Free The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson Page B

in the ward and one was out of the room for rehabilitation exercises and the other was snoring.
    Behind the plastic barrier, she felt safe to pull back her hood—just a bit, not all the way off—and I could see that the bags had disappeared from under her eyes. She looked much sharper than she had during our first meeting, and there was the strong smell of tobacco upon her. I wondered if she’d actually been able to sneak by the nurses, or if they’d simply let her pass. By the fact she was again without the proper visitor’s gown, I suspected she had entered without their knowledge. She kept her hands at the corners of her hood, as if ready to draw it back up over her head at a moment’s notice.
    “I don’t want them to know that I’m here.”
    “The doctors?”
    Marianne Engel nodded. I told her that she didn’t have much to fear, that they were good people.
    “You don’t know much about doctors.” She reached inside her neckline and pulled out a leather strand with an arrowhead dangling from it. “Look, I got my necklace back.” She lifted it up over her head and held it out, above my chest, so that the arrowhead hung like a magical amulet dowsing for my heart. “May I?”
    I didn’t know what she meant, but nodded anyway.
    Marianne Engel lowered her hand, slackening the leather so that the arrowhead came to rest on my chest. “How does it feel?”
    “Like it belongs there.”
    “It does.”
    “How did you know about the scar on my chest?”
    “Don’t rush. Explaining things like that takes time.” She lifted her necklace from my chest and returned it to her own. “For now, may I tell you a story about a dragon?”
     

     
    “Once upon a time, there was a dragon named La Gargouille who lived in France, close to the River Seine. La Gargouille was a quite ordinary dragon with green scales, a long neck, sharp claws, and little wings that couldn’t possibly support flight but did anyway. Like most dragons, he could breathe fire, spout gallons of water, and rip up large trees with his talons.
    “The residents of the nearby town, Rouen, hated the dragon and lived in fear. But what could they do? He was much more powerful than they, so each year they made a sacrifice in the hope that he’d be appeased. La Gargouille preferred virgin girls, as dragons are wont to do, but the villagers tended to offer criminals. In any case, people were eaten, which made it a generally appalling situation.
    “This continued for decades. Finally, around A.D . 600 a priest named Romanus came to the city. He’d heard about La Gargouille and wanted to try his hand at subduing the beast. If the people would build a church, Romanus offered, and if every villager agreed to be baptized, he would dispatch the dragon. The villagers, no fools, thought this was a good deal. What did they have to lose, other than the dragon?
    “So Romanus went to the Seine, taking with him a bell, a Bible, a candle, and a cross. He lit the candle and placed it on the ground, then opened the Bible before calling out to La Gargouille. The beast emerged from his cave with no real concern; he was a dragon, after all, so what did he have to fear from a mere human? If anything, such a visitor was nothing more than fresh meat.
    “As soon as the dragon appeared, Romanus rang the bell—as if announcing a death—and began to read aloud the words of the Lord.
    “The dragon snorted little puffs of smoke when he heard the sound, as if it amused him, until he realized that he could not have exhaled fire if he had wanted. There was a pain in his lungs which, after a few more moments, began to feel deflated and drained of breath.
    “Realizing that he could not dispatch the priest with a burst of fire, La Gargouille lunged towards the man. Romanus lifted the cross and held it staunchly in front of the beast, which found it could go no further, as if an invisible hand were pushing it back. No matter which way the creature turned, the priest mirrored the