by N. D. Wilson
seven
THE DEVOTED
MERCY TRIED NOT TO PAY ANY ATTENTION to her warped reflection as she flowed through the people rivers and around the great glass towers of Midtown Manhattan. But only because her reflection looked pitiful. She was too small for the heavy mailbag on her shoulder, too short and too thin for her blue-gray shorts and her official uniform shirt. The shoes had seemed comfortable at first, but now every step on the uneven concrete sent needles up into her feet.
Her uncle had said this would be hard when he’d hired her. He’d said she wouldn’t last the week. And yes, he had been willing to bet. If she did last, he would owe her a week of restaurant dinners. If she quit, she would owe him a week of cooking with her grandmother’s recipes. Butter. Lard. And no more fat-free sour cream.
Mercy Rios, eighteen (and a half), temporary letter carrier. Mailman. Mailgirl. She puffed a strand of loose hair out of her face and stole a glance at her reflection in a pane of black bank glass. Broken little beast of burden in borrowed clothes.
Pausing before she reached the next street and putting one foot up onto a bench, Mercy adjusted the bag strap. It was her third day, and there was no longer any unbruised patch of shoulder willing to carry the weight. Not on either shoulder. But the pain wasn’t what bothered her. She knew pain well. And physical pain could be pushed away and eventually forgotten. In the gym, she had been a fearless little gymnast, crashing on the balance beam and scrambling back up through the blood and tears, flying off the bars, tumbling onto her head. There had been pain every day, but she had never held herself back. She had never attempted only what she knew she could do. It was the unknown, the dangerous darkness of the harder, higher thing, that she had always chased.
In her last meet, two years ago, she had defied her coach. Her team’s victory had already been assured when she’d chalked her hands and walked to the uneven bars. Her coach had crouched down, and with his nicotine breath and yellow smile, he’d told her which of the more difficult elements to drop. He’d told her to play it safe. And Mercy had nodded. She’d smiled.
She’d meant to. But once her blood was flowing, once she was flying and swinging faster and harder and higher than any girl was meant to, something else took over. She didn’t drop her double back flip. She tripled it.
Mercy knew what it was like to hear a bone snap, to see and feel it jutting out of her thigh. That pain was long gone. But the pain of her coach’s anger, the pain of being thrown away, of being pushed out and told not to come back … that was the kind of pain that could last a lifetime.
Hitching her bag, Mercy straightened up and stared down the sidewalk toward the next intersection. People parted around her, leaving her behind.
This next street, this next part of her route, was why she wanted to quit. It was why other carriers had already quit or pulled rank to be reassigned or had simply disappeared. It was why her uncle had been willing to give her a chance.
Mercy Rios never quit. Not even when she wanted to scream and sob and run away.
The small temporary letter carrier marched forward. Her eyes were on the corner, where the street’s mouth waited. In the crosswalk, the rushing crowd seemed to accelerate, hurrying to get past. She knew they could feel it. Probably the same way she did. As she approached, the light turned red. The pedestrians should have stopped. They should have piled up on the curb and waited for cross traffic. But they kept rushing forward. There was no cross traffic. Not one car leaving, and not one of the hundreds of cabs and town cars and buses turning in.
Mercy approached the corner, holding her breath. As she did, the cross street became harder and harder to see. It wasn’t invisible, it was just … pushing her eyes away, forcing her to look elsewhere, at pedestrians and cabs and bicycles. She felt like she was trying to push the wrong sides of two magnets together. The more she tried to focus her eyes—and her mind—on the street, the more they slipped away. It made her feel dizzy and a little motion sick. But she had spent years spinning on balance beams and flipping off vaults. She could handle a little dizziness. This time she was not going to hurry past.
Mercy stepped into the intersection and stopped. She was suddenly cold, and she began to sweat. In the crosswalk ahead of her, one man had stopped. He was in a suit and holding a briefcase. He was young. Pale. Sweating. But he was also crying. While Mercy watched, he walked slowly forward. With her eyes on him, she was finally looking into the mysterious street. She was walking into it, and as she did, the resistance disappeared. The magnet had turned. Now she was being pulled.
