Mercy, A Gargoyle Story (17 page)

“I want you to have a good life,” Selene finally says.
 
They break apart and wipe their eyes.

“And I want to be here with you.
 
You’re my mom and I want to stay and take care of you.”

“But what about that boy?”

“What about him?”

“Does he love you?”

“I think so.”

“Of course he does,” Selene says, opening her arms again.
 
“And you don’t love him.
 
That makes it even worse.”

***

Trickle’s eyes no longer move to find me, even when I come back up at night, clinging to the ledge beside him.
 
I mean to ask him about Selene, but I’m still reeling from what I heard.
 
Ayla doesn’t love The Boy anymore.
 
But he loves her.

 
It takes me a while to get up the nerve to ask what I need to know.

“I have something to ask you, Trickle, but I don’t want you to be mad,” I say.
 
There is no way to know what his mood is, or if he’s even listening now.
 
“Selene, the one who beat you, is she your recipient?
 
She is dying, and her daughter was my best friend.
 
I’m sorry for asking, but I really need to know if you can help her.”

I use the boot from the door to scoop water from the rain bucket and pour it into the lion’s head.
 
He licks his chops as the water runs through him, but his eyes don’t move.

“No,” he says.

“Do you mean you can’t heal her or that she’s not your recipient?”

With another boot full of water, Trickle groans and says, “Neither, if you must know.
 
You have horrible manners, but you are lucky, as I find myself at your mercy.
 
Another bit of water, please.”

I pour until there is only one shoe full of water left.
 
I don’t use the last of it because he is only wasting it, moaning through each drop, “What good now?
 
What good?
 
I cannot see to see what I must.
 
I am ruined.”

I toss down the boot.
 
I’ve had it, with how nothing is going the way it should.
 
Something has to change, and if the circumstances aren’t going to, well, then it will have to be us that do the changing.

“Stop,” I tell him.
 
I have no way of knowing if it is his lack of water or my tone that renders him silent.
 
“You took a risk.
 
Now you’ve got to deal with losing.
 
You’re going to just have to figure out how to make it work for yourself.”

Trickle’s face remains immobile.
 
I hear one last wheeze from him, but that is all.
 
I move away, the sadness of his problem leaking into me as I try to ignore it.
 
Over my shoulder, I say, “There must be a way, Trickle.
 
You can still do what you have to do, just not the way you thought you would.”

There isn’t a sound of disagreement across the entire rooftop.
 
Tires squeal a short distance away and a horn blasts its disapproval, but nothing else.
 
Not until I hear the wings.

My second suitor floats up, his wings nearly sputtering to hold him, over the edge of the building.

“Why, hello, my Queen,” he says the moment his bulbous eyes find me.
 
I can’t even remember his name, but he supplies it for me.
 
“Kervus, at your service.”

“What are you doing here?”
 
I hope he can see the curdled frown beneath my mask, but if he does, he doesn’t comment.

“I’ve come to offer an incentive,” he says.
 
“A sweeter pot of
choose me
that should stimulate your decision to make me your king.”

His enormous eyes run over me.
 
Ugh.
 
Everything about him is gross.
 
He bobs in front of me and I think of how easy it could be to bat him across the rooftop with one arm, one swish.

“I’ve already made my decision,” I say.
 
“I told you that.”

“But your final decision, the one that truly counts, can not be made until all your suitors have assembled to hear.
 
When you hear what I have to tell you, I am positive that you will want to choose me as your king.”

“Doubtful,” I mutter.
 
Kervus flutters down to my feet and grins up at me with his stacked-fish lips.

“Your son…did you even know, my sweet, that you had a son?” he asks and everything freezes.
 
My thoughts, my body, my existence.
 
Kervus giggles.
 
“It is a son.
 
Was a son.
 
Is a son again.”

I dive down on the grotesque little man and pin his neck beneath my claw.
 

“What do you know?”
 
I growl, giving him a shake that skittles his eyes like baby rattles.
 
“Tell me!”

“Your son is alive,” Kervus says, grinning although it looks uncomfortable.
 
