6.4: History Lessons
Two hours after sunset, Elisa walked with Goliath and Adam into an ancient cemetery at the edge of the clan's estate. As was the custom here in an area with such a high water table, the cemetery consisted mostly of mausoleums rather than burial plots; the local plant life grew rampant between the small stone buildings, green covering much of the gray. "The path is fairly clear right now," Adam said as he walked unerringly through the undergrowth. "I always clear it out when I visit, the evening of every All Saints' Day."
"The day after Halloween," Elisa added to Goliath as she walked alongside him, though she found the going harder as the path through the undergrowth was really wide enough only for one. Goliath thought so, too, and urged her to walk in front of him. Unfortunately, the overcast sky almost completely hid the moon from view and made it hard for even Elisa's night-adjusted eyes to see, though the gargoyles naturally had no trouble, and more than once she tripped on an unseen branch or rock. After the second time Goliath had made a split-second grab to keep her from falling down, she observed wryly, "Maybe I should let you go first."
"Or maybe I should just carry you," Goliath said as he swiftly scooped her up into his arms. When she made only a token protest, he set off down the path again after Adam. They caught up to him a few moments later, to find him waiting for them by a raised stone crypt.
The crypt was a large rectangle of stone and mortar, the size of an average car, and it had a stone figure perched atop it, a female clothed in a heavy stone cloak and gown, and kneeling with her head bowed. Adam gestured to the crypt, and smiled a bit sadly. "My parents, Anastasia and David Dubois. If they could say anything, they'd probably be happy to meet you."
Elisa nodded sadly, figuring that the crypt held both mortal bones and gargoyle gravel; she occasionally had the morbid thought that her own burial plot would hold that same mixture some day. But Goliath gasped sharply, and could say nothing for a few moments. Finally, he managed to choke out, "Pardon me; it's a rather unsettling sight at first."
Elisa eyed him oddly, wondering what the heck he was talking about. Then it hit her, and she couldn't help a tiny gasp as well. That was no statue on the crypt; that was a female gargoyle! The 'cloak' was her caped wings, and her wings and kneeling posture concealed her taloned feet and tail, but did not hide the two tiny horns peeking out of her hair. But she was solid stone, at night… No wonder Goliath had been so freaked.
"Most of the clan avoids this place, as a result," Adam quietly confirmed. "Except the hatchlings that dare each other to come in and touch her, to prove their bravery… and me. I suppose it's macabre, talking to the stone equivalent of a human skeleton, but since they both died before I was hatched, this is the only contact I've ever had, other than a single letter."
"She wrote you a letter? While you were still in the egg?" Elisa thought that was endearing, like mothers-to-be who wrote letters to their unborn children, dreaming about what people they would one day become.
"She did… But before I explain about that, you should learn a few secrets of my clan's history." Adam gave both of them an earnest look as he added, "And these are indeed secrets; very few members of my clan know what I'm about to tell you. As I said last Wednesday, officially we're all devout Catholics, and Catholicism frowns heavily upon the use of magic. If the old priests in Notre Dame knew that some gargoyles knew and practiced magic, they would have cast the entire clan out, or smashed them in their stone sleep, rather than share the cathedral with them. Here in New Orleans, where the ways of voodoo are strong, there is some limited tolerance… but it was decided long ago that some things are best kept secret still, since the safety of all who sleep in stone depends on the oaths and tolerance of those who sleep in flesh."
"Mouths zipped shut; got it," Elisa said succinctly.
Goliath said rather formally, "I understand, and swear that no one shall learn your secrets from my lips or hands." Then he added curiously, "Since you said that you are all 'officially' Catholics, does that mean that unofficially, you still speak of the Great Dragon?"
Adam half-smiled. "We do, but for the most part, we tell the old stories only during 'story hour'. That's between two and three a.m., after the last human has gone to bed and before the first one gets up again. The histories are told to the hatchlings just as human fairy tales are, and only later, once they're old enough to truly understand, do we tell them that these particular stories are more than fairy tales. But not to contradict the Bible, oh no; merely to add to it, to what it left out, since our race isn't mentioned at all in its pages."
Goliath nodded slowly, his face unreadable.
Talking about religion tended to make Elisa uncomfortable, so she verbally nudged, "What else needs to be kept secret, beside the old stories about the Great Dragon?"
Adam turned to her and asked, "Do you remember when I said I was occasionally referred to as 'the Third Miracle'?" When Elisa nodded, Adam began, "The first miracle happened in the year 1207, before the builders of Notre Dame had even finished construction…"
Before the year 1200 A.D. as humans reckoned it, the gargoyle clan that lived in the French countryside had no names, nor needed any. All they desired was food enough to feed their hatchlings and the night sky to glide across in peace, and those they had, for countless generations. Oh, they'd had some trouble from time to time with the humans that lived nearby, but for the most part each side left the other well alone.
