Little One wondered why he'd never heard anything about Ashton from his clan. From the old soldier's journals, he and Elder, whom he'd named Lady Blue, had become good friends quickly. And he was even more curious about "the spotted fellow" who apparently had died or disappeared sometime between Ashton's journals' end and Little One's hatching. Ashton had described this individual as a dappled blue beanpole, tall and gangling, with a forked tail and curling horns like a ram's.

Nolee had mentioned her suspicion that Sister had been his mother, and he was inclined to agree. He had her grey coloring and her wings and her pattern of spots, though hers had been all dark. Little One's tail was forked, and though his horns were too short yet to have any definite shape, he was on the thin side and did have some lighter spots in places. This dappled male could have been his father.

Little One was unsure of how he felt about this. For one, Sister had hardly been an ideal mother. The few times she had been pleasant to him, it had inexplicably triggered arguments with Leader, and that would be it for her good mood. And he had never known the male, whom Ashton had dubbed Spots, but at least from the writings he had seemed civil enough, even friendly towards Ashton.

While Nolee slept, Little One sifted through the journals for any mention of the clan, sorting them by date. Ashton was a frank writer, peppering his entries with colorful colloquialisms that sent Little One to the dictionary often.

Came to see Lady Blue last night, but she was busy with some drama with the younguns. From what I could gather, Missy (Ashton's name for Sister) had a roll in the hay with Spots, and Brown (the younger Leader) had his tail in a knot over it.

While 'tail in a knot' was fairly clear, when Little One discerned the meaning of 'roll in the hay' he was a little irritated. Why hadn't Ashton simply said that they had mated?

Missy leads those two boys around something shameful. She's very pretty, even I can see that. To those two she must look like Marilyn Monroe. And she knows it. I told Lady Blue I'd met plenty girls like her in my day, and she gave me one of those sad smiles.

"She has the advantage, being the only eligible female. I've tried to tell her that behaving like this will only cause trouble, but... the young, they never listen."

I didn't know how to put it delicately, so I just came out and asked her what gargoyles thought about polygamy. Lady Blue hardly blinked, though, and threw up her hands.

"She could have them both, but instead she plays them against each other! We are already dying, my friend, and she hastens it!"

That explained the animosity between Leader and Sister well enough. He hadn't been her favorite, or even her first choice. Little One shook his head. Elder had known their clan was on the brink of extinction, and had been helpless but to watch. He wondered exactly what it was that she had seen, the symptoms of this slow death, and if Ashton, as an outside observer, had seen it as well.

The journals went on, at first nightly, then gradually slowing down to several nights a week. Ashton was as old as his friend Lady Blue, and both of them were feeling their age. As a consequence, the old soldier reluctantly cut his visits short, or waited a few nights between visits.

Some years' time later in the journals, Little One read of his own hatching.

Brown damn near pitched me out of the shed, and would have if Spots and Lady Blue hadn't got in his way. Brown said I had no business being there tonight, and called me something I won't repeat even in print. Well, that set Lady Blue on her claws, and she nailed his wings to the wall like I'd never seen.

"He is our friend! He is welcome here! You will respect him while I lead this clan!"

What a gal!

Missy gave a yelp before Lady Blue could tear Brown up much more. Two of the eggs were cracked. One of them broke wide open right away-- a big fat brown baby gargoyle right there. God as my witness, it was an ugly little cuss, but being a baby managed to be cute anyhow.

Little One paused. Big Brother? He and Big Brother had been the same age? He had been twice Little One's size, if not bigger, and by the time of his accident an able-enough glider, while the best Little One could manage was a sustained float on his small, more finely-formed wings.

It took three hours for the second to come open. The little thing had to keep resting. Lady Blue told me a hatchling has to break out on its own or it will be sickly. When it finally came out, I had to wonder if the poor thing was going to make it, he was so tiny. Didn't cry at first, until Missy pinched his little tail, and even then he only fussed for a minute. Nothing but grey, this little one, even his big grey eyes.

The third egg didn't hatch at all. Turns out it was bad... Spots told me to keep Lady Blue's attention on the two good hatchlings while he disposed of it. "Tonight's too good to ruin her good spirits with this," he said. I agreed.

