Mercy

by Rhiannon Paille

  She padded across snow, the sun a bright thing, transforming snow into glittering fields of diamonds. Her eyes watered as she neared the dock to her back yard. Boards clicked underfoot as she crossed the yard and stopped short. A brand new Polaris Snowmobile sat in the snow, just off the main path. She narrowed her eyes, knowing her parents didn’t have that kind of money. Michael’s uncle did … and she felt a crushing sense of guilt snake into her. He’d never do anything like that for her. She reached out with a gloved hand and touched the handle, liking the rubbery grips.

  “Hey!” Scott said, screen door banging shut.

  Maeva pulled her hand back as Scott put goggles over his eyes, sun glinting off them in a kaleidoscope of colors. Scott was decked out in everything from ski pants to ski gloves and boots. She crossed her arms.

  “Who bought it for you?” It had to be gift from Tait, his family owned everything—maybe it was a year old, used but nearly brand new.

  “I had a deal with dad. You know, hockey perks.”

  “What? You win a championship or something and you get that thing?”

  Scott smiled and she wanted to smack him. “Yep. We won provincials so we’re in the playoffs.” He lifted his leg over the snowmobile and started it up.

  Maeva felt a little pang of envy. She wanted her parents to notice her, just once, to dote on their daughter instead of ignoring her or acting like she was reckless. She huffed. “I don’t get anything for every solo I land.”

  Scott laughed. “Dad doesn’t give a shit about music. He likes hockey.”

  Maeva couldn’t argue with that. “Where are you going?”

  “Out.”

  “Does mom know?”

  “Yep.”

  And it was impossible to get Scott in trouble. He took off, and she trudged into the house, removing her winter wear. She didn’t want another interrogation with Grace. She didn’t want to admit to spending every spare minute with Michael, half because their relationship revolved around keeping him alive. She kept the truth away from everyone, shadowing him at school to make sure he didn’t have another episode. He didn’t want anyone to know he had cancer.

  She peeled open the fridge, grabbed a water, and glanced at the living room, her mom sitting on the couch. She didn’t want to sit on the computer upstairs. She leaned against the wall. “Can I borrow the laptop?”

  Grace deigned to look at her and nodded, waving her away. Maeva glanced at the screen, another episode of some reality show about toddler beauty pageants. She took the laptop and cord off the desk and headed into the basement, opening it on her bed.

  She went back to the search. Michael was less than forthcoming with information, even with the gigantic shift in their relationship. He replaced silence with kisses, and refused to tell her anything more about what she needed to remember. She knew he was guarding his words, careful not to accidentally let something slip. Along with the search for what she was, she kept trying to figure out who “they” were, but exhausted almost all possibilities.

  She explored Faeries, Vampires, Werewolves, Therianthropes, Phoenixes, Griffins, Sidhe, Gargoyles, Dragons, Mermaids, Shape Shifters, Fae, Elven, Satyrs, Minotaurs, Centaurs, and Shining People but none of them spoke to her. She found references to demons but was fairly sure she wasn’t a demon. Michael claimed to be demonic, but hadn’t explained anything else about Wraiths or what they did. She tried to make a jab at him about assassinating unknowing nonhumans but that didn’t go over very well with him. His eyes got dark and his mouth formed a hard line and she knew not to push him any further.

  She typed “otherkin” into the search bar and waited, scrolling through pagan websites, looking for a shard of something she related to. Most of what she found sounded foreign and made her head throb. None of the traditions clicked. Michael kept saying she would know it when she found it, but she felt like everything else was being flung at her, obscuring her from the truth.

  She closed her eyes, thinking about the woman in red. She reminded Maeva of Elektra, and as far as she was concerned, the woman wasn’t a comic book character. The flaming red sword had to indicate something mystical. She sighed. She hadn’t seen the woman in weeks, and if it weren’t for Michael and his all-encompassing stoic attitude and well-kept secrets she would have called off the search and claimed crazy. She wanted to be skeptical but something in the back of her mind nagged at her. She turned to the headboard and pulled her journal down, flipping through pages. The dreams hadn’t changed. Forests, lakes, explosions, blizzards. The dreams seemed to take turns scaring the hell out of her with different images. Whatever connection it had to who she was, it proved to be as much of an enigma as her boyfriend.

