Mercy Rising: The Prophecy

by DC Little

  “Tell me about it,” she said as she stretched. “Feel like greeting the sun?”

  “Always.” He grinned, knowing how cheesy he probably looked but not caring.

  They walked toward their boulder, the one they sat on nearly every morning for the last few weeks. Their boulder. His heart squeezed.

  “So...Choosing Day, huh?” He watched her from the corner of his eye.

  “Yeah,” she said, staring straight ahead.

  “When, uh, when does that happen for you?” He tugged at his jacket, finding it too tight around his neck.

  “Summer. This summer.”

  Orion let out an audible sigh. Mercy eyed him, her eyes narrowing.

  “You don’t have to, uh, choose until then?”

  “No. Not until that day.” She hopped down to their boulder, sitting in one smooth movement.

  “That’s good.” He lowered himself beside her, both facing east.

  “It is, huh?” She blew out a breath. “I’m glad you think so. It’s coming too soon for me.”

  “Oh?” Orion heard his voice quivering from the frantic rush of the blood pumping through him. “Haven’t decided who you will choose as your...uh...mate yet?”

  Mercy turned toward him, reading his eyes in the growing light. He looked down, feeling his face flush, but then he pushed his shoulders back and met the intense gaze. He never backed down from a fight, nor from what he felt was right, and this...her...she was right.

  Mercy’s lips parted as he met her gaze, and her eyes slightly widened. Did she know then? Did she feel it, too?

  He opened his mouth to ask, but the first ray of the sun chose that moment to blind him. Mercy turned away to face the sun, eyes closed. She spent the next few minutes with the Creator as she called it, eyes closed, body still, and only her breath moving slowly in and out. He watched her, transfixed and mesmerized, knowing he should do his own connection to the Creator, or whatever he believed in, but right now, a completely different connection called to him.

  “My parents believe I have chosen already. They had planned the match since I was a baby.” Her voice sounded detached and her eyes remained closed. “Most assume that is who I will choose. Though, that doesn’t stop the guys from doing their best to prove themselves, just in case.” She opened her eyes then and met his gaze.

  His tongue felt glued to the inside of his mouth. People assumed, but she didn’t say she had chosen. “And you...you get to choose? Anyone?”

  “Any unmatched man.” She cocked her head. “Do the coalitions not have a similar ritual?”

  He shook his head, not liking his mind going there. “No. Definitely not a woman’s choice.”

  “Are there that many women that the men get to choose?” Mercy’s eyes widened in what looked like hope.

  “Not necessarily, just...the Old Man has different...priorities.” Orion fingered his lengthening hair, enjoying the tug of it. “Remember the girls I told you about?”

  “The ones you were hiding?”

  “Yeah, well, I told you they were hiding to keep safe, but not from what.”

  Mercy leaned forward.

  “The Old Man runs everything in the coalition. He tells you where you will work, how you will contribute, and who you will live with. Meyers puts most women into service.”

  “Service?”

  “Yeah, like…” Orion felt the heat filling his cheeks. “With men, whether or not they want to.”

  Mercy gasped and leaned back, her hand over her mouth. “No.”

  “That’s why I have to save them. You see?” Orion stood, pacing the rock she sat upon. “My sister...she comes of age...which is eighteen, not twenty-one in the coalition, this spring. I have a feeling that Meyers will use her as a bargaining chip...to gain favor with another coalition.”

  Mercy jumped to a stand, her face red and eyes blazing. “Then we must save her!”

  Orion couldn’t stop the pull of a smile on his lips. Mercy looked incredible when fierce. It made him want to...he shook his head, focusing on the conversation. “It’s easier said than done, but that is my plan.”

  “I will tell my dad. We will go as an army and take her!”

  “I love your enthusiasm. I really do.” Orion reached out to pull a sunlit strand of red hair out of her eyes and tuck it behind her ear. “Your dad, your leaders, decided not to rescue me as a small child. Do you really think they have changed their minds?”