The next night:

Missy had a devil of a time trying to get the brown one to suckle, Lady Blue tells me. Says she thinks there's something wrong with him. I have to agree. He won't turn when there's a noise, and he doesn't quite look at you. He doesn't react much when you touch him, either. Just kind of pulls away. Privately I told Lady Blue that there'd been human babies that did the same thing, and that you couldn't do much but watch and hope it was just a phase. But I don't have much hope for that. He looks pretty bad, and if he won't eat he might not make another night.

(Little One snorted, thinking that Ashton needn't have worried about Big Brother's eating habits.)

Now, the other one, the grey one, acts just like a baby ought, other than being really quiet. I'd never seen such a serious look on a baby before. Sharp, this one. Looks right at you, like he knows what's going on. Something tells me he'll do just fine.

Gargoyles don't have names, it's the damndest thing. I know Lady Blue don't mind me calling her that. She's amused by what she calls my 'human quirks.' She's the only one, but I had to name them to keep them straight in my head. And I know they're not the fanciest names in the world... I ain't none too bright sometimes.

I don't know what I'll call the brown baby gargoyle, but I know who the other one is. His name, to me, is Grey.

It was sometime between three and three-thirty when Nolee became aware that little hands were shaking her awake, and an excited voice was telling her, "Ashton named me! I have a name, Nolee!"

"...mmmh. Little One?"

"No! My name is Grey! I have a name, Nolee!"

"Wha...? Okay. Grey."

"Yes! Grey!" And then the thudding of small feet on carpet down the stairs, and laughter fading away.

A minute later, Nolee rolled over and looked at her digital clock, blinking blearily, and grinned despite herself. "Girl," she muttered to herself, "this is your own fault."

--------

Ashton's journals ended abruptly at a year after the hatching, with no explanation as to why. But at least Nolee knew for certain that her little charge was about nine years old. Which amazed her even more, considering how very young he looked. But then, he spoke and acted as if he were thirty-nine, for the most part (outbursts of name-discovery glee notwithstanding), and she had no frame of reference anyway.

Grey wore his new name like a kingly robe for the next few nights, immensely pleased. Nolee had to agree with Ashton; it wasn't the most creative name, but it did fit the young gargoyle well (besides the obvious). It sounded gentle without being weak, strong without being presumptuous.

She arrived home just in time to greet him in the basement as he shook free of his stone shell. Tonight, though, instead of his usual warm 'Hello, Nolee' he frowned as he dusted himself off, poking a fang thoughtfully over his lip.

"Rise and shine," she said, plucking a chip out of his hair. "Something the matter?"

"I was dreaming," Grey replied, glancing around. "Where is my journal?" Without waiting for an answer, he grabbed it from a nearby shelf. The journal, a simple spiral-bound notebook, had been his idea, a routine he adopted immediately after learning his name.

Nolee had often idly wondered if gargoyles dreamt while they slept, locked in stone during the day. One minor mystery solved. "Dreaming? What about?"

"A book," he said, pausing only to brush aside flakes of his stone skin with his tail before sitting down right where he'd roosted. "I am turning the pages of a book but I cannot read it."

"Sounds frustrating. C'mon, let's get something to eat while you write it down, hm?"

Grey shook his head, already scribbling. He had developed a curious handwriting style, with tall, upright letters crammed in tight against each other. "This one was different," he said, without halting his pen. "I've dreamed that book before. This time... this time someone took the book from me. I became upset. They began tearing the pages out, and burning them. Leader did that once, a few seasons ago."

He hesitated, distractedly scratching at a horn. "But it was not Leader in the dream. It was..." Grey stared intently at the open notebook in his lap, then shut it with a loud sigh. "Already it fades."

"I'm sorry." Nolee smoothed down his hair, for all the good it did; the snow-white mop had all the substance of goosedown and would not lie flat. "I hate it when I can't remember a dream. You okay?"

He gave one of his noncommittal shrugs and smiled up at her. "It's nothing. Let's eat. Tell me of your classes today!"