“And I know where he is, my love, my Queen.
 
He is a gargoyle.”

“Impossible.
 
You are a liar.
 
He died before his birth.
 
He had nothing more to learn.”

“The first breath of air is not the first moment of education about life,” Kervus’s voice is pulled tight, strangled as I push harder on his neck.
 
“Kill me if you must, but this is the truth.
 
We begin learning, gathering data, the moment of conception.
 
Your son must have incorrectly absorbed some of his data, as he is most certainly here.
 
A gargoyle.”

I stand, dragging Kervus up with me, cinched between my talons.
 
I carry him to Trickle, scooping up the last of the water in the boot and holding it over the hole in the lion’s head.

“I’ve only got this much water left, Trickle and I need answers.
 
And I swear, I will push you from this ledge myself if you waste it moaning about your eyesight.
 
I’m sure you’ve heard everything Kervus has told me and I need to know if this is true.
 
Is there a way my son could be a gargoyle?”

I upturn the shoe and dump the last of the water into Trickle’s head.
 
He clamps his jaws shut to catch it and rolls it around a moment before letting it drizzle down the beard of his mane.

“Not only possible,” Trickle says, “but true.
 
I’ve seen him myself.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I hurl Kervus away from me and whip the boot at Trickle at the same time.
 
The shoe only bounces off the top of his mane and disappears over the lip of the building.

“What do you mean you’ve seen him?”
 
I roar, digging my claws into the brick and hoisting myself around to push my face against the lion’s.
 
“You’ve never told me?
 
What is wrong with you?
 
Where is he?”

There are only droplets of water clinging inside the lion’s mouth and he uses them to push the words out, like an unoiled tin man.
 
“Not…up…to me.”

“Who then?”
 
I roar.
 
“Who has the right to keep him away?”

Kervus sputters up and bobs in the air beside me.

“The one who also made him,” Kervus says.

Truce.
 
I drop away from Trickle and scale back over the ledge of the rooftop.
 
Truce has kept my Bean away.
 
He’s kept my son in his back pocket, obviously to blackmail me into becoming his Queen.
 
Everything I thought I felt in his eyes becomes a black beach, filled with rotted thoughts of hope.

“Take me to my son,” I say, but Kervus shakes his head.

“I can not.”

“Then bring him to me.”

“I can not.”

“What can you do?”
 
I shout.
 
Kervus drifts closer, his fish lips spreading in an excited grin.

“I can ask you to choose me, my Queen,” he wiggles excitedly as he says it.
 
“When your choice is made, our kingdom will lie at your feet.”

I fall back from him, gleaning through the foamy truth of what he is saying.

“Does it?”
 
I say, and Kervus nods vigorously, his earlobes flapping.

“Yes, my heart, my Queen.
 
Choose me and the kingdom is yours.”

I smile beneath my mask and glare down through the tunnels of my eyes at the disgusting little gargoyle.

“Then my choice is made,” I say.
 
“Bring whoever must be brought, so I can tell you all at once.
 
Go now and bring them, Kervus!
 
I believe my kingdom awaits me.”

***

The gargoyles come as dark meteors, comets even, that scream across the sky.
 
They come in every form; animals and dragons, humans and goblins—perching like huge, ugly birds around the entire lip of the building.
 
They huddle and grunt when others get too close.
 
They don’t want to touch or be touched.
 
Standing in the center of the roof, I hear them breathing and grumbling all around me, the tension stretched in the air, as if a fight could break out at any moment.

Jaibu is the first suitor to arrive, landing on the roof in black silence, although his shoulders are thrown back as if he is ready to clash heads in war.
 
Kervus flutters up like a wounded butterfly, full of teeth.
 
He tries to land close to me, but I step away and wave him off with the swipe of one clawed hand.
 
The gust propels him off the roof, shooting him directly between two goblin-looking gargoyles.
 
It takes him a moment to flit back up to his spot.
 
His smile is less confident now.

“My diamond starlight, my Queen,” Kervus begins, but Jaibu interrupts him, jutting out his broad chest.
 
