Story #10

Description: On Brooklyn and Carbonear's honeymoon, Carbonear relates the full story of her childhood...and of  how Clan Newfie's upbringing may have made them gargoyles in name and appearence only.

AUTHOR'S NOTE : With some exceptions, none of the characters used in the story are mine.
"Gargoyles" characters belong to Walt Disney/Buena Vista Television.  This is an unofficial story,
not sanctioned in any way by Disney.  Also, I have decided that in this, and in every future story,
I am ignoring the existence of any episodes after "Hunter's Moon, Part Three", for the most part.
Not because I don't like them, because that's not true, but because they and my universe conflict
so badly that letting anything besides the first two seasons exist would make my stories
unintelligible in terms of my plotline.  Finally, this story contains mature subject matter
(language and intended sexual reference), so read at your own volition.  However, reader
discretion is advised.
As far as I know, there was no moratorium on the fishery in Newfoundland in 1985, but by then, fish stocks were showing signs of decline.  The moratorium is fictional; the situation, sadly, is not.
Look, I know this story is long, even by my standards,  but come on, I'm fitting a good thirty-six years of history in here. Just bear with me, here. Hopefully, it'll be worth it.

Oh, and just for all you people who aren't lucky enough to speak French, the title is French for "reason to be".

HISTORIAN'S NOTE:  The parts of this story that occur in the present occur roughly two nights after the events in "Brooklyn's Wedding"; most of the story, however, takes place in the years  leading up to and including "Shadowplay, Part III - One Ring To Rule Them All".

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        For Amy, who does more for my ego than most anyone else and who makes me infinitely grateful that I'm not out to be an Outklaw.  Here's a story just for you, you Mainiac.

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        "You gotta know where you come from to know who you are today,

         And there's a reason why you play that song or you hold the fiddle that way,
         Oh, sometimes roots run deeper than we care to say,
         But if you're trying to find yourself, take a look at yesterday."

        Heather Doiron, "Toronto Road"
 

        "For years and years you can drift along, and write another verse to an endless song,
         Wait one more day till the timing's right, hopin' that you both see the light,
         But you won't see the light, oh, let's wait one more day for the conversation,
         One more day to make it right, let's get away from the confrontation,
         One more day just buying time..."

        Great Big Sea, "Buying Time"

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CARBONEAR: "Watch out, Manhattan..."
WHITBOURNE: "Here comes Clan Newfie!"
"From Darkness to Light"

BONAVISTA: (voice-over)  "Previously, on 'Gargoyles', my son..."

WHITBOURNE: "My name's Whitbourne. This here's Clan Newfie...Bonavista, Woodstock and Carbonear."

(show Bonavista, Whitbourne and Carbonear joining the clan, "From Darkness To Light")
"One Ring To Rule Them All"

CARBONEAR: "My life story's not half as interestin' as yours, but I thinks ye might like it.
(show the younger Whitbourne, Carbonear,  Bonavista and Woodstock in the bell tower, "Brooklyn's Wedding")
CARBONEAR:  "It kind of gives my views on the world."
"One Ring To Rule Them All"

CARBONEAR: "Ye knows what I mean. He don't. Clan Newfie's biggest crisis to date was when we was born, and we was completely alone, with no one to care for us."
(show Carbonear embracing Jason Doyle, "The Gargoyle Went A'Courting")
"And In The Darkness Bind Them"

CARBONEAR: "Trust me, I knows Whitbourne. He may come across as this fun lovin' party animal, but deep down inside he feels just as abandoned as we all does.  Maybe that's why we's so sensitive."
(Show Whitbourne hugging June Tibbo, "Brooklyn's Wedding")
"And In The Darkness Bind Them"

JUNE TIBBO: "It seems appropriate...seein' as you two are at the beginnin' of somethin' great and special together, ye needs to look back at where it all began in the first place...and maybe it ain't as much your history, Brooklyn, but ye's a part of our family now, in a sense, so in a way it is."
(show June giving Carbonear and Brooklyn 'The Gargoyles of Newe Fovnde Lande', "Brooklyn's Wedding")
"Brooklyn's Wedding"

WHITBOURNE: "I wouldn't leave what I gots here in New York for nothin' in the world, but I kind of misses them old days."
"Lady Delilah's Lover"

WHITBOURNE: "And now we's becomin' like Brooklyn and his buddies. Called on to save the world."
CARBONEAR: "Of course, it's who we is, really."
(show Carbonear, Whitbourne and Bonavista in the battle with Demona, "Convergence".)
CARBONEAR: "Suddenly, we's bein' thrust into what our kind was meant to do. This is our chance, Whitbourne. To become what we really is inside...to live up to that legacy."
"From Darkness To Light"

HUDSON:   "A gargoyle can no more stop protecting the castle..."
BROOKLYN, BROADWAY AND LEXINGTON: "Then stop breathing the air.  We know."
"Her Brother's Keeper"

BROOKLYN:  "See you in a few nights."
(show the helicopter leaving, "Brooklyn's Wedding")
"Brooklyn's Wedding"

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Prologue

                The Stone Diaries

Private Property, outside Wilson, New York (Xanadu)
May 25, 1998
11:34 p.m., Eastern Daylight Time

        The owls were singing, Brooklyn thought.  He smiled as he walked through the forest, listening to the hooted, muffled cries of birdsong, and hearing the wailing cries of the grasshoppers around him.  The moon shone through the canopy of trees above him, its soft silver light reflecting jaggedly through the leaves.  There was an imperceptible breeze; just enough to keep the air cool.  Were it not for the fact that he was walking on an asphalt pathway with the sparse glow of old-fashioned streetlamps surrounding him and lighting the way, he could easily have been walking back in the forests of Scotland that he had walked in during his long ago youth.
        He was alone; Carbonear was inside the mansion a few hundred metres back, having  a bath.  The two had just had supper, and had watched a movie.  Maybe it wasn't the most romantic thing they could have been doing, considering that they were, for all intents and purposes, on honeymoon, but Brooklyn was a firm believer in the fact that romance was were you found it, be it in a wedding ceremony that your mate dreamed of for years since she was a girl, or in just laughing and talking over a plate of french fries and a glass of Pepsi in the kitchen.  And there was no problem finding romance with Carbonear; considering how deeply he loved her and she loved him in kind, he probably would have found it warm and tender if she had sat him down and recited the closing stocks from the New York Times.  That was how highly he regarded her.  And loving her was so tranquil and peaceful, much like the forest he was now walking in to pass the time while he waited for her.  It was all right; he didn't mind the time alone, but at the same time there was a hint of anticipation in him as he  waited for her, wondering what they'd do next.  Absence helps the heart grow fonder, he told himself with a smile, kneeling down and picking a flower from the walk along the path.
        He stared at it...it looked almost like a lupin...and set it down on the grass beside the pavement.  Suddenly, he wanted to go back to the mansion and surprise Carbonear.  Grinning, he picked a couple more of the lupins, and raised an eye ridge as he critically  surveyed them.  Not quite something out of a romance novel...didn't the heroes in those sappy books always manage to find roses for their lady friends, instead of lupins?...but that was all right.  After all, there was nothing quite so formulaic in their relationship as one might find in a Harlequin romance book.  It was too real, and Brooklyn cherished every second of it.
        They had spent the previous night at Niagara Falls, watching the thunderous cascades of water plunge down to the depths.  And sure, they had kissed, and stared at the majesty of that sight (and, truth be told, there was something romantic about watching the falls with the coloured floodlights illuminating the Canadian half and the ghostly white beams lighting up the American half...something mysterious and intriguing) but the moment hadn't felt any more special than when they had returned to the mansion and sat on the couch and watched television.  The fact that all of his moments with Carbonear made him feel the same way might have sounded callous, but when Brooklyn thought about how whole and  alive and happy just being around her made him feel, that statement didn't seem cheap at all.  It was the little moments he cherished.  The ones that made it all seem so real.
        He slowly  walked back along the asphalt walkway, leaving the forest (with a vague note of regret, though distant) and walking into the Xanadu compound.  A large mansion, but not at all opulent...it seemed more like a glorified cabin than anything else, or at most a large house that just happened to be in the woods.  The only lights on the building were the streetlights in the woods that lit the paths, and the sparse lights on the building itself.  It seemed an island of light in the dark upstate night, yet very understated.  Brooklyn walked up the steps, nodded hello to the doorman (who was a bit uncomfortable around gargoyles, it seemed, but looked content to suffer in silence), and walked inside, pausing only to wipe his feet on the mat at the door.  He walked calmly up the stairs, towards the room that was serving as his and Carbonear's honeymoon suite.
        There  was a splashing of water from the bathroom door, which was closed and locked.  Brooklyn grinned, set the lupins down on the bed, and knocked discreetly on the door.
        "Who's there?"  Carbonear called, sounding a bit guilty.
        "Room service."   Brooklyn called back.  "Aren't you scared you'll wrinkle?"
        "Oh, frigg, Brooklyn, I hasn't had a nice warm bath in ages and I'se too comfy to get out just yet."  Carbonear replied, again sounding guilty.  "When I comes out, I'll make it up to ye, I promise.  I ain't puttin' our honeymoon on hold for all I has a bath."
        "Sure."  Brooklyn grinned.   "You go ahead and soak.  I'll just be out here."
        "Patient as a saint, ye is."  Carbonear chuckled, and there was a happy little splash from the bathroom again.  Brooklyn laughed, and walked over to the bed, picked up the lupins, and set them on the night table. Knowing Carbonear, she would be out of the bath in anywhere from five minutes to five hours.  Poor Carbonear and her sinful little pleasures.
        He lay down on the bed, grinning at the ceiling, and turned over.  His eyes suddenly caught that book that June Tibbo had given them as a wedding present, lying on the dresser.  He frowned.   They had skimmed through it, but he hadn't had much of a chance to actually read it.  Carbonear had explained to him the significance of it...how one night in 1992, she and her rookery brothers had found it and read about who they never quite were and yet somehow should have been, and that ever since then...indeed, their whole lives, they had suffered from a pronounced lack of purpose, at least when compared to the gargoyles discussed in that book.  A chronic lack of a raison d'etre.  A reason to be.
        Frowning slightly, he picked up the old leather bound tome.  "The Gargoyles of Newe Fovnde Lande", it read, penned by Sir Richard Whitbourne.  There was an irony worthy of Shakespeare, Brooklyn thought; that man had written a book which would one day be read by a gargoyle who had taken the name of a town that had taken Sir Richard's name as its own.
        Without any real conscious thought, he opened the book.  The pages were old, but not brittle; the book was in no danger of ruin.  The writing was spidery, hard to read, and old.

        Know ye all this, [the book read, once translated into modern English] that I, Sir Richard Whitbourne, have hereby set my pen to this account of my encounter with a strange species of creature here on the island of Newfoundland that neither mortal pen nor memory has ever presumed to record or remember.  The meeting was one of purest chance, yet has opened my eyes, and indeed, the eyes of man, to the existence of this creature...these gargoyles of Newfoundland.
        This account shall probably never be seen by any other man; most certainly I shall not detail it to Sir William Vaughan, who has requested details of the colonial effort here in Cambriol Colchos. He is a worldly man, and would certainly not appreciate the importance of this discovery. Yet I write it down here in the event that some learned scholar may read it some day, and by the grace of God know of this magnificent race of creature...

