by Jodi Meadows
I was on my back.
Something pounded on my chest. A rock. A fist. Anger. Chill and wet pressed on my mouth, and heat blew in. The beating on my chest resumed and a bubble formed inside me, grew and forced its way up.
A dark and dripping face floated in my vision a heartbeat before I choked up lake water. It seared my throat like fire, but I coughed and spit until my mouth was dry. I fell to my back again as the shivers came, rattling through me like the cottage windowpanes in a storm.
I was alive. The freezing wind was colder than the lake, but I could breathe. Someone else’s air filled me. I forced my eyes open, hardly able to believe anyone would bother to rescue me.
The ice and encroaching blackness must have damaged my vision, because I saw a boy’s concerned expression shift to relief. Maybe it was my fading consciousness that made him appear to smile. At me.
Then I was gone, lost in dreams.
Wool blankets brushed my face. My bulky coat and boots were gone, and I was dry, lying on my side. My toes and fingers tingled as the numbness retreated. Already I was sore from my impact with the water, but the only thing that really hurt was the graze on my cheek. Blankets trapped me in a pocket of warm air. Foggy thoughts trapped me in this dream of safety.
Something solid pressed against my back. A body breathed in time with me, steady in and out, until I broke the unity by thinking about it. An arm was slung over my ribs, and a palm rested on my heart as if to make sure it continued beating, or to ensure that it didn’t fall out. Breath warmed the back of my neck, rustling hairs across my skin.
Just as I began to drowse further into my dream, a deep voice behind me said, “Hi.”
I held my breath, waiting for the dream to change.
“It’s been, what, four thousand years since anyone thought midwinter swimming was a good idea? It’s an awful way to go. Did you just want to see if that had changed?”
My eyes snapped open as my situation crystalized. I jumped, legs tangled in the blanket, and my elbow bumped a small heater. The tent seemed to close around me. Only a tiny lamp illuminated the space, but it was enough to show me the zipped door. I lunged for it.
The man caught my waist and pulled. I dropped to my butt, dragging the zipper with me. Winter air poured inside as I wiggled from his grasp and threw myself into the waiting night. Snow sparkled in moonlight, deceptively peaceful with its smothering silence.
Wool socks protected my feet until I got to a line of trees across a clearing, and then pine needles and pebbles stabbed through the snow. I didn’t care. Didn’t stop. I ran anywhere, as long as it was away from sylph and the strange young man. There was no telling what he wanted, but if he was anything like Li, it wouldn’t be good.
Winter caught up with me as I rounded a tower of boulders and stubby trees. Goose bumps crawled up my bare arms. I wore only a thin shirt and too-big trousers — neither were mine.
Freezing air hit the back of my throat with each ragged breath. I stumbled down a staircase of rocks and packed dirt, intent on running again, but the lake stretched wide under moonlight, right in front of me. Wavelets glinted as they lapped the shore and my toes.
I staggered backward, images of ice and a dimming flashlight on the backs of my eyelids every time I blinked. The cliff where I’d fallen — no, jumped — hung over the lake a ways to my right, silhouetted against bright starlight and snowy mountains. I should have died.
Maybe Li had paid that boy to rescue me. It wouldn’t be the first time she used me like a cat playing with a mouse until it nearly died of fright.
Pine needles rustled and snow swished underfoot. Light bled across the waves in front of my feet. I spun around. The boy held a lamp shoulder high, his gaze beyond me. “After I worked so hard saving you, I’d appreciate if you didn’t try to kill yourself again.”
I clenched my jaw against chattering teeth. Tremors wracked through me as I searched for escape, but he was blocking the only path. I could try beating him up, or swimming to another shore where he couldn’t follow. Both were unlikely to work, especially since getting back in the freezing lake was the last thing I wanted. He’d probably just save me again.
He must have been strong, dragging me from the bottom like that. Stubble darkened his chin and he towered over me, but he looked my age. Tan skin, wide-set eyes, and shaggy, shadowed hair. Those must have been his arms around me underwater, and his breath that filled me when I had none of my own.
