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Sure beats a studio apartment in the city.
Leo leads the way through the outskirts of the forest in silence, keeping to the trees as best we can. We avoid the illumination of the streetlamps that look as though they’ve been stolen from Victorian England. I marvel at the flickering light that is pure white with a violet core. “Beautiful. That’s a witch’s lucent. It burns without needing oil to keep it going. Lasts as long as the witch needs it to go. The longest light was catalogued thirty years ago, burning for a week straight.”
Leo’s massive head swings up toward me, so I answer what I assume is his unspoken question.
“Fern holds that record. I know very little about any of this, except how it applied to Fern,” I admit. “If you already knew that, thanks for letting me feel cool, like I have new information to share. I’m a little out of my depth here.”
Leo bumps his side to mine in his silent way of telling me that maybe I shouldn’t have been kept away from all of this. It’s my heritage. My birthright.
Or maybe Leo’s just telling me to shut up and keep my feet inside the forest, so we don’t make a show of our presence. It’s hard to tell when he can’t talk to me.
As we move further around the city, my mouth falls open as I start to piece together where I’ve seen this place before.
“I’ve dreamt about this,” I admit in a whisper. Then I shut my mouth tight.
Leo doesn’t need to know that sometimes I wake up and find that I’ve scribbled on paper foreign images of these very buildings while I was asleep. He doesn’t need to know that I’ve seen all of this in my dreams that leave me feeling both haunted and intrigued.
Leo really doesn’t need to see the wall of crazy I have in my apartment, where I wake each morning to find I’ve added a new drawing to the wall in my sleep, or that I’ve connected one image to another using a string of yarn. It’s starting to look like a serial killer’s obsession, but that’s not me. I’m not doing it on purpose, but I also can’t seem to make the sleepwalking or the dreams stop.
Yeah, best keep my mouth shut.
More things I recall from my dreams that I didn’t know were real come into view. Fern’s bedtime stories never came with illustrations, so I assumed my subconscious was just painting a backdrop for the crazy dreams I’ve been having for the past few weeks.
I wonder if…
But now that I’m putting together that my dreams are a manifestation of this reality, I want to know ifheis here.
I have to find the gargoyle who’s been haunting my dreams.
I study the elaborate terraces on each of the ancient buildings we pass.
My gut pings inside of me when I finally catch a glimpse of the tall spires and stained glass, framed by a parapet that looks as old as it does sturdy. My feet still when my gut lets me know thatthisis what I am supposed to see, though I don’t know why, other than for my own gratification.
The buildings in this part of town stretch four stories high for the most part, made of stone and laden with bronze detailing that I wish I could stop and study for days on end. I gape at the single stone gargoyle perched on the parapet, looking down on the city. “He used to be alive,” I tell Leo, as if he doesn’t already know this history of his own town. I don’t care that Leo’s lived here his whole life. This is all new to me, so I get to gush on the details I am finally permitted to study in person, rather than constantly seeing them in my wonky dreams with no explanation, or hearing Fern’s fragmented recollections and trying to make sense of them.
Leo pauses beside me, staring up at me in what I swear is a look of mild amusement, as if asking if I intend to educate him on his hometown.
As if I know anything about where I came from.
I fix my gaze on the breathtaking building of the sole library in Grayrock City. That much, I know. Fern told me the entire city has only one library, and it was well guarded by a gargoyle.
I point at history come to life. “That’s the lone gargoyle!” I tell Leo excitedly. My feet carry me forward until I spot the monstrous features of the beast, my mouth agape. “There he is! That’s Gregory Pectonda. He’s the guard who was meant to keep the magical artifacts and books safe that are inside the library. One was stolen on his watch, so he was cursed to live forever in his stone form.” My hand goes over my heart. “It’s so sad. Why would they do that?”
I can tell Leo has opinions, but he doesn’t voice them.
He chuffs quietly at me, then moves to the edge of the forest, putting distance between us when a man in a grayish-blue uniform with a taser and baton hanging off his belt walks past.
I can tell Leo doesn’t want the officer to know we are here together—that somehow it would be bad if we were caught… being friends? Walking together? I’m not entirely sure.
“He isn’t dead up there, you know. Fern told me he can see and hear just fine.” I move into the lamplight, blinking up at the stone statue with compassion that jerks my heart in my chest.
Though I recall the sad bedtime story well, seeing it in front of me coaxes emotion to the forefront. I know Leo wants us to stick to the forest, but my feet carry me closer to the lone gargoyle perched on the edge of the parapet, looking down on me as I stare up at him. I can see the shame in his cartoonishly rounded eyes. I can tell he carries it still.
In my drawings of him that litter the wall when I wake, there is a detail that I want to check to see if it is there in real life. I ignore the goosebumps erupting on my arms, knowing that there is significance in this moment that I have yet to fully understand.
I step closer, nodding politely to a person who walks past and goes into the library (which is apparently open twenty-four hours), peering carefully up at the stone statue.
And there it is. A thin chain necklace around his fat neck. Even it is stone now, but I see it all the same. Fern never mentioned that the gargoyle wore a necklace. I’m not sure it’s a detail that even matters. But in my drawings that I do when I’m sleepwalking, the necklace is always there. It feels important, and I feel a sort of resolution being able to see it in person.