“I am here for your choosing.”

“Presumptuous of you,” Jaibu says.
 
“Considering the company you keep.”

“So you think.”

“As I know.
 
It’s obvious, by viewing the options here, that there is no competition at present.”

“Exactly,”
 
Kervus sniffs.

“Are you inferring that you would be my equal?”

“No, no.
 
Never.
 
That would be an insult.
 
I am your superior, of course,” Kervus says, and the gargoyle panther lunges at him.
 
Kervus dodges Jaibu’s jaws, which crack shut like boulders pounded together.
 
With Kervus out of his grasp, Jaibu turns on me.

“What does this
creature
know?”
 
Jaibu growls.
 
“Have you made a deal with him?
 
Have you agreed to him?”

A squabble of grunts breaks out along the roof edge, but I keep silent, watching an immense shadow, larger than all the others, darting through the evening sky, toward my rooftop.
 
Jaibu and Kervus follow my gaze and fall silent too.
 
Moag swoops down and drops one mammoth, clawed foot on the rooftop.
 
Truce slides off the gargoyle’s bodily staircase with grace.

Once deposited, the King stands in the center of the rooftop with his arms open and announces in a booming voice, “Three suitors have been accepted, and this choosing is for us all, so all of the Gargoyle brethren are welcome to attend.
 
Speak freely, move with ease, you are all welcome to come and see if the Queen chooses to be, and if she will choose a suitor as her King.”

On the King’s words, Trickle turns off his pedestal and steps off the ledge.
 
He blinks his great stone eyes, and I know instantly that he has been granted a reprieve from his blindness.
 
The lion rolls onto the balls of his feet gracefully, but as he strides toward us, I see what a luxury it is for him, not only to see, but also to stretch the stiffness from his bones.
 
His jaw opens and closes a few times, and when he takes his place, he lies on the roof with his mammoth paws folded in front of him, instead of sitting in his usual pose.

Truce opens his mouth, presumably to begin the choosing ceremony, when a scream, from the neighboring rooftop, suddenly cuts through the night.
 
I can’t tell if it is a scream of excitement, pleasure, or pain, but it is a scream that sends a singeing bolt of lightening through my bones, because I know the voice so well.
 
I crane my neck upward, searching for Ayla in a particular window, but the lights of The Boy’s rooms are dark now.
 
My wings extend and in their bowl, I catch the sound of her breathing, coming from somewhere on the dark roof next door; her breath is a fast and panicked sound that puts my whole body on alert.
 
Something is wrong.

Moag lands before me.

“Your attention, Slip.
 
One opportunity is all—no one gets more than that.
 
Your suitors are obligated to tell you their truth, but only here and only now,” Moag’s gaze passes dangerously over the suitors.
 
His tone drops to a menacing growl and drags my flickering attention from the roof next door, to what he is saying to my suitors.
 
“To fail is to be cracked wide open!
 
I shall, even to the strongest,” Moag says, lingering on Jaibu.
 
Then his eyes move to Kervus.
 
“Even to the most cunning,” he says and then, to Truce, “Even to my King.
 
So, ask your asks, Slip, with caution and ears to puzzling.”

Moag gives me one hard stare, and then the great beast jumps, ascending upward, until he is hovering over top of the roof proceedings, locked in the air directly over the King’s head.
 
My eyes rove back to the building next door, the absence of sound grating me even more than the screams had.

Kervus wilts mid-flutter and drops down to stand on the tar.
 
Truce pulls back his shoulders and strides across the roof, coming to stand between the two gargoyles and directly in front of me.
 
His chin is high and his cape billows around him, as he brushes it backward.
 
He doesn’t acknowledge the other two gargoyles, but Jaibu takes a step back, not looking down, but away, over the rooftops, as if there is something more interesting in the direction opposite his King.

“Madeline,” Truce says, tipping my chin to him with the wave of one silver finger.
 
“I understand you’ve made your decision.”

The jaw beneath my mask hardens.
 