It was only one block of emptiness. Cars and people flowed past on both ends. Trash had accumulated uncollected at the curbs. Tourist shops and restaurants were silently entombed behind graffiti-speckled metal doors. A few cars had been abandoned in the road, and others were parked in front of expired parking meters. None of them had tickets.
A silent congregation of people surrounded a brown tower at the center of the block. The man with the briefcase was walking toward them. Men in sharp suits sat on the sidewalk with their backs against the building. Women in skirts had kicked off their heels and lay curled up on the concrete.
Mercy’s pain grew as she walked, but not her physical pain. That had vanished since she’d rounded the corner. Her shoulder no longer ached. Her feet no longer felt needles in her shoes. The pain Mercy felt now was old, hidden away for years. She felt the throbbing shame of being thrown off her team, thrown out of her girlhood dream. It beat inside her fresh and raw until something older and deeper boiled up. Her father. The man who had so eagerly signed her away. She was suddenly eight again, out of her bed, peering into the filthy, cramped living room of the old Brooklyn apartment, watching her uncle gently explaining to her father why it would be better if he took custody of his niece. Her father had seen her. Unshaven, unshowered, sprawling on the couch with a bottle in his hand, he had turned his bleary red eyes on her.
“Take her,” he’d said. “She’s nothing special.”
Mercy stopped in the street and her small body shook. Why was this happening? Why was she crying? The eight-year-old Mercy hadn’t cried. She’d been eager to leave. That was the day the sun had begun to shine in her life. Cold sweat found her eyes and her stomach turned over, uneasy and sick. She could see her father’s eyes. She could hear his voice. She shook her head and wiped away her sweat and tears. She didn’t know what was wrong with this street, but it was a trick. She wasn’t sad about her father. Not anymore. There was a small package in her bag, and she was going to deliver it.
The man with the briefcase was on his knees now, outside the revolving glass doors of the brown tower.
“Yes,” the man said. “Please. Please.”
The people around him weren’t listening. Their eyes were open but empty, dazed. And they wore small frozen smiles, like dolls.
The man fell and rolled onto his back. Tears ran from his eyes as he stared at the sky. And then he smiled.
“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you.”
Mercy swallowed back a gag, and she stepped around the man. She reached into her bag and pulled out the package. It was wrapped in stiff brown paper and labeled with letters so black and smoky around the edges, they looked like they’d been burned on.
The street address was correct. But the recipient was strange.
To the Peace upon the Earth
40th floor
Where there would normally be a return address, there was only a city. Phoenix.
Mercy moved through the dazed crowd on the ground and stepped into the revolving door. Inside the marble lobby, she could see more bodies. People were crammed in tighter than hot dogs in a package. They sat back to back. They sprawled on top of each other. Skaters, bankers, models, moms, hard hats and cop hats and oil-stained coveralls and kids with school uniforms. Every race. Every age. She couldn’t see the floor between the bodies. And they were all still.
Child, you hurt.
Mercy jumped. The voice had been deep and soothing. She stood i
n the door and looked around. And it had been inside her head.
I see pain that even you cannot.
An image erupted in Mercy’s mind. Her mother. She’d only ever seen her in pictures. Now she was on a filthy floor. She was pregnant. Shaking. Foam dribbled from her mouth. Her father was there, talking stupidly, grabbing her mother, telling her not to play. An ambulance. Men and women in uniforms. Bright lights in a room. Blood. A baby. Little Mercy Rios. And her mother motionless.
Mercy was back in the glass revolving door, and her body was quivering.
You cannot remember, the voice said, but you still feel. Child, there is a hole in your heart. A hole in your soul.
“I’m fine,” Mercy said, and she shut her eyes. She should quit. Right now. Turn and run.
Mercy Rios, the voice said. I am the healer of souls. I am the Peace upon the Earth. Shall I heal you?
