Mercy, A Gargoyle Story Read online

  "I had Moag bring you, although I realized you'd passed. Unfortunately, your very Slipness was due to a grave miscalculation on my part. Much worse than I expected. You see, I sent Moag to save you from drowning. It is an ancient duty of the gargoyles.

  "Fate indicated that Moag would do just that, so no angels were sent for retrieval. But you fooled us all, Madeline. Everyone assumed you would continue to fight your own death until Moag arrived, but then, when you gave up so quickly, Moag was left in quite a pickle. He can not leave behind anyone that he's come for, and yet, we are not in the business of ferrying the dead about."

  Truce sighs, sweeping his stringy red cape behind him as he strolls toward me. "It is my personal failure that you are now a Slip, Madeline, so I asked Moag to bring you here, as you now have a choice that neither of us expected."

  "What does that mean?" I say.

  "It means, my darling, that you have essentially become my problem."

  CHAPTER TWO

  "What to do? What to do," Truce says, twirling toward the gargoyle, so his cape flares around him. The tattered edge wiggles like fingers trying to grasp a thought. The gargoyle hunkers down on its haunches with a heavy sigh, its knees nearly poking its cheek.

  "Nothing to do,” the gargoyle grumbles, as if he's already heard the answer a thousand times before. "Crack it open on a rock. Make it look like it was not dead, and then it is. Oops the darling, so that fate can come wanting."

  "You are always practical, but rarely anticipatory,” Truce says, tapping a thoughtful silver-tipped finger on his chin. If he applied even the slightest pressure, I believe he would slice his neck open. "We cannot tempt fate. What's done is done. She is a Slip. We cannot make her more than that, but...” Truce's eyes narrow as he tips his head with a grin. "Could she be made less?"

  The gargoyle springs from its haunches. It paces the half roof on it’s grasshopper legs.

  "Too pretty for ugly," Moag sneers, as if what he is saying is not the answer he truly wants to give. "And it is entirely stupid. This is not to be learned! This Slip is no Gargoyle Queen."

  The last word is spit, a tangible glob of it landing on one of the stones, in front of my mangled feet. Broken and dead, I am still repulsed by the implication of what Moag has said. Then Truce drifts closer.

  "And what do you think, Madeline?" He peers at me, tapping his chin again with one silver-winged finger. The tiny motion sends Moag pacing furiously, but Truce persists. "A Queen? I see Moag's concern, I do. Even with your damaged body and waterlogged face, there is still some sort of attraction about you. Something that tempts even me."

  "Let her become it!" Moag shrieks, his words finally seeming to be his own. "She will see to your destruction, if you will not have it yourself. This is the curtain's closing. Let it seal you in your shrine."

  Truce flips back his cape with one arm, raising his palm to the gargoyle, but the King's eyes are on mine.

  "The pie on a windowsill," the King whispers to the gargoyle, "can be even more tantalizing than the bite of it on your tongue. But even a girl so lovely as this cannot overcome my disease. I am the only Gargoyle King and you should not doubt me so, my friend. You should not excite yourself.

  "You see, Madeline,” Truce says as he turns back to me. “Moaguza is tired. I've run him ragged with the longest rein ever served by a Gargoyle King. He cannot retire, however, as there is a synergy between humans and gargoyles that anchors Moag to me. Let me try to explain.

  "Gargoyles have a gift,” Truce points carefully to the place where his human heart should be suspended. "They own a gift of mercy. Forgiveness. This tremendous gift can heal anything a human body can manifest. All diseases, all ailments. With mercy and forgiveness, the gargoyle's gift completely heals and restores. An individual's need draws the gargoyle most fit to supply the proper healing. It is a very personal, very specific bond. It is a second chance for both, if you will, and anyone who receives a gargoyle’s gift is truly blessed.

  "I am Moaguza's human recipient, however, I can not allow Moaguza to heal me. Our job is one in the same on this Earth. It is my calling to be the King of the Gargoyles. Those who needed creation, created my kingdom.