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Cambriol Colchos, Newfoundland (now Renews, Newfoundland)
July 18, 1617

        The settlement of Cambriol Colchos was not one that Sir Richard Whitbourne was very impressed with, even if he was its governor.  He was a distinguished Captain in the Royal Navy...why, he had even helped defeat the Spanish Armada those years ago! A Captain in the Royal Navy, knighted for his courage!  And yet, here he was, surrounded by brigands and slothful ne'er-do-wells (idle fellows, he would later write, who never applied themselves to any commendable thing.)  As it stood now, he was standing in the drawing room of his house, looking out upon the night-darkened settlement with faintly disguised regret.  Such promise this new found land had shown, and not even ten of the settlers showed any real promise of making good on creating the framework for something that would last here in the New World...that would ensure Great Britain and His Majesty, King James VI, would have a foothold in this new land for ages to come.  Oh well.  At least he was only here during the summer.
        It was just as he was about to go and write the days' activities in his journal when there   came a frantic knocking at the door.
        "Open up!"  came the terrified cry.  "Open up, for God's sake, Your Grace..."
        Whitbourne blinked, and walked to the door.  Standing there was a young man, about thirteen years of age, looking frightened out of his wits.
        "What's the trouble, boy?"  Whitbourne asked.
        The boy trembled, and pointed towards the settlement's common.  "M-Mallett and Stavert were on the edge of the settlement investigating a noise and they caught a monster, Your Grace."
        "A monster?"  Whitbourne frowned.  He did not dismiss the boy's claims immediately...after all, he had seen mermaids before.
        "Yes, sir...it attacked them, and they shot it in the arm, and they brought it back, and in the name of the Lord, Your Grace, I swear,  they asked me to come fetch you..."
        Whitbourne raced out of his house and ran towards the common.  A crowd of people had already gathered there.  Whitbourne pushed his way through...and stopped.  He stared.  He made the sign of the cross.  "Oh, Lord Jesus Christ..." he whispered.
        Sitting there on the ground was indeed a monster. It was very large.  It had green skin, almost the colour of the ocean, yet it's face was painted with blood red ochre.  Its brown hair  was tied above its head like a bundle of hay.  Its hands and feet ended not in fingers and toes but  in sharp claws, talons much like a bird of prey's, and it had two great wings that extended from its back and a long, flicking tail.  It was naked except for a skirt of caribou skin about its loins, and its eyes...they were what startled the governor the most.  Its eyes were glowing a fierce white.  It was clutching its shoulder, from which blood was sluggishly oozing from between its fingers.  The two men who had caught it were nearby as well, but they were in no condition to explain.  Mallett  was screaming in pain; he had four bloody claw marks along his arms and legs, and Stavert was rubbing his head, looking as if  he had received a terrific blow.  One of the settlers poked the beast with a stick.  It growled and made a fearsome roar, but was either too weak or  too disoriented to attack.
        "They caught him on the edge of the town, Your Grace." a man explained.  "Creeping around the woods.  Mallett and Stavert went to see what was wrong, shot it, and dragged it back, but it attacked them..."
        "What is it?"  Whitbourne asked.  "Can it speak?"
        "All it makes are howling noises, sir, and nonsense words."
        "Nonsense words."  Whitbourne mused.  He frowned, and took one hesitant step towards the creature.  One of the men with a musket took careful aim in case the monster should make any move to attack him, but the creature merely sat still and regarded Whitbourne carefully.
        "What are you?"  Whitbourne asked.  The creature stared at him, and snarled warily.
        "I say again, what are you?"  Whitbourne asked.
        Alarmingly, the creature spoke.  "Uhn hahna kway...uhn hahna kway Shannanhaditou." it stated.  "Uhn hahna kway Beothuk."
        Whitbourne had no clue what it was saying, but recognized one word.  Beothuk.  The race of Indians who inhabited Newfoundland, who painted their bodies with red ochre and tied their hair much like this...this creature.  He frowned.  "Send for Peter."  he commanded.
        Peter was not his real name.  Peter was merely the name given to him by the English, who he had accompanied back to England years ago with Sir Francis Drake to be presented to Queen Elizabeth.  His real name was Pehanadwit, and he had once been a member of the Beothuk nation, but he had learned English and had been converted to Christianity.  He had returned to Newfoundland and lived at Cambriol Colchos as a liaison and translator between the settlers and the Beothuks.
        One of the boys ran to fetch Peter, who returned almost immediately.  The Anglicized Beothuk paled instantly.
        Whitbourne cleared his throat, and pointed to the creature.  "I believe this thing is speaking your language, Peter."  he stated.  It was an unphrased question which Peter instantly understood.
        "Hahna quahl tah?" Peter asked.
        "Uhn hahna kway Shannanhaditou."  the creature repeated.  "Shannanhaditou.  Gargohyl."

        "Gargoyle?"  Whitbourne blinked.
        Peter looked up.  "He says he is a Shannanhaditou, Your Grace. The Beothuk word for 'people of the moon'."
        "People of the moon."  Whitbourne frowned.   "But it also said gargoyle..."
        Peter nodded.   "The Shannanhaditou are also called gargohyl, Your Grace.  The legends say that that is what they called themselves when they came here."
        "When they came here?"
        The 'gargoyle' began speaking excitedly.  Whitbourne looked helplessly at Peter, and the Beothuk shrugged.  "He says that he was only here for food.  Among my people, a hungry man takes what he needs, and he was hungry."
        "It's a thief." one of the settlers cried.
        "Tell it to follow me."  Whitbourne frowned.  "Tell it that we will help heal its wounds, that I would like to speak to it."
        Indeed, he wanted to.  Sir Richard Whitbourne had always, however privately, been a believer.  He believed in mermaids, in witches, and in magic...but far from being frightened by such supernatural occurences, his curiosity was invariably piqued.
        "Heal its wounds?"  one of the women...Mallett's wife, who was trying unsuccessfully to refrain from hysterics at the sight of what the Shannanhaditou had done to her husband...cried.  "In the name of the Savior, Your Grace, are you mad?  It attacked my husband!"
        "Is it any more than a scratch?"  Whitbourne asked the physician, who was tending Mallett's wounds.
        The doctor shook his head.  "Very minor, actually."
        Whitbourne thought for a second.   "I don't believe it will be too dangerous if we take the proper precautions.  Have the creature fettered, and tie a bandage round its shoulder.  Peter, tell it that it's only for our own safety that we chain him."
        "But my husband!"  Mallett's wife protested again.
        Whitbourne ignored her, and watched as Peter calmly explained to the wild eyed gargoyle what they intended to do.  The creature started speaking back, and looked straight at Whitbourne with a look of apprehension and wariness in his eyes...but also a glint of real, pure, intelligence that struck a note of wonder in Sir Richard  Whitbourne's heart.
        It wasn't long at all before he was completely and utterly enthralled.

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        It turned out the chains weren't needed...as soon as Peter had placated the beast by telling it that they meant it no harm (this was a rather hard promise to take, as many of the settlers were understandably upset that it had attacked Mallett and Stavert, but through the creature's explanations, Peter's translations and Whitbourne's understanding of his settler's attitude, Whitbourne himself was satisfied that the attack had only been in self defense after it had been shot) they allowed it to remain free.  Its shoulder was bandaged, and it apparently made some moves to want to return to the forest, but Whitbourne (through Peter) convinced it to stay.  It did so, though very alert and ready to tear away or perhaps even take to flight with its wings at any given moment.
        At first, Whitbourne's questions had centered on where it had come from.  The gargoyle (Whitbourne had taken instantly to calling it as such) had paused, hesitant, and began to slowly speak once it had understood the question.
        "He says that there are others like him who live in the forest."  Peter translated as it spoke.  "A group of thirty Shannanhaditou who live near a Beothuk village about an hour away from here by wing.  They protect the village and the people.  He says that is what the Shannanhaditou do and have done for hundreds of years...protect the Beothuk."
        "Protect from whom?"  Whitbourne asked.
        Peter translated.  The gargoyle replied with a shrug and a quiet answer.
        "From all harm."  Peter nodded.   "Your Grace, no one in my village has ever seen a Shannanhaditou, but we were aware of the legends.  Winged beings who live among us, behave as us, and protect the Beothuk from all who would harm them."
        "You say that it's just a legend, yet here one stands before me."  Whitbourne frowned.   "Ask it where it came from.  Have they always protected you?"
        And so Peter asked.  The gargoyle hesitated, and began to speak.  "He says that the legends have faded over time, but that they are passed down from generation to generation.  He says that they have not always been here, but that they came from a land across the sea hundreds of years ago...they were brought here by white men, though not like you."
        "Across the sea?"  Whitbourne asked.
        The gargoyle then spoke again, but Whitbourne could almost pick out a single word out of the phrases he spoke.  Almost.  Tantalizingly close.
        Scotland.
        Paling, Whitbourne listened as Peter explained what the gargoyle has just spoken.  "He says that they came from a land called Scott-land, across the sea.  Their ancestors were kidnapped by white men, who sailed in long ships, and had fair hair.  They were brought here, to protect the white men's settlements from the people who were already here, the Beothuk.  But that long ago, the Beothuk befriended the Shannhanhaditou, and freed them from the white men, and helped drive the white men away across the ocean.  In return, the Shannhanhaditou promised to protect my people from all harm, because that is what they do.  They protect.  It is their nature.  He says that his people tell these legends and never forget the past."
        Whitbourne sat down, and stared curiously at the gargoyle.  It stared back, and almost shyly looked away.  It asked Peter something.
        "He wants to know why you are staring at him."  Peter translated.
        Whitbourne frowned.  He thought for a second, and cleared his throat. "I'm curious."  he stated; to the gargoyle, not to Peter, even though the Beothuk had to translate for him.  "I have never heard of your kind before, and these legends are fascinating.  I wish to learn more about you."
        The gargoyle frowned, and spat out a few angry sounding words.  "He says that he doesn't know if he can trust you because of what the others did to him.  Wounded him."  Peter frowned, nodding towards the gargoyle's bandaged shoulder.
        "That was a misunderstanding."  Whitbourne pleaded, suddenly needing to understand everything and feeling that old feeling again...the  one he felt when he found himself in a library back in England, engrossed in some ancient tome, the emotion he didn't recognize as the human need for knowledge and understanding.  In twentieth century terms, the gotta.  "Please, tell me your name.  Your name."
        "He says his kind does not have names."  Peter translated, once the gargoyle had spoken. (warily...how Richard Whitbourne wished those fools Stavert and Mallett hadn't shot it!) "He says that they are simply called the Shannanhaditou, but that they don't have names for themselves.  They are just the people of the moon."
        "Why are they called the people of the moon?" he asked, and the gargoyle's answer did nothing more than cement the gotta into Sir Richard Whitbourne's mind.
        "He says that they live by moonlight."  Peter translated.  "Only at night do they waken.  During they day they sleep." He paused, and looked at Sir Richard.   "In the legends my people tell, some people say that they turn to stone."

