Chapter Two Duncan
“Today sucks a big one.”
I woke up at moonrise. Everything hurt, and yet it was immediately evident there was work to be done.
A woman, clearly ravaged by some bandits who had removed most of her clothing and driven her mad with fear, sprawls before me, spouting nonsense in her terror.
Her face is stained with tears, and her hands and feet bear traces of earth.
I fear something horrible has happened overnight.
When I look up for the familiar, comforting orb of the moon, I know I am right.
I am in a nightmare.
Castle Mackintosh is gone. There isn’t even any rubble.
There are mountains and pines that were never in our craggy landscape, and the river is missing.
And all of my family—they’re missing, too.
I don’t know what to do about the world that’s clearly going wrong, but I know my duty, especially as one of the youngest, strongest males left to defend my clan and the humans that we’ve allied with.
“Don’t cry, my lady. No harm will come to you as long as there is one defender left for Clan Mackintosh.
Who did this to you? Where are they, and what has become of the castle? Where are the others?”
The lady looks at me with wide, terrified eyes. “Gargoyle?” she squeaks.
“Aye, gargoyle. Defender and friend of Castle Mackintosh.”
“My boyfriend just bought the castle,” she manages to say, the sounds she makes high and terrified, thin and almost inaudible, even with my ears.
“He’s the new laird?” The world is deeply fuzzy and grainy, as if I were asleep for far more than one day. “The American, with the steel factories?”
The lady blinks up at me and slowly crawls from her rear to her knees. “Oh. Oh, God. What year do you think this is? Where do you think you are?”
Now it is my turn to blink at her, my tone taking on the same careful, puzzled tone she speaks in. “1895, Gilcreedy, south of Inverness.”
“Shit,” she whispers.
“Lady!” I gasp, but I don’t chide her further. She’s obviously had a shock of some kind. “Where do you think we are?”
“Pine Ridge, New York. In America. And it’s 2026.”
Twenty-twenty-six. She speaks the years, and it takes me a moment to understand them.
“Wh-what? No! No, when I went to sleep, it was in the spring, and the old laird and his family had sold the place to an American. We were going to move, possibly take shelter with Clan Davidson if he was not minded to see gargoyles or to treat us well.”
“Uhhh. You might have moved, I guess? My boyfriend— Ex-boyfriend? The new owner, he found you when he was excavating the wine cellar underneath the place. Or like, on the grounds. I really don’t know, and I’m pretty sure I’m hallucinating.
Stress can do that to you. I thought I handled stress better, honestly.
” The lady shakes her head and runs both her hands through her hair, frowning and muttering.
“Lady, you are unwell.”
“Dude, you’re not kidding.” She laughs, but it is the hysterical laugh I heard too often when Lady Moira’s father was ill and there was no money to repair the castle or pay the taxes. Not a happy laugh at all. “What did you say your name was?” she asks.
“Duncan.”
“I’m June.” She hesitates, wipes her hand on her short (indecently short) under garments that are now exposed because some ruffian has stolen her skirts, and extends her hand to me. It’s less earthy now, but I’m not sure what she expects me to do with it.
Kiss it, I suppose, like I have seen the laird’s visiting guests do with Lady Moira and her companions.
My wing throbs strangely, and so does my chest. For a gargoyle to interact with a human member of the castle would be frowned upon.
But not in 2026—if that’s where I am.
Like I’m holding a breakable thing, a fragile bird’s egg, I lift the hand and kiss the spot where it meets the delicate wrist. “I have been sent here by the new laird, the owner? Then I am your guardian and protector, Lady June.”
Lady June just stares.
And stares.
“Lady June?” I fear she is going to faint. Or perhaps have a fit.
“Duncan, if you’re my new imaginary friend, you’re a good one. Come on in. I want to show you something.”
LADY JUNE HAS A BOX with lettered keys, like a flat version of Lady Moira’s fancy new typewriter—but instead of paper at the top, there is a screen—and there are grainy pictures of my home and my family.
But the pictures change, and go from all gray to a stained brown and cream, and then to color. And I disappear from my spot on the battlements, as do my kin.
“Where did I go?” I ask, trying to remain calm.