Mercy doubled over and gagged. Her body was shivering and her veins itched with cold. She wanted heat inside them. She needed them filled. “No,” she said. “Don’t.”
Bring me what is mine.
The words were hard, and when spoken, the bodies in the lobby rippled. Men and women suddenly rolled to the sides, leaving a narrow path from the door to silver elevator doors on the far side.
Mercy took a step back, but hands shoved her forward. She yelled and turned, but the people outside were on their feet. A dozen hands grabbed the revolving door, and they pushed.
Fighting, shoving, Mercy still slid around and stopped at the entrance to the narrow road through the human sea.
She stood, terrified, looking over the tangled mass of limp bodies. The room was silent but for one thing. The people were all breathing slowly and in sync, like a single organism. Chests expanded, and the sea around Mercy rose. They exhaled, and the sea sank.
On the other side of the lobby, a woman’s arm rose from the floor, and she pushed the elevator button.
The sea rose.
Ding. The elevator doors slid open.
The sea sank.
Mercy looked behind her. The revolving door was jammed with dazed, smiling people. A side door was blocked as well. But the windows were glass. Glass could break.
Bring me what is mine.
The elevator doors tried to close, but the woman’s arm flopped between them. The doors chewed on the arm and reopened.
Mercy had nothing to break her way out through a glass window. And everything in the lobby was surrounded. A flowerpot. A chair.
Child, I can also grow angry.…
“Let me out,” Mercy said. “I’ll leave your package here.”
Bring it to me.
“Listen,” Mercy said. “I don’t care if you’re in my head, or if I’m crazy, or what’s going on. But if you don’t let me go, I’m opening your package right now.”
And then a young cop sat up in the sea. He wasn’t looking at her, but the gun in his hand was, and his arm was as steady as the steel of the barrel.
Bring it to me.
The breathing sea of bodies quickened. And then the bodies rippled. Hands reached for her ankles and Mercy yelped, jumping over them, stomping on fingers. And she made the dash, sprinting through the narrow path for the elevator doors.
Mercy slammed into the elevator and kicked away the woman’s arm that held the doors open.
As the doors closed, the cop with the gun fell back onto his side. The loud communal breathing had already slowed to the steady rhythm of a single sleeper.
The button labeled 40 was already lit. The elevator was rising. Mercy hit the 3. She could jump back off. There would be a fire escape. She could get out.
The doors opened on the third floor and Mercy jumped back. More bodies. The doors closed and she hit the 6. She began to rise again.
Mercy. You cannot run from pain. You must be healed.
Waves of memory rocked Mercy. Every awful thing that anyone had ever said to her, every unkindness ever done to her, every dirty look and insult and rudeness, every laugh from every boy, every slight from every girl, and every groan from every teacher. Crowds and crowds of men and women and children sprinkled through eighteen years of life now assembled in Mercy’s mind in a chorus of disdain.
The doors opened. Even if the floor hadn’t been lined with bodies, Mercy wouldn’t have been able to move. As the doors closed again, she sank to the floor, gagging, choking.
It can stop. I can heal you.
“Of course you can,” Mercy sputtered. “You’re the one doing it.”
The voices in her mind grew louder until the insults roared like breaking waves. The faces, the sneers, the spitting lips grew closer, and Mercy was suddenly washed in the sickening reek of foul breath. The air in the elevator was unbreathable.
“No,” Mercy gasped. “No. It wasn’t like that.” Curling up on the floor, she squeezed her eyes tight. Through all the roar, through all the stink, she pictured her uncle.
Ramon Rios, short and broad, with a smile bigger than any room, teaching his niece to cook. Taking her to school, helping with her homework, smiling when she struggled, and telling her that beauty wasn’t everything and brains would be useful, too. Presents and sacrifices, the extra jobs to pay for gymnastics, dinners out on her birthday, and trips to the shore.
The sickness inside her shrank away. The stink in the elevator retreated.
The elevator doors opened to the sound of breathing.
