by Jodi Meadows
“Are those sylph?”
“Sylph!”
Within moments, every prisoner was on their feet and pressed as far back inside their cells as possible. One or two wept silently. Most just stared, terror in their eyes.
“Just like Menehem,” breathed someone. “Come to kill us.”
“I’m not here to hurt anyone!” My voice rang out over the cells. “We came to set you free. Stef is back there, ready to open your cells. But first I need you to know something.”
The clamor of voices dulled, and gazes focused on me. I drew a few deep breaths to clear my head, but their fear and distrust was palpable.
“You’ve all been imprisoned for questioning Deborl, or refusing to follow his orders. Others have been killed.” I met a man’s grave eyes, and a woman’s look of despair. “I know what you’ve suffered in the last few months.
“You know many of us left Heart and Range after the new year. Sarit and Armande stayed behind to watch and wait for our return. Because though I’ve been exiled, I swore I’d return and do everything I could to save Heart, the people here, and the people who left. I still intend to do that. Armande died at Deborl’s hands several weeks ago, but Sarit was able to tell us what you’ve endured, and I’m here to tell you something: it will get worse.”
“What do you mean?” someone asked, over the ripple of mutters. “I thought you were going to free us.”
“I am here to free you.” I straightened my shoulders and lifted my chin. “But Soul Night is coming, and Deborl is preparing for Janan’s return. His ascension will trigger a series of massive eruptions. Whit”—his name caught in my throat, tangling with grief—“finished applying Rahel’s seismic research to these signs, these earthquakes and dying plants and bulges in the land. There will be days and days of eruptions. The ash and pyroclasts will smother Heart and Range and all the surrounding lands. There will be nothing left.”
“Do we all leave, then?” asked one of the boys, maybe a few years older than Sam and me. He kept eyeing the sylph, my silent, shadowy guardians.
I shook my head. “You can try, but you won’t be able to outrun the eruption.”
“Then what do we do?” asked a girl, a few years younger than me.
“I have a plan to keep Janan from returning—from ascending.” I bit back revealing exactly what that plan was. Everyone already thought I was like Menehem. No need to give them more ammunition. “I’m going to do everything in my power to stop him, but I can’t do it alone.”
“What do you need?” The girl stepped forward, scraping black hair from her face. “What can we do?”
“Where will everyone be when Soul Night begins?” I asked.
“By the cage,” someone said. Others muttered agreement.
“All right. Then that’s where I’m asking you to be, too. Disguise yourselves. Do whatever you must to keep from being caught until then, but I’ll need you in that crowd. While Sam and I work, Stef and Sarit will be setting off distractions throughout the city, and we need people to point them out. We need to keep Deborl, Merton, and all of them away from what we’re doing.”
“And what will you be doing?” asked a man in the back of one of the cells.
I met his eyes, keeping mine hard and steady. “Doing anything I can to stop Janan from destroying everything.”
“If we survive this,” Sarit said, “maybe we’ll be able to tell you everything Ana’s done for Heart, oldsouls and newsouls alike. You wouldn’t believe it now, but if we succeed, you will. If we succeed, you’ll understand and believe what her friends already know: Ana can do anything.”
I eyed her askance and frowned, but said nothing. They needed hope, and Sarit was giving it to them. Still, I wished she wouldn’t use me as a vehicle for that hope. Yes, I’d do everything in my power to save Heart and the people I cared about, but my plan sounded crazy even to me. How was I supposed to succeed in this impossible task?
“Well,” I said, “I’ll certainly try.”
Sam’s hand curled around mine, and his thumb rubbed across my skin in a warm rhythm. He touched me all the time now, my hands or my hair or my back. The end of the world loomed nearer every moment, and time to touch each other was running out.
“And the sylph?” a girl asked. “How do they fit in?”
Black roses bloomed all around, and comforting heat enveloped the prison as the cell doors unlocked, then swung open. A trickle at first, and then the rest, the prisoners stepped out of their cells. They approached my sylph and me with only a little hesitation as I said, “They’re my army.”
26
BELIEF
“WE’RE GOING OUT for a few hours,” Sarit said the last evening before Soul Night. The previous few days had been filled with planning and preparing and scattered napping, and all of us wore dark shadows under our eyes. “Stef has a few last-minute distractions she needs to check on. They involve fire.”
I frowned. “You don’t need our help?”
“Nope. It’s a two-person job. You’ll just get in our way.” She kissed my cheek. “Get some rest. Or whatever.” She turned quickly, but not before I caught the way she winked at Sam, and the sly look she and Stef shared as they left the storage room, then the mill. All the sylph followed.
“That was suspicious,” I muttered, staring after them. “Why did she wink at you?”
“No reason.” Sam spoke a little too quickly.
Hmm. I narrowed my eyes. “And on the subject of suspicious, why do so many of my friends’ names begin with an S?”
“It’s a good letter.” He stepped behind me and pulled the hair tie from the end of my braid, and gently began pulling the sections apart from the bottom up. Red spilled across my shoulders. I stopped moving and let him, relishing the feel of his fingertips on the back of my neck, down my shoulders. Even though we were alone, Sam kept his voice low. “But technically my name starts with a D.”