  "Some of those, who have not absorbed what they came to learn in their human life span, are allotted a short continuance of time after their death to learn their lessons. These entities take on the gargoyle form. In exchange for this continuance, they are also given a gift of mercy and forgiveness that they must bestow on their human recipient. My gargoyles need a King who appreciates them and will create them, you understand? This is my job and I am the only one fit to do it.

  "Likewise, every king needs a court of faithful servants. The world's need requires my existence and in return, I require a henchman, a knight who will labor under my same vision. This is how Moaguza came to me. We do not know the details of how we came to be paired, but we are here nonetheless, locked together. We are defined as much by our need of one another as by the gifts we cannot give to each other. That time, that choice, has passed."

  Moag grunts. "Not taken. Not passed."

  "Moaguza offered me his gift long ago," The King says with a fleeting glance at Moag. "We could have ended the gargoyle kingdom quite easily, as there were no successors at that time, but we both understood the value of our sacrifices by then." When he pauses to look at the hideous gargoyle, the King's brow melts in the center and the core of his back tightens, pulling him much straighter. His body reflects a distance between sadness and pride, mirrored in the gargoyle that is hunkered down only steps away.

  "We are required to work together in our suffering. Something in me must never be healed and, likewise, Moaguza's gift must never be accepted. Should either of us reach those destinies, the gargoyle empire would be destroyed."

  Moag grunts. "Not if the King..."

  "Hush!” Truce bellows. When he turns back to me, he snaps out his cape and breathes deeply before continuing. "Those who have not learned would be trapped in the void. The Earth could do nothing but absorb the sadness; the depression of the damned, and the light of the human race would dwindle, smothered by the merciless ghosts of error. The only hope for the human race is hope. Second chances, you see.

  "It is our burden and our joy that Moaguza and I have been chosen for such dark greatness." The King sighs at his crumbling turrets.

  "Please,” I whisper. I am afraid to move one step, as I am balanced so precariously on my broken limbs. Falling to my knees may or may not have the impact I desire, and I doubt I'll be able to get back on my feet. My voice is all that is left, as any instrument of influence. "I don't want this."

  "You don't?" he asks softly. He steps closer and peers into my eyes with his head tipped to one side. "How can that be? It is an entire kingdom, my dear. A vast domain of choices and power, all waiting for you to control it."

  "I only want to die. I don't want to control anything."

  "You don't..." he says wistfully, part question, part confusion, and part relief. Then he spins, snapping the edge of his cape so it twirls away, the silver jewels on his fingers shining in the half-moon. This time, with a sure voice, he adds, "No, you don't."

  Moag growls, a deep and guttural growl that hobbles in an echo along the edge of the turret wall.

  "It was a clear decline, Moaguza,” Truce says, but the gargoyle growls again.

  "Let the darling steep," the gargoyle hisses. "Have it’s chances against your tongue. Time to choose once it knows it’s choices. And if the choice does not want what I need, then I will labor on, my King, in your perilous fate."

  "Fair enough, but of the temptation," Truce says, "we may be able to have this temptation, without change to our path.”

  “That is not a choice. You do not want what you need," the gargoyle whines. “You must give the choices.”

  “With one concession, then. Let's see what becomes of it in good form, shall we?”

  "It can not bring wanting. Unfair. Unfair!”

  "I continue to
disagree, yet there is nothing we can do, to prove which of us is right, aside from testing the theory. I cannot remove the desire, but we shall test the wanting. Get to your wings, Moag."

  The gargoyle groans, but it stands. The thing spreads its emaciated bat wings against the sky, until the entire, eroding turret is eclipsed in its shadow.

  "Ready?" the King asks, but his tone leaves no room for dispute.

  "Yes," the gargoyle grumbles. Truce holds both hands toward me, palms out, and the underside of his silver-ensconced fingers wink and slither. He keeps his head down.

  "Rot!" he roars, and at the same moment, the gargoyle's fierce wings give a hard downbeat, as its claws snatch me off the castle top and carry me away once more.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I am not cradled in the gargoyle's claws this time. Instead, the thing hangs onto me the way I would've once held a dead insect: pinched between my fingertips as I carried it to the trash. I'm dangling by my ankles, watching the landscape blur away from me, below.

