"What would you have us look forward to? Pretending at being human, living in the shadows of their societies, as you've just done?" Biali shook his head. "That's no life for a gargoyle."

  Hajnal arched an eyebrow. "Whereas hiding in the mountains watching them encroach ever further is ideal?"

  Biali snorted. Hajnal and Alban exchanged a smile, and Biali harrumphed again, making the other two laugh. "There are no good solutions," Alban said easily, and for some little while the topic lay fallow, through the change of seasons. It became easy to forget that Alban was young, yet; he had become part of the always, a known mark in the memories, and one of the few of whom Biali was truly fond. Alban's tempered enthusiasm balanced Biali's dour gruffness well, and Hajnal flew alongside both of them, so they were large and strong and small together, and one was rarely seen without the others.

  Rarely, but not inevitably: Alban left twice more before his seventieth year, years he could count more closely than most because he had come into the world in the same year as one of the human royalty, a girl who grew up to be queen for so long that even the Old Races noticed, and marked it in their memories. In his seventieth year—in hers—she died, and he left again, to see the land that had been hers to rule. Hajnal went with him; Biali proclaimed them both insane, and watched the memories they added to the gestalt prove him right. London, full of humans and animals, stank, and no theatre performed in the round could convince him it was otherwise worthwhile.

  No one else followed them, in the memories, not with the attention Biali did. Hajnal asked more than once that he come along behind them, but the distance was as close as he had any desire to encounter humanity in. But they live so brightly, Hajnal said through the memories. Brutal, short, ugly lives, yes, but with so much passion, Biali. It might rub off.

  I don't want it to rub off, he protested, and the memory of her laughter stayed with him as dawn stole their lives away.

  They returned just before winter, flying at night over the narrow gap of water between England and France, hiding in woods and hills and once in a while on a church top for the daylight hours, then taking advantage of the increasingly long nights to wing their way home. They arrived dangerously close to sunrise one morning, risking a fall from air-borne heights, risking shattering on the mountains below, to be home. Biali waited for them, awake, pacing, watching the sky, demanding they show some modicum of sense and land before dawn caught them; they could come the last little distance at night, in safety. But no, they both insisted on wasting no more time in arriving home, and with the sky dangerously grey on the horizon, they landed together with the grace of long practice. Biali, cursing their foolishness, caught them in a hug, and woke from daytime's stony prison in the same embrace, still scolding, until Alban threw him over with a laugh, and they pounced and wrestled and tumbled in the snow like children. Earth-shaking children, to be sure, able to knock small rockslides loose, while Hajnal leapt lightly into the air and watched from above, where she wouldn't be caught in their wrestling.

  Their antics drew the attention of a handful of others who ended up caught between amusement and disapproval; the eldest of them, sternly, said, "You've spent too much time with humans, Alban," and, "Biali, you should know better."

  "Surely you ought to be reprimanding me," Hajnal replied. "They're both striplings, compared to me." But Biali disengaged from the game, brushing snow and dirt away, and suffered a sting of chagrin, that Alban's youth and playfulness should be so infectious. Alban, for all his size and propriety, seemed unscathed by the scolding, though he too shook off the snow and spread his hands in a show of apology.

  Not enough of one, though: he said what he had said before, with more conviction. "We need something of humanity, to survive. The more time I spend with them the more certain of it I become."

  The elders landed, at that, scowling around at each other and then, together, at the youngest of them. "Then you spend too much time with them, Alban. Humans are dangerous to the Old Races. We need have nothing to do with them."

  "Humans are dangerous to us whether we deal with them or not," the big youth replied with quiet confidence. "They're eager to explore their world, finding new corners of it every day. Eventually they'll find us, whether we want them to or not. What would you have us do? Lock ourselves away in stone forever, hoping we might be mistaken for sculptures and statues? Hoping their casual destruction of the unknown will pass us by and we'll emerge unscathed from their hammers and wedges? The Old Races haven't survived for untold millennia through willful ignorance of our situation. We're going to have to adapt, one way or another."

