hwango

I want to make one thing clear right away - I don't eat pigeons. I don't know anyone who does, and I don't know how the misconception started or why it persists, but it irritates me. The other thing that I want to set straight is that I'm a grotesque, not a gargoyle. It's a gargoyle's job to drool rainwater away from the sides of the building to keep mortar from eroding. It's important, but it's not really dignified work. I, on the other hand, am a warrior.

Well, a guard. But there is fighting involved from time to time, and when things get dangerous the gargoyles don't exactly leap into action.

I remember waking up just after my building was finished being constructed. I knew instinctively that it and I were both newly created, what I was, what my job was, and that I wasn't on holy ground. It was hard starting my first moment on guard duty feeling that I wasn't actually guarding anything important, and that I might go my whole life never actually doing anything, because surely evil spirits only attack cathedrals and such. I knew that I'd do my job anyway if evil spirits did show up, but I admit that I resented my situation. Then my building woke up.

Now of course buildings can't move around on their own like I can when the situation requires it of me, and they don't have a fully developed conciousness or the ability to speak. They're not alive in that sense. They're alive more like I suppose trees are. Or maybe a little less than that. Or a little more. Anyway, I could tell that my building was more than just my duty and my home, and that it...loved me, for lack of a better word, and I felt ashamed for thinking so little of it.

For the most part, it turned out to be a pretty easy job, but not meaningless or entirely dull. It quickly became apparent that evil spirits don't just go after holy ground after all, and whatever it was that was in my building held at least passing interest for them. But evil spirits are, for the most part, a pretty cowardly bunch, and tend to be pretty stupid. A good snarl will send most of them packing. Raise one foot off my ledge and start to spread my wings and nine out of ten take off like lightning. The one that doesn't take off is what keeps the things interesting. I've had some good fights over the years. And on nights when things are slow, sometimes my building will sing to me, silently, in my head. It's not a bad life after all.

My name is North. I'll bet you can guess why. I suppose I'm lucky in a way that there aren't more of us here. I suspect on some cathedral somewhere there's a grotesque whose name is North Side Third Story Fourth from the Left.

Though I'm always on the lookout for evil spirits, you can't stare at a city every moment of every day and not notice other things happening. New buildings go up, stay a while, maybe get renovated, maybe get demolished. That's always a sad and sometimes terrifying sight. I worry about that happening to us. Evil spirits I can handle, but cranes and the bulldozers would be another matter.

I've seen more people than I care to count. For the most part I think of them as noisy and insignificant or even dangerous, when I think about the bulldozers. I know that technically they made me and they made my building, and I probably ought to feel some sense of gratitude towards our creators, but they're always yelling at each other or shooting each other or something, and every few decades there's some new noise or smell or other irritating thing they come up with. For the most part, I could do without them and be happy. There are a few exceptions, though.

There was a fire, once. My building screamed, both aloud and in my head, and I knew there was nothing I could do about it. I'd seen smoke in the distance before, but never from a fire close enough to see what was causing it and what was happening to the building. It was new and terrifying, and I could feel that we might all die. But some of the humans came by with a few of their loudest contraptions - those big red ones with all of the flashing lights that I had always thought were gaudy and obnoxious. Then I found out what they were for. It's funny how quickly your feelings towards something can change.

Not long after, some other humans came in and repaired the damage. So that's two varieties that are okay with me, and for their sake I'm willing to put up with the others.

And so the decades have passed with their periodic moments of excitement and danger, but mostly just the usual routine.

* * *
Everything changed a couple of weeks ago.

Evil spirits. The first one came at us from the West, and so it was West's job to deal with it. From my position I could see that it was a big one, but I didn't think it was anything West couldn't handle. I heard the usual threatening growls, and the much rarer replies in kind. Creaking stone as West suddenly took flight. At that I knew things must be serious, and I turned to look.

Then I heard a sickening crack from the other side of the building, and I felt a part of me go cold. I had always been able to sense the building in a clear and obvious way, but I hadn't realized that I shared any similar kind of awareness of my compatriots until that moment. But I knew that South was dead.

I took off immediately and headed for its corner of the building, and almost crashed into an evil spirit. I realized in that moment that I had almost shared South's fate - it too must have been distracted by West's fight, and so been ambushed. If I hadn't felt it die and taken off to investigate...

I felt a sudden spike of fear for East, but saw that it was also in the air. It was facing off against its own foe, but seemed to have the upper hand. Indeed, as I tore into my own attacker it quickly became apparent that without the edge of surprise the things were no match for us. Or maybe it was just that we were empowered by our rage. That was not a night that we simply scared the spirits away. They number four fewer now.

Afterwards we all gathered around the broken chunks of granite in the street below. South had shattered on impact, but we could all see the dirty, corroded crack through its neck among all of the other clean breaks. That was the killing blow from the spirit.

We were all back in our positions by the time the humans came. They talked about erosion, acid rain, building codes, insurance, materials costs, and all manner of other trivialities. They do so love to talk.

A few days later some cranes and workmen came. They put another grotesque on the south ledge. We waited and waited for it to wake up, for that hole in our souls to fill, to be four again. Nothing.

Eventually, I could no longer stand it, and I left my post to go and see. I hated to burden East and West, who were already strained by having to watch South's post as well. But I had to see.

It looked like granite from a distance, but I could tell even before I landed that it wasn't made of stone at all. Whatever it was, it was not even carved, but cast from some sort of mold. It wasn't one of us. It is an ornament, not a soldier.

So now, a new fear. I had thought us immortal, or at least that if we should prove not that we would be replaced in kind. I thought our building would always have its four guardians. But now I have seen that there will be no more soldiers. That if one of us falls we will forever be one fewer. That we must fear not only fire and bulldozers and evil spirits.

I have seen renovations before. The old and worn are replaced with the shiny and new.

And we three are old.