Asunder (Incarnate)

by Jodi Meadows

  “Where did you go?” He sounded broken. Shattered. He sat on the edge of the sofa. “I looked everywhere for you.”

  My arms were too heavy to lift all the way to his face, so I settled for his elbows and dragged him downward. “You really don’t remember?”

  “You didn’t tell me. I thought we were going somewhere together, but I can’t remember. I had a backpack. I tried to call you.”

  The memory magic had closed over the cracks in my absence. I groaned.

  “It’s okay,” Sam murmured. “We can talk about it later, if you want. I’ve called Lidea and Sarit. They want to come see you.”

  Opening my eyes was painful. No way could I smile for guests. “Not now.”

  “Not now,” he agreed. “Can I get anything for you?”

  I spoke without thinking. There was one thing I always needed. “Music. Play for me.”

  Sam kissed my forehead and retreated to the piano in the center of the parlor. Long, low notes filled the room, bouncing off the polished wood and stone figurines. This room was meant for music, and I sank into the sound as though it were a pile of feathers.

  I dreamt of black rooms and black tears, and my fate narrowly avoided.

  I awoke trapped in the tangled embrace of blankets. I thrashed and tumbled off the sofa, ran for the nearest washroom, and lost everything in my stomach.

  Outside the washroom, I heard Sam growling into his SED. “Tell them to postpone the deadline. She’s in no condition to leave right now….

  “She’s very ill….

  “No, she was getting better, and then someone attacked her in the market field. Deborl cornered her right after….

  “You’re the Speaker, Sine. Overrule them….

  “Stand up for her. Stand up for all the newsouls and do something to help.”

  More than he knew, someone had to stand up for them. Someone had to stop Janan from hurting newsouls. Someone had to.

  I had to.

  I sobbed until I crashed into dreams again.

  When I finally opened my eyes without panicking, Sam brought tea and a plate of buttered toast. The lines and dark smudges were gone from his face, so I must have slept for quite a while.

  I’d lost a week in the temple, lost more time sleeping after my escape. If I kept this up, I wouldn’t have any memories at all. I might as well be one of the newsouls trapped in the everywhere-light and darkness.

  I lowered my teacup mid-sip, and Sam brushed a tear off my cheek. That was all I had left: a few tears. No energy left for a big cry.

  “I wish I hadn’t gone in.” I gulped my tea and set the cup aside, scrubbed my palms against my face. I really wanted a shower. A week of real sleep. No nightmares. “Where are my things? My notebook?” I needed to work on translating the temple books.

  “In your room. Do you want to go up?”

  “After I finish this.”

  Sam frowned, but waited while I ate my toast and found my feet. I felt like a memory of myself, after no food, after crying. It made me heavy and light at the same time, and I swayed on aching legs. Were they thinner than before? If I took off my clothes and looked in the mirror, could I count my ribs? I felt so hollow.

  I managed to get upstairs without crumbling, without forgetting I wasn’t still climbing out of Meuric’s pit. Sam followed me into my room, staying close while I found clean clothes. He didn’t speak when I went to shower.

  Hot water burned off layers of memory. The reek of sideways and spherical rooms, the rancid odor of Meuric and his eye, and the stench of my own sweat. I watched it spiral into the drain.

  Dressed again, I sat next to Sam on my bed. “Did you sleep in the parlor today? Last night?” My window showed a deep purple sky, a pale dusting of stars. Evening.

  “I’m afraid of what will happen if I look away from you.”

  “If you were afraid I’d been kidnapped, why did you tell everyone I was sick?”

  A line of thought formed between his eyes. “We checked everyone who’s ever publicly acted against you, like Merton, but I was afraid that—no matter what actually had happened—people would find a way to twist the truth. You were kidnapped because everyone hates you, or you ran away to live with the sylph. I don’t know. Scared people are creative people. They would have come up with something, so if I only said you were sick and no one knew the truth—that you were missing—I could control what people said.”