  So much of the tribe had gathered by then, all but a handful. Thirty or forty of them, as many as would be seen on the longest night, though that was weeks away yet. They stood against Alban, a gathering of relentless stone, and despite his youth he looked neither afraid or uncertain, as if his conviction ran as deep as the mountains. Hajnal came to the earth finally, landing by his side, and if she didn't take his hand, the gesture of solidarity was still clear, and made Biali look to see where he himself stood in the throwing of lots.

  Neither with nor against; closer, perhaps, to Alban and Hajnal than to the gathering of their elders, but not with the two itinerant travelers. Hajnal's gaze on him was patient, loving, but not pleading; she didn't need him to stand by her, though she would welcome him if he did.

  He knew it at the time, recognized it as a moment of schism, and still did not move. Could not, perhaps, move; the path Alban stood on the precipice of was too unwelcome to Biali, even if Hajnal stood there as well. There was a chance, still, that they could be drawn back; that was what he believed, or told himself to believe, even then, and the most that he could do was stay rooted where he stood, with neither faction and wondering at the cost of solitude.

  "Come with us." A ritualized request by now, after a dozen leave-takings and returns. Hajnal crouched on the mountain's ridge, looking out into sky turned blue with moonlight, and snow that paled the horizon. "For a little while, Biali. Come see a little of the mortal world with us. A month or two, no more."

  "Stay," he countered, and that was as habitual as the rest, by now. "They can't find every hidden space on the planet, Hajnal. We've been safe in our quiet corners for a long time now. Stay, and stop tempting them."

  "Once you would have come with me."

  "Once you didn't have a more eager young idiot to accompany you."

  She looked at him, the corner of her broad mouth half turned up. "Were you an idiot, then?"

  He was one now, and knew it, to stay behind, but it had become a line of foolish stubbornness he would not, or could not, cross. "I was always happy to stay behind, Hajnal. I traveled because you wanted it, not because I had any need to see their world, or even more of ours. It's all there, in the overmind."

  "But it isn't the same, experiencing the memories once removed. The scents, the colors, the textures. They're distanced, in the gestalt."

  "Not very."

  "No." That, at least, she granted him, with little more than she smile she'd offered before. "Not very. But enough. I'd go so much farther, if our wings would stretch that far, Biali. To the New World, to the frozen poles. Doesn't it bother you, that we gargoyles, especially, are so limited in our terrain? Only as far as we can fly in a night."

  "But night lasts for months, when you go far enough north, and the gestalt shares stories of those who have crossed the ice in the darkness. You could reach the New World, if you wanted to."

  "Would you come with me?"

  "Wouldn't Alban?"

  "That," Hajnal said quietly, "is not what I asked. Come with us," she said again. "To Spain, to Portugal. There are places where gargoyles can live, Biali. Cities where so many torches are lit that the night seems as bright as day, and men and women live their lives late at night. We could be part of that."

  "Where humans live their lives late at night. We'll never be part of that, Hajnal. We're not human."

  She transformed suddenly, an unexpected burst of air as her gargoyle form gave way to the slighter human form that all the Old Races could cultivate. Her transformation wasn't as dramatic as some: Alban lost half a foot or more of height, and Biali, some of his breadth, but Hajnal, small to begin with, was hardly any more delicate as a human than as a gargoyle. Her hair whipped around her, long black tangles the only clothing she wore, and her eyes were dark and luminous in the moonlight. No gooseflesh marred her skin, despite the cold wind; that was perhaps the greatest sign of her alien nature, that even in human form, gargoyles were largely indifferent to the elements.

  "We're not," she agreed, and her voice was lighter in this form. A human might call it sweeter, but to Biali it sounded thin, as if she had lost something of herself in the transformation. "We're not human, but we can go among them as if we were, and revel in experience. Where's the profit, Biali? In staying true to our first forms, if most of what we do is let the world glide by below us without ever touching it? Come with us," she said one more time. "Come see the world with me again, Biali. There must be ways to belong in more than one world at once."

