by Brian Fuller
“And now I finally find you, and you are exactly the good, brave man I thought you would be, but instead of light your heart seems so dead and lost in pain. It was that woman who put that into you, and I can’t stand her. I can’t stand to see her talking to you and touching you and smiling at you like she did nothing. She took you from me. I want you back.”
He reached up and stroked her face, smearing mud across her cheek. “Melody, I don’t know that I’ve ever been the man of light you fell in love with in your dreams. You know what I’ve been through on both sides of death. It’s been tough. I’ve been so—”
She leaned down and kissed him. The Ash Angel numbness was still there, but he couldn’t miss the love in it. “I want to help,” she said. “Please tell me what I can do.”
“Sing to me,” he said. “It’s the closest I come to peace outside of Rapture.”
“Always,” she said, and then sighed and put her hands on his chest. “Do you see yet?”
“What do you want me to see?”
“Me.”
Had he really been dismissive of her? He knew what that was like. His dad had seen to that. He never wanted her to feel that way. “I see you.”
“Good. Sorry I had to get all up in your grille, but Aclima told me the only way to get you to listen sometimes was to chop your head off. I didn’t quite get there, but I hope you heard me anyway.”
“I did,” he said. “Sitting on me in the mud also works. Get up in my grille anytime I’m not listening.”
She smiled and paused for several seconds, like she didn’t want to move. “I guess we should get cleaned up. I think people are coming.”
She pushed herself off, and they both collected their headlamps, katanas, clothes, and scabbards. Two headlamps bobbed toward them, though the light shining at them made it impossible to tell who it was until a British accent broke into the night.
“What is this?” Sparks said. “Sexy sword fighting?”
“It’s like I was telling you,” Finny answered. “It’s this thing the Yank Michaels do called ‘Slice and Dice.’”
“Looks funner than the C4 Cricket we do,” Sparks said. “But what’s with the mostly nude part of it?” He glanced at Melody. “Not that I’m complaining.”
“It’s the clothes, mate,” Finny said. “Can’t be getting your uniform all hacked up all the time. If your knickers get a hole, who’s to know?” They stopped in front of them, tilting their headlamps up. “Just starting or just getting over?”
“Over,” Helo said.
Sparks frowned. “Well, have the courtesy to tell us when the fun stuff is going on.”
Finny laughed. “When is the last time you even picked up a sword, Sparks?”
He shrugged. “Can’t be that hard. Runs in my English blood. Bestowals allowed?”
“Not usually,” Helo said. “Unless the two have the same Bestowals and agree.”
“Brilliant,” Sparks said. He pointed a finger at Helo. “Tell us next time. See you back up there.”
“Sure thing,” he said.
The pair turned and headed back toward camp.
“Hey,” Melody said. “Follow me. I know a great place we can get this mud off.”
They affixed their headlamps, and Helo followed Melody’s lithe form into the rain-soaked woods, heading in the direction of the river. He’d never thought of her as athletic before, but she walked with the balance and strength he would have expected from an MMA fighter or gymnast, not a pop star.
Thunder rumbled in the sky for the first time since the storm began, the wind kicking up a little more. He could hear the river getting closer. Melody was morphing her hair back out as they walked. She followed no trail, the undergrowth wild and undisturbed, the hike taking much longer than Helo expected. Lightning split the sky from time to time, thunder chasing after it.
“Haven’t told anyone else about this little paradise,” she said, pace slowing. She glanced back at him. “Some things I like to keep just for myself. And here it is. It’s to die for in the mornings and evenings, but I’ve done a night swim in here a time or two. The stars . . . well, none of those tonight.”
Helo moved his headlamp around to take in the details. They stood on a rock that slanted up onto the shore and then gradually sloped down into a pool of water about as big around as a cul-de-sac. A gentle current streamed through it, left to right, the rain pockmarking the water with fleeting craters and ripples. While surrounded by trees, the pool itself offered a clear view of the sky, and Helo could imagine that on dark nights, the stars would shine like gemstones.
