Chapter 7 #2
“Yes.” The horseman’s low voice cracked with age, but his emaciated face seemed younger than I’d first thought. His long arms were wrapped with lean muscle and his back and shoulders were straight and square.
“Why?” If I was going to die, I’d ask the question and go to my grave with the truth. “What have we done to deserve this?”
“That is a question for the Creator.”
I craned my neck so I could watch the impossibly tall man’s eyes as he spoke.
“I’m asking you.” My words would have sounded brave, challenging even, had they not quivered with fear. “Why?”
His eyebrows ticked up for a second. The ghost of surprise washed over his face.
I trembled as the man took a step toward me. My stomach growled anew.
“Because I am commanded.” He spoke the words as if they were made of iron.
“Then…you are like us…a prisoner of fate.”
The man blinked. And blinked again. Then, with a great rush of sound like the starting of an engine…he laughed.
I could count on one hand the number of times I’d laughed.
This glorious human was filled with surprises.
I fought the urge to take another step closer.
To lean in and drink the scent of green growing things clinging to her skin.
Now that the old woman’s warding herbs were gone from her delicate neck, I could smell Mercy’s essence rich and blooming with life.
Was she right? Was I like them? I dearly wished to be. My thought grew wings and lifted to the heavens.
Was that compassion in her eyes? Her words lacked the sizzle of scorn, or the skewer of sarcasm, but still they held a less than flattering assessment.
The amusement drained from me. I was not built to hold such a thing. I wasn’t built for envy either, and yet, here I was wishing to be a prisoner with her.
“Please, give him back his life.” Her lip trembled again. That small tremor shook me like an earthquake. I watched enraptured as her arm lifted. She reached an uncertain hand toward me. Her fingertips brushed my skin as gently as butterflies.
I turned my hand in hers until our palms met. Our fingers touched. Abundance. Profusion. Plenitude. The richness of her soaked through my skin.
She did not pull away.
Neither did I.
Starlight peeked down from the clearing sky above.
“For you—” the words caught in my throat, “I would do anything.” The truth escaped me like a prisoner. “But I can only take. I cannot give.” I swallowed hard as she peered into every corner of my soul. “But for you, Sweet Mercy, I would starve the world.”
A gasp escaped her tiny mouth. Tears flooded her pale eyes again. Of course…she didn’t know the beauty of agony. She didn’t hear my song. And now, so close to the bountiful harps of her song, I almost doubted my own meager chords.
“No. No more hunger.” She reached for my armor and the emptiness behind it. Without the restraining force of her grandmother’s talisman, her gift ran wild from her touch. It reached for the void inside me.
I shuddered as the bloom of life danced along the angelic script on my breastplate. Vines spread from her palms, twisting over the symbols, looking for a way in. Flowers budded and bloomed and threatened to bear fruit.
I gripped her wrists as the blessing overwhelmed her. Mercy’s face went slack. My hands flooded with vitality. Moss unfurled from her toes and spread over the river stones beneath us. Grass sprouted tender and seeking, then sturdy and tasseled.
A carpet of green rolled over the Cheat where he lay still and quiet. Then, with a violent spasm, the withered wretch gasped.
“Mercy, you mustn’t,” I warned, but her eyes held no focus. Her jaw hung loose. Her mouth gaped. “He is too close to death. My brother comes for him.”
Every instinct urged me to move away from her. To call Scarcity and vanish into the night before my brother arrived and witnessed this forbidden tableau. Death was the youngest of the four of us, but he was the strongest and fiercest by far.
“Mercy, please. Do not—”
A wave of energy burst forth from Mercy’s body in all directions.
The force of it nearly knocked me from my feet.
Scarcity whinnied from the shadows nearby—a high frightened call.
A trickle of water danced over the stones at the center of the creek bed.
Stalks of corn pushed from the ground on either side of the small canal like verdant swords.
Wide leaves spread. Insects woke and tested wings.
Scarcity stamped the squirming ground. Mercy’s body swayed. And then I felt him, my brother, moving toward us from the east.
The Cheat coughed and seized on the ground. Mercy’s blessing had lent him strength he was not meant to have. Death would know he had been foiled. He would demand an explanation. He would insist on recompense. He would take reparation as he saw fit.
“We must leave.” Her sunrise hair had fallen over her face. Her arms and legs hung limp against me. I lifted her into my arms and called for Scarcity. The shadows moved. The night parted and Scarcity thundered toward us.
“Take us far from here,” I whispered as I lifted Mercy onto my companion’s sharp-boned back. I leapt up behind the mortal and pulled her to me. Scarcity tore at the ground as we vaulted forward toward the mesas hunching in the darkness.
I did not look back. I knew what I would see—a glimmer of white on the black horizon. A rider on a pale horse.
TO BE CONTINUED…