LITMIR.BIZ

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wide, shrieking as loudly as he could in the dog’s very surprised face.

      That was the last they saw of that dog.

      After that, Milly and Gargoth were fast friends. If her family was looking for her, they knew she was probably sitting under his pedestal, or occasionally sitting in his lap, allowing herself to be stroked by his cool, leathery claw.

      There was also one night when Katherine could swear she heard men’s voices in the backyard yelling, “Let’s get out of here!” She smiled to herself and rolled over in her bed, secure knowing that Gargoth wouldn’t let anyone near their house, especially if they were trying to climb over the back fence into the yard. He was better than a dog that way.

      Gargoth tried his best to be good. He wanted to help the Newberry family, and in return, he hoped that Katherine would help him with the request he had made.

      He wanted, more than anything, a chance to find a certain store. A store he had seen from the inside of a box as the lid was pried off. He had been lying in the box, hiding, when the lid was opened.

      And she was taken away.

      He could hardly bear to think of that moment and pushed it from his mind whenever it came to him.

      Instead, Gargoth tried hard to remember what he could about the store. He knew it was quite small and dark and had a heavy scent of cinnamon candles. He also knew it was close to a busy road, and a great thundering machine went by frequently, which made the entire shop and all its contents quake as it passed. It was a large red machine with doors that opened and shut, letting people enter and leave as they pleased. He also knew that the person who owned the store was a tall woman with long curly red hair tied up in several scarves with beads. She wore long skirts and bangles, and she jangled and swished when she walked by the box he was hiding in.

      Gargoth waited for his opportunity to talk to Katherine again about helping him find the store, but it was a long while before it came. And it was Katherine who brought it up.

      During the weeks after Halloween, she had seen a change in her parents. A change in their entire lives. She had been thinking that she wanted to help her parents somehow. She saw how it upset them, not knowing how to help Gargoth on his way. She knew that they wanted to have a dinner party at Christmas time, but were afraid to invite people over in case Gargoth decided to defend their home again.

      They were losing touch with their friends. The McDonalds were asking questions. And Katherine hadn’t had any of her own friends over for a sleepover in ages.

      It wasn’t that they didn’t like the little gargoyle. In fact, just the opposite: they really liked him. Which made the situation worse.

      How do you get rid of a houseguest you don’t really mind?

      A very odd houseguest to be sure, but not an obnoxious one. Not a mean or unfriendly one, particularly, but rather an interesting one with lots of stories to tell. In fact, she and her mother were beginning to really appreciate some of the finer points of having a gargoyle around. He never strayed from the yard, never asked to be let into the house, but if you bundled up and spent time with him in the yard under the cover of darkness, you would be richly rewarded with fabulous stories from the past.

      Katherine came to understand that a rich, personal knowledge of history could come in very handy. One week, when Gargoth had overheard that Katherine was studying the great composer Mozart in history class, he grew very excited.

      “Katherine! I didn’t know that people still know about Mozart! Here, sit, I can tell you all that you need to know about Wolfgang Amadeus—I was one of his greatest admirers!”

      Gargoth really was an expert. Katherine learned that he had first heard Mozart in Paris in the summer of 1778, when Mozart created a beautiful masterpiece called “Paris Symphony”. (It’s a long and interesting story, which you may read about some day, but you’ll have to be satisfied with just a taste here). Gargoth sat entranced one hot July night on a nearby balcony as the beautiful music filled the air. Over that summer, Gargoth often perched himself near wherever the great composer was playing and listened blissfully. He had never heard anything like it, such pain and beauty combined together to create haunting musical perfection. Gargoth had been a very knowledgeable music fanatic ever since.

      Gargoth and Katherine spent hours together in the backyard, discussing Mozart’s life and musical practice. Katherine learned more than she ever wanted or needed to know about Mozart.

      She got an “A” on that history project. Even Mrs. Glean was pleased!

      Katherine learned that Gargoth had lived at one time or another in several towns in 17th and 18th century Europe, both in England and France. He told Katherine about the restoration of the great Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, at that time the greatest church ever built. He had lived through the terrible French Revolution and once again, saw more terror and bloodshed than he cared to remember (which he mostly glossed over for Katherine’s sake). He told her about the great plague that swept the European continent in 1665; so many people died that entire villages and towns were simply abandoned. He talked for hours about life in southern France in the 1700s (they kept a lot of bees, apparently). Katherine got the impression that life during those times was nearly unbearable, since it seemed from Gargoth’s descriptions that people were really hungry and sick most of the time.

      One night, after hearing yet another tale about a religious battle in England, Katherine finally had to blurt out, “Honestly, Gargoth, weren’t there ever any good times? Didn’t anyone ever have a good day, where they could just hang out and relax?”

      He stopped and blinked at her, surprised. It took him a moment to accept the change in the course of their conversation, but when he understood what she was asking, he slowly smiled. “Of course, Katherine. There were many good things about living a long time ago.” He paused, thinking for a moment.

      “The air smelled better, for one thing.” Here Katherine sighed, ready for another lecture. Gargoth had complained almost daily about the poor quality of the Toronto air, ever since he had arrived in their backyard. Katherine was so used to his complaining, she tuned him out and was no longer surprised if, right in the middle of a conversation, he stopped, wrinkled up his nose and started coughing. He hated the air and wondered often what it was doing to “one so young”, meaning her.

      He went on. “Food tasted better, too. These so-called apples barely have any flavour compared to the English apples of my early life. They were strong and tart, yet somehow sweet at the same time. There were lovely, clear blue skies and beautiful smells of hay and sweet clover in the summer.” He closed his eyes, and Katherine could almost hear him sniffing the wind, remembering a time long ago and far away when the world did not smell like car exhaust and diesel fumes.

      After a long pause, he finally added, “And the world was much, much quieter then, Katherine.” As if to confirm the point, a car alarm suddenly started blaring on the street in front of the house. He flinched, hunching his shoulders a little, drawing his wings in tightly around himself. He glared toward the front of the house and wouldn’t continue until the offending alarm stopped.

      “I could stand on the church parapet on a deep summer night and hear nothing but crickets, the wind in the long grass, and the trickle of the churchyard stream. Nothing but blissful silence, right until the first rooster crowed at sun-up.”

      Katherine wondered about that; she thought a serene and quiet world where the air smelled sweet and food tasted better sounded pretty good. But then there was all the bad stuff about religious persecution and starvation, no doctors, short life spans and constant illness, which she thought might make living in the past not so much fun, really.

      One mid-December night, Katherine made up her mind. She would help Gargoth find the store he’d lost. She would help him, but they would have to be very careful. She didn’t want her parents to find out. Or anyone else, for that matter.

      After dinner that night, she went to visit him, which wasn’t unusual, since either she or her mother or even her dad would once in a while, take an after-dinner snack out to him and say goodnight. It was becoming part of the family routine,

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