Page 60 of Hearts of Stone

“Ah, she’s a good woman, that one. She’ll look after you, but you better stick close to them big fellas while you’re ’ere.” Rosie looked around with a theatrical air, then burst out laughing. “There’s some bad people round ’ere, just like there’s good ones.”

“Right, thanks,” I said, with a nod, before letting the gargoyles steer me away. “Why do I think this place is a lot more dangerous than Diagon Alley?”

“I do not know this alley place,” Carrick replied, “but I do know somewhere safe that you will enjoy.” He moved in front of me, then held out a hand. “I said I’d take you aerial dancing.”

“I was kind of hoping you’d forgotten that,” I said, with a wince. “I really do have two left feet.”

“And I’d be proud to have both of them standing on top of mine,” he replied, not moving until I took his hand.

Oh no, I thought when we reached the ‘dance floor’.Oh no, no, no, no. The area was off to one side of the markets and the path we’d taken to reach it was lined with twisting jacaranda trees. Their purple flowers were strewn all across the cobblestones, only to lift up and swirl around in warm updrafts. And the dancers? None swept across the mosaicked floor, asthey performed one elegant move after another. Instead these slender creatures before us spun within the eddies of air, in something that was more akin to flying than dancing.

I turned to Carrick.

“I can’t—”

“You can,” he insisted, with a slow smile.

“I don’t have wings.”

His flapped open.

“I have enough for both of us, Jade.”

“But I…” I turned back, watching a woman so slim she was almost skeletal, yet elegant with it. Perhaps that was due to the wings that sprouted from between her shoulder blades. She needed to be built like a bird to perform like one. “I can’t—”

“Can we try?”

He held out a hand, a completely different creature to last night’s demon lover. There was a need there, a desire for something completely different. Trust, I quickly realised. Didn’t he know how hard that was to give? I stopped myself from thinking about how much my trust had been betrayed, my jaw locking tight, right as I nodded and then put my hand in his.

I felt like I was terribly grounded, welded to the earth by my size, my stature. I’d never been little, slender, light. A group of my school friends had played a game one lunchtime when bored, working out what kind of animal each person was. Others got cute things like cats, or cool things like eagles. My friends turned to me and said I reminded them of a wombat: an Australian marsupial that had more in common with a bulldozer than a kangaroo. Short, squat and built like a rock, they were animals that tunnelled in the dirt and their poop came out in little cubes. As I looked up at the dancers, I could not see myself fitting in amongst them. Carrick tugged me so close that I could feel his slight chuckle rather than hear it, then he launched us upwards.

His wings, the drafts of air, they seemed of the same mind, pulling us upwards. The muscles in his back flexed as his wings worked, gaining altitude and I knew that because my hands clung to him. I was standing on his massive feet again, but that felt like a very small platform, especially when I looked down.

“Oh my god…” I yelped.

“Never fear.” His grip on me was iron tight and somehow that was reassuring. “I will not let you fall.”

“OK, cool, great, so…” My eyes flicked up to meet his. “Um. We’ve done this, so now can we—”

“We have not done anything yet,” he said in a softly chiding tone. “Take a deep breath, Jade.”

“Why?” I asked, my nails doing their best to dig into his flesh, but I couldn’t even dimple the tough surface. “What’re you going to do?” I glanced down again, but felt that dizzying wave of nausea that comes from being up high and forced myself to close my eyes. “We are not going to perform an aerial pole dance routine like those other creatures, are we? Because I do not have the core strength for that shit. Carrick—”

“I love it when you say my name,” he told me, his voice somehow deeper and more resonant when my eyes were closed. “I will sleep when the sun rises and hear the way it sounds in your mouth in my head until I rise again.”

“Jesus…” I was trying so damn hard to not get bowled over by these guys, but they were making it so hard. “I don’t think anyone’s ever said anything like that to me before.”

“Then all human men are bigger fools than I previously thought,” he said, right before he spun us around.

I let out a little shriek, sounding like a total girly-girl, but I couldn’t help it. I clung to Carrick like a monkey, and he just laughed. I could see why: for him there was no danger here. He was in his element. His wings swept through the air in gentle movements, keeping us exactly where he wanted us,before he changed the angle and sent us spinning. It was like being a kid again, getting strapped into a rollercoaster with a combination of fear and excitement and not sure which would win, not until the ride started. But after you realised you were safe, you threw your arms up in the air, glorying in that feeling of weightlessness.

I wanted that, I realised, just to put my many burdens down and let go, so perhaps that was what had me prising my fingers off him. I didn’t fall, didn’t slip backwards, the gargoyle watching me closely as I relinquished my hold, then he carefully let me drop backwards slightly. My eyes went wide, my hands slapping down on his shoulders for a second, but when he smiled, I realised he’d only let me go so far. One hand was resting between my shoulder blades, the other was on the small of my back and sliding lower.

“Men have disappointed you,” he announced, starting to swirl us through the air again and it was now I could hear the thin strains of a strange kind of music. “They have not followed through on their promises; have not treated you with the respect you deserve.” His words were just as dizzying as the way he moved us through the air. “But that ends now. Each one of us will do everything we can to make you happy, Jade, in every respect.”

It was hard not to believe him. Literal fairy lights twinkled around our heads as he spun us around, small disembodied points of light that brightened each time we drew close. My head was a whirl along with my body, and while we moved it was hard not to think of that mural. Of the three gargoyles clustered close to the witch who’d taken the creatures as mates. The cautious part of my mind scratched for attention like a cat at a bedroom door, but for now I was content to ignore it. Just like on a rollercoaster, I let myself smile then throw my arms up in the air.

Dancing was incomprehensible to me, a complex combination of hips, leg and arm movements, where I always struggled to move only one part of my body in time with the music. But this… If this was dancing, maybe I understood the appeal. I felt small, fragile, and yet that didn’t make me feel weak. It made me feel precious, cradled within Carrick’s arms, my head spinning, right up until the point I curled up and stared into his eyes.

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