by S A Shaffer
If only she knew how much her words made his soul ache, but he swallowed his discomfort and nodded. “I’ll do my best.” He said.
“You better!”
David smiled, but turned to wipe away secret tears. They continued to talk until lunch, conversations David had desired for whole cycles, questions he’d wanted answered for far too long, but as he talked, he watched his mother’s strength ebb away until she spoke from hooded eyes. Over and over she told him how proud she was of him, how he was every bit the son she’d prayed for, and how his father would say the same if he were there. It pained him to let her sleep, knowing that every word she spoke could be her last, but in the end, he pulled her blanket up to her neck and kissed her on the forehead. She didn’t need much prompting. As soon as he stopped speaking, her eyes shut, and she slept.
David ate a few bites of what the nurse had brought, but for the most part he sat by mother and waited for her to rouse and speak with him again. She slept through the afternoon, and he paced her room while she did. Dr. Abraham entered a few times, but only for a cursory check, and then he left them. At five minutes to five ‘o’clock, David stood at the window watching the passersby and the Úoi Season clouds blow in from the West.
“Darling, is it really you!” Mother asked. “It’s been so long!
David turned and looked at her. She favored him with the same lopsided smile he’d seen that morning. He smiled at her even as his heart broke. She had already forgotten their earlier conversation.
“I’m here.” David said and he walked to her bedside and grasped her hand.
“Oh, my dear husband, I’ve missed you so much.” She said in the midst of sobs. “I know it hasn’t been long, but it seems like an eternity since we were together. How I’ve missed holding hands on our walks. I’ve needed you these past few cycles.”
David felt a lump form in the back of his throat. She thought he was his father. Did he really look so much like him? He’d spent cycles as half the man, but now his own mother confused them in her delusions. It hurt him to see her so confused, a woman famed for her wit. He felt pride at knowing he’d finally measured up to his father’s stature, but pain that his father couldn’t see it himself.
“I know.” David said, becoming the mirage mother had manifested. “But I’m here now, and I’m never going to leave.”
“David needs our prayers.” mother said. “He’s struggling to find his way and he’s giving into despair. You need to talk with him!”
“I will.” David said, struggling to hold back his raging emotions as he spoke. “I’m sure he’ll be fine.”
“He’s hurting so much.” Mother said. “So many things have happened to him in the past few cycles, and I haven’t been able to help him. The beasts want him for murder now, our David. It’s even worse now than it was before, like you predicted. David needs hope again.”
“He’ll be fine now, I promise. I’m here, and I’m not leaving.” David’s body shook as he spoke. He didn’t know how much longer he could maintain the charade in his present state.
“Now that your back, you can finish what you started.” Mother said. “Run as a representative and start rebuilding the assembly. David has been having so much trouble with them. They… They…” She paused and shook her head with a confused look. “They’ve accused him of murder.”
“Everything will be fine.” David repeated, but most of it was lost in a sob. He leaned in and held his mother. “Everything will be fine.”
“I’m so glad your back.” mother said, smiling her crippled smile. “I’m so happy.” She rested her head against his chest and sighed.
David continued to hold her for a few minutes while her mumbling grew more and more incoherent. Eventually, she stopped speaking at all. He felt her chest rise and fall with feeble breaths, each one fainter than the last.
All at once, she turned and looked at him with her deep chocolate eyes. “Walk in the truth, my son. Don’t forget the truth!” Her voice sounded far away, but her eyes looked clear and coherent. “I see you… I see you standing victorious, rising above your enemies, soaring in an airship black as night. You’re going to save them, all of them.” Then she smiled and grew still.
David’s looked on in shock. He shook her body, but there was no response. After 5 long cycles, the constant rhythm of her breathing had stopped, the one outward sign indicating the life within. Now, it lay still. He heard an alarm ring on one of the machines, but he knew what it signified even before it rang. He’d didn’t let mother go. He held her long after doctors and nurses rushed into the room. None of them disturbed him. His mother was gone, and there was nothing to be done. Someone turned off the alarm and the racket of the other machines, and then they left him in peace and quiet.
It came suddenly, the feelings of emptiness and loneliness. He’d had a purpose for so long, the purpose to keep mother alive, and now she was dead. Even when she couldn’t speak, she could still listen. Now she was nothing, just an empty shell. He had held her when she passed, but his holding did nothing to stop her passing. She had slipped through his fingers and into eternity. Death had snatched her from his grasp, but she was still in his arms. His throat felt raw, and his eyes clouded with unshed tears. The sobs came a moment later, and his body shook violently with the emotion. He looked up in the midst of his lament.
“I want to hate you.” He said to the empty room, but he knew that someone was listening. “I want to hate you so much! Doesn’t that bother you? Do you want me to hate you? Why?” David fell forward and sobbed into Mother’s blanket again. “Why did you do this to me? You took everything. My friends, my family, my job, my home; I have nothing left.” He tore at the blanket with his hands. “I don’t have any strength left to go on. I’ve run out of people to love.” Hopelessness closed in around him, and he choked on its noxious fumes with gags and tears. “I need a reason to keep going. Right now, I don’t have one. Please! Please speak to me! Answer me!”
