Sneak Preview: City of Dancing Gargoyles, by Tara Campbell
Tara Campbell, author of City of Dancing Gargoyles
We’re thrilled to be bringing you a sneak preview of a weird and wonderful new novel from one of our own, Barrelhouse Fiction Editor Tara Campbell’s City of Dancing Gargoyles, from Santa Fe Writers Project. Amber Sparks describes the book as “a strange, sharp warning of a novel…a little bit Calvino, a little bit Atwood, and a little bit Anne Carson.” We’re especially pleased to be bringing you this preview because City of Dancing Gargoyles is also one of the featured books at our upcoming October 5th conference in Philadelphia! Okay everybody, let’s get weird.
Chapter 1
What is the point of a creature created for rain when there is no more rain?
“Do you remember?” M asks, shoving another clawful of sand away, and I say yes without even needing to ask what. I remember them well, the days when we didn’t have to dig. When water came to us.
With the next sweep of his claw, M uncovers a fat, black beetle. I snatch it up and carefully bite off half before placing the rest into his mouth. We roll the tiny burst of vitality on our tongues until every last molecule of liquid seeps into our stone, then exhale the rest in twin puffs of iridescent dust.
Refreshed, I begin digging again.
“We used to just…” He gestures with his front paws, miming the torrents of rainwater we would simply allow to pass through us.
“I know,” I say, now also imagining a storm, water first trickling, then gushing down through my body, then the skies opening up with so much rain, water wells up behind me and overflows, spilling down my sides and over my head. Soaking in.
Back then, we would stay damp for hours after the rain stopped. We actually welcomed the sun, craving its warmth after a downpour. Back before basking became baking.
M pokes a claw into a divot in the sand and pulls up another beetle. He gives it to me to bite in half. My eyesight is keener, my tongue nimbler, my teeth sharper—and he trusts me.
When we were still up on the church tower, I was around the corner from him, protected from the worst of the sun and sand-blasting wind, so I’ve retained more of my original features. M’s hearing, however, is still keen. And he’s the one who had the visions, a foretaste of the crumbling, the falling, the long, dry future before us. More than a century ago, he began foretelling these dusty days of want, and because I trust him too, we prepared, looking out from our perches to the north and the west, planning where we might go.
We were among the lucky ones, carved with complete sets of limbs. We were able to move around after the abandoned church finally fell. Granted, on the ground I’m not as graceful as I might have looked coiled around a rabbit high up on the parapet—for whatever reason, my sculptor added four stumpy legs to my long, sinuous shape. M’s sculptor had more sense, endowing his powerful lion’s body with wings large enough to lift him—and, conveniently, me as well. I’m light enough to carry, but M’s also getting weaker. For the moment we’re surviving, together. But up there on the wall, I couldn’t have imagined how bad things would get. How deprivation would really look and feel. How thirst could hollow out an already hollow being.
The wind shifts a dusting of sand onto our heads from the lip of the hole. I look up and am startled at how deep we’ve dug. We’d been so intent on following the trail of beetles.
“We’d better go,” I say. M nods in agreement. If the sand shifts and traps us, I doubt anyone would be strong enough to dig us out. If they even came to look for us.
M jumps and unfurls his wings, careful not to touch the sides of the hole. He pumps for lift while I wind myself up his leg in our practiced manner. This time I don’t bother to coil around his whole body to distribute my weight because we’re only flying far enough to ensure we won’t get buried.
We touch down and begin the trek back to the church. This also is new—we used to fly back. He would glide easily, wings outstretched over scraggly creosote and spindly mesquite, far above dusty earth before it completely dried out, while I scouted out sources of moisture below. It was easy at first—we weren’t selective, didn’t care whether a trickle of water was muddy or clear, whether an animal was alive or dead. If carrion was too far gone, we could at least consume moisture from the flies or their offspring.
Now, a maggot would be a plump luxury; a stream would seem an ocean.
And so we walk, because even as brittle and light as I’ve become, I want M to conserve his strength.