Humans tended to fear the darkness and stay inside at night, when the gargoyles were up and about. So long as the gargoyles didn't touch the oxen and sheep, and other animals kept in pens at night, and the humans didn't try to set up residence near the base of the cliff face that the gargoyles occupied, they had little conflict with each other. The gargoyles who had troubled to learn the human tongue overheard that the humans actively feared them, and considered them demons and monsters… but really, what did that matter? So long as they kept their distance.
But in the large city that lay some miles over the horizon, a man had acquired a vision, a vision of a massive building to be dedicated to his deity, and he persuaded many people to help him achieve that vision. This massive building would be made of stone and glass, and the stone had to come from somewhere nearby… At first the stonecutters of the time dug and cut their stone from other quarries, avoiding the rich supplies that could be found at what the locals called Montagne des Diables. But the great cathedral needed more stone, and more… Finally, the stonecutters began scurrying in by day to cut what they could, before retreating to a safe distance before nightfall.
But the clan didn't take too kindly to someone trying to chew away at the base of their mountain home. Conflict was inevitable, as was the eventual presence of a stonecutter who was too intent on his work and didn't get out of range before nightfall. The first patrol of the night found him and gave him the fright of his life, taking him back to the clan elders for judgment.
The elders let the frightened man know that they did not like what the humans were doing, and wanted it stopped immediately. They would let this man go free, solely so he could warn the others; the next one they caught would be killed outright.
The terrified human sobbed that he would tell the other stonecutters of their warning… but it would do little good. The first bishop in Paris who had first envisioned the mighty cathedral, Maurice de Sully, was dead now… But the new bishop who had taken his place, Eudes de Sully, was even more ambitious and determined to raise the cathedral to greater heights still. It had already been declared that God wanted the cathedral built. The bishop would surely say that God wanted their small mountain's stone for His great house, and no force of demons should stand in the stonecutters' way! The bishop would send soldiers, to force the stonecutters to work whether they wanted to or not…
His words gave the clan reason for great concern. In centuries past, they had witnessed wars between the humans; seen the battlefields afterwards, with stinking corpses left out on the war-torn fields, far too many to bury before they rotted. Gargoyles prided themselves on being excellent hunters, but had to admit that humans could be equally effective when it came to simply killing. A mass of soldiers in the area, soldiers who knew of the gargoyles and wanted to eliminate them… this would not be good.
Something had to be done! But what? No matter how many humans they sought out and killed at night, the gargoyles were all too vulnerable by day; the cliff face they lived atop could be surmounted in a single long summer day by a human who was determined enough.
Their clan had a shaman, one who could use the clan's few magic talismans that had been passed down through countless generations. The shaman knew the secret ways of sky and earth and water, and how to talk to the elements and ask them to do his bidding. Could the shaman use the talismans or ask the earth and sky to protect them somehow?
The shaman shook his head. Neither of the magical artifacts that the clan possessed could protect the clan indefinitely. Earth and sky could become many things, but the humans who tilled the earth, ripping it open to plant their seeds, and who filled the skies with smoke from their fires, could eventually overcome any protection that earth and sky would grant them.
What, then? What could they do?
They could either become friends with the humans, and allow them to take the stone that they needed… or they could leave their home behind and move to a new territory, as the wolves and bears did when a new and stronger predator came along.
The shaman's words were not given a kind reception, and the debate raged for many nights. But on the fourth night of their debate, four nights after the stonecutter had been released… soldiers came, a half-dozen of them bearing torches to burn through the blackness of night, and with a human priest at their forefront.
But this priest, who had been chosen at random by the bishop to check out this story of devils inhabiting a prospective quarry, was not like the other men the clan had encountered. After reading aloud from the book he was carrying did nothing to the gargoyles staring down from the cliff face, and after ringing a bell and flicking about some water from a flask he carried did nothing to them either, the priest did not order the soldiers to try to attack them. The gargoyles were prepared and braced for that; the first soldier to draw his sword or string his bow would have been ripped to pieces on the spot. But instead, the priest looked up and asked them: "What are you?"
An elder who knew some of the human tongue glided down to land and talk with him. The soldiers bristled, but the priest bade them stand fast, and the elder was allowed to land safely. The clan elder and the priest talked, all through the remainder of that night; when words for what they wanted to say were unknown, they took sticks and drew figures on the ground by torchlight. When the elder climbed back up the cliff face near dawn, the priest promised that he would return the next night, to talk again.
And when the clan awoke the next night, the priest and the soldiers were there at the base of the cliff again. The elder glided down to talk once more, to negotiate on behalf of the tribe and find some way that they could be left in peace. And the two talked for hours, sitting or crouching between the soldiers and the clan, while both sides watched each other warily and with great distrust. The soldiers still thought the gargoyles were devils, and the gargoyles knew that the soldiers were human weasels, ready to kill in an instant even when they did not need food.
