Chapter 3
Three
Georgie
The ground was hurtling towards me. Cold wind rushed past me, stinging my eyes, tearing at my hair.
Of all the thoughts to have before you die, 'I can't believe the idiot dropped me' shouldn't have been one of them.
He'd let go of me less than fifty metres from Wallace Monument.
So close, yet so far. And I was about to end up smashed to bits before I could even find out why the Guardian had come to life, grabbed me and flown me high into the air.
The theory that I was dreaming, or in a coma after falling off the ladder, was increasing in probability.
I had a second or two to live. Then it would be over.
I closed my eyes and waited for the impact.
Strong, hard arms wrapped around me and pulled me up.
The flapping of wings drowned out the wind.
I dared to open my eyes a tiny bit. The Guardian's face was a mask of pain and exhaustion.
His wings moved unsteadily, one noticeably weaker than the other.
But he'd caught me. And we were close to the ground now, maybe twenty metres from the cliff's edge where two benches offered a view over Stirling and the river Forth.
I'd sat on those benches many a time with a book and a thermos flask of tea.
The Guardian's breathing was hot and fast against my ear.
When he'd first snatched me off the castle wall, his grip had been gentle yet secure and strong.
Now, it had become desperate. He was pressing me against his bare chest, and I felt like I was being crushed against stone.
I'd think about how he felt both like hard rock and warm skin once I had my feet on solid ground again.
“The landing might be rough!” He was out of breath and every word was laced with exhaustion.
I steeled myself for a crash. The grassy clifftop was surrounded by tall trees, leaving only a small place safe to land on. I was tempted to close my eyes again.
“Almost there.”
A few more beats of his leathery wings, then the grass rushed to meet us. We avoided the closest bench by a hair's width, but before I could be relieved, we tumbled onto the ground in a mess of limbs.
It hurt. As much as I'd been looking forward to this flight ending, I had hoped for the landing to be less painful.
The Guardian groaned. He'd taken the brunt of the impact. I was mostly still on top of him, my head resting on his chest, his arms cradled protectively around me.
“Are you hurt?” I asked carefully.
He groaned again. That didn't sound good.
I'd planned to tell him exactly what I thought of him abducting me, but that could wait.
I pushed his arms off me and scrambled to my feet.
My back hurt a bit, my trousers had green stains from the grass, but everything seemed to be intact.
A few bruises at most. Considering we'd almost crashed into a cliff face, I'd fared pretty well.
But not the Guardian. He wasn't moving. His wings were still spread out across the grass. His eyes were closed.
I knelt by his side. “What's hurting? How can I help?”
I realised a second later that I had no idea how to give first aid to a gargoyle. He'd felt softer than he looked, but he was made of stone. Wasn't he? I didn't know what to think anymore.
Until this morning, everything had been simple. Stone was stone. It didn't move. Gargoyles were carved from unmoving stone by craftsmen and women. They didn't come to life. And they certainly didn't jump off their perch and kidnap stonemasons.
“I will be fine.” His voice reminded me of a boulder grinding over rocks. “Just a moment.”
I peered around the small clearing. I knew dog walkers and students from the university liked to come here, not to mention the tourists flocking to the Wallace Monument.
I could see the tip of it through the trees, reaching high into the sky.
The top had been built to resemble a royal crown, elegant yet imposing.
You could see the tower from miles away, built on a rocky cliff-lined hill called the Abbey Craig.
Down below were the fields where William Wallace himself had fought the English.
It was a beautiful spot, but today I couldn't appreciate it.
Not when I had an injured gargoyle next to me. If he even was a gargoyle.
“What are you?” I blurted before I could collect my thoughts.
“Who.”
“What?”
“Who are you. That's the polite thing to ask.” His lips moved into something like a smile, exposing two sharp fangs. “My name is Cairn. I am of the Grey Warrior Caste, the finest in all of Spiris. And I have been waiting for you for a very long time.”
Most of that didn't make any sense. Yes, the words were words and they fit together in one way or another, but I had no idea what a warrior caste was or why he'd waited for me.
“Sorry, but that's not what I meant,” I said. “I'm not going to ask you what you are again but - no, that's exactly what I'm asking. You're not human. You're not a grotesque. Unless you're telling me that stone statues can come alive. I don't believe in magic.”
“Neither do I.” He did a chortling sort of laugh. I could hear the pain underneath it. “I am not a statue. I'm a living being, just like you and your kind. And until I crash-landed on this planet, I was as agile as any gharrgoil warrior. Something in this atmosphere caused me to petrify.”
“A what warrior?”
“Gharrgoil.” He repeated the word, adding a rough sound in the middle that came from deep in his throat.
“That sounds suspiciously like gargoyle.”
“I know. I have had a long time to consider the similarity and have yet to find an explanation.”
I went over his words again. “Planet. Planet. You're... Actually, that makes more sense to me than magic bringing a statue to life. You're an alien.”
“You're taking this surprisingly well.”
“I think the freakout will come later. And so will more questions. But for now, I want to know how I can help you. Do you want to sit up?”
He finally opened his eyes. They were dark, almost black, but sparkled with life. His skin looked softer now than it had when I'd first approached him on the castle wall, but it was still the same graphite grey. Some of his features were human, yet he very clearly was anything but.
