Gargoyle Scourge: Island of Fog Legacies, #3

By Keith Robinson

A magical fantasy adventure with shapeshifters and creatures from myth and legend. Suitable for all readers 9 and up. Parents, read this with your children!

Eleven-year-old Melinda Strickland is setting out on her first mission as a shapeshifter—to save a town from unruly gargoyles. The ugly stone creatures have been perched on the rooftops of Garlen's Well for decades, warding off evil spirits, but lately they've grown mischievous and downright destructive. Somebody needs to talk to them, find out what's going on, and persuade them to be more respectful of private property.

That somebody is Melinda, daughter of famous shapeshifters Robbie the ogre and Lauren the harpy. But what kind of creature will she get to be?

Travis Franklin accompanies her on the trip west, though Melinda is keen to point out she's in charge, not him. He's only a dragon, after all.

Nothing ever goes as planned. What promises to be a fairly routine mission turns into something quite deadly . . .

GARGOYLE SCOURGE is the third installment in the Island of Fog Legacies series. Good, clean, sometimes scary fun for young readers, and suitable for adults as well.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Unearthly Tales
• Release date: Feb 24, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386015901

Keith Robinson

Keith Robinson is a writer of fantasy fiction for middle-grade readers and young adults. His ISLAND OF FOG series has received extremely positive feedback from readers of all ages including Piers Anthony (best-selling author of the Magic of Xanth series) and Writer's Digest. Visit UnearthlyTales.com for more.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Dragon Flight

Melinda still felt woozy from the sleep tea and laboratory procedure, but she tried not to let it show. She was a shapeshifter now, her first time ever! Her parents had actually become quite weepy when she’d transformed earlier.

But now it was down to business. She had a mission.

She glanced sideways at Travis. He’d spread out his leathery wings, providing much-appreciated shade from the hot sun, and his thick tail gently thumped on the grass as he looked off into the distance. Was that a smug grin on his scaly face? Did he really think he was going to be in charge?

She stepped out from under his wing. Just so you understand, she said firmly, "this is my mission. As Travis swung his huge head to face her, she folded her arms and lifted her chin high. Yeah, yeah, I get it. You’re the son of Hal Franklin, the famous dragon shapeshifter, and now you’re a dragon as well. But guess what? That doesn’t make you the boss of me. Miss Simone is sending me on this mission, and you’re just coming along to—"

She paused to choose her next word wisely. Not protect, nor even help. She didn’t need either.

"To assist me," she finished. Yes, that was the one.

Travis’s yellow eyes widened, his nostrils flaring even more than usual. Muscles bunched up on his shoulders and along his flanks. Fearsome claws dug into the earth. His club-ended tail swung back and forth, then thudded down. A low growl came from deep within his throat.

As impressive as he was, Melinda felt no fear. She had no doubt Travis could kill her any number of ways if he wanted to—burning, chomping, clawing, even squashing underfoot. Of course, there was no way he’d do such a thing. He couldn’t and wouldn’t, because he wasn’t a real dragon, just an ordinary boy a little older than herself, one who happened to be in a spot of trouble and needed to remain in dragon form for the next few days. He could beat his wings and breathe fire all he wanted, but he was no danger to her. She was in charge here.

Just wanted to make sure we’re clear, she said. Or you can stay here if you prefer. It’s not like we can talk and catch up while you’re stuck in that form. She pursed her lips. Well, I can talk, but all you can do is listen. Do you think you can listen to me talking for a few days nonstop without being able to say a word back?

Travis huffed and shook his head, rearing back with what seemed to be a reptilian look of horror.

Melinda laughed. It’s okay, I’ll try not to talk too much. If you get bored, just grunt or something. A thought struck her. Hey, maybe we can figure out some kind of sign language, or you can grunt in different ways to mean different things.

She edged toward him and reached up to pat his snout. He jerked back, and she giggled.

Sorry, she said. It’s funny, though, isn’t it? We grew up together like cousins, and I never would have patted you on the nose while you were human. But now that you’re a dragon . . . well, you’re like a giant pet.

Travis reversed, stomping hard. He threw back his head and let out a terrible roar, and red-hot flames blasted from his throat. When the fire cut off, a puff of black smoke curled away on a breeze.