Then it happened: something went wrong. Not long before dawn, some gesture was misunderstood as hostile; both sides instantly sprang up, ready for battle. Nearly all the clan had the advantage of high ground; the upper reaches of their home were even out of bowshot. But the elder was grounded, and vulnerable…
An arrow sped towards the clan elder's heart… but it found the priest's shoulder first. Whether by accident or by self-sacrificing intent, the priest had stumbled into the arrow's path, and saved the elder's life. The soldier who had loosed the arrow was soundly thrashed by one of his comrades, while the gargoyles watched, dumfounded; the elder was staying down there instead of climbing up to safety! And moreover, he was calling for the clan shaman!
The shaman had a hunch, and asked the sky for a favor… and light shone all around the shaman as he walked through air down to the ground, instead of gliding. He alit next to the elder, who was holding the badly wounded priest in his arms. And when the elder said bluntly that they must help and heal the priest, or war would break out for sure, the shaman nodded, and radiance surrounded them as the elder and shaman walked the air back up to the top of the cliff.
The soldiers had drawn back in awe as the shaman had descended, and as the two had arisen in light, one of them shouted that the creatures weren't demons, they were angels! Angels who had been sent to test their party's mercy, and they had failed most miserably; while the priest was being taken up to Heaven for his martyrdom, the soldiers would be cast into Hell!
There was a great uproar down below, but the clan paid little attention to it, focusing instead on the priest in the elder's arms. The shaman bade the elder set the priest on his feet, and hold him upright, while the shaman asked the earth for a favor; the greatest and strangest favor ever asked. The shaman touched the crystal pendant that hung about his neck on a leather cord; a talisman that had been handed down from shaman to shaman for as long as the clan had existed. Then just as the sun rose, he yanked the arrowhead out of the wound, and wrapped his arms and wings around the elder and the priest… and they all turned to stone together.
When the clan awoke that sunset, the priest awoke with them, shedding stone and shouting with astonishment. His wounded shoulder was healed without even a scar showing through the tear in his cassock, and he declared it a miracle; surely a sign that the gargoyles were, instead of demons, earthbound angels! Not fallen angels like Lucifer, but ones who had been assigned to Earth by God himself, for reasons of the Lord's own ineffable design. And they had been given such frightful forms in order to test the hearts of men, who frequently feared and hated those whom God had commanded them to love.
Still babbling of angels and miracles, the priest was gently returned to the base of the cliff so he could run off and find the soldiers who had disappeared during the day. The clan hoped that meant they would be left in peace now… but they were wrong. Two days later the priest came back, in the company of eleven other holy men, and a full forty soldiers!
This time the priest bore a message from the bishop in Paris, who praised God for revealing to them the angels assigned to guard the earth… and invited the fearsome angels to take up residence in the grand cathedral he was building. The priests and holy men were determinedly smiling, but not all the soldiers were smiling, and after some conferral, the clan decided that the soldiers were there to make sure the invitation was accepted… or else.
Twelve brave young gargoyles were picked to go with the company back to Paris; one for each of the priests in the company below. The elder made up something about needing to wait for a direct sign from God before committing the "full choir of angels" to the move, and the twelve would go to Paris and await the sign from their Lord. In actuality, the twelve knew they might well be on a suicide mission, but it was becoming plain that the humans just would not leave them alone… and if the clan could not beat them, then they'd better figure out how to join them.
Four nights later one of the twelve scouts came back, reporting that the bishop had indeed received them warmly, and none of the twelve had suffered any harm. And the bishop had said that he was really looking forward to quarrying more stone from their mountain, which would surely prove to be the best stone possible for building a house of God, since it had housed angels already…
The clan gave in and moved to Paris, to take perches on the cathedral as it was being built up around them. The shaman later remarked that it was ironic; he had said they would either have to leave their territory, or become friends with the humans… and as it turned out, they had done both.
Adam concluded, "And over time, the shaman's enabling the priest to turn to stone that one day and heal as we heal, was referred to as 'the Great Miracle.' It wasn't until an incident nearly four hundred years later, after the English gargoyles arrived, that it became referred to as 'the First Miracle' instead."
"I take it something 'miraculous' happened when the English gargoyles arrived?" Elisa asked.
"Soon after, yes." And Adam told the tale:
By the year 1562, the gargoyles of Notre Dame had all but forgotten their original home, and become quite comfortable with the priests and monks they shared the cathedral with; they chanted the hymns, recited prayers in Latin and gave glory to God in the Highest as readily as any of the human residents. They named themselves after the saints and martyrs of the Catholic religion, and publicly agreed that all magic was the work of the devil (while privately making sure that their current shaman had hidden his or her talismans well, and practiced magic well away from human eyes and ears.)
The younger priests and monks who were confined to the lower levels of the cathedral thought that the gargoyles were earthbound angels, sent to guard God's house from demons; visible proof that Notre Dame was indeed the holiest cathedral in the land. Every generation, a few carefully selected older priests were allowed to ascend to the highest levels and enter the rookery to see the youngest 'angels,' and told the truth about their fellow residents; those select few always swore to keep that information secret even from the local bishop.
In January of the year 1562, the clan had some unexpected arrivals. Four gargoyles arrived out of the night sky, gargoyles unlike any the clan had ever seen before; different enough that at first some had hesitated to even call them gargoyles, for all that they too turned to stone during the day.