He - Cairn - blinked up at the sky, then his gaze focused on me.
My chest constricted. There was something about the way he looked at me...
I couldn't put my finger on it. He was hard to read.
Not that I was very good at reading people.
It's why I liked to work with stone. It didn't talk back, didn't have opinions, and didn't want anything from me.
Stone was easy. Sometimes, a rock would tell me the shape it could take, the art waiting deep within.
All I had to do was set my chisel in the right place and slowly, gently reveal the hidden beauty inside.
“I will be alright in a moment. Gharrgoils heal fast in the presence of their mates.”
His lips pressed tightly together, as if he hadn't meant to say that.
But he had.
“Mates?” I echoed.
He hissed in pain as he folded his right wing, then his left. He slowly pushed himself up, but his arms were shaking with the effort of holding his weight.
“Let's talk about that somewhere else. It was foolish of me to aim for the tower. A deep instinct that overwhelmed me upon invigoration. Gharrgoils like to roost in high-up places. I should have known better than to fly right away. And over a populated area at that.”
The implications of that slowly crystallised. “I bet someone filmed us. We might already be on TikTok. On the news. A gargoyle carrying a woman. Not something you see every day.” I laughed despite myself.
“I have watched your kind for a long time, yet my understanding is still rudimentary,” he said slowly. “Are you aware other species exist across the universe?”
“No. Not really. I think many scientists accept that there has to be life out there, but they keep talking about bacteria on faraway planets, not actual aliens.”
“That is what I thought. I have been reckless. We should hide.”
“Hide?” I laughed again. I sounded hysterical.
“Where are you going to hide? As soon as we leave this clearing, we will encounter someone.
If you fly, you will be spotted. Everyone has a phone nowadays.
You'll be seen, filmed, put online. And I don't know what would happen then.
One video can be explained away as being made by AI. Two, three, ten - I don't think so.”
He had the decency to look guilty. “I am sorry. The exhilaration of finally being able to move again overwhelmed me. And the joy of - no matter. You know this planet more than I do. What do you suggest we do?”
Typical. A guy gets me into trouble, then expects me to find a solution. Story of my life. Except that all my previous male encounters had been with humans, not a seven-foot gargoyle with wings and impulsivity issues.
“We can try walking through the forest, away from the paths. That will get us to a road. I can ask my apprentice to pick us up. He's young, but he's-”
“No,” Cairn growled. “No other males. Not yet. Not while I'm still recovering.”
“No other... Fine then. We can either call a taxi and hope that the driver is a woman who doesn't report you to the police, the media, whatever, or we can ask one of my friends.
Either way, someone else is going to have to get involved unless you want to walk from here back to the castle where I have my car.
That's at least three miles. And there will be people everywhere.”
He thought for a moment. His brow was furrowed, a valley of stone between two cragged mountains. As long as he didn't move, he still looked like the gargoyle from the castle wall. Only when he breathed, shifted, talked, did his skin look softer than rock. Slightly.
“Is your friend female?” he asked eventually.
“I have more than one friend.” I didn't know why I felt like I had to establish that. Maybe I didn't want him to think I was lonely, or unsociable. “The closest one to here would be Cleo. We went to school together. She works for a dating agency and she's a bit... alternative.”
“Alternative?”
“She believes in things others don't. Once, when we went out and got a bit too drunk, she said that she believed in aliens. That she'd met some. I obviously thought she was pissed at the time, and I still doubt that she's met any - what are the chances. Or do aliens frequently come to Earth?”
“I have not been in touch with my people for a very long time. When we crashed on your planet, it did not yet exist in our interplanetary databases. But that was many generations ago. For all I know, Earth could be a destination for alien tourism by now. The one thing I can say for definite is that I never saw an alien in the castle I watched. Unless they arrived while I was asleep. That is a probability. I lost track of some of the rotations.”
I stared at him. Was he making a joke or was this actually possible?
A dog barked in the distance. It was high time to get out of here.
I pulled out my phone and dialled Cleo's number. I'd not talked to her in weeks. She had three children, the youngest only a year old. She was usually too busy to meet up. But this was an emergency.
She picked up on the third ring.
“Georgie? Give me a moment, I'm just changing nappies.”
“Nappies?” Cairn whispered. “I do not know that word.”
He had excellent hearing. Good to know.
“Doesn't matter,” I whispered back. “Not something you'll ever encounter.”
He raised an eyebrow but stayed quiet. I could hear rustling in the background, then a baby crying, followed by cooing sounds from Cleo.
She was a great mum. Her having children and me being both single and childless had moved us in different directions, but the occasional times that we did manage to meet, it felt like no time at all had passed.
“Sorry about that. Megan always gets a bit upset by nappy changes. What's up?”
Well. How to even begin...
“I need your help. Are you able to pick me up from the Wallace Monument in Stirling? I'm kind of stranded here.”
“Stranded at the Wallace Monument? That's a weird one.”
“Tell me about it. I'll explain everything later.”
“Have you called the AA? I assume your car broke down?”
“Uhm... Not exactly. I didn't get here by car. I'll explain. Can you pick us up? Please?”
“Us?”
Ah. Yes.