FicWad

Had a kind of spontaneous decision to upload this here. No idea how long it's going to be, other than pretty damn long. I will admit to you, I don't like the beginning of this much but I don't have a clue how to improve it. That's where you, dear reader, come in. Tips and advice will be welcomed with open arms. It would be nice if I could actually get a story FINISHED for once, so all motivation will be welcomed with open arms too ;D Most of all, though, I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I have writing it!

X X X

The bell of the Chymecaster Cathedral started to strike ten. Sitting in a junk shop on the High Street, Evie Whitley sighed, and started to get ready to go home. Another night, another twenty-four hours since the last time she got her hopes up, and another twenty-four hours until the next time her hopes were let down. She quietly began to pack her things away, and then paused. Her hand clenched into a fist.

"I don't know why I even bother anymore!" she shouted to the empty shop. "What am I even expecting?!"she drew back her hand to angrily swipe her coat off the desk so she could get to the papers beneath, and stopped again. Just as quickly as it had come, her anger vanished. She sighed. "This is just getting pathetic..."

She glanced across at the assorted miscellanea that the shop consisted of. She rubbed her forehead with the back of a cold hand. Then she picked up her coat, prepared herself for the trudge back home in the cold November night and left the shop.



X X X



At the same time, one teenage male was walking home alone in the dark. This might have been a risk in other cities, but Chymecaster was small and generally a nice area. Anyway, Jamie didn't own anything a thief would be interested in, like aphone or anything like that. Unless there were any criminals interested in his slightly stale PE kit or his prescription glasses, he felt pretty safe. It wasn't like his dad would notice if he got kidnapped anyway. Not for a day or two at any rate. Well, that was probably a lie, but it wasn't exactly difficult to imagine. He's not what I'd call the most supportive of fathers, Jamie thought as he wandered along. He wasn't immenselybitter about this - it meant he could head off to a friend's house whenever he wanted or have friends over whenever he liked.

But still, it would have been nice if there was anyone who could at least try and understand his weird interests, especially the biggest one, the one he stopped in front of on the way back. He smiled a very small smile to himself as he looked up at it. The cathedral always looked pretty cool at night, even if it was a bit spooky. The white lights somehow made it look taller and more mysterious while making the grotesque faces sharper and more sinister at the same time. It was his favourite place in the whole world, he was pretty sure. Not because he was religious or anything like that (in fact, he was the opposite) but because from the outside it was a place of awe and inspiration, and on the inside it could be quite quiet and warm.

He'd seen other cathedrals on school trips and such, but he'd never been to one that had quite the same feel to it as the Chymecaster Cathedral. The architecture just wasn't quite the same. It had a lot more grotesques on it (not gargoyles, despite the popular and frustrating belief of many of Jamie's friends) than the normal English cathedral and the roof wasn't an acidic green copper-rust but amuch darker shade, more like the sea than rust. And no matter how many times he walked past it, he always had to stop and admire it in some way.

In fact, if he hadn't stopped to admire it this time, what happened to him next never would have happened. He stopped his admirations after barely a minute due to the cold, and he turned to continue on down the deserted High Street on his steady way home. Had it been a weekend day there might have been more people around, but on this Monday evening it was just too cold for there to be anyone else around, and Jamie felt like he was walking through a ghost town. Or he might have done if it weren't for the streetlights and the shop lights and the occasional lit window above a shop or pub. As he walked on barely twenty yards further, he saw a couple of other people standing in the middle of the cobbled street, facing each other. He might have paid them no mind if it weren't for the fact that one swung a fist at the other.

Not wanting to be seen, he dived behind abench table that was sitting outside a closed pub. The last thing he needed was to walk into a fight that wasn't his. There was no telling what could happen. Adifferent person may have just sat there until they couldn't hear anything else, but with the mind of a boy who likes mystery novels Jamie crouched so he could see through the gap between table and bench at what was going on. He was startled to see that the person who had thrown the punch wasn't a drunken man but a classy-looking young woman, with a coat that had a fur lining and a very weird hairstyle and definitely not the kind of person Jamie would expect to see standing outside at just gone 10pm in a fight with someone else.