  "Just let go of me!” I try to kick a leg free, but the gargoyle has a tight hold. "It's what you want anyway, isn't it? To kill me?"

  "Inaccurate." The gargoyle groans with disappointment. "I must let you, Slip."

  "Let me what? Rot? What do you care? Let go of me! If Truce is sending me to rot, I may as well just die now!"

  "Not die, beautiful Stupid.” The thing pounds its wings against the air and a jackhammer gust slams into me. The gargoyle banks left and pounds its wings again. The burst of wind pulls what is left of my clothing loose. It accordions up and down, as if I'm caught inside a pillow case, each swirl of air trying to vacuum away my attire. Even dead, I am modest.

  "Stop it!” I shriek. I clutch for my neckline but the gargoyle gives me a hard snap. I cry out and the thing tosses me into the air and catches me again, dangling me from my wrists. And my clothes finally pull free.

  Except that it is not my clothing. It is my skin.

  It slips off me like a boiled tomato, sliding from my skeleton inside out, until it snags on my ankle. The pale, soggy bag with hair and holes where my eyes saw out, waves in the air from my foot. There are punctures speared all through it from the branches and broken bones. Another shake from the gargoyle snaps the skin free and it parachutes like a paper bag into the treetops below.

  The gargoyle snickers from above and shakes me hard again. This time, my skeleton breaks apart in pieces, scattering splinters and toothpicks that slice through the canopy below. What is left of me is some muscle and the flapping sinews of tendons, a disconnected aqueduct of arteries and veins, held together like globs of sticky modeling clay.

  "What guts do you have, darling?" Moag squawks. "What guts indeed? Regrow the ugly seed, that is what we do."

  And this time, when the thing drops me, I don't care at all.

  ***

  I fall through the open patch in the forest ceiling and it swallows me whole. There are no trees to cushion my fall. I slap down on the hard Earth, a puddle. My cheek rests against the dirt and one eye swivels upward to watch Moag flap away. I assume the gargoyle has betrayed his master and done me the favor of death in the process.

  I assume wrong.

  No angels come. I lie motionless in the dirt again, my system of ligament-strings-and-pulleys completely failed. I wait in agony for the angels, while the sun and moon take turns boiling my innards dry and then cooling them with a damp darkness.

  In three days, no animals come to feast upon me, but my guts bake and cool to a crackled, dusty gray. I am turning to a meaty pile of ash.

  On the fourth day, I spot Moag circling above me. He spirals down as though he is following a winding staircase. When he is close enough, my dried eyeballs see the shards in his clutches. Splinters and toothpicks. The gargoyle has collected the bones he shook from me and has brought them back.

  The Earth coughs dust as the gargoyle lands on its pointed back claws. Moag folds up his wings and drops my bones in a pile beside me. My mouth feels too dry to use and I am sure my jaw would no longer work anyway. The gargoyle says nothing, but sets to work, one bone after another, leaning them into a triangle. Making a teepee of my skeleton.

  When he has finished, he sweeps me into the small opening he has left at the base of the triangle. He has no care if my head is on top, so it is buried beneath the dried jerky of my hamstrings and hocks.

  "So much of you," the gargoyle growls. When he's gotten every last scrap of me inside, he leans the last bone against the opening. Without another word, he extends his wings and jumps into the sky, leaving me in the cage of my bones, buried beneath my dried and quivering self.

  ***

  I am squashed. The chalky meat of my upper arm jiggles like a teakettle weight at the top of the pyramid. Eventually, a broken plate of my skull slides free and flips, nose and eyes and brow, flat to the ground. Moag returns twice, swirling low over my sharp, bone tent, although he never lands.

  "The pretty bones are falling away, but you do nothing?” He groans the first time. "Lazy, Slip. Do the growing!"

  I don't bother to ask what he is talking about. If my mouth even works, it'd be muffled by my dusty gray spleen anyhow.

