Stoneskin Dragon (Stone Shifters Book 1)

by Zoe Chant

  "Are you sure we don't have to worry about being attacked?" she asked.

  Mace beckoned. "Come here."

  They left the library and went out onto a wide stone terrace and down a flight of stone steps into one of the gardens surrounding the house. Then Mace turned back and pointed up.

  Jess had been too shell-shocked to notice when they had arrived, and also, it was less obvious when you were up close to the house; you had to back off to appreciate the full effect. But the house was covered in gargoyles. They crouched on the parapets and the rooftops, perched on the balconies. Some were large, some were small, and each one was unique. They were looking off in all directions, silent and alert.

  Jess gasped aloud. Beside her, she felt Reive tense. He put his good arm around her, curving protectively around her waist.

  "I thought there weren't very many of us," she stammered.

  "Look more closely," Mace said.

  She did, shading her eyes and squinting up against the sun. The bright afternoon sunshine stripped the gargoyles of a little of their fearful mystique. They would have been terrifying on a foggy night, crouched as if to spring.

  "They're not moving," she murmured. "Are they watching us? No ..." A shiver went through her, as if the cool early-autumn air had turned to ice. "They're stone."

  Still wrapped cozily in Reive's arm, she turned to Mace, who was looking up at the statues with a reverent expression.

  "Who are they?" Jess asked. "What happened to them?"

  "You misunderstand. They are a 'what,' not a who. They were created, not born. They are stoneskins, made to guard this place."

  "Oh," she said. "Are they alive at all?"

  "Not right now." Mace smiled briefly, a sideways tug of his wide mouth. "It is said they will awaken if we are attacked. Their protection extends down to the village. You asked earlier why this place is called Stonegarden. They are one of the reasons."

  "What are the other reasons?" Jess asked.

  Mace's smile flickered again. "Wander and find out."

  With that, he marched back toward the library, already lost in thought.

  "Do you really trust that guy?" Reive asked, as they watched him vanish through a different door than the one they'd come out of.

  "I ... I'm not sure." She hovered on the edge of telling Reive about her maybe-relationship to Mace, but decided not to. Not yet. She wasn't prepared to say it out loud and get her hopes up. "It's just so nice to be able to talk to someone else of my kind. And he's welcomed us into our home and offered us his help."

  "Yeah, that's what bothers me. We're complete strangers. Why should he want to help us?"

  She gave his arm a little tug, turning them away from the house to walk down into the garden. "Wouldn't you help a strange dragon if they showed up in trouble?"

  "What? No! They could be from a rival clan, or allied with enemies. I ..." He trailed off with a soft laugh as Jess looked up at him. "And that probably says more about dragons than I'd like."

  "Not everyone treats strangers as the enemy."

  "And not all strangers are friendly," Reive said quietly.

  With their sides pressed together, she was all too aware of the hitch in his steps as he walked. Yes, he had more reason than most to know that. From the way he was moving, his side was severely affected now, and maybe one of his legs as well.

  "Is it making you much worse?" she asked under her breath. "Being here."

  There was a brief silence that answered her more eloquently than either a confirmation or a denial.

  "Oh Reive," she murmured. "In that case, we should leave."

  He shook his head firmly, and pulled her closer against him.

  "Yes, it's making me worse, it's true. But I'm going to get worse no matter where we go. And I think you're right. Whether or not Mace is helping us for his own reasons, here is where answers can be found. We certainly aren't going to get a better offer somewhere else."

  They wandered through the garden on a gently winding path that looked like it was generally leading downward toward the town. For the most part, it was landscaped with natural plants, although there were also giant cascades of rosebushes. The roses had almost finished blooming this late in the year, but there were still enough blossoms to perfume the air sweetly.

  When they turned a corner of the path and came upon the first statue, Jess yelped and Reive swung her behind him. It was a life-sized gargoyle, crouching beside a fountain with one clawed forepaw resting on the fountain's rim. It was gazing down toward the harbor, and when it remained perfectly immobile they both began to relax.