“Uh. Well...” Lady June pads around in bare feet now, still ridiculously close to naked in tiny garments that show all of her legs and shoulders, to say nothing of her arms and cleavage.
She goes to the shining metal box on the wall and opens it, a blast of cold air filling the kitchen—although it looks little like the kitchens I know.
She pulls out a bottle of wine and two glasses.
Those, at least, are familiar. “So. Uh.”
“Are you faint?” I rush to catch her, big feet kicking into chairs and those odd pink shoes she’s tossed off.
“Oh, I’m pretty sure I’m unconscious somewhere,” she sighs, and pours two glasses, one with a half portion and one full to the top. She pushes the full one towards me with a wry smile. “If you don’t drink that because you’re not really here, that’s fine. I’ll finish it. I could use it.”
I sip the wine, then drain it greedily, unsure why I feel so parched. So hungry. Something... Something in my memory stirs.
A happy place. Of feasting. Talking. No battles, and no one to guard, only ones to love. Old faces I hadn’t seen in ages, new ones I had never met.
Like a heaven—and yet, I don’t fully recall it, and there is a feeling that I never quite entered.
“Like a visitor by the gates,” I murmur to myself, voice low enough that Lady Jane cannot hear it.
“Wanna hear a theory? You know, since you’re my imaginary friend?” she says suddenly.
“I am your true and loyal friend, Lady June, if you are now of the clan of Mackintosh.”
“I’m of the clan of Russo-Mitchell,” June laughs. “Here’s my theory, friend.” She refills my glass. “Actually, first, I need your help. Not to be unpleasant about stuff, but how do gargoyles die?”
“The same way all mortals do.”
“Yeah, well, most mortals don’t turn to stone. What’s the last thing you remember?”
“Well... This American man had bought the place, and we weren’t sure what he would do with us, with the ‘statues’ on the castle.
We decided that if he wasn’t the sort of man to accept us, then we would move into the caves by the loch, and we’d regroup there, still guarding members of Clan Mackintosh.
That’s our way, you see. We would talk more the next night, after meeting the new laird.
Then... We all took our places on the battlements, and the sun came up, ” I say slowly, as if swimming through murky waters, trying to see something glinting at the bottom.
“Okayyyy. Can you be killed in your stone form?”
“If someone took a hammer to us, I suppose. Oh, my uncle, he died during a lightning storm late one August. A bolt struck him and blew him to pieces. Oh, horrible it was, to wake up and find him shattered in our midst, and my Aunt Morag never the same after.”
Lady June cautiously comes up to me, creeping slowly, hand outstretched as if she’s afraid I’ll bolt. Or bite. Her hand makes contact with my wing and then my back.
It’s an intimate touch that no human should attempt, stroking a gargoyle in such a fashion. However, instead of eliciting feelings of pleasure, there’s only pain. Something feels... wrong.
“If you were broken badly, like if your wing got knocked off—would you die?”
“I don’t know. I suspect I might. I don’t think a merciful creator would wake me up just to bleed to death, horrified at the sight of my mutilated body. A gargoyle without wings would be...” I stop and cannot voice the horror that image brings to mind.
“You didn’t wake up. Time for my theory, okay?
” Lady June drains her glass, licks her lips, and gives me a long, steady look.
“Now, I don’t know a lot, just a few conversations and a few minutes on the internet—I know you don’t know what that is, but you will soon, trust me.
The American guy who bought the castle tried to modernize it, but all he did was start bringing in crews who knocked stuff around.
The outside never got modernized, and he went bankrupt putting in plumbing and heating, stuff like that.
So the castle was pretty much abandoned except as a historical spot after the 1930s.
Well, until now. My theory is that you were the first casualty of his attempts to modernize things.
You can see in the photos that some of the gargoyles disappeared right after he bought the place.
I’m going to guess he put some of the gargoyles away, or moved them, or maybe...
Maybe you were what caused them to leave.
One of his crew moved you, or knocked you over, and your wing came off.
Where did your clan bury their dead? Or did they? ”
“In the old caves down by the loch, if we died while flesh,” I answer hoarsely, “and beside the castle, if we never woke from our stone state. Still standing guard, or so it appeared.”