“That’s right. Dossam.” I turned and looked up at him, my head dropped back so I could meet his eyes. “Maybe I should call you Dossam from now on. It’s what I called you before we met.”
“If I’d told you from the start that my name was Dossam, would you have been using my full name this whole time?” He rested his hands on my hips, watching me with dark eyes and genuine curiosity.
“I’m not sure.” Dossam had always been my hero. The musician. The composer. He’d been a legend to me, almost not real. The boy I’d met in the woods had said his name was Sam. He’d saved me. Made me believe I was more than a nosoul. He’d been my friend, the first I ever had.
If Dossam had rescued me that night, rather than Sam, I’d probably never have bothered getting to know him beyond his music. I’d have tripped over myself, fumbling for any kind of coherent thought. I’d nearly ruined everything when I did find out who he was, and by then I’d already liked him for him.
“You’re having a lot of thoughts.” He released my hips and touched my chin, bringing our faces closer together when he leaned downward. “Good ones?”
“Maybe.” I raised myself onto my toes and kissed him, just a soft brush of our lips.
His mouth curved into a smile, and the heat in his voice made me shiver. “I have to confess something. I asked them to give us some time alone.
“Maybe it’s selfish to want time alone with you right now,” he whispered, “but a year ago I promised to show you a thousand ways I love you. I thought we’d have more time. An entire lifetime.”
I swallowed hard.
“Anyway,” he said, “I wanted something special for tonight. I thought about taking you on the roof with a telescope, if we could find one. I would show you craters on the moon, other planets, and stars. But it’s too bright out to risk it.”
With the temple shining like the sun, we wouldn’t have a good view of the sky anyway. “The idea is noted, though.”
Sam took my hands. “You would have liked it.”
“What did you have in mind instead?”
“Music
?” He searched my eyes and squeezed my hands. “I would give you everything if I could. Unfortunately, our options are limited right now.”
I stood on my toes and kissed him, deeper than before. “Music is perfect.”
He pulled away to dim the light until our world turned to dusk.
“Do you want to sit?” He glanced at a pile of blankets, rumpled from being used as a cushion.
“Yeah.” My nerves caught and tangled with our aloneness. It was like fire, the way I wanted to be with him.
He settled on the blankets. Feeling bold, I sat so close my leg pressed against his, and he put his arms around my waist. His skin was hot against mine, even through our clothes.
“You choose what to listen to.” I handed him an SED and watched as he scrolled through music. Titles flashed across the screen, pieces I’d heard only once, and pieces I loved so much they made my heart ache.
“Here.” His voice was low, husky. “You’ll like this one.”
He chose a sonata called “Awakening.” The piano began, its sound rich and warm as it surrounded me. Like air. Like blankets. Like Sam’s arms. That was Sam’s playing; I’d recognize it anywhere.
When the flute began to play, soft and low and mysterious, I shivered. “How are you playing both instruments at the same time?”
He gave a soft chuckle. “How can you tell they’re both me?”
I twisted and raised my eyebrow. “Haven’t you realized? I’ll always know.”
He smiled a little. “They were recorded separately. This recording was meant to be a test only, but I never got around to finding a partner for it.”
“Ah.” I let the music envelop me, growing sweeter, bolder, more seductive.
Though they were recorded separately, the flute and the piano blended together to make a new sound that flew through me. It was neither wholly flute nor wholly piano, but it made my heart soar higher than it had ever been. This sound, the way he played those instruments, was too lovely and strange to be real. I wanted to hold it inside of me forever, like I’d wanted the night he’d played my flute for the sylph, the night he’d seemed to conduct the orchestra of nature by simply holding an instrument.
When I looked at Sam, he seemed faraway, somewhen else. “What are you thinking?”
His face flushed. “Nothing. Sorry.”
“No, tell me.” I shifted so I could meet his eyes, and his hands breezed over my waist, as though he were afraid I’d fly off.
He breathed into my hair and held me tighter. “I’ve been having this dream since we returned to Range.”
I waited.
“It’s a little different every time, but in it, I’m always in a forest listening for birdsong. I used to do that a lot. I liked to figure out ways to mimic their calls and try to understand what they meant. But in my dream, I hear something amazing. Not just a bird whistling, but a whole group of them singing with different voices, like an orchestra. Everything seems to join in the performance: the wind and water and leaves, the insects and mammals and birds. It’s this beautiful, joyous music that’s wild and unpredictable, but my heart feels like every note and beat is the most familiar thing in the world. It makes me feel like home, and every morning I wake up haunted by it. The emotions linger, but the music fades; I can’t remember themes or melodies, no matter how much I try.”
“That sounds frustrating.”
“Incredibly.” He sighed. “Now, after having the same dream so many times, it feels more like a memory of something long ago.”
Maybe it was. “When Cris and Stef started to remember things in the temple, they said the memories were dreamlike. This could be more of Janan’s memory magic shattering. And the way you describe the music . . .”
He looked up, hopeful.
“Remember when we went for a gardening lesson at Cris’s house, and we both stopped to listen to the wind in the plants?”
