Mercy, A Gargoyle Story

by Misty Provencher

  "How's she say it that's so different? Adam. Adam. Adam. How many ways can you say it?"

  "I don't know. It just sounds different."

  "From the way I say it?"

  "From the way anyone says it.” His tone is all shruggy as he strums the guitar.

  “That’s it?”

  "And she smells amazing."

  "Ugh," the girl groans. "All it is baby powder. It makes me think of dirty diapers."

  He chuckles. "Well, I like it."

  "I smell like that all the time.” I hear the swish of her foot as she kicks her heel into his couch. "You wanna see?"

  "See what?"

  "How I smell."

  A pause stretches between them so long that my claws ache. I want to pull closer to the glass and satisfy my eyes.

  “Wanna see something?” she asks. When I hear the door latch instead of an answer, I can't help but steal a glance. I peek around the corner of the window pane and see The Boy’s guitar, upright and leaning on the couch, as if the whole conversation had been carried on between it’s strings and the air.

  Otherwise, the room is empty.

  ***

  I scale across the walls like a bug, peering into windows to find him. He is not in his bathroom or his bedroom and unless he’s squatted down in the hallway, blocked from my view, he is no longer in his apartment. My hunt becomes not just for him, but the two of them.

  The thought of him returns to me, the thought of how once, he dipped his face like the moon, into my hair.

  “You are so beautiful,” he had murmured. “Your hair, your eyes, your body…God, you know that nobody believes we’re actually together.”

  “Of course we are,” I said. He half-laughed.

  “Why do you want to be with me anyway?”

  “Because I love you,” I laughed when I said it, because we’d never said that before. I meant it to sound almost like a joke, just in case. I snuggled closer to him, my heart racing, and my stomach turning over on itself. I stole a breath, hoping my voice wouldn’t come out all funny when I finally asked him to say what I’d been dying to hear. I asked carefully. “So, why are you with me?”

  He took my face in both hands and looked me deep in the eyes. His brow looked cracked and sad up so close. It was like he was trying to pour all his confessions into me.

  “Because you’re so beautiful,” he said and I still thought he meant everything else that he didn’t say.

  So when I hear the rumble of his voice, speaking to someone on the roof, I hurry to the top and around the side, where I won’t be seen right away. I dig in my claws, peek over the edge, and see him standing, too close, to Carly.

  “You should know how beautiful you are,” he says. His voice and my memory rattle the bone cage around my dead heart. How beautiful. He’s said this to me and he should be saying this to Ayla, but instead, he is standing over Carly, his head tipped down and hers up, as she stares into his eyes like he’s some savior.

  I sink my claws into the brick and swing myself up over the ledge. They are at the other end of the roof, but I scuttle like a silent bug. I want to come up on him, overpower him, and scare him to death.

  I gather speed, unnoticed, as he continues to murmur assurances to this girl and suddenly, a gray streak bursts from the sky, like a meteor or an eagle after its prey. The streak catches me in its claws and lifts me soundlessly off the roof.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  One claw of the beast extends exactly over my mouth, pressuring down the plate over my face. The pain is excruciating, but the plate plugs my mouth. Just above my eyes are feet, a pair of feet in worn shoes, standing upon one of Moag's other great claws, as we fly soundlessly through the air. There is not even a draft from Moag's wings this time, but when I swivel my eyes downward, I wish I hadn't. Moag drops me and I land with a hard FLOMP! on Ayla's roof.

  Moag hovers only steps away, balancing in the air as the King of Nowhere steps down off the beast's claws as if they were stairs. Once Truce is standing on the roof, Moag folds up his wings like stone origami and sinks onto the tar. I've never heard him land without resonating like a kettle drum.

  I jump to my feet and turn on Moag.

  "Why did you do that?" I bellow. "Do you know what he was going to do to her? Do you?"

  "What was he going to do?" Truce asks, stepping closer. His calm infuriates me. I turn on him.

  "He was...he was going to...” I search for the right word and can't land on any of them.