The other person was turned away from Jamie, towards the woman, but they looked to be male. He had tattoos on his arms, too, though Jamie was more amazed by the fact that anyone would be insane enough to go out in a t-shirt in English November. He had deflected the blow that the woman had struck with those big tattooed arms of his, and from the look on her face looked to be intimidating the woman. Jamie could hear that they were speaking but he was too far away and they were speaking too quietly (quietly but angrily, he could tell that much) for him to be able to distinguish just what it was that was being said.

So he had to sit back and watch the actions they made to each other. The man shook his fist at the woman before pounding it into his other hand, and she took a step back. He started to get angrier, his gestures getting bigger and more spontaneous. The woman, however, went through a fairly large range of emotions in the same amount of time (around a couple of minutes). When the man shook his fist at her, she looked scared. Then something else he said seemed to change her mind and make her look determined, and then she got angry again. She opened her mouth to say something, but the man suddenly clamped his hand over her mouth. Jamie jumped. This was getting a bit more violent now. I should have just legged it while I could, he thought.

The man spoke to her in a deep, threatening voice for a moment, before slapping her face with his free hand and shoving her so she fell to the floor. Though Jamie was focusing more on the huge wings that unfolded from the man's back. Jamie had to bite his tongue to stop himself from yelping. What. Just what. What the hell. What. What. Why. What. What.

"Now keep out of it!" the man shouted, loud enough for Jamie to make it out. The man stepped back, looking down at the woman as she glared up at him. Then in a puff of black...black smoke-looking stuff he vanished. Jamie's brain was still stuck on what what what what what, and then his train of thought finally ran over a bump and he came to his senses. Right. OK. Sort-of fight between a man and a woman. Alright. Can deal with that. Wings. Right, right, how to explain those...a costume maybe? So it was a bit of athin excuse, but at least it made some sort of sense. Aaaand how to explain the disappearing...well, they did stuff like that on TV all the time. Magic tricks and stuff like that. Best not to think about it too much. It was pretty late, after all. I need to get back home, Jamie thought. Back to the nice warm house and then fling himself into bed and carry on with the book he was reading, because he'd left it at a crucial moment.

But...the woman? Was she alright? Jamie peered through the space again. She picked herself up fairly quickly, wiping off her coat. She made a cross-sounding huff that sent a small cloud of icy particles into the air. She looked ticked off alright, but not hurt. She turned around and stormed off not long after, leaving Jamie to finally get up and stretch his leg from where he'd been leaning on it at a weird angle. Should I call the police? He thought. I don't think it's against the law to shove someone, is it? Does that classify as anti-social behaviour? Well...if she wants to call the police because she'd been shoved and shouted at and slapped, and if hewants to call the police because she tried to hit him then he can go ahead. I'm not getting involved. I'm going home.



The fight he had witnessed preyed on his mind overnight, and the shape of the winged man was still imprinted onto the inside of his eyelids when he woke up the following morning. He was still confused by it, and the worse thing was he didn't think he could talk to anyone else about it. His friends, as great as they were, weren't exactly sensitive or even that intelligent. They'd most likely make fun of him for seeing weird things and be of no use at all. So he'd just have to forget about it. That was the easiest thing to do. Worrying about something that was completely unrelated to him was just wasting energy, in his opinion. So after this short series of profound thoughts he got out of bed and headed downstairs to get breakfast.

Even after this resolution to forget all about it, it still stuck inside his head. He thought about what it could mean or what they had been arguing about, whether the two people were arguing friends or just acquaintances. He was fairly absent all day, missing about half of the stuff he should have been listening to. Tuesdays were dull anyway. He wasn't missing out on much. The only things of any interest that happened on Tuesdays were break and lunch, when he could go to the library and read his current book. It was another murder mystery, one of his favourite kinds of book. The fight he had seen wasn't amurder, but it was a mystery. It wasn't his business, but the heroes and heroines of most of the mystery books he had read had been poking around where they didn't belong too.

But this isn't a book, he reminded himself once lunch had ended and he was heading to his next lesson. This is real life. Or is it? Those wings...look, you're still worrying about it! Just shut up about it, brain! It's got nothing to do with me! He scorned himself, and then was finally provided with a distraction in the form of a couple of his friends in the line outside the classroom. These same friends kept him distracted for the rest of the day during that one double-period, and so it was that, temporarily, he got what he wanted and forgot all about it.