  “Sam.” I tried not to imagine how frightened I’d have been if our positions were reversed. I couldn’t blame him for the way he watched me now. “Sam,” I whispered again, because the only thing I could say was his name.

  He pressed his hand over mine, resting on my lap. “I don’t think I’ve ever been as afraid as when I couldn’t find you that night.” His breath was long and shaky. “I’ve been inside every darksoul home, every warehouse and building in both the agricultural and industrial quarters, and every closet in the Councilhouse. I don’t think I slept for more than five minutes at a time.

  “When we first met, you asked about the scariest thing I could think of.”

  The day had been clear and cold, filled with questions. I hadn’t even known who he was then, just that he pulled strangers from frozen lakes. I wished he could pull me from the frozen shock now. “I remember,” I whispered. “You said not knowing what would happen if you died and didn’t come back. Where would you go? What would you do?” My gut twisted.

  “When I couldn’t find you that night, I realized that wasn’t my answer anymore.” He pulled my hand up, placed it over his heart. The beat raced under my fingertips. “If you asked me now, I’d say the scariest thing I can imagine is losing you.”

  I didn’t know how to respond.

  “I wish I could tell you all the things you make me feel. I tried putting them into music, but even that wasn’t strong enough.”

  I wanted to ask how he knew, how he could tell the difference between love and infatuation. But I couldn’t force my mouth to form the words, because then he kissed my fingers one at a time and my focus sharpened, narrowed to all the places we touched. Our knees, his hands over my wrist, his lips on my knuckles.

  When each finger had a kiss, he turned my hand palm up and cupped it over his cheek. “You’re part of me, part of my existence.” Muscles in his jaw shifted under my fingers. “Everything was dimmer without you.”

  If he’d been the one missing, I’d have crawled onto him to keep him from leaving ever again. Even in my imagination, I could feel him beneath me, bones and muscles and the solid presence of him. In my imagination, he lay there beneath me and never left.

  I was both relieved and disappointed that he didn’t have the same impulse. Or he had better restraint.

  Sighing, he released my hand. “I’m still not sure you won’t vanish if I’m not holding you.” He glanced at my fingers, now curled on my knee. He started to reach again, but hesitated. Maybe he did want to crawl on top of me after all. “But you just got back, and there are so many things we need to do, which means anything I want will wait. And whatever happened to you, it must have been terrible.”

  The odor of Meuric’s nest, the blackness with weepers, and Janan’s voice by my ear. My breath came like a stutter.

  Sam tucked my damp hair behind my ear. “Can you tell me?”

  “You don’t want to know,” I whispered, hating myself for all the terrible things I was about to make him feel. “But it’s important that you do, anyway.”

  He waited.

  “First, you have to know that for a little while, you knew exactly where I was. You were going to go inside the temple with me.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  “It is. I had a key.” But it was gone now. Had the stranger given it to Deborl? What would they do with it? “We were going to go in together. You insisted, and I didn’t want to go by myself. But Stef spotted you and I had to go in alone, before I lost the chance. It’s just, Janan plays with your memories. You aren’t allowed to know certain thi
ngs, so you forget them, and you don’t question inconsistencies because none of you notice them.”

  “That sounds crazy,” he whispered. “We remember everything, from the very first lifetime.”

  “You don’t.” I touched his hand. “You don’t remember everything. And that’s not the only thing.” I told him what Janan did to souls like mine.

  19

  TRANSFORM

  AFTER TELLING SAM everything that happened in the temple, I didn’t have the energy to attempt translating the books, though I’d hoped to try.

  Instead, I started crying again, and Sam grew somber and distant as he led me downstairs. Dusk had fallen long ago, leaving only lamps and reflections off polished wood to illuminate the parlor. I wrapped myself in blankets on the sofa, listening to his footfalls in the kitchen. Cabinet doors opened and closed, boiling water hissed, and a spoon clanked on ceramic as he stirred honey into my tea.

  He left the mug on an end table for me, then went to work on the piano, adjusting strings beneath the gleaming maple lid, then testing pitches. Every so often, he’d stop working to play, always making sure to ask if I had any requests, but most of the time I was content to watch and listen.

