Читать книгу The Lost Gargoyle Series 3-Book Bundle - Philippa Dowding - Страница 12

House Guest

After that, Katherine and her parents left Gargoth alone for the rest of the day. He seemed content to sit on his pedestal and stare gloomily at the tree.

Katherine and her mother spent most of the rest of the morning sitting at the kitchen table, trying to explain to Katherine’s father what the gargoyle had said.

As far as they could figure out, they explained, Katherine’s mother had been the first adult to speak “without malice” to Gargoth in ages, maybe hundreds of years.

This made Gargoth want to speak to her. This also somehow made him “hers”, but not in a servant-like way. Her father wanted to know everything that was said at this point, particularly about being “hers”, but this had them as lost as he was.

Clearly Gargoth was very sad and had talked about being “lost”, but in this first conversation they didn’t really have the chance to clear that up. How was he lost? Who had lost him? Were there other gargoyles like him somewhere in the world? Was there any way to help him? He didn’t seem to think anyone could help but Katherine’s mother.

And he didn’t seem very interested in going away.

On the plus side, he hadn’t stuck his tongue out at them since they had started talking to him, so maybe they had won a very slight victory on that count. Katherine’s mother still thought the gargoyle stuck his tongue out as a kind of downspout reflex, but Katherine wasn’t totally convinced; she thought he was just being rude.

Rude or not, they decided that he was going to have to stay in the backyard until Monday, then they would make a clear plan about what to do with him.

Katherine caught her mother stealing glances out the back window at the gargoyle all day. Finally, at dinner time, her mother went out to the backyard alone and talked once more to Gargoth, then returned and started putting apples into a basket.

“What are you doing, Mom?” Katherine asked.

“He’s hungry,” she said simply, and with that emptied the fridge of all the apples they owned and slipped back outside.

She didn’t come back in for a long time.