I am Mercy

by Mandi Lynn

  “That’s part of all this,” Garren says, watching me stop breathing but doesn’t do anything. “You don’t need air to be alive.”

  In silence Garren sits next to me, but the small space feels overwhelming. It’s magnified by the vast space left by the mass grave we sit atop. He doesn’t dare come closer and it’s all I can do to sit in one place.

  “I don’t feel anything,” I say after a long stretch of silence. He doesn’t speak so I continue. “Garren, I see the ground beneath my feet, but I don’t feel it. Emotions overwhelm me, but a tear never comes. I’m waiting for some release, for some cry to rip its way through my core, but it never does.”

  I look at him and he frowns. He wants to say something. His mouth opens, as if to form words, but they never come and he chooses not to speak. I wonder how I look. My face feels rabid, distorted, and twisted enough to make me a monster in my own body. Garren doesn’t look aside though; he just continues to study me, like he wishes he could take away my pain.

  “I’m sorry,” he says.

  I shake my head. “Why?”

  “Because I told Mystral about you.” His eyes are sad as he speaks.

  When he looks at me, I know all he can see is a broken girl.

  “Mystral was looking for eternity and the moon held that power, but she needed someone to be the gateway. The moon had marked you when you were born. There are legends surrounding others like you, but none had been carried out until you.”

  I look away, feeling a sort of weight in his words. It makes sense, but I don’t want to believe him. I don’t want to be this gateway to dark magic that he speaks of.

  “The moon was blocking the sun. You looked at it and were gifted. Mystral told me that, up until that moment, you had been blind, without sight. It is said that when a baby is born disabled, the moon can choose to give a gift but only during the correct time. The moon gifted you sight. There was no color, but you would never realize the difference.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “In the streets you looked at me—but only for a moment. Once I saw your eyes, I knew there was a dark magic in you—everyone did. Even your own family was wary of you. I needed Mystral’s help and she needed someone like you. I had heard she could do things, so I told her about your eyes. Mystral was on a search for eternity and you were the only one who could keep it from slipping away.”

  “Because of the pestilence,” I say.

  “She became frantic, seeking a cure or some way to ensure she would live. Tiboulain is the daughter of the moon. To be gifted with eternity you first needed to give it something in return—or, in this case, give something back.”

  Garren looks at me, waiting for some sign of comprehension.

  “Mystral gifted me. Back to the moon,” I say.

  “Aida de Luna. Helper of the moon.”

  “Postpone the moon and find forever,” I say, mimicking Mystral’s chant.

  “Postponing death is what she wanted, and that’s what she received.”

  When I look at Garren, suddenly he isn’t a stranger. He’s the man who lent me his boat the night I left my family. I was so desperate for some cure or solace from the disease killing my family that I didn’t bother to make sense of the events. He was the one who found me asleep on the side of the cliff; he was the one who brought me to Tiboulain, but he was also the one who drowned me in its waters.

  “You tried to kill me that night,” I say. The blurry image courses through me of his face as I slowly descended into the water. He looks the same—deep brown curly hair, a square jaw—but now I can see him better, bolder. I try not to remember the feel of his arms on my shoulders as he held me beneath the water.

  Garren holds my gaze, but his face makes me feel as if I’ve just slapped him across the jaw.

  “I’m sorry it appeared that way. Your body had to become the water of Tiboulain, and drowning you was the only way to do that.”

  “But why would you bother with all this? Did Mystral make a deal with you? All this, just so you could live forever?” My voice grows in volume as I speak.

  Garren reels back from where he sits but listens to every word I say. Shame is written over his face, and he doesn’t look at me when he talks.

  “There was a bargain, but I wasn’t the one who was supposed to live.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He pauses, his eyes darting everywhere except my face. “Mystral was to grant my sister life. My mother and father had left us once the pestilence struck. They ran away one night, taking all the food with them, along with our horse. They followed everyone to the countryside for safety.”

  “There’s no magic in Mystral’s powers to bring them back,” I tell Garren, my voice turning to a gentle lull.

  He doesn’t look anywhere. His eyes glaze over, but I can tell he isn’t with me in the present. His mind is off somewhere, remembering what he wishes he could forget.

  “I know,” he says. “My sister died shortly after they left. She was one of the first in our village to pass from the pestilence, but she certainly wasn’t the last. I didn’t want to live forever, Luna. When I met Mystral, I was waiting to die, to join my sister, maybe even my parents, but that’s not how things worked out.”

  “What was your sister like?”

  For the first time Garren smiles. A light ignites in his eyes and I know for certain he loved the girl. “Her name was Lucie. She had just turned twelve and smiled up until that age.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Lucie came across a man on the street one night, when I let her walk to the market alone and he offered to pay her. She accepted.” Garren stops talking, emotions brimming from within. “She came home crying—the sound was awful. I’ve never heard such a small being make that wail before.”

  Stillness grows and unfolds. The air settles around both of us, and the atmosphere grows heavy. I watch Garren as he breathes, the steady rhythm bringing me to a calm place I don’t understand.

