by Jodi Meadows
My heart stumbled on itself. Life with Sam. With music.
“Ana.” Sam’s hoarse whisper drew me closer to him. Our eyes met, and he didn’t have to say what he was thinking. He’d already told me a thousand times.
He would choose me.
No matter the price, no matter the consequences. Sam would choose me.
My heart broke.
“You understand why I can’t, right?” I touched his face. My eyes ached with fresh tears. The salt stung cuts on my face.
He nodded. “I understand.”
I brushed my lips against his, then climbed to my feet to face Janan. Here was a chance to make the others see.
If there were any who’d been too afraid to speak up.
If there were any who’d wanted to make a choice, but hadn’t known how.
If there were any who wouldn’t stand for the slaughter of a phoenix and newsouls.
“What is the price of immortality?” My voice sounded wisp-thin, only a thread of a song, but I urged strength into it.
Janan spoke easily. “One life never lived. One tiny spark that will never know.” He motioned at the phoenix, which gazed over the assembly with unreadable eyes. “And this.”
Couldn’t everyone see how wrong this was? Whit and Orrin had insisted there were good people we were leaving behind. I wanted that to be true. I wanted them to stand up for what was right and prove all my fears wrong.
But no one moved.
What about the people we’d freed from prison? When I glanced over the crowd, I spotted familiar faces, but when our eyes met, they looked away.
“Five thousand years ago, you told everyone the phoenixes had imprisoned you because of the knowledge you gained, but that isn’t true. They imprisoned you because you captured a phoenix and tortured it.”
Everyone was silent. Staring.
“The phoenixes wouldn’t kill you for what you’d done, but they did give you eternity in a tower. Instead of repenting, you began exchanging souls. You reincarnated people because you couldn’t bear to be without them, and then you made them forget.”
Janan cocked his head and remained silent.
The whole city was silent, save ragged breathing and groans of dragons dying and the muted roar of the pyroclastic flow surging past.
No one was listening.
“It’s true.” Sam forced himself to sit a little straighter. “You stole our memories.”
Whispers sizzled through the crowd.
“You made them forget because you knew the guilt of trading a newsoul every lifetime would crush them,” I said. “You didn’t want them to know what you’d done.”
“You didn’t just trade their lives for ours,” Sam said. “You took newsouls, and you ate them. You consumed their souls for power. Our reincarnation was bought with that stolen life.”
“No. No.” The voices came from the crowd. Some of the people I’d freed from prison moved about the others, muttering and pointing.
“What I did before was wasteful,” Janan said. “Now I know a better way. One soul for infinite life. That’s all it will take now. No more death and rebirth. No more reincarnation. Just life.” Janan motioned to the phoenix. “And I have this.”
“I would die for other people,” I said, “and other people have died for me. We do it because of love. But I won’t accept an unwilling sacrifice. Not the phoenix, and not a soul that’s never lived.”
Janan nodded. “Very well. I was afraid you might feel that way, but I’d hoped otherwise. We will continue without you.”
The crowd hushed. Everyone watched me; I could feel their stares. Only, I had no idea what to do next. I’d hoped to inspire them, make them see the truth, but no one was moving.
No one was willing to speak up.
“Wait,” someone called. Someone from the prison? “You made us forget?”
“What was that about newsouls?” another asked, and voices poured from the crowd, talking to one another, shouting questions at Janan.
“They’re just newsouls. They don’t know what they’re missing.”
“We thought newsouls would replace us, but we’ve been replacing them this whole time.”
“We’ve had more than our share of lifetimes, and the cost . . .”
“I’m afraid to die.”
“The girl is right. We can’t do this.”
The questions and demands for more information intensified. I couldn’t believe it. They cared? Not everyone, but some were asking questions and pressing through the ring of skeletons, and Janan looked stunned, like how could they not accept the trade?
He didn’t understand the value of one life. He underestimated the impact one soul could have.
My friends had been right after all. There were good people here.
At my feet, Sam grasped my ankle. “Help me up.”
I bent and wrapped my arm around him, taking as much of his weight as I could bear while he found his feet. He swayed, but steadied himself and added his voice to those standing up to Janan.
“I won’t be part of this!” someone shouted.
Hope flowered inside me as people closed in on the cage, on Janan standing there with his knife. The phoenix watched people turn on their leader.
“Very well,” said Janan. “If you will not all accept my gift, I will give it to no one.”
“No!” Toward the back, someone threw a punch. A fight broke out, and screams again rang through the night. Blue targeting lights flared and people yelled, calling to Janan for help, but he just stood on the dais and watched chaos erupt through the industrial quarter. What was left of the city would destroy itself unless someone stopped it.
Stopped Janan for good.
But what could stop something like Janan? He was human, but immortal now. He had nothing to fear.
I’d once thought dragons had nothing to fear, but they were terrified of Sam and what he held. If the phoenix song was life and death, if it could destroy something as formidable as dragons, maybe it could affect Janan as well.
As the crowd pressed closer, louder, and Janan’s smile grew wider, I bent for my backpack and removed my knife and flute case.