X X X



Normally Jamie walked home with his friend Keith, as they both lived in a similar direction from the school. Keith, while he hadn't learnt to understand it, had learnt to tolerate Jamie's habit of stopping front of the cathedral, looking up at the carvings and grotesques, and then continuing on like it had never happened. However, today was the day Keith was at one of the many music clubs, and so Jamie had to walk home on his own. He wasn't particularly sad about this, as it meant he could stop by the cathedral for a little longer today. As he gazed up at its huge figure, he made a decision. He walked over to one of the benches that faced towards it, sat down and took out his art book.

Flicking to the back, he saw several of the grotesques there, etched in pencil. He'd not drawn many of the dozen that were up there, and today he was in a drawing mood. He wasn't a particularly artistic person when it came to simple drawings, but it was relatively warm out, warm enough for him to sit on a bench for half an hour or so drawing, so he saw no reason why he couldn't sit and draw. Unusually, the grotesques weren't all the same. Some had thin faces, some had huge bat wings and others had small bird ones. Some looked like dragons and others looking more like gryphons. Jamie had put this down to the same reason that many cathedrals had weird, silly faces and weird scenes carved into them: it was the sculptor's or artist's or architect's way of saying 'I WAS HERE'. A sort of signature. In the same way that in every piece of coursework he had done for his art course, he'd snuck in at least one instance of a gargoyle-ish face, invisible to most. Lots of artists did things like that, and even if he wasn't that good at art he thought he may as well try.

He'd drawn half a grotesque by the time he decided that he was too cold and starting to get hungry, so he put his things away and got to his feet. Then he headed off down the High Street on his way back home. He passed the pub that he'd sheltered in front of yesterday, and then walked over the spot that the fur-coated woman and the tattoo-wingman had stood in. He walked past the shoe shop and the newsagents, he walked past aclothes shop and the sports shop, he walked past another clothes shop and the department store. He walked past the newsagents and past the - and then he stopped. He'd almost walked past the junk shop, which he never normally paid much attention to because he'd never needed to buy any furniture or anything like that. The stuff they had on display outside changed around frequently, and today they had a waist-high statue of agryphon outside. Made of a dark, cloud-grey metal. That was weird, but at the same time pretty epic (to Jamie, at least). He'd never seen it there before, though it would have been easy for him not to have noticed it. His mind strayed to imagine that statue sitting outside his bedroom door, or next to his desk or underneath the windowsill. His dad wouldn't be too happy about it, but if it was Jamie's own pocket money that had been used on it, Jamie couldn't really see why his dad would be cross about that.

He walked up to it. No price tag. He wondered how much it was. Depending on what the metal was and how old it was, it could be anything from twenty quid to two hundred. There was no harm in asking...it would be interesting to take a look around anyway. Who knew what other weird things they might have?

Stepping in, he caught a whiff of old. It was impossible to describe other than it smelt of old, in a similar way to the smell of charity shops but not quite. While the smell of charity shops smelt of old clothes, the smell of the junk shop was more like old furniture. That was mostly what they sold, after all. And smallish statues of gryphons too, apparently. Maybe they had a matching hippogriff. Walking in between the assorted items, being careful not to knock anything off with his oversized schoolbag, Jamie headed slowly towards the counter. There were strange bottles hanging from the ceiling, like old misty spirit bottles or the small clear kind that might have once held a note, or those wine bottles you got that had been squished flat. And there were the usual things, like chest of drawers with old letters at the back and wardrobes that might have been gateways to other worlds and might not have been and tables that used to be bomb shelters and God knows what else lying around.

Jamie was musing to himself that he should probably come in here more often when he spotted the till, hiding somewhat behind a bookcase. Heading up to it, the shop assistant (or maybe even owner, Jamie had no idea) stepped out of the door just behind the counter, and gave him an amused look.

"Can Ihelp?" she said, raising an eyebrow. It was a look Jamie had received before:'You're not the kind of person we usually get here'.