“You might as well come back.” He offered his free hand, long fingers slightly curled in welcome. “I won’t hurt you, and you’re shivering. I’ll make tea.” He didn’t quite hide his shivers, either; no coat or gloves meant he hadn’t taken the extra time to dress for cold before following me. Perhaps his concern was genuine, though I’d thought Li sincere when she reminded me about bringing a compass. “Please?”
My other option was freezing to death, which seemed less appealing now that I was definitely alive. I would watch him, though, and if he did anything Li-like, I’d escape. He couldn’t make me stay.
I followed him through the woods. Didn’t take his hand, just hugged myself and was glad he’d brought that lantern, and that he’d paid attention to where I’d run.
The forest was black with shadows and white with snowdrifts. Fir and pine trees shuddered under the weight of a million snowflakes. I jumped at noises, straining to hear the whispers and moans that had driven me into the lake to begin with.
My cheek still throbbed where the sylph had touched me, and was hot to my bare fingers. It didn’t feel blistered, though; doubtful it would kill me. I was lucky it hadn’t gotten me more than that. Large sylph burns were said to grow and consume the entire body over time. Li had warned me it was a painful way to die.
We reached the tent. Outside, a small horse snorted and eyed us from underneath half a dozen blankets. When we didn’t do anything alarming, he tucked his head down to sleep.
My rescuer held open the tent for me. Our boots and coats hung by the door, still damp. Blankets on the left, a small solar battery heater in the center, and his bags on the other side. There was just enough room for one person to stretch out, two if they were friendly… or staving off hypothermia. He’d known exactly how to save my life, while I would have panicked in his position. I’d panicked enough in my position.
“Sit.” He nodded at the blankets and heater.
I didn’t lower myself gracefully so much as collapse into a trembling heap. My entire body ached. From cold, from hitting the water. From the fiery shadows chasing me through the woods.
If he’d known I was the nosoul, he wouldn’t have knelt and helped me sit up. He wouldn’t have pulled a blanket tight around my shoulders and scowled at the burn on my cheek. But he didn’t know, so he did. Which meant maybe he wasn’t one of Li’s friends after all. “Sylph?”
I cupped my hand over the burn. If it was obvious, why was he asking?
He retreated to his bags, filled a portable water heater, and flipped the switch. When bubbles rose from the bottom of the glass, he produced a small box. “Do you like tea?”
I forced a nod and, when he wasn’t looking, held my hands toward the space heater. Hot waves prickled across my skin, but the cold burrowed deeper than that. In my feet especially, from running outside. The wool socks — which must have been his, because I could have fit my hands in there too — were damp with snow.
He poured two mugs of boiling water and dropped in tea leaves. “Here.” He offered one. “Give it a minute to finish steeping.”
Nothing he did was threatening. Maybe he had saved me out of the goodness of his heart, though he’d probably regret it if he knew what I was. And now I felt stupid for dragging both of us into the cold night again.
I took the offered tea. The ceramic mug was dimpled from either long use or poor craftsmanship, and a choir of painted songbirds decorated the side. It was nothing like Li’s stark, serviceable belongings. I wrapped my hands around the mug to soak up the warmth, breathing in st
eam that tasted like herbs. It scalded my tongue, but I closed my eyes and waited for my insides to stop shivering.
“I’m Sam, by the way.”
“Hi.” If not for the risk of melting my insides to puddles, I’d have gulped down the tea all at once.
He peered at me, searching for… something. “You’re not going to tell me who you are?”
I frowned. If I admitted to being the nosoul, the thing born instead of someone named Ciana, he’d take my tea and kick me out of the tent. This wasn’t my life, Li had sometimes told me. She hadn’t revealed Ciana’s name then, but I knew I’d replaced someone. I’d overheard her gossiping about it once. Every breath I took should have belonged to someone whom everyone had known for five thousand years. The guilt was crushing.
I couldn’t tell this man what I was.
“You didn’t have to chase me outside. I’d have been fine.”
