Asunder (Incarnate)

by Jodi Meadows

  “There’s something out there.” I couldn’t see. The front light stretched and vanished only halfway down the path, and the trees huddled beyond its reach. Rosebushes shivered in a cool breeze, and in the woods, someone moaned long and mournful.

  My stomach dropped. I knew that sound.

  “Sylph.” The light made harsh shadows across Sam’s face. “Is that a sylph? Here?”

  “It didn’t sound like a sylph before. I thought it was a bird. It was mimicking my playing.”

  Shock flickered in Sam’s expression as he squinted into the dark. “Surely they wouldn’t be this far into Range. Or—mimic you.”

  I licked my lips and played four notes, and the repeat came from closer. Just beyond the light, a shadow writhed. Then another, to the left, and a third still in the forest. There were so many, maybe as many as there’d been the night they chased me off a cliff, into Rangedge Lake.

  Sylph burned, reeked of ash and fire, and they were without substance. The lore was complicated and contradictory. Some said they were shadows brought to a terrible half-life, thanks to fumes and heat from the caldera beneath Range. Skeptics maintained sylph were simply another of the planet’s dominant species, like dragons or centaurs or trolls; people should be cautious, but not assign them any special history or powers.

  Whatever they were, I’d had more than enough experience with them for one lifetime.

  “Sam.” I hardly recognized my voice, so opposite the storm of fear building inside me. “Get all the traps you can find.”

  Several more sylph picked up the notes, singing as though it were a short round of music. The sound grew, pressing closer, and abruptly stopped.

  A sense of waiting grew heavy in the air. A heartbeat later, a sylph whistled a scale.

  Sam touched my elbow. “You need to get inside. The walls are protected.”

  “Protected. Not sylph-proof.” I lifted my flute. “I think—” My breath hissed across the mouthpiece and made all the sylph tense, push closer. I retreated until my skirt caught in a rosebush; thorns pricked through the cloth. “I think my playing keeps them distracted. Get the eggs. Set the traps. If the sylph attack, I’ll go inside.”

  And hope I was fast enough to reach the door before they burned me alive.

  “I’ll hurry.” Sam vanished into the cottage.

  Heat billowed from all sides as the sylph swarmed closer. Heart pounding, I began to play.

  2

  SHADOWS

  DARK TENDRILS FLICKERED in and out of the light. The moaning grew softer as I played a major scale—and they sang it back.

  Every scale I played, every arpeggio and trill, the sylph echoed it and hummed closer. Heat brushed against my skin like breath as the shadows drew ever nearer, but did not attack. The scent of ozone filled the clearing, though, and the front light seemed to grow dimmer.

  “Good Janan!” A boy’s voice came from the bottom of the path.

  Every sylph went rigid and shrieked, and a wave of heat rolled toward the cottage. I gagged on the taste of ash, and sweat prickled over my skin.

  “Stop!” The word was out before I could consider the wisdom of shouting, but the sylph froze. Adrenaline surged through me, making my head buzz with terror and my voice too high and pinched. “Stay where you are,” I called to the newcomer. “Stay out of their way.”

  Silence. Either he had run, or he was doing as I said.

  I couldn’t breathe through the heat. Too easily, I could recall the sensation of a sylph burning my hands. The blaze, the lightning pain, and then nothing.

  These hadn’t burned me—yet—and if music would keep them from trying, I’d give them music. Sam would be out soon with the sylph eggs. I hoped.

  Sweat pooled between my chin and the flute as the heat intensified, but I could feel their attention shifting back to me as I drew a breath, struggled to focus, and blew a stream of air across the mouthpiece. Haltingly, I played one of the first sonatas I’d learned. It was a sweet, unassuming thing called “Honey,” which Sam had named for Sarit and her apiary five or six lifetimes ago.

  My hands and jaw shook, but after a few moments, the sylph heat faded. One or two tried to sing along, and more caught on as I kept playing.

  The sylph danced, black knotting with black. Ropes of darkness reached toward the stars, twisting with one another until they melted into one writhing shape.