  "Hello?" Jess called softly, and then to Reive, she said, "I think it's just another statue."

  They went cautiously up to the statue, and Jess worked up her nerve to touch it.

  Granite and basalt, her rock sense told her. Local stone, rugged and gray, sculpted with an incredible attention to detail.

  But it was just stone, sculpted at a normal human level of skill, even if it was finely done. The statue didn't have the incredible, unreal detail of Reive's stone hand or her own gargoyle form, right down to the tiny hairs on the backs of her hands that would have been impossible to sculpt out of a solid, slabby rock like this one. This was a good statue, but not more than a statue.

  Also, there was moss growing on its legs.

  She noticed Reive touching the statue with his gloved hand. He shook his head.

  "The stone in me doesn't respond to it at all. It's not alive in the slightest. Though ... I guess it might be a stoneskin in some kind of inactive state, like the ones on the house." He gave her a curious look. "I wonder if you can make them come to life too, the way other gargoyles can?"

  "I guess we could find out." She laid a hand on the statue's sculpted, muscular arm, and giggled. "Should I? Is it rude to make Mace's statues rampage around his garden?"

  "Well, I know I'm curious," Reive said, smiling. "Aren't you?"

  She was, actually. Desperately, wildly curious. It was like a whole new, fascinating world had opened up to her. She'd never realized that the gargoyle side of her could do anything other than make her big and ugly and fang-y. But what if she had all kinds of powers that she just hadn't unlocked yet?

  She felt silly, standing here like this. What next? She tried to remember what it had felt like to stonewalk, as Mace called it—the shivery and yet somehow pleasant sense of the rock closing around her and spitting her out in a new location. But no, that wasn't what she wanted to do; she didn't want to sink into the stone, and was afraid to do it without Mace's help, for fear she'd never come out again.

  No, what she wanted to do was probably more closely akin to shifting into her gargoyle form. It was hard to recreate the feeling consciously, especially knowing Reive was right there. The deep-seated fear of shifting in front of other people shivered through her. No, she didn't want to shift. But maybe if she turned that feeling outward, if she focused on the stone of the statue, rather than her own interior nature ...

  Granite and basalt, forged together in the great heat and pressure under the earth, cooling slowly over the millennia. The endless life of rocks, their dark world with its slow, eons-long erosion, their continual breaking and melting and reforming into something new.

  No. Look closer. Look nearer ...

  There was a crack deep in the statue, invisible from the outside, a fault that might someday cause it to break through the endless freezing-warming cycles of the harsh Newfoundland winter.

  A seam of quartz ran through the rock, a hidden treasure only visible to those who had the eyes to see. Had Mace or one of his ancestors chosen the rock for that purpose, knowing that only gargoyles would be able to sense the beauty in its depths?

  There was a soft gasp from Reive. Jess's eyes flew open.

  Her hand was sticking into the statue up to the wrist.

  Jess yelped and yanked it out. She shook her fingers automatically, as if she'd burned them, although actually they felt fine, not even the least bit tingly.
Cautiously she prodded at the statue with her fingertip to make sure it hadn't gone melty or something, but it was still completely hard and cool, indistinguishable from normal stone.

  "That's not what I was trying to do," she said.

  "I could tell." The corners of Reive's mouth twitched. He reached out and put a hand on her arm, and then he stopped looking amused. "Jess, you're shaking. Are you okay?"

  "I—I just ..." She put her hand to her mouth. She couldn't explain; she could barely even begin to explain it to herself.

  It felt as if she was poised on the edge of something so huge she could barely comprehend it. She wasn't the only gargoyle in the world, and she might have all these powers she was barely beginning to understand. And yet, in order to use those powers, she was going to have to embrace the gargoyle side of herself and accept that she could never change it, never get rid of it. How could she ever bear to do that?

  "Jess?" Reive put an arm around her. She leaned into his comforting warmth for a moment and then pushed away.

  "Come on, let's go find this village Mace told us about."