  "No, Madeline, tell me what he did to you," Truce says softly. His arms are opened slightly, as if he is waiting for me to throw myself against his chest for comfort. I curl my claws and then splay them instead, ready to rip Truce to pieces.

  Moag steps between us. He's at least ten feet taller and wider than me and every feature on his face is menacing. If he'd been a bully on a playground, I would've kept quiet, but even with this monster chuffing like an over-stoked furnace, I can't stop. I won't. Carly doesn't deserve what will happen. Ayla doesn’t. The boy doesn't deserve for me to just give up and let him happen all over again. I'm two steps from the gargoyle, about to launch myself at the thing, when Truce raises a hand and paralyzes my limbs.

  "Tell me," he says.

  "Take me back!" I shout, as I struggle to wiggle one leg from its spot. Moag takes a heavy step toward me and the roof trembles beneath us all. I don't care. No matter how hulking he is, I will still fight him if I can move. I will do it happily, even if I take every blow. "You know what will happen! That girl will be ruined! You can’t leave her there! But what's another girl to you? Another broken spirit? Another..."

  "Tell me," Truce insists again, his voice dropping off like stairs. “Please.”

  My words drizzle away. My heart is pounding in my stomach, beating itself against my ribs. There's so much Carly's about to do, just because The Boy’s told her something about her skin. She has no idea, but I do. I know how five minutes can create and destroy a lifetime.

  Truce steps closer.

  "Tell me,” he says again. This is a part of Truce that charms me, but it grows from the same place that also decided to murder his loving wife, in order to gain her kingdom.

  I lunge at my king, claws bared.

  All I want is to rip him to pieces.

  Like a love letter that never meant a thing.

  ***

  My claws clatter against Moag, but I don’t stop. I rear back and lunge again, my claws sinking into the gargoyle’s thick skin. It is like gouging luggage. Whatever I do seems to have little to no effect on the monster. He is mottled with similar gouges.

  “Let her come, Moaguza,” Truce says as if he’s opening his arms to a small child, but Moag continues to hold back my striking talons.

  “I can not, you know I can not,” Moag grunts, as I dig a claw into his side. A bit of his body crumbles away. “I am bound to protect you. There are no choices, but to be the servant, and to be the king.”

  Truce dodges the gargoyle, stepping out from behind the beast. The King opens his arms at either side of his ribs, a gesture almost signaling surrender, elbows crooked. As if I might rush in and embrace him. I rush him, as he desires, but Moag blocks me again. I run into the wall of gargoyle with a thud.

  “He is our King!” Moag hisses to me in a whisper. “The yoke of his rule is on us both, my darling, so say you’ve come with mercy for me! Say that you will slaughter us bothand become a Queen. Quickly now! I’m rattling the chink in my armor! Slow and large I am…tell me you can hear me. I am bursting at the seams of his disposal. Save me! Allow me to fail in cracking you to pieces, darling Slip. I can hope you all my wishes, but I am still bound to defend my King as his gargoyle.”

  “Stand aside, Moaguza! I will not say it again!” Truce commands. But it is the desperation in the gargoyle’s eyes that wrenches the fight from my grip. My claws droop at my sides and Moag groans, a horrible anguished thing, but with the fight finally drained from me, he steps aside and reveals our King.

&nbs
p; “It’s right,” Truce says. “Come to me, Madeline. Tell me now, what he did to you, so that I can understand. Help me. I want to. I want to know you completely.”

  His words melt my resolve. Maybe it’s some piece of magic he has or maybe it’s that I’ve used up any that I had myself, but I wilt. I am tired of the fight. Every one of them.

  Truce puts a hand out but doesn’t rest it on my flesh. There is no burst of emotions from his touch and I eye his hand curiously. Truce grins.

  “I am blocking my touch,” he explains. “So as not to overwhelm you.”

  I eye him skeptically. “Why doesn’t everyone do that?”

  “It is only a King’s ability. I must separate my emotions from the others I carry. I will do that for you, in time.”