After cleaning mud off their clothes, they washed the mud off the katana blades and scabbards, setting them on the rock. Then Melody stripped her underwear off. Ash Angels didn’t have the biological impulses of mortals, but he still had a hard time knowing where to look. This was Dolorem’s daughter. A subordinate in his unit. A beautiful singer whose work he had admired since the very first listen.
“Now a quick tip,” she said. “Adding a little fat on your body helps you float. You’re going to sink to the bottom with that zero-percent body-fat morph of yours.”
“You’re going in?” he said. “That’s going to be cold.”
She shrugged. The fat was filling out her form, which was distracting. “I do it all the time. Helps me think. You get used to it.”
Then she dove in, letting out a little scream. “That is cold. So hurry up!” Lightning flashed, turning her skin pale for a split second. “No stars, but there’s still a show.”
He couldn’t argue with that. Morphing fat onto his body came more quickly than it usually did. He stripped off his underwear and dove into the water, the shock of the cold widening his eyes. The heartbeat in his chest chugged to life. He came up next to Melody, who floated comfortably on her back, staring up at the sky with her hair fanned around her head.
It took a moment to get relaxed and floating, the water wanting to suck him back under. But with a little strategic fat morphing, he got it right and settled in. Melody was right. He did get used to the cold flow of the water around him.
“I like feeling human again,” Melody said. “I know the Ash Angel numbness is a blessing, but I miss the beat of my heart and the feel of my skin prickling with the cold or glowing with the heat of a fire. From what I understand, when two Ash Angels love each other, that feeling returns when you’re with them, right?”
“Yes,” he said.
“You feel it with Aclima?” she asked in a “this is just a casual question and I’m not really prying but I am prying” sort of voice.
“A little,” he said. “We didn’t have a lot of time.”
Her hand brushed his as she adjusted herself in the water. “I know it’s none of my business, so you don’t have to answer, but did you two ever, you know . . .”
He smiled. “No.”
“Oh,” she said as casually as possible, but she couldn’t quite squelch the happy note in her voice. The current had pulled them to the far end of the pool, and he followed Melody as she swam back upstream and returned to floating again.
“You know,” she said, “I don’t want to give you a big head or give you ideas or anything, but you have been quite the talk of the Ash Angel ladies.”
“Shut up.”
She laughed. “Oh, it’s true, Helo. Most of them were pretty pissed about you chasing after this Dread Loremaster chick, but as soon as she turned back to an Ash Angel and you helped her move on . . . well, it’s a new story. Now it’s all ‘I wish somebody loved me half that much.’ I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in debates with the girls about how soon would be appropriate to start hitting on you.”
Lightning branched overhead. This sounded like trouble. “And what did you say?”
“I told them to give you a year, eight months at the earliest.”
“Think this crap with Avadan will all be over by then?” he asked.
“What?” She laughed. “I don’t know when this will be over. I was just making sur
e they stayed away from you for a good long while. I’m not going to wait around anymore. I want you. That’s it. I’m not going to apologize for it. I’m not going to stand around and let Scarlet ruin it. And I hope you’re okay with that.”
The water might be cold, but he felt warm. After the tortures of Terissa and Aclima’s nonstop, complicated, hard-to-get routine, to have Melody declare her intentions and show her affection with such straightforward simplicity was as refreshing as the water that coursed around them and bound them together for that moment. He hoped he could reciprocate, but his heart simply didn’t feel free.
“Nothing to say?” she said.
“Thank you,” was the first thing that came to mind. “You were right back there. I have been drowning in war and pain and sorrow so long I’m not sure I’ve ever known anything else. I’ve kind of given up hope that anything but ascending again could bring me peace.”
Her hand took his and she tugged him closer, her arm against his. “But you’ll let me try?”
“I’d be an idiot not to,” he said.
