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He was older than the other reapers, but seemed to hold more power than all of them put together. His eyes seemed older still, and there was a strange sadness in them despite the kindly smile on his lips.
“What is your name?” he said. It was a question no one had ever asked the Hated.
It was so unexpected that the Hated could not at first answer it.
“H-Hated,” he finally managed. The name came at last. Ugly to his own ears.
“No,” said the man. “That is not your name.”
He took a step closer. The Hated could have killed him right then.
Except that he knew he couldn’t. Not this man. The truth of it seemed to burn hotter than the sun.
The man reached out very slowly and touched the Hated’s cheek. It was a gentle act, an alien thing. No one was kind to him. No one had been, except a few random strangers here and there.
“You are not hated, my son,” said the man. “You are loved
.”
“Wh-what… ?”
“You have opened red mouths in these others, and in doing so released them to be with god. You have shown them such kindness and mercy.”
The Hated did not know how to reply to that. He lowered his knife, having nearly forgotten that he held it.
“From now on, to all in my hearing,” said the man, raising his voice, “and to every believer of the true faith of Lord Thanatos—praise his darkness—you will be Brother Mercy. This I have said, and thus it is so.”
And, to the Hated’s complete surprise, the guards all lowered their knives and yelled it out.
“Brother Mercy!” they cried. Over and over again, and soon the prisoners picked up the words, chanting them, turning them into a prayer. The Hated could feel his shame and emptiness die. He could feel the Hated crumble into dust and blow away.
From then on, he was Brother Mercy.
He raised the knife again, offering the weapon to the sad-eyed man.
“Oh, no,” said Saint John of the Knife, “keep it, Brother Mercy. You will need it.”
PART TWO THE ROAD TO ASHEVILLE
The sound of snow in trees makes silence, makes the poem in my pocket sing through the holes, the loose change of angels, all those fallen lights into the world we came in on sound, the stranger cadence of wave, and drum. And our inner work is to never stop hearing ourselves for the rest of our lives when everything conspires to drown the silence of us out.
—ANNE WALSH, “GRIEF IS THE THRONE WE ALL SIT ON”
10
MORGIE MITCHELL SAT IN THE saddle of the rumbling quad and studied the farm. The sun was low in the sky, and this looked like a good place to spend the night.
Despite being with Riot, Morgie felt very alone. Benny and the others had gone off to warn the people in the small town of New Alamo—which they’d learned about from a dying soldier—while Morgie and Riot continued on their way to Asheville. Since leaving their friends behind in a forest near the ruins of Harlingen, Riot and Morgie had followed Route 77 north, planning on using it to skirt the radioactive wasteland of Houston. From there they would merge onto Route 90 and head east.
This farm was along the way, and it reminded him a bit of home. Unlike the carefully tended fields back in Central California, this place was clearly untended. Abandoned. The acres of soy had grown wild over the years and been invaded by a thousand kinds of weeds. Young scrub pine and wild maple trees stood alone or in clusters, their boughs crowded with birds.
Beside him, his on-again-off-again girlfriend, Riot, squinted beneath a flat hand held above her eyes. She was thin and wiry, with a bandana that hid most of the wild roses and thorns tattooed on her shaved head.
“It’s pretty,” said Morgie.
Riot didn’t respond to that, but instead pointed. “Zom.”
Morgie followed her finger and saw a thin figure walking slowly and clumsily along a gravel road that ran from a big farmhouse. A boy, dressed in pajamas that were so ravaged by weather they were barely more than rags.