  Yeah, right. I think he just doesn’t want to overwhelm me with the truth of how awful he is. With his long, silver-extended fingers balanced on the curve of my talon, his hand appears as deceptively dangerous as shards of china, buried in scraps of metal. Still, the weight of his touch spreads confusion through me. I stare at his armored hand. Some feeling leaks through, and it is strong enough to grow the confusion. There is a depth of sensitivity, a desire and a need. The feelings are so exact, even in their weak transmission, that I’m swayed. Having felt them, I’m no longer convinced that Truce would use his touch to kill me. The feeling is a only a wisp, a tendril of an open hand that stretches to the point of being as thin as thread, but the feeling still tries to envelope me. Is this a trick? Can he forge fake feelings? Would he actually use his abilities to keep me safe? I can’t expect chivalry from a man who killed his wife for the same power that I may soon possess myself.

  “Love is such a precious commodity, isn’t it, Madeline?” Truce says. “A soul mate is the most intimate gift you can obtain during a lifetime and yet, the pursuit of what will be your most valuable asset can not be made into a personal endeavor. Finding true love means not finding it enough times that it becomes easily recognizable. It’s fair to say that most men break their hearts a hundred times over in the process.”

  “Or die doing it,” I add. Truce bows his head slightly, looking down the tunnels of my mask. It is hard to tell if his gaze reaches my eyes or if I’ve just given up and met him half way. He looks so far down inside of me that I feel, unexpectedly, like a flower opening in a sudden burst of sunlight.

  “Or you may find the new love of your very new life,” he says. I stumble on the words.

  “What are you proposing? That…”

  “Ah, that would be my next step. But for now, I’ve simply come to present myself as a suitor,” he says, turning away with a flourish of his raggedy cape. He glares at Moag. “I’ve come to understand that you’ve been entertaining suitors, and since you are allowed three choices, I am here to take my position. Hopefully, I am a suitor with favor, as I am already your King.”

  I touch the rib bones that surround my dead heart, like teeth in a ready jaw. Truce has deposited me into this beastly form and now he wants my vow of alliance for having done it. My promise of favor. I am so tired of the fight and yet, I pull against the hook he’s planted.

  “I do not accept you as a suitor,” I hiss. “I know what you are, Truce. You’ve already had true love once. You’ve already killed the Queen who loved you to the point of her own sacrifice. Why would I expect anything from you but a strangle hold?”

  Instead of anger, Truce tucks his chin to his chest and coughs a laugh that sounds nearly embarrassed. He strolls across the rooftop and takes a seat on the ledge, after moving his cape carefully to one side. He drapes it over one leg and plants his hands on his thighs, leaning forward to study me.

  “You surprise me, Madeline. So forward and so accurate. Let me tell you what you do and do not know. Arianna loved me with everything she had,” he says, shaking his head at the tar beneath his shoes. His voice is angry, but repentant.

  “You didn’t love her?”

  “What you’ve heard is most likely the truth, probably more so than I care to admit. I loved Arianna, but I never quite matched her emotional intensity. People love to varying degrees and it is not a sin, but certainly a shame, that I was not a more worthy competitor for my wife.”

  “So why not just die?” I ask, embarrassed the moment I say it. Now I realize how difficult dying is when you must choose it. I add, “Or let her remain your Queen?”

  “That I didn’t love her as much doesn’t mean that I didn’t love her at all. We were both Slips, Arianna and I, and neither of us knew the laws or rules of becoming such creatures as you and I are now. If we had, surely my wife would have let me perish first. But as it was, she was first to reach her last breath and thereby claim the crown to this island of a life. She was the closest I’d ever found to love and it’s the truth to say I loved her more than most things...”

  His eyes gleam as he says it and I watch him struggle to extinguish the light.

  “Except the power,” I say.

  “Yes, exactly,” he agrees with a shameful nod. When his gaze finds me again, it is so thoroughly vulnerable that my heart shutters two beats, as if it is trying to regain it’s life. The sins of his past aren’t so clear, when viewed on a landscape of fate and eternity. Truce drops his voice into a deep thrum that secures its own beat inside me. “It seems obvious to me, my dear Madeline, you’ve chosen the wrong mission in this second life. You’ve made it your goal to die. But you don’t truly wish to cease being, now do you? What you actually want is to live, in whatever dimension your lost child subsides. To me, it seems that you don’t really want to die at all. What you truly want is to live a different life.”