  Softly, wondering if there was regret or only inevitability in the word, Biali said, "No," and Hajnal sighed. Maybe this time, he thought, without believing it: maybe this time she would choose to stay, choose the safety of isolation and the quiet life of the mountain gargoyles. She had, a few times, at the beginning, but no. Tonight, as she had done most of a dozen times past, she stood on the mountain ridge, human form bare and fragile in the darkness and the wind, and stretched her arms as if she could embrace the world.

  "Look for us in the overmind, then, my love. I have to go. Alban is waiting for me."

  She leapt, inexpressible strength flowing even through human limbs: leapt high, and long before a descent began, transformed again, with wings flared to catch the air and glow pale in the moonlight. A sense of joy touched him through the overmind, joy in flight, joy in exploration, tempered only faintly by the sorrow of leaving.

  Spain, 1608

  New memories flooded the gestalt, at least the places Biali haunted: the lingering scent of sunlight hot on bricks, the warmth of a hand placed against those warm stones. Human laughter, so bright and easy, and human friendships. A woman who looked very like Hajnal herself, with bright black eyes and long loose hair, and dresses in red and yellow and blue, trimmed with equal brilliance; Hajnal herself enthralled by the textures of those dresses, the smooth fabric, the delicately worked lace. Her absolute ineptitude at making those laces, to the great hilarity of her mortal friend. Alban, quite solemn in comparison, but easier and more open than gargoyles ever were, a glass of wine almost as white as he was held delicately in his big hand; a determined Spaniard, hardly seeming half Alban's height, teaching the big gargoyle the steps of a quick-footed dance, and Alban's fond memory of Biali's patience with an awkward youth that now paid off in his ability to join in a human celebration.

  Food of rich depth, spices and warmth, paired to the wines and applied, assiduously, to see what the Germanic pair—for that was how the Spanish peoples saw Hajnal and Alban, the accents of their native tongue rendering a liquid language more guttural than it was meant to be—to see what they could hold, what they liked, and whether, after a series of wagers, it was possible to get either of them drunk. It wasn't, and none of the wagering humans really thought that giant Alban couldn't hold his drink, but tiny Hajnal's ability to partake endlessly without becoming incapacitated delighted them. Laughing mortals, hassling two gargoyles out of their seats and onto a square of dirt kept clear for dancing, and Alban's lessons being worthwhile as he effortlessly spun a laughing Hajnal across the square.

  Biali visited those memories often, studying them, searching for the differences between mortal and immortal, and finding far fewer than he might have hoped. The hours they kept, yes, because gargoyles could do nothing other than retreat at dawn and rise with the sunset, and the length of memory; the humans told stories of childhoods that had been a mere span of years in the past, while Alban and Hajnal were careful to say little about their own pasts, or to elide the details of when an event had happened, but the content of the stories was not so very different. The children were: there were so many human children, even in the evenings that Hajnal and Alban partook in. Babies at their mothers' breasts, little ones scrambling between legs and under tables, protesting bedtimes and wheedling for treats, older ones trying to be grown-up, sometimes with eerie success and other times with laughter-inducing failure, even youths who reminded Biali very much of Alban, all elbows and knees, if with less height and strength than the gargoyle lad had possessed. Memories of their enthusiasm filled the corner of memory that Hajnal frequented, and if she still harbored no regret over having none of her own, she was very fond of the small humans she encountered.

  They were none of them dangerous, not really; even deep in reluctance Biali could hardly dispute that. Not so long as the gargoyles excused themselves before dawn, and if their hours were a source of interest to the humans, they were also, perhaps, a source of envy. To not rise and work with the sun; well, they were clearly wealthy, then, and the friendship with higher classes surprised and delighted the mortals, who half-imagined that the nobility were an entirely different people than themselves, so rarefied did they seem. If only they knew, Biali said one night into the overmind, as Hajnal's memories of the day built new hillocks and bumps in the vast range of memories, and she laughed, echoing in the growing hills.