The male stranger who called himself Andrew, looked very much like the Catholic humans' ideas of what an angel would look like, with his feathered wings; his face was utterly human in appearance, though instead of hair he had feathers covering his scalp. Indeed, if not for lifting the hem of the heavy robes he wore so they could see his tail and three-taloned feet, they wouldn't have believed him gargoyle at all.
But after accepting Andrew as a fellow gargoyle, the clan accepted the others as well; the female named Catherine who resembled a feather-winged feline, the male named Edward who looked positively equine right down to his horse's tail, and the male named Luke who resembled an ox stood upright and given wings.
The strangers had arrived speaking largely gibberish, with a smattering of badly-accented Latin, but by mid-March they had learned enough French and proper Latin to make themselves better understood. They told the Notre Dame clan about the clan they had left behind in England, that barbaric land across the channel. A clan where everyone had feathered wings, and most had heads like animals; a clan that had also lived in a cathedral in the heart of a city, though in London instead of Paris. But recently, after a few too many people had begun to question why these 'angels' only appeared at night and were made of flesh and blood instead of ethereal substance, the clan had decided to abandon the city and move to an estate far from most human habitations.
Most of the clan had left London willingly, tired of always pretending to be angels instead of who they really were, but four of them—Andrew, Catherine, Edward and Luke—had thought that the country life would be too quiet for them. And since the priests of their cathedral had heard rumors of another cathedral in France housing a host of 'fearsome angels', the quartet had decided to strike out on their own and find those who might possibly be their distant kin.
Once he had learned their language and customs, Andrew proved to be a great asset to the gargoyle clan. Looking so much more like the angels depicted in the cathedral's stained-glass windows, he became the clan's primary liaison with the priests. The explanation given for Andrew's sudden appearance was that a single novitiate (whose name was withheld) had feared the appearance of the cathedral's 'guardian angels' so much, that he had begun to fear the Lord more than he loved Him… which left one's soul vulnerable to the temptations of the demons that preyed on Mankind's fears. So to safeguard that single novice's soul, God had decided to send an angel who was less fearsome to human eyes, to reassure him of God's love for all.
The explanation went over very well; so well that some clan members were a bit insulted. Surely they weren't considered that fearsome and terrible to look upon, by the priests they'd shared their dwelling with for centuries? But since it had worked so well the clan leader set their bard-chronicler to come up with another whopper to explain the appearances of Catherine,Edward and Luke, whom he kept secluded with the hatchlings until he thought it time for them to be officially introduced to the priests as well.
And in October of 1562, there was another unexpected arrival. An addition to the priests' ranks; a man calling himself Father Jerome, who spoke with an odd accent, and expressed extreme suspicion of the cathedral's resident angels. He insisted that they weren't angels at all, but demons who had infested the cathedral and manipulated the priests with their lies, and had to be utterly destroyed in order to make the place holy again!
There was an immediate resulting uproar in the priests' ranks. Well over half the priests and monks vehemently disagreed with him, and insisted that he confess his sin of doubting God's truth and undertake penance in order to save his soul… but more than one man of the cloth muttered that they'd always had their suspicions, and it was about time someone had said the truth aloud!
But the uproar in the priests' quarters was nothing compared to the uproar in the upper reaches where the clan dwelled, once they heard the news. The clan had hatchlings not even five years old toddling around the rookery; they must not allow even a suspicion of a threat to their children! Most of the clan was all for immediately grabbing the rabble-rousing priest and pitching him from the highest point of the cathedral, and following suit with all the other mutterers unless they shut up fast and went back to their normal routine.
But Pierre, the clan leader, knew that outright violence would not silence the mutterings against them; they might grow quieter for a while, but would grow and fester the way a wound does, if it's bandaged but not properly cleansed. So after consulting with all the clan elders and their young shaman, he concocted a plan.
While the plan was still being tested to ensure it would actually work, Andrew crept down below after Matins to see this rabblerousing priest for himself… and came back to report that Jerome's odd accent was Scottish, and that his looks matched the description that his rookery brother Luke had given of one of the chief agitators against their clan back in London. Trouble had evidently followed the English gargoyles across the channel, but Andrew vowed it would spread no further.
Two days and nights of discreet testing ensured that Pierre's plan should indeed work as he hoped. After arranging the meeting with the cathedral's bishop, he and Andrew went to confront the troublemaking priest shortly after sundown on the first day of November, All Saints Day.
The resulting debate, witnessed by nearly every monk and priest assigned to Notre Dame, lasted the full winter night. Jerome had assembled arguments against them that were poisonously clever; using words from the Holy Bible and from the teachings of others such as Thomas of Aquinas to denounce the 'angels' as pretenders, frauds and demons who must be destroyed. But three-and-a-half centuries of living in the cathedral and speaking with holy men had given the 'angels' plenty of arguments to justify their existence, drawing from those same sources.
