LITMIR.BIZ

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as high as he could toward the sky. Katherine would have found it funny if she wasn’t so annoyed. Then he put his arms above his head and started prancing around, pretending to be a ballerina.

      Katherine and her parents had seen the Canadian National Ballet perform The Nutcracker the Christmas before, so she knew what real ballerinas looked like. They were dainty and graceful.

      The gargoyle’s performance wasn’t anything like that. He looked like an ungainly and ugly monster, aping something beautiful. It didn’t seem to matter to him that he looked freakish and frightening. He tried all the moves anyway. The jumps, the spins, the positions, the leaps. All he needed was a frilly pink tutu around his waist.

      Katherine shook her head and plucked up the nerve to speak to him out the window again.

      “Hey, stupid gargoyle, take off my new shoes!” she yelled as loudly as she dared. She really didn’t want to wake up her parents. Things were just getting interesting now that the initial shock of seeing the gargoyle alive in her backyard was beginning to wear off.

      He stopped dead and turned to look up at her in mid-pirouette. “He really does look hysterical,” she thought, “but I can’t laugh now that he’s looking at me.” Despite herself, Katherine had a half-smile on her face.

      Then the gargoyle spoke.

      Have you ever heard a gargoyle speak? It’s unlikely, I know, but they do speak. They sound like leaves rustling in winter, and although they don’t speak English, or most of them don’t, children can understand their language without any interpretation. It’s a gift most children lose when they turn twelve or so (although some very wise children manage to keep the gift all their lives).

      This is what he said: “Morgle mount flishin benjor taminki.” This is what Katherine heard his whispery voice say: “Did you call me stupid, little girl?”

      She was caught off guard, she was so surprised. What was going on? But she wasn’t going to be silent and miss her chance to get her new shoes off his feet.

      “Uh, yes,” she stammered, “I guess I did.” She grew defiant, and stuck her chin out. “Now take off my shoes!”

      “Methol ment triagra.” Which meant: “Hmm, no I think not. I like these shoes.”

      Then he proceeded to do the most awful thing that Katherine could think of. She watched, speechless with indignation and horror.

      In her brand new shoes, he walked over to her mother’s prize-winning New England Asters and started stomping on them. With big, athletic jumps, he hovered, then landed, again and again, until all the beautiful purple flowers lay trampled on the grass in a ruined pile.

      “NO!” she shrieked. “No, stop! You’re ruining my mother’s asters! Stop it!” She wasn’t being quiet any longer. All thought of her sleeping parents had long fled from her mind. She just wanted that awful monster to stop stomping her mother’s beautiful prize-winning flowers IN HER SHOES.

      But it was no use. It seemed to her that the more she yelled at him to stop, the harder he stomped, and the more he enjoyed it. He wore a sneering smile the entire time, giggling and chortling with glee.

      And if you’ve never heard a gargoyle giggle and chortle with glee, it’s just as well. It sounds like a bucket full of rusty nails being dropped onto the top of your parents’ brand new car.

      Chapter Six

      Utterly Hopeless

      You’re probably wondering what happened next?

      Well, Katherine didn’t have many choices. And if you can think of a different way to handle the situation than any of these three choices below, then you’re very wise and clever!

      Choice #1. If you’re a sensible sort of person, you’re probably wondering if she got her parents out of bed and explained what happened.

      Well, think about that for a minute. If you woke your parents out of a sound sleep and started talking nonsense about a gargoyle stomping the flowers in your new shoes, would they believe you? Or would they think you had stomped the flowers yourself and were trying to blame it on someone, or in this case something else?

      So that was out.

      Choice #2. If you’re an adventurous and brave sort of person, you might be wondering if she ran downstairs and went outside to try to make the gargoyle stop?

      This would seem like the most sensible thing to do, but Katherine found that she was suddenly a little afraid of facing the gargoyle in the middle of the dark, cold night all alone. Even if Milly did come to help her, Katherine didn’t think she was quite brave enough for that.

      So that was out.

      Choice #3. Although this probably didn’t occur to anyone, since it’s so terribly dull, did she do nothing and go back to bed, convinced it was all just a VERY BAD DREAM? Sometimes a thing that seems the most unlikely is the very thing that actually happens.

      So it was with Katherine after the gargoyle had stomped all her mother’s flowers to bits.

      She watched, helpless and sad, until he finally stopped, tired out from all the stomping. Then he flung her shoes off his feet and left them where they landed among the devastation.

      After that, he simply waddled back to his little stone pedestal, hopped up and turned his back to her, apparently content to look like a statue once again.

      Katherine was suddenly very tired and a little shaky from the cold. She didn’t know what to do, so she did nothing. She closed her window and turned her back on it, then walked slowly back to bed and climbed under the covers, all the while with a very puzzled look on her face.

      There was nothing else to do. She cried herself to sleep and slept fitfully until morning.

      Chapter Seven

      Decisions

      Morning sun pierced through the bottom of the window blind deep into Katherine’s room.

      It was very cold, and she woke with a start, sitting bolt upright in bed. The events of the night before came flooding back to her.

      She fell back onto the pillow and groaned. She couldn’t begin to think what her parents were going to say when they noticed her shoes among the ruined flowers.

      It was Saturday, so both of them were at home. She listened carefully and could hear them both moving around in the kitchen below her, getting breakfast ready, just like any ordinary Saturday morning.

      They were letting her sleep in! She wasn’t in trouble yet, which could mean only one thing: they hadn’t noticed the damage.

      She was wondering what she was going to say to them. What could she possibly say? The truth seemed like a big, ridiculous lie. And, in a completely confusing and unfair twist, a lie would sound so much more like the truth.

      Katherine ran through a few possibilities:

      “Mom, I was really mad that I had to stay after school, so I stomped your flowers.”

      No, that was no good.

      “Mom, I really hate the dinner you made me last night, so I stomped your flowers.”

      No, that wouldn’t work either.

      “Mom, the gargoyle did it.”

      Hopeless. Utterly hopeless.

      She was looking up at the light above her bed when a blood-curdling scream filled the house.

      “OH MY GOSH! NOT MY FLOWERS! HANK, THE FLOWERS! LOOK AT THEM! THEY’RE RUINED!”

      She heard the back door open, then slam. Then silence.

      Without getting up to look out the window, she knew her parents were frantically running across the lawn to look at the damage. She also knew without looking that the gargoyle was sitting scrunched up on his pedestal,

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