Mercy, A Gargoyle Story Read Online Free PDF Page B

we are both revealed in a kiss.   He saved me and I suppose I owe him his wishes, but I am repulsed.   Moag grunts.
    "Around it," he growls, as if I’m interrupting him.   " Around it.   How do we hide the pretty and find it at once?"
    He groans and goes back to mumbling a conversation so filled with pauses, I open my mouth over and over again to ask if he is speaking to me, but each time, he begins talking again, with such exasperated speech, that I never utter a word.   "Stupid.   Must understand the stupid...better to have bashed the Slip to be found sooner or later, I think...no wanderers, though, I know, I know.   Ugh...no wanderers.   We take the Slip and we try, even if it doesn't, we do...we give it ugly.   Silver platter the ugly, and it asks why and how and but, but, but...I disagree.   I do."  
    "Are you calling me an it ?"   I ask through tight, heavy lips.   I can tell already, this new face is one that is meant to be silent.   The gargoyle blinks; as if I've broken whatever intense concentration, it has taken to grumble to himself.  
    "It?" he says absently.   "That is what I am, isn't it?"  
    I sputter.   "You have been reading my mind, haven't you!"
    "Not hard to do.   Jabber jabber jabber.   Annoying.   Pointless.   Useless..."
    "You just want me to give up! "   I howl.   I try to dig my own talon-ish fingers and toes into him, to dig myself up his body and into his face, but my skin is still too mushy beneath the crumbly surface and the gargoyle's body is as inconducive to climbing as the smooth side of a cliff.  
    "Give up?   No.   I want you to be what you should, Slip."
    "What are you talking about?"
    "Resignation.   That is where I shall take you."  

 
    ***

 
    I expect sewers filled with rats.   Fresh graves with rotting corpses.  
    I don't expect a rooftop in the middle of the city.   With its bent vent pipes poking up across the flat top, I may as well be landing on a tarred side of the moon.   If it were possible to land at all.  
    Moag swirls around the roof top, feet above the actual roof but hidden by the ledge.   I assume it is necessary, so as not to attract onlookers to the enormous, buzzardous monster that is clutching yet another monster to it.   He shuffles me, as if to drop me, and I cling to him and protest.
    "Don't throw me down again!"   I shout, but the change in my voice draws me up short.   My vocal cords plunge my usual sound even deeper, with a vulnerable crumble at the edges of the sentence.   Moag grunts.
    "Oh so pretty,"   He gurgles as he tosses me the ten or so feet to the rooftop.   As I fall, I try to stretch my new wings, but they are still sticky.   Instead, I land on my feet with more ease and silence than expected, digging my talons into the tar to steady myself.   I step aside and wait for Moag to land, but he doesn't.   He drifts in the air above me, his wings as wide and long as those of a dragon.
    "What am I supposed to do now?   I can't go anywhere looking like this,” I say.   Moag's face is more fitting than ever.   It is like stone.  
    "You don't be seen, or maybe I return to tear you to pieces myself,” he says.   The edges of his mouth dip a little, showing even more of his horrible teeth, but he manages to look almost remorseful at the prospect.   "Here, you learn to fly."
    I peer out at the edge of the rooftop.   The fat curled lip of it is made of solid, white concrete.   I can't bring myself to move any closer, to see how far up I am.   I'm certainly not going to jump off it.  
    "I can't fly with these wings," I bend the tip of one of my wings inward and rub the thick jelly that covers the useless spines.   "That doesn't even make sense."
    "Oh,” Moag says with a contorted grin.   "But it does, Slip."

CHAPTER FIVE

 
 
    I hate the gargoyle.   Both the one that left me here, and the one I am now.
    There is no flying.   The suggestion is nothing more than a taunt.   My wings are still