He scowled, shadowed lines between his eyes. “Like you were fine in the lake?”
“That was different. Maybe I wanted to be out there.” Stupid mouth. He was going to know if I couldn’t control my stupid mouth.
“If you say so.” He wiped the inside of the water heater dry and stuffed it back in its bag. “I doubt you wanted to die. I was filling my canteens when I saw you jump. You screamed, and I saw thrashing as if you were trying to swim. When you reached the lake a little while ago, you startled like a mouse realizing there was a cat in the room. What were you doing in the woods? How did you run into sylph?”
“Doesn’t matter.” I scooted closer to the heater.
“So you aren’t going to tell me your name.” A statement, not a question. He’d start guessing soon. He could rule out all the people who I definitely didn’t behave like, all the people reborn in the wrong time to be eighteen right now, and all the people my age he’d seen in the last few years. “I can’t remember offending anyone so much they wouldn’t trust me with their name. At least not recently.”
“You don’t know me.”
“That’s what I said. Did you get water in your brain?” It only half sounded like a joke.
I didn’t know of a Sam, but considering the meager collection of books in the cottage library, that wasn’t a surprise. I didn’t know about a lot of people.
I gulped the rest of my tea and lowered the empty mug, mumbling, “I’m Ana.” My insides were warm now, and I wasn’t drowning. When he kicked me out, I’d be no worse off than before, as long as I could find my backpack.
“Ana.”
Shivers crawled up my spine when he said my name. And what a name. When I’d gotten the nerve to ask Li why they chose that, she said it was part of an old word that meant “alone” or “empty.” It was also part of Ciana’s name, symbolizing what I’d taken from her. It meant I was a nosoul. A girl who fell in lakes and got rescued by Sam.
I kept my face down and watched him through my eyelashes. His skin was flushed in the warm tent, with steam from the tea. He still had the full cheeks of his apparent age — close to mine — but the way he spoke held authority, knowledge. It was deceptive, the way he looked like someone I could have grown up with, but he’d actually lived thousands of years. Hair fell like shadows across his eyes, hiding whatever he thought while he studied me in return.
“You’re not—” He cocked his head and frowned. I must have been as easy to read as a sky full of rain clouds. “Oh, you’re that Ana.”
My stomach twisted as I pushed off the blanket, torn between anger and humiliation. That Ana. Like a disease. “I’ll get out of your way now. Thank you for the tea. And for saving me.” I moved for the door, but he held his arm across the zipper.
“That’s not necessary.” He jerked his head toward the blanket again, no room for argument in his tone. “Rest.”
I bit my lip and tried to decide if, as soon as I fell asleep, he would contact Li, tell her he’d found me in a lake, and I wasn’t capable of caring for myself yet.
I couldn’t go back to her. Couldn’t.
His tone gentled, like I was a spooked horse. “It’s all right, Ana. Please stay.”
“Okay.” Gaze never straying from his, I lowered myself again, back under the blanket. That Ana. Nosoul. Ana who shouldn’t have been born. “Thank you. I’ll repay your generosity.”
“How?” He was motionless, hands on his lap and eyes locked on mine. “Do you have any skills?”
Nerves caught in my throat. This was one of the few things Li had explained, and she’d explained often. There were a million souls in Range. There’d always been a million souls, and every one of them pulled their weight in order to ensure society continued to improve. Everyone had necessary talents or skills, be it a head for numbers or words, imagination for inventions, the ability to lead, or simply the desire to farm and raise food so no one would starve. For thousands of years, they’d earned the right to have a good life.
I hadn’t earned anything. I was the nosoul who’d taken eighteen of Li’s years, her food and skills, pestered her with questions and all my needs. Most people left their current parents when they were thirteen years old. Fourteen at most. By then they were usually big and strong enough to make it wherever they wanted to go. I’d stayed five extra years.
I had nothing unique to offer Sam. I lowered my eyes. “Only what Li taught me.”
“And that was?” When I didn’t speak, he said, “Not how to swim, obviously.”
