Echoes (Book 1): Echoes

by Caplan, A. M.

  By the time she limped her way upstairs and around the promenade, cleaning her way through an office crammed with books and the other extra bedrooms, streaks of pink and coral were beginning to show themselves.

  Less edgy in the beginnings of the day, she made her way back to the doorway of his room. She brushed her hands down the rows of perfectly hung clothing on either side of the closet, shaking her head at the perfect gradient of shades starting with whites and pale creams by the door, darkening to black near the false wall. Hannah was amused by his fussiness, and because she did exactly the same.

  It took a couple of tries probing the back wall to find the right place to push until the door unengaged with a click. Once unlocked, the door pivoted on its center effortlessly.

  I’m not being nosy, I’m just being prepared. If I hadn’t come in and figured out how to open that door beforehand I might not have been able to do it under pressure, she told herself. That might have been partly true, but Hannah felt a twinge of guilt when she began opening the drawers one by one.

  She couldn’t begin to imagine the worth of it all as she peered at her hand through the transparent shapes on thick stacks of money from Canada and Australia and admired the beautiful colors of the Brazilian reals and the fierce painted dragons on Chinese renminbi. Hannah ran her fingers over the row upon row of coins, surprised by the weight of one when she picked it up. Turning it over she looked at it in the low light, seeing the unmistakable luster of gold.

  Below the newer money were thick stacks of larger, older coins, individually housed in acrylic cases. Many were worn nearly smooth with time, and she tilted them sideway to better make out the faded images of emperors and animals.

  In a long, thin drawer she pulled out a lumpy bag, tipping the contents out into her palm, a rainbow of gemstones tumbling out into her hand. Another drawer lined with dark velvet held more stones, gems big as robin’s eggs rolling around loosely against jewelry in heavy, old-fashioned settings.

  The next shallow drawer she pulled out made her pause. Compared to the others it was bare by comparison, the only thing in it a single necklace, a teardrop-shaped silver pendant the size of a half dollar on a slim chain. The metal was smooth and dull, the raised design worn away and indistinct. The edges of the pendant were not quite symmetrical, oddly beautiful in their irregularity.

  Letting the chain trail over her hand, she fingered its surface. It weighed heavy in her hand, and she could almost feel the enormous age of it. She stared at it, examining the barely visible pattern.

  “Hannah.”

  The pendant hit the ground with a thud and she nearly followed, backing into a cabinet knob painfully. She righted herself to see Asher framed in the doorway.

  She blushed furiously at having been caught rummaging through his things. Hannah reached for the necklace, but he got there first, picking it up.

  “You’re back sooner than I’d hoped,” Hannah said, looking down, feeling too guilty to meet his eye. Even though he had shown her the room, she had most definitely been snooping. Hannah wished she had been caught in the gun cabinet at least.

  He was holding the pendant, small in the center of his hand, and looking at her with an expression she couldn’t decipher as she made to edge clumsily past him and out through the closet.

  “Wait.” He undid the clasp carefully with his large fingers and placed it around her neck, then stood back to look at it where it lay against her chest. He reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, his hand brushing her burning cheek when he did. Her face was hot with shame, and she reached up a hand to touch the necklace.

  “It suits you.” He smiled at her sincerely but somehow sadly, and stepped aside to let her out of the room, clicking the door shut behind them.

  “How did you manage to get all of this so fast?” Once Hannah had finally been able to subdue the flush on her face, and trying not to constantly touch the pendant around her neck, she helped him put away the mountain of groceries he had lugged into the kitchen.

  He shrugged and closed the refrigerator door on the last of the perishables. “I was rather surprised myself. Had I known it would go so smoothly I might have taken you along after all. Did you know it is possible to place an order online for almost anything and someone will helpfully load it into your trunk without even having to see your face?”

  “You don’t think anyone saw you?” She reached overhead to put a box of pasta in the cabinet, tugging down on the hem of yet another giant t-shirt at the same time. She winced as her arm protested at having the healing skin pulled taut.