Melinda laughed again, but inwardly this time. Having Travis along on her first mission was going to be fun, and she had to admit—secretly—that she’d feel much safer with a dragon by her side. Just as long as he didn’t overstep his boundaries and try to take charge.

Well, I guess we should get started, she said, pretending not to have noticed his outburst. Before all those gargoyles tear up the town.

Her casual statement had the desired effect. She felt Travis’s intense dragon stare on the side of her face as she peered absently into the distance. She waited a moment or two before feigning surprise.

Oh! I just realized, you don’t even know what my mission is yet!

Travis grunted. It sounded suspiciously like Duh!

Have you heard of a town called Garlen’s Well? It’s to the west. My mom flew out there last month and mentioned that the place is overrun by gargoyles, which has been perfectly all right for decades but recently has become a bit of a problem. They’re getting mean and destructive, and people are asking for help. They asked for a shapeshifter to come and talk to them. That’s where I come in.

The dragon lowered his head, listening intently.

Melinda pointed at her tiny brown suitcase. I brought some overnight things. It might take a few days, or it might take a week, but you and me are going to find out what’s going on and try to fix the problem.

Like our parents used to do when they were our age, she thought with excitement. Except for one tiny issue . . .

It would have been helpful if I were a gargoyle shapeshifter, she said ruefully. The easiest way to speak to gargoyles and try to understand their problems is to be one of them. But Miss Simone has never been able to extract DNA from a gargoyle. She made a golem once, which is a person made out of sticks and stones and animated by magic, but for some reason gargoyles are much more difficult, maybe impossible. So I can’t be one, which is a nuisance.

She paused, knowing Travis was waiting with bated breath. It would be easy to transform right now and show him what she’d chosen to be for this mission—what Miss Simone had suggested might work—and it would be easier still to simply tell him.

But where was the fun in that?

Well, let’s go, she said, reaching for her small suitcase. Apparently, you need to fly west and look for three mountains in a row. Garlen’s Well is just to the right of those. It should only take a couple of hours for a strong dragon to fly there.

She looked at Travis’s tail, wondering if it were best to walk up its length and onto his back or clamber up over his shoulder. He hunkered there with his head tilted to one side, looking like a dog who’d only been given half of his dinner, still waiting to be told what kind of shapeshifter she was.

This is going to be fun, she thought with glee.

Because she had a suitcase, she picked her way up the length of his knobby tail, balancing as though crossing a wobbly log over a stream. It was a steep climb, but the bony ridge grew more pronounced higher up, reaching almost as high as her knees by the time she made it onto his broad back. She jammed her suitcase between two of the blunt ivory spikes and wedged herself between two more farther forward, suddenly feeling nervous. Travis was just a young dragon, no more than twenty feet long, but he still stood much taller than the largest of horses. Falling off would hurt.

Ready, she called, trying to keep her voice light and confident as she gripped the cold, immovable, rocklike bony protuberance with both hands.

Travis reared up on his hind legs and started flapping his wings. Melinda stifled a scream and gripped harder, unable to keep from sliding back a few inches. She hoped her suitcase wouldn’t come loose. The huge wings to her sides beat up and down with increasing speed and power, causing a draft and a heavy whump-whump-whump sound.

This went on for another ten seconds or so, like Travis was practicing or perhaps getting up the nerve to launch. Then, without warning, he sprang upward.

A gasp escaped from Melinda’s lips, partly due to the sudden upward motion but also the fear of falling off. The dragon’s leap was powerful, and there was a long moment of mid-air suspension before he came back down on his rear feet. He sprang again, his wings pumping harder, fighting to get him airborne.

Whump-whump-WHUMP-WHUMP.

Slowly, Travis escaped the pull of gravity. He rose higher and higher, his speed increasing. Melinda noticed his wings rose and fell with much greater reach now that the ground wasn’t in the way. As momentum built, his ascent quickened.

About time! she called over the rising rush of wind around her face.

Though her heart hammered at the sight of the ground dropping away all around, she refused to let Travis sense her fear. She shut her eyes for a moment, then snapped them open again. Being blind did not help. But as long as he held steady and she didn’t let go, everything should be all right.