"There was this statue outside, I was wondering..." he started...but broke off. He stared for a moment. The young woman had a red mark on her right cheek, like she'd been hit. And her hair was in a very weird hairstyle, not one he was going to forget in a hurry (two plaits rolled up into two coils, held there by scarlet ribbons). And there was a coat with fur lining hanging up by the door. That was just...spooky. It was the kind of coincidence that made Jamie wonder if his life was being orchestrated by some kind of sadistic god, or even several sadistic gods.

But what was he supposed to say to her? 'I saw you being attacked by a guy with wings yesterday?' No, that just sounded weird. 'I saw you being attacked yesterday.' Still no, too blunt...

"Are you alright?" he asked instead. She looked surprised.

"Um, yes?Why wouldn't I be?" she frowned. Jamie got stuck on what to say without sounding rude.

"You look like you got attacked," he settled on, hoping he sounded sympathetic enough.

"Oh, this?" she indicated to the mark on her cheek. She shrugged. "Just a minor scuffle with someone I know."

"It didn't look like that."

"Hey, it's not that bad!"

"I mean, it looked more like you got attacked. From where I was standing. Um, I think Isaw you being attacked yesterday," he blustered, having been unable to think of anything else to say in the short space of time.

This time she hesitated.

"No...I didn't get attacked. It must have been someone else you saw. Did you call the police?"

"It was you, it had to have been! I've never seen anyone else with that kind of coat or that hairstyle," he protested. The girl gave him a dark look.

"Did you call the police?" she asked, ignoring what he'd just said.

"Well, no, because I figured that if youwanted to call the police because that guy attacked you then you would have, and if he wanted to call the police because you tried to attack him then he would have."

"I told you, it wasn't me."

"It was. Just because I wear glasses doesn't mean I can't see," he glowered at her. For a moment she looked angry, like she had when she'd been in the argument with the guy Jamie had taken to calling Tattoo Wingman. But it was only very brief, and she collected herself and said calmly:

"I'm sorry, but it's got nothing to do with you anyway. You said something about astatue outside? Did you want to know how much it cost?"

"Alright, alright, I'll stop asking..." he sighed, giving up for the time being. "But can Iask one more thing about it and then I'll go on and ask what I actually came here to ask?"

"What?"she said venomously.

"Why did that guy have wings? Or what looked like wings, anyway? Because I know I wasn't seeing things."

This time she looked like she'd been shot.

"I...you...I don't know what you're talking about," she settled on.

"That wasn't a very good lie."

"Why do you care anyway?" she asked. Jamie got the feeling that he was making her angry. He wasn't being very polite, at any rate, but he wanted answers and then he could put his mind at rest and forget about it.

"Because I saw a woman getting attacked yesterday by a guy who looked like he had wings and looked like he disappeared into nothing, and that's not the kind of thing Inormally see! I need answers and then I'll be happy and forget all about it. And that's the honest truth," he told her. She gave him a very intense stare for a moment, before licking her lips and saying:

"Alright, I did get attacked. It wasn't exactly a huge attack, as I'm sure you somehow saw. It's not worth getting the police out over, trust me, that is the last thing either you or I want. It was about a debt I owe to him. I don't know howyou saw the wings, but that doesn't matter."

"Yes it does," Jamie protested. "What do you mean 'how' I saw them? I just told you!Like any other human being!"

"No, not like any other human being, because any other human being wouldn't have been able to see them," she snapped.

"...what."

"What did you think they were when you saw them?"

"Um. Acostume?"

"You don't sound very sure of yourself."

"That's because I'm not. I don't know what they were, that's why I'm asking you."

"You'd never believe me. The best thing you could do is settle with what I've told you. It was an argument about a debt, I'm fine now, it's not worth getting the police out over. Now what did you really come in here for?"

"I came in here to ask about the price of a statue of a gryphon outside, but I think this is more important."

"Look, just stop. Please. I don't need anyone else getting involved, especially not aschoolboy. It isn't that serious and I don't need any help and I'm fine on my own," she said, sighing heavily. "But the gryphon outside...um, there wasn't a tag on it?"

"No tag."

"Er...hold on a moment," she sat down in the chair behind the counter, leaning back in it as she started to pull drawers out and rifle through them. "Um, it's here somewhere...oh, right! Gryphon statue...that's the one that's like this big, right?Yeah, that one...I've got