“Oh Merrily…” Gideon whispered pressing my face down harder in the nook of his shoulder.
His breath came in deep shuddering sighs. I made wordless cooing noises hoping I could take away some of this unknowable terrible pain. I knew he was worried. I couldn’t understand why he seemed to be griped with terror. I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of family he had…he never discussed them. I didn’t know if it was normal to talk to your spouse regarding family issues or not. I didn’t understand his familiar relationships, but I didn’t need to. I planned to always be here for him.
It almost hurt how hard he was pressing me against him. Gideon’s fears were catching. I was having hard time breathing. He had told me several times that he was afraid that there was something wrong. That my health and the babies were at risk…that he feared for us both.
He was putting so much pressure on my stomach. I struggled just letting him know how uncomfortable I was…nothing aggressive. I simply showed him my discomfort in how he was holding me. His hand locked down not moving on the back of my neck…his other arm was pushing painfully against my lower back. Gideon was keeping me tightly in place against him.
He pushed my face down tighter against his shoulder. He was smothering me and I couldn’t get the leverage I needed to pull away. It didn’t occur to me to fight back. I loved him too much to think that he would actually hurt us. That was a mistake.
“I am so…sorry” he sounded almost…heartbroken.
When the sharpness slid up my spine I screamed and fell backwards…unbalanced… my knees just gave out. I looked up at Gideon standing above me his eyes glowed blue and his hands…they were not hands at all. They were talons that reached out to me… as black wings rose from him his mouth twisted into something sharp and clacking. I screamed…while he cut us…until I couldn’t feel anything.
*
I was there for a long while…stuck inside my head making soft noises. I came to myself pressed against the headboard. Trying to breathe…I don’t know how I managed to move and I felt wetness upon my chest.
I shook with shock and covered my ears with my hands just listening to the pounding of the blood in my veins. It had been a long time since things had hit me so hard. I had never properly buried my memories just tried to live life with them. It felt wrong to try to forget.
I worked on opening my eyes and dealing with what was in front of me. Isaac and Athena didn’t try to touch me. They made soft soothing sounds as I rolled my emotions over with a logic that chilled me to the core. It scared me sometimes…how well I shut myself down.
Isaac gave me a speculative look and shook his head. Athena snagged the blanket at the foot of the bed tossing it onto me. I looked six huddled under the blanket trying to hide from a monster. Gideon didn’t know where I was…and Athena…she was not her brother.
Isaac sat down once my breathing leveled out. Leaning back in his chair with a sigh he crossed his arms and began to speak to me… and it hurt too much to hear his words. So I cut him off.
“Jacob?” I put the weight of my question in his name.
“Dead” Isaac said and there was profound grief in his voice. “We buried him, he was the best of us” Isaac seemed detached as he said that. “Kelly is dead too. I took care of him right after he attacked you. He won’t ever hurt you again” Isaac hesitated as if he was waiting for me to speak. “I wish I had been there to save Jacob.” He said at last.
“Kelly?” I asked. “He wasn’t even there” I said.
Taking everything I felt and shoving it aside so I could get some answers. Real answers from Isaac…I don’t know if I was brave enough to ask Athena for answers. Later I would grieve for Jacob…in my own time, how I saw fit. I knew about terrible grief.
“He was the animal that attacked you” Isaac said.
He paused again to look at me into me…his eyes were glowing again. Sparking with emerald fire as Isaac spilled his guts. I didn’t have the energy to shut-him-up. I didn’t know what it would mean for Isaac to be…something other.
I think… I think… I am too much in awe of Athena to freak out. I was to calm about what was happening…these revelations. I wondered if these …people…were doing something to me. It wasn’t as if I could stop them and I examined that realization with clinical detachment.
“You were twenty-three when I first found out. Gideon’s wife… I can’t say I was thrilled that he had gotten married without the consent of his family. He hid you away from us those few years you were together and we did not interfere in his decisions.” Isaac leaned forward clasping his hands together tightly.