It was ridiculously easy for them to disprove most of the charges that they were demons; Pierre and Andrew partook of Holy Communion and the Eucharist without harm, and Pierre even stuck his arm into a fount of holy water that the bishop himself had blessed and withdrew it intact, whereas a true demon's hand would have been withered or utterly destroyed by contact with the hallowed substance. As for why they were solid, made of flesh, rather than of ethereal substance as creatures of Heaven were supposed to be made, obviously they had taken on human flesh in order to interact with them as Jesus had done back in Nazareth. But not all the arguments could be dismissed so easily. Jerome demanded to know why they turned to stone every day, hiding from the sun's rays from dawn to dusk; Jesus definitely hadn't done that!
Pierre finally told Jerome in a solemn voice that his kind turned to stone every day in order to protect the priests and monks from another danger, one that they normally did not speak of since the knowledge of it would open the way for temptation to creep in… but if the man insisted on learning the full truth, on knowing things that Man was not meant to know, then he would learn! Pierre proclaimed, "Dawn comes… and this dawn, we shall not turn to stone!" Then he turned to the bishop and urged the man to have all his priests and monks secure themselves in their quarters, lest they be affected by the truth as well… knowing full well that curiosity would win over their obedience, and as many of the humans would spy on them as could possibly manage.
On prearranged cue, most of the clan's warriors solemnly walked down the stairs from the uppermost reaches and assembled inside the cathedral's nave. While up in the rookery, the clan's shaman pulled out the clan's second magical talisman, one that was not designed for wearing on a thong around his neck; a statuette of a gargoyle crouching and holding his hands together as if in prayer. Until very recently, the talisman had not been used in centuries, perhaps even millennia, but the spells used to activate it had been passed down through their oral history and still worked well, as had been proven the day before. The shaman spoke the words of activation, assured the talisman that it was once again needed in order to protect gargoyles, and made his requests…
And as dawn crept over the city and illuminated the east-facing stained-glass windows of the cathedral, the gargoyles assembled inside the nave did not turn to stone. Instead, chanting a hymn of praise to God, they began to glow…
Less than three minutes after the sun rose, the cathedral was lit from within by light far brighter than the dawning sun outside; brilliant light that blinded the shouting and fervently praying priests and monks, so that they staggered about walking into walls and each other. Pierre declared in ringing tones that all could hear, "This is why we normally turn to stone during the day; to spare you all the sight that mortal eyes can not withstand! We are as holy mirrors, who reflect the light of the Glory of the Heavens; only when the sun is down and dim firelight is all that you have to see by, can human eyes perceive us without being struck blind by the brilliance!"
The shaman had layered the spells carefully; remaining flesh during the day, glowing with brilliant light, and adjusting their eyesight so the gargoyles themselves would not be blinded by the enchanted light. So while Pierre was loudly making his proclamation and the other warriors were singing hymns at the top of their voices, Andrew quietly stalked up to the blinded Jerome, swept the man off his feet and wrapped his feathered wings around them both, muffling the sounds of struggle as he clamped a taloned hand over Jerome's mouth and nose.
Three minutes later, Andrew removed his hand from Jerome's face and let the man drop to the cathedral floor, his sightless eyes now staring up into eternity. He and Pierre let the corpse lay where it had fallen, as they led the procession back up to their perches. Pierre announced as they left that after they withdrew their holy light from the priests and monks' presence, the humans should all recover their sight in a few days… but the one who had doubted and challenged them had been struck down by God for his sins. Still holding hands over his own blinded eyes, the bishop hastily agreed that the sinner had deserved it, before calling upon his congregation to sing God's praises even louder than before.
But when they reached their home in the upper reaches, the gargoyles found a dismaying sight; their shaman, who was only fifty-five years old and should have been in the prime of life, had seemingly aged a full century in the last few hours! His wings drooped and creaked, his skin wrinkled and sagged on his frame, his well-muscled body withered to skin and bones. The shaman croaked through a mouth gone near toothless that it was the price one paid for using the Praying Gargoyle; it was designed to protect gargoyles, but at the cost of a portion of the life force of the one who activated it. That had been incorporated into its design to ensure it would not be used frivolously; only in the direst situations that could not be resolved through nonmagical means. The testing the shaman had done before, on a lone volunteer and for only a few minutes duration per spell, hadn't cost him more than a few months of life; such a small price to pay he'd barely noticed. But re-casting the spells to include the entire clan, all three spells at once and for the duration of a full day, had cost more than even the shaman had anticipated…
The shaman's mate had been one of the warriors returned from the assembly in the nave, and at the sight of her mate in his horrifically spent condition, she howled in rage and despair, snatched up the Praying Gargoyle statue and smashed it to pieces. Immediately, the brilliant light that still emanated from everyone's bodies began to dim; the spells on them were fading away with the talisman's destruction. The shaman managed one last smile as he whispered, "It shall recover, in time. But I shall not…"
Those were the last words everyone heard as the last traces of the spells faded and they turned to stone. When dusk came, they awoke to find the shaman's body had crumbled to gravel.