  The village was easily visible below them, a scatter of colorful houses along the harbor. If they got lost, the ocean was right there, and the lighthouse was visible from any angle. It was just a matter of figuring out how to get down there.

  They took a few wrong turns and at every turn, discovered more gargoyle statues in the garden. There was seemingly one behind every bush and beside every pond. Eventually they found a gateway through the wall around the garden (flanked by gargoyles, naturally) that led to a narrow dirt road winding down to the harbor.

  It was a gorgeous walk. The island was chilly and wild. The wind tangled Jess's hair; seagulls screamed above them. All around them, the hillside flamed with colors—not so much in the trees, which were mostly scrubby pines and spruce, but on the ground, in heather and wildflowers growing around glacier-tossed rocks. If Mace's family had come here from Scotland, Jess could see why they liked it. She had never been to Scotland herself, but it looked very much like pictures she'd seen. And it almost seemed as if something in her knew the place, calling out in glad recognition. It was as if the rocks themselves welcomed her home.

  "You okay?" Reive murmured.

  "I'm fine." She leaned closer to Reive and tried to let go of the constant drumbeat of worry pulsing in the back of her mind—Reive's condition, the black-robed mage, other gargoyles, her own history—and allow herself to exist in the moment, enjoying the warm perfume of late-season wildflowers, the sound of the surf, and the distant clang of bells on buoys.

  It seemed impossible that anything bad could happen in a place like this. Even once they reached the edge of the town, the feeling of peace persisted.

  From above, she had seen that the houses were painted bright colors, but she hadn't fully appreciated how beautiful they were. The houses clung to steep, narrow streets on the hillside, stepping down to the harbor. Each house was a different brilliant color, turquoise blue and violet and red and yellow. Most of them were small, square clapboard houses with pointed roofs.

  Looking up from the bay, as the town would be seen by a sailor returning home, it must look like the hillside was splashed with color, the houses like little squares stacked on top of each other.

  The main street, which she could see looking down between the houses, was along the docks, where it looked like most of the businesses were located. The lowest row of houses were on stilts projecting out over the water, some of them with docks integrated into their structure. Docks, houses, and street all ran together, as if the town itself had grown out over the water.

  They descended a steep street with houses on one side and nothing but a drop to the ocean on the other. There was a clear view across the water of the headland with the red and white lighthouse, located at the very tip of the steep rocky ridge that wrapped around the village and harbor like a protective arm. The lighthouse flashed rhythmically, making her think of airport lights. There was a rotating mirror inside a lighthouse, wasn't there? She was going to have to look that up, and felt keenly, for a moment, the lack of her library.

  "Look," Reive murmured, pointing.

  They were approaching the intersection where this steep, narrow little street met the main dockside road. Where the streets met, a gargoyle stood, life-sized and holding a flowerpot full of real flowers in both hands.

  Jess started to say something, but then she noticed another one beyond it, this one at the bottom of a small, tidy garden surrounded by a white wooden fence. The garden gargoyle was only a couple of feet high, like a garden gnome made of gray stone.

  And now that she'd started to notice them, they were everywhere: crouching on rooftops, lurking in yards, even holding up signs in front of a few businesses. Jess laughed aloud when she noticed one sitting on one of the town's many docks, holding a fishing pole in its hands.

  "Do you think they're real?" Reive asked quietly.

  "Real as what? I think they're like the ones at Mace's place. Not alive, but ..." She hesitated, not quite sure what she wanted to say.

  "Oh, do you like our gargoyles?" said a voice above them.

  They both looked up. A woman was leaning out the window of a two-story building, hanging out pillowcases to dry on a line strung under the eaves. The building was brightly painted clapboard like all the rest. A dangling sign with ornate scrollwork letters read Westerly Inn.

  "I'm sorry!" Jess said. "I didn't mean to be rude." She couldn't help noticing another gargoyle perched on the building's roof, its legs dangling down.

  The woman grinned. She was perhaps in her sixties, matronly looking, with her hair pulled back in a silver bun. She reached up to give a playful tug to the gargoyle's stone toe.