“Good,” she said. “You said songs helped, so here’s one I learned from Rachel when I was a girl”:
We dance in borrowed shoes
To music we cannot play.
We drink in borrowed light
As we struggle into day.
But never doubt that in the soul
Our own song’s somewhere playing.
A melody from glories bright
Where first was our beginning
And never doubt that in the soul
Our own light’s somewhere shining,
A brilliance somehow all our own
That joins with heaven’s beaming.
So dance to music you cannot play
And drink the light you cannot shine,
For in the dance and in the drink,
Our music and light become divine.
Even in a dark pool in the dark woods on a stormy night, Melody’s voice soothed his burning mind. It was like some spell, and floating next to her naked in the water with lightning flashing above made it all the more mystical. Maybe mystical wasn’t the right word. Sacred. His heart beat a little more slowly, his mind a bit more conscious of her touch, his body in equilibrium—in the dark water, but not overpowered by it.
But Rachel’s words were never idle.
“A message,” he said.
“Yes,” Melody said. “When I was older, I tried to track down where that song came from, but it was hers. Now that I know who she was, it was something she meant for us, I think. It came after I told her about a dream I had about you.”
“That is so weird.”
“What?”
“You dreaming about me for so long. I’m not sure if I should be flattered or creeped out.”
She squeezed his hand. “Flattered, of course!”
The thunder rumbled somewhere out in the darkness, reminding him of the storm. “Wonder what time it is.”
“Who cares?” she said dreamily.
“We need to meditate before tomorrow,” he said. “We’re heading back into that desecration. We’ll need all the Virtus we can muster.”
She sighed. “Wow, Helo, you really know how to kill the mood.”
“My bad,” he said. “A little while longer.”
“That’s better.”
They pulled themselves out of the water uncounted time later, and for the first time, the return of Ash Angel numbness felt like a loss. They morphed back to trim and put their clothes back on. He was completely lost in the woods, but Melody knew where to go, and she hummed happily to herself as she navigated the drenched abyss.
“Let’s meditate in my tent,” she said. “It’s more secluded.”
With the rain pouring down, the camp was deserted, the low hum of conversation filtering out from a few tents they walked by. Melody led him inside hers. They had tried to wring their clothes out, but it would ultimately be useless until the sun came up. They shared her blanket to dry off, then she spread it on the floor and they sat face-to-face in lotus position.
“Ready?” he said.
She nodded, and he took her headlamp and his and extinguished them, throwing them on her cot. He closed his eyes, turned his hands palms up on his knees, and focused his mind on bringing up the familiar image. Just before he had it fixed in his mind, Melody reached out and laid her palms on top of his. The image wavered and went black for a moment, but he concentrated harder, and it returned.
The blazing sun flared bright in the middle, the ball spinning around it. He knew the trick about focusing on the sun, but before he bent his mind to that purpose, another sphere dropped into the image, spinning in an orbit directly opposite his original sphere.
His eyes snapped open. He couldn’t see Melody’s face in the darkness, but she sat unmoving, her palms soft on his.
“Get back in here,” she said reverently. “It seems there’s another mystery to uncover.”
Chapter 27
Avadan’s Traveling Surprises
They meditated until sunrise. Helo could do nothing but wonder at it. Whenever he and Melody touched, the spinning sphere of each orbited the same sun. When they pulled apart, the sphere was solitary. Centering their vision on the sun had the same effect as when they meditated singly—the bright side of the spheres dominated the scene. When Rapture came, they drank in the powerful emotions, Melody clenching his hands. Divine light filled him to the brim and seemed to spill out of him. Every dark thought was purged, and when his eyes cleared, Melody sat before him, eyes closed, face content. When she opened her eyes, they were a more brilliant green than he remembered, even in the dim light of the tent.
“Amazing,” she said. “Did you understand what the next riddle is?”
