Mercy, A Gargoyle Story

by Misty Provencher

  “You have these made?” I ask. “You collect us?”

  “Not by choice, but by duty to my kingdom. When a soul becomes a gargoyle, another piece of the jewelry grows, to represent the form they are placed within. When a gargoyle passes on, the silver collapses into a knot like this one.” He points one sharp index finger at a tiny twist on his opposite finger. “The knots indicate a statue that can be filled with the next needing soul.”

  “I was not placed in a statue form.”

  “You are a Slip. Unique. You created your own form.”

  “You sent me to rot.”

  “I sent you to grow, to learn, in order to reach an understanding of this very moment.”

  I jut out my jaw, but it stays tucked away beneath my mask. I don’t understand what he means, except that he trapped me in this body to influence my decision to be his Queen. On this, I keep silent.

  “The jewelry,” I say, “is it always changing?”

  Truce nods. “The kingdom, while in my hands, constantly changes.”

  “And if I become Queen?”

  Truce takes my hand, holding it so that the spikes of his silver jewelry are cool against my gray skin.

  “Then you will wear these heavy jewels yourself.”

  ***

  From the other end of the roof, Trickle groans from his pedestal. It sounds the same way as a house settling, except that we all turn to Trickle, knowing that it means something more. I realize it must have taken him a herculean effort to do it, as he can barely move anything without water running through him.

  “Something to say, Trickle?” Truce asks. He strides the length of the roof, halting behind the lion’s mane. Truce raises one hand and flicks his wrist, twirling his silver fingers in a circle. Trickle’s entire body rotates on the ledge, although his limbs never move. When he settles again, Truce says, “Speak freely.”

  Trickle’s jaw drops and closes.

  “I would like a chance,” the lion says. Truce’s fingers reach up and curl around his chin, the shiny silver spike of his index finger climbing the sharp bones of his handsome face.

  “Mmm hmm,” Truce hums. “Another chance? It is your last, you know. That makes it your risk. You know I can not reverse your fate, if you should lose, Trickle.”

  “What are you doing? What is this?” I ask, stepping between them. Trickle’s irises seem to open, taking in all of me.

  “Nothing, but the kingdom’s game of chance,” Trickle says with a cheer that does little to convince me.

  “Every gargoyle has three chances,” Truce explains. “If they can not resolve the lesson they were sent to finish on their own, they can take another option and have three turns at fate. If they win their turn, they will be released from their service prematurely. However, if they lose, they lose the faculty they’ve wagered. But, in he case of their last turn, called the risk, the loser not only loses the sense they wagered, but they also have only two weeks to find and heal their current recipient. If they fail, they are trapped in their crippled servitude, until a King or Queen agrees to be the new recipient.”

  I turn my head back to Trickle, peering down the tunnels that lead my sight to him. His eyes grit away from mine.

  “Don’t do this, Trickle,” I say. “If you are taking this chance, assuming that I will become the next Queen and take you on, you’re playing at fate twice. Don’t make me responsible for your gamble and don’t try to seal my fate with yours.”

  “My, it feels good to have a closed mouth,” the lion says. “So good. You don’t realize what a pleasure it is, until your tongue boils for entire weeks in the sun. I have been beaten and baked, and left on this ledge to die a different death. I have no luck in finding what needs to be seen, so I must take what chances I have. My fate is mine to gamble. Truly, how much worse can it be?”

  “So much worse,” Truce warns, in a tone that almost matches the echo of sadness.

  The lion clasps his powerful jaw for only a moment and then says, “I shall take my risk.”

  Truce nods gravely, as he pushes his cape away to squat beneath the lion’s feet, where the roof meets the high brick lip. He produces a tiny glass top from his palm, pointed, with an arrow tip on one end and separated from its rod by a silver shield in the center. There are marks burned upon the shield, too tiny for me to make out, other than to know they are there. Truce balances the top on its point and gives the toy a snapping twist that sends it sputtering away in circles.