I let the agitation build like a bubbling fountain inside me.
 
Torn between aiding my past and choosing my future, it is easiest to proceed from where I stand.

“You knew that I had
a son
and that he was a gargoyle,” I level the hard track of my eyes on Truce.
 
“I assume you meant to use him as a bargaining chip.”

My voice is made of more stone than I am.
 
Truce drops his hand from me, his eyes widening in a flash of surprise that disappears as quick as lightening.

“Not at all,” he says, stepping backward, and I realize he’s not lying.
 
Of course, he didn’t want me knowing about Bean.
 
If I knew, I’d definitely want to stay and take his kingdom.
 
It only makes sense that Truce will keep my child hidden from me, unless I choose Truce as my king.
 
He must know I wouldn’t do it otherwise and he’s right.

“When I become Queen, I will be human again?”
 
I ask.
 
Truce nods with a small, affirmative rumble deep in his throat.

“As a human, I will be the recipient to a gargoyle?”

Another nod.

“As Queen, do I have a choice of who becomes my gargoyle?”

“Somewhat,” Truce says.

“Enough that it’s likely that my son could be my gargoyle?”

Truce eyes drop and his chin follows, in agreement.
 
I can see how he didn’t expect me to put it all together and I suddenly feel more brilliant than I ever have in life or in death.
 
As if my hands are finally wrapped around a destiny that I can really hang onto, and mold into, what I want it to be.
 
I have my fingertips on my Bean, finally, even if it is just the ghost of a touch.

Another shout echoes from The Boy’s roof.
 
It is low and gruff, without a specific word, but the sound resonates like anger in my ears.

“Do I have to kill you for this to happen?”
 
I ask.

“No,” Truce answers, but his voice is so soft it is nearly an etching on the air.

“Do I have to marry you?”

“This is not a choosing,” Jaibu barks, stepping forward.
 
I notice the way Moag dips lower to hover even closer to Truce.
 
“This is a collection of games.
 
This is bargaining.”

As the dark panther advances, I turn on him, ready to fight.
 
Moag’s wings splay a little further outward and I feel the waft of them on my head.
 
Trickle gets to his feet.

“Do
you
have anything to bargain with, Jaibu?
 
Something to sway me toward choosing you?”
 
I ask.
 
The panther narrows his sleek eyes on me.

“Yes,” he growls, but he stops out of arm’s reach to each other.
 
“I have knowledge.
 
I know that this King will kill you.
 
He’s done it before and you are nothing to him, so there is no reason for him not to do it again.”

“Wouldn’t
you
kill me as well?”
 
I ask.
 
Jaibu is brought up short.

“Not necessarily.”

“Wouldn’t it be necessary, if you wanted to rule the kingdom?”

“Only if I did not fall in love with you.”

“Do you think you could?”
 
I ask, watching the gargoyle try to erase his sour, scowl that appears each time his gaze travels over me.
 
I know the answer, but still wait for the lie.
 
I’m not sure he will honor his obligation to tell the truth, even if it means being ripped to pieces by Moag.

“Anything is possible.”

“And unlikely,” I say.
 
“You accuse me of dishonesty and games, but isn’t that what you are offering me right now?”

“Not at all,” Jaibu says.
 
“At the moment you repel me, so it is difficult to say if I could love you.
 
Gargoyles do not find attraction in each other, but there is no hiding the aroma of life that lingers on a Slip.
 
I thought you’d masked yourself, but now I see that it was a particularly cunning move by our King, to create you in gargoyle form, since the sight of you is so repulsive, the majority of our brethren would never give you a second thought.
 
But I am unique.
 
A soldier once and a soldier now.
 
It is why I persevered to find what was hidden.”

“A soldier,” Kervus groans.
 
His round body burbles up to my eye level, wobbling between his tiny wings.
 
“Ask the whole truth, my Sky Diamond.
 
This animal would love you for your skin and nothing more.
 
He was an executioner in life.
 
He killed women and children, put them to death for their beliefs alone.
 
Hardly a soldier, in the terms provided.”