A Merric's Tale

by Margs Murray

  “Mistakes have been made before,” Epps replied, which started the two of them bickering.

  From the table, Greer and I watched the exchange.

  “If it is too much to take the clothes,” I whispered to him, “I can do without.”

  Greer ran his hands through his hair again. “No, you can’t. They need your clothes to spread in different directions. Besides, Epps was right; your clothes are too bright. I shouldn’t have involved them but not a lot of choices. Good people like them are scarce. The uniform is a good idea.”

  “But we made them fight.” Except for conversations about Bollard, my parents hardly ever bickered, so I wasn’t used to people getting into arguments, and definitely not in front of company.

  “Who? Them? No, they’re an old married couple. They’ve fought like this for as long as I’ve known them. Don’t worry about it. You should change so we can get going.” He pointed to the bathroom door.

  In the bathroom, I caught my reflection in a mirror over the sink. I looked awful. Mud coated my cheek. The entire dinner, the side of my face had been smudged with dirt. Probably it had there been there since I fell asleep in the cellar.

  I let the water wash over my hands. I took off the sunglasses and put them on the sink along with my underwear bracelets. After washing up in the little sink, I changed into the military styled olive colored button-up shirt and military pants. Last, I slid into the woolen coat. I realized I was about to go for a potentially long summer hike in a wool coat, with a stranger, in the woods. Me, running away with that Greer guy. He could be a serial killer. I should be home with my family, watching a movie with Sasha in my room.

  But I wouldn’t have been happy even if I had stayed at home. I would have been continually seeking a cure for Grandma in a world that had never heard of her disease. Or I could be in a ball gown greeting heads of state, worse than miserable. Bollard had plans for me and the unknown powers he said I radiated. There was no place for me, so here with this unknown man was as good as any.

  “Everything all right, dear?” Elsa followed the question with a knock on the door.

  “Yes.” I opened the door for her.

  “You clean up nice, dear.” Elsa had a black backpack with her. “You should place your undergarments in the bag, dear.”

  I took it and realized the bag had already been packed. “What’s in it?”

  “I don’t know. Your Greer brought it with him for you.”

  My Greer? “Um, we just met, so he’s not really my—” Her head turned in confusion, and I felt awkward enough with my underwear still in my hands, standing there in her family’s clothes. “Anyway, dinner was good.”

  “Your curls are lovely, but you don’t want your hair to get caught in trees and such.” Elsa held hair bands. “You need to keep your hair back. Let me.”

  Elsa split my messy hair down the middle, her fingers working through the knots of my curls. Occasionally, she would find bits of twigs in it. “My, you’ve been through a good deal already.”

  I watched her work on my hair in the mirror, and I caught my gray eyes. They were light silver. I thought of the marble cutter and what she had said. Never look a Merric in the eyes. This world knew my gray eyes as a sign of distrust and power. What would happen if she looked in my eyes? What if she saw them and hated me after everything the Epps had done? I grabbed my sunglasses from the sink and put them on before Elsa saw my eyes up close. “Thank you. You and Mr. Epps have done a lot. Too much.”

  “Mr. Epps. Ha! You hide out in the family root cellar, and you are family. Marcos and Elsa, okay? The uniform belonged to my husband a long time ago. It is the memories that matter and not the clothes. My son, Shawn, wore this coat. He died in battle. Now, I don’t know why the Merrics want you and I don’t care. Our Greer stole you away. My son would’ve liked that. You’re lucky he saved you. He’s a good man. Now, see yourself in the mirror.”

  The braids were tight and clean but I looked young like I was a child playing in an old World War I uniform. I scratched under the collar of the jacket. At least the shirt and pants were cotton.

  “You look like a Bridgidet. That was what they called females in the army, back in the day, during the Heyday of Good Fortune. Oh, that was so long ago.”

  I handed her my pajamas. “I feel bad handing these disgusting things to you.”

  “I am an old military wife and mother. I know smelly. I also know lice, and yellow fever, flu, fleas, and infections—all sorts of things.”