"Do you one better," she told him as they climbed the stairs into the living room. "I found an old friend of ours today."

"Who?"

"Ashton," she replied. "And he's still alive."

Nolee had the feeling only Grey's reserved personality kept him from having a tizzy right there. He turned and gaped at her, clutching his journal so tightly he poked holes with his claws. "He is? Where? We must go to him! Does he remember me?"

"Slow down, slow down." Nolee steered him over to the couch and sat down next to him. "Firstly, he's in a VA nursing home about an hour and a half's drive away. Even if we got in the car right now, it would be closed to visitors when we got there. And I didn't go see him, I called the home and they told me that he was there."

"How did you know?"

"Ashton was a soldier," she replied. "And once you're a soldier the government agrees to take care of you when you get old, and they keep records of everything. All I had to do was call the local Army office and ask if Gregory James Ashton was still around."

"We must speak to him!" Grey couldn't sit still. "We need to return his uniform and his Bibles, and his journals-- and I must thank him for my name, and ask him why he stopped visiting my clan--"

"Grey-- Grey, slow down." Nolee gently grasped his shoulders to steady him. "I have to warn you, he's eighty-five years old. For a human that's very, very old. We are going to go see him, but... he might be like Elder by now. He might not remember much, if anything."

"It will be enough to thank him, then," Grey replied with a solemn nod. "Old warriors should be honored."

And so it was, the next evening, Nolee sat in her car in the parking lot of the Veterans' Affairs hospital and nursing home two towns away, ticking off the minutes until the sun would dip below the horizon. Grey was in the back seat, curled into a stone ball, the position he'd assumed so that Nolee could carry his sleeping form out to the car in order to make the trip on time.

Skin and bones he might have been in flesh, but as a stone lump he was certainly heavier than he looked. She almost had strained something in lugging the oblivious gargoyle to the car. Once there, she strapped him in securely with two seat belts, cushioning him with blankets and draping one over him so that when he awoke he wouldn't fling bits of stone everywhere inside the car.

At length the sun vanished and there was a muffled crackling and a yowl from the bundle in the backseat. Nolee got out and opened the back door on the side of the car facing away from the building, looking around to make sure no one was nearby.

"Are we there?" Grey asked, peeking from underneath the blanket.

Nolee unfolded a raincoat. "Yup. It's showtime, kiddo."

He crawled out and donned the coat. It was Nolee's, and swallowed him whole, presenting a comical picture of drooping overlong sleeves and dragging hem. Nolee pulled the hood up over his head and he effectively vanished in its shadow. Someone would have to kneel and bend over to look to see that the child was something other than human.

"Ready? Okay, let's close it up in front... tuck your tail up. There we go." Nolee picked up the duffel bag that held Ashton's belongings and found Grey's hand through the sleeve of the raincoat, and together they entered the building. The desk clerk looked up as they came into the lobby.

"Visiting hours are up in one hour, miss," he said, tapping a clipboard on the counter. "'Fraid you'll have to make it quick."

"We won't be long." Nolee scribbled her name in the appropriate blank. "Can you tell me what room Mr. Ashton is in? Gregory Ashton?"

The clerk consulted his computer for a moment. "Third floor, room 327. Ashton, huh? He almost never gets any visitors. How do you know him?"

"I found some things that belong to him," she replied. "Bibles, books, personal stuff. I want to return them."

"Well, I would tell you not to tire him out, but he's likely to be up soon. He's a little weird. Sleeps all day, up all night." That certainly sounded like someone who'd gotten into habits more suited to consorting with gargoyles. The clerk peered at Grey, raising an eyebrow at what appeared to be a child covered in a collapsed tent.

Nolee flashed her biggest smile and flipped a dismissive wave. "My nephew," she gushed brightly. "He's in the dress-up play-pretend stage. Tonight we're Batman."

"Ah, I see," the clerk said, smiling knowingly. "I've got two girls who're doing the same thing, only it's Princess Jasmine or Mulan these days. I'll let you and the Dark Knight go on about your business, then."

"Thanks! C'mon, Batman."