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Xanadu, New York
May 25, 1998
11:58 p.m., EDT

        Brooklyn didn't hear the splashing in the bathtub get louder or become aware of Carbonear leaving the tub and cursing when she realized that there were no towels within easy reach.  For the first, last, and only time in his life since meeting her, Brooklyn probably wouldn't have noticed if Carbonear had suddenly walked out and wrapped her arms around him, kissing him softly and whispering tender thoughts in his ear.  He was completely engrossed in the story, one he dimly recognized as an offshoot of his past.  Much like Sir Richard Whitbourne had nearly three centuries before, Brooklyn was mired deep in the gotta of the manuscript.

        "Peter's answer set my mind fixedly upon the topic. [Whitbourne wrote] A race that turns to stone throughout the day! Brought to this island from across the sea by others!  English words rooted in the barbaric speech of the Beothuk!  I was enthralled, and for weeks thereafter I could do naught but focus on the gargoyle.  Even after the gargoyle left the village that very same night, having taken off back to its home shortly before sunrise, and even through the business I was forced to attend to throughout the colony's day-to-day affairs, my mind would often drift back to the strange creature...the gargoyle.  I constantly talked to Peter of the legends, and he told me timeless stories that he had learned before his salvation of how the Shannanhaditou and the Beothuk made a pact after driving these mysterious white men away; that the creatures would protect the Beothuks during the night if the Beothuks would offer the same in kind during the day.   This fixation on protection fascinated me as well...why were these creatures so intent on protecting?
        "My questions were not answered immediately.   In fact, after that encounter, I didn't see the creature again for nearly a fortnight.  When he did return to Cambriol Colchos, he did not come alone.  Instead, one night, a band of Beothuk arrived from the forest, seeking to talk to us.  As the natives walked into the common, I was quite startled to see about four gargoyles...one of whom was the one we had captured two weeks earlier...land in front of them, warily watching the settlers and ready to protect their Beothuk brethren, it seemed.  Though no harm came to anyone, they still seemed mistrustful and anxious.  The protective instinct, I surmised.  Apparently, word was travelling through the Beothuks that settlers in other places did not  have very pleasant relations with the savages, and while the Beothuk were there that night to try to determine whether or not we posed any threat, they informed us that their Shannanhaditou had decided that for as long as we were there, they would protect the Beothuk from us, considering us to be somewhat of a danger.  Preposterous though that may be, I cannot help but be fascinated at this deep urge to protect..."

        Brooklyn read, turning the pages faster and faster.  Apparently, Sir Richard Whitbourne had become thoroughly involved in watching the gargoyles, and was fascinated enough to milk every available resource for information.  He talked to his Beothuk translator, he went to the Beothuk villages.  He observed the gargoyles turning to stone during the day (this had apparently raised a stink when the Shannanhaditou's leader had been furious at  the thought of a white person knowing of their vulnerability, but Whitbourne managed to see it all the same)  While he wintered in England, Whitbourne spent long hours looking for information on the strange beings, trying to find the mysterious link to Scotland.
        I know it, though, he thought, remembering Sevarius's revelation and Hudson's story from almost a year ago.  Vikings kidnapped gargoyles from my clan.  My parents, even.  Then they took them to Newfoundland.  That's who these white men are that you don't know about, Sir Richard, the Vikings.  And these Shannanhaditou might very well have been related to me.
        Alas, Richard Whitbourne went to his grave not knowing that.  He spent the rest of his part of the book focusing on the gargoyles themselves, meticulously recording their society and their customs and trying in vain to analyze and understand them.  When the settlement at Cambriol Colchos failed, and Whitbourne was enlisted to organize a settlement in the Falkland section of what was now the Avalon Peninsula on Newfoundland, he still observed, returning to Cambriol Colchos and watching.  He even managed to teach one of the younger gargoyles a little bit of English.  But what Whitbourne focused most upon was the protection.

        "It seems to me that though savage and cunning, these gargoyles are indeed nobler   than most men, [Whitbourne opined].  Upon making many observations of these beings (I cannot bring myself to think of them as creatures any longer) I have observed that they possess a sense of duty and honour and above all loyalty clarion to all else in their existence.  Whatsoever they do, be it tending to one of their own sick and injured or watching out for the Beothuk during nighttime hunting, they do it with a single minded sense of purpose that I can only admire and envy.  They simply protect, and do good for others...this is their  first duty above all else, and they simply do not comprehend or approve of any other way to live."

        A gargoyle can no more stop protecting the castle than he can stop breathing the air...ah, Hudson, looks like your litany was true after all, Brooklyn thought.  Then, a little bit of a sadder one.  Jesus, no wonder Carbonear and Whitbourne and Bonavista and Woodstock were so upset.  They lived their whole life as humans, not understanding...not even knowing about this clarion sense of duty or protection, just living for the moment...and then suddenly finding out that that wasn't the way it was supposed to be.
        Oh, Carb, I'm so sorry, he thought, six years too late.
        Halfway through the book, the narration changed.  Apparently, after Whitbourne had passed away, the book was handed down to others involved in the settlement of Newfoundland.  And they  wrote in it, those who observed the  gargoyles...but in the words of Bob Dylan, the times, they were a'changin'.
        By 1662, the French had decided they wanted to get involved in Newfoundland, too, and then the Dutch got into the act.  The gargoyles maintained that they would protect the Beothuk, but ended up helping out the British the odd time, against both French and Dutch.  By association, the gargoyles ended up protecting the British settlements, apparently for fear that the invaders would ruin the Beothuk way of life and attack their keepers and allies.  Soon more gargoyles learned (or relearned) to speak English, and soon some gargoyles were protecting English settlements around the Avalon Peninsula.
        But their worries about the destruction of the Beothuk way of life turned out to be well founded.  Writer after writer (the book had become a depository for all manners of gargoyle observations, passing from historian to historian.  The entries were reading like a history book, and Brooklyn surmised that the author  had penned these accounts long after they had happened, gathering from hearsay and second-hand) told of how as settlement in Newfoundland grew and European and American influence changed things forever, the Beothuk began to disappear...starved, plagued, even hunted.  As the Beothuk disappeared, so too did the Shannanhaditou.  While one historian had guessed that Whitbourne's day had had possibly three to five hundred gargoyles, by 1800, all estimates pegged that there were perhaps eighty gargoyles left in Newfoundland.  Where once legends had been told of gargoyle clans from coast to coast, east to west, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of St. Lawrence,  the nineteenth century confined them to a few scattered clans on the Avalon Peninsula; and only those who had left the Beothuk and lived with the British had escaped the ignominious fate suffered by the others.  The rest were gone with the Beothuk, and in much the same manner...erased from history somehow, written out of time's ever changing epic by some uncaring pen of destiny.
        But the legacy did continue on, and those eighty gargoyles apparently remained as protectors of the Avalon.  However, where Whitbourne had saw only nobility and honour in them once, history had repeated itself, and the Newfoundlanders...like the Scots and the Vikings and the English before them...reacted with mistrust and hostility.  One family, the Tavenors, who had come to Newfoundland from Scotland and claimed ancestry back to an eleventh century king, hunted gargoyles, killing them out of some blind rage that nobody understood.  While that was  one extreme example, it was by no means a fluke.  The gargoyles were feared and mistrusted by the people...and the only ones who understood them, the Beothuk, were gone, all wiped out and extinct, vanished from Newfoundland and from the face of the earth.  The gargoyle population dwindled further, and by the time the book stopped recording  their history in 1856, they had  faded into obscurity.  Whitbourne's obsession had vanished, and the gargoyles of Newfoundland had gone with time, leaving only the book to show that they had even been there.  A legacy of protection and nobility wiped away and lost forever, so it seemed, fallen to misunderstanding and fear.
        Brooklyn felt numb, and set the book down.  He dimly thought back to that May day the year before when the clan had figured out how Whitbourne could possibly be his nephew, what had happened to the gargoyles kidnapped by Vikings, how they had realized that some fragment of the gargoyles of Castle Wyvern had lived on after the massacre on the other side of the ocean, far away from the castle where six gargoyles spent a millennium locked away in stone.  But, reading this, Brooklyn realized that they hadn't escaped...that they had only delayed the inevitable.  Their reckoning had come nearly nine hundred years after the massacre, but come it had.  Time marched on and slowed for no one, be it human or gargoyle.  The end had come.
        But it hadn't been complete.  Some of them had survived, though obscure, and their line had continued...and culminated.
        He turned, and saw Carbonear  standing in the doorway to the bathroom.  She had dressed, and was watching him with a pensive expression on her face.
        "I didn't want to be after disturbin' ye."  she stated gently.  "You looked troubled.  Like what ye was readin' was hurtin' ye."
        Brooklyn nodded, and  looked at the book.  He closed it.  Suddenly he wasn't thinking of the lupins or the owls singing, all he was feeling was pain.
        "Jesus Christ, Carb...how could you stand it?  Reading about who you were, what your  heritage was, and then finding out how it ended?"  Brooklyn whispered hoarsely.  He was suddenly feeling hurt...delayed hurt, hurt that had been festering in time for a thousand years, and suddenly he was shaking for an offshoot of his family...his life...that he had never known, never seen, hadn't known existed until two years ago, and yet had somehow become so intimately involved in his life that he felt the long since forgotten Shannanhaditou's loss and obscurity like a knife in his heart.
        Carbonear was suddenly holding him close.  "It hurt."  she whispered.  "It hurt a lot, Brooklyn.  It still do hurt.  But the past is just somethin' to learn from, and to live with.  It can't be changed.  Nothin' in that book means anythin' but things to remember and learn from."
        Brooklyn kissed her, and wrapped his arms and his wings around her.  "Even besides how it all ended, now I think I understand how you must have felt when you picked up that book and read it back in St. John's...how you felt when you discovered what it was gargoyles did.  I don't know, Carb, it's like I was putting myself in your shoes the whole time I was reading that..."
        "...and you realized what a long road  I was after walkin'."  Carbonear nodded.  "Oh, Brooklyn, don't feel bad.  Things is all right now."
        She kissed him.  "Everything's all better now, my son.  Trust me, my life's improved a hell of a lot since we was after findin' that book.  First of all, they's you and me..."  she began, looking down at the wedding ring on her finger.  "Second of all, we knows that we ain't alone.  Most of my life, Brooklyn, me and Witless and Bonnie and Woody didn't have a sweet blessed clue that they was more gargoyles in the world.  We never knew till that story about the church ye's were fighting at came on the news just a couple of weeks before we met ye's...that's why I was so surprised when we first met.  Cause ye was the first besides us we ever  knew."
        Brooklyn looked at her.  "You must have been so very lonely."
        "It was, yeah."  She picked up the book.  "Lonely cause they was no one like us and lonely cause there was no real reason for us to be there.  What could we of protected?  That just wasn't us, my son.  We had no raison d'etre.  No reason to be.  We had people to love and people to care for, but no real reason why.  Does ye understand?"
        "Yeah."  Brooklyn nodded.  "Yeah, I do."
        Carbonear hesitated for a second.  She looked at the book, and flipped through it again. "Look, I knows we was plannin' on watchin' movies and havin' us a time tonight, Brooklyn, but..."
        "But what?"  Brooklyn asked.
        "But...well...like June said, we needs to look back at where it all began in the first place.  I'se never told ye the whole story of my childhood, has I?"  Carbonear asked.
        Brooklyn looked carefully at her, and took her hand gently.  "No, you haven't."
        "Well, if ye wants to understand why that book's so important, then ye has to know what I had in place of it."  Carbonear replied.  "And I thinks I can do that by tellin' ye about my life.  Plus it'll be good for me, too...I'se never told anyone everything before.  Just bits and pieces.  I'se never tried stringin' out the whole tale for no one before."  She looked at him.   "And if I ever has to tell it to anyone, I'd want it to be you."
        Brooklyn took her hand.  "Do you want to walk, though?  We don't have to stay up here.  It's a beautiful night."
        Carbonear smiled.  "That'd be nice, Brooklyn."
        Brooklyn got up, and helped her to her feet.  They walked out of the room, and down the stairs, oddly silent until they walked out  the door and walked down the patio steps.
        "Before I starts, though, I don't want ye thinkin' that it's all gonna be pain."  Carbonear clarified.  "Bein' a kid and growin' up as I did was happy, and I was never lacking for people to love and care about me.  Everyone from Witless and Bonnie and Woody to Jason and June and Oggie.  I was a happy girl."
        "I don't doubt that."  Brooklyn nodded, holding her hand close and tight, sounding concerned.  "I know you were happy.  But you must have always felt at least like an outsider."
        "You bet."  Carbonear nodded.  "Outsider lookin' in.  On both worlds...the one I understood and the one I was supposed to be part of."
        They walked along the asphalt paths Brooklyn had been walking upon an hour ago, headed on the long walk towards the capes of Lake Ontario nearby.  Once again the owls were hooting and the crickets chirping, but Brooklyn paid them no mind, instead focusing on Carbonear.  He took her hand, and she smiled.
        "You told me once that you wished ye'd of been there, so I wouldn't have been so lonely half the time."  Carbonear recalled suddenly.  "And I said ye didn't need to be."
        "Uh huh."  Brooklyn nodded.   She had said that at Matt Bluestone's wedding three months ago.
        "I guess I'm gonna be after givin' ye the next best thing, my son."  she smiled, and she looked at him.  He looked back, and softly ran his fingers along  her chin, toying  with Hawthorne's pendant around her neck.
        "I'm glad you're telling me."  Brooklyn replied.  She kissed him suddenly.
        "I'se glad I finally has someone who's eager to listen."  she whispered.  "Oh, Lord, I'se been waitin' for this a long time."
        They walked in silence for  a while more, finally leaving the forest and the streetlights behind.  The asphalt path stopped, as well, and soon they were walking upon open grass.  They walked for a ways more, finally stopping at land's end.
        Brooklyn looked down, watching the waves of Lake Ontario pound against the rocks below him.  The night sky was clear and star filled, and the wind was picking up a bit, softly blowing and whipping both Carbonear's and his own hair around a bit.  There was a lighthouse a few miles away; every few seconds, it would flash its beacon towards them, in a seeming acknowledgement of isolation.
        "Just like home."  Carbonear whispered reverently.  She sat down, and looked up at him.  "Here's as nice a place to tell the tale as any, my son.  Ye'd best be after sittin' down."
        "It's that long?"  Brooklyn grinned, teasing.  She chuckled, and wrapped her arms around him as he crouched next to her, sitting on the grass before the capes.
        "No, cause I wants a snuggle while I tells ye."  Carbonear replied.  She stared out at the water for a few seconds, searching for the right place to begin.  Brooklyn followed her  gaze, watching the pounding water and listening to the lonely cries of a few gulls overhead.
        She suddenly cleared her throat.  "It starts like this..."