As though reading my mind he asks: “Today?”
“Let’s talk after we rest.” We trudge back toward the remnants of the church. Those of us who remain have developed the custom of spreading out to forage in the morning, then returning to the shade of what little still stands in the hottest hours of the afternoon.
We settle in among the other gargoyles and doze, never quite sleeping. We were all fearful of resting at first, afraid we would succumb to exhaustion and desiccation and simply—cease. But we’ve discovered that rest is helpful, that we can close our eyes and pretend we’re back in the time of rain. Opening our eyes to the early evening, with its break in heat, is a small gift every day.
This time, when I open my eyes, I look around at the others. “I don’t see Vlad,” I murmur.
“Or Beatrix,” M says.
“Or Winsome,” adds another gargoyle who has overheard us. “It’s been days.”
M and I look at each other.
We excuse ourselves for the evening forage.
“No story today?” Quasi asks, turning expectantly toward M.
“Maybe later.” He barely looks at her before heading for the exit. M and I begin scanning for dimples in the sand almost as soon as we
step out through the broken arch of the church door. It’s much too close to find anything, but it’s habit.
“Tonight?” he asks softly as we head away from the grunts of stirring gargoyles.
I open my mouth, but don’t know what answer I’ll give. We’ve never been more than a few miles from the church. Even when M had more strength he’d only fly so far that if anything happened to him, my stumpy legs could carry me back within a day. He’s always been the more apocalyptic thinker of the two of us, but now, faced with the real possibility of leaving, I want to catalogue the dangers.
The problem is, I don’t know them. Not exactly.
“Has anyone ever come back?” I ask, mainly to stall for time, because I already know the answer:
“Not that I’ve heard.”
I stick my claw into a divot, finding nothing. “But maybe some of them have made it somewhere better now. Some have to have, right?”
M hesitates, probably also recalling the fractured, lifeless gargoyles we’ve spotted face down in the sand on our forays. “Maybe. Maybe the ones who left earlier would have had enough strength to make it somewhere else.”
There’s no way to know, no rules for this, since it was never supposed to happen—the church was never supposed to crumble from underneath us. We all sense that we’re only supposed to go so far, but no one really knows what that distance is, or what happens if you exceed it. Only a few have tested the limits. Maybe they’ve made it to cooler, wetter climes—if there are any. Or maybe they’re just piles of rubble now, strewn farther and farther from the church. But facts are facts: we’ve run out of food, and most importantly, I’ve run out of reasons we shouldn’t go. I sigh. With a nod, I answer him: “Tonight.” “Now?” M shoots back.
I hesitate. “Let’s see how the forage goes.” We both know I’m lying, though. We both know this is it.
The sun sets as M and I head roughly to the north—in our time up on the church, that’s the side where moisture seemed to linger, where moss sometimes grew. At first it’s no different from our usual routine; we normally wander all night on a forage. We dig and pluck, sifting through sand and sticks, sharing what we find. But as the black of night begins to fade, our silence feels different. M has never been one for idle chatter while we’re foraging—he saves his stories for our free time back at the church, when everyone can enjoy them. Tonight, however, there is a brooding quality to his quietness. Instead of turning around in the dawning light to head back home, we keep walking without a word.
Tara Campbell is an award-winning writer, teacher, Kimbilio Fellow, fiction co-editor at Barrelhouse, and graduate of American University's MFA in Creative Writing. Publication credits include Masters Review, Wigleaf, Electric Literature, CRAFT Literary, Uncharted Magazine, Daily Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, and Escape Pod/Artemis Rising. She's the author of the eco sci-fi novel TreeVolution, two hybrid collections of poetry and prose, and two short story collections from feminist sci-fi publisher Aqueduct Press. Her sixth book, City of Dancing Gargoyles, was released by Santa Fe Writers Project (SFWP) in September 2024. She teaches creative writing at venues such as Johns Hopkins University, Clarion West, The Writer's Center, and Hugo House. Find her at www.taracampbell.com