Short Stories
“Stone Works”
Misunderstood
WolfSinger Publications 10/09/2015
Synopsis
A gargoyle released from his long captivity on the side of a building meets a troll who is willing to show him the modern world, if the gargoyle will turn him into a statue.
Excerpt
The troll steepled his fingers, tufts of hair sticking straight out of his head, and glanced up at the brick and stone buildings of the square. Raffaello was mindful of his wings pressing against the inside of his skin, a reaction to the crooked creature.
“My name is Carmine,” he said, peering over his fingers at Raffaello. The moment stretched on until Raffaello wanted to turn and walk away. Then he realized he had nobody else to talk to. He was not friends with the man who had released him, and now that his job for the man was done, he would not see him again. After seven centuries, he longed for companionship. He had not seen the fellow gargoyle who had enslaved him, but he would look for the woman, in time. For now, he was…lonely. Even if there had been others like him around, he did not currently long for his own kind.
Raffaello paused, and relented. “What do you want?”
Spectacles had been a rarity in the 14th century, but the troll peered over a pair of them and then back up at the buildings.
He looked to be about two hundred, still young by their standards. He would not have existed when Raffaello was put to stone. Through trolls’ long lives, their ears and noses grew, making them even more horrible at the end.
“You have your stone powers?” Raffaello nodded at the question. Sunlight did not make trolls explode, as human lore would have it. However, they did not prefer the daylight, so it was rare for them to be out during the day. There were a lot of wrong myths about the paranormals, all of which the gargoyle had had time to mull over in the long decades.
“I have them,” the gargoyle said. Perhaps the other man wasn’t so bad. They were talking, after all, something few had bothered to do since he had been freed.
“Good, good,” the troll said. Raffaello caught a glimpse of something in the troll’s mind. Cogs and parts and wheels. He focused, his powers working too slowly for his liking. The image came clear after a time. Carmine was a clockmaker? Odd choice for a troll.
“Why do you ask?”
The troll peered at him as if were far away.
“I want you to turn me into a statue.”