  The truth sucked, but looking at the Zion they had built, a place of peace and self-sufficiency, who could blame them for not wanting to bring danger to their sanctuary?

  “It’s not fair!” Mercy squeezed her fists, yelling at the sky. She glanced back at him. “We should have rescued you. You should have grown up with the rest of us, and your sister, too.”

  Orion’s heart tugged. He couldn’t say he hadn’t thought the same thing, hadn’t wondered if he would have been different, but life happened the way it had, and now it was time to decide.

  “Would you…” he swallowed, “Would you still look at me like this if...if I had grown up here?”

  “I...uh,” Mercy stumbled over her words, her breath coming in quick gasps.

  “Mommy!” The sharp cry split the tension-filled air between them.

  Orion’s neck prickled with the intensity of the cry. He hadn’t heard a cry of fear or panic like that in months, and it instantly put him on edge. His eyes swept the ravine as he hopped up the rocks to get a better view.

  “There,” Mercy pointed, panting beside him.

  A boy clung to an overhanging rock, a rock that stood upon a slab of ground that slumped away from the ravine’s wall. Orion and Mercy ran toward him, keeping their eyes on the boy hanging above them.

  “Stay still!” Hannah cried from below the rock.

  Mercy and Orion ran toward her.

  “I told him not to go up there!” Hannah sobbed.

  “I’ll go get a rope!” Tyler said as he ran back toward the dwellings.

  “There’s not enough time. The ground is giving away!” Mercy’s voice filled with panic as she looked at the child.

  The rock the boy clung to sat directly in the middle of what would soon be a landslide. Orion had seen something like that happen along the river near the coalition, except on a much smaller scale and with sand rather than a jumble of boulders.

  “I’ll climb up there,” Mercy started off toward the rock wall, and Orion followed her.

  “You can’t climb it. There’s not enough time and your weight will make it come crashing down even faster,” Orion told her.

  “I can’t just stand here while I watch the boy die!”

  “I’ll get him. I can do it.” Orion planned out his route. He wasn’t lying when he said Mercy couldn’t climb it without causing it to crash down. One misstep or foot planted too long or too firmly and it would let loose. The rescue had to be done with nimble speed, with barely a second of contact. “What’s his name?”

  “Blaze.”

  “Blaze!” Orion called up to the boy, who looked down at him with a trembling lip. “When I get to you, I will need you to jump on my back and cling as tight as a bear cub. Can you do that?”

  Blaze nodded frantically, letting out a little high-pitched scream as the rock slipped a few more inches.

  “Get them back and out of the way of the slide,” Orion told Mercy before bounding up the rock.

  He studied his route for a moment from the side, but the hill had slipped again. The boy watched him, his eyes big. Orion knew he had to move fast. He threw his hands on the rock above him and launched upward, staying there no longer than it took to get his body back under him, before moving onto the next and the next. Two more boulders until he was at the boy.

  “Ahh!” Blaze screamed, sobs wracking his body, as the rock began slipping and didn’t stop.

  With two more bounding leaps, Orion was under the boy who dropped onto him, clinging for his life. The whole hillside surged, tumbling down the cliff. Orion sucked
in a breath, leapt from the rock careening down the hill, to another slipping down as well. He kept his feet moving, launching, pulling, bounding, until they were almost to the other side where the mountain remained stable and still.

  The boy screamed again before shoving his face into Orion’s back and clinging tighter. Above, a rock catapulted toward them, bouncing off the sliding slope, spraying rock shrapnel with every hit. Orion’s muscles wobbled, his newly healed leg throbbed, but with one last push, he launched them to the unmoving rock, landing so hard he ended up flipping, struggling to keep them in the correct position with the extra unbalanced weight. With a groan, he landed on his feet, but the extra weight pushed him forward to his knees.

  Orion’s body shook. As he gained his wits about him, he realized it shook from the boy’s convulsions. Reaching behind him, Orion pulled the boy off his back and into his lap, sure he would be crying in fright. Instead, a wide smile plastered on the boy’s face.

