Garrick Stonewing's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Garrick Stonewing stood on the runed platform at dusk and listened for the music again. He was a gargoyle, wings folded tight against his back, horns lowered toward the treeline. Below him, past the carved slab and its jeweled lamps, the ground he had chosen for her sanctuary lay untouched. He had not laid a single stone. Every evening for six nights, the music had come, and every evening he had stayed at her door instead of building. Behind him rose the jeweled castle where he had placed Princess Melodia for safekeeping. Its stained glass burned with lantern light. She was inside, close to the door, her white gown bright through the colored panes. Garrick had chosen her. He was certain no one else saw her the way he did. He meant to build her a wall no rival could breach, the way he had built every wall he cared about. But he could not cut stone and guard a door at the same time. The music started. It came from the small stained-glass pavilion at the edge of the clearing, where the rival had made his perch. Notes drifted out between the jeweled panels, sweet and slow, pitched for her ear. Garrick heard the castle door creak. He turned. Melodia stood on the threshold, one bare foot forward, her hand on the frame. "Go back inside," Garrick said. She did not look at him. She looked at the pavilion. Garrick stepped down from the platform and put his stone hand flat against the door above her head. He pushed it closed, gently, until she stepped back. He heard the bolt drop on the inside. Then he turned toward the pavilion and opened his wings. The Mushroom Sprite sat on the pavilion roof, small and grinning, its glowing spots pulsing in time with the song. It saw Garrick coming and bared its sharp teeth in delight. Garrick did not fly. He walked. He crossed the clearing in a straight line, wings dragging the grass, and when he reached the pavilion he set both hands against its jeweled wall and pushed. Stone ground against glass. The pavilion tilted. The music broke into a shriek. The sprite leapt from the roof, hovered once at Garrick's eye level, hissed something in a language he did not know, and shot away into the trees. The pavilion settled at a crooked angle, silent, its lamps swinging. Garrick walked back to the platform. The castle door was still bolted. Melodia's shape had moved away from the glass. He had bought himself the hours he needed. But the sprite had not been driven off, only chased, and it had seen his face now, and known what he guarded. Garrick knelt on the bare ground beside the platform and pressed his palm to the dirt where the first foundation stone would go. Tomorrow at dawn, he would begin to cut.