“Yes.” A sort of reminiscing sorrow stole his expression. “We both heard music.”
I nodded. “And outside the cave, when you played the flute for the sylph? Did you notice anything about that?”
He seemed to search inside himself. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“What you described before, about the music in your dream—that’s what I heard that night. It seemed like you were conducting an entire symphony, like magic.”
“You did? I—It felt special to me, but not like my dream. Not like that.”
“I’ve heard it before, too. When you played ‘Ana Incarnate’ for the first time. I heard lightning and waves and wind. I heard . . . this force. This power that you play with.”
His eyes met mine, dark and full of wonder. “Do you think that’s it? The phoenix song?”
“Maybe.” I smiled. “I think it could be.”
“But we still don’t know what it is, or how to do it on purpose. What use is it?”
It seemed to me he could call the music whenever he wanted, but I didn’t want to pressure him. “We know it terrifies dragons. They think it can destroy them. It must be powerful. It feels powerful to me when I hear it.”
He said nothing.
“To me, it sounded like life. The way the whole world seemed to join in, it made me feel alive.”
“But dragons think it will destroy them.”
“Maybe it depends who’s using it, and why. The book said it was the song of life and death. Beginnings and endings. They’re all tied up together. It’s the phoenix song. Expecting it to be as straightforward as a knife is a little unrealistic.” I shrugged. “Why didn’t you tell me about the dream before?”
“At first,” he said, “I thought it was only a dream, and I didn’t want to burden you with it. What we’re doing tomorrow night is so much bigger than a half-remembered symphony.”
“It’s still important to me, if it’s important to you.”
He leaned his cheek on the crown of my head, his whisper a confession. “Even if we survive the ascension, what about the caldera? How can anyone survive Range erupting? How can anyone survive the ash cloud? It seems like no matter what we do, this is the end.”
“If we stop Janan from ascending, the earth might settle, too. No eruption.” No more earthquakes. Even now, I could feel a shudder in the ground, a constant reminder of the world’s ability to open up.
“Then we could have this.” He caught my hand in his, pressing it against his cheek. “A life together. And maybe it’s only one, but we can fit a lot into one life.”
“We’ve already done a lot. Flown on the backs of dragons. Discovered millennia-old secrets. Watched newsouls come into the world.”
“Found each other at the masquerade.” He kissed my fingertips.
“You knew who I was as soon as I arrived.” I rolled my eyes. “But I knew you.” When he’d shown me old photos, I’d known him in them, too.
“Maybe I knew you.”
“Because I was wearing giant butterfly wings.”
“That was a big clue, I’ll admit.”
“And I was probably the only person who didn’t tell everyone else what they were going as.”
He flashed a half smile. “Don’t you want me to have known you immediately?”
“Oh, I do.” I brushed my thumb over his cheekbone. “But I want it to be real. Not because you’re a reasonably intelligent person who can recognize a short redhead when she’s hiding her face. Besides, I know you don’t believe in the matching souls stuff.”
“You make me want to believe.” He grew quiet.
Even if we lived through tomorrow night, I’d always look like me, even if I put on another costume. Besides, people didn’t dedicate their souls to each other after only one life. A dedication of souls was supposed to be forever.
“I’ve decided,” I whispered into the dimness. The sonata’s final notes faded and another piece began, all warm lute strings and a clarinet.
“What’s that?” His voice was heat, and his breath traced over the curves of my cheek. I never wanted to move.
He gave a slight nod.
“I’ve decided what I think happens. Everyone is so busy being afraid, no one considers that what happens next might be good, too. Different. But not bad. Not something to be afraid of.”
Sam kissed my cheek. “That sounds very wise.”
“I don’t want to be afraid of something that’s inevitable. I don’t want to go rushing toward it, because there are so many things I want to experience in life, but being terrified of something natural like that seems like a waste of energy.”
“The pain that often accompanies death isn’t very pleasant.” He kept his voice low, thoughtful. “And pain often is a good reason to fear something. Fear is natural, too. It’s what keeps us alive, sometimes.”
I nodded. “I don’t mean about not being afraid of everything that goes along with death. I’m still for avoiding it. I want to live. But as a whole thing. What happens next. What really happens next—rather than reincarnation bought with another’s soul—doesn’t have to be scary. I choose to believe it’s another good thing. Like life. Another beginning. Only different.”
“You have a beautiful way of thinking,” he murmured, voice as sweet as the duet playing on the SED. He caressed my face, my throat, my shoulders, my arms. Everything melted under his touch, and the soft way he kissed me.
When I climbed onto his lap, our chests pressed together, his kisses grew deeper and more passionate. His palms were hard against my spine, pulling me closer as he kissed my neck and shoulders and collarbone. He tugged my shirt askew and caressed the bare skin of my shoulder.
“I love you.” His words pooled in the hollow of my throat. “I want to tell you a thousand times how much I love you.”
I ran my fingers through his hair and turned his face up, leaned his head back, and kissed him. Soft black strands fell between my fingers, and his hands were up my shirt, palms flat on my back. My ribs. My waist.
My skin burned with our heat. I was melting into him.
Footsteps thundered through the mill, and light spilled across the storage room.