“Several years after you had been married… Gideon came to me asking for the family’s help in finding him a new life. He had said that your marriage had fallen apart and that you were too weak to know us.” Isaac’s eyes were glowing again not as brightly as before but enough that he had my undivided attention.
I felt my body had stilled when he began speaking…and everything that came out of his mouth was oddly reassuring. Yet I stilled myself… hiding myself from his truth. I knew that Isaac would never hurt me.
The reality was…I don’t know what they were. The both hid themselves from me. I could understand hiding yourself from unpleasant things. I was in Noel for a reason after all. Yet my calm persisted.
“It isn’t that I had any particular reason to distrust Gideon. I felt I needed more information than Gideon was willing to provide. I decided to look into what had happened to drive such a wedge between a husband and wife” he said.
Isaac kept looking at me as if he expected me to run screaming from the room. I glanced at Athena she had been staring calmly at me for a while. I knew that she was the reason I listened. She was doing something to me…and I was okay with that. I knew that I needed to know what Isaac had to say…to fill out the holes in my own mind…the bits that would crop up and tell me that I was crazy. Athena nodded at me affirming my reasoning.
“It is unusual for the head of the family to involve directly in the private life of another of us. It is only that marriage in our family is considered sacred and binding. We do not believe in divorce and the only thing that can cause a separation from the oaths of marriage is death…It was an anthem to ask for assistance if you had not been made a widower by fate.” Isaac said.
I considered this…it was…well nuts. What kind of family had such old fashioned traditions? I considered the possibility that I had unknowingly joined a cult. If Athena hadn’t been standing in front of me simply existing... I would have called Isaac a liar.
Athena was powerful and gracious…I had thought for a time…that she was an angel. A powerful hallucination formed from my broken mind. I knew that wasn’t right. She didn’t seem holy at all…I had seen her as a force of nature. She just was. Isaac reached his hand out to me and reconsidered dropping it back into his lap.
“That is how I found out about you. And we did not know…we DID not know of the events pertaining to your son until the damage to you had been done.” Isaac screamed soundlessly and let himself out of the room. My eyes held spots of emerald from where his eyes had burned me.
“Gideon was driven from our family and disowned. I stripped him of his rank and honor personally.” Athena said. “Isaac swore an oath to Gideon that if he ever darkened our family home again…if he so much as looked for you that he would kill him for what he did to your son… for what he did to YOU.” Athena seemed to be taking in gulping breaths of air.
With every breath she seemed to expand. I wasn’t even surprised by the shadows radiating from her now. Like clouds gathering in a thunderstorm…a great and terrible mist that was casting pitched slices against the walls. I think I was too shocked to grasp anything other than that void of light. She rose up a mighty vortex with wings of gold. I knew her and her voice rang with truth and storms.
“What are you?” I asked. I was unafraid; I had seen Athena before in dreams and waking hours. She had taken my pain from me…several times. I needed
to know what she was. It didn’t change anything…I just needed to know she was…real.
“I am a sphinx” she said. “The Sphinx” her voice rumbled with anticipation. “Isaac is my father” she said as softly as a spring rain. “He isn’t human anymore than I…” her presence began to fade back into a person…kind of.
A person face so lovely made of chiseled stone. Her face sat on the body of a lioness with gilded wings tucked tightly to her back. Athena was never really a person in my head anyways…I was actually legitimately crazy…I accepted things to easily. Then I remembered…Athena kept me alive simply by her will alone. Keeping me calm…it would be nothing to her.
“What is he?” I asked my heart sinking…I had tucked away the mythology I had searched trying to find answers. Those books gathered dust on my shelf but I didn’t throw them out. I had simply put it all from my mind. “He is Gideon’s father.” I said.
Just letting…all…this…sink in. I tried to focus on Athena’s gray eyes but I couldn’t see the ‘might’ there just now. She wouldn’t heal me from this. That is why Isaac looked so familiar to me in his current state. He looked like an older version of my husband. I just didn’t want to accept that.