  He leans closer to me and I curl my wings up around us, so we are cupped together in the palm of my entire body. His face and mine are so close that I can feel his breath and watch his lips as they barely move, despite his words.

  “I promise you this, Madeline,” he says, his whisper as thin as a curl of smoke. “As my Queen, I will give you whatever you desire most. I will give you your death, if you truly desire it. But if you do not insist upon it, I also have an alternative to offer.

  “I am trapped, my possible love, and it is why I am willing to beg for your mercy in this matter. I’ve made mistakes, horrible mistakes. Because of them, I have been the King a very long time. I’ve grown wary of the perpetual battle to keep myself from death, in order to avoid my mistakes. Or more precisely, from going on to the next life, where my former Queen resides. I am certain that there is no death, mortal or otherwise, that is more terrifying than answering for the death of the soul who has loved you most. It is fair to say that I am still not prepared to face my past. I could love you, fair Madeline, or I could not. I am willing to follow your whim.”

  “I cannot love you,” I say.

  “If you should choose that, then I still wish for your hand. Your Queenship adds one more layer between me and my second death.”

  “You mean another Slip would need to kill me first, and then you, in order to gain the Kingdom.”

  Truce drops his head in agreement. “But I will also assure you, Madeline,” he says, “that I will endeavor with every power at my disposal to keep you with me in this life, if you so wish it. Because even if you do not love me, it does not mean that I cannot love you.”

  Moag groans down on his haunches behind us. I ignore the gargoyle.

  “Why would you bother?” I ask.

  “I find it puzzling,” Truce says with a sad grin, “but there is an attraction about you that moves me, you have a soul that draws me in. I can see it you know,” Truce leans in and his gaze is so penetrating that it makes me blink, as if a blink can cover the nakedness of my soul. He is right, I feel it, and my gaze traces down inside him too. He opens suddenly to his touch and I see things inside him I shouldn’t. If I were still human, I would blush the deepest rose. Truce smiles and sits back again, continuing. “You enchant me and I’d like the opportunity to understand why. And certainly, there are less enjoyable ways to avoid a
n old love, than to find a new one.”

  “I am a gargoyle.”

  “You will be transformed, if you choose to be my Queen.”

  “And if I choose to be my own Queen?” I ask and for the first time, I see the Gargoyle King squirm. He regains his composure with a smirk.

  “As Queen, you will choose your name and revert to human form.”

  “I don’t love you, Truce,” I say, but the words break from me like a scatter of birds. I have no idea if it is true or not, now that I’ve felt his soul, but I want him to believe it. “I never will.”

  “Spoken as one who believes that love offers options,” he replies. There is a tight ring inside me that cinches tighter with his words. He smiles as if he knows. “But this is why I am quite willing to be your faithful King, and either keep you or kill you, whatever your choice may be, so long as you relinquish any endeavor to murder me.”

  ***

  Instead of an answer, I mull over the proposition and search for a topic of distraction.

  “Tell me,” I say, and Truce, with charming enthusiasm, replies quickly, “Anything.”

  “Why do you wear armor on your fingers?” I ask. Truce holds up his hand, splaying his fingers so I can see each metal covering. I stare at the layers of stones and churning filigree and glinting silver shapes.

  “Look closely,” Truce tells me. “Each is part of the territory.”

  I inspect his fingers, but the jewelry twists and intertwines and I lose one piece in another.

  “What do you mean by territory?”

  “I mean,” Truce says, moving closer to me, under the premise of my inspection, “the kingdom is at my fingertips. If you look carefully, each finger represents an accumulation of my gargoyles.”

  I peer down at Truce’s first finger. What catches my eye are the familiar jaws. They are Trickle’s sharp teeth, although the large, jeweled eyes of Kervus obscure most of the lion. Searching Truce’s hands, I find Moag and even myself, with my small wings curled around the King’s pinky.