  She rested her chin on her open hand, contemplating the word. Boyfriend wasn’t really an accurate description of what he was to her. He was vital, essential. She gravitated to him the way plants stretched their petals towards the sun, longing for sustenance. He was everything keeping her planted firmly in her own skin. She wasn’t sure what would have happened if he hadn’t found her, if the woman in red had found her first. The idea of suffering from confusion and a potential mental breakdown was staved off because he was there, telling her everything she sensed had a purpose. She had to put the pieces together to understand what it meant.

  She went to the dresser and grabbed the pocket watch, opening the face. The symbols were a bunch of little lines, definitely not Roman Numerals. She flipped to an empty page in her journal and jotted them down, snapping the face shut and pressing the pocket watch to her chest.

  She squeezed her eyes shut trying to remember anything before the concussion. Everything that came to her was like pastels painted on canvas. She couldn’t make out pictures, words, or sounds, just colors melding together. She lay down, clutching the pocket watch and tried to conjure her earliest memory.

  Maeva was at the beach, her hand gripped firmly in Grace’s, shimmering blue water an endless sheet ahead of her. Grace walked casually, leading her closer and closer to the waters’ edge. Icy water lapped over her toes and she screamed, struggling out of Grace’s iron grip. She heard Grace’s hysterical voice behind her but she couldn’t stop running. She scurried past umbrellas and blankets, sand castles and makeshift reservoirs. She thought she was free but hands came down on her and she was thrown into the air, the sky arcing above her. She squirmed in the strong arms as Gord carried her back to their spot on the sand, and put her down.

  “Why don’t you want to go in?” Gord asked, crouching to eye level.

  Maeva looked at his face and at the water, fear welling into her chest. “They’re going to get me.”

  “Who?”

  “The Merfolk.”

  Maeva shot up and the memory dissipated. She typed Merfolk into the search bar and came up with Mermaids, Mermen, Sirens, Selkies, Nymphs, and the Loch Ness Monster. She lay on her side and hunched her knees to her chest. Michael said something about mermaids before, maybe it was a hint? She didn’t know what else to look for. Frustration rocked her as she shut the laptop and sat it on the floor beside the bed. She laid flat on her back, hands piled on her stomach, determined to remember something, anything from the past.

  O O O

  Maeva woke hours later, her limbs stiff, head heavy. The only thing she wanted was water, her throat dry and scratchy. She sat and the room swirled, making her fall back onto the bed. She felt like she was trapped under an avalanche. She closed her eyes and the sensation deepened, ice worrying its way into her skin. She opened her eyes and swallowed bile in the back of her throat. She stared at the drop ceiling for a long time, little aluminum sparkles etched into the panels.

  Her mind screamed snow.

  She grew up in Kenora, snow came with the territory. She couldn’t remember a year when a blizzard didn’t cover the town in a fresh mountain of cold white stuff.

  She sank deeper into her memory, desperately trying to conjure the past. It was a blizzard. She stood in a field, perfect snowflakes falling from an ugly black sk
y. She made footprints in the snow, and fell on her knees, gasping at the cold shock. She fought the urge to open her eyes and forced herself to her feet. She peered through the tufts of white stuff and made out the shape of a person—a boy.

  Her chest clenched and guilt lanced into her, launching her out of the memory. Stinging pain enflamed her ribcage and she choked, shifting violently, disbelief attacking her as she tried to catch her breath. She wanted to shove the memory into the far reaches of her subconscious but she couldn’t, the truth was too crisp, too clear.

  She was something terrible.

  And Michael was innocent.

  O O O

  Krishani was insane.

  Being with Kaliel hurt more every minute of every day, knowing he couldn’t stay. He was intoxicated by her, and completely unable to control himself. He savored every touch, every smile, and every laugh. He shamefully held her hand and kissed her lips and drowned her in the sweet symphony of his desire. He knew it was wrong—coveting, obsessing, and feeding off her, but she filled him with a kind of simplistic innocence he missed.