  "What do you wait for?” Moag howls the second time he comes. "The rain will not wash you away, you know. Even if you are only ashes, Slip. The bones are ripe enough to do the growing. If you wait, oh, you will not appreciate the ugly!"

  His nagging infuriates me. Whether or not I can make it work, I jut my jaw free. I get a mouthful of my own dusty, burnt guts. I spit to clear my mouth and the gargoyle swoops closer.

  "Oh ho, one word and your heart will slip right in! Of course you will, Stupid, of course," It says. Unfortunately, the thing is right. The second I open my mouth to speak, my heart drops in and I have to swallow or else I will gag to death on it. The dry, grimy beat is caught behind my teeth. I talk anyway.

  "Go away, Moag!” I say. "Just git, you useless animal."

  "Useless?" Moag swoops down, running toward my pile of bones as he hits the ground. "This is what your Stupid thinker thinks? Yes, rather on, with your silly travesties. Pull yourself in by your belly button, then, Slip. Beauty is a useless truth."

  He snorts over the top of my bones, peering down into the pile at my one unburied eye and liberated mouth.

  "You are so ugly," I say.

  "Ugliest,” The gargoyle corrects me, straightening away from my bones with a proud chest. "Lucky to say it. You could wish for that. If bones were pushed over, you could end lucky? A gift instead of an earning?” He mimics Truce's solid voice. "What to do, what to do, Slip? Uglier? Ugly enough? What gets me where you want to be?"

  "Go away," I moan. "Go tell Truce I'm rotting, just like he wanted. I don't need your help."

  Moag pushes off the ground and propels himself like a straight missile, further into the sky above than my straining eye can see.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Night slides in. I cannot take another day, I know it. If there were a way to pull myself together or to let go completely, I wouldn't hesitate. It is the first time in days that the life I've just come from occurs to me and I remember the things about it that I don't want to.

  Like before my mother left for good, she did three things. She quit her job, she bought a new car, and she and I planted a half-grown pear tree outside. The tree she bought was enormous and we helped the men from the nursery dig the hole for it. Kind of. I probably didn't help much with my plastic shovel, but I felt like I did, and my mother made such a big deal about my help that I ended up feeling like I'd done the majority of the work.

  "It's a you-and-me-tree, Madeline," she said. "Whenever we eat these pears, we'll think of today and how we planted this together and how much we love each other."

  But when my father came home that night, I remember the last fight that sprouted from my father's complaint that the tree was too close to the house. The argument grew into my father shouting that the roots would grow around all our underground water pipes, st
rangling them until they broke and ruined everything.

  The next day, my mother was gone.

  My father left the tree where it was.

  The tree grew as I did, the roots buckling the sidewalk and snarling the sewer system. My father didn't care. He was hardly home long enough to use the shower or flush a toilet. He hired a maintenance man to cut the lawn and put chemicals on the tree to keep the bugs off. The chemicals ruined the fruit. The pears grew like lumpy tumors, all misshapen and pale, and they never ripened. They went from rock hard to rotten, with nothing in between. I could never eat them and my father cursed when he stopped off at home and found them littering the entire yard.

  The maintenance man never touched them, so I was in charge of cleaning up the mess. I would drag out the garbage can and toss in heaps of pears and think of how my mother had smiled at me the day that I'd helped her dig the hole. And after I'd collected up the rotted fruit, I would just close the lid and wheel it all out to the curb.

  I tried to blot out the thought of my father, the afternoon he actually came home and found me, curled in my bed and bleeding. I never expected him to show up, much less realize that I was anything but sick.

  But he found out, somehow. Someone saw me go into the clinic. Someone told. His veins stood out on his neck.

  "Get out!" he shouted. He dragged me from my bed. I stumbled and couldn't get my ground. He dragged me through the living room, past all the furniture my mother had chosen for us. He threw open the door and pushed me out. He shoved me off the porch.

  He wasn't crying. He said he wasn't disappointed. He said he knew I'd do it all along.

  "You are dead to me," he said. Then he slammed the door.

  I howl in my bone cage. I drowned out my life, never realizing I still had choices, dangling like ribbons in my palms.