“When Jacob found you he made us swear to leave you be…we tried too. I swear it. Jacob tasked himself to guard you…until you didn’t want to end yourself anymore.” Athena said her voice still the soft echo’s of rain drops. I knew she was still doing something to keep me in this hyper focused cocoon of calm. And I didn’t care.
“Isaac’s son is dead” I said. “Isaac told me himself days ago” I couldn’t quite reach the explanations that hovered on the outskirts of this calm.
“Isaac killed Gideon himself…a few days ago” Athena said. “Gideon was here looking for you…and Isaac made sure he would never harm you again” Athena didn’t seem upset about the death of her ‘brother’. “Isaac did warn him to stay away…Gideon just failed to listen and he paid for it” Athena seemed to glow brightly…but it was difficult to understand how she really felt. She still hadn’t answered my question.
“What is Isaac?” I said again…waiting in silence while Athena twitched her wings and pawed at the floor.
“He is a gryphon” Athena said.
I just stared at her in her not-person calming voice as she brought the apex of all my struggles to the forefront of my mind. Absorbing that I knew…I knew that I had seen wings…and talons… stretched across my stomach when Gideon ripped my life from me. I had tried so hard to just…live some shadowed semblance of life.
It had taken me years to really begin to function. I knew I could never be who I was. I stayed alive and had attempted an existence that was calm…normal. When I had known deep down that everything after Gideon was never going to be normal. I had tried to…stay.
Athena reached out a fur covered paw and touched my arm lightly. I shuddered slightly but did not pull away. She could have killed me at any time. I had been helpless and empty the first time she saw me…and many times after. Her ‘hands’ were as gentle and compassionate as they were when she held my broken body in her hands. She had cried then…as I cry now.
“Sleep now” she said “I will it so” and I fell quietly into her gray eyes.
*
Coming in 2020
Book Two:
Merrily We Weep
(The story of Jacob)
“Jungentur jam grypes equis”
The impossible shall happen.
*
Merrily had come to Noel, Missouri… I chuckled at the irony of it…the men at my table smiled appreciatively that I had found them funny. It wasn’t that my small circle of men weren’t amusing…it was that Merrily came to the one place that was known for Christmas. Residents and tourists flocked to have the town stamp their Christmas cards every season. It was the one major source of income…and now…Merrily has come to Noel.
Every afternoon a man with nothing in particular to do comes to the gas station to visit. It has become a habit to sit at the booth and gossip about important events or the un-appreciative youth that are ruining the country. They complained about their wives and boasted about their grandchildren. We smoked cigars and drank black coffee in hope that someone would remember them when they were gone. No one remembers me unless I will it so.
Her presence here was a shock. Enough of a surprise that I spent some time ignoring her as she pattered about the store. She was taller than I would have expected…and so skinny that her clothing hung off of her.
I kept myself from frowning…she had a starved desperate look about her. In my opinion whoever was responsible for her hadn’t been doing a very good job. It was unpopular to think such ways these days. I am old…old enough to have seen Mount Vesuvius form.
Her hair was haphazardly pulled back in a knot and it was greasy. I didn’t recognize her face though I had been asked to keep an eye open on the off chance she passed through my territory. There was no mistaking her smell…under the unwashed body the scent of death…of Gideon lingered on her. Some things can’t be wiped clean.
It had been so long since I had something to interest me besides the day to day routines I found in this place to occupy my time…that I simply savored it. I am by choice a gentle being capable of great violence should the need arise. I hold true my nature despite the features of man which I had adopted so long ago that whispers of dead languages are almost all that remain of the creature I was.
The impossibility of Merrily coming to this town… amongst the entire countries small towns to choose from… was a sign. Signs should not be ignored and I took this one very seriously indeed. I watched Merrily from the corner as she took overly long to choose from the limited selections I intentionally kept in the station.