  They seemed to…enjoy the music. A little more confident, I stepped closer and they moved back—as though I were a light they couldn’t stand to be near. But they kept singing, kept twisting. They kept dancing, even as we moved away from the cottage.

  Sylph had always been terrifying shadow predators, but these were behaving unlike any sylph I’d ever met. Not like the ones that had chased me on my eighteenth birthday, or the one that had burned my hands the day after. They weren’t even like the ones that had been at Templedark, though those had behaved strangely as well, fleeing from my father.

  But this. Dancing. This was not sylphlike behavior at all.

  The sonata came to an end. I smothered a moment of panic—would they be angry?—but the sylph hmmed and murmured the melody here and there, like echoes or making sure they hit the right notes.

  One at a time, sylph drifted down the path, humming as they went.

  Brush rustled, and a flashlight beam bounced across the yard as the newcomer hurried out of their path. When they were gone, the boy climbed the hill, sagging under the weight of his enormous backpack. “What did you do?” he asked.

  I clutched my flute to my chest, waiting for my heartbeat to slow to a normal speed. I had no idea what I’d done. They heard the music, sang along, and went away. It was very odd behavior.

  The boy didn’t wait for an answer. He pulled his backpack off and dropped it to the ground beside him, glancing over his shoulder like he thought the sylph might change their minds. Did they have minds? They were incorporeal shadows, affecting the world only with their heat. My hands prickled with memory of sylph burns and my phoenix feeling from months ago. The pain had been excrutiating, but when it was over, my scars had been burned away.

  “Were they after you?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “I don’t think so. I was walking here and heard your playing. I thought you might be—” He shrugged the words off. “Then I saw the sylph as I approached the path. That’s it.”

  “Hmm.” I looked beyond him into the forest, but nighttime hid everything, especially sylph.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, offering his hand. “I’ve been rude. I don’t think we’ve met in this life. Cris.”

  “Cris.” I glanced at the cottage as Sam’s rushed footfalls came toward the front door. “Purple rose Cris.”

  He made a smile that might have been a grimace. “Yes.”

  “Sorry, I meant blue.” According to everyone, Cris had bet he could grow the perfect blue rose, supposedly a genetic impossibility. Four lifetimes of rose breeding later, everyone said the results were purple, and Cris left his cottage. This cottage, which people called Purple Rose Cottage to mock his attempt.

  “Don’t worry about it.” Another smile-grimace. Cris was tall and narrow, with sharp points at his cheekbones and chin, accented by short hair. Physically, he was maybe only a couple of years older than Sam and me. In reality…

  They were all much, much older.

  The front door flew open, and Sam stood there with an armful of sylph eggs. He scanned the clearing, breath heaving. “Where are they?”

  “They flew away.” The bar of keys on my flute dug into my ribs where I held it too tightly. “We got Cris in trade.”

  “Cris.” Sam’s voice slipped, and there was something while the boys looked at each other—something I couldn’t understand.

  “Dossam. I heard you were…” Cris shifted his gaze to me. “Then you must be Ana.”

  “Yes.”

  Awkwardness pulled in all directions: the awkwardness of being me, the newsoul; the sylph that had seemed happy to go awa
y after singing; whatever history Sam and Cris had. Friendship? Hate? Some sort of falling-out? Sam hadn’t talked about Cris much, and everything I’d ever read about or by Cris—mostly gardening notes—made him seem like someone who kept to himself.

  “Sorry,” Sam said, coming back to himself. “The sylph are gone?”

  I nodded.

  “Then we should get inside before they come back. Cris, are you staying?” Sam backed into the cottage and dropped the sylph eggs in a basket, making a metallic clatter. Then he hurried to help me with the blanket and music.

  I glanced at Cris, inclining my head toward the door: another invitation. It was his cottage anyway. I didn’t know if he built it specifically for the roses, or if he’d built it long before, but it carried their name.

  He grabbed his backpack and followed me up, eyeing the roses as he walked past. “Someone’s been taking care of these.” He lifted an eyebrow at me. “You?”

