A Merric's Tale

by Margs Murray

  At the foot of the bed was a dresser and mirror. One drawer was half opened, a pile of nylons and slips on the floor. Curiosity eventually got the better of me, and I rose and went to the drawer. There I found underwear and nighties and lots of bits that sent me into a whole new atmosphere of red blush. The next drawer had corsets and lingerie. No real clothes; the woman who stayed in this room must have walked around in her underwear all day. There wasn’t much I could use on the road, at least not without being super uncomfortable. I’d have been happy with an untorn shirt and a pair of jeans.

  I brushed the grime away from the dresser mirror with my shirtsleeve and was shocked by my appearance. I ‘d lost weight from the long hike, and it caused my cheeks to sink in. Large purple circles underlined my dark gray eyes. I was unrecognizable to who I had been a few weeks ago.

  Rain clinked against the window, and the air chilled. Walking would be hard that afternoon.

  An amethyst hair clip lay on the dresser and with it, I pinned back one side of my hair and scrutinized myself. I couldn’t decide whether it looked better or worse. In the end, I let my hair fall back over my face. I pinched my cheeks. I needed color; I needed sleep. I needed a hot bath and an actual meal.

  Still, on the bright side, the lack of real shampoo had kept my hair from being an entire frizz ball. I was checking out the side view of my locks when something gray streaked behind me. My heart fell, and my skin went icy. I wasn’t alone in that room and I couldn’t get out of there. My imagination took over, and my mind jumped from one horrible animal to another, finally resting on a cobra or a rabid raccoon. I refused to turn around. Instead, I watched the mirror and waited for the animal to show its ugly head. When it didn’t appear, I decided to look for it myself. Resigned, I closed my eyes, held my breath and turned around.

  Crawling up the wall, growing and multiplying to nightmarish heights, was a black, shapeless figure. It moved forward, engulfing everything it passed over: the walls, the bed, the windows. Closer and closer it crept towards me. The darkness covered all, the blackest of blacks. Shrieks of a thousand human voices erupted from the blackness, hundreds and hundreds crying out. The black went overhead, boxing me in. I went to my knees, and it enclosed around me. The blackness was going to attack, and I couldn’t stop it.

  “Waverly,” Greer said calmly from the other side of the room. “Did you lose something?”

  I looked up. The shadow left, and I was alone on the floor.

  “Are you crying?” he asked disgustedly. “Look, I kept you here for your own safety. You don’t need—”

  Tears overwhelmed me. “What happened here?”

  “I was about to ask you.”

  “Tell the truth. What happened to this place?” I was crying very hard at that point. He came over and offered his hand. When I didn’t take it, he sat on the floor next to me.

  I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. “Something awful happened here. The reason no one pillaged this place—what was it?”

  “People think it’s haunted.” Greer’s bag slipped on his shoulder, and he pushed it back up. He put his arm under mine and helped me stand. “It’s just talk.”

  It wasn’t.

  The rain fell sideways and clanked loudly against the window as the storm picked up speed. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t stay there any longer.

  Greer read my mind. “The Galvantry will be here soon. We can’t be running in the rain.”

  “I can’t stay here.”

  “What did you see?”

  I didn’t want to talk about it. It was too terrible, and a black cloud of screams wouldn’t have enough gravity to describe it.

  I left, bounding down the stairs, taking two at a time, nearly falling just to get out of there.

  “Wait!” Greer yelled over the banister. I didn’t bother to shut the door.

  Rain pelted my face as I ran down the cracked pavement and towards the woods.

  “Come on, Waverly!” he called after me, running into the rain. “I thought we were over not communicating,”

  “I won’t stay here.”

  Greer ran in front of me, so we were facing each other. Water poured down his face and dripped from his nose.

  “It isn’t worth the risk of being in the rain right now. The Galvantry will be here soon.”

  “No.” I pushed past him. I didn’t care what he did, but I couldn’t stay. I kept storming off, my boots slipping on the wet grass and the rubble. “I can’t stay here.”