  When she wasn’t around he felt the heady effects of chemo taking hold. He went twice a week—willingly, sitting there for an hour while poison drowned his veins. It wouldn’t cure what was wrong with him, but modern medicine could prolong it.

  Kaliel didn’t come.

  After the episode at the waterfall she refused to watch. She dropped him off, sat in the waiting room, and took him home, but she couldn’t hold his hand through it.

  He didn’t hold it against her. He told her too many times to count she didn’t need to do this. She pressed on, wanting to know more about Wraiths, more about “them,” more about everything he didn’t want to talk about. He was confounded by her persistence. Cossisea hadn’t returned, Darkesh hadn’t come for her, and neither had Tor. For now, he was a boy with cancer, and she was a girl desperate to save him.

  Krishani lingered by her locker, avoiding awkward glances from other students. Rumor mills were poison and apparently he and Kaliel had become an item. It didn’t come with jealous outbursts or school drama, but it did come with a lot of awkward stares.

  An outcast for an outcast.

  According to his classmates, Krishani was everything from an emo arsonist, pathological liar, a cutter on the suicide watch list. People seemed quicker to believe his relationship with Kaliel was based on a suicide pact than actual emotion.

  The last of the student body emptied the hallway leaving a dull fluorescent light buzz in the air. Kaliel approached, head down, backpack slung over her shoulder. She looked up, eyes holding that secret intensity reserved only for him. She dropped her heavy bag and opened her locker, dressing herself in as many layers as possible. He faced her, noticing faded eyeliner and pinkish coloring on her cheeks. She swiped lip-gloss across her lips and threw it into her bag, slamming the locker shut.

  “Bad day?” Krishani assumed. Second semester started a while ago and while he shared one class with her, she struggled with the rest.

  She smiled and pulled a book out of her bag, holding it up in front of her face, a scowl in her eyes. The cover was nothing special, the title printed in big block letters. It looked like an adult contemporary, and was as thick as a textbook. “Say hello to my life for this week.”

  Krishani took the book and flipped to the back, skimming through the English words he knew. Admittedly it wasn’t his first language. “She wants you to read this in a week?”

  Kaliel grabbed the book and stuffed it into her backpack. “I’m going to find a detailed synopsis on Google and base my essay on it.”

  He smirked as they walked to the parking lot, finding her Sundance in the farthest spot from the school. It wasn’t any warmer outside. February was a harsh mistress, leaving it unreasonably cold. He trekked through packed snow and sat in the passenger side as she pulled out of the lot.

  “It looks boring,” Krishani said.

  “What?”

  “The book.”

  Kaliel smiled. “It’s about a southern family and their drama.”

  “So it’s boring,” Krishani reiterated, thinking about all the times Lord Istar assigned him reading and the amount of times he avoided it so he could spend more time with Kaliel on Avristar. Here she was doing the same thing for him.

  Kaliel took a left down First and Krishani frowned. “Where are we going?” He skated around the possibility of meeting Kaliel’s human parents. He didn’t associate them with who she was the same way he didn’t think of Aulises’s dead uncle as Kaliel’s dead uncle. He hoped she wasn’t trying to take him home with her. He definitely wasn’t the kind of guy a girl took home. Unless the girl was dying and he was there to devour her soul.

  “I’m kidnapping you,” she said.

  “Is there any hope of escape?”

  She laughed. “I promised Rob I’d introduce you.”

  Krishani shot her a mangled expression. “You did what?”

  “He insisted, saying that any boy that takes up ninety percent of my conversations with him was a boy he had to meet.”

  Krishani went silent for her benefit but didn’t feel any form of calm. Pux was up to something, playing a dangerous game. He was supposed to be keeping his distance, not getting in the way. He scowled at the window as Kaliel pulled into Grandma’s.