He didn’t. When he had learned the meditation from Dolorem, he quickly felt the wrongness of the dark side of the shiny sphere. But nothing had bothered him about a place where he and Melody’s spheres danced together in the light. The new addition to the meditation excited him, felt satisfying. He hadn’t even entertained the idea there might be some problem to solve.
“No,” he said.
“Gotta pay attention next time,” she said with a smile as she got to her feet.
“What is it?” he asked as he grabbed his damp uniform off the cot. The Ash Angel numbness made wearing clammy, cold clothes bearable.
“Can’t tell you,” she answered, pulling her gypsy skirt on. “Meditation rules.”
“Give me a clue,” he said. “I’m a Marine, remember? I’m not good at this symbolic-vision stuff.”
“That’s not true,” she said. “You figured out my song and the first meditation riddle without my help. You’ll get it. We’ll need to work on it every day. Especially in that desecration.”
They finished dressing. The rain had stopped a couple hours before dawn, but when they stepped outside, the ground was still a soppy, boot-swallowing mess. With every sole-sucking step Helo longed for the good old days of the AAO when they actually had buildings. Maybe he could convince Mars to set up camp in the Foundry.
The clouds brooded overhead, waiting for another chance to dump on them. At the Sicarius Nox campsite, Sparks sat outside his tent smoking, Finny next to him fiddling with a Big Blessed Sniper Rifle.
“Hey,” Helo said. “Let’s get our gear ready for—”
“Everyone’s geared up except you,” Sparks said. “What have you two been up to?”
“Meditation,” Helo answered.
Sparks chuckled. “That what they call it on this side of the pond, Fin?”
Finny grinned. “I don’t think so.”
Sparks took a drag. “Maybe we should see what those fraternization rules say after all.”
“It was just meditation,” Helo said, Melody winking at him as she disappeared into the supply tent.
“Just messing with you, mate,” Sparks said. “It’s pretty soupy out there. You think we’re going to get the van out of here?”
“That’s a good question,” Helo said, looking at the sky. “Doesn’t look like the weather’s going to get any better. We need to find a town where we can buy some normal clothes. Where’s Faramir?”
“Here,” Faramir said, sticking his head out of his tent. “I hate mud, so . . . I’ll find us a town and a store. Who’s got money?”
“I’ll ask Mars,” Helo said. “Finny, go bring the van around.”
Shujaa and Andromeda came out of their tents carrying all their gear. They had steely eyes, like they’d spent the night thinking about every Dread and Sheid they wanted to send to hell. Good. They would need the grit. Going into the desecration would tax them all to their limits.
Helo had taken two steps toward the command tent when an awful feeling washed over him. He stopped and spun around. A snowflake drifted down in front of his nose. Melody walked out of the supply tent, face pinched.
“Something’s coming,” Helo said, slipping past Melody into the tent. He needed to gear up.
Sparks popped up. “What?”
“Something’s coming!” Helo repeated, hunting down a Big Blessed Shotgun and some ammo. “Get everybody up and armed. Now. Finny, get to the command tent. Let the Archai know.”
“To arms!” Sparks yelled over and over, the call taken up by other voices.
“Is it a Sheid?” Melody said.
“Worse,” Helo said, grabbing two comms units and handing one to Melody. He knew how Shedim felt. What assailed him now didn’t dredge up fears and pain from the past; it cast the future in a bleak, hopeless light, like a fortune-teller turning over the death card ten times in a row.
By the time they left the tent, the single flurry had swelled into a storm, huge flakes falling like ash on the campsite. The temperature plummeted to dead-of-winter cold in scant minutes, the wet ground hardening beneath their feet. A thin film of ice crusted over the puddles.
Melody yelped as a songbird fell out of the tree beside her and landed at her feet, breath stolen by the sudden frost. Helo tried to raise the sentries, but none of the channels seemed to work.
“Faramir,” Helo said. “Get a drone up!”
“Working on it, boss,” he said. For once his knit cap with the dongles made some sense.