  "Spin it, spin it,” Truce murmurs as he stands. “Truth was never meant to be a game to play, but here it is, a child's toy, rotating beneath the adult hand."

  The top skitters around our feet, but never touches them. "Next will come the wagers, I expect, if your turn does not prove true. But you've already vanquished your credit, haven't you, Trickle? You seem to believe that virtue is as worthless as honesty. Isn't that still the case?"

  The lion drools rainwater as his stone eyes grit along, tracking the movement of the top.

  "Let me, Truce," the lion pleads, as the top jitters. "Let me down from this pedestal to have this chance again. All you need to do is say the word and I'm free. You have more power than God over me. I would serve you, if you like. Your right hand...” Moag growls from the side and Trickle revises, "An aid to the great Moag, and to you, great King. An assistant."

  "I see, I see...” Truce says. “But you understand I had made my choice of gargoyles and I don’t need a spare. I understand too that all you want is to get your hands on the top; give it one more try, with your most clever, losing spin. You are willing to call me God, but make me your Satan in order to play. It's so obvious, how don't you see it? Child's play becomes treachery at a certain age."

  The top falls on it’s side and Truce leans down, scooping it up in his hand. He holds it close to his chest; his eyes flicker down, to the top's shield, and back to Trickle. "What was your wager, Lion?"

  Trickle laps at the rainwater eagerly. "My sight."

  "I suppose you do not need it to complete your task, but it will be uncomfortable without it. How will you cope?"

  "I will not lose."

  "But what if you do? You've lost your ability to both move and speak with the last two chances you’ve taken."

  "Then I will adapt, with my ears and my claws and my senses."

  "And what would your prize be?" Truce asks, his eyes flickering between the shield and Trickle again. "If you are correct and you move on to the heavens, what will you gain?"

  "Same as ever,” Trickle says.

  "Ah yes, your name will be known among the stars," Truce finishes for him.

  "Yes. Known." Trickle’s motionless form seems to straighten proudly on his pedestal. "I shall be known through out the world."

  "So if you win this spin, you will have some kind of fame?” I say. “A legacy? Who do you find so important that they must speak your name? You already have your fame here, Trickle, through all of us. Don’t you see it?"

  Trickle falters, his tongue lost in his mouth.

  "I will be known for greatness throughout the world. That is what I shall win." His answer is as proud as it is unsure. His tone dribbles, like the water flowing off his mane, and then turns sharply on Truce. "What is it? What is the answer?"

  "The answer is," Truce says and casts his eyes down to read from the top’s shield in a foreign tongue. He frowns at Trickle and translates, "you must see."

  Trickle roars, a wailing roar that shakes the sky and Truce’s shoulders fall, as Trickle’s eyes grind back to their centers. The stone eyes do not move again. The pedestal turns back, to face the skyline he can no longer see, and the mighty lion’s echoing roar drifts away in the distance.

  “I am deeply sorry, my friend,” Truce says. He lays his silver hand on Trickle’s mane and I watch as our gargoyle king turns his face away from me to weep upon the shoulder of his own tattered cape.

  I step forward and raise one hand, about to rest my own claws carefully on Truce’s shoulder when Moag jump
s forward again.

  “You do not touch him!” Moag commands. “You do not touch the grief!”

  Stunned, I stumble backward and Truce lifts his head.

  “Do not,” Truce agrees. His voice is stern, yet strangled, and desperate through the tears. He arcs backward suddenly, every muscle in his body pressed to the top of his skin, and the King groans, as if he is being electrocuted. Moag drops to his massive knees, whispering to Truce, asking the king to allow himself healing, but Truce shakes his head, despite the pain that pulls his muscles taut.

  “Stop it!” I shriek to Moag. “Make it stop!”

  “I can not,” Moag howls. “The grief of a gargoyle is a pure thing and though the gargoyles harbor the grief of the human world, as their king, he must harbor the grief of every world. He has the shield of royalty that keeps him from being utterly destroyed.”

  “He is being tortured!”