"Wait a minute… Did you say the Praying Gargoyle was broken?" Elisa demanded, her eyes narrowed.
Adam responded, "Yes, but--"
Elisa ignored him as she turned to her husband and demanded, "The one you broke, that Demona was wielding… did you see any seam lines? Evidence that it had been broken before, and glued back together?"
Goliath shook his head, his expression troubled. "I did not. Could there have been more than one such talisman?"
"Mass-produced Praying Gargoyles; that's all we need," Elisa moaned, rubbing her forehead. "If there are, then as soon as Demona gets her hands on another one, we can--"
"I said," Adam interrupted a bit louder than before, " 'Yes, but it got better'."
"…Got better?" Elisa and Goliath both stared at him.
"That's what I said." Adam gave a lopsided smile. "That's what our chronicles say, anyway. That talisman has the ability to regenerate itself after being broken, though it takes many years; 'two breeding moons and a hatching,' according to the old teaching rhyme. So about sixty years after what came to be known as the Second Miracle, the Praying Gargoyle was whole again… but the clan had no one who could use it, or the other talisman they called the Crystal Tear. The chronicler had written down the activating spell as he'd heard it, but the shaman had died before he could identify any youngster as having magical talent and begin training a new shaman apprentice."
Adam explained how, with no known magic-user to wield them, the talismans had lain unused on a shelf for the next two hundred years. During that time, the clan prospered and grew, until by 1771 they'd numbered too many for their perches again. In the past when that had happened, the splinter clan that formed usually went east, into the French countryside and beyond, until they could find unclaimed territory that could support a new clan. But this time, the departing youngsters decided to explore and claim territory in a new direction.
Over the years, the clan had gradually befriended not only a few carefully selected priests and monks, but a family of minor nobles who had supplied friends to the clan for three generations in a row; the Dubois family's practice of tolerance and fairness instead of intrigue and backstabbing may have prevented them from becoming significant powers at the royal court, but those qualities made them fine friends to the clan. And when Robert Dubois announced that he and his wife and child would emigrate to the New World to find their fortune, the clan decided that it was time some gargoyles explored the New World as well.
The departing splinter clan took not only copies of the clan's chronicles with them; they took the Crystal Tear as well, while the Praying Gargoyle remained behind in Paris. The new clan leader promised the main clan leader that if any hatchling they raised showed evidence of untrained magical ability, they would teach it what they could of magic from the chronicles, and advise the other clan of the mage's presence so it could be summoned to Paris if the need was dire. The main clan leader promised the same, before everyone said their final goodbyes and boarded the boat to the New World in the middle of the night.
The rest of the tale, Elisa had heard before, though neither of the gargoyles present knew that; she'd been listening in via the castle's security system when the New Orleans gargoyles had first arrived at the clan's home in Manhattan, and had told a bare-bones, severely edited version of how their clan had come to be. Since she knew it was being said again for her benefit, she listened quietly while Adam spoke of how the Dubois family had acquired a large tract of land outside the town and built a mansion there, and the gargoyles had settled in quite happily, hunting the bayous for food and occasionally patrolling the town, mostly to act as secret bodyguards for their human friends (New Orleans had already acquired a reputation as being a city where anything could happen, including sudden violence.) But they had retained contact with the old clan in Notre Dame, until the summer of 1793.
All of France had been embroiled in the French Revolution by then; the king and his family had already been executed as traitors to the State, and under Robespierre's Reign of Terror, thousands more people—some of them nobles, some of them bourgeoisie who happened to be a little richer than others, and some of them people who had just dared to speak out against the insanity—were being imprisoned and executed every month. The last letter the New Orleans Clan had received, from the Paris Clan's leader Valjean, said that they had been forced to evacuate most of the clan to an abandoned farmhouse outside the city, but they still had hopes of being able to return to the cathedral and their protectorate once the current madness died down. Then after that… nothing. A short time later, a visiting sea captain had told one of the Dubois family that Notre Dame had been sacked by the forces of the Revolution, and much of the cathedral's fineries—including several ornate statues—had been destroyed.
"We still hope that some of them managed to escape the slaughter, hiding out at that farmhouse, but we've never heard from them since then," Adam concluded with a sorrowful shake of his head. "If this immortal and criminally insane female that you told me about, Demona, was wielding the Praying Gargoyle and claimed to know how to activate it… then she might well have witnessed, or in her raging insanity even been involved in, the old clan's demise…"
"I wouldn't put it past her," Elisa said bluntly. "Particularly since you said the clan was on friendly relations with at least a few humans."
Goliath nodded grimly. "She has sworn enmity against the entire human race, and so views any gargoyle who befriends even a single human as a traitor to our race. And if she knows of the Praying Gargoyle's ability to regenerate… we must get word to our allies in New York immediately, to search the ruins of St. Damien's Cathedral and find those pieces of the talisman before she can get her hands on them."
