The Tattooed Heart

by Michael Grant

  15

  I STOOD ALONE IN THE NEARLY FEATURELESS blandness of my abode. I just stood there. The silence buzzed in my ears. The full weight of my loneliness came down on me hard.

  I missed my friends and school. I missed my home and my mother. I missed the weekly pilgrimage to place flowers on my father’s grave.

  I wanted so desperately to be in my own room. I wanted so desperately to sit at the kitchen table with my mom and gossip over a plate of brownies. It wasn’t a feeling, it was a physical craving, a need.

  On a lesser level I missed the internet and my phone. I hated not knowing what was happening in my own little world, back in San Anselmo.

  I wanted to cry but they would have been empty tears of self-pity, and I suppose my subconscious understood that I had no right to feel sorry for myself. I was alive. Samantha Early was not.

  I don’t know how long I stood there staring at nothing, feeling alone before my eyes came to focus on the book of Isthil.

  I picked it up and sat down on the couch. The sound of air escaping the cushions as I sat was loud to me. So was the sound of paper pages being turned.

  In my head one of Graciella’s songs was playing.

  I’m a bit of a mess.

  I s’pose that you know.

  Does that scare you off, or push you away?

  Are you fool enough

  To love me despite?

  Or love me because of,

  My bruises and all.

  I had begun by being skeptical of Isthil and the Heptarchy and all of it. But I had seen Isthil myself now, and maybe she wasn’t God in the way I’d always thought of God, but she was something, some creature of great power. Her mere presence had weakened my knees so that I had knelt most willingly to her.

  Now I needed her to be real, to be something more than a very imposing creature who had earned Messenger’s devotion. I needed her to be wise.

  I needed her to be right.

  Into existence came the Seven.

  Summoned by the will of existence itself.

  Summoned to serve existence.

  Summoned to ensure that this time,

  Existence should not fail.

  Summoned to maintain the balance,

  Of the guppy, the feather, and the pebble.

  Summoned to extend the length of that blink.

  And thus was Isthil born.

  She traveled the world and saw,

  Traveled the world and listened,

  Traveled the world and felt.

  And thus spoke Isthil when she had come to understand:

  Here is the center of the balance.

  Here on this earth existence hangs.

  Here the Seven balances must be maintained,

  Else all should perish.

  So she said to her brothers and sisters:

  We are not called to idleness,

  We are called to a great work.

  We have been called into existence by the Source,

  So that this universe shall not perish,

  So that life will not cease,

  So that beauty and joy may live on.

  At some point I had started to read aloud. “So that what is may go on being; so that this time the will of existence shall not be thwarted; so that the eye of consciousness will not be closed again.”

  I heard the sound of someone clearing their throat politely. I looked up expecting to see Messenger, dreading where he would take me next.

  But it was not Messenger. It was Haarm.

  “Haarm?”

  “Who else?” he asked, smiling and spreading his hands in a gesture of innocence.

  “What do you want?”

  “You’re getting into that, huh?” he asked, nodding at the book.

  “I don’t seem to have cable or Wi-Fi,” I said. “I have these books.”

  “Yeah, me, too,” he said.

  “Have you read them?”

  He snorted. “Why, so I can understand?” His tone mocked the very idea.

  “You don’t want to understand?”

  He shook his head. “We’re trapped. The messengers are our jailers. The books are their way to convince us to accept our fate like it’s all part of some great, cosmic plan.”

  “You have an alternative?” I asked, closing the book.

  “You have anything to drink? I’m parched.”

  Wearily I rose, walked to the kitchen, found a bottle of sparkling water, and brought it to him.

  “Shame there’s nothing stronger,” he said. “If anyone deserved a glass of, I don’t know, something, it’s us.”

  “I’m not feeling deserving,” I said shortly.

  “I hope I’m not intruding,” Haarm said. “I wasn’t sure what the protocol was. No phone, not even a front doorbell to ring . . .” He grinned in what he surely meant to be a winning way and said, “I was half afraid I’d pop in here and you’d be changing clothes or just getting out of the shower. Well, half afraid, half, you know . . . hoping.”

  I stared at him. I had a feeling I knew where this was going. Sure enough . . .

  “You’re a very pretty girl,” he said.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No, you are. You really are. I’ve always had a thing for Asian chicks.”

  “Are you seriously hitting on me?”

  “Look, we’re together, right, and it’s not like either of us has a lot of other options.”

  I was having a hard time believing he was actually doing what he was clearly doing. Until he got up and came over to sit beside me on the couch. And then turned to face me.

  “Are you seriously hitting on me?”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself, you’re really cute and—”

  “Are you insane?”

  He drew back.

  “What? Seriously? You’re going to fix my loneliness, are you? I’ve had better offers,” I snapped.

  He laughed again. “From him?”

  “From Oriax,” I said. “And believe me, whatever this is that you think you’ve got”—and here I waved a contemptuous hand in the general direction of his body—“however amazing you are in your own mind, believe me, Oriax is all that times a thousand. And I’m not even into girls.”

  He stood at last. “Who’s Oriax?”

  “You haven’t met her?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe I did, I don’t always remember people’s names.”