  Krishani unbuckled his seatbelt and followed her, head down, hand on the small of her back as they neared the doors and she pulled them open for herself, holding them for him as she went through. He followed her past the hostess podium and down to a booth where Pux was already seated. Formerly a feorn, the boy in the booth slid out and enveloped Kaliel in a bear hug. Krishani hung back, hooking a thumb through his belt loop and trying not to seem awkward about the whole encounter.

  She slid onto the bench across from Pux and Krishani lowered himself, keeping eye contact with Pux. The other boy had a sly smile on his face.

  “So, you’re the infamous, Michael,” Pux said, extending a bony hand across the table.

  Krishani narrowed his eyes and shook it, glancing hesitantly at Kaliel. She was squirming out of her sweater and brushing curly black hair out of her eyes.

  “Oh yeah, this is Rob, from Thunder Bay,” Kaliel said, nodding at Pux.

  Pux drew his hands into his lap and Krishani kept his elbows on the table, unwrapping the cutlery and twisting the knife between his fingers.

  “Ahdunie,” Krishani replied, his eyes on the smooth turquoise table top. An older woman interrupted them for drink orders. Kaliel and Pux both ordered milkshakes. An awkward silence hung between them.

  “Did you download the movie yet?” Kaliel asked, staring at Rob.

  He flinched, turning his gaze on her. “Yeah I did.”

  “And?”

  Pux shrugged. “I didn’t really get it.”

  Kaliel sighed, turning to Krishani. “Rob didn’t have television growing up. I’m trying to catch him up but he’s pretty hopeless.”

  Krishani was going to make a comment but Pux beat him to it.

  “I don’t understand how a guy can build a robot in a cave. Actually, I don’t understand technology at all.”

  “Yeah because the forest is where you belong,” Krishani muttered, awarding him a glare from Pux.

  “There’s one about Hobbits, but there’s a lot of walking,” Kaliel said hesitantly, seeming to ignore the forest comment. The server showed up with drinks and Krishani avoided speaking by taking a long sip of water. Kaliel moved her straw around in her cup, mixing the whip cream into the milkshake, making it drip down the side.

  “Hobbits?” Pux raised an eyebrow.

  “Yeah, they’re short people …”

  “You mean Dwarves.”

  “No, there’s Dwarves too but they’re hairy.”

  “Those are Feorns,” Krishani mumbled.

  Pux’s eyes hardened, stopping mid stir.

  Kaliel frowned. “What are Feorns?”

  Pux seemed to cower but Krishani liked seeing h
im squirm. “They’re hairy creatures with wolf-like feet and claw-like hands. And perky puppy ears.”

  “That’s not true,” Pux shot at him, the tips of his very human ears a shade of red.

  “They’re not from a game are they?” Kaliel asked. She seemed lost.

  Krishani shook his head, finishing the water and sliding the glass to the edge of the table, the sound of it scraping along the tabletop. “Mythology, but I can see how they’d get mixed up with Dwarves. Common mistake.”

  Pux took a deep breath and went back to his milkshake for a moment. Kaliel followed, leaving Krishani to sit back in the booth waiting for the server to return. He wasn’t really hungry, a lot of what he ate didn’t agree with all the meds so he was stuck on a strict diet.

  “Well, the story is about Hobbits, not Feorns,” Kaliel said. She played with the straw, her milkshake half empty.

  “Send me a link and I’ll look it up.”

  Krishani narrowed his eyes. “Where did you grow up?”

  Pux coughed. “Uhh … Toronto, why?”

  Krishani shrugged. “You act like you grew up in the forest. You know, Australian Outback, or maybe Africa?” He liked poking fun at Pux but Kaliel, without a memory, grabbed his leg and pinched, making waves of aches roll up his leg. She shot him a look that said cut it out.

  “Actually my parents were hippies. They didn’t believe in technology.”

  Krishani frowned. “They have a word for that … Amish. Are you saying you’re Amish?” He really wanted to stop but it was too easy. He’d spent nine thousand years in and out of bodies, lapping up knowledge of every culture on Earth. There wasn’t a person out there that could school him when it came to history. The server came back and dropped off another water. Kaliel ordered a plate of fries with gravy.

  Pux flattened his hands on the table. “They were Mennonites.”