  “This rain isn’t safe; it’s too hard.”

  “I don’t care. I can’t stay here after—”

  “After what?” I still didn’t answer. He said, “I’m not putting us in more danger if you will not tell me why. Give me a good reason or we stay.”

  “No.”

  “You can’t keep things secret; I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s wrong.”

  “That’s rich. Coming from a man who locked me in that room.”

  “So that’s what this is about!” He threw up his arms in frustration. “Oh, I should have known.”

  “Should have known what?”

  “You’re doing all this because I locked you in a room, aren’t you? Because I didn’t let you get your own way.”

  “You think I’m throwing a hissy fit because you locked me in a room? You really don’t know me at all.”

  “That’s what it looks like.”

  He really didn’t know me at all.

  “I can’t—“I was so angry I couldn’t even come up with a reply. I stepped back from him.

  “Only a Merric would be such a priss about things.”

  Oh, he did not just—

  “And you know so much about them.” Angry, I closed the gap I had made a moment before. “And about me.”

  “More than you do, trust me on that.” He turned, heading back to the town, and added in a mutter, “And he thought you were different.”

  “Who did?” I ran before him, but he didn’t answer. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. I have done everything you asked. I ran away with you. I still don’t know where you are taking me or what you want from me. I know nothing about this place, and still I blindly follow you. I keep one thing from you, and you say I’m like the Merrics—you have no right!”

  “One thing? Waverly, who are you kidding? You’re… You’re…” And at that moment, standing foot to foot in the rain, our eyes met and his were filled with such passion, I couldn’t tell if he wanted to sock me in the gut or kiss me.

  Chapter 29

  Nano Storm

  Green lightning cracked above our heads. We jumped away from each other as another crashed sideways in the cloud, not touching the ground. Never had I seen green lightning.

  “Trackers!” he cried. Without another word, his hand seized mine, and we raced into the woods.

  Branches whipped my face. We both slid on the muddy ground. The woods were nothing for the cloud of trackers. They filled the space between trees. I fell. Greer slid before me on the rain-soaked ground and ran back, pulling me up by my armpits as the dark black cloud crackled, charged again with electricity. Power radiated in sizzles and clacks, and lightning burst sideways overhead.

  I screamed. A large flock of birds soared over us. Greer yanked harder, and we ran again. The clouds grew, billowing green electricity mere feet away. We’d never outrun it.

  Greer went faster, dragging me behind him.

  A buck shot past us, followed by two does and a fawn. As we ran, I turned to see a bear trapped in the surge of trackers. Greer frantically searched the surrounding woods.

  “Hold on!” he shouted. Over his shoulder, the clouds became clearer. They weren’t clouds at all but a swelling army of beetle-sized electronic machines.

  Greer launched himself under the exposed roots of a tree, pulling me with him. He buried us down close to the roots of the trees, me on top of him. A belt slipped around my waist and his, buckling us together to the roots. To be safe, he squeezed me to him, burying my f
ace into his shirt.

  “Hold on,” he said.

  I wrapped my arms around him and pushed my face into his chest. His heart pounded, and mine felt as though it would rip through my ribcage. I was acutely aware of everything. The hoofs of deer running past us, Greer’s taut arms, the uneasy pattern of my wild breathing. He smelled good, like rain and clover and mint and spice. I inhaled deeply. His smell disappeared in an instant as he doused our bodies with possibly the most repugnant spray in the world. Something like cat pee but stronger burned my nose. I wanted to pull my head up for fresh air, but his arms held me in a vice grip.

  “Hold on, Waverly!” he cried.

  There was a moment of intense silence and stink, and then they struck. Thousands on thousands of small electrical pulses shocked and washed over my body, lifting and tugging as the trackers raised us from the ground and into the roots. They jerked up, back and forth so hard, I thought I might lose him, but Greer locked his arms into a vice. We hovered there above the ground.