  This time it was my turn to laugh. “Believe me, Haarm, if you’d met Oriax, you’d remember. Now, get out of here. Really. Now.”

  He shrugged, shook his head as if amused by my resistance, and disappeared. I retrieved Isthil’s book and though there was no mark on it, I brushed it reverently with my fingers before placing it carefully back on the table.

  After the obnoxious apprentice was gone did I feel the silence and emptiness around me even more keenly? I am embarrassed to admit that I did.

  16

  NO, I DID NOT TELL MESSENGER WHAT HAD HAPPENED between Haarm and me. Later, in hindsight, I would see that this, too, was a mistake.

  But when Messenger came to collect me I knew we had the worst of duties to perform, and it didn’t feel like a time to complain about a “coworker.”

  “So, it’s time?” I asked him.

  “Let us collect Haarm, and then we will begin.”

  He noticed that the book of Isthil was gone from the coffee table. He didn’t ask, but Messenger doesn’t always need to give voice to his questions.

  “It’s on my bed. I fell asleep reading it.”

  He nodded slightly and I think he was pleased.

  I wanted to tell him that I was beginning to really understand what he had endured in his time as a messenger. I wanted to confess that I dreaded my future having seen something of what was in store. I wanted to tell him that the reading had helped calm my worries, but only a little.

  I wanted to tell him that Haarm was . . . what? Immature? What exactly was the word for a boy who came away from what we had witnessed and found i
t stimulating?

  I wanted to tell him that I wasn’t sure I was going to make it, that the isolation, the empty times punctuated by horror, were wearing me down to the point where I could see a day when I would welcome even Haarm. Or worse. But there is no therapy for messengers.

  Messenger took me and we collected Haarm. Haarm looked tired, as if he hadn’t gone to sleep. He was wearing the same clothing, his hair was a mess, his eyes were bleary, and he blinked too much.

  Haarm avoided looking at me, and his carefree way was decidedly more subdued. He seemed nervous. Maybe, I thought, he had had time to think about what had happened, what he had witnessed, and the inappropriate way he had spoken to me. Maybe he was embarrassed. If so, good.

  For the sake of honesty, for I have promised myself that I would be truthful in all things, I will admit that Haarm’s attentions weren’t completely disliked by me. It was more a matter of timing than anything else. Had he seemed like a nicer guy, had he been a little less crude and indifferent . . .

  But I wasn’t Mara the high school girl, I was Mara, apprentice to the Messenger of Fear. I had duties to perform, a penance to do. And yet . . . And yet didn’t Messenger allow himself the bittersweet pleasure of pursuing Ariadne?

  I don’t know why this particular thought had not occurred to me earlier. No, that’s not true, I do know why: because Haarm’s silly advances had forced me to think. Haarm, looking at me as desirable, had brought home to me that my desirability had a short shelf life. Soon Trent’s misery would join Derek’s on my body, a permanent reminder. And what would Nicolet and Oliver endure? What horrors would their suffering etch onto my body and soul?

  A year from now it would require an act of deepest and most passionate love, as well as the courage to endure agonies of mind, just to brush a fingertip against my collarbone. A year from now, holding my hand would be the most awful experience of a boy’s life.

  The full depressing reality of my life came clear to me. My God, to be a messenger meant a life without love, at least without romantic love, physical love.

  No wonder Messenger was so desperate to find Ariadne. He had lived this loveless life. He craved relief. He was like a plant slowly dying from lack of water. He was starving before my eyes.

  We were a sort of celibate priesthood, we messengers and apprentices. We were like monks and nuns. In medieval times, women who became pregnant outside of marriage, or women who were unruly, difficult, opinionated, or merely inconvenient, were often shut away in nunneries, there to live out lives of quiet despair. That was me now. I was being shut away. And with each new descent into a wicked mind, I was deepening my isolation, obliterating my chance of ever . . . of ever . . .

  “Are you unwell?” Messenger asked me.

  I shook my head, not ready to speak.

  I prayed, not to Isthil, but to my God, that Oriax would not appear this day, for I was feeling weak and did not wish to face temptation.

  To my surprise, Messenger took us first to Trent, still as we had left him, curled up on his basement floor. His mind was elsewhere, enduring the time punishment, living an entire life as what he feared: a weak and defenseless cripple.

  How could I not pity him? He was being forced to live a life without power over himself, without any likelihood of love. How could I not identify with that now?

  “I don’t want to . . . ,” I said. “I know I will be delving into Nicolet and Oliver, isn’t that enough?” My tone was ragged. I felt as depressed as I have ever felt. I looked at Haarm’s hands, I couldn’t help it, I wasn’t even really thinking about him except as a boy who could never touch me. They weren’t his hands, but every hand.

  I am not to be touched.

  God in your heaven, can’t you save me?

  “I will perform the witnessing,” Messenger said. He made no comment, offered no argument. Did he know that I had glimpsed my future?

  “Sorry about . . . ,” Haarm whispered.

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  And of course, being the perverse person I can sometimes be, I felt an almost overpowering desire to reach for and hold his hand. I resisted, and the decision to do so felt as if I were now pounding the nails into my own coffin.