  “I do not think so, or else I would not have come straight back.”

  “Is that everything?” Hannah stuffed the last of the groceries into the cupboard.

  “Almost. I brought some things back for you. I put the bags on your bed.”

  She turned around to speak but just caught the back of him heading out into the sunlight of the courtyard.

  There was a neat row of brown shopping bags on the white bedspread, their twisted paper handles in a perfectly aligned arch across their tops. One by one she unpacked them, feeling worse and worse as she laid the items out on the bed.

  Shoes and sandals in the correct size. Soft leggings, jeans, and a pair of rugged, cargo-style pants. A variety of shirts, and two jackets, one canvas with a soft fleece lining, the other light and waterproof. Undergarments and pajamas. Another bag held every toiletry she might need and then some. She was embarrassed at the generosity. Also by the thought of Asher selecting her underwear.

  She changed into leggings, happy to be covering the itchy still-healing skin down both sides of her legs, and a soft, long-sleeved shirt, pulling the necklace out and combing her hair down her back. She quickly braided it to disguise the worst of the burned-out chunks at the bottom and went back downstairs.

  Unable to find him at first, Hannah wandered through the courtyard until she saw the back door she had never seen unbolted was cracked open. She peeked cautiously through the space.

  “Come join me.”

  Asher nodded toward the other chair and poured wine from a dusty bottle into a glass for her, topping off his own before setting it down.

  Hannah picked hers up and pondered the viscous red that clung to the sides of the glass as she tilted it this way and that.

  “Thank you, for everything,” she said, and looked where his eyes were focused over a wide swath of green grass, and beyond it to the black water. The bayou was dark as ink under the cypress trees, their gray old men’s beards hanging still and unmoving over the water.

  He looked at the pendant, then back into the distance.

  “When I told you I did not recall how my very first life ended, it was not the truth,” he said. “As you knew, I imagine. You see through my falsehoods rather too easily.” He smiled, picking up his glass and draining it swiftly, setting it down with a click. “The world Amara and I were born in was very different than this one. We were not free. My father was a serf, at the mercy of the man whose land we lived on. All of us were; my father, my mother, Amara and I, our brothers and sisters. Though I will not glorify an unjust system, I know we were luckier than most. We had a home, enough to eat, and the unrest in the land never came to our doorstep.”

  Asher paused, drew a long breath.

  “Hannah, I am a simple man. I was then and I am now. Maybe I cannot look back from such a distance at the way we lived and say I was happy, but at the time, in the only world I knew, I wanted no more. I would have lived and died in the same manner, forgotten by history and been no worse for it.” His face darkened. “But not Amara. My sister thought herself made for more, and maybe she was.

  “In appearance she has not changed a great deal.” He turned to look at Hannah. “She was as fair then as she is now, and more shrewd than any of us; this she well knew. Because of this she might have had her choice of matches, to men above her station, men who would have paid for her freedom and the right to her hand. Amara refused them one after ano
ther. She thought to go higher.”

  He shook his head, picking up the bottle to refill his glass, then setting it back down.

  “I teased her about becoming an old maid, still unmarried at the great age of nineteen, having turned down offer after offer. I laughed at her scheming to rise up, to find a way into the manor amongst the likes of those who were so far above our station they might as well be gods. But Amara never wavered. She would have fine clothing, servants, and live in the great stone house, her children carried behind her by their nursemaids.”

  Asher said, “This will sound strange to you, knowing what my sister is now, but I was in awe of her the day the son of the manor lord came and took her away. It was not even that she managed to catch the eye of someone so far above her station—that I could understand. It was that the father was convinced to countenance a marriage to someone so far beneath them; it was beyond imagining. When it happened we simply looked on in disbelief.”

  He paused for a moment and when she looked over at him his face was in shadow, his eyes far away.

