A Box of Gargoyles Read Online Free

wall so that he could see.
    Valko squinted.
    â€œNo,” he said. “There can’t be anything up there. That’s where my room is.”
    â€œWell, but look,” said Maya. “On that little ledge outside. The gargoyle . Wait, no, two gargoyles. I didn’t see the other one before.”
    They had just about stepped right into the street by now, trying to get a better view.
    â€œOh!” he said, and shook his head three separate times, like a dog confused by too much water.
    â€œBut gargoyles are heavy,” he said. “Aren’t they? There can’t be a sudden gargoyle. It must have always been there. Even if it wasn’t. I mean, I didn’t see it before. There was never a gargoyle on my windowsill. But I must have been wrong. It must always have been there. Right?”
    â€œWhat do you mean, always ?” said Maya. Valko was really beginning to worry her. There are friends you go to when the world gets wobbly and you need someone to explain again that everything is logical, really, if you study it hard enough. That was Valko. That was always Valko. And now here he went sounding, of all things, vague . “I don’t know about the gargoyles, but I told you, the rest of it just happened two minutes ago. When I touched the wall. Valko?”
    â€œThere’s got to be an explanation,” Valko was saying, more to himself than to anyone else. “There’s always an explanation. All right. A branch with new leaves—why? It came from a tree from a warmer climate, maybe, and was just grafted onto that trunk today. Or a committee has been wrapping it in heating pads, maybe, at night? That could be. All those warm heating pads, fooling the branch into thinking it’s spring already. Or a bunch of people with hair dryers—”
    Maya couldn’t help herself: she snorted out loud. It came from nowhere at all, that snort. For one second she had forgotten the cold water entirely.
    â€œWhy are you laughing?” said Valko, turning to look at her (but she was already not laughing anymore, because as soon as he looked at her, she remembered all over again about December). “It’s a scientific explanation . Hair dryers. Why not? Yes, that’s what it must have been.”
    â€œStop it!” said Maya. “Something’s messing with your brain.” It was beginning to creep her out, to tell the truth.
    â€œOh,” said Valko, and he perked up a little, considering that possibility. “Really? Like seeing things that aren’t there? Like that shadow thing following you?”
    Shadow?
    Maya spun around to look.
    It was true. Behind them the wind had kicked up a little column of leaves—of dust—of something. A sack’s worth of shadow, hugging the embassy wall. It paused, spinning in place, tasting the air, and then began slipping along down the sidewalk in their direction, feeling its way toward them against the wind . A silvery trickle of cold raced down Maya’s spine.
    â€œI wonder what the scientific explanation is,” said Valko, “for that shadow?”
    It was tempting, at that moment, to turn tail and run. To drag Valko away in a completely other direction.
    But she had just been thrown from the tilting deck of the world into a lot of very cold water, and one effect of that, it turned out, was that bubbling up inside the old, cautious Maya was a new, half-drowned Maya, a little bit furious with the unfairness of the world. You know? Gash! So this is what she did instead:
    She took one reckless step toward that shadowy, lurching column—and she barked .

  2  
BARKING AT SHADOWS
    I t’s a useful talent, being able to bark like a dog. The shadow fell back, quavering, and Valko made the small gasping sound of someone finally waking up.
    â€œMaya?” he said. “Did you just bark at that thing?”
    â€œLet’s get across the street,” said Maya. But she couldn’t