"I'll take care of that, Big Guy," Elisa said hastily. "I need to call New York and check in with Matt anyway." Goliath still didn't know about the Quarrymen battle that had happened in New York exactly one week ago, and Elisa preferred to keep it that way for as long as possible. Even if she knew that the longer she delayed in telling him, the angrier he was apt to be, she kept stalling… She pasted a bright smile on her face as she said to Adam, "But that can wait at least a few minutes; you were still telling us about your clan's history! So what happened after 1793, and how did the Third Miracle come about?"
Adam nodded, and continued. "Ironically, not three months after they received news of the old clan's destruction, one of the hatchlings from the new clan's first rookery clutch began showing magical ability. The clan stressed the importance of keeping his ability secret from their human brethren, then gave him the Crystal Tear and taught him everything about magic that was in the chronicles, but he was never able to do much more than light candles—and only one at a time, at that—and stir up favorable winds to aid in gliding. That's all that any successive magic-user could do… until Anastasia," as he gestured again at the gargoyle in stone.
From her hatching, Anastasia had been a bit different from the others in her generation; quieter, moodier, often given to lone flights out over the bayou and even occasionally going to her stone sleep far from her rookery kin. Her behavior quietly worried her rookery keepers… even more so when they saw her take flight from a standing position on low ground, something no ordinary gargoyle could do unaided. It became evident that without any training, she had as much raw magical ability as any trained magic-user they'd seen in the last century. But the clan trained her anyway, in what little they could, and soon she could light an entire chandelier's worth of candles with just a few spoken words and a touch to the Crystal Tear she wore around her neck, and summon winds strong enough to give lift to half the clan's wings.
By that time, the human side of the New Orleans clan had grown considerably, and there had been a few mixed marriages as well, between the white descendents of the original French settlers and the black descendants of former slaves. (To their credit, the Dubois family had always maintained their plantation estate with sharecroppers instead of slaves; after acknowledging the gargoyles as fellow sentients and equals, there was no way they could participate in the general population's mass pretense that humans from Africa were an inferior race.) Several of those human clan members now made their living in town, including the mulatto family of Thomas and Estelle Dubois, and their son David.
David had been born on the same night that a clutch of eggs had been laid, the generation after Anastasia's clutch, and everyone took that to be a sign that he would become a fine stone-brother; one of those who particularly befriended a hatchling until they were even closer than rookery kin. So when David was nine, his parents moved with him back to the estate, and he joined the rookery keepers in tending the eggs until they hatched. After they did, he particularly befriended a wee green hatchling named Eustace… but he spent even more time with Anastasia.
Everyone had known that Anastasia and David were close, but no one had realized just how close until her thirty-sixth year, and the occasion of David's twenty-first birthday. That night they announced to the entire clan that they were secretly engaged, and had been for the past six months… and that very night, they would become mates. Then, before everyone's stunned eyes, Anastasia took David in her arms and glided off to the bayou. And when a few of the clan's single males got over their shock and indignantly/angrily started to glide after the pair, they found themselves blown about and forced off course by contrary winds. Anastasia would not allow anyone to stop or even follow them, and the clan leader put a halt to the pursuit before either any gargoyles were hurt, or any of the human clan members noticed there was something actively keeping the males from gliding after her.
Four nights later, the pair emerged from the bayou, simultaneously nervous and smug… and Anastasia's scent had a mated marker. The clan somewhat reluctantly accepted their pairing; there's no arguing with scent, as the saying goes. But the clan leader sternly advised Anastasia that there was mating, and there was breeding; when the Breeding Moon came in a few more years, she'd be expected to leave David for those few nights and fly with a male gargoyle to breed an egg for the rookery. The clan might have grown considerably in size over the last hundred and forty years, but their gene pool was still too limited to let any female member's possible contribution go to waste.
By all reports, Anastasia had flared wings and bared fangs at the commandment, but David had gently restrained her from doing anything rash and had sworn that a few nights apart and even an egg bred by another male, wouldn't change his love for her. And a few years later, when the Breeding Moon of 1922 rose, Anastasia ascended into the night sky and let an unmated male named Fabian chase her and catch her… but not until after midnight. The first few hours of the night, she'd spent alone with David in their small cottage on the edge of the estate. There had been an invisible barricade of capricious winds swirling around the cottage, preventing anyone from getting too close; after Fabian's first attempt to go inside and drag her out resulted in his being blown twenty feet back, no one else dared try to fight the winds and draw attention to the presence of magic.
When the winds swirling around the cottage had suddenly vanished and she'd burst out of the cottage and flung herself skyward, shrieking with lust, everyone had figured that her biology had finally won out over her stubbornness and she'd done what every good female gargoyle did when the time was right; what she should have done hours ago but better late than never, eh?
For the next few nights Anastasia shrieked and glided and mated on the wing just like everybody else, so no one said a word when, as soon as the Breeding Moon had faded and the breeding fever had passed, she spurned Fabian like he was spoiled meat and went back to David. She'd done her duty by the clan, and that's all that they had asked. And as he'd promised, David was as tender and loving to his mate as she swelled with egg as he'd been before; perhaps even more so than before, rubbing her swollen ankles and feet just as any devoted male gargoyle did for his mate. Everyone agreed it was very admirable behavior, and after four years of trying to ignore him, the clan leader finally told David he was indeed a good member of the clan.