“What are you doing?” Sam gripped my shoulder for balance.
“There’s a phoenix. I’m going to make it use its song. Unless you think you can do it on command?”
“I don’t know.” His eyes grew wide. “I don’t know how.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I understand.” He was broken. Dying. All his hope and confidence stripped away. I held his hand as he staggered with me to the cage while Janan was distracted by the fighting.
The phoenix was quiet now, watching everything, though I couldn’t guess its thoughts. I left Sam leaning against the bars while I searched for a latch. But if there were a way to open the cage, it was near Janan.
“Hey, phoenix.”
The black eyes turned on me.
“I want to free you.”
Its head tilted.
“But I need you to use the phoenix song. The one dragons are afraid of. Sam knows it, but he doesn’t know it. And his arm is hurt too badly to play my flute. I need your help.”
“You just go right up to anything and talk to it, don’t you?” Sam closed his eyes and smiled. “I love that about you.”
“Everything else has talked back so far.” I turned to the phoenix again. “I need your help. Please.”
The phoenix shook its head.
No?
Because it wouldn’t take a life and risk its own cycle of rebirth?
Then what was I supposed to do? How was I supposed to stop Janan? How was I supposed to ensure newsouls had a life?
I’d already failed the sylph.
Hadn’t I?
On the dais, Janan lifted his knife into the air. A man went flying backward, like the dragons had earlier. Janan was just adding to the chaos.
If he’d consumed the sylph when they entered the temple, were they already gone? Or slowly digesting as the newsou
ls had?
Fine. I’d try it myself. I lifted my flute and started to play.
The flute whispered a song, high and thin with my nervousness. But Sam looked up. The phoenix softened. And Janan spun, looking for the source of silver sound and defiance.
I began with four notes, hesitant but hopeful as the flute’s voice swelled into a familiar waltz. I played waves on a lakeshore and wind through trees. Lightning strikes, thunder, and pattering rain.
It seemed impossible one flute could do all that, but I wasn’t alone. Sam hummed with me, heat and anger and honey sweetness as I played the music of my heart. His heart.
He was doing it, the magic. We were doing it.
When I looked at him, he was smiling.
More voices joined. Men and women close by caught the note Sam hummed, and sang with him. They formed a wall around Sam and me, the cage. And when Janan raised his knife to flick them away, nothing happened.
Another rush of voices raised up, strange and unearthly and coming from somewhere I couldn’t see, but they sang wild harmony and countermelody.
Even the stomp of boots and the clash of weapons joined our song, weaving into the music with the thunderous bass of surging pyroclasts.
I poured my soul into this, the threads of voices weaving into sound that seemed to transcend music. This was something altogether new, strange and lovely and magical.
Music thickened over the night as though this was the only thing in the world, the only thing that mattered. Janan dropped to all fours and shuddered as smoke peeled from his body, black and undulating.
Sylph.
The fighting stopped as more people began to notice what was happening, began to add their voices to the song. Lightning snapped through and Janan screamed as blackness overwhelmed him. All my sylph freed themselves and left Janan lying on the dais, unmoving. Scarcely breathing.
As the voices rose higher and sylph added their own melodies to the waltz, I lowered my flute and approached Janan.
My knife, a slim rosewood handle and tiny steel blade, found its way into my hand. I climbed the dais and crouched next to Janan, looking up only a moment to find most of Heart watching to see what I would do. A few people held back others, but most—most just sang and watched, because somehow this was my choice.
Oldsouls or newsouls. Beginnings or never-endings.
Sylph flowed around me, Cris next to me, and waiting by the phoenix was Sam. He looked tired, barely alive, but when I closed my eyes, I remembered the way he’d held me after I hadn’t killed Deborl. He’d said he was glad I hadn’t.
I looked back at Janan. Could I show compassion for a man who’d caused millennia of pain for newsouls, who’d captured a phoenix twice now, ready to sacrifice it for his selfish desire to live forever?
Who was I to decide who lived and died? That was a decision Janan had been making for others for thousands of years. I wanted to be nothing like him. I wanted to value life, all life, regardless of how despicable some of it could be.
And who knew—maybe there was something else after death. Just because it was unknown didn’t make it bad. It could be good.
I sheathed my own knife and took Janan’s bloodstained knife from his hand.
Light and power flooded into me, dizzying and far too much for one soul to hold. I fell back, and the last thing I heard was the phoenix singing four notes.
32
LIGHT
THE SKY WAS deep violet when I opened my eyes.
My skin tingled and my heart thrummed too fast. Maybe this was what it felt like to be struck by lightning.
Janan was gone, as were most of the citizens of Heart, though the skeletons were still there, their silver chains dull and tarnished. The expelled temple rocks were murky white now, no life left in them. The sylph were gone, too.
“Sam!” I jerked up and scrambled to my feet, stumbling down off the dais before I realized Sam wasn’t standing by the phoenix cage anymore. He was slumped on the ground, breathing shallowly. Someone had placed my flute in his arms, but it slipped from his grasp as I dropped to my knees before him. “Sam.”
