Nolee couldn't keep Little One in books fast enough. After three weeks he had mastered the basics and was openly bored with anything with the name Seuss on it. The living room floor turned into an ever-changing landscape of children's library books. A paperback dictionary, purchased brand-new after the third night of reading lessons, was now quite tattered and scratched up by little grey claws. He was already making attempts at Nolee's personal collection of novels, and she prudently moved the Steven King to higher shelves.
He was a completely different creature. He had visibly gained weight since his arrival, and the tone of his skin changed; it deepened from the chalky color to a mixture of subtle cloud-grey tones, and a pattern of spots that Nolee had mistaken for sickly mottling became better defined. The wretched excuse for a breechclout had been replaced with a pair of shorts and a little t-shirt she had bought and then altered to accommodate his wings and tail. A comb had tamed the rat's nest on his head into surprisingly silky, down-soft snow-white hair.
And he no longer spoke in short half-whispered sentences. He had quickly figured out that speaking his mind was not only acceptable, but encouraged, and now Nolee could hardly get him to stop talking when his nose wasn't in a book. And she soon got a picture of what his life had been like before his arrival.
"Leader was brown. Tree-bark brown," he said, pausing to take a bite of hamburger at dinner, his breakfast. "And long black hair, like yours with curls in it, but always tangled. Sister would always complain about the knots in his hair. Loudly."
By now Nolee had discerned that 'sister' was more of a title than name, and wasn't actually Little One's sister. In fact, from his description of her-- grey-colored like him, with spots, and similar wings-- she was willing to bet she had been his mother. "Did they always bicker like that? What about... Elder, was it?"
"Not always. But a lot. Elder did not. Sometimes she never even noticed." He shrugged. "She was very old."
"Do you miss them?"
He chewed thoughtfully for a moment, then licked his fangs. "I miss Elder... the others did not like me very much. I was a burden."
Nolee blinked. "A burden? How do you mean?"
"I think too much. And I cannot hunt well."
She muffled a snort. "What did he expect? You're... what, six years old?"
"Elder once told me she had counted ten winters since I had hatched... but she had a bad memory," Little One replied.
"Ten?" Maybe gargoyles aged differently, she supposed, bus she still could swear he wasn't a minute past five or six by the look of him. "Well, you're still too little to bring down a buck or whatever else is living in those woods."
"I could catch rabbits and fish. But that was not enough to feed us." He made a disgusted face. "And Leader was never patient enough!"
"Sounds like he was a real charmer."
"He was not," Little One insisted, as the sarcasm blew past him and Nolee had to hide her grin. "Big Brother was better company."
She didn't bother to stop her giggle this time, recalling the description of said individual. He had been either extremely dim-witted or simply mentally handicapped. An overbearing leader, a shrew, a senile but kindly elder, a halfwit and at the bottom of the pile, slowly being squashed, was the bright child. Small wonder the group had been doing so poorly. She wondered how the decline had begun.
"Well, I don't think you think too much. Just more than the average."
He nodded solemnly. "I am glad you think so. It is a relief to know I was right."
In the back of her mind, Nolee was amused at the pains he seemed to take to speak in such a proper manner. Sometimes she felt as if she were talking to a learned old man and not a small child. "Right about what?" she asked as she took her plate to the sink.
"Humans. Leader always said you were all horrible and greedy."
"I'm not going to lie; there are some people like that." She turned and leaned back against the counter, facing him. "There are even some humans who hate gargoyles."
If she expected this news to trouble him, she was disappointed. He merely gave another wing-shuffling shrug and downed the last of his burger. "I know. We frighten you."
She gave a small smile and shook her head. "You don't frighten me."
"Nolee," he said, coming very close to rolling his eyes, "You would be frightened of Leader, or Sister. I am the Little One. You could sit on me and that would be the end of it."
She threw back her head and laughed. "You have a point! But you won't be little forever."
He slid out of his chair and handed Nolee his dishes. "Then what will I be called?"
"You want a name?"
