I am Mercy

by Mandi Lynn

  Part of me questions why Garren has gone through with this. But tonight—this morning—he is my captain. Once morning fully strikes and the sun rises on new land Garren will leave me on Tiboulain. I’ll thank him, and he’ll leave. And just as soon as I have met him, he will be gone. He’ll go back to his family and I will forget mine. Maybe I’ll find whatever Mystral was talking about, or maybe I’ll just find my demise. Either way I have come to accept both possibilities.

  ~~~

  When the sky turns to marble, I see Tiboulain. The two larger islands, Pomègues and Ratonneau, rest next to us and the massive rock of Tiboulain sits across the ocean like the grand structure it is. No life seems to be found. Trees, grasses, animals—they are all absent. The entire surface of the island can be scanned from our boat. It rests far from our reach, but within the hour we will dock.

  “Is that it?” Garren asks. He doesn’t stop paddling, but he turns to look at me. His eyes are soft in the morning light. A spark there tells me that he doesn’t need me to answer.

  “It isn’t what I expected,” I say, seeing the island for the first time in my life. It’s always been hidden behind the larger of the Frioul Archipelago. A small hope inside me had told me that Tiboulain wasn’t like the other rocky islands, that there might have been some life hidden there, but it’s nonexistent.

  Garren looks at the island and its utter emptiness. “Would you like me to take you back?”

  I don’t bother to look back—I know Pomègues blocks my view of Marseille. As far as I’m aware, there is nothing for me to return to, so my next words are clear.

  “Please take me to Tiboulain.”

  XXII.

  The island is a glorious piece of art. The cliffs of Tiboulain face the sun that rises on the horizon. In front of our eyes the morning awakens, shining into a cove of the massive rock island. There is no beach or shore to Tiboulain. All is rock that lifts from the water. It is a massive sandbar built by the warriors of the sea.

  “It’s beautiful,” I say. In front of me Garren doesn’t speak. He shifts his body as he rows us toward the island. It is small—small enough to see across to the other side. If I wanted, I could sprint clear across to the other end. The only thing stopping me from this activity is the rocky surface that juts out in random directions.

  “Where would you like me to dock?” Garren asks.

  “You’re staying?”

  “I can’t leave you,” he says. Garren turns to the island that rests in its grandeur.

  I follow his gaze and see it as he must: a deserted island full of nothing but rock. Of course he wouldn’t leave me here alone.

  All I can do is nod. I begin to question Mystral and her motives for urging me here. Surely she knew what the island looked like.

  Garren brings our small rowboat to the closest edge of the island. The waves sway us toward the rock’s surface, but the movement is small enough to not damage the vessel. Garren is quick as he works the rope and secures the boat to the sharp corner of a jetting stone. He’s first to get off and set foot on the island.

  His hand beckons me.

  “Why have you come with me?” I ask.

  He stands on the island, the surface about a stride’s length higher than the boat. If I wanted to set foot on the land, I would need Garren’s guided strength in order to do so. He stares back at me, not at all put off by my question.

  “Because the only way to get you to this island was by boat. You don’t have one—I do.”

  The ocean roars behind my ears. I want to press my hands over the sound, containing it, muffling it, and block away the world. Everything screams, and I don’t know why.

  “I’m just a stranger to you,” I say, but the words come out as a shiver. My lips tremble and I pray Garren doesn’t see.

  The wind off the water brings a deep chill and makes me sway. Garren’s tunic shuffles, but he stays grounded. His eyes are knowing. Everything about him speaks to me, but it’s like I can’t hear. Words escape; sounds reverberate, but nothing is heard over the roaring ocean.

  “Come. We are here to see the island.” He offers his hand again and I take it with numb fingers, I take it. He pulls me from the rowboat and onto the island without another word.

  The ground is steady where we are. After such a long time at sea, with the push and pull of the waves, the stable ground seems almost unnatural to my feet as Garren leads me away. Here there is nothing to offer shelter. Anyone on the other islands could see us as soon as the sun breaks over the horizon.

  The uneven ground continues on. The two of us hike, Garren always in the lead. I let him guide me, though I’m not sure what it is we are looking for. For the most part, everything about Tiboulain can be seen. The only mystery is what would be found within the crevices between massive slabs of rock.