  “Lucie wouldn’t talk to me for a long time. She wouldn’t let me touch her. Every time something, anything, brushed up against her, she would yelp. I watched her every day, struggling to get through the hours, always looking behind her, as if that man might jump out and take her again. She wouldn’t tell me of that night.

  “One day I cornered her and shook her. I don’t know why. I was just so scared for her and I watched as she fell apart. When I touched her, she screamed and cried and when I released her, she sank to the ground. I didn’t mean to scare her. I just wanted to know what had happened to my little sister.”

  “Then how did you find out?” I ask.

  Garren’s hands are fists at his sides, and part of me waits for him to lash out and punch something. But despite his eager ability to break down he doesn’t do so much as move another muscle while he speaks.

  “She told me. She told me as she crumbled to the ground. Lucie mumbled words of money and a man and how he touched her, even when she screamed for him to stop.

  “She wasn’t the same for a long time. Months passed before I saw her smile again, but then one day something changed. She was happy again and I don’t know why. I couldn’t understand how she could have been tormented yet still see the world like she always had.

  “I loved her because of that, because—even after the world had hurt her—she had hope. Even after our parents left, she didn’t question their actions. She said they were safer away from her than with her. I didn’t understand her selflessness.

  “But her death was slow. I watched her slip from me every day, growing sicker as the pestilence fought its battle against her beating heart. I watched her as she smiled at me, before she closed her eyes to the world and I remember thinking that I would do anything to give her life again, just so the world could remember that smile.”

  “So Mystral would bring Lucie back?” I ask.

  Garren nods his head, looking far off to the ocean over the cliffs. “But Mystral couldn’t. I helped her and when I finally
gave her what she wanted, she gave me life instead of Lucie.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, because I don’t know what else there is to say. When life has handed someone something so tragic, what else is there to do except apologize for the wrongs of the world?

  “No, I’m sorry, because all this was for nothing. I’ve brought you into this world that you never asked to be a part of.”

  I look around us and see the settled ground. Time has come and passed; lives have been lived, and people have died, but the one sure thing is the corpses that lie in an eternal sleep beneath my feet.

  “Nobody asked for any of this,” I finally say.

  XXIX.

  The water is so still. My curiosity wants me to touch the surface, to see the ripples glisten across the surface as my disturbance hits it, but I’m able to refrain. I’m afraid of this pool of water. The last time I made contact with it I disappeared for one hundred years, leaving my family behind to live or die without me.

  “So this is it? The place where the black magic stems?” I ask. I stand at the very edge of the pool, just a jump from the water. If I wanted, I could lean in and become consumed by the water again—I know it is deep enough. Even when I was sprawled out in the pool my feet never came into contact with the bottom, only the sides of the rocky walls.

  “Yes. As I said, Tiboulain is the daughter of the moon. It is the connection the moon has to Earth. And now you are part of this connection.” His voice is flat, only some background noise in the pandemonium of my mind.

  “I never wanted to be a part of this,” I say.

  Beside me Garren shifts and comes closer. I feel his body radiate toward me, but I flinch from any contact—or lack thereof. I walk from the pool of water and navigate the rocky surface of Tiboulain to look at anything other than the monster who took away my life.

  I turn toward the vast ocean instead of the islands of Frioul Archipelago that open themselves at my back. The water is endless, nothing but a vast openness that never dares to close in. I look to the ocean and I wish I were as invincible as the waves that crash and thunder against the breaks.

  “I’m sorry this has happened to you.”

  Garren’s voice forms at my back and I want to push him away, to let me be, never to be bothered again, but he is also all I have left.

  “If you were sorry, you never would have told Mystral about me.”

  “You have to understand. I was desperate. I didn’t know what Mystral’s plan was.”

  “Why didn’t you stop her?” I ask, my voice catching.

  “She promised me that she could bring back Lucie. She had me. You have to understand that. I had to do everything I could to bring back Lucie.”

  Garren’s voice is still desperate. It’s no wonder Mystral was able to convince him so easily. The boy is blinded by his emotions.

  “So you traded my life for your sister.”

  “Never,” he says, sounding genuinely hurt. “Mystral told me that you would live on as something that existed throughout eternity, just as she would. I didn’t take your life—I gave you forever.”

  “You can’t decide that for me,” I shout. Eternity rests on my shoulders, and I don’t want it. I want to blame the one person who gave me this curse, but when I turn to look at him he seems to be hurting more than I am. “I was waiting for the pestilence to take me, Garren. I watched as so many died, one after the other. There was no reason for their deaths. It just happened, and I didn’t understand. Why would God put us on Earth just to take us away so bluntly, before we could learn to live? And I don’t understand why anyone would want to live forever, because all you will ever see is death.

  “You and I, Garren, from this point on, will never see life. Every moment a baby is born, we will not see the miracle of life. We will only wonder how long until they leave Earth again, because life is cruel and fragile and there is no real goal. We are just here for a moment, but now I’ve been cursed. I’ve been bedeviled, and you’ve created me into the witch everyone always thought of me.”