  I am not to be touched. Haarm is not to be touched.

  Messenger is not to be touched.

  But Oriax . . .

  Messenger blinked, nodded once briskly, seemed almost amused for a second, then slipped back into his usual taciturnity, and we next appeared amid the bustle and excitement behind a large stage.

  Music was playing, very loud, very close. It took me a minute to assemble the pieces into a coherent framework and to realize that we were backstage at a live show. Costumed performers were rushing around, men and women with headsets were speaking terse instructions, crew were moving instruments and painted Styrofoam sets. There were cables snaking across the floor, and bright computer monitors everywhere as well as the glow of iPads carried by people whose jobs I could not guess but who were very busy and moved with the swift efficiency of long practice.

  I heard a booming voice yelling into a microphone, “Now, how was that for some banjo picking? Ladies and gentlemen, I believe that was worth another round of applause before we bring out our next act!”

  Beyond the edge of a drawn curtain a large audience clapped and whistled, and women’s high-pitched voices shouted, “Woo!” and men’s voices yelled, “Yeah!” I looked out toward the audience but couldn’t see them clearly because the lights shining on the stage, and therefore in my eyes, were too bright.

  A three-piece band came off the stage, grinning and sweating, to hear voices crying, “Kicked ass, brother!” and, “That was the stuff, man, you brought it!”

  The band walked through us carrying their instruments, and raced to a table set up with food and bottled water and beer.

  “And nooooooooow,” the announcer cried. “Here she is, the newest country music sensation, she is taking over the charts, folks, a real talent, the real deal, give a big Grand Ole Opry welcome toooooooooo . . . Nicolet!”

  Two facts. One: this was the Grand Ole Opry, the ultimate venue, the greatest stage for country music anywhere.

  And two: Nicolet had been standing in the wings, just a few feet away without my noticing it.

  Nicolet’s face split into a huge, toothy smile, and she strode toward the spotlight.

  Messenger stepped in front of her. Nicolet saw him, tried to brush past, and found her feet were fixed to the boards.

  “What the hell?” she demanded.

  But no one was listening. Nor was anyone speaking. Everything, everywhere in the Opry, had stopped.

  Nicolet looked around wildly. “Hey, what’s going on?”

  Frozen stagehands. Frozen electricians. Frozen band members. A silent audience.

  Silence everywhere.

  Messenger held his hand up, silencing Nicolet as well, who continued to try to escape, but could not move from her spot just outside of the spotlights.

  To me, Messenger said, “Bring Oliver here.”

  Now I felt as frozen as everyone else. This was by far the biggest independent responsibility laid on me yet. I blurted, “Me?”

  “Yes,” Messenger said.

  In reality I probably stared blankly for no more than a few seconds, but it felt longer. But what was I going to do, refuse? So, I nodded. “Okay.”

  I pictured Oliver in my mind, and when I did I saw a place as well. He was at school. He was in class, seated in a circle of desks around a teacher.

  I imagined myself there, and then, I was.

  He did not immediately notice that everyone and everything around him was still and silent. He was taking notes on an iPad and the soft impact of his fingers on the screen went on for a dozen words before he looked up with a quizzical look on his face. He saw his frozen teacher.

  Then he saw me.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, as if he was arriving late to a practical joke of some kind.

  “You are to
come with me,” I said.

  “What are you talking about?” he demanded, not frightened, just puzzled.

  “I’m talking about filling a syringe with heroin and shooting it into a girl’s arm,” I said.

  The smile that had lingered now dropped from his face. “I don’t know—”

  The last part of that sentence, “—what the hell you’re talking about,” was spoken to the frozen audience of the Grand Ole Opry.

  I am certain Oliver was surprised.

  Five people stood at the back of that stage—Oliver and Nicolet, Haarm, Messenger, and me. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of people around us, but they might as well have been statues. They stood or sat, laughed, spoke, or muttered into microphones, all utterly still, as still as the people in a painting. The stage lights were purple, giving the scene an extra layer of surrealism.

  Oliver was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. Nicolet wore spangled boots, a cutaway skirt, and midriff-baring top.

  Many unusual people and things had appeared on the fabled stage, but this was no doubt the strangest.

  “Who are you people?” Nicolet demanded.

  “I’m not with them,” Oliver said. “I’m . . .” He failed to come up with a way to introduce himself and fell back on, “This is one weird dream.”

  “You have done wrong,” Messenger said. “You must first acknowledge the wrong, and then you must atone.”

  “I don’t acknowledge anything without a lawyer,” Oliver said.

  This brought a grin from Haarm. “Just like on American television shows.”

  Really? He was making wisecracks?

  “You have each helped to cause the degradation, victimization, addiction, and infection of Graciella Jayne.”

  That got Nicolet’s full and undivided attention. “I don’t know what that little bitch has been telling you, but—”

  “Nicolet and Oliver, I offer each of you a game,” Messenger began.

  “—she’s not . . . Wait a minute, what the hell is this about?” Nicolet demanded, her anger growing. “You can’t do this to me. Do you know who I am?”

  It was not my turn to speak, but I couldn’t help it. “Do you know who Graciella Jayne is?”