Prelude All the gargoyles on the unfinished cathedral in the dusty market district of Odierne face east except one.
Which means that all the gargoyles are insufferable early risers who begin their gossiping the moment sunshine hits their stone faces. Except one.
“Did you hear?” says one of the east-side gargoyles. “The tanner’s wife caught him buying a pint for that saucy new laundress!”
The rest of them chortle. “Well, which would you choose? One smells like fresh linens, and the other one stinks like the entrails of a boar.”
Only one gargoyle on the cathedral roof faces west, thereby avoiding the morning departure of the pigeons from their roosts, which means there is only one gargoyle who does not get coated in bird grime. Only one gargoyle who does not have to wait for the rain to wash the smelly splatters from his horns.
And that gargoyle, in faith, is me.
“Serves you right, you noisy scummers!” I hoot the minute I hear the
slap-slap of white pigeon poop hitting the heads of the east-side gargoyles. “One of these days, you’ll get a special delivery right in the chops—that’ll teach you to talk so much!”
“Bite your tongue, ugly!” the east-side gargoyles screech back at me. “No one likes you!”
I chuckle to myself. Always to myself. Their words roll off my back like water.
There are five of them, of uniform size and shape except for their monstrous heads, which are chiseled to look like various beasts from God’s green earth.
They have a decent view of Odierne’s best streets, the vendors, our city’s front gates, the count’s manor. My ledge overlooks the Sarluire, a river of little color that winds between Odierne and an expanse of barley fields beyond. The water carries the city’s refuse, which tends to bunch at the nearby canal bridge. After ninety years of this view, I weary of it.
I weary of the gleam of the Sarluire at high noon, angled right into my eyes.
For ninety years, I have been blinded by that river.
For ninety years, I have had to listen to those east-side ninnies speaking about things I cannot see, their voices so loud I cannot hear anything else.
They were made by a different sculptor. Perhaps that is why it is so easy to argue with them. Or perhaps it is because there is little else to do up here except spin new ways to insult each other, new cruelties to shout across the roof like sermons.
Every day is the same when you are waiting. Tomorrow we will call each other guileless toads, wart-faced nanny goats, great horned devils. I will growl for quiet; they will refuse me my request.
And above, the sun will burn a trail across the sky, and the moon will rise vapors from the sea. Time marches on.
Ninety years.
They call me ugly—but we are gargoyles. We are all ugly.
And ugly has never once stopped the birds. They roost in the eaves, in the bell-less belfries, safe from weather and wind. And when there is no more room in the hollow places of our unfinished frame, they try to roost on top of my head. Every time one of these feathered rodents steers too close, I bite at them,
hard as I can.
“Fly south forever!” I shout. “Get plucked!”
At night, when the birds think I am snoozing, they bring their sticks and leaves and pieces of straw to my mouth, hoping to construct a nest before morning. But I snap my jaws shut, aiming to squash them, and end up with dirty feathers between my teeth.
“I hope someone roasts you with fennel and rotten potatoes!” I call as they flap into the darkness. It’s a good thing I do not sleep, or else they would make a birdbath out of me.
The pigeons are enough of a plague, and my fellow gargoyles make me wish I could chip my ears right off my head, but they are nothing compared to the abbey next door.
The Glorious Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy, it is called, and its sisters are a bunch of white-cloaked old hedge witches. After their morning prayers, which drone on and on, they stand in their garden and blend together in chant, as if each of their voices is a string and they must musick them into a benedictory banner that hangs above Odierne for all the town to hear.
It makes me sick. It makes me wish for a working spout so I could spit water and pretend to be throwing up whenever they start their singing.
“Praise God, from whom all blessings flow,” they sing.
“Praise butts, from where all droppings flow!” I sing back, as loud and triumphant as I can.
“Grow up!” the east-side gargoyles scold. “You’re revolting.”
So revolting, I have alternate verses for every hymn in the Glorious Congregation’s repertoire: “All Glory, Farts, and Honor,” “Sing to Him in Constipation,” “Of the Fathers Doves Were Smotten.”
I do not think God minds. I like to think He is on my side.
After all, God made the silence to be enjoyed.
Ninety years I have watched the river from my ledge.
Ninety years since I was chunked from a strange mountain and chiseled into shape and hauled onto this rooftop to keep our cathedral safe.
“A gargoyle is made to protect,” said my maker as she brought her tools up to my horns. And that is what I am supposed to do. Protect.
Ninety years since they started working on our cathedral. But I still remember.
How my stone fizzed with excitement when I saw where my perch would be—so high up, I could see all the way to the horizon. How our structure came together in bursts and bits, block by block, slathers of wet mortar and piles of split timber. All of Odierne came out to witness the birth of a new cathedral, a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle. How I could not wait to keep watch over them. Whatever came through the city walls—sieges, storms, spirits—I would guard the people as my own.
And I remember when the workers left for a midwinter feast day and never came back. The hay they had stuck between our stones to keep the mortar from cracking in the cold was there for many winters and summers alike, until the mice carted it off for their burrows.
Odierne was able to forget. They forgot about us long ago. They stopped seeing our stones as potential walls. Now they look right past our deserted structure as if we are invisible. They walk around the foundation to get to the butcher, to get to the river, as if we are something fixed in the earth like a tree. We are an eyesore, an embarrassment. They have learned to ignore us the way you learn to ignore a festering pockmark on your chin.
And every evening, when we are silhouetted with the rest of Odierne’s skyline, I wonder if we will ever be finished? Or are we destined to rot up here for eternity?
“Someday they will come back and finish this box of bricks,” I tell myself when the taste of righteous longing overpowers the usual flavor of my tongue, sun-warmed lumière rock. “They will finish the choir. They will finish the last wall. They will put in the windows. This will be a functioning cathedral, and we will protect the city. I will be a functioning gargoyle—”
“You’re a functioning monster already.” Harpy, one of the east-side gargoyles, a real delight with an eagle’s head and the temperament of a snarling boar, can never pass up a chance to harass me. “You’re so ugly, you scared the financiers away!”
Gargoyles are supposed to be ugly.
Ugly does nothing.
We are all ugly.
Copyright © 2022 by Lindsay Eagar. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
