Reflected Mercy
Story by Allison Quaid & illustrations by Natalie Chavarria.
In a concrete block house, a young woman lay in bed tracking the free-floating clouds outside. Mercy brushed the thick strands of her hip-length hair from her eyes and climbed out of bed, wincing as she moved. Her thin frame was covered with sharp pieces of mirror. The shards were like armor, stuck to her skin—irremovable. Only her head, bobbing like an apple above her stiff neck, was soft and pink.
She walked slowly to the library, flinching with every step as the glass dug into her delicate flesh. Her eyes narrowed as they passed over the photo of her deceased father, mounted on the wall like a shrine to a cruel, immortal god. His voice brought to her on the wings of the past, slithered inside her head, and hissed, You’re damned.
Turning the knob of the library door, her eyes brightened a bit. She walked to the crimson velvet chair, gingerly placing herself upon it so that the jagged shards didn’t push further into her legs. Thumbing through the book, Lena’s Magic Carpet, her face softened.
“Woof, woof!”
Mercy turned with the care of an old woman to look around the chair and out the window into the garden. There, a golden retriever beckoned her to come to play with a wag of his tail. He barked and licked the window.
She placed her finger above her lip, tapping it indecisively, leaving a prick of blood on her face. Decision made; she went down to the garden. The lush grass wilted around her as she walked, cleaved by the sharp glass. The dog bounded to her side, and she petted her new furry friend with a single finger, careful to keep the glass off his soft head. He dropped a tennis ball at her feet. As she smiled, sunbeams danced across her body, casting iridescent speckles of light in the garden.
She threw the ball across the lawn. The dog retrieved and dropped it once more at her feet. Mercy threw it again, once, twice, a third time, until it lodged in a bushy thicket. The dog shoved his head inside the thicket, trying his hardest to extract the ball, until Mercy coaxed him aside and reached in to get it. As the ball released into her hand, the dog leapt up to grab it,pressing its front paws on her stomach.
A mournful howl came out of his mouth. Bright red splashes from his bloodied paws sprinkled her mirrored legs. He limped out of the garden, whining.
Tears sprang into Mercy’s eyes and she walked back towards the pond at the back of the garden. She stopped at its edge and stared into the water. Her tears pitter-pattered onto its surface, rocking a grasshopper perched upon a floating lily frond.
“Why are you crying?” chirruped the curious grasshopper.
Mercy found herself answering the grasshopper before she can express any surprise that it was able to talk to her, “Everything I touch gets hurt.”
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“It’s these stupid mirrors. They hurt everyone they touch.”
“Where did they come from?”
“One day, I got real hurt,” says Mercy, eyes downcast as she settled, cross-legged, by the side of the pond, “Someone beat me up. I thought I might die. The next day, instead of bruises, these mirror shards sprouted all over my body, just like measles.”
“Did they keep them away?”
“Yes, for the most part.”
The grasshopper stroked his two front legs together, pondering Mercy’s words.
“My little brother has been hurt, too. By foxes here in the garden.”
“Oh no,” said Mercy, leaning forward in sympathy.
“They ripped off his two front feelers. But you could help him ... help all us grasshoppers. What’s your name?”
“Mercy. How?” said Mercy.
“We need someone big and scary like you to frighten the foxes away.”
Mercy frowned. “I don’t know. What would I have to do?”
“My friends and I would hop on top of you and make you look like a giant grasshopper. Your mirrors will make our trick even more frightening, and those foxes won’t dare try to gobble us anymore.”
“But won’t you be cut by my mirrors?” asked Mercy.
“No, miss. We are very small and light creatures. We can just stand on top of your mirrors, or in between them. You won’t hurt us.”
“Okay. I guess I can try,” said Mercy, the words leaking out as cautious as her movements. “I don’t want your little brother to get eaten.”
“Thank you, dear Mercy,” said the grasshopper with a bow of his head. “I’ll go get my friends.” He spang from the lily frond and into the bushes.
Within a few minutes, hundreds of grasshoppers stood in the grass at Mercy’s feet. Their trills of excitement mingle with constant words of, “Thank you, miss,” as new members join the party.
“Ready?” Mercy’s new friend asked.
She nodded, “Be careful of the glass.”
