The village was easily visible below them, a scatter of colorful houses along the harbor. If they got lost, the ocean was right there, and the lighthouse was visible from any angle. It was just a matter of figuring out how to get down there.
They took a few wrong turns and at every turn, discovered more gargoyle statues in the garden. There was seemingly one behind every bush and beside every pond. Eventually they found a gateway through the wall around the garden (flanked by gargoyles, naturally) that led to a narrow dirt road winding down to the harbor.
It was a gorgeous walk. The island was chilly and wild. The wind tangled Jess's hair; seagulls screamed above them. All around them, the hillside flamed with colors—not so much in the trees, which were mostly scrubby pines and spruce, but on the ground, in heather and wildflowers growing around glacier-tossed rocks. If Mace's family had come here from Scotland, Jess could see why they liked it. She had never been to Scotland herself, but it looked very much like pictures she'd seen. And it almost seemed as if something in her knew the place, calling out in glad recognition. It was as if the rocks themselves welcomed her home.
"You okay?" Reive murmured.
"I'm fine." She leaned closer to Reive and tried to let go of the constant drumbeat of worry pulsing in the back of her mind—Reive's condition, the black-robed mage, other gargoyles, her own history—and allow herself to exist in the moment, enjoying the warm perfume of late-season wildflowers, the sound of the surf, and the distant clang of bells on buoys.
It seemed impossible that anything bad could happen in a place like this. Even once they reached the edge of the town, the feeling of peace persisted.
From above, she had seen that the houses were painted bright colors, but she hadn't fully appreciated how beautiful they were. The houses clung to steep, narrow streets on the hillside, stepping down to the harbor. Each house was a different brilliant color, turquoise blue and violet and red and yellow. Most of them were small, square clapboard houses with pointed roofs.
Looking up from the bay, as the town would be seen by a sailor returning home, it must look like the hillside was splashed with color, the houses like little squares stacked on top of each other.
The main street, which she could see looking down between the houses, was along the docks, where it looked like most of the businesses were located. The lowest row of houses were on stilts projecting out over the water, some of them with docks integrated into their structure. Docks, houses, and street all ran together, as if the town itself had grown out over the water.
They descended a steep street with houses on one side and nothing but a drop to the ocean on the other. There was a clear view across the water of the headland with the red and white lighthouse, located at the very tip of the steep rocky ridge that wrapped around the village and harbor like a protective arm. The lighthouse flashed rhythmically, making her think of airport lights. There was a rotating mirror inside a lighthouse, wasn't there? She was going to have to look that up, and felt keenly, for a moment, the lack of her library.
"Look," Reive murmured, pointing.
They were approaching the intersection where this steep, narrow little street met the main dockside road. Where the streets met, a gargoyle stood, life-sized and holding a flowerpot full of real flowers in both hands.
Jess started to say something, but then she noticed another one beyond it, this one at the bottom of a small, tidy garden surrounded by a white wooden fence. The garden gargoyle was only a couple of feet high, like a garden gnome made of gray stone.
And now that she'd started to notice them, they were everywhere: crouching on rooftops, lurking in yards, even holding up signs in front of a few businesses. Jess laughed aloud when she noticed one sitting on one of the town's many docks, holding a fishing pole in its hands.
"Do you think they're real?" Reive asked quietly.
"Real as what? I think they're like the ones at Mace's place. Not alive, but ..." She hesitated, not quite sure what she wanted to say.
"Oh, do you like our gargoyles?" said a voice above them.
They both looked up. A woman was leaning out the window of a two-story building, hanging out pillowcases to dry on a line strung under the eaves. The building was brightly painted clapboard like all the rest. A dangling sign with ornate scrollwork letters read Westerly Inn.
"I'm sorry!" Jess said. "I didn't mean to be rude." She couldn't help noticing another gargoyle perched on the building's roof, its legs dangling down.
The woman grinned. She was perhaps in her sixties, matronly looking, with her hair pulled back in a silver bun. She reached up to give a playful tug to the gargoyle's stone toe.
"They're guardians," she said. "They're good luck. As long as they protect our town, nothing bad can happen to it."
She had a light, lilting accent, and hearing her speak, it suddenly clicked into place where Jess had heard it before.
"Oh, that's Mace's accent!" she said, and then blushed and clapped her hand over her mouth.
She had assumed that it was some kind of blend of accents from Mace's past. But the woman talked the exact same way. It was a lilt, a little bit Canadian, a little bit Irish, with a tendency for the words to run rapidly together. It was different from any accent she had heard before.
A fisherman sitting on the dock not too far away, working on a boat engine, looked up and said, "Yah, they all talk like that here. Live here thirty years, still can't understand a word anyone's saying."
The woman scowled, balled up a wet cloth, and hurled it at him. It went surprisingly far, arcing all the way across the road to just miss his head. "No one asked you, Stieg Nilsson. Where are you folks from? American?"
"Indiana," Jess said. "Um, yes. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be rude—"
"You weren't. Don't pay any attention to that idiot," the woman said. "I'm Heddy. Come on in. You want a drink? Something to eat, maybe? Best berry crumble you'll find 'round the bay."
"Oh no," Jess began to protest. "We don't have much time—"
Reive nudged her. "We're here to sightsee. Let's see the inside of the place."
The inside of the inn was exactly what it looked like on the outside, a little old-fashioned and very tidy, with a scattering of small café tables on well-scrubbed floorboards and a tiny gift shop area. There were a couple of fisherman types drinking coffee at a table by the window.
Jess really meant to just look around and leave, but the proprietress came bustling down the stairs and before Jess quite knew what was happening, they had been hustled to a seat and plied with giant pieces of warm berry crumble, oozing juices across the plate and topped with ice cream.
"Enjoy," Heddy told him with a beaming smile, and went to refill the fishermen's coffee.
Reive looked uncertain. Jess hesitated with her spoon held over her dish. "I don't even know where to start. This looks amazing."
She scooped up a spoonful of berries and ice cream. It was perfect, the berries bursting sweet-tart on her tongue, and the ice cream providing the perfect balance of sweetness and cold, with the crumble topping for a bit of crunch.
Reive still wasn't eating. He poked at the edge of the crumble with his spoon.