  This confused me. “But isn’t there a shot for diseases?” Well, all of them except the one illness that struck the Merrics.

  “Only important people get the treatments. No, the rich don’t mind when the poor die.”

  “Even the Libratiers?” I didn’t understand. These people had fought for the country. She had to be mistaken.

  “Especially the Libratiers. They think the poor are expendable.”

  That wasn’t right. My family hired these people only to let them die.

  “It’s time for you two to go.” Elsa turned me around to face her, and she kissed both my cheeks. I closed my eyes tight, and I kept them closed in case she saw through the sunglasses. She said, “May your days be diamond mines and not a sulfide pit.”

  “Huh?” I asked.

  “It’s an old saying from back in the day. Only the Galvantry use it now. Life’s hard but in the end, I hope you get diamonds and not poison.”

  “Are you Galvantry?”

  “That’s what the Merrics would call us or anyone who disagrees with them, but no. We’re friends.”

  Greer and Marcos waited in the kitchen for us. Greer had a black bag of his own.

  “You better be off. You should be safe if you go right out of town. All soldiers are accounted for. Go straight down the yard and into the woods. You should be fine but go quickly.” Epps took Greer into another bear hug. Elsa latched on too. When they broke apart, Epps patted Greer’s back. “Good luck.”

  “Thank you,” Greer said once more. And we slipped out into the night.

  Chapter 22

  Hills and Hills

  The shoes did the walking that night. The blackness and the stones—all the wear—belonged to the boots. I was sure at some point I fell asleep in them and that the shoes themselves were awake, or maybe my mind turned off, and all that was there and present was my body. This was a good thing. Exhaustion was good because it limited all mind mechanisms except movement.

  We hiked the rest of the night, down through a long valley, weaving between the river, and up a high hill. The mid-morning sun was high overhead when we finally stopped at a small clearing near the peak. I saw down the valley and over to other hills in the distance. Miles and miles of trees and river and hills. Greer leaned on a half-fallen tree trunk and took off his pack.

  Sweat from the brutal summer heat drenched my shirt and legs. A perspiration stain ran from my armpit to my belly button, and my eyes were sweating so much that my sunglasses were steaming over. Annoyed, I pushed them on my head. There was a wet ring around my stomach from where I had worn my wool jacket. Last night’s soup had only lasted so long. We’d burned a lot of calories on the hike, and a fiery pit of acid in my stomach growled, demanding food.

  Greer stared out over the terrain, and my mind flooded with too many questions to process all at once. Who was he? Why was he helping? How did he know I was in danger? What did he know about the Merrics and their intentions?

  Adrenaline had been coursing through my body during the night with thoughts of escape and running and danger, but in the morning light, I thought about the current situation. I had been so terrified over what Bollard did to Lothaire that I hadn’t thought about the person I was running away with.

  “Who are you?” I felt this was the most appropriate question to ask and the best place to start. I had no idea who this guy was, and I needed to know because my gut was telling me he and I were in it for the long haul.

  “Greer,” he answered, as if I
’d forgotten.

  Thanks, I thought sarcastically. I knew his name but needed more.

  “Well, Greer, what do you want from me? Where are you taking me?” No one risked his life for a stranger without wanting something in return. This man was no different. If this summer had taught me one thing, it was not to trust people, and if I couldn’t trust this Greer guy, I was out.

  He took a while before saying, “Those are fair questions, but I can’t answer them.”

  Great. I stood up. Greer hadn’t attacked me yet—and that was promising—but I wouldn’t risk my life to be with a man who couldn’t tell me why he’d saved me or where he was taking me. I had already been delivered up to my uncle like a lamb to the slaughter. I would not be so easily had this time.

  “I don’t mean to be rude, but that answer’s not good enough. I need more from you than these one-word answers or… or…”

  “Or what? You’ll leave me right here on this hill while you run off to where? Your home is on a different Earth, and you have the world’s most powerful army after you.”

