Page 12 of The Girl with a Thousand Faces
Mercy thought of the bystanders who had fled screaming from the elderly woman’s indiscriminate fire breath, and twinged with guilt. “I’m not sure fun is the right word, boss.”
“It was justice, and justice is fun when it happens to other people,” Cobra Lily said, with a hint of impatience. She didn’t like being disagreed with. “Humans have no natural empathy. We must be taught it, and we can only learn it through suffering the same pain we inflict on others. Like that young man! No sympathy for his grandmother when he left her to die. I bet he could summon up some now.”
Except he was dead, Mercy thought. Not able to summon up anything, anymore.
Still, he had deserved his fate, as his grandmother had deserved justice, and if his grandmother hadn’t killed him, then Cobra Lily’s laws would have. Either way, he lost his life. At least this way, the elderly lady had the chance to exact her own vengeance.
And that was justice.
Wasn’t it?
“I suppose,” Mercy agreed, doubtfully. “You know best, boss.”
“I do, yes. Speaking of which, are you ready for today?”
“Today?” All thoughts of her own silly worries vanished instantly. “What’s happening today?”
One slim eyebrow arched in disapproval. “You’ve forgotten?”
“Of course not,” Mercy lied. She reached for a handy excuse, and found one. “I’m just distracted. On the walk home, after dealing with that grandmother ghost, I had a strange encounter.”
“Oh? What with?”
“Well, I…” Mercy froze in shock, train of thought instantly lost.
Soft tendrils of vine were creeping across the weapons rack, spreading and growing in little green twists. Leaves unfurled in rapid succession, buds fruiting on stems and erupting into flowers. The sight filled her guts with icy fright.
Cobra Lily’s mocking smile wavered. “What’s wrong?”
Mercy backed away from the vine-riddled rack, then yelped as her feet stepped into cold water. She looked down.
Water flooded across the floor, puddles and rivulets trickling across wooden slats and pooling on the mats. She wanted to gasp but her chest had constricted tight. Around her, the noise of a stream grew louder, even though the water had no source; it seemed to well up from gaps and nooks and joins.
“No,” she said, thickly, managing to squeeze the words out. “It is just a dream, it isn’t real—”
Vines burst across the walls in rapid, frantic growth. Branches tangled with the spinning ceiling fan, grinding it to a halt, squeezing the wood untilit cracked; pieces of it rained down. Bamboo shoots erupted from the ground; giant taro erupted, the leaves and roots rending the walls.
Every single moment we are undergoing birth and death.
The words were soft yet clear as a bell. Mercy felt the hairs on her arms and the back of her neck stand up straight, her teeth chattering with a sudden chill.
Mercy looked up. Already knowing what she would see.
In the center of the room stood a woman with pallid skin, her nails unnaturally long and sharp-edged. She wore rags, the fabric drenched and sodden. Rivulets of water trickled down her arms and dripped from her limbs, as if she’d just stepped from the ocean. Strands of kelp wrapped around her ankles, and her feet were caked in sand. The scent of brine overpowered.
“Sea Sister,” Mercy whispered.
The green-skinned woman lifted her head. Gleaming pearlescent eyes peered from a luminous face. She seemed to draw all sound and light in the room; even the vines and lotus flowers had paused in their frenzied creeping.
Thin lips moved and she spoke again, without breath or sound.
Stay with me. Stay with me, forever.
Sea Sister held out a hand and Mercy swore, stumbling to get away. She tripped over her own feet and landed hard on elbows and knees.
A keening reverberated in the room. A sensation like the world was straightening, correcting, uncoiling; as if a universal string had been twisted taut, then suddenly released. Terrible light on all sides. She gasped out loud, shut her eyes against the brightness.
“Chan? Chan!” Cobra Lily was shaking her by the shoulder. “What the hell is happening? Are you sick?”