As he sobbed over his mother’s body, he heard the sound of bells in the distance. He realized what they were: the call to the evening sanctuary. At first the sound infuriated him, but the longer they tolled the more his mother’s words rang in his own head, and the words drove and compelled him. He had to see it for himself, the hope mother had described, the flicker of hope in the sunset. He needed a hope for the future, and even if he couldn’t admit it, he knew he needed Jeshua to give it to him. Without wanting to, he stood and found himself walking through the facility. He took the stairs to the top floor and stepped out onto the roof.
Clouds had congregated above in recent hours, driving the last light of the golden days to the far western side of Alönia. Only a few small patches of blue sky remained, but the areas around them were brilliant hues of pink, indigo and ruby red. The green hillsides beyond the city with their fresh foliage and thousands of different colors of wildflowers faded into navy blue the further out he looked, as the distance blotted away the green. David wasn’t sure why, but he looked back to the east and saw the dark rainclouds of the new season approaching, filled with the black of night and devoid of hope. As they crept overhead, he heard the first drops of rain tap the roof and felt its coolness on his head. It chilled him, and he turned forward again. The golden light of the sun glistened off the droplets and formed a brilliant rainbow circling the sky, one with more hues than David had ever seen before. The sunlight banished his chills and caused him to gasp. He stumbled to the edge of the parapet and sank to his knees. He reached a hand toward the distant light, grasping at something that seemed just out of reach. Tears filled his eyes anew, and he fell against the parapet.
“I want to know you.” he said between sobs. “Please forgive me for my stubbornness, just don’t leave me here alone. Help me. I can’t go on without you.”
No sooner had he said the words he felt a surge of peace wash over him, as though he had been holding his breath beneath the water, and he had just broken through to suck in cool fresh air. David closed his
eyes, and warmth flooded his body as though someone had wrapped him in an embrace. He comprehended more than understood that he had just met someone, and that they cared more for him than anyone he had ever known. He opened his eyes and watched the brilliance of the sunset anew.
He could see it, what mother spoke of. As the sun ebbed lower and lower behind the Alönian mountains, he felt no loss in its passing, only hope. The feeling was different than the sunrise he watched seasons earlier after Mercy died, just as his mother said. Then, he saw purpose, an understanding that Jeshua had a path for him and would direct his steps, but he only saw it in part. Now, he saw Jeshua’s eternity in all of its splendor. The sun would rise again, not only on the morrow but also in the glory of the afterlife. Life in the Fertile Plains was only a moment compared with that eternity, his eternity. As the last light of the golden days played across his face, he knew Jeshua, more than ever before. He knew him as he knew a close friend, and the relationship gave him peace and direction. He’d do his duty. He’d do justice, love kindness, and seek the humble path. He’d make his parents proud, Jeshua rest their souls, and someday, he’d join them in eternity.
A NEW HOPE
Mercy walked through the underground’s facility toward the surgical center. She’d been there several times before, once when she’d reported to Johnson her findings on David during its construction, once when the underground decided to bring David in for questioning, and once a few weeks earlier when she’d visited David’s mother. This time, she needed to convince David she’d never died, and console him at the eve of his mother’s death. She shook her head as she walked, a mixture of excitement and terror amidst questions and confusion. She really didn’t know what emotion to feel; only that she needed David to forgive her for hurting him. But on the other hand, how could she justifiably ask him for anything. She’d abandoned him by faking her death after he’d expressed feelings for her, and now she’d come back at the time of his mother’s death, and she wanted to ask him for forgiveness? He’d throw her out the minute he saw her. He’d tell her he didn’t care she was alive, because he never wanted to see her again.
Mercy paused as she walked up to Marguerite Ike’s surgical room and looked at the shut door. Perhaps his mother had told David she was alive. Mercy wondered if she’d also told him to be wary of her.
She closed her eyes and went over the speech she’d rehearsed a thousand times in preparation for this moment. But the words seemed so trite in comparison to the emotions raging inside her. She struggled at the door before she mastered herself and knocked three firm times. Nobody answered. She knocked again with still no reply. Finally, Mercy cracked the door open and looked inside. The room lay empty, the bed stripped and the multiple machines she’d seen earlier wheeled off into the corner. Mercy turned back to the hallway and caught a nurse by the arm.
“There was a patient in this room.” Mercy said. “Has she been moved?”
“Not moved, no.” The nurse said. “She passed on less than an hour ago.”
“Was there a young man with her when she passed?”
“Aye, he’d been with her all day.” The nurse said. “Poor dear sobbed for an hour.”
“But where did he go?”
“I’m not sure, miss. He walked out in a daze just after the woman’s passing and took the stairs.”
Mercy forgot to thank the woman as she turned and rushed toward the stairway. She didn’t have time to be bothered with such things. She stepped into the stairwell and looked up and down its center. Nobody was there, and she couldn’t decide which way she should go. She looked up and decided she’d check there first because there was only one story above her and several below. She stopped off at the top floor of the facility and asked a guard if he’d seen someone with David’s description. The brawny man shook his head, so she raced back into the stairway and climbed the last flight to the rooftop. She opened the door and stepped out onto the expanse, turning as she went. There was only one other person there, standing on the far western side, leaning against the parapet. The sun’s last rays were twinkling as she looked at the man’s back. Light rain pattered on the roof around her, soaking her auburn tresses and red dress. The man she saw had David’s hair but not his body. This man’s square shoulders and muscular physique stood in stark contrast to David’s crippled form. But who else would stand on a rooftop in the rain than a man who’d just watched his mother die?