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Chapter One

                The Luck of the Irish

Yates' Convenience Store, St. John's, Newfoundland
August 22, 1960
8:08 p.m., Newfoundland Daylight Time

        The world was entering a turbulent time.  It was the very dawning of the Summer of Love, but the Cold War was well underway...it was beginning to dawn on people that they might wake up one morning to find half the world blown back to the Stone Age all for the sake of some silly squabble over  who had a better economic system.  People were getting hurt and killed in the good ole Southern United States just for saying how great it would be to be nice to black people for a change. It was the same old bad news every day in the papers, and yet somehow, St. John's stood apart from all that.  The cradle of European civilization in North America continued its watchful existence on the eastern tip of Newfoundland's Avalon Peninsula, its people blissfully unaware (or so it seemed, anyway) of the troubles of the world around it.  After all, there were more important things to worry about than Nikita Khrushchev or the Ku Klux Klan.
        Such as the dilemma Jason Everett Doyle found himself with that night, which, to him, was as important as the bomb or the winds of change in the South.  He was in a strange city with no permanent place to stay, no money, and no prospects, so it seemed.  All he had was a kitbag full of a few essentials, fifty bucks in his tattered wallet, and a friend to share the adventure with.  He and Patrick O'Neal (known by all his close friends as Nuts) had hit the road to independence from a life of futility in the good old homestead at Whitbourne, Newfoundland.  Two nights ago they had hopped into Jason Doyle's pickup truck and drove away from that old life.  Goodbye, Whitbourne, and a nagging pestering mother who was always  at your back about getting a job, getting some cash, getting decent and respectable.  Goodbye, Whitbourne, hello, St. John's.
        Hello, St. John's, but by the bye, Jason, my son, what is ye gonna do when ye's got a pickup truck, fifty bucks, and a 2-4 of beer, and not  too much else?  Jason thought as he walked out of the convenience store, a box of cigarettes clutched in his hand.  He opened it up, and by the time he was in the front seat of the truck, it was well in his mouth.
        Nuts O'Neal was playing the radio in the truck and be-bopping his head along to some old song from the States.  Rock and roll was here to stay, didn't you know.  "Give us a smoke, Jay." he commanded.
        "Stop callin' me Jay."  Jason frowned, forking over a cigarette.  He ran a hand through his thick, brown hair, and scratched the side of his large nose.  "No one calls me Jay 'cept Dad, and didn't we come here to be after leavin' that life behind?"
        "Oh, don't go gettin' right snotty and educated to me."  Nuts laughed.   "Just start the goddamn truck."
        "Where the Christ is we goin' to, anyways?  This buddy of yours ye's after talkin' about better be able to put us up."  Jason frowned, starting the truck.  It roared to life...after making a thick farting noise that sounded as if the engine was stuffed full of wet newspaper, true, but it roared all the same.
        "Trust me, bye, I knows Travis Eddison."  Nuts stated, settling back. "He and I was buddies back when I was workin' for Scottie Dupre back the other summer.  And he was after sayin' that he'd be able to hold us up for a few months when I was callin' him last week."
        "He friggin' better."  Jason frowned.  "He just friggin' better, Nuts, cause we ain't got a whole lot of options otherwise."
        "Hey."  Nuts frowned.  "Hey, Jason, this whole thing was your friggin' idea, my lad.  Ye was after wantin' to get the hell out of Whitbourne and get away from that old bat ye calls a mother."
        "Ah, yes, mother dear."  Jason smiled ironically.  "Bye, I tells ye if she was here, she'd be off her rocker.  'Jason Everett Doyle, ye was raised better than to go runnin' off like this.  Ye little jackeen.  Ye never was good for nothin' other'n takin' up space'.  Christ, sometimes I'd just like to drive 'er one."
        "So do half of Whitbourne, my son."  Nuts grinned.
        They drove down the street, and as Jason drove, he started to calm down a bit.  They sang along to the radio, and when they pulled into the parking lot where Travis Eddison was supposed to meet them, according to Nuts, Jason was feeling almost cheerful.  Nicotine, the independent man's best friend.
        According to Nuts, Travis would be pulling into the parking lot sometime around nine o'clock.  They spent the half hour until then talking, just reminiscing about old memories and making impressions of Jason's dear besainted mother.  Nine o'clock came and went.  Nuts explained that Travis probably got holed up somewhere and would be by soon.  But come nine-thirty, guess what?  No Travis Eddison!  Come ten and ten-thirty and eleven o'clock, guess further what?  More of the same, by God!  Finally, at eleven-thirty, Jason (whose patience and good cheer had long since evaporated after hearing two hours of Nuts trying to excuse and then cursing that poster man for punctuality, Travis Eddison) decided that they were screwed.
        "Well, he ain't showin'."  Jason muttered.  "Just wonderful, Nuts, just absolutely wonderful."
        "I doesn't know where the Christ he is."  Nuts swore.  "Aw, goddamnit!"
        "So we doesn't have a place  to stay.  We can't be after sleepin' in the truck."  Jason growled.  "Some friend."
        "He ain't no friend of mine, no more.  If I ever catches up with him I'll knock 'im."  Nuts frowned.  "Aw, Christ, Jason, I'se sorry..."
        "Well a goddamn lot of good that's gonna do us!"  Jason yelled.  He closed his eyes.  "Oh, frigg it. C'mon.  We'll go look for somewheres to stay."

        He started the truck again, and drove away from the parking lot.  They drove around St. John's, trying to find some sort of refuge against the night, but, much as a young couple had found two thousand years previous in Bethlehem, Jason and Nuts found no room at the inn.  Or the YMCA.  Or any motels.   Many of these had vacancy, but had taken one look at the two voyageurs and turned them out.
        So, come midnight, Jason and Nuts found their possibilities exhausted.  Jason was tired and angry, and he was fast getting sick of playing the wanderer.
        He almost didn't give the old abandoned church on Beausejour Avenue a second look.  It was only when Nuts started ruminating about it that Jason looked, and pulled alongside of the curb.

        "Hey, what if we stays here for the night?"  Nuts asked.
        Jason looked out the passenger window.  The old church looked foreboding and dark in the night dimness of the city.  No lights shone from within.  It looked decrepit and old, and Jason could tell just by looking at it that no one had darkened its doors for a long, long time.  "Ye's joking."
        "No, man, I ain't!  We breaks in there for  the night.  Come tomorrow, we finds a better place to stay.  Trust me.  I knows a  buddy I worked with with Scottie Dupre..."
        "Scottie Dupre sounds like a fine judge of character."  Jason muttered dryly.  "Christ, Nuts, I knows we's desperate, but..."
        "Beggars can't be choosers.  C'mon, Jason, it's just for one friggin' night.  And just think about what your mother'd say."
        Jason sighed, and shook his head. What the hell.  What were their options?
        "Okay, let's do it." he muttered, and that was that.  They got out of the truck, and walked up the old, weathered path to the church door.  An old sign stood watch at the gate, welcoming all to St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church.  The rest of the sign had  rotted away.
        There was no problem getting in; one of the  windows was broken.  The two clambered in, and looked around.  They were right in the sanctuary of the church, but all of the ornaments were gone.  No cloth vestements, no tabernacle, nothing.
        "What a dump."  Jason muttered.  His voice echoed through the empty room.
        Nuts looked towards a door on the side of the wall.  "That don't go outside." he noted.