  “They didn’t deserve to be abandoned just because they weren’t what you expected.” The words cut out sharper than I intended, and both Cris and Sam winced as we filed inside. “Sorry,” I muttered.

  “I’ll make tea.” Sam shut the door. “You still prefer coffee, Cris?”

  “Please.” Cris smiled—sort of—and left his backpack by the basket of sylph eggs. “I wasn’t expecting to find anyone here.”

  “You’ll stay, of course. We’ll work out sleeping arrangements.” Sam took Cris’s jacket and hung it on a peg, while Cris looked between us as though he were reevaluating something. Was he surprised that Sam and I didn’t share a room? A bed?

  A few minutes later, Cris had washed up and Sam was in the kitchen, boiling water and preparing mugs. Cris and I sat in the front room, me on the threadbare sofa and him on the chair across the low table. Neither of us said anything, and my thoughts flashed back to the sylph and their strange actions. What had they been doing?

  “I thought you’d be bigger,” Cris said.

  “What?”

  He had the decency to blush. “Sorry. I just meant that you’re the newsoul. Even being away for four years, I’ve still managed to hear the fuss everyone makes. I thought you’d be giant or have tentacles, but you’re not. You’re kind of pretty.”

  “Oh. Um.” I wished I had something to do with my hands. Anything. Besides Sam and Sarit, no one had ever said I was pretty. Sam’s friend Stef had called me cute, but that hardly seemed the same thing. “Thanks. I guess.”

  “So you’re studying music with Dossam?”

  A thrill raced through me, and I couldn’t stop myself from grinning at the flutes and music resting on the table. It had always been my dream to study with Dossam. Sam. I’d wanted music from the first moment I heard it, and Sam gave it to me every day. But Cris didn’t need to know that much about me. I just nodded.

  “What about the roses? You took care of them, even though you thought no one wanted them.”

  “People don’t want a lot of things, but they get them anyway.” Such as newsouls, or roses of indeterminate color. “I liked the roses for what they were.”

  Cris offered a dazzling smile, like I’d just said something amazing or profound. “I’m glad someone appreciated them.”

  “Hmph.” I wished Sam would hurry with the tea. Then I could pretend to focus on not spilling. “We had things in common, the roses and me. That’s all.” I wanted to kick myself for being rude, but Sam came into the room with a tray of mugs and rescued me from more humiliation. The way he looked at me said he knew it, too.

  “Where have you been traveling, Cris?” Sam sat beside me and offered a mug of tea. I wrapped both my hands around it, grateful for the distraction.

  “Lots of places. I went across the continent, cataloguing different species of plants, their rate of growth, looking for more edible plants that we might be able to grow in Heart….”

  “You walked the whole way?” I asked. “For four years?”

  He nodded. “That’s the best way to see plants you might like to eat.”

  No wonder he was as thin as a wire. But he looked strong and sharp, like he could walk across the world. I didn’t know much about lands outside Range, but I knew this continent was huge, with mountains, plains, deserts, and marshes. You could walk a thousand leagues from the east to the west and still miss so much. That is, as long as nothing killed you the moment you stepped foot outside of Range.

  “Didn’t you get lonely?”

  “Sometimes, but I had my SED.” He patted his breast pocket. “Which is how I heard about something called Templedark. What happened?”

  I shuddered, and Sam pressed a strong hand on my spine. “My father made Templedark,” I said. Though maybe I shouldn’t claim Menehem. I hadn’t known him—only through his diaries and the way just his name seemed to make everyone roll their eyes. I’d met him for only a short while the night of Templedark, before he died. “Menehem did something to the temple to stop Janan from being able to reincarnate anyone who died that night. He captured dozens of sylph from outside of Range, then released them in Heart. Dragons came that night, too.”

  Cris jerked his gaze toward Sam, who’d gone still and pale at the mention of dragons. “And you—” Cris smoothed his perplexed expression. “You made it through. That’s good.”

  “Ana saved me.” Sam’s hand settled on my hip, pulling us close. “She saved me from dragons twice.”