In a few hops, the grasshopper and hundreds of his friends covered the girl from head to toe, so only her eyes, nose, and mouth were free. Moving around the pond, Mercy tried different poses, until her reflected image was a gigantic creature crawling forward with pointy light-green limbs. Two long antennae made of pussy willows and tucked in by the grasshoppers tested the earth as she lowered her head in a menace and clicked her great mandibles made up of tiny insects.
Unbeknownst to Mercy and her friends, a crafty fox lay hidden in the hedges, watching Mercy’s transformation. He licked his chops and thought, Wonderful. I’m going to gobble up all those grasshoppers in one go!
He crept from his hiding place and waited under a shady maple tree. When the grasshopper girl appeared, he flattened his body to the ground, eyes peeled wide open in feigned terror.
“Fox,” Mercy said in the loudest, scariest voice she could muster, “I have come to avenge my brethren.”
“Oh no, big grasshopper, please don’t hurt me,” said the fox, using a shaking paw to hide his smile.
“Promise me you will never eat another grasshopper, and I will spare you. Or else, I’ll have you for lunch right now!” snarled Mercy as she crawled toward the cowering fox. Peering into the neighbor’s garden, she saw two foxes chasing a leaping rabbit through the neat rows, uprooting lettuce, basil, and strawberries.
“Stop!” she cried, leaving the cowering fox behind as she made her way through a gap in the fence.
The foxes, catching sight of her, froze in genuine terror, and the rabbit sprinted into a bush. One of the grasshoppers near Mercy’s right shoulder gasped, “Oh no, they’ve got Dandy. He went to gather berries for the new baby grasshoppers. They will starve now.”
The guilty fox licked his jowls, scooping in the stray legs, while anger bubbled in Mercy’s stomach.
“Please don’t hurt us, big grasshopper,” cried the brother foxes in unison.
“Only if you promise to leave these gardens forever, and never eat another grasshopper.”
“We promise! We do, we do, big grasshopper,” yipped the foxes, turning tail to leave the garden through the gate.
Mercy smiled, holding in her celebration until she thought the foxes were gone. Mercy sat down and whispered, “All right, grasshoppers, time to get off.”
“We should wait until we’re hidden back in your garden,” said the grasshopper who first befriended Mercy.
“I guess a few more minutes won’t hurt ...,” said Mercy, struggling to keep the glass from shifting too much as she crawled on all fours to the gate.
No sooner had she taken the final step into her garden than all three foxes ran at her with a spider web net in their mouths and tossed the net over her head. The grasshoppers scrambled to jump off and escape but were held in by the webs.
“Time for a grasshopper feast, brothers,” said the head fox who had cowered beneath the maple, now dancing around Mercy. The foxes yipped in unison, saliva stringing from their mouths.
“Quick,” whispered Mercy to the grasshoppers, “jump into my hair so that I can protect you.”
The grasshoppers jumped in and hid among her thick, dark hair. Those who couldn’t find room huddled down between the glass shards like a protective cage.
Mercy stood up and swiftly used the mirrored edges on her arms to cut the spider webs.
The foxes growled and pounced on Mercy together, but as they collided with her, their jaws snapping toward her hair, the glass cut deep into their paws and muzzles. The foxes yipped and yowled in pain and fled as fast as their injured feet can take them.
“You saved us!” cheered the grasshoppers as the safely jumped out of her hair.
Mercy laughed along with the grasshopppers as they walked back to the pond and sang,
“You are our hero! Hooray for Mercy!”
With all the grasshoppers safely in the grass, she walked towards the pond.
She stared at herself in the pond’s reflection among the swaying willow trees. She had done something good. Really good. She was good. She smiled and she felt warmth in her heart. As her smile was reflected back to her from the pond’s surface, the mirrored shards began to wiggle loose and fell like silver snow, bursting on the ground. She gasped in amazement as her plump skin came into plain view, as sweet and pink as the magnolia flowers lining the pond.
She placed her hands on her arm in a small hug, feeling their softness for the first time in years, and held herself tighter. She thought she might float, so light was her body.
A strong wind blew, and the shards of glass lifted up in a whirlwind of light and refracted color around her, fusing together into a tiny pair of glasses that fell onto the grass at her feet.
“I’m glad I could help you, grasshoppers. You’ve helped me, too,” she said.
She picked up the tiny glasses, dropped them into the pond and walked back. The dog came running toward her. She bent down to pet his soft fur and they rolled around in the grass laughing.