  "They're guardians," she said. "They're good luck. As long as they protect our town, nothing bad can happen to it."

  She had a light, lilting accent, and hearing her speak, it suddenly clicked into place where Jess had heard it before.

  "Oh, that's Mace's accent!" she said, and then blushed and clapped her hand over her mouth.

  She had assumed that it was some kind of blend of accents from Mace's past. But the woman talked the exact same way. It was a lilt, a little bit Canadian, a little bit Irish, with a tendency for the words to run rapidly together. It was different from any accent she had heard before.

  A fisherman sitting on the dock not too far away, working on a boat engine, looked up and said, "Yah, they all talk like that here. Live here thirty years, still can't understand a word anyone's saying."

  The woman scowled, balled up a wet cloth, and hurled it at him. It went surprisingly far, arcing all the way across the road to just miss his head. "No one asked you, Stieg Nilsson. Where are you folks from? American?"

  "Indiana," Jess said. "Um, yes. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be rude—"

  "You weren't. Don't pay any attention to that idiot," the woman said. "I'm Heddy. Come on in. You want a drink? Something to eat, maybe? Best berry crumble you'll find 'round the bay."

  "Oh no," Jess began to protest. "We don't have much time—"

  Reive nudged her. "We're here to sightsee. Let's see the inside of the place."

  The inside of the inn was exactly what it looked like on the outside, a little old-fashioned and very tidy, with a scattering of small café tables on well-scrubbed floorboards and a tiny gift shop area. There were a couple of fisherman types drinking coffee at a table by the window.

  Jess really meant to just look around and leave, but the proprietress came bustling down the stairs and before Jess quite knew what was happening, they had been hustled to a seat and plied with giant pieces of warm berry crumble, oozing juices across the plate and topped with ice cream.

  "Enjoy," Heddy told him with a beaming smile, and went to refill the fishermen's coffee.

  Reive looked uncertain. Jess hesitated with her spoon held over her dish. "I don't even know where to start. This looks amazing."

  She scooped up a spoonful of berries
and ice cream. It was perfect, the berries bursting sweet-tart on her tongue, and the ice cream providing the perfect balance of sweetness and cold, with the crumble topping for a bit of crunch.

  Reive still wasn't eating. He poked at the edge of the crumble with his spoon.

  Jess gestured at him vigorously. "You won't be sorry," she said, and scooped up another huge bite.

  Reive smiled a little, and took a small bite. Jess was pleased to see his expression of delight, and even more pleased when he dived back in for more.

  "How is it?" Heddy asked, passing by their table with her coffeepot.

  With her mouth full, all Jess could do was moan expressively.

  Heddy smiled. "Coffee to go with it? On the house."

  She poured them two steaming cups and left them alone.

  Jess and Reive cleaned their bowls down to the last delicious crumb.

  As she was chasing the last bits of berry-soaked toasted crumble topping around the edges of her dish (and half-seriously wondering if it would be horribly rude to pick up the bowl and lick it), Reive leaned across the table and whispered, "I've just thought of something. We don't have any Canadian currency."

  "Oh, crap." Jess patted her pockets. No money, no passport. Magical traveling wasn't all it was cracked up to be. "I have my credit cards. Maybe that'll work? Um, ma'am? Do you take credit cards?"

  The innkeeper produced a cell phone and struggled with a plugin scanner. After some tries, they got Jess's card to swipe, and full of berries and ice cream, wandered on up the street.

  Jess was glad they'd had a chance to stop and rest. Reive had been looking completely wiped out from the walk down the hill, and now he seem to have perked up a bit.

  Maybe he's getting better, she thought hopefully.

  She suspected it wasn't going to be that easy. This was, if anything, just a temporary remission.

  But it gave them a little breathing room to enjoy the day. Seagulls wheeled above them, and colorful boats with names like Fin and Tonic and The Codfather bobbed in the harbor. Everyone they met said hello to them.