Six months after the breeding, the eggs were laid, and the rookery keepers began caring for them just as they always did, turning them regularly and etc. Everyone else went back to their normal routines, with the exception of those chosen to begin the fifteen-year-old hatchlings' formal education now that they were out of the rookery.
Then in June of 1927, tragedy struck. David had been in town on a shopping trip, getting the supplies for the clan that they couldn't make, hunt down or grow themselves, when he'd been hit by an automobile driven by a drunkard. Anastasia had still been out on the estate while her mate was in town, but somehow she'd known what had happened, had shrieked and summoned hurricane-force winds to carry her into town, secrecy be damned! But she'd arrived only in time for her mate to die in her arms.
The next night the clan had solemnly laid David Dubois to rest in the clan's cemetery. Rather than being put in with the bones of others in an existing mausoleum, he was raid to rest in a raised tomb that Anastasia had quietly made herself, secretly summoning stone in slabs with the aid of the Crystal Tear. It was a magical feat she'd never done before, and the chronicler privately asked her how it was done so he could document it for future magic-users, but she ignored the question and instead asked him for pen and paper.
Anastasia spent the rest of that night writing a letter, that she put into an envelope addressed to no one. She gave the envelope to the clan leader, telling him only that the contents were not for him, and that he would know whom it was for soon enough; she would leave it to him to decide when it should be delivered. And as dawn approached, with everyone nervously watching, she ignored her usual perch on the roof of David's cottage and glided over to the cemetery. The clan leader had been prepared for her to perch at the edge of a high roof, or glide out to the bayou, and had others standing by to prevent her from 'greeting her last sunrise' by either falling from a great height or falling into the water to drown. But when she merely perched on her dead mate's tomb, he shook his head and bade the others leave her be. At least at the moment, she apparently wasn't determined to commit suicide; the clan could help her grieve and begin to heal tomorrow night when they all awoke..
Except Anastasia never woke up. Her form remained stone, never stirring again… Somehow, either using magic or just willing it through sheer despair, she had decided to join her beloved in 'eternal sleep', presumably until the Second Coming when all would rise again.
Also, when she'd turned to stone, the Crystal Tear had converted along with her and her clothing; it now appeared to be made of stone instead of crystal, and couldn't be removed. The clan leader quietly sighed to the few who had known of Anastasia's magic that if she'd really cast a spell of indefinite/eternal duration, she might well have burned the talisman out in the process… and besides, Anastasia had died before choosing an apprentice, so they wouldn't have known who to give it to anyway. Once again, the clan was without a magic-user… but they hadn't really needed magic for a long while now, had they?
The clan might have called Anastasia's 'eternal sleep' the Third Miracle, except it was just too eerie and disturbing; besides, miracles should be about Life, not death. So they just tried not to speak of it at all. The chronicler finished writing about the tragic tale of Anastasia and David, closed the book and set it aside to begin another one, and life went on…
Until March 1st of 1930, when an apprentice rookery keeper named Ursula got the shock of her life while turning one of the clan's eggs. That particular egg had already been remarked upon for hearing movement within, considerably earlier than the others, and everyone took that to be a good sign that it would be an exceptionally strong and healthy hatchling. But now, a full three years before the hatching time, there was a crack in the shell. Young Ursula was terrified that she'd somehow damaged the egg, but when her shrieks summoned the chief rookery keeper, a hurried examination gave the conclusion that the egg was hatching!
Everyone gathered around in astonishment, and just before midnight that night, the infant gargoyle emerged. And after one look at the hatchling's five-taloned hands, not-quite-normal-sized feet, wispy mane of tight black curls, and light brown hide the exact shade as the deceased David's skin, the clan knew that they had a half-human, half-gargoyle hybrid on their hands. Stubborn, willful Anastasia had gotten her way after all...
"Those who didn't know about my mother's magical ability were sure I was indeed a miracle, the Third Miracle, and I've been stuck with that since the night I was hatched," Adam said with a wry smile. "But after naming me Adam, the rookery keepers weren't quite sure what to do with me. I couldn't stay in the rookery around unhatched eggs; as I grew and began walking, I might well have endangered one of them with the usual childhood antics. Moreover, it just didn't seem right that I grow up without other hatchlings my own age; gargoyles are never raised alone. And Maurice Dubois had been born the previous November, and was then at nearly the same stage of development as a new-hatched gargoyle infant…
"The clan decided that very night that I'd be raised alongside Maurice in his parents' nursery, instead of the rookery two floors above. Maurice and I have been called 'nursery kin' all our lives; even now that our aging disparities have become as obvious as our other differences, we still consider ourselves brothers. Also, Ursula was assigned to the nursery, to help my human kin watch over me for the first few years… and she's been trying to watch over me ever since."
To be continued…