"What?" Grey looked up at her, almost tipping the hood back and revealing that he was definitely no kin of hers, but she nudged him along towards the elevators, quickly planting a hand on his head so the hood would stay in place.

"Nolee," Grey asked once they were alone in the elevator, "...bat man?"

"It's a comic book character. Superhero. He goes around fighting crime." Nolee chuckled. "First thing I could think of. We're lucky you're little enough to get away with that."

Grey apparently had no response, trying to process being compared to a man who called himself a bat.

Nolee knocked on the door of room 327, at first quietly and then, getting no response, a little louder. Grey fidgeted in his shroud, fiddling at loose thread in the sleeve with his claws.

"Rhonda? That you? I don't think I'll have breakfast just yet," came a voice from within. Nolee pushed the door open, and Grey could see an old man reclining in a metal-railed bed. "I want to finish watching the news, and..."

The old man looked up and squinted through thick glasses. "You're not Rhonda."

Nolee patted Grey's shoulder before stepping into the room, and Grey fell in a step behind, suddenly nervous. He wanted to spring onto the end of the bed and speak to Ashton immediately, but Nolee had made him promise to wait until she said it was all right to reveal himself. Startling a person of advanced age would not be a wise thing to do.

"Mr. Ashton?" Nolee asked.

The old man nodded, reaching up with a wrinkled hand to straighten his spectacles. "Yes. Can I help you, miss?"

She approached the bed and held out her hand. "My name is Nolee Carroll, sir, and you don't know me, but I found some things that belong to you and I thought I'd return them in person."

"Oh goodness." Ashton smiled up at her and reached to shake her hand. "Must be some junk in that old townhouse. I do apologise, Miss Carroll, I thought my grandson had taken care of that."

Grey let out a breath, relieved that it seemed the old soldier's mind hadn't gone the way Elder's had. Good winds are with me tonight, he thought.

"Well, might not be junk," Nolee said, putting the bag on a nearby chair and taking out the uniform jacket.

"Good Lord." Ashton accepted the garment, shaking his head. "This I haven't seen in years. Where did you find it?"

"In my basement," she replied, and reached in for one of the journals. "Along with these."

Ashton paused. Grey took a step forward, watching intently from underneath the hood.

"I didn't read any of the private stuff, Mr. Ashton," Nolee continued. "But some of it was pretty interesting..."

Ashton sighed, shifting slightly in his bed. "What I get for not throwing anything away. You probably think I'm a loon."

"I might," Nolee conceded with a small smile, "if I hadn't run into an old friend of yours." She motioned to Grey.

Ashton's bushy white eyebrows went up in confusion as Grey came to the side of the bed and pulled the hood back. The old man's jaw dropped open and he inhaled sharply. Then he began to laugh softly, his eyes wet.

"Oh, my God... look at you. Look at you!" Ashton reached towards the young gargoyle with a trembling hand. Grey clambered up into the chair, shrugged out of the coat, extended his own hand and very gently held the old human's wrist. Ashton returned the gesture with a surprisingly firm grasp.

"Thank you," said Grey shyly, "for my name."

"Just look at you!" Ashton repeated. "Grey! The last time I saw you you couldn't walk two steps without falling over. Where are the others? Lady Blue?"

Grey closed his free hand over Ashton's, which was still grasping his wrist. "I'm sorry. They are gone. Lady Blue as well. I am the only one left."

Ashton sobered, closing his eyes for a moment. "Yes," he said, nodding. "She was old before you hatched. I'm not surprised. She... she didn't suffer?"

"She died in her sleep."

"Good. A good way to go."

Nolee, watching the exchange, had to marvel anew at the depth of Grey's character. For one so young he seemed to have a keen understanding of others, and little fear for the reality of death and old age, concepts that normally had adults tiptoeing about in the presence of children. Nolee mused that if her grandmother knew Grey, she might say he had 'an old soul'.

"I've read your journals," Grey was saying, "but the others never spoke of you. I cannot remember you. Why did you stop visiting?"