What did that mean? I’d figured out how to tread water when I was younger, but everything was different in the winter. In the dark. I frowned; maybe it had been a joke. I decided to ignore it. “Housecleaning, gardening, cooking. That sort of thing.”
He nodded, as if encouraging me to go on.
I shrugged.
“She must have helped you learn to speak.” Again, I shrugged, and he chuckled. “Or not.”
Laughing at me. Just like Li.
I met his eyes and made my voice like stone. “Maybe she taught me when not to speak.”
Sam jerked straight. “And how to be defensive when no offense was intended.” He cut me off before I could apologize, though my mouth had dropped open to do so; I didn’t really want to leave the warm tent, especially now that the herbs and overall exhaustion were taking effect. I grew drowsy. “Do you know anything about the world? How you fit in?”
“I know I’m different.” My throat closed, and my voice squeaked. “And I was hoping to find out how I fit in.”
“By running through Range in your socked feet?” One corner of his mouth tugged upward when I glared. “A joke.”
“Sylph chased me and I lost my backpack. I planned on walking to Heart to search the library for any hint of why I was born.” There had to be a reason I’d replaced Ciana. Surely I wasn’t a mistake, a big oops that cost someone her immortality and buried everyone else under the pain of her loss. Knowing wouldn’t help the guilt, but it might reveal what I was supposed to do with my stolen life.
“From what you’ve said, I’m surprised Li bothered teaching you to read.”
“I figured it out.”
His eyebrows lifted. “You taught yourself to read.”
The tent was too hot, his surprised stare too probing. I licked my lips and eyed the door again, just to remind myself it was still there. My coat, too. I could escape if I needed to. “It’s not like I created the written word or composed the first sonata. I just made sense of what someone else had already done.”
“Considering how other people’s logic and decisions are rarely comprehensible to anyone else, I’d say that’s impressive.”
“Or a testament to their skills, if even I can figure out how to read.”
He gathered the empty mugs and put them away. “And the sonata? You figured that out as well?”
“Especially that.” I covered my mouth to yawn. “I wanted something to fall asleep to, even if it’s only in my head.”
“Hmm.” He dimmed the lamp and shifted bags around the tent. “I’ll think about repayment, Ana. Get some
rest for now. If you want to find your bag and go to Heart, you’ll need all your strength.”
I glanced at the blankets and sleeping bag, wary in spite of exhaustion. “Like before?”
“Janan, no! I’m sorry. I thought we knew each other. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”
“It’s okay.” He was probably wondering how he’d managed to find the only nosoul in the world when chances were so much higher of him rescuing someone he already knew. He was showing me more kindness than anyone ever had, though; I should try to reciprocate. “There isn’t much space. I’ll face the wall if you’ll face the other way. That way neither of us is cold.”
“Don’t be silly. I’ll face the wall.” He motioned me closer to the heater. “We’ll discuss other issues in the morning, and that’s”—he checked a small device—“in three hours. Get some rest. It sounds like you’ve had a difficult day.”
If only he knew.
Chapter 3
Sylph
MOVEMENT AROUND THE tent dragged me to the edges of consciousness.
Water murmured, a switch clicked, and something unfamiliar swished, like powder falling into ceramic. A heavy, bitter scent flooded the tent as Sam stirred water into a mug.
“Wake up. Time to go.” He touched my shoulder.
I gasped, fighting the way my mind conjured a similar image of him leaning over me, only a few hours old. The dark hair had been dripping, and the broad hands urging my heart to beat again.
Like an idiot, I stared at him until I saw only the present. Last night became a memory again. “Oh.” I’d been staring too long. “It’s just you.”
“Yes.” His tone was chalk-dry. “Just me.” Before I could apologize for insulting him somehow, he sat back. “Drink your coffee. We’re leaving in twenty minutes. That gives us enough time to pack and load Shaggy. We’ll eat breakfast while we walk.”
“Shaggy?” I sat, blankets knotting around my legs, and reached for the nearest mug of dark liquid. Then I answered my own question with a smirk. “The horse? Creative name.”