The horizon stretched all around, the green landscape opening up below. It was both awesome and terrifying.

I’ve been up high like this before, she said loudly as the wind whipped about her face. My mom’s given me plenty of rides. But normally she grips me in her arms or talons, and I just hang there, completely safe. This is the first time I’ve sat on top of a dragon.

She refrained from mentioning that Travis’s dad had offered rides before. She’d always refused, being too afraid of the monstrous dragon. Now, a little older and braver, she realized how lucky she was, at least in the eyes of her peers. A chance to ride on the back of Hal Franklin, the most famous of shapeshifters? How could she pass up an offer like that?

By rights, her mom was just as famous. The adults were all part of the same group, after all—nine shapeshifters who’d grown up on a foggy island in Old Earth without realizing they were able to transform into creatures of myth and legend. They’d found out around age twelve, and then Miss Simone had brought them across into New Earth to commence their duties as emissaries between humans and varying other species.

Melinda’s dad was an ogre, her mom a harpy. Their names, Robbie and Lauren Strickland, were held in high regard in the village, but somehow they’d always been overshadowed by the ultra-famous Hal and Abigail Franklin. Especially Hal, even though some thought he was a fruitcake. Maybe he was infamous rather than famous. Either way, it didn’t seem fair that everyone clamored after him just because he was a massive, powerful, fire-breathing dragon . . .

She scowled. And now his son Travis was a dragon, too. Don’t worry, Mom and Dad, she thought. This is my mission, and I won’t let the Franklins take all the credit.

She checked over her shoulder to make sure her suitcase was still there. It remained firmly jammed. Facing front again, she avoided looking too hard at the million-mile fall to the ground and tried to strike up a conversation. Hey, you didn’t bring any overnight things. But I guess you don’t need much, being stuck in dragon form. It’s not like you need to change your underwear or brush your teeth. A thought occurred to her. What will you eat?

Travis turned his head a fraction, indicating that he’d heard. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking, though.

I mean, it’s not like a dragon can just eat a sandwich, she said. When my dad is in ogre form, he’s nearly thirty feet tall and as wide as a barn, and his usual evening dinner—a plateful of meat and potatoes—is like a tiny bite-sized snack. I once saw him chewing on a roasted boar. He sat there looking off into the distance, happily munching away until Mom yelled at him for eating a week’s worth of meat. He looked surprised and changed back to human form, and then, when he’d quit being so dim, he realized what he’d done.

She laughed at the memory.

When Travis made no comment, rudimentary or otherwise, she shrugged and sighed. "The thing is, if you’re in dragon form, you’ll need to eat a heck of a lot. After devouring a whole boar, my dad changed back to human form and felt just a little bit full. That’s amazing, right? Where did all that boar meat go? It wasn’t even fully digested. It just . . . disappeared. Or shrank down in size along with his body. If it hadn’t, it would have burst out of his stomach. Imagine how gross that would have been."

Travis let out a grumble. What he’d said was anybody’s guess.

Conversation with you is going to be fun, Melinda said with a sigh.

Chapter 2

Garlen’s Well

Melinda focused on the horizon. Heading roughly west was simple enough when the sky was so clear and the day so early. They just had to keep the sun behind them. Still, finding their way would be much easier once they’d spotted their actual destination on the horizon.

Three mountains in a row, she thought, seeing nothing yet. Everything looked the same from this height: forests, fields, and hills.

An impressive mountain range lay to the south, barren plains to the north. A number of glittering mirrorlike lakes drew her attention, and she guessed the one below was where the eerie miengu lived—the Lake of Spirits, as it was known. But mostly she saw forestland.

We need a way to communicate, she said after a while. At the very least, you can give me one grunt for yes, two grunts for no. Okay?

After a pause, Travis grunted.

Good! All right, then. Now, if you don’t know the answer to something, like if it’s not a simple yes or no, then give me one really long grunt. Understand?

Again, a pause. Then Travis let out a long, low rumble that she felt through his armored reptilian hide.

Okay, good. We’ll figure out some other signs later. She twisted around to check on her suitcase again. Still there. "I’d love to hear more about this thing that’s after you, though. Your dad said it’s an invisible demon? Something that will track you down no matter where you are and say your name out loud, and you’ll die? But if you stay in dragon form, it’ll forget about you after a few days?"