"You were about a year old," Ashton replied. "I was at home and took a notion to change a light bulb and fell off a chair." He waved a hand in disgust. "Broke my hip and dislocated my shoulder. Then while I was at the hospital I caught pneumonia and spent about three months flat on my back eighteen hours a day. When I finally was in some decent shape again I went out to the woods to see you and Lady Blue and Spots.

"It was Brown who met me, told me Lady Blue wasn't fit to be leader anymore and he was in charge now. Told me if he ever caught me in his woods again he'd kill me."

Grey's eyes flashed white, and he bared his fangs with a hiss. "Leader," he almost spat, then visibly calmed himself. "Always showing his claws."

"That must have been when Lady Blue started going," Nolee interjected, putting a hand on Grey's shoulder. "From what Grey tells me she might have had Alzheimer's or whatever gargoyles get instead of that."

"A shame," Ashton murmured. "She was a grand lady. It must have been tough." He patted Grey's hand abruptly. "But tell me about the others-- what on earth happened?"

Grey laid it out in his usual forthright manner; Big Brother's hunting accident, Sister's shooting, Leader's suicide-by-dawn, with Ashton inserting a grunt of surprise or a sad headshake here and there.

"A shame, a damn shame," the old man said, and cast a hasty glance at Nolee. "Pardon my language, Miss Carroll."

She waved dismissively. "I live across from a fraternity. Believe me, I've heard much worse."

"Ashton..." Grey hesitated, then plowed on. "My clan was dying. Elder saw it, you saw it... Do you know why?"

"Well," Ashton drawled, pausing to collect his thoughts. "I 'spect it might have been bad blood. Some of it, anyway."

"Bad blood?" Nolee asked. "You mean disease?"

"Not exactly. That small a community, closed off... inbreeding." Ashton shook his head. "From what I could tell gargoyles don't keep track of who begat who like us humans do. Pretty soon everybody's related to everybody else and there's nowhere for the blood to go but in circles."

"Inbreeding," Grey repeated, committing the word to memory. "This is what caused my clan to die?"

"It certainly didn't help. I don't think I'm too far off the mark thinking that's why your brother was like he was. I always thought Brown and Missy looked a little alike, had the same double-pronged horns," Ashton said, holding up two fingers to his forehead to illustrate. "But Missy and Spots weren't anything the same, so I think you'll be fine." Ashton smiled warmly and patted Grey's hand again. "You're his spitting image, you know."

Grey's brow knotted. "Spitting...?"

"He means you look just like him," Nolee clarified, ruffling the little gargoyle's hair. "Maybe it was the only two separate bloodlines left in the clan coming together in Grey."

"If I find other gargoyles, I'll tell them about this," Grey said, lifting his chin. "Perhaps they will not be to stubborn to learn from my clan's mistake."

"Stubbornness was one thing they had in spades," Ashton remarked. "I once told Lady Blue she might have to pack up the clan and leave if they wanted to stay out of human sight, and that was the one time she got angry with me. Never, she said."

"They were lucky those woods hadn't gotten plowed under to build a mini-mall," Nolee added.

"I am alive," Grey said. "I will learn, and I will not be stubborn."

"Oh yes, you will," Ashton admonished him. "But about the right things. You've got your whole life ahead of you. I want you to be stubborn enough to live it right no matter what anyone, human or gargoyle, tells you. You hear me, son?"

Grey again reached out and grasped Ashton's wrist, feeling the surprising vigor in the old man's return grip. It was time, Grey decided, to seek out his own kind, to find what life he could beyond the shelter Nolee afforded him.

"Yes, elder. I hear you."

It was time to go to New York.

Author's note: I hope you've enjoyed "The Shade of Grey" so far, or just been patient with my slow pace... have no fear, things are going to pick up very soon, because as we all know, you can't wave your arms around in Manhattan without hitting a gargoyle. Little Grey is going to find more than he bargained for... (insert evil author laugh here)

One more thing...

Gregory Ashton is based partly on my grandfather, a WW2 veteran and one of the most important men in my life. Even as an ailing octogenarian in the VA nursing home, he never lost his sense of humor or his strong character. Last year he passed away, and I feel fortunate to have known him as long as I did. I dedicate this chapter to him.

Old warriors should be honored.