as though he was flashing his horn back and forth. The water falling from his horn into the pool around him made a gentle lapping sound.
It was very peaceful and serene.
Katherine took her new shoes off and felt the cooling grass between her toes. They chatted and her dad played some quiet guitar. When her parents went in, her mother said, “Five more minutes, Kath, then you come in too. Bring Milly in with you, I don’t want her out all night.” If Katherine didn’t know better, she’d have said her mother gave the backyard a quick, dark look.
“Sure, Mom,” she said and moved off the porch to the back of the yard to swing a little. Milly followed her.
She sat in the swing and listened to the sound of the city around her.
Someone was smoking a pipe nearby. Katherine wrinkled up her nose at the hot, strange smell. Nobody around here smoked. It was probably someone visiting a neighbour in another small backyard one or two houses away, but she didn’t like it.
A fire truck was screaming somewhere off in the distance. There was a police car too. The neighbour’s dog was barking. Katherine had to concentrate to hear him. She was so used to the sound of him barking that she didn’t really hear him any more. It was just background noise.
Suddenly something moved beside her. She jumped right off the swing onto her feet with her fists clenched.
Milly had disappeared into the bushes and came out growling.
“Milly, don’t scare me like that!” Katherine said.
As she said it, she thought she heard another noise, very quiet but distinct. It was like a little chuckle.
Who would be laughing at her? Everything was quiet now. Even the neighbour’s dog stopped barking.
“What the heck? What’s going on in there?” Katherine, who was a brave twelve-year-old, didn’t think twice about going into the bushes to check out the noise. She crept up to the bushes and quickly pulled them apart.
Her face broke into a smile. The gargoyle was sitting there.
“What are you doing in there?” she asked, surprised. “You shouldn’t be in the bushes. I wonder why Mom put you in there?”
She reached in and picked up the little gargoyle, heaving him high. She was expecting him to be much heavier than he was and was surprised when he weighed only a little more than Milly. Sometimes she helped her mom move the dwarves around, and they were much heavier than the gargoyle, although they were about his size.
Katherine noticed something else, too. The gargoyle was oddly warm. She wondered if he was made of something other than clay or stone.
“What are you made of, little gargoyle? Plastic or something?”
She placed him back on his pedestal beside the swing. Milly watched from a distance with disgust on her cat face, growling softly and twitching her tail.
“What is it, Mil? Don’t you like Mr. Gargoyle? Hmmm?”
Katherine tried to catch Milly and take her over to see the gargoyle, but the cat was too quick for her and darted up the garden toward the house, spitting all the way.
Katherine laughed, patted the gargoyle’s head and walked toward the house.
Milly never took her big cat eyes off the gargoyle, which is why she was the only one to see him stick his tongue out at Katherine’s back as she walked away.
Cats are very wise, aren’t they?
Chapter Four
Moonlight Dance
That night the backyard was much quieter. There were no raccoons fighting or banging garbage cans, no broken dwarves. It was just a still, cold night.
In fact, it was a little too cold. Suddenly the weather had turned chilly. It was definitely autumn.
The cold woke Katherine up on and off, but she didn’t really mind. She liked dozing under her big blanket, toasty and warm while her nose got cold. It felt a little like sleeping outside in the tent when she and her parents went camping. They went to Algonquin Park every August, and sometimes the nights were really chilly that far north.
Around three a.m., Katherine woke to see Milly in her window, growling and twitching her tail again.
“Milly,” she whispered, “shhhhh. I’m trying to sleep. Come here, kitty, come sleep under the warm covers.” She lifted the covers invitingly.
Milly usually slept with her, but not tonight. She stayed put, all her attention trained on the backyard. She ignored Katherine.
“C’mere, Mil!” Katherine demanded, a little louder. She was annoyed at being woken up now and wanted to get back to sleep. But Milly-the-statue-cat wouldn’t budge.
Katherine sighed and got out of bed. She had to go to the bathroom anyway. She padded off down the hall, as quietly as she could so she wouldn’t wake her parents.
On her way back, she stopped to scratch Milly’s ear and casually looked outside.
“What’s so interest...” Katherine stopped mid-word and stifled a small scream.
There, dancing among the statues in the cold moonlight, was the gargoyle!
Katherine was so dumbfounded that she slumped to the floor, her hand covering her mouth in shock. She shook her head back and forth in disbelief, barely breathing.
“No, it can’t be,” she said. “No way is there a gargoyle dancing around in my backyard. It’s just a trick of the light or something.” She looked around her familiar room for a moment to make sure she wasn’t seeing things in there, too. Everything seemed pretty normal, no dancing teddy bears or walking furniture. She decided she wasn’t completely losing her grip on reality.
She breathed deeply, drew up all her courage, and as quietly and bravely as she could, peeked over the bottom of the window into the backyard.
The gargoyle wasn’t dancing any more. In fact, he was standing perfectly still. “That’s better,” she thought, “see, you were imagining it.”
But she knew in her heart she hadn’t imagined it. It made sense. It explained why he was so light and warm when she picked him up. It explained the chuckle she’d heard: he was laughing at her. It explained the “raccoon fight” the night before, and the dwarf’s broken nose, and why Milly didn’t like him.
It explained a lot of things.
As Katherine was putting the pieces in place, she didn’t notice that the gargoyle had turned and was looking up at her window. He was looking directly at her.
BANG! She jumped as something hit the window right beside her head. The gargoyle had thrown a stone at her to get her attention.
“Hey!” she shouted and came back to her senses. She was looking straight into the backyard, straight into his glittering, dark eyes.
Chapter Five
