Chapter Two Duncan #2
“I’m going to guess that you were buried, along with your broken wing, because your clan assumed you were dead.
When my— When the new owner, this most recent owner, wanted to excavate the area under the castle for a wine cellar, he found you and put your wing back on.
Not him personally, but he hired some guy.
Whoever he hired, he did a really good job of it, because—well, look.
You’ve got a wing on your back, and you’re alive.
That’s something. Perhaps because it was a clean break, it could heal?
He did it fast, too, all in a day.” Lady June’s hand runs over the place where my wing is reattached—with a long ropey scar that I can feel with the tip of my tail.
It reaches up and accidentally snaps against her fingers, and we both jump.
“A bit knocked off in flesh form can be healed, stitched on. Cracks show in the stone. But when it heals in flesh, the cracks are mended.”
“You have one hell of a scar made out of cement. I don’t know if that will ever heal right. It might not be cement. It could have been something like powdered rock paste? Is that a thing?”
I think on her words, but I cannot give an answer.
For one thing, I don’t know the term ‘cement,’ but I figure it must be something that can hold stone together.
“Perhaps mortar,” I suggest. “I don’t know how it works, but then again, some say no one but God Himself knows why gargoyles can have a coating of stone by day and turn to flesh at night.
If He made the rocks and water, and the lime and stone that bind bricks, I don’t know but what that same stuff will transform to flesh when it’s used on a gargoyle.
In my clan, they never tried to mend stone forms back together.
If I didn’t wake, they must have thought... ”
Lady June bites her lip, her eyes soft with sympathy. “You’re right. I don’t know, and it’s not important. What’s important is that I’m either having a nervous breakdown, and I’ve dreamed that my garden statue is a living monster—”
“We are not monsters, my lady. We’re gargoyles.
That is, I am.” It feels so strange to not have clan around me, to be a solitary soul.
I have to swallow hard before I continue.
“My kind are noble defenders and warriors.” I bow with courtesy, but my voice is pointed.
Some of my kind revel in the term monster, but my clan was never keen on it.
“Or you’re really a living, breathing gargoyle who has been asleep for the last century and change, and you’re a long, long way from home. We probably need to figure out how to get you back to Scotland, huh?”
My eyes pass over the pictures on Lady June’s strange box, which she calls a laptop.
The most recent photos, in bright, sharp colors, show no gargoyles at all.
“I have to know where my clan went. I have to try to find them. Gargoyles live a very long time. Some of the older ones will have passed on, but the younger ones may be about, and their little ones, and...”
“Man, I don’t know how we do that. I don’t think Daniel would believe me if he said his present came alive—I don’t even know if I’m supposed to give you back, now that he’s cheated. I mean, I consider it cheating, he doesn’t.”
“Cheating?”
“Oh, sorry. Unfaithful. With... scores of, uh, harlots? Is ‘harlots’ the right word?” Lady June looks as if she’s struggling with such a distasteful phrase. Or perhaps to find words that she thinks someone of my kind will know.
“The world has changed so much. It must have,” I muse aloud. “But I have not changed. I am able to comprehend your speech. Gargoyle-kind are not simple beasts.”
“It wasn’t that I thought you were ‘simple.’ I didn’t know how to put it without shocking you. Or if they even had BDSM and fetish clubs when you were alive.”
I squint. “No, I don’t know some of those words.”
“I’m very okay with that right now. Not that I’m kink shaming.”
“What is—”
“No! No, no, I’m sorry. Look, I’m still not sure that I’m not hallucinating. I just had the love of my life, the man I was going to marry, tell me he’s going to keep a bunch of harlots on the side as a healthy pastime. Is that how it is in your world? Back in the day?”
“Among humans? Too often. Among my kind? Never. We give a heartstone to our one and only love, and pledge our loyalty and heart to them and them alone.”
Lady June looks at me, tears standing out in her pretty brown eyes. “That’s beautiful.”
Perhaps it is because I’m lost, out of my time, injured, and confused that I cling to what I know.
“The laird of Castle Mackintosh has sent you here, to America? To this wee estate?” True, it is bigger than many of the tied houses and crofter’s cottages, but it is small for the wife of a man who owns a castle.
“More like he wouldn’t let me come with him.
Whenever he’s in the UK— that’s England and Scotland.
Well, and Wales and Northern Ireland, and—you know what, I’ll put on National Geographic for you later.
The point is, he kept me here so he could go visit his harlots.
I live in the ‘wife’ box. They live in his ‘playtime’ box. ”
I rear back and knock over three high stools with my tail and talon-like feet.
“He’s exiled you here, away from your rightful place at his side as lady of the castle?
” My eyes blaze, and my wings flap out to their full extent, taking down the wine bottle and glasses, making Lady June yelp and pick up her typing picture box.
“To sin against his love and troth with you?”
“Uh. Troth?”
I don’t care that Lady June seems puzzled by my words. Some of hers confuse me, too. “The centuries have passed, but a gargoyle’s job remains the same.” I bow. “I will protect you. That is obviously why I was sent—an exiled gargoyle to care for the exiled lady. Fear not. I am here now.”
Lady June nods slowly, as if she has grave doubts.
“I may not be able to fly on this wing, but I can still hunt, and if there are still highwaymen—”
“Can you sweep up? Because I’m barefoot, and there are bits of glass everywhere, Duncan.”
“Oh. Does the maid not do those menial things?” I look again at her meager clothing, and rage boils up within me. “Did he send you away like that, with nothing to wear? No servants?”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. I don’t do servants, I don’t need protecting, and I live by the code of ‘if you break it, you clean it up.’ There has to be a broom around here somewhere, and then we’ll find the vacuum.”
“The vacuum?”
“This is going to be a long night.”
“No servants? No gowns?”
Lady June groans. “A very, very long night.”
“Forgive me for saying it, but your man is a bastard.”
Lady June actually laughs, and for all that it is a harsh sound, it is still beautiful. “I think so, too. Looks like we have something in common, Duncan.”
“Thank you, Lady June.”
“Just June.”
“No, no, I cannae call the lady of the castle—”
“If you call me Lady June, I have to call you Sir Duncan. Like a knight. My brave, protective friend.”
My tail tip tingles at her praise and her smile. “Gargoyles do not usually receive titles, my lady.”
“Well, if I’m like the royal boss babe, I can knight you, right?” Lady June finds a broom in the narrow cupboard in the kitchen and taps me lightly on each shoulder. “I dub thee Sir Duncan, Protector of Pine Ridge.”
“Ooh. I like that.”
And even though I’m bloody confused about everything around me, I quite like Lady June, too.