The Tattooed Heart (Messenger of Fear 2)

NO, I DID NOT TELL MESSENGER WHAT HAD HAPPENED between Haarm and me. Later, in hindsight, I would see that this, too, was a mistake.

But when Messenger came to collect me I knew we had the worst of duties to perform, and it didn’t feel like a time to complain about a “coworker.”

“So, it’s time?” I asked him.

“Let us collect Haarm, and then we will begin.”

He noticed that the book of Isthil was gone from the coffee table. He didn’t ask, but Messenger doesn’t always need to give voice to his questions.

“It’s on my bed. I fell asleep reading it.”

He nodded slightly and I think he was pleased.

I wanted to tell him that I was beginning to really understand what he had endured in his time as a messenger. I wanted to confess that I dreaded my future having seen something of what was in store. I wanted to tell him that the reading had helped calm my worries, but only a little.

I wanted to tell him that Haarm was . . . what? Immature? What exactly was the word for a boy who came away from what we had witnessed and found i

t stimulating?

I wanted to tell him that I wasn’t sure I was going to make it, that the isolation, the empty times punctuated by horror, were wearing me down to the point where I could see a day when I would welcome even Haarm. Or worse. But there is no therapy for messengers.

Messenger took me and we collected Haarm. Haarm looked tired, as if he hadn’t gone to sleep. He was wearing the same clothing, his hair was a mess, his eyes were bleary, and he blinked too much.

Haarm avoided looking at me, and his carefree way was decidedly more subdued. He seemed nervous. Maybe, I thought, he had had time to think about what had happened, what he had witnessed, and the inappropriate way he had spoken to me. Maybe he was embarrassed. If so, good.

For the sake of honesty, for I have promised myself that I would be truthful in all things, I will admit that Haarm’s attentions weren’t completely disliked by me. It was more a matter of timing than anything else. Had he seemed like a nicer guy, had he been a little less crude and indifferent . . .

But I wasn’t Mara the high school girl, I was Mara, apprentice to the Messenger of Fear. I had duties to perform, a penance to do. And yet . . . And yet didn’t Messenger allow himself the bittersweet pleasure of pursuing Ariadne?

I don’t know why this particular thought had not occurred to me earlier. No, that’s not true, I do know why: because Haarm’s silly advances had forced me to think. Haarm, looking at me as desirable, had brought home to me that my desirability had a short shelf life. Soon Trent’s misery would join Derek’s on my body, a permanent reminder. And what would Nicolet and Oliver endure? What horrors would their suffering etch onto my body and soul?

A year from now it would require an act of deepest and most passionate love, as well as the courage to endure agonies of mind, just to brush a fingertip against my collarbone. A year from now, holding my hand would be the most awful experience of a boy’s life.

The full depressing reality of my life came clear to me. My God, to be a messenger meant a life without love, at least without romantic love, physical love.

No wonder Messenger was so desperate to find Ariadne. He had lived this loveless life. He craved relief. He was like a plant slowly dying from lack of water. He was starving before my eyes.

We were a sort of celibate priesthood, we messengers and apprentices. We were like monks and nuns. In medieval times, women who became pregnant outside of marriage, or women who were unruly, difficult, opinionated, or merely inconvenient, were often shut away in nunneries, there to live out lives of quiet despair. That was me now. I was being shut away. And with each new descent into a wicked mind, I was deepening my isolation, obliterating my chance of ever . . . of ever . . .

“Are you unwell?” Messenger asked me.

I shook my head, not ready to speak.

I prayed, not to Isthil, but to my God, that Oriax would not appear this day, for I was feeling weak and did not wish to face temptation.

To my surprise, Messenger took us first to Trent, still as we had left him, curled up on his basement floor. His mind was elsewhere, enduring the time punishment, living an entire life as what he feared: a weak and defenseless cripple.

How could I not pity him? He was being forced to live a life without power over himself, without any likelihood of love. How could I not identify with that now?

“I don’t want to . . . ,” I said. “I know I will be delving into Nicolet and Oliver, isn’t that enough?” My tone was ragged. I felt as depressed as I have ever felt. I looked at Haarm’s hands, I couldn’t help it, I wasn’t even really thinking about him except as a boy who could never touch me. They weren’t his hands, but every hand.

I am not to be touched.

God in your heaven, can’t you save me?

“I will perform the witnessing,” Messenger said. He made no comment, offered no argument. Did he know that I had glimpsed my future?

“Sorry about . . . ,” Haarm whispered.