        "Looks like it's after goin' upstairs."  Jason muttered.
        "And somewhere's a sight more comfortable than havin' to sleep in a pew."  Nuts continued.  He opened the door, and walked cautiously up the stairs.  Jason watched him go, and frowned, walking around the sanctuary with an upraised eyebrow.  His boots cracked against something on the floor, and he frowned.  He looked down.
        There, lying on the ground, were little chips of stone.  Granite, it looked like.  He knelt down and picked it up, noting that it looked a little bit like a claw of some kind...
        "JESUS, MARY AND JOSEPH!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
        Jason dropped the rock, and sprinted towards the door that Nuts had entered.  He tore up the stairs two at a time, scared out of his mind.  Nuts' yell had sounded more than simple shock or fear...it sounded close to horror.  Terror.
        He entered into a large...absurdly large...bell loft.  There were no bells in it; they had been removed long ago.  It was littered with personal effects, showing that perhaps Jason and Nuts were not the first people to have come up with the idea of residing in the church.   Nuts was standing in the doorway, screaming and pointing at the center of the room.  Jason looked, and saw...
        ...Jesus Christ, what the hell are them things?
        There, in the middle of the room, brightly visible through the light of the moon shining in through the window, were four...four animals.  They were lying on the floor, half dead and silent.  They all had two wings protruding from their backs, tails lying limply on the floor, and long, sharp claws on their three taloned hands and feet.  Jason fought the urge to scream.
        "Calm down, Nuts."  he whispered.  "Calm down, bye, they ain't gonna hurt ye.  They's barely movin'."
        "What the hell are them things?"  Nuts panted.  "Bloody Jesus, what the..."
        Jason cautiously stepped forward, grabbing a stick and brandishing it like a club.  He stepped on something which cracked beneath his boot, looked down, and saw a light purple fragment of what could have been an eggshell lying smashed on the floor.
        He stepped forward until finally he stood over the four things, and  held the stick up.  Then he saw one open its eyes, half lidded, and then close it again.  His mind allowed him to see further details, now...they were very small, newborns, even.  They were also emaciated and looked fragile enough to crumble at the touch of a feather.  Half dead.
        Holy Jesus Christ, they's just babies, he thought.
        Baby WHAT?   he demanded.
        Baby corpses, he thought back.  Jesus, Jesus, look at them, they's more dead then alive...
        He didn't know what they were.  He had little or no exposure to the exotic animals of the world, no way of telling if he was in any danger.  But...the sight of the four little creatures there lying as still and as cold as a grave was stirring up some emotion that he didn't completely understand or know.  It was sympathy, of course.  Sympathy for four little animals that were laying on  a church floor half  dead, new, starved, sick, whatever.
        Jason Doyle, though he didn't recognize it, was a very complicated person.  He projected a certain image...of a man who likes to party hard, drink harder, and doesn't feel the weight of the world that heavily upon him.  Commitments hadn't rang with him...for instance, he and public education had parted ways five years ago when he was at the tender age of seventeen...and so he honestly didn't expect that he would do what he would do that night until it was done.  But deep down inside, Jason Everett Doyle had always been more than what he seemed to be.  He dearly loved his father, who had passed on a few years back.  He had a firm, unswerving faith in God, a facet drilled into him by the nuns at school but just as much his own.  And even though he was considered a man going nowhere fast by nearly all who knew him, he had a deep sense of compassion and sympathy that many of those people themselves lacked.
        That was one reason for making his decision...not the only one, but the main one.
        He knelt down next to the small animals, and gently picked one up.  It opened it's mouth, but no sound came out.  He picked it up and carefully examined it.  It was a boy whatever-it-was, and had a small beak and horns, unlike the other three.  It was about as thin as a straw, and that was almost not an exaggeration.
        "They's starvin'.  They needs somethin' to eat."  he mused, and he looked up at Nuts.   "Go get  it some food.  They's some sandwiches in the kit..."
        "Ye's goddamn nuts!"  Nuts cried, still near hysterics.   "I ain't..."
        Jason frowned.  "Look at  it, Nuts, it's almost dead.  Ye means to honestly tell me that ye ain't gonna help it out?"  Nuts did not reply, but his face looked oddly shameful.
        "For Christ's sakes, Nuts, go!"  Jason commanded, and then Nuts did.  He bolted down the stairs.  Jason turned his attention back to the baby creature in his arms.  He turned to the other three who were still on the floor, just  barely respiring but now looking up at him with dull eyes.  He swallowed.
        "I doesn't know what ye's are,"  Jason stated,  "but there ain't no friggin' way I can just leave ye's like this.  That's a sin, whoever was after doin' this to ye."
        He didn't at all realize it, but he had just found his raison d'etre.

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        Nuts came back up the stairs with the sandwiches, considerably calmed.  Now he was just pissed off.  Jason paid him no mind as he listened to Nuts describe exactly how crazy this was, how stupid this was, how he hadn't run off to St. John's just to babysit a couple of animals and play zookeeper.  Jason told him to shut up, and focused on the four  things.
        The sandwiches were tuna.  Jason calmly scraped the very soft fishmeat off of the bread, and held some out to the beaked, horned one.  It took a few minutes to respond, but when it did, it started to eat.  Slowly at first, then ravenously.  Jason only allowed it to eat a little bit at a time, and split the rest of the tunafish between the other three animals.  They still looked bad, and not at all well, but at least they had something in their stomachs.
        "They ain't all that much we can do for them."  Jason stated, when the sandwiches were gone and there still was no real improvement in them.  He had even let them eat the bread once the fish was gone.
        "Jason, we can't go buyin' food for them things.  We has to think of ourselves too."  Nuts protested.
        Jason paid him no mind.  "Maybe they's a vet somewhere that'll help us out...tell us how to get 'em in a better shape than they's in."
        "Jason..."  Nuts groaned.  "Ye's friggin' insane, bye..."
        Jason  looked up.  "They's just babies, Nuts.  I ain't leavin' 'em to die up here, starved and alone.  Go get me a box or somethin'."
        "What the frigg does ye need the box for?"
        "We's takin' 'em to a vet."  Jason replied.
        "A veterinarian."  Nuts groaned.  "Oh, beautiful, a vet at midnight for four monsters in a church..."
        "Babies."  Jason stated stubbornly.  "And they must be a vet or two in St. John's that's open at night for emergencies."
        Nuts stared at him.  "Friggin' insane."  he muttered again.

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St. John's Veterinary Hospital
August 23, 1960
12:47 a.m., NDT

        The pickup truck pulled in front of the vet's office, and stopped.  Jason opened the door, and immediately hauled out a large cardboard box that Nuts had found in the parish hall.  It used to hold paper towels.  Now, with a blanket that had once covered the seats in the truck covering  the bottom, it held the four baby animals from the church, still half-dead and looking grim.
        He hoisted the box up carefully, checking to see if the four were all right.  He looked up, and saw a light on inside the clinic.  His silent prayer on the way over had been answered.  Wordlessly, he walked up to the door, and set the box down to knock on the door.
        "I just wants ye to know how stupid and brainless this is."  Nuts reiterated.

        "Oh, frigg off, ye stupid shagger."  Jason growled, picking up the box again.
        "Excuse me?"  came a voice from within.  Jason looked up, and saw the door open and a woman looking out back at him.  She was in her late thirties, with brown hair  and brown eyes.  JUNE, her nametag read.
        Jason blushed, and shuffled his feet.  "We found these four animals and they looks like they's half-dead.  We was wonderin' if the doctor was in and he could take a look at him."
        The woman frowned, looking genuinely sorry.  She shook her head sadly.   "We's closed.  Dr. Moores ain't here."  she muttered.  "I'se just a secretary, and I'se only here late updating files for him.  And even if we was open, they's not all that much we can do for wild..."
        She looked into the box, saw the four  animals, and gasped.  Jason had steeled himself for a reaction similar to Nuts', and wasn't terribly surprised.
        He was surprised, however, when she crossed herself and muttered "Gargoyles...holy Christ, they's gargoyles!" under her breath.  And he was even more surprised when she looked at him, and nodded.
        "C'mon in."  she stated.

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        "I ain't a vet."  June Tibbo stated.  "I just works for one.  But judgin' from what I can see, they's newborns and they hasn't been cared for at all."  She watched the four...the four gargoyles, as she called them...crawling around on the floor weakly, experimentally, making small mewling sounds the odd time.  They were a sight better than when Jason had found them.  June had managed to get them some more food and some milk and water to drink.  They were still weak, and probably would be for a few more nights, but they were at least looking better than they had.  That was good...they didn't look quite so in danger anymore.
        Jason shook his head, and watched as the four animals slowly moved.  In the lights of the office, he could clearly see them for the first time, even their odd skin colouring.  The beaked, horned one was a very light blue...the colour of a summer sky, with small tufts of brown hair.  There was one who had thick blond hair, two horns that extended sideways along its brow, and had skin the light green colour of grass.  Another one was brick red, with black hair the colour of midnight, and the last, a girl, had a bit of wavy white hair...and was a deep navy blue.
        "What are they?"   Jason asked.  "Christ, I ain't never seen nothin' like them before."
        June looked out the office door to the waiting  room, where Nuts O'Neal was standing, reading a magazine and muttering to himself.  "Gargoyles."  she muttered. "They's gargoyles."
        "What's a gargoyle?"  Jason asked, blankly.  Briefly he wondered if this was the sort of thing he should have been paying attention to in science class.
        "They're kind of like people.  They ain't animals.  They walks, they talks, and they thinks."  June muttered.  "I knew some of 'em a few years back,  but they just vanished a while back.  That's how I knows what they is, cause I was after seein' them before.  That's why I let ye's in."
        She looked down at the four gargoyles on the floor.    "Jesus, they even looks like the ones I knew.  Spot on.   Maybe ye found their kids."
        Jason didn't understand half of what she was talking about, but at least he had something to call them instead of animals.  Gargoyles.
        Suddenly something jammed in his mind.  "They walks, they talks and they thinks?"  he stammered.
        June nodded.  "I barely knew these gargoyles I was after knowin'.  I saw 'em maybe once a week for an hour or so.  They was only one I really clicked with...but yeah, they's just like people."
        "Holy Christ."  Jason blinked,  staring down at the gargoyles.  The blue one was crawling slowly towards the door to the waiting room, and Jason carefully scooped him up and set him back down.
        "What is we gonna do with  them?"  Jason asked.  "If they's like people, I can't turn 'em over to the Humane Society or nothin' like that..."
        June stared at him as if he had suggested loading them into a cannon and shooting them to Quebec.  "They's like people."  she repeated.
        "I knows."   Jason sighed.  "But...frigg, Mrs. Tibbo, what's I supposed to do?  I can't look out for them.  Nuts and I ain't even got a place to stay.  No job, no shelter, nothin'.  I has to get me own self on the ground fore I can worry about takin' care of these things.  And to be blunt, Nuts prob'ly has other ideas of stuff he wants to do 'stead of playin' father to four gargoyles."
        June  nodded.  "Maybe I could take care of 'em, but...but not with my husband passed on and this job bein' barely enough to support me."
        "So what is we gonna do?"  Jason  asked. "I can't just pawn these four off on anybody else."
        June bit her lip.  "You needs a place to stay?"
        "Uh huh."
        "I could rent ye my basement till ye gets your feet on the ground."  June stated, seeming to be in the throes of a plan.  "Till ye gets a job, ye can pay me back by doin' odd jobs around the house, and then we'll be able to look out for these four.  Then once ye gets workin' ye can pay me rent till ye finds somewheres else to stay."
        Jason felt as if someone had kicked him in the stomach.  A perfect stranger offering him a place to stay...and a way to take care of the gargoyles.  A way to find a purpose.  A way to get what  he had come to St. John's looking for...a life apart from being under his mother's thumb in Whitbourne.  He was struck by this act of kindness, and felt genuinely touched.
        "You'd do that?"  he asked weakly.  "Ye...ye hardly knows me."
        June smiled.  "Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, that you also do unto me."  she replied.  "The offer's open to your friend there, too.  Though I has to warn ye that it ain't like you'll be livin' comfortable.  They's an awful draft in my basement so it might be cruel of me to stick ye's down there..."