  “I went off to fight behind her husband that year, and brought home with me a wife, a widow with two young boys. She was kind and beautiful and we were happy in our small life. Her sons called me father, and I was content.”

  A wife. Asher married, children running around him. Hannah had never thought about him like that, but she could see it. She wondered what he saw. For so happy an image, his face looked haunted.

  “As time went by, no more children came. I could not have known what I was at the time, or that the failure was mine. Nor could Amara. For her, it was far more dire. After four years she still had not provided her husband with an heir. What good was a beautiful base-born wife if she was unfruitful?”

  His face had gone stony, dark for the first time since they’d come here. Hannah sat back, waiting for the storm to pass. His voice was grim when he continued again.

  “My sister had no use for us until then. But one night she came sneaking back home on her fine horse, hidden beneath her expensive cloak. Amara had not returned to see her family, but to seek help from my wife. Sara was a midwife, greatly respected in the village, and an herbalist and healer of the sick. Amara wanted her to make a remedy to bring a child. She had grown desperate, fearing the loss of everything she’d accomplished if she was put aside for being barren. Sara obliged her—what else could she do? She sent Amara away with a tea to help bring a child, and a tonic to make her husband virile.”

  Asher finally moved, turning his head toward Hannah, but he was still looking past her, through her, as he spoke. “Truly I do not know what happened, though I believe it must have been a mistake, the wrong herb, two roots that looked similar, or an unforeseen allergic reaction. Amara slipped her husband Sara’s potion and that same night he suffered a horrible, painful death.

  “We heard the bells toll the next morning, but we did not know the reason why until the door crashed in and Sara was hauled out. When I learned what had passed I feared for Sara’s life. The sentence for poisoning was a brutal death.

  “Then the father of Amara’s dead husband came to us. He offered us a solution that would save Sara’s life. If we would deny any knowledge of Sara’s part in what had happened, and swear Amara had wanted her husband dead, he would allow Sara to keep her life. He would be free of his son’s low-born widow and any dower claims against him, and he would have revenge once and for all on a woman he had hated for her grasping elevation.

  “Hannah,” he whispered, “I did not hesitate. I gave over my sister as a murderer to save my wife. They tied Amara to the post and put the rope around her neck, to strangle her, then lit the pyre before she was yet dead. I had to stand there and watch, show my support in the condemnation of my own sister, guilty of nothing more than desire for a child.”

  This time Asher met Hannah’s eyes.

  “And in the end my betrayal did me no good. Amara’s horrific death was only her first. A week later I heard the screams from the field, saw the smoke. By the time I reached our home it was engulfed, my wife, my sons, swinging by their necks while the flames rose around them.”

  His voice faltered. “Amara made me pay for my sins. And after, she made our mother and father, our brothers and sisters pay. She made her father-in-law pay, and his wife and daughters for looking down on her. And the maids for begrudging her their service, everyone in the town who had ever slighted her or showed her unkindness. Finally, someone managed to pierce her with an arrow, but she disappeared. A week and a day later she returned again.” He shook his head. “She came for me. I did not raise a hand against her, let her strike me down like the avenging angel I believed her to be. At least then I would go to my family.”

  Hannah sat in silence and wondered how a hurt could still feel fresh after so many years. She could almost feel the depth of his anguish and loss, the heat of Amara’s rage.

  “Asher, I am so sorry.” She didn’t know what more to say. There weren’t any words.

  He picked up the bottle and divided the remaining wine into their glasses. The storm had passed, leaving only sadness. Asher looked over, managing even to smile weakly.

  “I did not tell you this to bring you sadness, but to remind you of who is out there, to keep you from growing complacent here, lest you forget the depth of my sister’s hatred and the danger in her. And more, so you understand my complicity. You are an innocent victim in this, no matter what Amara’s motivations for pursuing you. I am not.”