She was stalling for time…that could be a good sign. I have seen other women in other places stall for some semblance of hope…to continue…mostly they failed.
I decided that I would watch and wait for her to show me what she needed. I would inform Isaac that she had…despite all odds…found her way to me. Decisions come quickly to my kind…to me… they always had. I have always been guided by the pull of my heart and this woman pulled at me with a quiet failing strength.
Merrily brought her things to the register and picked up a brochure that I kept about mostly to keep the town council happy by promoting tourism. She stared blankly at it with a look of soft surprise on her face. I decided this was my chance to engage her and use my nature to give her a tiny push in her interest.
I worked my way to the counter coming up behind her. It was frightening how intently she looked at the brochure…that she was so focused she didn’t acknowledge my presence. It didn’t bode well for her chances at surviving if Gideon ever found her. Given the impossibility of her surviving the first time…I might be wrong about that. I wondered if her mind had been damaged along with her body.
“Tha all for ya dar’ing?” I said using a voice that was as gentle and nonthreatening as I possibly could. I knew that Merrily would bolt if I gave away that I knew who she was. That I knew what had been done to her…that I understood what she was doing to herself. Isaac had told the entire ‘family’ what had happened…well the gist of it. I got more details because Isaac respected his elders…and Isaac was afraid of me.
I spent a considerable amount of energy projecting peace and acceptance at her. I willed it so… that she only sees that I was just a harmless old man… so forgettable… unnoticeable. It had been a few centuries since I had cared enough to employ the effort to influence. I had lived in this town since its conception and have never been remembered in the length of its history. Convincing one lone girl I was harmless was much harder than I expected.
It made me reevaluate her worth and the strength of her character. I chastised myself; I should have known that she was strong of will. She survived… which had been questionable even with some intervention in her healing by Isaac’s eldest daughter.
What truly fascinated me was
that she must have remembered in broken pieces what had happened. It was stamped on her face that she had seen the true form of Gideon. That some of my kindred had intervened in her fate.
He had willed her to see him truly…when he hurt her…and I felt a profound grief in this. Gideon had been the most beautiful animal…he had held the most potential of his kind… once upon a time. Human minds were not meant to hold the realities of mythology brought to life. Even in her ignorance she had a right to our aide…will she nil she.
“I need gas too” she said handing me a twenty. “What is that place?”
I have lived so long alone while being surrounded by people. I was aloof and mostly forgotten by my own choice. It is the core of my existence to expect impossibilities and know in which directions love lays. Merrily saw wonder in the brochure she held for Bluff Dwellers Cave. It was a beautiful wistful look.
Her deep brown eyes looked at me with shadows of someone who had survived…but wish that they hadn’t. I needed her to have her interest peaked by something which called to her. Above all else I am a creature of vast and lonely compassion. If this girl had only seen animals such as Gideon…and the sacred healings of our kind…she should be completely insane.
I see in Merrily the potential for a return to nobility…my family had lost touch with the ideals mankind had once held sacred long ago. Perhaps if a consistent shred of decency had remained some wouldn’t have been reduced to such as Gideon. Isaac should have destroyed Gideon when the merest whisper of what he was becoming reached his ears. It was pure denial that stayed Isaac’s hand from wiping the world of his son’s taint. I could fault Isaac his choices…I knew the price of terrible love…and I always paid.
“Tha be summing ya otta see” I said. Using my influence to suggest that she should rest before continuing on…wouldn’t it be nice to get some sleep…food…
Isaac wasn’t going to be happy with this development…he owed her more than he had provided. He would insist that he has prior claim on the girl….thinking that she held some latent respect for her husband’s father was laughable. Isaac was to out of touch with humans…they lived so quickly. He could try to force Merrily to his side…but would have to go through me first… I smiled at Merrily…finder’s keepers.
Merrily In Tragedy: Book One (Merrily We Live 1) Page 9