        "Frigg, Mrs. Tibbo...that won't be a problem."  Jason stated, ecstatic.  His benefactor looked back at him, and at the gargoyles, and smiled.

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        "No."
        Jason blinked in surprise.  "What?  Nuts, this woman's takin' us in out of the goodness of her heart, and ye's refusin'?
        "Yeah."  Nuts replied.  They were standing in the waiting room, watching the city lights through the window.  June was standing in the office still, watching the four gargoyles, but Jason could tell she was listening in.   "Ye and me was comin' to St. John's to get away from Whitbourne and find  ourselves adventure on our own.  That ain't takin' care of four animals and livin' in some secretary's basement."
        "So ye'd rather strike off on your own and look for somethin' else?  Holy fuck, Nuts, your one effort to that's been us waitin' in a parking lot for some friend of yours that ain't gonna show."
        Nuts glared at him.  "Travis Eddison ain't the only buddy I knows, Doyle.  And I ain't stickin' around with ye just so we can play babysitter." He sighed.  "What's gotten into ye?  We's been best friends since kindergarten, and ye's turnin' your back on me for the sake of four animals you found tonight?"
        You're abandoning me, you pissant, Jason thought.  "I ain't turnin' my back on ye."  Jason stammered, disbelieving.  "This woman is offerin' us a place to stay until we gets a job, Nuts.  Ye don't have to worry about them gargoyles if ye doesn't want to.  What the frigg is ye lookin' for?   Parties every night and as much booze as ye can handle?  I'se been there and done that.  Don't tell me that's what ye wants all your life."
        Nuts bit his lip.  "Look, forget it, okay?  I said I ain't doin' er, and that's that."
        "Nuts, Jesus, ye's chuckin' away your chance  to find somethin' here!  Don't be such an omadhaun, Nuts..."
        "Ye don't get it.  This is about pride, Jason..."
        "Pride?  Yeah, right.  You're just out to prove you can make it on your  own without no help from no one, Nuts."
        "And ye's still tryin' to find your mother's approval."  Nuts shot back.  Jason paled, and had time to think only that his mother would definitely not see respectability in caring for four gargoyles or  whatever  they were and living in a secretary's basement before Nuts threw up his hands in the air and started for the door.
        "Patrick!"  Jason called.  Nuts turned back, and shrugged.
        "Come get me when ye's ready to be Jason Doyle again."  Nuts replied.  "I'll be around."  He walked out the door of the clinic, and was gone, without so much as a means of transportation.  Jason watched him go, and closed his eyes.

        "And what was that all about?"  June Tibbo asked.  She wasn't looking at him...she was feeding the gargoyles again.  They had taken quite the liking to tuna fish sandwiches.
        "The idiot took off.  I don't know what the frigg his problem is."  Jason growled.  He walked over to the gargoyles, and picked the green one up.  He suddenly wondered if he had made a mistake in caring about the four gargoyles at all.  "He just took off cause he didn't want to play babysitter to these things."
        June looked up at him.  "I'se sorry to hear that."  she stated.  "Aren't ye gonna go after him?"
        "What's the use?"  Jason frowned, suddenly angry. "He's too stupid to see these four needs help, that we could be looking at a purpose instead of runnin' off just without a care in the world..."
        He suddenly started swearing.  "Damnit, what's goin' on?  I leaves Whitbourne to get away from someone's definition of respectability, finds these four  and starts down the road to findin' me own way, and that ain't good enough for him.  He always was a free spirit, but holy Christ..."
        June looked at him, and at the four gargoyles.  "Maybe he'll come around."  she stated, "but as for me, I thinks that ye bein' worried about these four is very kind of ye.  And ye's right about findin' your  respectability, Mr. Doyle...maybe all ye needs is a reason."
        Jason looked at her, at the tiny gargoyle in his arms, and just sighed.

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        The day dawned bright and clear, and  the gargoyles turned to stone.  This did not sit  well at all with Jason Doyle, who had never seen anything at all like it in his life.  He spent ten  minutes privately fearing that he had done something wrong and killed them somehow before June told him that gargoyles turned to stone in daylight.  She had learned this fact from the gargoyles she had known before, and assured Jason that  they would be fine come sunset.  They  moved the four statues to the pickup truck, and took them back to June Tibbo's house.  She lived at 35 Tupper Street, a few blocks away from the clinic and from the abandoned church where the four had been found.  Jason stayed at her house while she went back to work; his first odd job was cleaning out the basement for him to live there, although he spent a good section of this time staring at the four statues that had been living, breathing creatures the night before.  That, and worried about Nuts and what he himself was getting into.
        Nuts and Jason had been friends most of their lives, Jason having met Nuts the summer he had  moved to Whitbourne from Carbonear, and they had both gotten tremendous reputations as ne'er-do-wells.  But while Nuts had  honestly believed he was a victim of everyone else's misunderstanding and honestly didn't want to have to earn anything in life, Jason had always been different.  He had spent his childhood very close to his now-late father, who had always accepted Jason with no questions and showed the rare kind of understanding love  that only a father and son can share.  His mother had always been trying to mold him into an upstanding pinnacle of society, and nothing was ever good enough for her.  That peculiar mix of parental values had shaken Jason badly, and led him to rebel against the both of them while deep down seeking some way to make them and himself proud of him.  He and Nuts had come to St. John's for very different reasons...Nuts for an adventure that'd keep him and work separate, he trying to escape his life and find something better.
        And maybe the four gargoyles were the key.  And maybe Nuts just didn't understand that.
        As he cleaned and hauled boxes and raked the hardpacked dirt floor, he came to wonder what the gargoyles were going to change.  They needed someone to take care of them.  He had been the first person in their brief lives to show any sort of compassion and concern whatsoever.  Even June, who knew about gargoyles, hadn't even known they had existed, apparently, and would not talk of the gargoyles she had known from before.  He didn't know anything about what they were, but he couldn't deny that they needed him.  And he wanted to take care of them...partly because he didn't want them to die from neglect, partly because they were the only opportunity  he had ever really and truly had to prove to himself that he could do something upstanding.  Make a difference.  Be something more than a high school dropout with no foreseeable future.
        And after  all, they were only  babies.
        What did Nuts know?

        And so he thought, long and hard, as he cleaned the basement, all the while shooting glances to the four stone statues which stood there looking  at him.

********************************************************************************************************

        And that was how Jason Doyle became a father.
        Nuts had returned to the vets office four nights after his outburst, and had then shown up, after  realizing Jason wasn't there and getting directions (which really went to prove, Jason thought later, that Nuts wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer if he thought that Jason would stay at a vet's for four nights) at June's house to talk to Jason.  In amidst watching Jason mashing up tuna fish to feed the four gargoyles, he had announced that he had a place to stay.  He had met up with another friend of his, Coady LaFosse, who was putting Nuts up.  Nuts offered Jason once more to stay with him and Coady.  Jason asked him if he could bring the gargoyles.  Nuts refused.  Coady, it seemed, thought Jason was being stupid for running off on a friend to take care of four animals, and Nuts explained that he was inclined to agree.  Jason had stated that he wasn't going to abandon them, and he had just as good a thing going with June Tibbo.  He once again stated that June was willing to put him up, too.  Nuts had laughed, said he wasn't going to spend his time looking after four stupid animals when there was a great big world out there and better things to do.  Nuts had told Jason to stop being such a sissy.  Jason had given up, and told Nuts to fuck off.  After that, Nuts left, and he never again darkened June Tibbo's door nor made any great lengths to meet up with Jason Doyle again.  Jason was saddened...after all, he had been friends with the guy since kindergarten...but as he watched the gargoyles slowly make their way back to health and progress from half-dead weaklings to spunky little mischief magnets, he couldn't help but feel that he had made the right decision.  It felt too right not to be.
        Over the next few weeks, the gargoyles became healthy again, gaining weight and eating better.  Once they had been rescued from their neglect and their  lonely existence in an old, dusty bell tower, they took off like rockets.  They grew full of beans over  the next few weeks, and during the night hours they were always on the run.  June gave the three males each cloth diapers to wear so they wouldn't be crawling around naked, and found a little smock for the girl, a little flower dress.  It once was a baptismal present to a friend of hers, she had explained, but the baby had miscarried.  That wasn't the only thing they had gotten over the next few weeks...one night just as August was giving way to the cool, autumn winds of September, Jason decided that he wanted to name them.
        "I'se sick of callin' them 'hey you' and 'the green one' and stuff like that."  he stated, standing in the kitchen.  He  had managed to clean out June Tibbo's basement, had moved a cot down there, and converted it into a serviceable bedroom.  He was living a pretty comfortable existence there...hadn't gotten a job yet, but he had a good feeling about a prospect.
        June, who had just gotten home off of  work and was heating up a bit of warm  milk on the stove for the four little gargoyles, nodded.  "Yeah, they needs names." she agreed.
        The blue, horned one started crying, suddenly, screaming and wailing and pounding its fists in a temper tantrum.  Jason rolled his eyes, and picked the gargoyle up, trying unsuccessfully to calm it down.  "What's wrong with ye, buddy?"  he asked.  "What's wrong?  Was the green one bitin' your tail again?"
        The green one looked guiltily up at him.  Suddenly the blue one in his arms calmed down and started pulling on Jason's ear, burbling happily.
        "You little shagger."  he stated, and gently removed his earlobe from his grasp.    "One of these days ye's gonna scratch me with them claws of yours, my son."
        "They's sure taken to ye, Jason."  June grinned, pouring the milk into a little bottle she had picked up at the corner store.  She had picked up a few other   things...a couple of pacifiers, a few baby squeeze toys, and a few other inexpensive amenities...that tended to calm the four gargoyles down.
        Jason blinked...he still called her Mrs. Tibbo all the time.  Somehow, her act of taking him in with almost no worries had ingrained a deep amount of trust and respect for her.  She seemed too maternal to be true.   He was forcibly reminded of his own grandmother who lived up north in Woodstock, who had never been able to turn a blind eye to the needy.  "Yeah."  he muttered.  "I'se taken to them, too."
        "You knows...ye seemed a lot different from that buddy of yours the night ye popped into the clinic."  June stated.  "Ye's got a paternal instinct about ye.  They takes to ye like anything.  Like ye was their own father.  I guess that comes from bein' the only person that really cares for them, eh?"
        "Maybe."  Jason muttered.  He took the bottle, and held it for the blue gargoyle, watching as he greedily sucked his meal.  The other three started clambering over his feet, pushing at each other as they tried to get into a position to be next.  Jason couldn't tell if it was his imagination, but the blue one looked as if he was shooting his three siblings a smug grin.
        "So what's we gonna call ye, my lad?"  he asked, as he handed the bottle back to June and let her take a turn feeding one.  She took to them just as well as he did.  "Ye looks a bit like an Everett to me.  My dad's name."
        The blue one did not look impressed at all, and started squirming.
        "He don't like Everett."  June stated with a smile.
        "And just what's wrong with Everett, now?"  Jason demanded.  "That's a fine name, you little frigger.  Everett Doyle was the kindest man in all of Whitbourne."
        At the mention of that name, the blue one suddenly settled down and burrowed its head into the crook of Jason's shoulder.  It was probably just a coincidence, he would think later...but it got a better reaction than Everett did.
        "Whitbourne?"  he asked.  "Oh, c'mon, now, I can't be after callin' ye Whitbourne.  That's a place name."
        The gargoyle burbled happily, and started to wriggle out of his grasp.  After a tense moment where it seemed that the little shagger would be falling to the floor and cracking his head, Jason picked it up  and looked it squarely in the eyes.
        "Whitbourne."  he stated.  The gargoyle grinned back.
        "I can't believe it.  Ye likes that name."  Jason stated.  He set the garg...Whitbourne down, and stared at him.  He picked up the green one, who was currently very engrossed in trying to eat his left foot.
        "We named Whitbourne after a place I used to live."  he mused.  "Maybe ye wants a place name too, do ye?"  The green one looked down at the floor, and started to drool.
        "Eew."  Jason stated, and gently wiped the drool off the baby's mouth.  "Well, what if I thinks back to the place where my Dad used to take me fishin' at his cottage.  Good old Bonavista.  You like that?  Bonavista?"
        Bonavista did.  Jason grinned, and looked towards the girl gargoyle, who looked very uninterested in the whole thing.  "And you looks like a Carbonear.  A nice name for a young lady."  Jason smiled.  "The place I was born."
        That left the red one.  Jason picked him up, and cradled him in his arms after setting Bonavista down gently.   He looked to June again, and thought of his grandmother.
        "Woodstock."  he muttered.  "Ye's gonna be Woodstock, my son."
        "Whitbourne, Carbonear, Bonavista and Woodstock."  June smiled.   "There's a coincidence."
        "What's that?"
        "The gargoyles I knew all had place names too."  June shook her head.  "Trepassey and Baccalieu and Trinity and the like..."
        Jason nodded; he had heard only faint details of June's association with gargoyles, apart from a description of what they were  and a few assertions that the four...beg your pardon, Bonavista, Woodstock, Whitbourne and Carbonear...looked achingly similar to the gargoyles she had known that she had fallen out of contact with and then vanished without a trace.  "That is odd."  he stated.
        June grinned, and picked up Carbonear and started smiling.  Jason grinned; the four gargoyles had taken to June as well.  "Fine names.  How does ye like that, Carbonear?"
        Carbonear gave a resigned little sigh, and then started to wail.
        "Frigg, she wants her sooky."  Jason stated.  June grinned at him as if to say Fatherhood was made for you, Mr. Doyle, and watched as he gently gave Carbonear her pacifier.  She said nothing, though, only watched as he took Carbonear back and gently rocked her close, and  then setting her down and playing peek-a-boo with the four gargoyles.
        Jason would always look back on those early days fondly.