  Perhaps you'll come with us next time, she said again, with a hope more familiar to human optimism than gargoyle nature, and for once Biali only grunted noncommittally, rather than refuse her outright. She and Alban stayed in the warm south longer than they had planned: years, rather than a month or two, reveling in the days and nights of nearly equal length, that left them feeling more part of the world than the short summer nights farther north. Time flew so quickly for immortals it was easy to forget how much of it had passed, even for Biali, left behind; it was only when some lingering moment in the gestalt showed him a human child who had been an infant when they arrived now reaching girlhood that he thought of the years they had been gone, and wondered into the overmind if their unchanging aspect would undo them, after too long in one place.

  Startled by the thought, they reluctantly left the sea and the warm salty air, but then returned home eager to see the tribe again. Hajnal flew into Biali's arms with a laugh, knocking him rough-and-tumble as if they were human children themselves, and Alban, amused, drew them both to their feet. He had gained his full breadth in the years they had been gone, shoulders wider than Biali's and his presence implacable. When he argued in favor of joining the human world this time, more of the tribe listened, though, like Biali, they didn't go so far as to join him where he stood—as ever, now—with Hajnal, against the tide.

  The tribe spoke of them together now, when they spoke of them at all: Hajnal and Alban, instead of Hajnal and Biali, as it had been for centuries before Alban's birth. If they had become lovers that was absent from the memories, kept carefully to themselves, though there were moments in the overmind where the possibility could be seen: Alban's hand covering Hajnal's against a sun-warmed wall, or in their laughter as they danced, or in quiet nights in the mountains above human cities, though any of those could be the comfort of friendship as well. But Hajnal came back to Biali with the joy of long-delayed unification, and if Alban had become so human as to learn jealousy, there was no sign of it.

  Still, they stayed for so little time it could only be seen as a visit. Their world was beyond the mountains now, and Hajnal hesitated this time, before leaving, to make her familiar plea: "Come with us. To the east, we think, this time. To India, perhaps even to China. There's so much world to see, and it will take years, Biali. Decades. Come with us."

  For the first time, Biali shook his head, not to say no, but to object to the scale of her ambitions. "That's too long, Hajnal. Maybe not for you, who are accustomed to traveling, but not for me. I left for that long once before. I don't want to do it again. Not the first time, not in so long."

  Surprise and pleasure lit her face. "Then we'll go somewhere nearer. London again, or even Paris. It doesn't have to be for so long, if you'll come with us. Where would you like to go?"

  He laughed, gruff sound. "I'd like to stay here, but you never will, will you?"

  "No." The answer needed no consideration, though she managed a note of apology in the simple word. "I could contain the urge to travel when no one else wanted to, but with Alban…" She shifted a shoulder, obsidian shrug. "The world is there for us to explore. To learn how to belong to it. Come try for a while, with us, Biali. If you hate it you can always come home again."

  London 1653

  He did hate it, despite his best intentions. Paris, laden by its stinking River Seine; London, worse than that with the slaughterfields filling the Thames with offal. Innumerable humans, sometimes appealing with their swiftly changing lives, but mostly smelly and violent; the theatre that drew Alban and Hajnal bored Biali, melodramatic representations of the human condition only throwing into relief all the reasons he preferred to stay away from them.

  Moreover, his mortal form got him invitations to a different aspect of the human world than Hajnal or Alban, one delicate, one tall, both beautiful by human standards, were offered. He, squat and muscular and roughly handsome, looked to men like a fighter, and they were eager to encourage him into a pit or a ring to see who could come out the best, himself or some poor human fool thrown in against him. He only participated once in a while, when he could slip away from the more genteel life the other two pursued, and he won more rarely than that, simply because it would be too easy to win all the time. That coins were tossed at his feet, that wagers were laid and livelihoods lost on the fights, only served to increase his dislike for humans and their cities, but they were so easy, and his skill and strength so superior that to disdain the opportunity seemed a waste.

 

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