He made a noncommittal noise. "I am still little."
"Suit yourself."
They hit the books together, she in her asian history book and he with a pile, a mixture of library books and those he'd scrounged off her shelves. Nolee supposed that if anyone else could see them together, the scene would be equal parts amusing and bizarre. She and Little One studied their respective texts in intense silence, both of them occasionally making notes or reaching for reference in other volumes.
It was eleven o'clock when Nolee realized that she'd been reading the same paragraph about a Japanese shogunate three times, and in the same moment Little One looked up at her and asked: "Why did Beatrice feel she was unworthy of Don Pedro? He seemed fond of her."
Oh, have mercy, Lord, he's reading Shakespeare, she thought, looking at the book he was currently holding. "Uh... it's been awhile. Which play is that in?"
"Much Ado About Nothing. Did the prince ask her in jest, or was she simply being graceful when she rejected him?"
Nolee blinked, then shut her book. "I think we both need a study break." 'In jest'... he must have picked that up reading Shakespeare. He sure talks that way a lot. Very carefully. It's cute and weird at the same time... and that question-- hell, that sounds like a high-school level essay question! I wonder if all gargoyle children are this bright, if given the chance... "C'mon, you can help me sort a couple of those boxes downstairs."
Bewildered, he followed her as she went down the basement steps. "Study... break? Did... did my question upset you?"
"Oh, no, no," she assured him with a smile over her shoulder. "You asked a pretty good question. I just think we need a break... There's nothing wrong with thinking too much, but you can do too much of it at once."
"...very well," he replied, as if she had just informed him that there were three moons in the sky.
Chuckling, she randomly picked a box and slid it out into the open floorspace and opened it. Together she and Little One sifted through its contents, consisting of some ugly brass geese figurines, a crumbling and rusted toaster, a few blankets, and a dark green threadbare jacket stitched with embroidered patches and adorned with tarnished pins. They sorted the bricabrac into piles, but lingered over the jacket.
"Ashton," Little One read the badge on the front. "Did someone named Ashton wear this?"
"Yes," Nolee said, pointing to a pin on the lapel. "See? This is U.S. Army. Whoever Ashton was, he was a soldier. Huh. Must have been the previous resident. The landlord said he was a very old man."
"A soldier... is a warrior?"
"Uh huh. I wonder how this got left behind. This looks so old. Maybe he was a war veteran."
"Elder once told me that old warriors should be honored," the little gargoyle said. "Is it so with humans?"
"Most people think so. At least I do. My Gram-- my mother's mother-- was an Army nurse." She looked at the jacket again, wondering what the row of ribbon medals signified. "Let's make another pile. Anything of Mr. Ashton's we find... if he died, maybe I can track down his kids or grandkids. This belongs to them."
Little One nodded solemnly, taking the folded garment and placing it carefully on a nearby empty shelf. "Is our study break over?"
"Does your brain ever get tired? C'mon, one more box and then to bed for me. You've got the whole night to cram your face in a book, silly." She opened the next box only to find it packed solid with books.
Little One's delight was absurdly palpable. With a smirk, Nolee poked his snowy-maned head with a finger. "We sort first," she told him. "Read after. If you crack one open I'll never get you out."
Unabashed, he grinned back. "Yes, Nolee."
It was an assortment of paperbacks in crumbling yellowed covers, old hardback novels devoid of dust jackets, and a pair of bibles, their aged leather bindings creased and cracked with use. Each one had a handwritten inscription inside the front cover, one to "my beloved Ellis Mae" and the other "Gregory James Ashton." These were placed with the jacket.
Underneath the bibles was a layer of journals, old-fashioned leather-bound journals, pages creased and dogeared with heavy use. Nolee opened the first one to a page full of bold, neat handwriting.
It was dated May 7th, 1978.
"Rebeccah had her baby this morning. A boy. She named him James David, after me and Dave. I can't hardly wait to see him. Elly and I are taking tomorrow off to go visit. I'm a grandfather. Best day of my life. Elly's beside herself. God gave my girl a baby."