*******************************************************************************************************

        Autumn eventually gave way to winter, and then 1960 gave  way to 1961.  Life was rather idyllic those few months...Jason found a little part time work besides working for June, and the basement became not at all a bad place to stay.  Life carried on for the odd little family (as Jason had begun thinking of it as; he grinned every time he thought of what the coffee shop wits would think if they saw him tending to Whitbourne, Carbonear, Bonavista and Woodstock and tried to reconcile him with the man who had spent his nights and days hanging out at the pool hall smoking) in such a way that only made Jason happier he had chosen the path he did.
        Whitbourne was always getting into trouble, it seemed.  He was the most active of the group, forever crawling around the house, screaming and yelling with anger when he couldn't get his way or when something wasn't advantageous to him.  It was he, for  instance, who tugged on the tablecloth when June was setting the table for Thanksgiving in October, and broke the good china gravy boat when it crashed to the floor.  He was the model of unrepentance about it, even though scolded tremendously...he simply sat there, sucking on his sooky and smiling a smug grin as if to say "You can't do nothin' about it cause I'm just a baby, so frigg you".  It was that incident that gave rise to the nickname Witless.  On the rare occasions where Jason lost his temper, he'd claim that it suited him.  But Whitbourne never took it to heart, it seemed...the next night, he'd either break something else or get into a fight with one of the other three, Carbonear more often than not.
        Bonavista was more a follower, it seemed...he wasn't as consciously bad as Whitbourne was, not nearly, but whenever there was a situation that Whitbourne could have perpetrated only  with help, much more often than not Bonavista was the co-conspirator.  He was much more placid, however, and he certainly didn't scream as much.   That wasn't to say he wasn't above a little mischief now and then...one night  he had apparently decided it would be great fun to knock over one of June's flowerpots just for the hell of it...but he was quite a bit happier-go-luckier.
        Woodstock was the opposite.  He was a bit high strung, and very rarely got himself into trouble.  Either that was a testament to his good behavior or to the fact that nobody caught him, since when he was with the others, he was rambunctious...but not to as great a degree.  And he didn't cry as much.  Jason would frequently wonder if something was the matter with him, if  he  hadn't recovered as fully as the others, but Woodstock seemed fine.  Just a bit more aloof.
        And Carbonear was a healthy mix of both.  She was Whitbourne's nemesis most of the time, but not at all above joining her brothers in their games or exploits.  She had one natural advantage over the others, though...she was a girl, and as such, she was always looked upon with a bit more sympathy.  It wasn't fair at all, both Jason and June knew, but they couldn't help it.  The crux of this came one January night when Carbonear let out a heart rending wail that brought both Doyle and Tibbo running.  They arrived to find Carbonear crying broken-heartedly, with her security blanket ripped in two.  Whitbourne was holding one half, a little bit of circumstantial evidence  that ended up giving him a sore arse when Jason "beat his bum" as he called it.  As it turned out, though, Jason had found out later on, Carbonear had ripped her blanket herself when Whitbourne wouldn't give her half of the cracker he had been eating, had shoved one half in her brothers arms...then ate the rest of the cracker when Whitbourne got his bum beat.  She was the most devious of all, a fact compounded by the truth that she could more often than not get away with it...and she knew it.
        But up until the beginning of April, 1961, the only real problem was that of money.  June Tibbo was not a rich woman, and if the house hadn't been paid off years ago, she wouldn't have been able to afford it, a fact which was true even before she had met Jason Doyle.  Her salary as a veterinarian's secretary wasn't exactly the best.  And she was paying for five extra people now.  She didn't at all draw attention to the financial situation, and told Jason to stop being so foolish the many times he offered to give her the money  he earned form his odd jobs.  June Tibbo firmly and honestly believed that charity was sacred, the very belief  that had prompted her  to put Jason up in her basement in the first place.  Nevertheless, when Jason found out that she was using almost all of her grocery money for baby food, he decided to take action.
        His ship came in in the form of a man named Mickey Brenton.  Brenton was an older gentleman, a fisherman by trade, who was getting too old to perform the various tasks all on his own.  Round mid April, just when fishing season was getting  in gear, Jason went for a walk down on the harbour, ran into Brenton (quite accidentally) and started a conversation.  After a discussion and a beer at a local bar, Brenton offered Jason a steady job straight through till October as a fisherman's helper.  The pay was decent...not six figure or anything, but enough to get by (most people don't realize that "poor fishermen" aren't always so poor, and in those days, after all, the Grand Banks still had lots of fish for everybody).  That was the promise that Jason needed...a steady income.  Oh, God be praised and saints be blessed, Jason Everett Doyle had gotten himself a job.
        June was, understandably, quite happy.  She had always contended to see something in Jason that would make him responsible, and that all he had needed was a reason.  The gargoyles had given him that, and now he had a job to prove it.
        "And now I can start payin' ye back for all the kindness ye's given me."  Jason grinned.
        June's brow had furrowed.  "You'll do no such thing."  she stated calmly.
        "What?  June, Jesus, ye can't go on livin' like this.  Ye's gonna end up in the poorhouse lookin' out for us."
        "God frigg it, Jason."  June swore. "This ain't about money.  This is about bein' kind to others, helpin' people out.  Ye's given me my reason, too.  And I ain't takin' money for you livin here.  If ye wants to help buy food and the like, by all means, go for it, but ye ain't payin' rent."
        Jason frowned.  "June...when I moved in here, ye told me once I got meself a job, I'd pay.  I'se willin'..."
        "Well, I changed my mind."  June stated, stirring her tea.  She looked at Bonavista and Woodstock, who were sitting on the floor chewing on crackers.  They were teething, it seemed.  "When my husband died them years back, I was all by myself.  No kids, nothin' to pass my time.  Now I'se got that, and ye wants to pay money for me to have that privilege. I should be payin' ye.  I loves the four of them like my own."
        "But I can't let  ye go on like this."  Jason protested.  He got up, walked to the fridge, and pulled the electric bill for the month of April off the door.  "Look.  Ye's got bills too.  Your pay can't pay for a whole family in your house, especially when I can be after helpin' ye out.  Either I pays my way and the kids' way, or I'se gonna move somewheres else and give ye some financial breathin' room.  Ye can't afford this no more, and ye knows it."
        June flinched, and stared sullenly at her coffee cup.
        "June,"  Jason stated gently, "I left Whitbourne tryin' to find my own responsibility and a way to be myself.  Stayin here abusing a saint's hospitality ain't the way to do that, even if that  saint is perfectly willing."
        "Well, I ain't gonna accept no money from ye."  June replied.  "That ain't right.  So if ye's hell bent on relieving me of this burden..."
        "Then I guess I better leave."  Jason stated sadly.  "Admit it, June, ye can't do this no more."
        "I wants to.  I loves them kids like me own."  June muttered stubbornly.
        "So does I."  Jason knelt.  "And they loves the both of us, but they wouldn't like putting ye into destitution."
        June frowned, and cracked  her knuckles.  "At least stay close by."  she sighed.
        Jason was about to reply when he  saw the days newspaper, open to the local news section.  "CITY TO TEAR DOWN ST. JOSEPH'S CHURCH", the paper read.  Jason frowned, and scanned the story.  The old church...the one he had found the gargoyles in...was being called an eyesore, and the diocese was no longer willing to pay for its upkeep, lackadaisical though it may have been.
        He thought a second, and frowned.  "I gots a place in  mind that's right close by."  he stated.