  The particles gently released us as the storm passed and we were back on the ground. Greer’s arms had let go, and he disconnected the belt, but I didn’t dare move, fearful the storm would pick us back up. I’d have stayed there all day, but Greer shifted under me.

  “It’s okay.” He rubbed my back. “You can let go.”

  When I still didn’t move, he shifted his body from under the branches. I still clung to him. This world was so awful. He sat up, and finally I let go, moved away, and hugged my knees. Greer picked a black tracker about the size of a thumbnail from his shirt. He crunched it between his fingers. “Tracker storm.” His breathing was still deep. “They scan, picture, sample areas. The trackers pick up objects and carry them while they scrape DNA to send to databases. They swarm faces and take pictures. The belt and limbs kept us from tearing apart. God, it was lucky.”

  “They have my DNA. They will know where we are,” I said, very much in shock.

  Greer smiled. “No, they won’t, not for a few days. That smell was a codent. I covered your DNA structure. It added alleles. They’ll think you are a black bear when they look at it.”

  “What about the pictures that the nanos took?”

  “With that hair, they’ll be sure you’re a bear.” He playfully pulled one of my random curls. “Your face was in my shirt and mine was under my mask. Bears sleep under trees all the time. The trackers read bear DNA, and it saw black and brown. It’ll report bear. The Libratiers would have to check every life structure to figure out if it was accurately recorded. They have thousands of square miles and animals to look over. It will take days.”

  He was downright jubilant by that point. “And this tree… if we hadn’t come across the tree or some structure to hold us together... that was a close call.”

  I held my head in my hands. I couldn’t handle this world; it was too awful. The rain stopped, but I was cold and tired from the wet.

  “Come on.” He put his arm around my shoulder. “Be happy we made it; we were lucky.”

  “Lucky? Greer, this isn’t lucky. It’s a curse. I shouldn’t have left Haverhill but—”

  “No, no. You saved us. If we hadn’t left Haverhill, the trackers would‘ve swallowed us up. They’re designed for towns; locked doors and windows are nothing to them. We escaped a nano storm. It’s rare to escape them, and if you hadn’t demanded to leave…” His voice trailed off.

  Greer got up, ready to move on but not me. My feet felt like anvils holding me in place.

  “It’s like I’ve been run-over by a train.” My hands were numb.

  Greer sat down next to me. “Things come at us fast out here. You’ll get used to it.”

  “No, I won’t. I won’t get used to this place. It’s hell. I think I’m in hell.” I was shaking.

  “Yes, eventually it will feel better.” Greer rubbed my back again. “You’re cold.”

  Cold? Cold? I remembered the last time I had been this cold. It was in that stupid cooler, back when I hadn’t seen the worst of the world. Before I met King Lothaire. Lothaire. In that moment, the past few weeks were too much. My body shook as my mind crowded with every emotion possible: fear, rage, disgust, deep sadness… but out of all of them regret was the biggest. I couldn’t stomach any more. I was alone in these woods. It didn’t matter if Greer was here. I couldn’t talk to him. I was angry about that too. My emotions flooded me, and I put my head in my hands, concentrating on the ground, the rocks, my necklace, but it was all too much for me. The shaking increased.

  Greer’s hand went to my head. “You’re freezing.”

  I’d have to take his word for it. I didn’t feel a thing. It was too hard for me to focus.

  Greer moved his hand away and said something. It sounded like he said he’d be right back but honestly, I didn’t know for sure. I was awake but not really, more in a trance of awful than anything else.

  I didn’t know how long he was gone. A minute? An hour? When he returned, he put a red hockey puck looking thing at my feet. He draped one of his shirts over my back. “We’ve got to get you warm.”

  Greer’s hands took mine. He rubbed his hands over them again and again. “Geez. It’s eighty and humid. You shouldn’t be this cold.” I didn’t even bother to look at him until he pulled my hands to his mouth and blew on them. That woke me up a bit. I looked up at his face.

  “You okay?” he asked, and the floodgates burst. Tears, big fat ugly tears, overcame me.