Nolee paused. "Our Mr. Ashton's grandson is only a couple years older than me," she mused, and picked up another journal, this one dated October 19, 1986. The handwriting was a little less bold.
"Elly left six days ago. I can write about it now. She would want me to. I miss her so much. I can't be selfish and wish her back. I'm glad she can't be in pain ever again. Rebeccah had to go back home yesterday. It was hard to see her off at the airport."
Respectfully, Nolee closed the journal. It was too private to keep reading, whether Mr. Ashton was dead or alive. Little One had also given in to the temptation and was intent on another journal. "Little One, don't read those. They're private."
But he did not close the journal. He looked up at her, eyes wide. "Ashton knew gargoyles."
That brought her train of thought to a complete stop. "What?"
"I can't figure out if I gone crazy or not, but I met some mighty strange folk tonight," Little One read aloud. "That damn car broke down again, I had to leave it on the old road. I lost my temper and cussed that machine up one way and down the other, and I guess my carrying on caught the attention of these two... I don't know what they are, Lord only knows! They had big bat wings on their backs and were pretty cross with me."
"Holy cow."
"What?"
"Just keep reading."
"Near killed myself with fright, the way the brown one jumped out at me. I swear his eyes were glowing and he had teeth like a lion. 'GET OUT OF HERE, HUMAN!' was what he bellowed at me.
"I don't know what came over me. I pointed down the road at my broke car and hollered back, 'Fine! Gladly! But you'll have to fly me outta here, cuz that car ain't going nowhere!' That's when the blue one started laughing.
"They didn't fly me, thank God, but they did escort me out of the woods. The blue one told me that they didn't usually do that, that most humans ran or fainted and she was amused that I'd gone and demanded a ride. The blue one was definitely a she, though, and from the looks of her older than me. I tried to get names out of them both, but I only got growls and scowls from the younger brown one, and all the lady would tell me was that they were gargoyles.
"I can't be crazy. I got home, but the car ain't here."
"Do you think they were your family?" Nolee asked. "Elder was blue, wasn't she?"
"Yes," Little One replied, "And Leader was brown." He turned the pages. "Ashton looked for them again for three nights... and found them on the fourth."
June 9th, 1987
I found them again. The winged gargoyles. It was the same blue lady and a different fellow with her, fishing by moonlight. I came up on the other side of the creek and there she was, tossing a fish to the spotted youngun on land. I said hello.
I almost thought the fellow was going to come across the water and kill me right there, or he was going to bolt, one. Was hard to tell. But the lady nodded politely to me and asked me if I liked getting lost in the woods every night. I told her no, madam, I was looking for you. I had to see if you were real.
"And now that you know, what will you do?" the lady asked me.
I told her I don't know one way or other. I'm just a bored old man out to satisfy some curiosity. I'll leave you be if you want, but you seem like interesting folk to me.
"Interesting!" the spotted fellow acted like it was the most ridiculous thing he'd heard all night.
The lady invited me to share their fish. So I did, and she and I had a talk.
Their kind, she tells me, don't have much to do with humans. A lot of mistrust. But she likes me, she says because I'd stood up to the brown fellow who'd done his best to scare me off. Damnfool thing to do, in hindsight. I'm not as young as I used to be.
The lady tells me there aren't but five of them in her "clan" of gargoyles. And she has no way of knowing if there are any other clans out there. For some reason her clan's dying, and she told me the only reason she was letting me near them again was to ask me if I had any news of other gargoyles.
The poor old gal, she was so hopeful. Broke my heart to shake my head and tell her that she was the first I'd ever laid eyes on. I promised her, if I heard anything, I'd come straight to her.
She smiled sadly and thanked me. The two gargoyles stood up to leave, and as the lady was walking away through the trees, the spotted fellow turned to me.
"You are very kind," he told me. "Don't tell her I said this, but I know she's lonely. Her mate is long dead and gone to dust. If you want good company, human, you can come back. It would do her good."
