Crickets and Gargoyles

Unlike the vine-covered ruins of Jandraming or the jumbled heap of ancient architecture that is Rampastula, abandoned buildings in the Golden Desert don't tend to get overgrown by anything. The Desert is short on plants and long on space, and many of its commonly available building materials are resistant to rot, even in the rare places where there's enough moisture to make rot possible. Buildings no longer in use tend to simply remain as they are.

This results in experiences like the one the caravan had a week after our encounter with the Painted Ones.

Chak had proven to be, as well as a generous host, excellent company; the two of us had spent most of that time happily exchanging songs and amusing anecdotes while sheltering inside his wagon, I from the heat, he from the dryness of the Desert air. I'd continued to decorate the translucent cover of his wagon with a design of water and fish that I hoped would help to soften the glare of the sun. Though I suspect the confined quarters would have become monotonous given enough time, it was a pleasant way to spend a period of recovery.

The seclusion was broken one day when Mogen opened the flap of the wagon to inform us that there was something worth seeing outside.

We had come across one of the Golden Desert's many abandoned villages. This one was in even better condition than most; the most abundant local building material seemed to have been a type of pink granite, which had withstood decades in the elements even better than other villages' wood or sandstone.

Several travelers with experience in exploring abandoned buildings (a riskier prospect than it might seem) requested that the caravan stop for the afternoon to allow them the opportunity to search the village, in case anything of use or interest had been left behind.

Tirakhai required little convincing to grant their request. The basement of the largest building was flooded with water clean enough to restock the caravan's reservoirs, and several of the smaller houses were home to a rare breed of domestic cave crickets, hunchbacked and freckled creatures the size of guinea fowl. Though feral, they were entirely unafraid of us, hopping between the shade of the wagons and generally getting underfoot in a fashion that most of the caravan's members found charming (except for the gafl, who were afraid of them despite being several hundred times their size). In short, there was plenty in the village worth stopping to examine.

It was about noon at that point, so most people retreated to either the shade of their wagons or the less monotonously familiar shade of the village's houses (those that had been checked by the explorers and proclaimed free of scorpions, rotten floorboards, cellar howlers, and other common hazards).

Chak and I didn't feel the need to brave the noonday sun to satisfy our curiosity, so we waited, listening to the bustle of chores, exploration, and tea preparation outside the wagon, until the shadows had grown longer. Mogen pulled the wagon into the shade of the largest building; Chak donned a scarf soaked in water to protect his face (ineffective for prolonged exposure, but good enough for a brief peek outside); and we opened up the flap of the wagon for a look.

Every house in the village had at least two or three gargoyles on its roof. They were all relatively ordinary examples of the art: hybrids of various animals that ranged between frightening and comical. Some looked benevolent, others charmingly mischievous; some held positions or objects meant to symbolize luck or prosperity, while others - ostentatiously showing off oversized shoes, pots, or spectacles - were clearly meant to advertise their residents' trades. A few, I suspect, were caricatures of the families that once lived beneath them. All of them were fairly sedate and quite clearly the work of the same three or four artists.

Then there was the main building.

No one in the caravan was certain what, exactly, its purpose had been. Various people suggested a granary, a town meeting hall, or a temple of some sort. It's entirely possible that it was meant to serve all of these functions at once. Whatever it might have been, the village's sculptors clearly saw it as the opportunity to create their masterpiece. The building was a riotous confection of bays, arches, gables, cupolas, and small minarets, all built from the same pink granite, and every possible niche and corner was inhabited by a gargoyle.

The East side of the building, which we could see from where the caravan had stopped, had gargoyles in the traditional positions: sly, beneficent, mournful, and pugnacious. Their forms were inventive enough, and the workmanship was superb - clearly several years beyond the work on the houses - but none of them were especially remarkable for gargoyles.

They continued on the South side, though the grimaces became less intimidating there and more like sneezes and stomachaches. A few of the more closely-placed groups gave the impression of quartets or trios of cheerfully hideous singers. It's probably just as well that no one could hear their voices.

The West side, farthest from the caravan, had the gargoyles sleeping, smoking, cleaning their spectacles, and so on. I got the distinct impression of a group of actors killing time backstage between appearances. Still, they remained in typical gargoyle locations, perched on lintels and peaks and at the edges of balconies.

