Читать книгу The Gargoyle Overhead - Philippa Dowding - Страница 7

Rooftop Pumpkins

Cassandra and Katherine were sitting on the rooftop in comfortable lawn chairs, sipping cool glasses of lemonade, deep in conversation. They tried to ignore the noises coming from the stairs as Gargoth climbed them, although they did exchange the odd worried look. Finally, he emerged through the small rooftop door. He stood for a while, glaring, his small chest heaving, and when neither Katherine nor Cassandra addressed him or seemed to notice him (they knew better), he stumped across the rooftop and flopped onto a small cushion.

Katherine and Cassandra were discussing soccer. Katherine was on a girl’s soccer team, and they played all summer long. Cassandra had joined Katherine’s parents, Hank and Marie Newberry, several times to cheer on Katherine and her teammates from the sidelines.

Occasionally, Gargoth also joined them, hidden in his yellow canvas backpack with eyeholes cut in the cloth. He was safely hidden but could still see the game around him. He wasn’t entirely ready to admit it, but he was starting to enjoy watching the “ball-on-a-foot” game, as he called it.

“Well, that team last week was on steroids or some-thing. Honestly, they were twice our size…” Katherine said.

Cassandra laughed. “I was tall at your age, almost six feet by then.” Katherine looked awed.

“You were six feet by the time you were thirteen? You poor thing! I mean, not poor thing, but really, was there anyone else your height? I mean, any boys or anything?” Katherine looked down at her nail then bit it after the word “boys”.

Cassandra laughed again. “A few, but they were too busy playing basketball to notice me.”

Gargoth listened quietly. When he’d regained his breath, and his dignity, he left his cushion and waddled over to the lemonade pitcher. There was the cocoa mug which he had chosen from Cassandra’s cupboard. It had an odd diamond-and-circle pattern on it like this:

He poured himself a large mug of lemonade, downed it in one swig, then wiped his leathery mouth with the back of his claw.

“GARRPH, ” he gurgled (which is the noise a gargoyle makes when clearing its throat). “Lemmi lumina,” he said. Katherine heard him say, “I need candles.”

She was so surprised that Gargoth had spoken, she left her mouth open. They had visited Cassandra’s rooftop several times since school ended, but in all those visits, this was the first time he had uttered a word.

His sudden request left her momentarily speechless. His rudeness didn’t bother her; she was used to that.

“Candles? What for?”

Gargoth just glared at her, clearly not in the mood to answer any of her questions.

“Oh, never mind. Um, Cassandra, Gargoth would like to know if you have any candles…” she said.

“Candles? This is Candles by Daye, after all! Of course he can have candles. How many would he like?”

Cassandra loved Gargoth and adored everything to do with statues and gargoyles in particular, but try as she might, she had never been able to understand a word that he said. To her, his language always sounded like garbled whisperings, or like the wind rattling in the winter leaves.

Katherine on the other hand, understood every word (since most children can, and the occasional very wise adult). But understanding Gargoth was sometimes a mixed blessing, since he had a very short temper and tended to say things which would be better left unsaid. She turned to the little gargoyle. “Well? How many candles do you need?”

“One hundred and forty-eight,” he answered in gargoyle, without hesitation.

She gasped. “One hundred and forty eight? You need one hundred and forty-eight candles? Why?”

She knew immediately that she had been too abrupt. Gargoth hated to be questioned. He turned from her, a heavy scowl on his face, staring off toward the dark city. The city skyline blazed in the distance, and tall office buildings shed thousands of bars of light over the dark houses and smaller buildings below. The CN Tower stood out majestically, a tall sentinel watching over the city.

Cassandra smiled. “Don’t worry, Katherine. I have lots of candles. I just received three crates of Halloween candles—they’re tiny orange pumpkins—and I only ordered one crate. I must have three hundred of those he can burn if he wants.” She whisked away, and they heard her clomp back down the narrow stairs into her store.

Cassandra was not only very tall, she was also very clumsy. Katherine flinched when she heard a giant crash in the building below them: Cassandra had tripped or dropped something heavy.

“It’s okay! I’m okay!” she yelled up to them as she tromped back upstairs. Gargoth hadn’t moved from his cushion and just stared up at the stars.

Cassandra stomped heavily back onto the rooftop with a gigantic crate in her arms, out of breath and puffing hard, but looking very happy.

“Here, Gargoth! All the candles you could ever need. I hope you like orange-scented pumpkins!” She opened the crate and started pulling out tiny pumpkin candles. Gargoth hopped off his cushion and waddled over to the crate. He peered inside.

“They’re smiling. They’re smiling pumpkins. Why are they smiling?” he grumbled in his strange language. He looked up at Katherine, as though the boxful of happy, smiling pumpkins was somehow her fault.

“Does it matter?” she said. “You haven’t told us what they’re for yet. And Cassandra has very nicely donated them to you, without a second thought. You could just say ‘Thank you Cassandra’, without complaining.”

Sometimes Katherine felt like she was teaching a rude little brother how to behave, except this little brother happened to be much, much older than her. Almost four hundred years older than her, in fact.

Gargoth mumbled something, which sounded very like “I hate pumpkins” and began carrying them in his leathery claws to an open part of the rooftop. He started to build a pile of tiny smiling orange pumpkin candles, oblivious to the girl and woman watching him.

“He says ‘thank you, Cassandra’,” Katherine lied.

Cassandra just smiled. She didn’t care what Gargoth did. She didn’t care that she didn’t understand him. He was a living, breathing gargoyle, waddling around on her rooftop. He could have snarled and snapped at her every second of the day, and she wouldn’t have minded.

Some people love dogs. Some people love small children. Some people can’t get enough of bugs.

Cassandra Daye adored gargoyles, which, luckily for Gargoth, will one day soon save him from a terrible fate.