  28

  Hannah sat stock still, holding her breath as long as she could, staying entirely silent so she could listen. There was a stiff breeze tonight and it pushed the branches of the trees back and forth against the roof with a whispering sound, one her mind turned into a rope sliding down over the tiles, the knot of the noose bumping on the ridges as it went. She’d left the window cracked, and every breath of wind that blew a strand of hair across her throat was a cord, winding around her neck, waiting to jerk her kicking and choking up into the air.

  They were nothing, the noises, just the same outdoor sounds she’d grown used to hearing every night. But they were different now, after Asher’s story. She couldn’t get the image of Amara standing under the dangling, spasming feet of his family out of her mind.

  Creeping out of bed, she tiptoed down the hall and around the corner.

  “Ash.” She tapped softly on the door. “Asher. Are you awake?” There was no answer. Turning the knob, Hannah pushed the door open a crack and peeked inside. No Asher, bed still neatly made.

  He didn’t sleep much, and though she’d seen him go into the room earlier, that didn’t mean he hadn’t gotten up and gone wandering; most likely down to the kitchen.

  Padding barefoot down the stairs she found the kitchen empty too; no Asher. Hannah poured herself a glass of water by the green glow of the clock on the stove and headed back out.

  It wasn’t pitch black, but the clouds across the moon made the light muddy. She made her way mostly by feel back across the corner of the courtyard and had one foot on the stairs when she heard a soft whump.

  “Asher, is that you?” she asked. She hoped it was, the water in the glass in her hand slopping over the edge as it started to shake. Squinting in the dark, she didn’t see anything or sense any movement.

  Slowly, Hannah took two steps forward into the courtyard, then stopped to listen. Nothing. She let out the breath she’d been holding. Nothing, just like there had been every night before she’d let what Asher told her creep into her head.

  Turning to go back up the stairs and to bed, Hannah tripped over something and hit the ground, landing painfully on her side, hearing the glass that had flown from her hand shatter across the floor.

  Whatever she had tripped over was thick and round, as big as her thigh, and very smooth, like a log. It moved, sliding against her skin, slipping down the length of her leg. She shrieked and clawed her way backward, scrambling to get back up on her iffy leg.

  “Hannah!” Asher race
d into the courtyard as bright lights came on and blinded her. “Where is she?”

  “Over there!”

  “Hannah, run!” Asher was almost to her. “What are you waiting for? Go!”

  “Right there.” Hannah pointed toward the edge of the fountain. Then she looked at Asher. He was naked.

  “Oh no! Where’s Amara? Is she still here? How did she get you?”

  Asher yanked Hannah to her feet and shoved her behind him.

  “Where is she?” he asked again. “Where is my sister?”

  He stopped, looking around frantically and followed Hannah’s finger to where it pointed. His eyes widened and he backed farther away from it with a shudder.

  “What? Where is she? You tell me. You’re the one she just killed,” Hannah said.

  The python Hannah had tripped over was eyeing Asher warily—though not as warily as he was eyeing it—from where it had gone to coil around the cool base of the fountain.

  “Is that what you yelled about? The snake? I detest snakes.” He shuddered again. “My sister has not found us?”

  Hannah shook her head.

  “I didn’t see anyone. I came down looking for you and tripped over the snake. It must have dropped down from that tree.” She pointed up at the branches trailing down over the edges of the roof. “How did Amara find you? Is she still here?”

  Asher furrowed his brow. “No, I heard you yell. I came running immediately.”

  “She didn’t kill you? Then why are you naked?”

  He disappeared, suddenly, leaving her frozen, waiting for his sister to drop down from the roof or dart out from the shadows. When he quickly reappeared, he had a kitchen towel as an inadequate excuse for coverage.

  “Ash, what’s going on?” she said.

  He looked Hannah over, where she was standing eyeing the snake that was ignoring her.

  “I was in the shower,” he said.

  When his words sunk in Hannah closed her eyes in relief. She sat down on the edge of the fountain, to hell with the snake behind her heels—it paid her no mind anyway—and put her face down in her hands.