  Nocturnes and preludes lulled me into dozing, and I awakened to find morning had arrived, covered in a film of snow. Sam and I dressed warmly and headed to the Councilhouse for my very late monthly progress report.

  Predictably, the Council quizzed me mercilessly on my supposed sickness and symptoms, expressing false sympathy. Well, Sine’s concern might have been real. She worked hard to steer the conversation back to my progress report, but the general suspicion was clear: the Council thought I was up to something.

  And wasn’t I? I’d discovered Menehem’s poison-making machine, Janan’s terrible hunger, and their fellow Councilor alive inside the temple. I possessed the only unaltered memory, books from the temple, and—until recently—the key to the temple. Sylph sang for me.

  It wouldn’t matter that Janan had even more sinister plans for Soul Night. The Council couldn’t trust someone like me.

  Fortunately, Sam had foreseen the Council’s questions about my illness and prepared me, so I described sleeping through a fever that involved lots of snot and throwing up.

  “I died from that once,” Sam added as we descended the Councilhouse stairs. An icy breeze scoured the market field, though it didn’t deter devoted gossips and workers.

  “Um.” I hunched beneath my coat hood, conscious of glares in my direction. Merton was out again, reminding people about the sylph incident at the lake, and how disgusting it was that Sam was in a romantic relationship with me. The Council’s advice on this was the same as it had been: ignore it. “If you died from the illness,” I asked, “is it a miracle I’m alive?”

  He slipped his hand around mine and squeezed. “Well, yes. But that was several lifetimes ago. Medicine has come a long way since then. Don’t worry. The medic who supposedly treated you is a good friend. She won’t say anything if they ask.”

  “Oh, good.”

  We stopped at Armande’s pastry stall, sipping coffee and eating muffins until he was satisfied I wasn’t starving to death. Sam kept checking his SED, but otherwise held a long conversation with Armande about what they each planned to have for lunch. It seemed suspicious to me, but we sat a good distance away from the temple and Merton’s gathering, and Armande continued giving me snacks. I didn’t complain, but I couldn’t ignore the voices from the Councilhouse steps.

  “Newsouls are a plague,” a woman shouted. “Punishment for our lack of devotion to Janan.”

  Her theory and the truth were as far apart as the sea and the stars, but it was a popular sentiment.

  “They have no skills,” said a man. “Why should we feel obligated to care for anyone who can’t offer anything to the community? We don’t have resources to shelter and feed them. What happens if there are more and more? There are—were—a million of us. And only a million. We used to think we were the only souls in existence, but that’s been”—the man’s voice thinned, like he didn’t believe what he was about to say—“proven false. Now whatever limit was set has been broken. What happens when they outnumber us?”

  I glanced at Sam and Armande just in time to see them cringe.

  It was a good question. I didn’t know, either. Of course, this man was leaping to conclusions. For all anyone knew, newsouls might be limited, too. Eventually, by counting how many newsouls were born, they’d be able to tell how many oldsouls had truly been lost during Templedark. At least seventy-two. Probably more. But it seemed to me, once we reached that number, that would be it.

  Then we’d either be reincarnated or we wouldn’t.

  At noon, Sam wished Armande a good day, and we headed back to the southwestern residential quarter. Snow flurries pushed through the streets, and the day was just cold enough to allow a layer of white on the ground.

  When we got home, tracks in the snow led to the front door and away, scuffed enough that I couldn’t tell anything about them except the intruder had been through a lot. Light seeped from the parlor windows. Perhaps the Council had finally made good on their threat to have my room searched. If they took my books and research, and Deborl had the key—

  Fear splintered through me. “Sam?”

  “It’s all right.” He took my hand and drew me to the door, where I caught a sweet scent. And when I stepped inside, roses transformed the parlor into another world entirely.