  “Woo-hoo! Can we do that again?” He laughed, his body jiggling in joy.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Orion said, plopping to his rear and clutching his chest as he caught his breath.

  As he watched the boy wave down at his mom, cheering with excitement, Orion fed off Blaze’s joy. The boy reminded him of himself. The danger had passed. Everyone made it through safely, so why not enjoy the moment?

  He looked at the crowd that had gathered below, but out of reach of the slide. They cheered his name, shouted their gratitude. Maybe they would finally accept him now that he had saved one of their own. All of that faded into a muted distance as his eyes found what he was looking for, the red-headed angel smiling up at him.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  >>>—MERCY—<<<

  Mercy fiddled with a pine needle while she watched Orion hang from the tree branch. She laughed at his antics. He let go, flipped, and landed on his feet. It reminded her of the day he rescued Blaze from the landslide. The way Orion moved looked unreal, like he was magic, barely touching the rock before springing to the next one. No one moved like he did.

  “It’s not that hard.” He plopped on the ground next to her. “You learn your body, how it moves, its potential, and you just keep it in motion.”

  “Easy for you to say,” she said, elbowing him.

  “What’s that?” he asked, looking at the pine needle her nervous hands had woven.

  She wrapped it around his finger, measuring it, then finished the ring and placed it over his finger. “A reminder that everything you need is all around you.”

  Her face heated as he met her eyes before inspecting the ring closer. He glanced back at her with his blue eyes intense, as if there was so much he wanted to say and couldn’t.

  His stomach growled. “Like food? I’m hungry. Should we go back to camp?”

  “There’s food all around us, if you know how to look.” Mercy lifted a brow. She bent back to pluck a red berry off a bearberry bush growing behind him. “Like this.” She leaned forward to grasp a dandelion green. “Or this.”

  “Really? Finding food is that easy?”

  “It’s not necessarily easy, but the forest provides everything you need. If you know what and when and how to harvest it.” She handed him the berry and the leaf. “Try them.”

  He ate them, and his eyes turned upward as he scrutinized the new food. “Not bad, but not filling enough. The berry doesn’t seem to have a taste.”

  “They are better cooked.” She laughed and shoved him. “Come on. We’ll go back to camp.”

  He followed her. “So, you can eat any plant you see?”

  “Well, no. There are some that are poisonous.”

  “What about this?” He took a sprig of bright green fir tips off the branch they walked past.

  “Yes, those are good to eat, and work well for tea.”

  “And this?” He plucked a mushroom from a tree trunk.

  “Yep. We call that a late oyster.”

  “What about this?”

  Mercy turned toward him, smacking his hand so hard he let go of the bud he had plucked from a stick coming straight out of the ground.

  “That’s going to leave a bruise.”

  “That one is poisonous. You need to wash off that hand right away.”

  Orion’s face blanched. “Will I die?”

  “No, but the rash you’ll get if you don’t wash off the oils is not pleasant. It’s called poison oak.”

  Orion started wiping his hand on his pants.

  “No!” Mercy clamped a hand on his arm. “The ground, water is even better.” She searched the ground for the long narrow leaves that rippled. Finding one, she dug around the root, pulling out a large root ball. “Soap root. There’s a creek right over here. Touch nothing with that hand.”

  Orion wiggled his fingers at her. She slunk away, and he followed, making her laugh in the uncontrolled way a person does when tickled.

  “Stop!” She finally got out between giggles.

  At the creek, she pounded the soap root bulb, added a bit of water until it foamed, and instructed how to clean the oils from his hand.

  “Besides making soap, you can make a brush from the fibers around the bulb, you can eat the bulb after you cook it a long time, and you can boil it to make glue.” Mercy moved the bulb around in her hand, always amazed by the surrounding resources.

  “I think I’ll pass on eating something that is also soap and glue.” Orion flicked the water dripping off his hands at her.

  She shrugged. “You’ve already eaten it. I think you called it a mighty fine potato.” She laughed and splashed him with a handful of water before rising to move down the creek. They splashed along the water, hopping from rock to rock, enjoying the warmth of the promise of spring.