*******************************************************************************************************

Diocesian Office of St. John's, Newfoundland
April 18, 1961
10:08 a.m., Newfoundland Standard Time

        "Ye wants to move into St. Joseph's?"   Archbishop Leonard Brennan stated incredulously.  Jason nodded, and smiled.
        "Look, Your Grace, I knows how crazy it sounds, but didn't ye just tell me that that place is a kind of historic landmark?" Jason Doyle asked.
        There was another person in the office besides Jason Doyle and Archbishop Brennan.  He was a young priest, roughly Jason's age if not a little older, who had brought Jason into the office  when Jason had  walked in off the street.  He had been just as stunned at first, but he was also a bit intrigued by his offer.  His name was Father Kenneth Ogden.  And it was Father Ogden who spoke up now.  "He's right.  St. Joseph's is one of the oldest Catholic churches in the city."
        "But it's been deconsecrated."  Archbishop Brennan sighed.  "Abandoned since 1941.  It's no longer a house of the Lord."
        "It's still a symbol of the Catholic Church in St. John's, though."  Jason stated.  "Father Ogden here told me while we was waitin' for the chance  to talk to you that it's been around since 1850."
        Brennan sighed.  "Frigg, my son, there ain't no way you can live up there.  They's no heat, no lights, no water, no electricity..."
        "I'se willing to pay for the upkeep.  Look, ye's gonna tear it down anyways."  Jason stated.  "Just give me a chance, Your Grace, and I'll fix it up so it looks all right on the outside, and I'll worry about the lights and the electricity and that.  That way  it's out of your hands, it ain't an eyesore no more, and ye keeps a piece of the church's history, at least visually."
        Archbishop Brennan looked at him.   "Why do you care, Mr. Doyle?  You're not even from here, as I recall you telling me."
        Jason shook his head.  "I don't wanna see it go to nothin'.  That place has some historical ties to some members of me family."
        "Marriage?"  Brennan asked.
        "Baptism."  Jason replied.  It was close enough.
        Father Ogden cleared his throat.  "And ye has to admit, your Grace, it'll keep ye in touch with the people of the diocese.  More'n a few was after writin' letters asking for the place to stay.  That old buildin' means a lot to some people 'round here.  If we lets Mr. Doyle get started with  a little help gettin' his feet on the ground, then not only does we keep the building and keep the parishioners happy, but we don't have  to sap the churches funds to keep it or tear it down.  She's the best of both worlds, Your Grace."

        Brennan rolled his eyes, and picked up a pen.  He tapped it on the desk, and looked at Jason. "You got guts, my son, I'll tell ye that."  he muttered.  "Not many'd come to the Bishop himself and waltz in asking to live in a church scheduled for the wreckin' ball."
        "I'se an Irish Catholic, Your Grace."  Jason grinned sardonically.
        "And stubborn as Saint Patrick himself, I bets."  Father Ogden grinned.  Jason nodded, and raised an eyebrow.  He had taken an instant liking to the bandy-legged little priest.
        "Well, Mr. Doyle, my answer  to you is an emphatic 'maybe.' "  Brennan stated.  "I'll bring the matter up at the next meeting with the diocesan committee.  I have to admit, this is the most unorthodox idea I'se ever heard of...but I'll consider it."
        "Thanks, Your Grace."  Jason replied, standing up and  shaking his hand.  He walked out of the office, not noticing Father Ogden following him.
        "Now what in God's name is possessin' ye to this now, Mr. Doyle?"  he asked suddenly as he closed the door, causing Jason to start suddenly and spin around.
        "Family reasons."  he stated carefully.
        "Ah.  Cause ye has to admit, a young man such as yourself who's got a job as a fisherman's helper livin' by himself and caring for an old abandoned church sounds pretty friggin' strange.  Its like a situation comedy."
        "I knows its strange, but...look, ye was with me and on my side in there, how come ye's questioning me now?"
        "Because it's in me nature."  Ogden laughed jovially.  "I'se just wonderin' why, that's all.  It ain't too often ye sees a young man so interested in local church history."
        "Well, I ain't got anywheres in town to stay otherwise, unless I imposes on a friend's hospitality."  Jason explained.  "And they's personal reasons."
        "Too personal to tell me?"
        "I'se known ye all of an hour, Father."
        "Yes, but I'm a man of the cloth.  Think of it as Confession, my son.  I won't tell a soul."
        Jason smiled, and shook his head.    "It's too crazy, Father.  Ye'd have to see them to believe them."
        Ogden looked at the clock.  "I gots the time if ye gots the story."
        Jason stared at him,  and shrugged.  Why not?   "All right, then, Father."  he frowned.  "Come on by the place I'se stayin' this evenin', and I'll show you. 35 Tupper Street.  Mrs. June Tibbo's house."
        Ogden nodded.   "I'll be there with bells on."

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35 Tupper Street
6:34 p.m., NST

        "Holy Christ."
        With that statement, Father Kenneth Ogden looked in shock at the four gargoyles, playing on the floor with a ball of yarn.
        "Yes, He is, as a matter of fact.  Ye's a priest, ye should know that."  June grinned, setting two cups of coffee before them.
        Father Ogden couldn't grasp the joke.  "Frigg, what are they?"
        "Gargoyles, they's called."  Jason replied, feeling a small swell of pride.  My gargoyles, he didn't say.  "Father Kenneth  Ogden, meet  Whitbourne, Bonavista, Woodstock and Carbonear."
        Ogden looked up.    "I doesn't know what's odder...them in the first place or that ye seen fit to name 'em after towns."
        June stifled a laugh, and Jason blushed a bit.  "My God, they's incredible.  Adorable."  Ogden continued.  "Can I pick 'em up?"
        "Sure."  Jason invited.  Ogden grinned, and  knelt down.  He picked Carbonear up off the floor, and cradled her in his arms.
        "She's got wings.  Does she fly around?"  he asked.
        "We's never seen her."  Jason replied.  "Maybe it comes to 'em later on."
        "So what do these buddies have to do with ye movin' into the church?"  Ogden asked.
        Jason frowned.  "That's where I found 'em.  In the old bell loft."
        Ogden looked up.  "THAT was never in the parish history..."
        "Tell me about it."  June nodded.   "But that's where they was to."
        "It wouldn't be right for us to stay here no more."  Jason explained.  "Hospitable though Mrs. Tibbo's been, and  heartbroken as she is to see us leave, she just can't afford to keep us.  And she's too stubborn to let me give her money."
        "The Lord don't say nothin' about makin' buddies who lives in your basement help pay your bills, Mrs. Tibbo."  Father Ogden stated reproachfully.
        "The Lord can stay out of my financial worries, my dear."  June replied with a grin.
        "And it just feels right.  Ye know, bringin' 'em home to the place  they was born."   Jason stated.  "A nice touch."
        "I can't believe ye's gettin' the whole diocese in an uproar over a bit of sentimentality."  Ogden muttered, setting Carbonear down.  She went back to the game, trying to unravel the yarn. "Look.  Your motives are true, at least, and I have to admit, ye'd make the place more interesting.  But it's one thing convincing  me and quite another gettin' the Archbishop's Byes to go along with 'er."
        "I know."  Jason replied.  "They's gonna say no, huh."
        "Well...no guarantees.  They's interested and buzzin', anyways...more than a few people don't wanna see that old place torn down."  Ogden stated.   "But I guess ye's just gonna have to wait and see.  But...I'll do whatever I can to help, though."
        He looked back at the four gargoyles.  "And I'll tell ye what else...they really should be baptized, ye know.   If ye wants 'em livin' in a deconsecrated church, they'd best have a clean slate with the Almighty Father."
        "Ye's gonna baptize 'em?"  June blinked.
        "Why not?"  Ogden shrugged.
        Jason picked up Whitbourne, who was once again contentedly enjoying his sooky. "I really appreciates this, Father Ogden."
        Ogden grinned.   "Well...look, if  we's gonna be friends, ye might as well call me what all my friends do."
        "And what's that?"
        Ogden grinned.  "Oggie."

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        It was another month and a half before Jason got word from Bishop Brennan.  By then, he was working on Mickey Brenton's boat full time, and so he had a little money to spend...though he made a point to sneak a little bit into June's purse whenever she wasn't looking.  She never did catch on, or if she did, she said  nothing about it.  Either that, or snuck it right back into Jason's wallet when he wasn't looking.
        The letter came near the end of May.  When Jason got home  from work that day, stinking of  fish, he found it   sitting on the kitchen table.  He frowned, and picked it up, fully expecting it to just  be a piece  of paper informing him that the diocese thought he was insane.
        It wasn't.
        They said yes.
        Apparently, they appreciated the history of the church, and wanted at least the exterior open for the public to view...and the fact that Jason was willing to help pay for the restoration  was just fine by them.  They were prepared to give him three hundred dollars to help him out; the rest would have to be on his own.  The letter was signed The Most Reverend Bishop Leonard  Brennan.  With a hoot of glee, Jason had let out a cry of triumph that got the kids worked up.  They had a little celebration, made even better  when Father  Ogden came over to celebrate the good news too.
        So for all that summer, Jason worked during the  day with  Mickey Brenton, and a few hours  each afternoon and evening fixing up the church.  The three hundred dollars went quickly towards paint and wood and other supplies to fix up the outside, but by the end of June, the  church's outside didn't look  all that bad.  He took to it with zeal, relishing the thought of moving into the church, getting off June's back financially,  finally having a place of his own even if it was an abandoned church.
        This responsibility thing took some getting used to.
        July and August were spent rigging the church into a serviceable home.  It wasn't as expensive as Jason had feared...the building was structurally sound, thank the Lord, and there was a small wood  stove in the parish hall that Jason moved up to the bell loft, so that took care of the heating.   Plumbing and electricity were the main things, simply because the church had neither.  But Mickey Brenton knew a plumber  who was willing to do a complete installation job for just seven hundred dollars...and even throw in a little shower for free...just  because he was  a good friend.  And the electric company, after a few calls and a little bit of coaxing, said that  they'd run a power line over to the church from the house next door for a hundred bucks.  That left getting a serviceable electrical system in the church, but Father Ogden sent over someone who had wired up the convent for the Sisters of the Precious Blood, and told Jason that he'd take care of the charge.
        By the beginning of September, the church  was ready.  Jason had paid a grand total of almost a thousand  dollars, with tax, for the church's repair...but it was now a recognizeable church, in a much better state than before.
        A recognizeable church...a serviceable home.
        The finances were something of a state; that thousand dollars had been a sizeable chunk of Jason's wages, and so there probably wouldn't  be much leeway for spending.  Most of his money would go for food and hardwood for the wood stove, but Jason's job was seasonal, and it would only last for a month more  that year.  So Jason took a stroll down to Human Resources, filled out an application for his UI, and got himself on the pogey for the winter months.  He didn't have any real problems...he had worked his twelve weeks to be eligible, and he had a  promise from Mickey Brenton that whenever  he needed a job during the fishing  season, he was more than welcome to sign up with him.  That was enough for the Department of Employment and Immigration, who saw to it that Jason would have a steady, albeit smaller  income through the winter months.
        That left just one last thing to do.

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St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church
September 16, 1961
7:32 p.m., Newfoundland Daylight Time

        June Tibbo helped him move the  last box up the stairs and into the bell loft, silent the whole while.  It  wasn't until they set it down that she looked at him and sighed.
        "Jason, if ever ye needs help with anythin'...anythin' at all...my door is always open to ye."  she stated, looking at the four gargoyles who were sitting on the floor playing on almost the exact same spot  they had been born.
        Jason Doyle followed her gaze, and turned back to her.    "Thanks, me girl."  he replied.   He looked around.  "It ain't exactly as cozy as a house, but I think we's gonna be all right."
        "I thinks so too."  June nodded.  "Ye's told me about them shaggers back in Whitbourne who thought ye was a good for nothin', Jason, but I knows ye better and I thinks ye's gonna be just fine."