  “Okay, yes,” I said. “That’s true, but a lot of people want me dead in this place and I am—“

  “Scared I’m one,” he said staring down at the green valley.

  “Well, yes, I am. Wouldn’t you be? I was just attacked by the Galvantry in Boston a few days ago.”

  Greer shook his head. “That man wasn’t Galvantry.”

  “But Rudolf said—”

  Greer was still looking off into the distant hills, studying them. “You shouldn’t believe anything the Merrics told you. They never tell the truth.”

  “So, who should I trust?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  This wasn’t the answer I was looking for.

  “Can I trust you?”

  He turned. His eyes had golden flecks near the irises; the outer edges were a faint green line. “I know you want me to tell you everything will be all right and that you’ll be fine. You want me to say I’m a friend and that you won’t get hurt. I can’t make you those kinds of promises.” And again, out of nowhere, I was feeling better, less stressed.

  I wanted to shake that feeling away. Now was a perfectly reasonable time to feel stressed. This wasn’t right, and I remembered Claudette in the restaurant. This guy made me at ease and safe. This guy could be part of my family, and this could be some twisted game orchestrated by Claudette. “We aren’t related, are we?”

  “No,” Greer uttered, his voice filled with disgust.

  “Okay. Good. And you’re sure I’ve never seen you before?” From my angle above Greer, he looked oddly familiar. “You’ve never been to the opera before, have you? Like a few weeks ago?”

  “Opera? Like I’d have time to go to the opera.” The notion appalled Greer. “Since the day you arrived in this world, I’ve been busy figuring out a way to rescue you. I was making plans while you were at the opera.”

  He was lying about the opera. I remembered his head too well, but I let that one go. “So you’ve been planning on saving me for weeks? Why? Who told you about me?” He didn’t reply. Finally, I said, “I don’t even know you. You’ve got to give me something or—”

  “You’ll head out into the hills.”

  I nodded.

  “Or at least you would try.” He picked up a piece of clover.

  “Unless I’m your prisoner, and in that case, I’d like to know that too.” He slowly rolled the three-leaf clover between his fingers as I stared at him. “So is that a yes? Because I have the right to know that.”

  He tossed the clover off to the side. “You’re not a prisoner.”

  “Then what am I?”

  “As far as I can tell, you are someone in desperate need of help.”

  “Fine, yes, I am, but what do you want from me? Because people don’t risk so much to help someone they don’t know. You want something. What? Is it because of what I am? You said you know. I don’t even know so if you want that thing the Merrics do, then forget about it. I’d rather be dead.”

  He smiled for the briefest of moments when I mentioned death. My stomach fell. "Do you want me dead?

  He paused for a second before answering. “You wouldn’t be alive if I did.”

  I didn’t like that pause. People shouldn’t pause when you ask them if they want you dead. My anxiety returned and then some.

  “Well, can you at least tell me whether I am safe?”

  Greer shook his head. “I don’t think you will ever be safe, but you are safer now than you were. I won’t hurt you, and I won’t take you to people who will hurt you.”

  Safer than I was.

  “Sit down, Waverly, rest. We still have a long walk today.” Greer took out his cubox and swiped through 3-D images. My face popped right out of the cubox. It was from the night of the opera when they dressed me to the nines. It’d be nice to go back to that night and not know anything about my family or this world. I could just sit in amazement at how the birds were trained to sing.

  His cubox flashed bright neon letters: “Seven Million Dollar Reward for Lost Merric Princess.”

  “Seven million dollars for me. Are they crazy?!”

  “It will be more by tonight, but that’s not the most important part. The person who turns you in will be set for life as will their children. They’ll have the best technology, doctors, education. They’re offering a chance at society. People will be out looking for us all over the country. Worse yet, they named you as the long-lost Merric princess. The arrogance—they added people who have longed for the opportunity to kill anything related to the Merrics to the list of dangers in the woods.” Greer shrugged his shoulders. “You’ve got more enemies than I can count.”