  “But with one touch, you would be removed,” Moag hisses at me, “beyond any hope of any life.”

  His tone makes my claws curl in my palms. They sink into me like enormous briars as I watch Truce struggle, shrink, and collapse on the rooftop. His sobs and his breath converge and reach the air, strangling it with grief. I stand back and wait, understanding now that this is why the Gargoyle royalty do not enjoy a long reign. Surely, absorbing the grief of this magnitude either convinces them to move along or drives them insane. It must. Truce’s guilt and fear must be larger than even this torture. And now I know—this is part of the territory too, which will greet me if I become the Gargoyle Queen.

  ***

  It is only after Truce’s collapsed form is scooped into Moag’s enormous claws that I really think upon what has happened. The insanity of it all.

  Trickle’s immobility and Truce’s suffocating load.

  I also think of the things less significant, but paramount to me, of how Truce looked down deep inside me, seeing into the farthest reaches that should have been impossible to find. To be able to see into a person’s soul—I don’t know if the excitement outweighs the fear of the intentions.

  But becoming a Queen would mean carrying the horrors of more than just my own world. And my own world has been horrible enough.

  This king has killed his wife. And he is asking me to take her position.

  He might be insane enough to let me live forever, or he might be so insane that he kills me quickly, but despite the way he looked into me, and how I could see some of the way back into him, it seems unrealistic that we might ever be able to love each other at all.

  But I saw things inside him that erased his sins. And things that stirred me.

  I must ignore that.

  I must think of what my own choices mean: becoming a Queen, killing, or not killing my King. I try to work out in my mind how to be with my Bean again, without hurting anyone else. Or myself. I think of what love is and how I am unsure that what I feel about the other person is the only important factor anymore. I am overwhelmed.

  And then my eyes wander back to the neighboring rooftop and I remember the girl and The Boy and how he rubbed his tender words against her low esteem, like it was volatile tinder.

  I put all my own troubles away and creep down the side of the building and scuttle across the street. Not quite to The Boy’s apartment wall, I hear two male voices coming fast toward me from around the side of the building. I press myself flat against the sidewalk, breathing hard, with my wings extended fully over me. I must look like an enormous, dead pod. From beneath the tip of my wing, I watch two pairs of sneakers round the corner.

  “Did you see how he did that, man? He’s always hitting on my girl, even if she’s the ugliest one in the place. Don’t tell me you didn’t see it,” one voice says.

  “I seen it,” the second one says. “Don’t let him get under your skin like that. It’s what he wants. Besides, that one you were with tonight, you shoulda just let ‘im have her. That chick was nasty.”

  Their feet approach and I close my eyes, like a child hiding from monsters under a cement bed sheet. I hope they stay so absorbed in conversation that they don’t notice me.

  “You got it wrong. The ugly ones will do anything. And I mean anything.” The first one laughs. Then the toe of a sneaker snags the corner of my wing and one of them stumbles, falling right on me.

  “What the hell?”

  “What is that? A manhole cover?” The weight of whichever one fell on me disappears and the chew of their shoe treads circles me on the sidewalk.

  “That ain’t no manhole cover. Dude, maybe it’s a sink hole starting.”

  I feel the warmth of one of the boy’s hands and his emotions spill out of him, like an overturned pail. He is hunched down inside, missing parts. His touch sends a vicious and selfish swirl through me, followed by a crippling emptiness that no matter how much he has, it’s still never going to be enough. There is no filling up the holes in him and the hopeless thought of it leaves me feeling empty too.

  “Give me a hand,” he says and the other boy gets a hold of me. The net of the second boy’s emotions lets free and it’s a welcome rush of calm. There is a search inside him, always trying to find more laughter, balanced by something solid at the bottom of him that remains anchored, even as his friends wash up around him with their troubles. Such a difference in the two of them.

  With a great deal of grunting, they lug me up, but I stay flat and immobile, a huge gargoyle disk. They drop onto their knees, breathing hard as they try to hold up the edge of me and peer beneath, at my face.

