Part 6 of the Foundations series
Part of the arc: The Houses that UG Built
The gargoyle had picked the roof ridge directly above the graveyard, which UG had to admit was a better instinct for the job than anything he’d have thought to give it credit for. It sat there for most of the first day doing nothing in particular, and then, the moment UG stepped underneath it to get a proper look, jumped straight up and came down again with a wet, satisfied gurgle, as though the whole point of the perch had been waiting for exactly one person to walk past so it could do that.
He tried to shoo it off. This achieved nothing whatsoever. It watched him wave his arms with what UG could only describe as polite interest, gurgled again, and did not move an inch. He went and got the jetpack, on the theory that a man hovering at eye level, present in three dimensions rather than one, would carry more authority than a man standing on the ground shouting. This also achieved nothing. If anything it made things worse — the gargoyle seemed to find a gnome bobbing unsteadily in midair considerably more interesting than a gnome standing still, and jumped twice more in quick succession, gurgling both times, delighted with the new game. UG gave up, landed badly, and decided the roof was the gargoyle’s now, on the grounds that arguing with something that couldn’t be shooed, bribed, or embarrassed was not a fight worth losing twice.
He came back that evening with nothing better to do and no real plan, and found himself talking to it anyway. He told it about the graveyard below — his, in the sense that he’d moved into the house and the plot both came with it, though he’d made it his own since: a set of Gilnean Stocks by the front path, a Gilnean Problem Solver tucked in near the back fence that he was fairly sure counted as a statement piece rather than a threat, various effigies dotted about that he’d added one at a time until the place stopped looking like somebody else’s cemetery and started looking like his.
The gargoyle gurgled back at him, low this time, nothing like the jump-and-gurgle it had greeted him with earlier. It sounded, if UG was reading it right, almost like agreement.
“You planning on staying, then?”
Another gurgle. It shifted its weight on the ridge, settling rather than repositioning, the stillness of something that had already decided and was only now getting comfortable with the decision.
“Suppose somebody ought to keep an eye on the place,” UG said. “I’m not down here as often as I should be.”
He hadn’t expected to mean that as much as he did once he’d said it out loud. The gargoyle didn’t answer that part either, but it didn’t jump this time, and it didn’t gurgle, and the silence that followed felt different from the one before. UG stood there a while longer than he needed to, looking at his own crooked stones, his own stocks, his own ridiculous guillotine, with something watching over all of it that hadn’t been there a fortnight ago, and found he didn’t mind the company nearly as much as he’d expected to.
He started leaving it scraps of rubble from the site most evenings after that, more habit than plan, and never saw it actually take one while he was watching. They always went missing by morning regardless.
More in the Foundations series
← Previous: V. The Claim · Next: VII. What the Second One Was Guarding →
Leave a Reply