  “What were you told about this place?” Garren asks.

  I hold up my cloak and kirtle to step over the rough surface. I can sense Garren’s eyes on me, but I keep my eyes on my path.

  “She said it could offer shelter,” I say. “Somehow …” My eyes skim the island again, having doubts about why I’m here. Garren must think I’m a fool, asking him to bring me to this deserted island that offers nothing.

  “Who?”

  “A woman I met not long ago,” is all I say.

  He doesn’t say anything, just continues forward.

  At some point he stops walking.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Who was this woman?”

  “I didn’t know her well,” I say. I let go of my skirt and cloak and they flit through the wind, brushing against my legs. The salt in the air coats my face and hair, a layer of natural dew. I watch Garren, but he doesn’t look at me. He gazes forward at nothing in particular.

  “Do you remember what she looked like?”

  Mystral’s face comes to mind like I had just seen her seconds ago. Dark hair and cloak, masking her for whatever she really is. The image of her body disappearing from the water replays itself in my head, begging me to solve an impossible mystery.

  Garren turns to face me and I shake my head.

  Something within me says Mystral is a secret best kept. It’s as if saying she existed connects me to her and her ways.

  When I don’t speak further Garren scrutinizes me. He sees the lie but doesn’t make me explain—I thank him for that.

  “Come on,” he says, motioning for me to walk ahead of him. I explore Tiboulain without any idea of what lies ahead. Rocks tumble and fall beneath my feet as earth is stepped over for what may be the first time.

  “Do you think others have been to this island?” I ask. The Frioul Archipelago can be seen off the coast of Marseille, but very rarely are they visited. The larger ones, like Pomègues and Ratonneau, have been explored, but with Tiboulain being so small it seems like a waste of time to bother docking when its entire surface can be seen offshore.

  “I don’t see why not,” Garren says.

  In front of us is not another rock but a crater. In the center of this small island, a pool of water sits within the opening. The hole is just big enough that, if I wanted, I could slip inside. Rocks overhang the water, giving the impression that the crevice goes deep, opening wider underneath.

  I bend down at the edge, my knees scraping against the rough surface. Behind me Garren doesn’t say anything. I sense him coming closer, but his approach is silent. Dipping my hand in the pool, I feel the soothing sensation of warm water. When I pull out my hand again, the sharp wind greets me without mercy. I bring my hand to my mouth and taste the water—pure, without salt.

  “It’s freshwater,” I say, putting my hand by my side, turning toward Garren.

  It happens fast. When I see Garren, the first thing that strikes me is the panic in his eyes. He jumps at me, his hands gripping my arms. My feet drag against the ground as I try to right myself, but I end up slipping. Garren falls on top of my legs while my torso hovers over the water. His hands grasp my wrists as he lowers me, closer t
o the water below.

  In the moment I forget to breathe or scream. All I can see is the fear in Garren’s eyes. He looks at me, his gaze piercing, but his body is an unwilling participant. It’s like he has no control over what he’s doing. When I see his face, I forget the pain of his weight on top of me, but the moment I look away I see how close I am to drowning.

  Garren doesn’t release me, so we stay here, my body hovering over the edge of the crevice, his body pinning me to the only piece of land keeping me alive.

  “Garren,” I say, but it comes out as a gasp. His body crushes mine.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, and his words are a cry.

  At the nape of my neck, I feel the warm water embrace my hair. The braids coiled around my crown absorb the moisture and pull me deeper to the water. I feel myself slipping, my back getting soaked. The water flows past my ears to my chin. My head dips below the surface, my shoulders and torso following. The water entwines around my arms. The weight on my legs lifts suddenly and I know Garren has fully released me, no longer holding half my body in the water. My feet fall into the pool now and my wet cloak and kirtle drag me farther, deeper and away.

  I can’t see him anymore, and it makes me happy. I don’t want to die while peering into his face, knowing he’s my killer. He can’t be. When he looked at me there was no malice. When he looked at me, it was like he was mourning my death.

  He can’t be the reason I die.