He made opening his eyes look like agony. “Ana. I waited for you.” His voice was a pale breath, a memory.
“Didn’t anyone help you?” I checked the bandages on his shoulder; they were new, but damp with sweat and blood.
“There’s nothing to help. I’m sorry.” His good arm jerked upward, but it fell and he sighed. I took his hand and pressed his palm on my face, now slick with tears. “That was it, wasn’t it?” he asked. “The phoenix song?”
“I think so.” It had felt like magic, and it had stripped Janan of his immortality. Sam had been humming. So had others. The sylph. And the phoenix.
Had I used the song? Or had Sam?
Did it matter?
The dragons had been afraid the phoenix song would destroy them. The song hadn’t destroyed Janan; sparing him had still been my decision, in the end. But we’d made him mortal again. If no one else killed him first, he’d one day die of old age.
Sam’s fingers curled against my cheek. “You have it in you now. The light. I see it. Beautiful.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” But I did know, didn’t I? My heart raced, my thoughts were sharp and clear, and something had changed inside me.
I looked around, but the only one left was the phoenix. The cage door hung open and the phoenix itself perched nearby, wings tucked against its sides.
“Ana,” it said, voice high and low and everything in between.
Now it spoke back?
“The sylph have gone to absorb the fires beneath the caldera, to settle it and keep it from erupting further.”
“No.” Cris had told me that wasn’t possible. It was too much. “That will kill them.”
“Yes,” said the phoenix. “And they will be reborn, per our agreement. They will have one life, the life they would have had if they hadn’t followed Janan that day.”
“What about everyone else?” What about Sam? I could still feel his pulse fluttering weakly under his skin, but for how much longer? What happened when he died? I’d already lost everyone else.
“That,” the phoenix said, “is your decision. Dossam is right. The fire of infinity has passed from Janan to you. You took it when you took his blade. You may keep it, or you may give it away, though your body might not survive a second transfer of the light.”
Meaning I could die. Still— “I don’t want it, not if I have to be alone.”
The phoenix bowed its head. “Then I think you know what to do with it. But know that it will work only once. As the sylph are receiving their second chance, that is what you will give to the others.”
Then Stef and Whit and Sarit and Armande might be alive again. And Sam. Would I, too?
I bit my lip before I asked. The answer might sway my decision, and there was only one decision I could make.
“Thank you.”
The phoenix surged up, trailing sparks and ash as morning paled the sky and stars grew dim. The pyroclastic flow was gone. The sky was clear. Dawn was still and quiet. My sylph were saving the world, redemption at last.
Only the quiet gasps of my weeping and the rattle of Sam’s final breaths cracked the air.
I had to work quickly.
I put my flute back into its case, kissed Sam’s lips, and approached the nearest section of chain.
“Ana?” Sam rasped. “What are you doing?”
“I’m choosing you.”
“Wait, think about this.”
“I am.” I forced a smile as I knelt. “And I’m choosing life. I’m choosing you.” Before either of us could say anything more, I closed my hands around the chains that linked everyone together, and released the light. It burst out of me until I was a star exploding.
And I could see everything.
33
BEGINNINGS
IT MUST HAVE been years and years later when Sam awoke to existence once more, because everything had changed.
By the time Sam returned, everyone seemed to understand that this was their final reincarnation. This was it. Only one life. Cherish it.
But Sam already knew that. When he dreamt, it was of the last moments of his previous life, and Ana talking with the phoenix. Then Ana glancing back at him, choosing him, and giving up the light.
The ache of missing her carried through death, through his first quindec, and though he searched for her, the world was filled with newsouls now. Orrin, Lidea, and Geral had long ago returned from their quest to protect their newsouls, and soon there were schools for the new and old. Soul Tellers still had jobs, finding the oldsouls born and cataloging newsouls. Sam spent months poring over the results, looking for Ana, but her soul had never been recorded into the database. If she’d been reincarnated, no document could tell him.
Maybe she would return. Maybe she would not. She hadn’t known when she let go of the light. He’d seen the question in her eyes, and seen her decide not to ask.
He wished she had.
On a sunny morning, Sam and his friends sat around a table by Armande’s pastry stall, sipping coffee and listening to a flutist play somewhere across the crowd. The music was familiar; lots of people played “Ana Incarnate” since Phoenix Night.
So many strange faces crowded the field. The din of conversation surrounded the table, all laughter and haggling and babies wailing. It was market day, which brought traders and buyers from the new settlements around Range. And students, he hoped. Music teachers still had to eat. The sign he’d made, advertising openings for students, had already received several curious looks from both children and adults. He tried to ignore the questions people asked one another when they thought he couldn’t hear: Was he the Dossam who’d written “Ana Incarnate”?
“How’s the new piano working for you, Sam?” Cris asked, searching his empty coffee cup for one more drop.
“Spectacular. When Orrin is reborn, I’ll compose something for him. I still can’t believe that with everything going on during his return to Heart, he managed to convince people to help collect supplies for the piano.” Sam shook his head. His friends were amazing.