  Garren is silent. For a long time it is just the two of us looking at each other, neither of us knowing what words should come next. My breath comes faster even though my heart no longer beats. Emotions stir and roll inside me and I wonder what it will take for my surface to crack and finally let the tears roll. It builds inside me and it isn’t until I release a shuddering breath that I feel free again. I inhale air, as if it will be stolen from me in mere seconds, only to exhale a personal poison. My chest stirs in chaotic breaths, but the tears never come—the relief is lost to me.

  Arms wrap around my shoulders, and without knowing it, I had been lowered to the ground. I sit with my feet curled underneath me, my body shaking. When I look up, I see Garren’s face close to mine. His eyes are rimmed red, his face contorted into something called pain. Through it all neither of us cries.

  The winds blow, but we never shiver. The water bites at our ankles, but the sensation never comes. Disconnected, we are no longer part of this world. We are rejected and left useless, only mannequins of the past.

  “I’m sorry, Luna,” Garren says, as his arms lock around me, but I can’t feel him.

  The only thing left for me is the roar of water where I had been drowned and taken from my old life and brought into a new, more unfavorable one, where all those I loved have gone and left me.

  Death separates me from humanity and the boundary is impossible to pass.

  ~~~

  Something about tears makes sadness somehow gratifying. Until I cry all I do is let the emotions build with nowhere to go; but once the crying comes and the tears run from my eyes, there is a certain relaxation in that. But when that release is denied, when it is impossible for me to cry, the pain becomes all the more unbearable.

  I sit far from Garren, my back to him. I can’t stand to look at him. He doesn’t dare break the silence that lingers between us and I can’t find it in myself to speak. There is so much to say, but I have no desire to exchange words with him.

  So we sit. I face the ocean, the breeze blowing salty air through my hair. Garren looks at the islands of Frioul Archipelago that no longer appear the same as in my memories. Ships and buildings inhabit what were once peaceful islands left to nature.

  With shaky hands I unwind the braid that curls around my head. My hair falls in waves and tangles around my shoulders, the golden pigment a shimmer in the sun. The strands are untidy and matted and I take three locks of hair and twist them into a single braid that falls to rest against my abdomen.

  “So why are you here?” I ask suddenly. Garren stirs behind me and I can tell my voice has surprised him.

  He doesn’t answer right away, reawakening himself.

  Rocks and pebbles move and stir behind my back and I hear him as he walks closer to me. Finally I see him standing off to the side.

  With the slowest movements possible he bends down to sit next to me.

  “Don’t,” I say.

  He doesn’t respond, just clears his throat as if it is a simple misunderstanding and walks off, coming to a seated position near the shoreline in front of me.

  “I’m here because Lucie is not,” he says when he’s finally gathered himself in a comfortable position. His thick coat falls in the sand around him.

  I can tell it’s expensive, something that is difficult to trade, yet he treats it no differently than his other clothing. Waves nip at his leather shoes, but he doesn’t flinch away. Instead he absorbs it all, his face taking everything in, the wind brushing through his hair.

  “That doesn’t answer my question. Of course Lucie isn’t here.” Once the words are out I see him flinch and I regret my bluntness. He knows his sister is dead—of course it eats away at him. That much is clear.

  His head bows to the ground.

  “I’m sorry. I just—I, I’m confused. Mystral was supposed to bring your sister back.”

  He laughs, the sick laugh used when the world has been so cruel that one must pretend it is all some tw
isted joke.

  “Isn’t that true! I thought the same thing, my dear Luna. I gave you up, all in the hopes that Lucie would be brought back to enlighten the world again. Yet here I am, and she is not.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I don’t know,” he says. His voice is quiet, somber when he says the words. “I’d like to think Mystral thought she could bring Lucie back. You don’t understand how hopeful she looked when she talked about the spell that she would cast for Lucie. I prefer to think it was not all an act.”

  He drags his hand through the thick sand at his feet. The grit is large enough that I can see the individual pebbles that make up the sand even from the distance where I sit. He piles the sand, gathers it, and crushes it all in an endless cycle. Finally he presses a final handprint in the sand and draws his fingers to his lap again, staring off into the endless vortex of ocean that lies ahead, as open as an unbarred door.

  “I suppose life is not something that can be bought or traded once it is lost. If it slips through your fingers, it’s gone forever. The dilemma is we don’t discover this until it is too late—until a life has been lost forever. I should have known this when Lucie died, that it was perpetual, but Mystral gave me hope …” He pauses, his voice faltering in the wind. “I had to do all I could to get her back.

  “Sometimes I think Lucie fought it. Maybe she didn’t want to return to the living, because there must be something really tremendous after this life that even the thought of seeing those you love seems dull in comparison.”

  “When you love someone, you will do anything to get back to them—you should know that,” I say suddenly. “Lucie loved you. If she could have come back to you, she would have.”

  Garren turns to face me, his eyes glistening with wonder. He doesn’t smile when he looks at me and even though I never knew Lucie, I see his love for her in every feature of his being. He lives her; he breathes her, and he would die for her.

  “I know,” he says.

  “We won’t ever know though, will we, whether you can come back after death?” I ask.