  “Whoa!” the calm one says.

  “What is that? It looks like a velociraptor fossil…but look at that head…whoa! And that fucked up Mardi gras mask! Wait. Dude, it’s got claws…see ‘em?”

  “It’s too heavy! Let go, let go!” Calm grunts and both pull their fingers free. I smack down on the sidewalk with a thud that makes the ground vibrate. It’s a relief. Their emotions drizzle away the second their fingers are off me.

  “It’s like a fossil or something,” the one with the ugly girl says. “Bet it’s worth a pile of cash.”

  “Yeah, it’s worth a million bucks, sittin’ out here on the sidewalk,” Calm says. “Maybe the city’s doin’ one of them sculptures or something.”

  Ugly exhales a doubtful psht.

  “Here? Fat chance,” he says.

  “We should take it.” Calm giggles in a way that I’m sure he’d never do, with a girl around. “We could always just roll it over to Dougie’s and block his front door with it.”

  “His dad would kill us.”

  “Yeah, probably. It’s a bitch to lift too.”

  “Yeah, damn,” Ugly says. He gives the corner of my wing a little kick, before his rubber-soled sneakers begin to walk away. Calm sighs and follows.

  “Tomorrow, get that girl to bring one of her friends,” Calm says. “We can rent a room or something.”

  I wait until their sneakers, and then their voices, fade away, before I unfold my wings and scale up the building walls, back to find The Boy and Carly.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I can't find them. I search the other apartments, the one with the man who seems to never do anything but snore on his couch, the young man who practices forgery the way some practice law, and the young woman who I see do little else but swivel in front of her mirror, pinching her parts and frowning. I scramble up and down the brick, from apartment windows to hall windows and fire escapes, but The Boy and Carly have vanished. Together.

  Finally, I climb back up to the rooftop and nestle in among the plant leaves that wave at nothing. I hunch down like Moag would, in the bowl of my haunches, and turn the thought of Carly and The Boy over and over in my head like a rotten apple. They've gone somewhere or maybe they haven't, but I can't find either of them and all I can think of is Ayla, somewhere in the rooms across the street, probably daydreaming out her window about the boy that is somewhere, here, with Carly.

  I will kill him. I will turn my gift backward, if I can, and I
will destroy him with it.

  I'm trying to reason out where I might trap him when the stairway door opens. Instead of Carly and The Boy, Carly’s mother, the fat woman, steps out.

  Actually, she sways out.

  She moves like she's waltzing on the stormy bow of a pitching ship. She has a bottle in her hand that sloshes and splatters from her slack grip every now and again. She stumbles under the slatted roof of the lean-to and drops in front of me, among the plants. Wedging her whiskey bottle between my feet, her skin grazes me and it brings me an explosion of her grief.

  "Just sleep a little...just go to sleep with the pills,” she murmurs, as she flops down on her side. But she doesn't just want sleep. I feel the mortal exhaustion in her, how tired her soul is. I feel the sluggish crawl of her blood stream, the stuttering pulse of her heart. She wants to die at my feet, she's hoping for it. I feel her hope, that the children she loves, but has not raised well, will get better homes for the remainder of their childhoods. She closes her eyes.

  "They can't need me...” She whispers into her tear-wet hair. But she doesn't mean it like it sounds. It isn't a plea for strength, but resolve, to keep going on, for her kid's sake. It is a cry of desperation. It gushes from her, as her fingertips touch my feet.

  I feel how it is for her, how her children need her and need her, attacking her with their need. She gives, out of guilt and responsibility and dedication, but there is no well for her to replenish herself. Only the endless take. She feels thinned at the edges and as hollow as an empty chocolate figure.

  The weight of it all is what has settled at her core in thick rolls, it weighs her arms down as she hugs them; it smothers her ability to move forward, as it keeps her anchored. The guilt of everything she has ever said and not meant to, hangs in the pocket under her chin and tries to smother her in her sleep.

  Her well is so depleted that she doesn't have the energy to need herself anymore.