  ~~~

  I was right; the pool of water is bigger than it seems. I’m suspended, stretching, feeling for something to grip, to fight my way out, but there are no handholds. The only thing my fingers encounter is water. The warm, delightful water.

  I think I see the moon. It is only half of itself. Behind the blurry surface, Garren looks down. I see him. He doesn’t see me. His eyes find mine, but when I look back at him his face shows no recognition—the only movement is his hair curling in the wind. Finally he turns away, leaving me.

  I want to panic, but I can’t. My body is numb to the world and I wonder the last time I felt alive.

  The water loves me like no one has before. It takes away my pain and embraces me. The fear and loss leaves me until I can no longer feel anything. Happiness is beside me. I could take it and keep it, but I don’t choose to. Instead I watch as happiness withers away. It shrivels into the million pieces I have always known it to be—too small to pick up. It will stay this way. Always afloat in the water, waiting for the waves to take me away.

  BOOK 2

  XXIII.

  People don’t understand what life has been withholding until they receive something beyond their wildest dreams.

  The colors. The vibrant, wonderful colors that have always been in my world were mere shades of black and white, dark and dull.

  Blue is the color of the water that embraces me. It is the sky and the ocean. It is so much more—and yet so little. Blue goes on forever and never stops. There are no boundaries for blue.

  Red is death. Red is Bernie’s cough, Margo’s lips, the Bird’s hands. Red is blood. The same blood that has leaked on the earth and captured us. It is what soaks our skin and makes us crawl into the corner for shelter. Blood is what threatens to leave, when our life is ending.

  The sunrise is oranges, purples, pinks—all these colors have names, and no color is more wonderful than the other. They all carry on into infinity. Each color has its own tone and hue. I want to capture them with my eyes and remember them forever because I’m not sure when I’ll see color again.

  How did I miss this world until now? When my hair falls in front of my face, I don’t see it as the dull hue it had once been. It’s an astonishing golden brown. The color makes me think of wheat and barley, the tilling of fields and the harvesting of food. It is the color of baked bread, risen and fresh from the oven.

  The sun rests somewhere over the horizon, not yet risen. All I know is that now, when I turn my head, I see the moon. It shines bright and radiant in the sky. A sliver of its being is still missing—a half moon in the sky. It’s the first thing I see with my improved eyesight and I’m just now being introduced to this new world.

