Page 10 of Gardening and Gargoyles

“Well... This American man had bought the place, and we weren’t sure what he would do with us, with the ‘statues’ on the castle. We decided that if he wasn’t the sort of man to accept us, then we would move into the caves by the loch, and we’d regroup there, still guarding members of Clan Mackintosh. That’s our way, you see. We would talk more the next night, after meeting the new laird. Then... We all took our places on the battlements, and the sun came up, ” I say slowly, as if swimming through murky waters, trying to see something glinting at the bottom.

“Okayyyy. Can you be killed in your stone form?”

“If someone took a hammer to us, I suppose. Oh, my uncle, he died during a lightning storm late one August. A bolt struck him and blew him to pieces. Oh, horrible it was, to wake up and find him shattered in our midst, and my Aunt Morag never the same after.”

Lady June cautiously comes up to me, creeping slowly, hand outstretched as if she’s afraid I’ll bolt. Or bite. Her hand makes contact with my wing and then my back.

It’s an intimate touch that no human should attempt, stroking a gargoyle in such a fashion. However, instead of eliciting feelings of pleasure, there’s only pain. Something feels... wrong.

“If you were broken badly, like if your wing got knocked off—would you die?”

“I don’t know. I suspect I might. I don’t think a merciful creator would wake me up just to bleed to death, horrified at the sight of my mutilated body. A gargoyle without wings wouldbe...” I stop and cannot voice the horror that image brings to mind.

“You didn’t wake up. Time for my theory, okay?” Lady June drains her glass, licks her lips, and gives me a long, steady look. “Now, I don’t know a lot, just a few conversations and a few minutes on the internet—I know you don’t know what that is, but you will soon, trust me. The American guy who bought the castle tried to modernize it, but all he did was start bringing in crews who knocked stuff around. The outside never got modernized, and he went bankrupt putting in plumbing and heating, stuff like that. So the castle was pretty much abandoned except as a historical spot after the 1930s. Well, until now. My theory is that you were the first casualty of his attempts to modernize things. You can see in the photos that some of the gargoyles disappeared right after he bought the place. I’m going to guess he put some of the gargoyles away, or moved them, or maybe... Maybe you were what caused them to leave. One of his crew moved you, or knocked you over, and your wing came off. Where did your clan bury their dead? Or did they?”

“In the old caves down by the loch, if we died while flesh,” I answer hoarsely, “and beside the castle, if we never woke from our stone state. Still standing guard, or so it appeared.”

“I’m going to guess that you were buried, along with your broken wing, because your clan assumed you were dead. When my— When the new owner, this most recent owner, wanted to excavate the area under the castle for a wine cellar, he found you and put your wing back on. Not himpersonally, but he hired some guy. Whoever he hired, he did a really good job of it, because—well, look. You’ve got a wing on your back, and you’re alive. That’s something. Perhaps because it was a clean break, it could heal? He did it fast, too, all in a day.” Lady June’s hand runs over the place where my wing is reattached—with a longropey scar that I can feel with the tip of my tail. It reaches up and accidentally snaps against her fingers, and we both jump.

“A bit knocked off in flesh form can be healed, stitched on. Cracks show in the stone. But when it heals in flesh, the cracks are mended.”

“You have one hell of a scar made out of cement. I don’t know if that will ever heal right. It might not be cement. It could have been something like powdered rock paste? Is that a thing?”

I think on her words, but I cannot give an answer. For one thing, I don’t know the term ‘cement,’ but I figure it must be something that can hold stone together. “Perhaps mortar,” I suggest. “I don’t know how it works, but then again, some say no one but God Himself knows why gargoyles can have a coating of stone by day and turn to flesh at night. If He made the rocks and water, and the lime and stone that bind bricks, I don’t know but what that same stuff will transform to flesh when it’s used on a gargoyle. In my clan, they never tried to mend stone forms back together. If I didn’t wake, they must have thought...”

Lady June bites her lip, her eyes soft with sympathy. “You’re right. I don’t know, and it’s not important. What’s important is that I’m either having a nervous breakdown, and I’ve dreamed that my garden statue is a living monster—”

“We are not monsters, my lady. We’re gargoyles. That is,Iam.” It feels so strange to not have clan around me, to be a solitary soul. I have to swallow hard before I continue. “My kind are noble defenders and warriors.” I bow with courtesy, but my voice is pointed. Some of my kind revel in the term monster, but my clan was never keen on it.

“Or you’re really a living, breathing gargoyle who has been asleep for the last century and change, and you’re a long, long way from home. We probably need to figure out how to get you back to Scotland, huh?”

My eyes pass over the pictures on Lady June’s strange box, which she calls a laptop. The most recent photos, in bright, sharp colors, show no gargoyles at all. “I have to know where my clan went. I have to try to find them. Gargoyles live a very long time. Some of the older ones will have passed on, but the younger ones may be about, and their little ones, and...”

“Man, I don’t know how we do that. I don’t think Daniel would believe me if he said his present came alive—I don’t even know if I’m supposed to give you back, now that he’s cheated. I mean, I consider it cheating, he doesn’t.”

“Cheating?”

“Oh, sorry. Unfaithful. With... scores of, uh, harlots? Is ‘harlots’ the right word?” Lady June looks as if she’s struggling with such a distasteful phrase. Or perhaps to find words that she thinks someone of my kind will know.

“The world has changed so much. It must have,” I muse aloud. “But I have not changed. I am able to comprehend your speech. Gargoyle-kind are not simple beasts.”

“It wasn’t that I thought you were ‘simple.’ I didn’t know how to put it without shocking you. Or if they even had BDSM and fetish clubs when you were alive.”

I squint. “No, I don’t know some of those words.”

“I’m very okay with that right now. Not that I’m kink shaming.”

“What is—”

“No! No, no, I’m sorry. Look, I’m still not sure that I’m not hallucinating. I just had the love of my life, the man I was going to marry, tell me he’s going to keep a bunch of harlots on the side as a healthy pastime. Is that how it is in your world? Back in the day?”

“Among humans? Too often. Among my kind? Never. We give a heartstone to our one and only love, and pledge our loyalty and heart to them and them alone.”

Lady June looks at me, tears standing out in her pretty brown eyes. “That’s beautiful.”

Perhaps it is because I’m lost, out of my time, injured, and confused that I cling to what I know. “The laird of Castle Mackintosh has sent you here, to America? To this wee estate?” True, it is bigger than many of the tied houses and crofter’s cottages, but it is small for the wife of a man who owns a castle.

“More like he wouldn’t let me come with him. Whenever he’s in the UK— that’s England and Scotland. Well, and Wales and Northern Ireland, and—you know what, I’ll put on National Geographic for you later. The point is, he kept me here so he could go visit his harlots. I live in the ‘wife’ box. They live in his ‘playtime’ box.”