melt. They looked ghoulish and spooky, melting slowly away, with sadly drooping wings and drooling fangs. Gargoth didn’t seem to notice.
School started the next day, and this was the first week of Katherine’s piano lessons for the second term. If she had forgotten their agreement, Gargoth hadn’t. At the first opportunity, he reminded her of her promise from a few weeks before. After dinner on Sunday night, Katherine took out a mug of hot chocolate in the new huge, checkered mug she had given him for Christmas.
“We will start looking for her this week, then?” he reminded her, as soon as they were alone in the backyard.
“Yes, Gargoth,” she said. “I promised. But I have to say I’m not really happy about it. It’s a lot of sneaking around, and I don’t like to do that behind my parents’ backs. I really feel like I should tell them.” She sat in the bench beside his pedestal and brushed some snow off the back of the unicorn’s mane.
“No, Katherine. Please, I promise all will be well.”
He was so earnest that she sighed and said, “Fine. But if there are any problems, if I’m late for piano even once, we’ll have to tell them and find another way.”
“Don’t worry, Katherine. It will be fine.” Gargoth delicately tipped up his mug to get his final sip of hot chocolate (despite what you might think, gargoyles are actually very tidy eaters) and grinned at her.
She went inside a few moments later, still not feeling great about the adventure she was about to undertake, traipsing through Toronto’s subway with a supposed-to-be-inanimate creature talking to her from her backpack. But she felt she might just be able to help him find the gargoyle he was searching for, and if he did find her, Katherine felt certain he would be able to leave her family, leave her backyard, and carry on with his own life.
And that’s what they all wanted, wasn’t it, Katherine thought? For him to get unstuck from their lives, and get on with his own? She also knew her parents had grown fond of him, but she knew they were saddened by the changes in their lives. No parties. No friends to visit. No beautiful flowers. She missed having her own friends over for sleepovers. And it was getting harder and harder to come up with reasons not to invite people over.
No matter how she looked at it, Katherine had to admit it was difficult having a gargoyle living in her backyard.
Monday morning dawned. The family quickly returned to their pre-Christmas routines. It always surprised Katherine how fast the events of the holidays became a dream-like memory.
She was happy to see her friends at school again. They all talked about what they had been doing over the holidays. She had a lot of fun telling everyone what the ski trip had been like.
All too soon, Wednesday morning arrived, and with a faint sense of dread, Katherine realized that today was the day. Her mother waved out the back door to Gargoth, then she and Katherine got into the car, and off they drove to school.
From the back seat, Katherine said as casually as she could, “So, piano starts again tonight, Mom.”
“Oh, yes! I forgot! Do you remember how to get to Elaine’s?” her mother asked absentmindedly.
“Uh-huh. Take the bus down Christie to the subway, then go east to Castle Frank, then north one street to her house. I remember. You’ll pick me up at six o’clock outside her house, right?”
“Yes. I’ll be there. And please remember to call me when you get there. Promise?”
“Yeah, Mom, don’t worry, I’ll call.” Katherine bit her lip, kissed her mother goodbye, then jumped out of the car and bounded into the school. She was beginning to wonder how on earth she was going to get home, get Gargoth into her backpack, then dash downtown and back up to her piano lesson on time.
It wouldn’t be easy. The night before, she and Gargoth had agreed that he would be waiting at the back fence. She thought she could run home after school, take the shortcut to their backyard down the lane, then he could leap over the fence, and she’d save at least five minutes off going the long way to the front door.
The day at school seemed impossibly long and slow. But finally it ended, without mishap. At last three-thirty came, and Katherine took off like a shot. Her friend Rubie ran across the school field to try to catch her, but Katherine pretended not to hear her and kept running. The last thing she wanted was to explain why she needed to get home really quickly today.
It worked perfectly. The day was clear and cold, but most of the snow had melted, so Katherine could run as fast as she wanted over the sidewalks without slipping. She had her big yellow canvas backpack on, and she hoped Gargoth would fit. Try as she might, she hadn’t been able to convince him to get in the night before, just to make sure there was enough room for him.
She smiled, in spite of herself. “Such pride!” she thought.
She arrived at the back fence at exactly 3:42. “Twelve minutes! That’s pretty good for two kilometres!” she thought. Then she whistled softly, as they had agreed.
A second later, she heard a loud thud beside her. There was Gargoth, lying in the muddy lane, looking very upset.
“You’re late, Katherine! And I’m all muddy and wet!” he complained.
She sighed. “Get in Gargoth, and be quiet.” She squatted down, and the little gargoyle clambered up onto her back, pulled himself over the rim of the sturdy canvas backpack and slid in, head first.
He grunted, then Katherine had an uncomfortable sensation as he wriggled and righted himself to rest on his large feet.
“Uh, Gargoth,” she began, as she stood up and adjusted the straps of the backpack to allow for more room for him, “would you mind turning the other way. Your, uh, claws are digging into my back.”
Gargoth grunted again, and after a few minutes of squirming and snorting and, Katherine was sure, quite unnecessary sighing, he had turned himself inside the backpack so his back was against Katherine’s back. She had to admit that scaly wings rubbing against her back were only slightly more comfortable than pointy claws sticking into her ribs.
She had been walking all the while. “Next week, we bring a soft towel for you to lean against,” Katherine whispered over her back. She was walking down Bloor Street now and didn’t want people to see her whispering into her backpack.
All she heard in response from Gargoth was a soft snort. He was asleep!
“That’s probably good,” she thought. “I don’t have to worry about him talking to me on the subway.”
She reached the subway entrance, paid her student fare, then waited on the eastbound platform for the next train. No one could possibly know what was inside her backpack, but she was nervous and jumpy all the same.
And Gargoth, small as he was, was beginning to feel quite heavy. Katherine hoped no one would notice that her backpack was snoring.
Chapter Eighteen
The First Store
Judging by Gargoth’s description of the store and the large red “locomotion machine,” as he called it, Katherine had decided that they should start looking in the stores along the streetcar route of Toronto’s Queen Street East. The area was full of antique shops,