  Postpone the moon and find forever …

  ~~~

  It’s like being born again into another body, the same but different. When my eyes finally open, all I can sense at first is the brightness around me. Different shades enhance my vision, but I can’t put meaning to them. The sun rises in the farthest corner to bring warmth to the new morning, but I can’t feel the effects of its rays just yet. The sky appears as if it is burning away, exploding into something wondrous.

  The next thing I’m aware of is the utter stillness around me. The sounds of waves echo somewhere far off in the distance, but that is all. Here, right now, I feel as if my body doesn’t exist; my limbs aren’t sore—in fact I don’t even feel them.

  My eyes peel from the scenery around me and I force myself to examine my body. And that’s when I realize I am underwater. My hair floats about my cheeks, wrapping itself around my chin in golden strings. Above me the world is magnified and I am trapped below, suspended in liquid that doesn’t wake all my senses.

  For a moment I panic and take in the air that is in no supply, swallowing water into my lungs. My body jolts forward and my fingers find a handhold in the rocky surface that makes up the sides of the water hole I’ve been suffocated in. I pull myself out and on to the land above.

  I feel a lack of sensation as I pull myself free from the cocoon of water. Once on land, I don’t need to catch my breath. Instead I lie here, my face to the ground, attempting to take in my surroundings.

  It’s like a switch has been turned off. Nothing is as muted as it had been when I was underwater. I can hear the ocean, no longer far away like it had seemed moments ago. A hue of color is missing from the world when I look at the sun. It takes me a moment to think of what it is called—blue. There isn’t any blue in the sunrise and I realize it is because I’m no longer seeing it from underwater.

  “Luna,” says someone in a quiet voice.

  My head perks up at the sound of my name. I try to place where it came from, but it feels like my world is being bombarded. Colors I’ve never seen distort my vision and make me close my eyes to whatever trick is being played on me.

  “Are you finally awake?”

  The voice is familiar. It comes from behind me.

  With a care I didn’t know I possessed, I twist my body to see whoever is speaking. The vision that greets me is not what I expected. A woman lies on the ground withering, but her face appears to be in the utmost peace. She smiles when I see her.

  “Oh, Luna, I thought you’d never wake.”

  Her voice is nothing more than a whisper. I find myself moving forward in order to catch her words. I kneel on the rocky land, and when I look down I see the drape of my cloak and kirtle clinging to my legs like a wet rag, but I am unable to feel a thing. I run my fingers over the fabric, but still no touch is ever felt. I take off the cloak, finding it no longer needed.

  “Glorious, isn’t it?” the woman whispers.

  I see her face for the first time. Ripely aged, she lies across the ground in sullen movements. Her voice is a soft murmur of words that must be deciphered, but when I see the wrinkles around her eyes, I recognize the woman. Mystral stares back at me, her dark hair falling over her shoulders in waves of gorgeous clamor. She is no longer the young woman who disappeared into the water that night so long ago.

  “What is glorious about this?” I say, my voice a hoarse echo into the wind.

  She smiles. “We cannot feel a thing. Nothing can hurt us—nothing will ever hurt us, my dear Luna.”

  “What happened?”

  Mystral closes her eyes for a moment, leaving me to sit within the confines of my own question. “What happened, you ask? Life. Brilliancy. Eternity!”

  She opens her eyes and this time when she looks at me, it is as if I’m a dying relative who cannot be fought for. The only thing left is to pity my
soul.

  “Luna, you lived all your life blind to a world that did not love you. Color—there was never any color for you, was there?”

  She stares back at me, waiting.

  I think back to the time before I awoke in the water. The memories of my past haze together like a large mess of words that I can’t make sense of. I vaguely remember my family. Mama and Papa, Margo and Dondre. Margo had married Anton—the man who had once tried to kill me—and their child was Joelle.

  “You don’t remember, do you?” Mystral asks.

  “Remember what?”

  “The pestilence.”

  The pestilence that killed Margo, which was the reason Anton left us with Joelle. How Dondre hated me and wanted me dead. How I left Mama on her deathbed with the Bird who put her through pain instead of easing it. Yes, I remember the pestilence.

  “It is killing my family,” I tell Mystral. I can feel an empty pain in my chest, a lack of emotion which threatens to engulf me. I wait in silence, expecting tears to flood my vision, but they never come.

  “There’s more,” Mystral says. “Think back to your senses.”

  “I can’t feel anything anymore,” I tell her.

  “I know. Our kind doesn’t have a sense of touch. It protects us. Nothing will ever hurt us.”

  “That’s not possible,” I say.

  Mystral shakes her head and closes her eyes. Her next words are more to herself than to me. “The child doesn’t understand. She does not see the boldness that beholds her eyes.”

  Her eyes flash open and look into me. “What do you see, Luna? Think back to how the world appeared to you once. Was it filled with this brilliance? This beauty? What has changed from now and then?”

  Her voice is almost frustrated, like she’s explaining something I refuse to listen to.

  I look around me. Tiboulain is the island Mystral told me to escape to in order to free myself of the pestilence. She said it provided safety. Nothing extraordinary is here. The island is so small I can see from one end to the other, but here in front of me, a pool rests. The freshwater travels deep into the island, but when I was drowning there was no need for air.