  Shades of red and blue clustered in vases on tables and shelves. They rested alone on the piano’s music stand and on the edge of each step of the staircase. They peeked from stands, from instrument cases, from behind the decorations that served beauty and acoustics.

  The perfume was intoxicating, so rich I could taste it. A subtler, spicy aroma filled me up, warming me as the front door shut and Sam stopped beside me, wearing a smile. “I like it.”

  “Did Cris run out of room in his greenhouse?”

  Sam chuckled. “Not as far as I know.”

  I drifted through the room, touching petals. “I like the way they’re all mixed together, the red and blue. Are these”—I bent to sniff one—“Phoenix roses?” They had more petals than the blue roses I was used to, like ruffles of wisp-thin paper.

  “They are. As many blue and Phoenix roses as he could stand to lose.” Sam tugged off his boots and leaned against the piano, tracking my progress through the room. “I haven’t seen you look this happy in a long time.”

  “It’s like a greenhouse exploded in our parlor and left—” I swept my hands around. They were everywhere, changing the way light and color caught my attention, drawing my eyes to places I hadn’t looked since I’d first come to Heart. They were by the cello, resting on the harpsichord, and threaded through my music stand.

  And by my new flute, resting on its stand and polished to a shine, lay the most perfect blue rose I’d ever seen, with smooth petals so flawless they didn’t look real. The bloom bent under my fingertips, as soft as air.

  I turned. “Why would you do this?”

  He smiled as I stepped into his embrace, and his arms wrapped strong and solid around my waist. “Why not?” He pulled me tight, and when I lifted my eyes to his, he kissed me.

  I lost myself in the brush of his lips, the thrill of his fingers against my cheek and neck and shoulder, and thump of his heartbeat under my palm. So engaged in the way his mouth fit with mine, I almost missed the purr of my coat being unzipped. When he paused his kissing, I stepped back, and he slipped my coat off my shoulders; I dropped my arms and the cloth fell with a soft whump.

  “I love you. Have I told you that since you got back?” He curled his hands over my hips and didn’t wait for me to answer. “I want to tell you every hour. Every minute. Ever since you returned, all I can think about is how close I came to not having you at all. And how close you came to being—” He looked away, expression grim.

  “You remember that?” I would be so grateful if I didn’t ha
ve to keep explaining it, or reminding him that I hadn’t actually been missing. “You remember everything I told you about being inside the temple?”

  He nodded, looking wrecked. “I keep remembering it.”

  “And the white wall in the north? Right before the dragons?” I bit my lip.

  Recognition flickered through him, but he shook his head. “No. A little, but no.” He grew quiet, seeming distracted by my hair. It tugged and tingled across my scalp where he pulled his fingers through the waves. “There are things I should remember, but I don’t.”

  “Yeah.” My heart thudded.

  “You remember them.”

  I offered a pale smile, relief that my newness was good for something. “I wasn’t reborn.”

  “And there are things I’m remembering because of you.”

  “Yes.” At least, it seemed to be my doing. It was unlikely that after five thousand years, the magic would suddenly begin breaking down in the middle of this lifetime. I was the only thing that had changed.

  A tiny sense of importance surged through me.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” he said.

  I looped my arms around his shoulders and pulled close. “Because I make you remember things?” I didn’t want to think about Janan right now. I wanted Sam to kiss me.

  “Because of a lot of reasons.” He read my mind, or read the way our bodies pressed together, only bunched clothes between us.

  Our kiss stopped time, stopped thoughts. All I knew was the feel of his mouth, the gasp and shuddered breath, and the calluses of his hands on my back. Cool air fluttered where he’d lifted my shirt, sharp contrast to the way he made me burn with desire. I didn’t have words for what I wanted with him, but if I could push closer and closer—

  “No one would believe Ana was terribly ill for a week if they saw this.” Amusement filled Sarit’s voice, and I spun to find her—and Cris and Stef—crowding the kitchen doorway. “Oh, I’m sorry.” Sarit grinned, not sounding sorry at all. “I didn’t mean to interrupt, but I thought you should know we brought lunch.”