Page 5

Chapter 2

Ravena

“Bloody hell,” Father shouts as another saw breaks.

He slams the handle on the floor and then stomps over to the table of tools, grabbing the largest hammer he has.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” I ask as he drags it over, the huge stone head leaving a gray trail as it scratches up our concrete floor. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”

“Him first,” Father grunts as he struggles to lift the hammer. He swings it with all his might and I wince as it connects with the creature’s head.

The sound is deafening. Stone shatters and falls to the floor.

But it’s not the gargoyle that breaks.

“That was my favorite hammer,” Father says, looking at the wooden shaft in his hands in disbelief. He tosses that on the ground too and grabs a rope.

“What are you doing with that?” I ask as he wraps it around the statue’s thick stone neck.

“I’m going to hang it from that tree.”

“It doesn’t appear to be breathing,” I say, wondering if my father has finally gone mad. We’ve been working on this for three hours and haven’t made any progress. We tried smashing it, cutting it, shocking it with Mooraxe eels, firing at it with a crossbow, and he even built a fire around it using the crate and straw it came in. We nearly burned the house down, but inflicted no harm on the gargoyle.

He secures the rope anyway and curses under his breath as he carries the other end to the large maytoral tree in the front yard.

He actually thinks this is going to work? Maybe he has gone insane.

I stare at him in disbelief as he tosses the rope over a thick branch and then begins to pull. The gargoyle doesn’t move.

“Stupid piece of chimera dung,” he curses as he struggles to pull it with all his might.

“Dad,” I warn when the thick branch begins to tremble. “You’re going to⁠—”

The branch snaps with a crack and falls to the ground. Dad gets thrown backward and lands on his ass.

“—break it.”

He roars as he jumps up, grabs the broken branch, and attacks the statue with it, smacking it from every direction—cursing and hollering—until the branch finally splinters in his hand.

“Dad?” I say when he’s standing there, his broad shoulders moving up and down violently, huffing and puffing, red with exertion. “Maybe we should take a break.”

He looks at his bleeding hands and sweaty shirt, and then nods. “Probably a good idea.”

I bring him inside and make some tea while he starts searching through some old dusty books looking for a trick to execute the beast.

“Find anything?” I ask as I place the tea in front of him and pull out a chair.

“It’s indestructible in its stone form,” he says, reading the ancient book.

He flips through the pages, reading as I sip on my tea, stealing peeks at the creature through the open front door. I can’t seem to take my eyes off it. I’m curious like crazy.

“Would it speak English?” I ask between sips.

Father grumbles as he flips a page, not even hearing me. “Oh. It says here they can turn to stone when in danger or during hibernation. It says they’re vegetarians… Oh, wait, that’s another species.” He flips more pages. “It says here that their mate can wake them up. That’s no help to us.”

“Their mate?” I ask, looking at the gargoyle in the distance. I wonder what a female gargoyle would look like. What would that guy out there be attracted to?

Father flips to the end of the book and lets out a frustrated sigh. “I have to go to that library,” he says, downing his tea in one sip. “If I can’t find anything, I’ll talk to the wizards on the way home, see if they can help us out. If they don’t know anything, I’ll borrow Andermasses’ mule and cart and we can pull him to the cliffs. I don’t think even he will survive falling onto those boulders at the bottom.”