She racked her brains for the name of the supernatural being. Hoopla-something. Hooha? Hooligan? Dooligan?

Dullahan! she exclaimed as the word popped into her head. Yeah, he said it’s a headless horseman that only you can see.

She found the whole thing bizarre. But then, so was being able to shapeshift. The world was full of bizarre things. The fact that Travis had to remain in dragon form so the mysterious, invisible dullahan couldn’t track him down and say his name was no stranger than, say, an ogre eating an entire boar and then reverting to human form with no disastrous effects.

Bit by bit, three mountains in a row appeared on the horizon a little to their left. Several other random peaks stood not too far from them, but Melinda had no doubt their destination lay at the foot of the gargantuan trio. Travis adjusted his direction and picked up speed.

Are you enjoying being a dragon? Melinda asked.

Travis grunted.

Okay, well, that’s the end of that conversation, she thought.

She lapsed into silence for a while, enjoying the ride. And, she realized with surprise, she really was enjoying it. Her terror at perching on the top of a hard reptilian back without a harness had dissipated somewhat. The scales didn’t feel nearly as rough as she’d expected, either. The flight so far had been smooth, a gentle rise and fall with each lazy downward sweep of the mighty wings. Of course, there was still the landing to contend with when they arrived at Garlen’s Well . . .

She blinked and squinted, spotting something odd about Travis’s bulky shoulders just behind his short, outstretched neck. Something about the scales was different. She leaned forward to touch, but couldn’t quite reach. She stared for a while longer and came to the conclusion the oddity had to be Travis’s smart clothes. The magical garments had transformed along with his switch to dragon form. Rather than get ripped apart and fall off, they’d adapted and reformed in whatever fashion they could, which in his case meant some kind of strap around his throat. As if knowing it needed to remain incognito, the material had turned virtually transparent. At a distance, nobody would ever notice. Even up close like this, the garments had taken her a while to spot.

Fingering her own silky smart clothes—a pretty green frock that came down to her thighs and some darker green knee-length leggings underneath—she wondered what had happened to them when she’d transformed earlier, right after the procedure in Miss Simone’s lab. Her parents had cooed and exclaimed with delight, and she’d turned in a circle, trembling with excitement. She would have stayed like that all day if Miss Simone hadn’t urged her to set off.

Go on now, the blond-haired, blue-eyed scientist had said rather impatiently. Travis is waiting outside. He’ll look after you on your first mission. He’s been in a few scrapes before, so he’ll know what to do if you get in trouble.

The idea of Travis taking it upon himself to run the show had annoyed Melinda. She’d reverted to human form and snatched up her suitcase, not even thinking to check that her magical smart clothes, underwear and all, were back in place. Obviously they were, but what if they’d fallen off or vanished? She’d quickly said goodbye to her parents and headed outside to find Travis.

She’d smiled at the sight of other children her age in the corridor. There was some kind of field trip in session, with a group of hopeful shapeshifters exploring the lab. None had been approved. They had basic aptitude tests to pass first, and then a lot of studying outside basic schoolwork. Their social lives would be closely monitored, and final selection depended on the council’s majority vote of each applicant. Not everyone was suitable for the weighty job of shapeshifter emissary.

They had two years of serious work ahead of them. Melinda, being eleven, was a special case.

Do you realize, she said to Travis as he flew toward Garlen’s Well, that I’m the youngest shapeshifter? Except for Thomas the manticore, who first turned when he was six. Oh, and Jolie the jengu, who turned when she was a baby. She frowned. I’m the youngest of our generation.

Travis grunted, sounding bored.

She smiled. Do you want to know what I am?

This time, Travis’s grunt had a bit more urgency to it.

Melinda pushed her frock down again, something she’d been doing a lot thanks to the constant wind. It was a good thing she wore leggings. Well, I can’t exactly show you while we’re flying, so I guess we’ll just have to wait until we get to Garlen’s Well.

He let out a roar, sounding annoyed.

She laughed. The quicker we get there, the quicker I can show you.

With another grumble of irritation, Travis abruptly