Suddenly a rustling in the ivy catches his eye. He looks more closely, and for a moment he is sure he sees two little figures disappear behind the church tower. He sees the outline of a wing, a leathery head, and maybe a claw.

Stranger still, just as he is sure he imagined it, an apple core lands in the grass near him, followed by a trill of laughter. He picks it up and examines it, amazed.

“Grandmother Katherine,” the boy shouts. “Someone threw this apple core at me! I think they were laughing…” Despite himself, he starts to smile.

His grandmother picks an apple and takes a bite, looking at him thoughtfully for a few moments. Then she turns and walks toward the church tower, calling over her shoulder, “Come with me. There are some friends I’d like you to meet!”