1001 nights (fantasy)

The clack of her wooden heeled shoes on the cobbled streets had become a ritual, starting in the chipped stone of his ears. Slow, deliberate steps. Measured as if each one cost a little more than the last. The first night, the strange sound had resolved itself into a small figure, moving unhurried through the rain-soaked streets. A pink umbrella bobbing brightly through the grey. It had been winter then and she had looked up, a quizzical expression on her face. Through the muffling rain came a sound she had never before encountered in the grey, stretching gloom of the city. A sound of pure delight like gurgling water. Her eyes had settled on the tortured expression, the hard stone lines, and she had smiled. Actually smiled at him, as if she had just heard an old friend speaking her name. Every night after, going about her way, she had paused there to look up. After the first time the expression of surprise had become one of familiarity. Of kinship. After that first night, somewhere deep in the slope of his stone chest, fibers had begun inexplicably to loosen.

***

What she did in the city that caused her to wander past that corner of Brille and Kastowitz at exactly 7 PM every night he had only been able to speculate. The fact she came night after night precluded the possibility that she was simply coming back from work. Even the most dogged of humans needed time to rest. He knew this from watching the others that came and went, never stopping. It had taken some months from that first, muzzy awakening to determine this was the case, but slowly, through repetition he had learned the details of the dreary existence played out each night beneath him. Most of them didn't look. If they did, it was to scowl up into the rain for a few seconds before hurrying along their way.

He had learned their language, learned her name from a chance encounter on the street below. A surge of energy took him as she smiled at someone else, a woman, who joyfully greeted her. Marguerite. It had been that day that he'd managed to move one great stone paw a fraction to the left. He had tried to move again thereafter, but a strange enervation took him. The energy of the encounter, seeing her happy like that with another human, left soon after. Now, it came only in spurts when she smiled sweetly up at him. A tingling, starting in the center of his chest and spreading a little more for each of a thousand nights through his cold body.

He began trying to entice her to stay longer, smile more warmly as an idea took root. There, in the familiar warmth of her gaze, he began to understand the value of what these humans had. Freedom. Uncaring, unaware, they moved like automatons beneath him. Following their same dreary paths, day in and day out. In the back of his throat he started trying to form their words. At times, he was sure she could hear it, the strangled syllables of her name gushing through the spout of his mouth each time the heavens opened. On those days, she stayed a little longer, squinting in puzzlement up at the pedestal on which he perched. Warmed him a little more with her mere presence. Though he could not fathom how, he knew she was the key.

***

For the past two months, her trips past his corner had become erratic. He knew it was because of the other one - the wizened little man that accompanied her on her strolls these nights. They went new places now. Did other things. Each time he saw her with him, a deep angry surge in his breast threatened to loose him entirely from the stone mount. Wrapping a long, treacherous arm around her waist. Provoking in her a laughter that simultaneously caused a surge of energy and fear through the old stone of his muscles. It was so close. He could feel it, that final push of strength lingering just beyond his reach as she walked away each time.

‘Marguerite,’ the old bastard spoke her name with such reverence. Spread a flush through her cheeks counter-pointed only by his own rising anger.
‘Marguerite, how about we elope, my love? We could go to my brother. In the country.’
She would laugh then, swatting playfully at his jacket with her own wrinkled hand.
‘Philippe, we are too old to elope! And anyway, how do I know I'd like the countryside, hmmm?’

Sometimes during these exchanges she would remember to look at him, smile that little wistful smile until her lover, catching her by the arm declared:
‘Smiling at that old gargoyle again? No good comes of those old things, my dear! They should all be torn down!’
Philippe would lead her then down another street, and after he would not see her for days.

***

She would always go back. It was the thousandth and first night, although Marguerite would hardly have known that. She pulled on her scarf, surveyed the lines mapped into her face in the mirror and smiled. She was going to go see him, one last time and the thought filled her with a strange apprehension. Her little friend. Immediately, Phillipe’s voice sprang into her head, chiding her playfully for this obsession she seemed to have with some old gargoyle. She could never explain it to him. Somehow, the thing was alive in that way that only very old things in a very old city can sometimes be alive.
‘He is my friend, Phillipe,’ she would say softly, teasingly. ‘Every night he was waiting for me, long before you were there, my love.’

A sadness she could not explain would take her then, as Phillipe rolled his blue eyes at her expense.
‘The country will cure you of these delusions,’ he would say, causing a strange melancholy feeling to rise up in her breast.
‘Would you love me more, if it did?’
Never! His answer was always the same, emphatically. I could never love you less, my darling.

***

Tonight she wore red and it was summer. He listened expectantly as the familiar gait drew closer, counter-pointed again by that other. when they drew into view, he felt the familiar venom and heat, rising up in his chest. It was so tantalizingly close this time. He could feel the stone beneath his paws creaking with the strain he felt to break free. Marguerite. Smiling up at him for thousandth and first time. Behind her, Philippe held back, allowed her this last goodbye.
‘We are leaving now, my old friend,’ she murmured. Like hammers, the words jostled into his joints, threatening to topple him entirely. ‘Phillipe has a place in the country and I am so very tired of this rainy old city. I will miss you.’ She stood, a moment longer, utterly unaware of the raging strength swirling in the stone above her head.
‘Goodbye.’

As she turned, the old man came to place an arm around her waist, guiding her away. Above them, the gargoyle felt the energy subsiding, the awakening in his old, stone joints seeping away. Not a drop of rain to channel his words.
‘Come, my love, come,’ Phillipe said softly, walking her across the quiet street. And as they went, he turned, briefly, horribly, to flash a quick smile up at the edifice.

This piece is an entry to the @mctiller contest here: https://steemit.com/twentyfourhourshortstory/@mctiller/writers-win-5-steem-twenty-four-hour-short-story-contest-for-june-5-a-gargoyle-from-a-top-an-ancient-building-plots-its-coming

Image from: https://pixabay.com/en/gargoyle-carved-stone-grotesque-372674/