Games and Gargoyles

When the blood red sun set over the city of Oxford and the last of the professors left the old, old university buildings that towered over the rest of the city, the newly carved gargoyles, affixed to the wall of the Bodleian Library, began to stir.
"Tis our turn to choose a game," said one of the gargoyles. It, like its brother beside him, was chubby-cheeked and podgy-bellied and wore a schoolboy cap. "What shall we choose, Tweedledum?"
"I say we have a battle," said Tweedledee, "a battle of hide and seek."
"Yes. A grand idea," said Tweedledum.
"That was your suggestion last time," gruffed the bearded stone face of Mr Tolkien. "I'd rather stay here and drink my beer. If it's all the same with you," he added, taking a slurp from his tankard.
"Hide and seek is a fine idea," agreed the stone head of Sir Thomas Bodley as he wiggled the rest of his body out from the stone wall.
"If that's the game, then we must be organised," said General Pitts River as he pulled a stone arm from the wall and tweaked his moustache. "You must count to fifty and no more or we'll all get lost. Those underground tunnels are like a rabbit warren."
"Must we play under the Bodleian again," chimed the three men in a boat.
"Woof," agreed their dog, peering over the side of their skiff.
"It's jolly hard trying to row our boat on the concrete. The river is so close. Can't we play down there?" said the first boatman.
"Now, now, Jeremy," said Sir Thomas. "It was your choice to come from Kingston to Oxford on a boat. That is the way you have been immortalised. You should have written your story about three men on foot, if you didn't want the children of Oxford to design your gargoyle statue like that."
"Why have we been immortalised anyway?" asked the second boatman.
"Because the Bodleian Library is short of a few gargoyles," explained Sir Thomas. "So the children of Oxford designed new ones. We all have some connection to this marvellous town you see. General Pitt Rivers created the Oxford Museum, Aslan, the dodo and the Tweedle brothers are characters from stories written by Oxford students, the boar was defeated by a student who threw a book at it and I restored the library here."
There was a collective sigh of understanding.
"So who else is playing?" enquired the General, pulling the conversation back to the matter in hand. "I need to make a list in my head. Aslan, are you in?"
The lion head opened it large, toothy jaw and yawned before smacking it's lips together. "I suppose," he groaned. "But only one game tonight. I'm sleepy."
"Dodo?" asked the General.
"Duh?" replied the hook-beaked bird.
"I'll take that for a yes," said the General. "And what about the boar?"
The eight stone gargoyles turned their heads and looked to where the head of the wild boar was supposed to be fixed."
There was nothing but a hole in the wall. He'd gone.
"That impetuous boar," roared Aslan. "He'll be tearing through the stacks, knocking over books and tables and chairs again. He should be leashed to that wall like a dog."
"Well, we'll just have to tidy up after him," said Sir Thomas.
"So are we playing then?" said Tweedledum.
"Or are we just going to sit here?" said Tweedledee.
"Yes, yes, yes, woof," said the three men and the dog as they tipped their boat out of the wall and sailed down the wall.
The others followed. Tweedledum and Tweedledee hopped off the plinth and climbed down, Sir Thomas and the General swung down using the stone ledges and the drainpipes, Aslan bounded down using his claws to grip onto the wall whilst the dodo, who opened its rocky wings to fly, dropped to the ground with a heavy thud.
As the three men in their boat rowed their way to the Bodleian Library's front door, the others trooped behind them.
"Right, Aslan," ordered the General. "Work you magic and open the door."
Aslan closed his grey eyes and took a deep breath. The others watched on as the lock of the library's heavy wooden door slowly clicked open.
Everyone stepped inside, except the three men in a boat who rowed over the threshold and the dodo who stumbled over it. They made their way along the polished wooden floor, between aisles and aisles of dark wooden bookcases filled from floor to ceiling with leather bound books. Ahead of them was the telltale sign that the boar had already gotten into the library. There was stone droppings on the floor, hoof marks on the wood and an array of smashed and toppled furniture.
"Look what that pesky boar has done to my library," said Sir Thomas as he shook his head in despair and stroked his goatee beard.
"Worry not, Sir Thomas," said the General as they passed the boar's path of destruction. "Aslan will fix it all."
"It's too quiet in here," said Tweedledum, as the Dodo tried once again to take flight but smacked beak first into a portrait of Sir Thomas hanging on the wall.
"Far too quiet," said Tweedledee. "We will need to see to that."
"You can make as much noise as you like once we get into the vaults. Nobody will here us there," commanded the General.
When they arrived at the door to the vaults there was a sign that said:
'Readers should tell a colleague of their whereabouts if entering the stacks after 5.00pm. In the event of an emergency evacuation or if you get lost follow the yellow line on the floor to find the exit.'
"Has everyone read the sign?" asked the General.
Everyone nodded.