  “I don’t...” Deep inhale. “… think so.” Ugliness.

  Greer blew on my hands once more. Even through the tears, it felt nice and I would have kept them there if my nose wasn’t running. Embarrassed, I turned away from him.

  Greer rubbed my back. “Things aren’t easy right now.”

  I wiped my nose with my sleeve. “Everything is so awful. I never ever should have come.”

  “It could have been worse,” he said.

  “Worse! Worse? I was almost trapped in a blue stinking cloud.” I shook even harder because that wasn’t the worst part of the day. “Haverhill and that thing and the screams—” I wanted to tell him at that moment, I wanted the weight off my chest, but I couldn’t.

  “Did you see something?” he asked. He took my silence as confirmation. “So that’s why you ran.”

  I nodded my head but said nothing. If I said anything about it, I had a feeling I’d throw up.

  Greer must have sensed not to push it. “We escaped the nano trackers. It’s rare.”

  “The nanos. Yeah. That was just today. The whole thing has been so awful. I don’t even know how I got here. I didn’t want to leave with Bollard, but then my mind switched.”

  “The Merrics can be very persuasive. They’ve got powers that no human should.” Greer backed away from me as if he wanted distance just from thinking about what they could do.

  Lothaire. My tears were hot on my cold cheek, and I bit my lip so as not to howl in my tears. It was no use. My balled-up body kind of rolled over, leaving me scrunched up on the ground. Stupid Merrics. Stupid necklace. Stupid me. I stayed on the ground crying for a while. I didn’t even care I was bawling like that in front of Greer. Finally, he offered me a hand up.

  I took it, and he helped me sit up again. “Feel better?”

  I shook my head. “Not really.”

  Greer handed me a handkerchief and a Cloverfield bar. “Come on.”

  My eyes hurt from crying. Greer sat next to me. I shouldn’t have let myself cry like that, even if I’d needed it. I was so humiliated, I verged on tears again.

  “Is this your first time away from home?” he asked me. I nodded. “That’s what I thought.”

  The way he said it, I realized then he must have thought I was a child, and I desperately didn’t want him to think of me as a kid. “I was leaving for college soon though.”

  Greer took my bar from me and unwrapped it.

  “If it wasn’t for my grandma,” I admitted.

  Greer handed the bar back. “She filled your head wit
h talk of royalty?” he scoffed.

  I shook my head. “Yes, but I thought it was her illness. I didn‘t know there was a second world or that I was a royal there.”

  “So why are you here?”

  The necklace was heavy on my neck. I was sick of not having anyone to talk to. I was sick of being alone even when I wasn’t. He was right. We were both keeping secrets, and I couldn’t keep this up. I had to make a choice. I either could trust Greer or I couldn’t. And if I didn’t trust Greer, why in the world was I with him?

  “A fortune teller told my grandma I’d find a cure for her illness.”

  That got Greer’s attention. He gawked, like he couldn’t believe what I had said. I had expected Greer to laugh at me, to make fun, but he replied without a hint of sarcasm. “A fortune teller told Helena you’d find a cure?”

  “That’s what Grandma said. I didn’t really believe her until she gave me this.” I showed him my ring. “She told me to find the necklace that matched.”

  Greer moved right before me to see the necklace. His face, his body were so close, and the awful cat urine odor had disappeared, replaced with the smell of old clover and mint. He was intoxicatingly close. “I don’t understand. What does Lothaire’s necklace have to do with anything?”

  “How did you know the necklace was Lothaire’s?” I asked. I hoped, no, needed him to be honest with me too. Otherwise, I had made a mistake and I would have to leave.

  “Believe it or not, Lothaire wore it on special occasions.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, he wore it always. The tabloids wrote about it often. King of France wearing Helena Merric’s necklace. King of France still in love with Helena. Queen ready to leave.”

  That explained it. “So everyone will recognize it?”

  Greer nodded. “It’s famous, but I don’t understand what the necklace has to do with anything.”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “She didn’t say.”