The North side was complete chaos. The gargoyles there had left their posts and climbed all over the walls. They poked their faces into the windows (which must have been a rather startling sight from the inside) and gnawed at the edges of the roofs. Five or six had gathered inside the top of an arch for what appeared to be an upside-down game of cards. According to a few high-climbing explorers, others in less visible areas of the building were doing things less acceptable in polite society (though accounts were vague on what exactly those things were). If this was true, the gargoyles in question didn't seem to be visible from the ground. Perhaps the sculptors suspected that whatever village leaders commissioned the building wouldn't have approved.

Though our view from the wagon was limited, we spent a fascinated hour or two slowly circling the building and looking at as many gargoyles as we could. I even paused to sketch several of the most inventive. We stopped only when Chak said that his face was feeling singed and my head began to swim again from the heat.

I left the wagon that night and spent the rest of the evening comparing notes with the other observers of gargoyles - a category that included nearly everyone in the caravan by then - over a dinner of cricket's-egg omelettes.

The crickets appeared to lay two or three small but nutritious eggs each day, like domestic hens. Tirakhai and several of the more agriculturally inclined travelers insisted on capturing a few in the hopes of breeding and selling them elsewhere as livestock. Using a combination of carrots, greens, and dried fruit, they had no trouble coaxing several dozen crickets into hastily constructed cages, where the insects sat placidly munching on the food and twittering to each other.

Apparently, the crickets used to be a much more common food source in the Golden Desert; Mirenza says that they're mentioned in several historical records, and the omelettes that night were, in fact, an ancient recipe that she'd never had the chance to test with proper cricket's eggs before. As the omelettes were excellent, with a nutty greenish flavor more subtle than chicken's eggs, I suspect that the crickets might be making a comeback in the next few years.

When we awoke in the morning, the gargoyles had moved.

No one who had kept watch overnight had actually seen them in motion, and no one saw them change position while the sun was up. However, everyone who had paid them any attention agreed: roughly one gargoyle in four was in a different position than it had been the previous day. Some had turned ninety degrees; some had shifted from one perch to another.

Most alarmingly, there were now more of them on the east wall of the main building, the side that faced our campsite, and many that had been on the main building the previous day were now perched on the houses surrounding the caravan. None of them were looking directly at us, but all of them were positioned so that they could have done so, if they wished, without turning their heads.

There was some debate - in tones considerably more subdued than the previous night's conversation - as to whether or not the actual shape of any of the gargoyles had changed. An object switching locations is hardly unusual; it happens every day in Hamjamser, though it rarely occurs with anything smaller than a building. For a carved statue to turn its head or move a limb would have implied that something much more unusual was going on. When one of the debates began to grow rather heated, on the subject of whether or not a particular seahorse-headed gargoyle had had its wings up or down the previous day, I offered to fetch my sketchbook and settle the matter. I remembered sketching the gargoyle in question, as it was one of the few in the village with the features of an aquatic animal.

I opened my sketchbook to find that every gargoyle I'd drawn was now shown, not only in its new location, but staring directly out of the page at me.

That was when we decided to leave.

While the others packed up the caravan, I removed the three pages of gargoyles from my sketchbook (I normally have a visceral aversion to tearing pages from any book, for any reason, but felt no hesitation in this case). Accompanied by one of the urban explorers - a woman named Imichek, with whom I had only a passing acquaintance, but whose dry sense of humor I'd come to appreciate during dinner conversations - I ventured into the main building and left the pages in a dry, sheltered area of the floor. One page had several sketches for the design of Chak's wagon on the other side, which I considered only a minor loss, now that the design itself was already sketched out on the fabric. Though the character for Patience in the center of the design was something that I suspected the gargoyles already had in abundance, I hoped, privately, that perhaps they'd appreciate the sentiment. I imagined I could feel the quiet gaze of stone eyes on us as we left the building.

Our departure from the village was far more subdued than usual. Hardly anyone spoke at all until the last minaret of the village had vanished behind the dunes. Even then, the topic of the gargoyles was conspicuously absent from conversation for the next several days.

What's frustrating (and fascinating) about the whole affair is, of course, the ambiguity of it. When one encounters an unexplained phenomenon in a place that has been long abandoned, for no obvious reason, by all intelligent life, it's usually wisest to make a swift exit, as we did. Still, although I wouldn't have stayed to find out, it's quite possible that the gargoyle's intentions - if they had any at all - were entirely benign.

Perhaps they were simply hoping for another taste of cricket's-egg omelettes.