The Speed of Mercy by Christy Conlin (good books for high schoolers txt) 📕

I remember what the woman in the yellow dress said: They’re watching you. They know you have something. It isn’t safe.

The other man speaks. “I’m a doctor, Stella. Just stay calm. Just stay relaxed. You’ve had a very hard time. A very hard time. Let’s everybody stay calm. You need to come with us. I can help you. You need to rest.”

“And we need to know what your friend Cynthia gave you. If you can just tell us that.”

He’s holding out his hands the way he thinks a hostage negotiator does, moving them down every time he says “calm.” He’s getting closer. They both are, not stopping, just taking one step after another, closer to Periwinkle. I open the door, slam it shut behind me and lock it. I will go out the front door, to the verandah and then down over the beach. I rush across the room and then I see it, there on the shelf, the Commonplace Book. I grab it and see the blue vase on the mantle. I know what’s in it now. It is an urn, not a vase. I take them, both clutched to my chest, high on adrenaline, and pull at the door. It sticks. I haul one more time and it opens up. And then I’m through the verandah, and over the lawn, and onto the rocks.

“She’s around front,” one of them yells. And David Jessome comes out the front door I just rushed through, the other man around the side of the cottage. They aren’t used to a rocky beach and they both fall as I continue stepping from one rock to another, moving faster and faster. Fly, fly, fly, Stellie, fly. And I hear Granny Scotia now too. Other voices, voices I have not known but have always known. One foot after another, one foot after another. Look to the offing, look to the sea. The men are still behind me, stumbling over the rocks, but coming faster now. I turn from the water. Behind them a flash of yellow, someone else coming. A few drops of water fall from the dark clouds overhead.

It’s too hard to run. It doesn’t matter how many miles I have walked with Dianne in the preceding decades. My joints are tired, my knees worn out, hips swollen as I rest atop the steep beach on the grey rocks. The towering waves of the incoming tide crash and roar. Cynthia to me: Open the book, open the book. And I do, putting my head back and looking at the rolling clouds, the sky dark in the east and glowing in the west. I feel my tears trickle down over my temples and into my hair, soaking my scalp. I look down at the blank yellow pages and weep onto them, all my regret and sorrow, my tears of love and loss, my tears of childhood, and the salty strange tears of the older woman I have become, the curious minuscule seahorses in my brain swimming and rocking. I hear the men now, on the rocks. So close. The speed of mercy is not slow. It is not fast. It is timeless. The old ancient words burst from the shells. Chaidh na geasan a chur oirnn / Spells were laid upon us.

I hear the young Cynthia at Mercy Lake speak:

Rè ar beò bhith le luchd-fuath / During our human lives by foes —

And a chorus of voices singing from all the seas:

‘S ged a tha sinn snàmh nan caol / Though we now swim the strait.

Sounds coming from my mouth as the words illuminate on the paper, the meaning swimming in my blood and my tears:

A Bhana-phrionns’ a’ chuain shiar / O Princess of the Western ocean,

The old exhortation flowing from my lips:

A bheil sgeul agad ri luaidh? / Do you have a tale to weave?

I hobble over the rocks to the water and throw the blue glass urn onto the beach where it shatters, the surf rushing over it, pulling Cynthia’s ashes and glass shards away, the power of the bay sucking back, the sound of rocks rumbling and crashing, and then another wave washing in, surging over my ankles, up toward the top of the beach as I wail out over the ocean and the mist billowing in, the two men following, hear them tripping, falling, yelling.

The mists gust in a castle of clouds and the beach is enveloped. My chanting is done, the words I’ve called out. I turn and hurry down the eastern beach, the stretch that will be flooded by the relentless ferocity of the stormy bay and the moon-driven tides, the mighty sea pounding and crashing against the sheer vertical cliffs.

Stella Maris, Star of the Sea.

Under the Arbor.

Now

The sky was overcast, the clouds a dull amethyst over the silver-grey sea as Mal drove down the steep hill into Lupin Cove. She had called Lark, the host of the morning radio show, who had promptly said the police should be notified, that she would take it to her producer and an investigative reporter. Mal should stay put. Mal had tried to do that, for about ten minutes. She wasn’t a journalist — she knew that now. She was also a woman who had descended from the people by the bay. There was nothing more for her to do than to try to help Stella. The call from Aurora was the turning point. A girl so young with no one to turn to. This was about all their lives and Mal would see it through to the end now, however it played out.

The rain started as Mal parked on the east wharf. There was a black car already parked there. She hurried over the path Grace had told her to look for on the right, and came upon the blue cottage on the beach. The doors were open and the wind swirled through as Mal