  “See that hill.” Mercy pointed. “I used to stand there and look out toward the Forbidden, wondering how you were doing.” She clamped her lips shut and increased her pace.

  “Me?” Orion followed her. “You really stood up there and wondered about me?”

  She nodded but didn’t stop moving in the hill's direction. They had left camp to check the foraging grounds for Laurie. She wanted to know if the yarrow was ready to harvest. The early spring plant was a staple medicinal herb.

  Mercy kept the pace quick so he wouldn’t want to talk...or at least couldn’t. Once at the top, he stood beside her, catching his breath, and she looked across the land she used to search for him. The heartbeat not her own, though, now stood beside her.

  His hand gently, tentatively held hers, his palm warm as his fingers intertwined with hers. It made her gasp, feeling that tingling which always happened when they touched. Thankfully, he said nothing, but stood there, his hand holding hers and looking out at the land he had come from.

  Suddenly, her attention pulled to the northwest section before them. She peered closer, reluctantly freeing her hand from his to shield her eyes. “Oh, no…”

  Orion followed her gaze. She knew he had found the smoke curling into the air when his entire body tensed. “They’re coming for me.”

  Mercy shook her head. “No...no. It can’t be.”

  “They don’t know where we are...but they will search. They won’t stop searching.” He took her shoulders. “I have to go. I can’t let them find Zion.” He searched her eyes. “I can’t let them find you.”

  “We must warn my dad and Arland. We can keep them away. We will protect you!” She took his hand and pulled him down the hill.

  He didn’t fight her, but she wrapped her fingers around him tighter, as if she feared he would turn and run toward the strangers rather than come with her.

  The rest of the afternoon sped by in meetings with the leaders. Orion’s eyes drooped by the time her dad called an end to the meetings for the day, and Mercy knew it had taken every bit of Orion’s strength to go over and over the coalition protocols, and what they could expect. He needed rest, but she couldn’t let him go.

  “Walk with me?” She nodded toward their boulder as they left t
he hub.

  He nodded, unusually subdued as they walked to their spot. They sat, shoulder to shoulder, leaning back to look at the stars, Orion slowly slipping further into the abyss.

  “If even one of them gets back to share the location, or even close to it, Meyers will send the army here. The bloodshed…” Orion shivered, his body shaking hers.

  “We won’t allow that to happen.” Mercy’s entire body tensed. She knew what he was going to say.

  “I have to go.” The words held a finality, like there was no way she could convince him.

  “No. My dad said you couldn’t leave Zion, remember?”

  “That was months ago,” he said, his voice sounding resigned to a fate he didn’t want.

  “Why didn’t you tell them this is what you plan to do?” Mercy asked, fear tearing through her. She had to convince him to stay.

  Orion smirked, turning to look at her and raising a brow.

  “Yeah, I know. They would forbid it.” Mercy hung her head.

  “As it is, they have doubled the guard and posted a sentry in the entrance.” Orion glanced that way, his profile seeming starker than usual.

  “See, we can fight them off.”

  Orion shook his head. “Zion will never have peace. You don’t know Meyers. He’s relentless.”

  “So is my dad!” She rose to a stand, her anger rising with each thought.

  Orion took her hand, pulling her back down beside him. “We both knew I would have to go at some point. People rely on me.” He wrapped his fingers around hers again, caressing her hand with his thumb. “Let’s not think about that right now.”

  She nodded. “We have time. It will take them more than a week to find us.” The thought of Orion leaving sent a shiver through her.

  “You cold?” Orion asked. Without preamble, he unclasped their hands to put his arm around her, bringing her closer against him.

  Mercy couldn’t breathe. She didn’t want to move, in fear of the moment ending or in realization of what it could mean. She closed her eyes instead, focusing on the warmth enveloping her. Besides, it wasn’t the first time they were this close. She had lain wrapped around him all night when she had rescued him...but that was before, before he was Orion.