Mercy was looking through a tunnel made of people. The bodies on the lower stories had been a tangled mass. These bodies were all facedown and stacked like bricks. A wall of men on Mercy’s left were stacked higher than the elevator. The man-wall leaned in, arching above the elevator doors. A wall of stacked women on the right leaned in, completing the arch above Mercy’s head. Limp arms hung down from the ceiling of the human tunnel like fleshy stalactites. With every slow, synchronized breath, the tunnel expanded. With every long, collective exhalation, the tunnel contracted, and hot sour air wafted down around Mercy.
She crawled slowly out of the elevator. The doors slid shut behind her.
Bring it to me.
Mercy rose to her feet, clutching her bag, wiping her wet cheeks. The walls breathed around her. There was only one way she could go.
One step. Two. She couldn’t help but scan the walls. Most of these people were well dressed—suits, skirts, nice watches, manicured nails. Blond and brown and red plumes of carefully styled hair dangled from the ceiling on the women’s side. The tunnel curved slowly to the left, and Mercy followed it.
Here, there were cops. At first just a few, and then more. A dozen in uniform. Half a dozen in suits with badges on their belts. Detectives? Of course, all these people had families. They had friends. When the block had first gone bad and the first people went missing, the police would have come. They would have felt what she felt. The older they were, the more pain there would be to bubble up inside. Had all these people said yes to the voice? Even the cops?
They know peace.
Mercy sniffed. “Get out of my head.”
Bring me what is mine.
The curve in the tunnel stopped, and Mercy stopped with it. Hot breath surrounded her. Ahead of her, the tunnel rose to a gaping hole in the roof. Men and women lay facedown across the floor, stacked like a flight of stairs, their backs waiting for Mercy’s feet.
A breeze slipped down from the roof, and the hair on the ceiling rustled. Dangling arms swayed. Mercy began to climb.
Under each careful step she felt the slip of cloth, of skin over bone. She felt the rise and fall of the breathing beneath her, and she clutched the little package tight under her right arm.
Slowly, she rose into the sun, into the air, into the towering cityscape of New York. But her eyes were not on the buildings.
A huge man leaned back in a chair made of stacked people. He wore only a belted skirt of white linen, and his long, bare legs stretched out in front of him. Broken chains hung from his ankles and wrists. His rich skin glistened in the sun, and h
is short hair was black and curly. His jaw was strong, his hollow cheeks were smooth, and his eyes were all darkness. In the center of his bare, hairless chest, there was a deep-red dragon twined into a circle. At first, Mercy thought it was a tattoo, but it bulged beneath the man’s olive skin like a blister full of blood. And while Mercy stared at it, she saw it ripple.
Welcome.
“Welcome,” the man said, and the two voices were not the same. His accented voice was musical and alive, like wind through trees, like a distant parade, like the promise of the sea. The voice in her head had been cold and slight and edged.
Mercy tore her eyes from the man and looked around the rooftop. Three priests in black were on their knees, purple stoles over their shoulders, vials of water and crosses in their shaking hands as they whispered quietly.
“All are welcome,” the man said. “Even those who labor to bind me. Their prayers weaken only them, and in the end, they too shall be given peace.”
Behind the priests, there were other men. Mercy could see a rabbi lying on his face, still clutching a large animal horn.
“Who are you?” Mercy asked.
The man smiled like an animal baring its teeth. “I am the son of the moon and the sea. I am the Peace upon the Earth.”
Mercy held out the package, her hand shaking. She couldn’t make herself step forward.
“For you,” she said. “From someone in Arizona. Can I go now?”
Bring it to me.
Hard and cold. Mercy blinked. The man still smiled. He spread out his arms and leaned farther back. Crude iron chains dragged beneath his wrists. The blister dragon quivered and darkened.
Mercy inched forward. “You … were in jail?”
The huge man laughed. He rattled his chains. “We were,” he said. “Long. But here, in the sun, in this new Babylon of towers and lights, there has been much pain to be healed. We are now strong.”
Bring it to me.
The voice had grown impatient. It bit into Mercy’s mind like ice.
“Hear and obey,” the man said. “I can drink your soul where you stand.”
