A Box of Gargoyles by Anne Nesbet

history,” said Pauline Vian, her frown so deep that whole textbooks could fall into it and never be seen again. “Since my vocation lies elsewhere.”
    A perplexed silence fell over the room for a moment, while those who were not native speakers of French tried to figure out what this little girl and her grandfather had actually been arguing about (or, in some cases, what the word vocation was supposed to mean). It was not a very long silence, because Maya’s little brother, James, who was still only five and thus tended to produce loud noises when doing even quite ordinary things, went bounding over to Maya, one of his hands clutching something colorful and slightly grubby.
    â€œHappy birthday, Maya! Can you open my present now? It’s a real present! Open my present!”
    Enough people laughed to break the general spell, Maya’s father went into the kitchen to get some more glasses, and Maya sat down in the nearest chair to pay proper attention to the package James had just handed her.
    â€œYou didn’t have to get me a present, you know that,” said Maya.
    James grinned at her.
    â€œI found it,” he said. “I actually found it this very morning. It’s a really good present.”
    He leaned against her chair while she took extra time with the wrapping paper, just so James could savor every second of it.
    â€œIs it maybe a very large book or a helicopter ?” she asked, and he laughed.
    Actually she was thinking it might be a few mints or—well, something small. But she kept working away at the layers of crumpled paper and the tape, until something round and gleaming dropped into the palm of her hand.
    â€œOh, James,” said Maya, and then she was briefly speechless.
    â€œLook, look. Do you see? It has a SALAMANDER on it! It’s a real present!”
    A real present ! In fact (she couldn’t help herself: she shivered), it was the very button she had thrown away, whenever that was. Yesterday morning. She had thrown it away, to show the gargoyles and the shadow and the Medusan stationery that they could not tell her she was bound to do anything. That she was free.
    But here it had come back to her in the hands of her brother.
    â€œDo you like it?”
    â€œIt’s . . . a beautiful button, James. Where did you find it?”
    He put his mouth to her ear: “In the courtyard! By the trash cans!”
    And giggled.
    â€œAnd it’s not a button, anyway,” he added. “It’s lots specialer than that. It opens up, see?”
    He took the button back from her and tapped some little latch on it that Maya had not seen before, and the top sprang open, like a locket.
    â€œHow strange!” said Maya. “Is it a watch, then?”
    â€œLooks more like a compass,” said Valko, who had come to look over Maya’s shoulder. Maya remembered then, with a twinge of guilt, that she had never quite managed to mention it to Valko, this not-exactly-a-button that the ebony bird had spit out into her hands. “But the needle’s not pointing north. Maybe it’s malfunctioning.”
    It didn’t want me to tell him , thought Maya. And felt trapped all over again, just putt-putt-putt ing her way down the clockwork path.
    James, however, was beaming around at them all, happy his present was turning out to be so very interesting.
    â€œThere’s writing on it, too,” he said. “On the outside and the inside. It’s hard to read. Maybe it’s in code.”
    Maya was already holding the nonbutton up to the light to see what the words were, scratched into the inside of the metal cover: forêt de Bière .
    The name of a forest. That didn’t make any of this any clearer.
    â€œWell, thank you, James,” she said. “That’s really sweet of you, to give me a present.”
    Inside Maya, it felt like a thin vein of ice had formed in her gut, though. She had wanted to be free!
    Maya’s