  Enemies everywhere, and those enemies had access to the cubox. Everyone would know how much money I was worth but not only that, they would know I was missing, that I was out there somewhere, unprotected. My world and everything I ever thought to be true was crashing down around me.

  My eyes filled with tears, and I angrily wiped them away. Greer noticed. “Look, there’s no point dwelling on it. What’s done is done.”

  I glared at him. “What do you suggest I do? I’ve got the entire world out there trying to find me and I’m here with you and I don’t know you and… God, why did my family trust Bollard?”

  “Again, what’s done is done. You can replay your past mistakes all day and you still won’t get anywhere. Focus on something else.”

  “Like what?”

  “We made it out of Boston and it’s a nice day.”

  “The hills are beautiful,” I admitted, a little grudgingly.

  He nodded. “They are. And it’s good thing you think that because we’re going to be spending a lot of time here.”

  “At least they didn’t release a picture of me looking normal,” I said, musing out loud. “The real me doesn’t look a thing like I did with all that makeup. My natural hair isn’t even close.”

  “Yes, but the eyes are a dead giveaway. You need to wear your sunglasses at all times.” I put them back on, and Greer added, “We have to make it to the river by nightfall.”

  I still longed for a hard sob, and I wished Doc were with me. He’d let me cry. Poor Doc. He wanted me to have a hero, and maybe I did, but in escaping, I had put his life in danger. “I hope Doc’s all right.”

  Greer picked up another piece of clover and rolled it between his fingers. “I’m sure Doc has weaseled his way out of blame,” he stated. From the way he said it, it sounded as if Greer knew Doc.

  “Do you know him?” I asked, remembering the hero comment.

  Greer tossed the clover to the ground. “Well, anyone hired as a specialist for your health must have been with the family for years. You have to be crafty to stay with the Merrics and not suffer from perdition.”

  Suffer. People suffered under the Merrics. I gazed off to the distance. “I know nothing about how things work in this world. It’s frustrating. I don’t even know your full name and you nev
er really answered whether you're part of the Galvantry.”

  Greer took a drink from the canteen. “I am.”

  As soon as he said it, I realized I had absentmindedly been playing with Lothaire’s emerald, sliding it back and forth on the chain. I slipped the necklace back into my shirt. I was sure the Galvantry would like to get their hands on it.

  “You are?” I contemplated the reality of the hills and trees. I was big time alone with this guy. Geez, I was making excellent grownup decisions this summer. Wow. What was next, joining a cult? I remembered none of this on my summer to do list.

  “Again, don’t believe a word your family has told you.”

  “I want to go home,” I told him firmly, like if I said it like I meant it, he’d take me there.

  “I don’t even know where to begin even if I could. Let’s get moving.” He slung his bag over his shoulder.

  We reached the river as the last rays of sun were sinking behind the hills. The river meandered over shallow rocks. Greer unpacked his bag on a flat grassy area nearby.

  “Your supplies are in your bag,” he told me, and I opened it up and found bottles: Plaque Be Gone, Zuds, Grease Grip For Hair, Grease Grip For Hands, and about ten other products. Some made me blush a bright red considering Greer had packed the bag, not Elsa. I hoped she added certain products because she knew better.

  Luckily, Greer was too busy setting up the camp to notice. At first, I didn’t know what he was doing. He tossed a thick gray disk into the air, and it expanded into a tent big enough for two. He unzipped it, and I saw inside. Two sleeping bags, flat as paper, were on each side. On the back wall of the tent was a small control panel with three buttons: green, yellow, and red. Greer crawled in and pressed the green button.

  “So, this is where we’re sleeping,” I said, hoping Greer would reveal he had a second tent in his bag.

  “Yes.” Greer put his bag on one side of the tent. I guess he already chose his side.

  At Gettysburg, we always rented a camper, so this was my first time camping in a tent. I was with a quiet stranger. A stranger. We’d be sleeping in here together. Oh, I was not ready to share a tent with this guy. Nope. “I can sleep outside.”