Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill or else my project fails.
- act V, scene 1
A father, his daughter, and their beast stand before a door.
Beyond it rages a tempest, furious thunder muffles to a gentle rumble, and blinding lightning bolts become soft rainbow light and glints of gold through stained glass and polished brass filigree. Howling wind breaks against the sturdy curves of their dwelling, sounding within like nothing more than a sad, distant song.
The father, his hand resting on his daughter's shoulder, watches the storm outside for a long moment, then he turns and bends to one knee before her. The beast creeps behind the daughter as he does so, curling its long tail as if completing a circle with him around the child, a wordless promise to protect.
"This break will not allow me to pass," the father says, "but you… you can slip through."
"Can I stay?" The daughter's voice is small, her hands wrapped tightly around the strap of a satchel slung across her chest. "For a few more nights?"
The father smiles gently, but it does not reach his eyes. "There may not come another break for a long time. I must— I must let you go now."
"I'm scared." She looks at the door, to what might be on the other side.
He shakes his head, and takes her chin delicately in his fingers, turning her gaze back to him. "My heart, Fortuna is my prison, not yours. To keep you here, even out of love, would be unforgivable. You are deserving of a true life beyond what little I can give you here.
"I know it's frightening. The world outside is vast and dangerous, to be true, but it is also wondrous and beautiful, and there are others like us, somewhere. Find them, and if I can make the next break in the storm, I will find you." He touches the pendant hanging from a slender golden chain around her neck. "This will guide you when and where."
The beast grumbles, as if impatient. The father reaches down to scratch its wide ears in reassurance. "My faithful friend, I know you will guard her well. And you will both look out for one another, yes?"
The daughter tries to square her shoulders, and she nods once, decisively. The little show of courage nearly makes her father bundle her safely back into the security of their abode, away from the door.
Instead he draws in a breath, and softly taps a knuckle against her forehead. "Be brave," he says, then playfully touches the tip of her nose, "be clever," and then his hand over her heart, "be kind."
She dives into his chest, arms thrown around his neck, and he holds her as if she were no more yielding but a dream. Then, with great effort, he releases her and stands. He raises a hand and makes a simple gesture towards the door.
The ornate gears of the lock clatter and turn of their own accord, as if the mechanism had been waiting at attention for the father's signal. The lock spins and pulls heavy brass bars away behind the solid frame. And without the brace against the furor outside, the door is flung wide open, hinges screaming like alarms. The storm invades, surging inside with wind and stinging rain, and the structure around them groans in terrible resonance.
One final squeeze of her shoulder, a nod for encouragement, and she is running. The beast lopes after her, and they cross the threshold. The storm rages as it ever has, but its character has subtly changed. Signs the father knows to watch for, has always watched for: a pause in the wind here, rain turned from driving to mild a moment there. If the timing is right, the veil thin enough—
The father watches from behind a doorway he cannot pass as his daughter vanishes from sight behind wind and rain and thunder. He is trembling. He waits at the door for… nothing, perhaps, as long moments pass and he is buffeted by the storm. It is warning him not to emerge from the shelter. It will not overlook him as it did the little one.
At last, the father gestures with a shaking hand, and the door obediently closes. The storm is once again muted within.
Underhill, Vermont was, to Manhattanite Elisa Maza, a little blip of a town, clocking in at just over three thousand residents. It was definitely not a place she'd have on her list of places to visit, especially after having had her fill of involuntary tourism aboard a boat not too long ago. But here she was, strolling down the quietest of downtown sidewalks she'd ever been on. Glancing down at the note in her hand to confirm an address, she passed a few more storefronts before stopping at the propped-open doors of a cafe.
Its early-fifties decor, along with the general ambiance of the town itself, was only a little unsettling, especially for Elisa, knowing accidental time-travel was in fact not out of the realm of possibility. But the diner's stylings were shiny and new up close, polished and newly installed, and a modest flatscreen TV hung on one wall playing ESPN hockey at a low volume. The uncanniness passed.
"Detective? Over here, hon," said a woman at a nearby booth.
Elisa slid into the overstuffed naugahyde seat opposite and offered her hand across the table. "Captain Hoffman. Nice to meet you."
"Call me Mavis. Seeing as how we're a bit off the books here." The local police captain, a middle-aged woman with sharp brown eyes and long salt-and-pepper hair in a neat braid over one shoulder, took Elisa's hand in a firm grip, then waved at the waitress. "Thanks for coming out on short notice. Coffee?"
The answer to that was eternally yes, of course. "Just black, please," she told the young lady at the counter, then turned back to Mavis. "So that was an interesting call we got from you."
"I'll be honest, I haven't paid much attention to the craziness coming outta New York lately," Mavis began. "Got enough on my plate as it is, you know how it goes. We'd been getting weird reports around here for nearly a week now— food being stolen outta vending machines, somebody walking around on rooftops, that kinda thing— and we couldn't figure out if it was raccoons, bears, or teenager hooligan shenanigans. Then one of the rookies caught a look at it and came back talking about a baby mothman."
Elisa didn't quite hide her grin. "Baby mothman."
Mavis leveled a wry smile back at her. "I told him that was silly. Mothman is in West Virginia. Up here we got ol' Champy."
The coffee arrived, giving Elisa the perfect cover for her expression as memories of Loch Ness flashed by. Ironic cryptid wisecracks aside, though… "You think it's gargoyles."
"Yep." Mavis took out a small digital camera and with a few button presses brought up a photo. "Just one, maybe two. The tracks are hard to figure, but they're not human, certainly not any animal I learned about in the Girl Scouts. I think I even saw it two nights ago, but it was too dark and this camera is a dice roll in full sun anyway… did manage to find this yesterday though."
Elisa studied the small screen. Something with claw-pointed toes had left impressions in a muddy patch of ground. "And your baby mothman has been raiding vending machines?" That didn't bode well. If there was a clan nearby, they'd have to have been hiding in the wilderness outside town, and if they were venturing into the humans' territory for such meager offerings as the junk food in your average vending machine, things could be going poorly for them.
"We've found machines with the front covers torn up just enough to get an arm through. Scratched to hell in the doing." Mavis took her camera back. "That's why I called this gargoyles task force of yours. I don't know what to do here, short of leaving a bag of cool ranch Doritos and a bottle of chocolate Yoohoo under a box with a stick and some string."
Elisa snorted despite herself. "Well, first we need to make contact. Talk to them and figure out what's going on, then take it from there. And I brought a couple gargoyle specialists along. My team's got a lot of experience at this sort of thing."
"Well, good to hear," Mavis said. "I left out something when I called the tip line."
Elisa put down her coffee and raised her eyebrows in query.
"I wanted to be sure whoever showed up wasn't gonna go in all guns blazing," Mavis continued, "because I'm almost dead certain this gargoyle is just a kid."