The Undrowned Child by Michelle Lovric Page A

head in marble. Above him were grim paintings of a torture scene; below, an inscription picked out in gold on slate. The gargoyles—lynxes, wolverines and lizards—were leaping up at the casket, trying to pull its heavy stone lid away. But their grainy gray bodies were far softer than the black marble, and they were all severely chipped. Sharp snouts were blunted; fragile ears were falling off all over the place.
    Teo saw an old Gothic script hovering in the air. There was something familiar to it, something she must have seen in a library book, perhaps?
    The voice purred venomously, “You’ll pay dearly for your feebleness.”
    Teo started violently then, for inside her pinafore The Key to the Secret City began to wriggle as if trying to get out. “What, you can move too?” Teo whispered to it.
    A sharp corner dug into her ribs. She suppressed a cry of pain and clamped her hand down on the bib of her pinafore, hissing “Shhhh.”
    Meanwhile, the gargoyles scrabbled at the marble in a blur of paws and snouts, only to lose more of their toes and noses. Panting, they leant back against the tomb, staring fearfully into the dark recesses from which the terrible voice had come.
    “Must I perform every task myself?” the voice howled with fury. “Begone to your posts, before dawn comes and the foolish Venetians see you!”
    They did not need to be told twice. Those that still had enough limbs to do so slunk away from the tomb, scampering up into the rafters of the church. They pushed themselves out through holes to their perches above the street. Those that were too mutilated lay on the ground, their little stone rib cages juddering in and out with fear.
    Teo cowered in the shadow of the door. She ached with pity for the poor creatures, but she dared not rush to their aid.
    The voice taunted the wounded gargoyles, “Missing our tiny legs, are we? Shall I tend to you myself? Or shall I send my Butcher to lend you a hand?”
    The gargoyles shook their heads violently, making begging motions with their poor shattered paws. One of them looked over towards Teo, and its round stone eyes widened. It opened its mouth as if to say something. Teo froze. At that moment the book in her pinafore suddenly grew unbearably heavy, like a huge stone on her chest.
    “Wha-a-t …?” she whispered, as The Key to the Secret City dragged her all the way down to the floor behind a pew just as something yellowy-white and indistinct came swooping out of the back of the church. To Teo, crouching on the cold stone, it seemed like a giant albino bat, big as a man. Its head and body were furred in a dirty white pelt. It shied sharply away from the altar with a hiss, then settled on a confessional box and folded up its tentlike wings. Something green glittered on one of its talons. Teo could not see its face; just its pointed ears and head in silhouette.
    At the same time another figure came stumbling out of the sacristy. It was a man in a bloodied butcher’s apron. Teo covered her mouth when she realized that he was carrying his head under one arm. Both his arms ended in bleeding stumps: his hands dangled from his neck on a chain. From his torn neck came a bubbling, grunting noise, but no words. Somehow worse was the fact that his feet were attached to his body from the backs of his legs, though his thick arms swung from the front of his body. The gargoyles mewed and squeaked piteously at the sight of him.
    “Thank you,” Teo whispered to the book. “I guess you were saving me from that. What if those two had seen me?”
    The bat-creature growled an instruction to the headless man. He shuffled on his back-to-front feet towards the tomb. The gargoyles arranged themselves in tiers so that he could step over their backs up to the black sarcophagus. With a single blow of his handless arm, he smote the marble lid off the sarcophagus so that it dropped on the gargoyles and crushed them instantly to fragments and powder. He tumbled to the ground on top