“David?” She called, disbelieving what she saw.
The man’s head twitched to the side. Then he turned and faced her. Everything Mercy planned on saying stuck in her throat. She opened her mouth to speak, but all she did was gasp, as she saw a man with David’s face on someone else’s body. He stood several inches taller than her, and his shoulders were broad and square. His mechanical arm no longer hung lower than his natural arm, and it drew the surrounding light into its black gilded depths. But his face remained, as it always was, strong and bold featured. He looked at her as though she did not even exist, smiling at a memory. A tear rolled down his cheek, and he made to turn back toward the sunset. If he had ever loved her, he certainly did not anymore. Mercy put a hand out and took a step forward. David jumped as he saw the movement, falling back against the parapet wall.
“You! You’re dead!” he said, and he clung to the wall behind him as though it were an anchor.
“No, I’m not.” Mercy said. That was it. Whole seasons of rehearsing and planning precise words, and they washed away the moment she saw his face. She took another step.
“You’re not real!” He said. “You’re a fake, a mirage of someone I used to love.”
Mercy’s step faltered when she heard his denunciation. A sob contorted her body, and she covered her mouth to choke off the sound. Tears mixed with the raindrops that ran down her face. She felt water soaking through her red dress, the very same dress she’d worn when she interviewed with Blythe and David. He hadn’t even noticed.
A fake, that’s what he’d called her, and that’s exactly what she’d been. Had anything about the Mercy he knew been the truth? He was right. He’d fallen in love with a mirage, an image he’d cast with the lies she told. Lies, so many lies, and now she hung in the web of her own making. She started shivering as the rain and the cold of her own dread seeped into her bones.
He snorted and then chuckled. “I can’t believe I’m even talking to you.” He said as he slid down the parapet wall to a seated position, seemingly uncaring of the rain that fell around him.
She let the tears flow freely now as she watched him. He rested his head against the wall and shut his eyes. It was clear he wanted nothing more to do with her. Mercy hung her head, all her fears realized in one fell swoop. He hated her for what she’d done. She’d exploited a good man to do her duty, and now she was paying the price. She wanted to turn and run back down the stairs. She wanted to hide; she wanted to be anywhere else but on that roof with David. Before she would have given anything to see him, but now that she knew he couldn’t stand the sight of her, she longed to be away so she wouldn’t have to feel his disdain. But she’d come on a mission other than the one to make her heart whole. His mother had passed on, and she had to bring David back from the brink.
“I’m sorry.” She said. “I’m sorry about your mother.”
He wiped his face of tears and rainwater and nodded. “It’s better this way. She had suffered for so long, only staying alive so she could deliver me one last message. As soon as she told it to me, it was like her life concluded, and she fulfilled her final desire. She’s with my father now.”
“What was her final message?” Mercy asked, and she risked another step toward him. They were only a few strides apart now.
“Purpose.” David said. “She gave me purpose again, or at least, she pointed me back to the purpose I should have been pursuing the whole time. It’s interesting, in her final moments, she hallucinated my father, the thing she loved the most in all the Fertile Plains. Now I’m hallucinating you scarcely thirty
minutes later.” He started to laugh. “It’s not enough for you to haunt my dreams. Now you’re in my waking thoughts as well.”
Mercy’s mouth fell open. “Hallucinating?” She said, and her tears ceased to flow. In three long strides she reached David’s side and slapped him, hard.
His eyes popped open with the impact, and he looked up at her with an expression like a hurt puppy.
“Has a hallucination ever done that?” Mercy asked.
David rubbed his cheek. “But… but I held your limp body! Your blood stained my clothes!”
“It wasn’t my body.” Mercy said as she crossed her arms and shut her eyes. “I had a plaster cast made a few weeks prior, and my brother rigged up a dummy corpse. That was sheep’s blood.”
David stared at her and rubbed his cheek as she looked down on him. Very slowly, he rose to his feet and stepped close, looking full into her green eyes. Mercy’s seasons’ long agony melted away as he looked at her. He touched her cheek, and she smiled.
“It really is you?” he asked.
She nodded and started to cry again. He shut his eyes and shook his head. But when he opened them again, he smiled and drew her into an embrace. His warmth brought immediate comfort and a sense of security.
“How.” He asked as he buried his face in her now limp hair. “… and why did you wait so long to tell me?”
Mercy took a deep breath. She made to pull away so she could speak to him face to face, but he didn’t let her.
“I’ll tell you everything, but can we first get out of the rain.” she asked. The sun had set, and cool evening air blew across her wet dress. She shivered.
“Yes of course.” David said. “I’m sorry.”
He took her arm and led her back into the old warehouse. After he found her a blanket and brewed some tea, she started her story, her real story.
