Mercy, A Gargoyle Story (14 page)
Read Mercy, A Gargoyle Story Online
Authors: Misty Provencher
"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 jumps 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
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.
Her muscles go slack and an uncapped medicine container drops from her hand.
It rolls away, empty.
As her breathing grows shallow, I can't be still any longer.
I reach my hand down and touch her cheek.
Her eyelids only flutter and death—a black, caustic cloud of it, churns over us.
She wants to die.
She wants it like I do, but her desire cuts into my nerves.
The faces of her children hang in the ether.
I cannot let her die.
I think of the little ones, who don't even realize she cares yet, and how they will be herded away, heartbroken and incomplete.
I think of Carly taking up with the Boy, or any boy she can find, just so she isn't taken by the system.
I think of the Fat Woman, running into the black forest of death, hiding from herself and her life, instead of being brave enough to face it.
She's not brave enough.
The bravery has drained out of her, along with the hope.
That’s when it all becomes clear.
If she had hope again, just hope, she could change all of this.
I can give her that.
I thrust my hand between the bones of the ribs around my stomach, digging for my heart.
It jumps when I touch it.
I have no idea what I will do once I get it out, but I wrap my fingers around it and pull.
I can't nudge it a centimeter.
The thing is stuck, rooted.
I pull harder and yelp at the sensation.
It's as if I'm trying to turn myself inside out with a fork.
My heart may as well be a loose tooth, attached by a stubborn nerve, and each tug sends a sting of pain rippling through me.
She is only skimming the air for breath.
Her red lips bloom to violet petals.
I could die and she could live, a bargain for us both, but when I try again, whatever invisible cord attaching my gift to me, won't come free.
A howl is in the bottom of my throat as her violet lips become a blue bruise.
We are both doomed if I fail.
She will pass and I will remain, trapped in this dead, gray, skin-clothing forever.
I reach deeper, trying to force my claws around the back of my heart, digging to sever the thing loose.
There is nothing holding it in place, yet it won't move and she is draining away at my feet.
My howls escape.
But the pounding of wings, beating through the air overhead, drowns it out.
A shadow races over the roof slats of the lean-to.
"BACK AWAY!"
A voice startles the grip I have on my heart.
I look up to see the brutal face of a gargoyle, with globes that bulge from eye sockets, too small to hold them.
The mouth is caught in a snarl, baring razor teeth.
I let go of my heart and skitter backward, as commanded.
The gargoyle jumps forward, his massive feet beating the rooftop like a horrible base drum.
He grabs the Fat Woman by her ankle and gives her a violent yank.
Her hair trails like listless tentacles.
He tugs her out from under the lean-to, toward him and away from me.
"She's dying!”
I scream.
"MINE!"
He thunders.
His nostrils, hard knots of skin beneath the bulges of his eyes, swell and puff with energy, as if he's waiting for me to challenge him.
I'm too scared to even move.
He gives the fat woman another ruthless jerk, this time by her hair, back toward him.
When he seems sure I'm not going to dispute his claim, his eyes flicker down to the fat woman's face.
She is pale as the belly of a clam.
While the gargoyle's features are that of morbidly shaped stones, the mortar around them seems to soften, and the gargoyle drops to his knees.
"You do not go," he whispers to the dying woman. "Not before you live.
This is your gift."
He reaches for his neck, as if he must grip it to release a sob, but instead, his hand slides into a camouflaged flap of skin.
I am mesmerized.
He withdraws a beating heart, small as a chicken gizzard, the ash dripping from it like dust.
It is as gray as mine, but as he tenderly lowers the organ toward the woman, it begins pumping so hard that it jumps in his fist, as if it is a fish in the air and she is the water.
But she is still only a puddle at his massive feet.
The gargoyle draws in a deep breath, closes his eyes, and presses his heart into her chest.
The organ sinks into her, as if she has a flap too.
He withdraws his empty hand.
If stone could relax, if it could soften, then that is how the gargoyle appears, as he tips his face toward the sky.
A flash, a blaze of lightening, moves out of the dark sky from nowhere.
It is a shooting star aimed from a rifle or a current pulsing down an electrical line, something violent and emerging from invisibility.
It explodes when it hits him.
The gargoyle is lost in the shower of light and sparks, a phoenix, an explosion.
I scuttle even further backward, amazed, awed, and scared to death that I will be burned alive too.
And then the light is gone.
The gargoyle's body is still there, although only a statue.
There is no soul within the stone anymore.
A statue is all that remains.
The fat woman stirs.
I remain frozen, paralyzed, and petrified.
She is slow to roll to her back, the deathly blue hue fading from her lips, her face turning back to the color of a baby piglet.
She is there so long, I wonder if she is damaged, until she scoots to a seated position.
She sighs, grunts, and sways a little, massaging her cheeks in her palms and the back of her head, where the gargoyle had pulled her across the roof.
Shaking her head, she looks up at the sky through the slats of the lean-to and takes a deep breath.
The orange pill container lies close to her thumb and she scoops it up, turns it upside down.
She sighs hard, her eyes glossy as they roll up to the sky and then she whips the container away.
"Thank you, God,"
she whispers with a small laugh.
"I ain't dyin'.
I kin do this."
She pushes herself to her feet and spots the gargoyle statue, the one that saved her.
Her eyes travel from the statue to me, frozen like a statue, and back again.
She turns in a circle once before she shakes her head and shrugs and then she heads, light as a stone grazing across awaves, to the stairs leading back down to her life.
***
When she's gone, I scoot closer to the statue.
"Hello?"
It doesn't move.
I brush my claw against it.
Still nothing.
The thing is cold concrete, not a spark of life hidden in its eyes.
I tap on the smooth forehead.
Its eyes are paralyzed in their upward roll, in the direction that the lightening came.
All that is left of the frightening gargoyle is this chunk of stone, with a face that no matter how twisted and grotesque, stll manages to look nearly benevolent.
I think of emptying myself from this gargoyle form.
I also think of the other fate I could choose, with any of the suitors that await me.
What I will become, as the result of either choice, seems vast and empty.
I sit back among the plants and the loneliness seeps in, even more than it had when I lay at the bottom of the water.
"Just come,” I hear a voice say.
It's his voice.
And I'm so startled and off guard by it that, for a moment, I think of when we were in my mother's house, standing on the stairs with our hands interlocked and we knew what we were about to do.
I can't remember who said it, but one of us did, and the other one followed and we went up the attic stairs together, to lie beneath the window.
But that time, we both knew we weren't going to the attic just to lie on the mattress and intertwine our hands and watch the leaves of the pear tree shiver in the wind.
We knew we weren't going to just kiss.
Whoever led the other up the stairs, it didn't matter.
We both wanted to come.
The apartment roof door opens and slams shut.
The glinting light from the stairs makes them both look like angels, as she spins out of his arms, laughing, and he chases after her.
"You know you want me," Ayla says and I can't help but gasp.
It's so loud that she halts and turns, the boy turns with her, and they are both looking at me.
"Did you hear that?”
Ayla asks.
He turns his face back to her and leans close to her cheek, "Nope."
She ducks away from him and walks toward me.
"That's weird.
That statue is just like the one on my roof."
"It's just Dawn's green house.
You know...Carly's mom?"
he says.
"She's got all kinds of plants and statues stuffed in there."