"Remember what I said you two," said the General to the two brothers.
Tweedledum and Tweedledee, each nodded in turn, twice.
"Count to no more than fifty. Then come and find us."
Whilst the others entered the shallow tunnel with its curved ceiling and pipework running along the walls on either side, Tweedledum and Tweedledee huddled together and started to count. When they got to ten they said, "Coming, ready or not."
The General barely got twenty feet down the tunnel. He turned round and scolded the two mischievous brothers who giggled, one after the other. "I didn't mean that you should stop at ten. Now if you want to play this game play properly or we'll go back to the wall.
The brothers hung their heads and huddled back round. "One, two, three, four," they counted.
Sir Thomas was already ahead of everyone else but kept stopping to look at the books on the shelves, admiring the collection the librarians of the modern time had collected. "Gosh I could sit here for months, years and never get a chance to read all this wonderful work," he gasped.
The three men and their boat rowed past him and turned into another tunnel that speared off to the right. The dodo, who was determined to maintain flight, bounced off the walls and off the book stacks and rolled into another corridor. The General, with his military precision, examined every nook and cranny he could find and assessed its potential as a hiding place whilst Aslan, in his wisdom, decided that the further inside the vaults he was the more chance those behind him would be found first.
But after half an hour nobody had been found. The General got impatient and followed the yellow line on the floor. When he turned into the corridor that lead to the exit there were the two brothers. Tweedledum was stamping his feet and tugging at his hair, shouting about a broken rattle. Tweedledee was sat on the floor with his back to the wall and his knees pressed into his chest.
"Everytime we come out you two always end up bickering about a rattle," the General said, despairingly. "I suppose now you're going to have to have your battle," said the General as he ducked his head in anticipation of what was to come.
Tweedledum stopped stamping his feet and Tweedledee stood up.
"He's right," said one.
"He is," said the other.
But before either one of the brothers took a blow a black crow flew down the corridor and over the head of the General. Tweedledum and Tweedledee gasped in horror and took off down the tunnel and out into the library.
"The game's over," shouted the General.
Sir Thomas popped his head round the corridor. "Already?" he said, with a copy of an ancient atlas in his hands.
"Gather everyone up Sir Thomas," huffed the General.
Aslan appeared first and gave a disgruntled snort. "When I get my paws on those two I will roar in their ears," he growled.
From deep with the vault there was a faint cry. "Erm, we need a little help down here."
Sir Thomas, the General and Aslan followed the distant cry and when they reached the source they found the three men in a boat wedged fast between two book stacks. "We thought we'd found the best hiding place," said the third boatman. "But now we can't get out. Poor Jeremy has come down with an attack from the dust and he can't row. We need all three to row this boat."
"Yes," Jeremy wheezed pathetically. "My poor lungs can't cope with this air. It's dusty. I'm weak."
Aslan rolled his eyes. He stepped forward and clamped his jaw round the bow of the skiff. With one mighty heave he yanked the boat from the aisle and ungraciously dumped it on the concrete floor.
Jeremy moaned again. "Oh my legs, that sent shivers up my legs."
Aslan stomped off, "Where's that dodo?" he roared.
Sir Thomas and the General both tugged the boat down the corridor and out into the library.
"Is he here?" Sir Thomas wheezed as he dropped the bow of the boat on the floor. Dust from his stony moustache blew off with every breath.
Aslan shook his head. His stone mane grinded against his body, shaving off fine sandstone grains that rained down on the polished floor.
"He has to be somewhere," said Sir Thomas.
"We don't have long to find him," said the General looking up through one of the library's arched windows. "The sun is about to come up. "
"If we're found here we're done for," said Sir Thomas, tugging at the ruff round his neck. "They'll grind us up."
But before the three of them had a chance to decide on a search plan, the wild boar bounded out from a dark corner of the library with the dodo in its mouth.
Aslan bounded after it and grabbed it by its rocky tail.
"I think we should hurry out of her Sir Thomas," said the General.
Sir Thomas nodded and so did the boatmen.
When everyone was outside in the quadrangle in front of the library entrance, with the two brothers still being pursued by the black crow, Aslan closed his eyes once more and took a deep breath.
The inside of the library rapidly transformed itself. All the broken furniture miraculously repaired itself, all the toppled furniture was back where it used to be, all the stone dust they'd left was sucked off the floor and all the scratch marks on the polished wood, from the boat and the oars and the raging boar's hooves all smoothed out. It was as though they'd never been there.
Aslan opened his eyes again.
"All done?" asked the General.
Aslan nodded.

As the deep orange sun poked over the horizon, casting a warm orange glow over the campus of Oxford University the mischievous stone gargoyles climbed (and rowed) back up the wall and took their place on their plinth on the side of the Bodleian Library just a second before the first professor arrived for work. All was well. At least until sunset.