  Questions stretched in the air between Cris and us, a piano wire pulled so taut it might snap. “So, Ana,” Cris said, “you know about Dossam and dragons?”

  I nodded.

  Sam was still ashen. “I told her about the way they come after me. She knows.”

  The thinking line had carved itself between Sam’s eyebrows; sometimes it was a worry line, or a stress line. I rested my hand on his knee and drew his gaze, and when our eyes met, the line melted away. “It’s okay,” I murmured. “I’ll protect you from the dragons.” It was a joke, mostly, just to make him smile. Because what could I do against dragons? They’d killed him thirty times.

  Thirty.

  But Sam wove his fingers with mine and smiled. “I know you will.” It didn’t sound like teasing at all.

  “Fascinating.” Cris wrapped his hands around his mug, his tone light and amused, but tinged with something sad. He sipped his coffee, as though to hide the emotion. “One newsoul, and Sam’s problem with dragons is fixed.”

  “I wouldn’t say that.” I glanced toward the window, like sylph or dragons might be peeking in right now. “There’ve been two dragon attacks since I came.”

  “They always come in twos.” Cris rested his mug on his knee. “You were just unlucky enough to be here for their first visit in quite some time.”

  “And we were all unlucky enough they chose to come during Templedark.” Sam lowered his eyes, the memory of Templedark still fresh and heavy. “The sylph and the dragons proved too much. Everyone panicked. We lost more than we should have before anyone realized what Menehem had done: he made the temple go dark.”

  When I closed my eyes, I could still see the strange darkness where the iridescent light of the temple should be. Except it shouldn’t illuminate. What kind of building glowed in the dark?

  One with Janan in it.

  “Stopping reincarnation. What a thing to do.” Cris shook his head, then leveled his gaze on me. “Did Menehem—before? You?”

  Oh, Cris was quick. “By accident. That was why he left eighteen years ago—to find out what he’d done.” I shrugged, feigning nonchalance. “Only Menehem knows why he wanted to end so many others. Maybe he’ll tell us when he’s reborn.”

  That wasn’t quite true, I knew. But not knowing how Cris felt about Janan—some people really cared, while others hadn’t believed for millennia—I didn’t say any more. Menehem had given me two explanations. The first made it sound as though he were doing me a favor: attempting to let more newsouls be born.

  The other reason Menehem had given me seemed most genuine: he’d wanted to p
rove Janan’s existence either true or false. It had been scientific curiosity, nothing more.

  Cris glared into his coffee. “I’m sure the Council will be very curious to find out exactly how he created Templedark so they can prevent anyone from ever doing it again.”

  “I’m sure they will be.” Did my voice shake? It seemed like Menehem’s research notes were a bright beacon shining from my room. He’d left them for me after he died, and I hadn’t wanted to leave them in Heart. The folders and diaries, the door device, the mysterious books I’d stolen from the temple—it was a wonder everyone didn’t know about them just from the guilt on my face.

  But I wasn’t ready to tell anyone about my visit into the temple or Menehem’s research, and Sam had agreed. I didn’t know exactly how the Council would react, but it definitely wouldn’t be good.

  Sam looked at Cris, a strange and awkward hopefulness in his tone. “You’re on your way back to Heart now?”

  “I think I’d better be,” Cris said. “Sine’s message indicated they’d need assistance reorganizing the genealogies now that so many won’t return.”

  “I’m sure they’ll appreciate your help,” Sam said, not explaining to me how a gardener would be useful for genealogies.

  They talked until everyone’s mug was empty, keeping the conversation to simple things, like the best road to take into Heart, and warnings about bears and wolves in certain parts of the forest. They concluded with a polite argument about who would take the other bedroom, and Sam won, which meant he slept on the sofa.

  As the calming herbs in my tea took effect, I wished the boys good night and went into my room, trying desperately not to think of the sylph.

  Moaning wind roused me from fiery dreams.

  My bedroom looked the same as it always had, dusty wood floors and walls all bathed in darkness, but something was different. Not the shadows, but the sounds. The wind had never made this particular wailing in the eighteen years I’d lived in Purple Rose Cottage.