by Jodi Meadows
“It’s okay.” I stood and tried to collect myself, but Dossam was right there and how could I ever look at him again, knowing he’d seen me at my worst? How could he ever be Sam again, now that he was Dossam?
This was what he’d tried to avoid by not telling me his true identity. If I didn’t get myself together, he’d think horrible things about me.
I forced myself to look at him, still sitting at the piano, palms on his knees. He still looked like the Sam who’d pulled me from the lake, and the Sam who’d wrapped my hands after they’d been burned.
“What was that you played?” I edged closer. To the piano. To him.
Same wide-set eyes, same shaggy black hair. Same hesitant smile. “It’s yours,” he said. “It’s called whatever you want.”
I staggered back. So much for collecting myself. “Mine?”
He took my shoulder, stopping me from crashing into something. “Didn’t you hear?” he asked, searching me. “I used the notes you picked, things that remind me of you.”
My notes. Things that reminded him of me. Dossam thought of me, the nosoul.
He didn’t think I was a nosoul.
Oblivious to my thoughts, he went on. “It isn’t often I have the pleasure of performing for someone who hasn’t heard me play a thousand times. I think Armande and Stef are bored of it.”
“I can’t imagine ever getting bored of that. I could listen forever.” I bit my lip. Why couldn’t I say anything halfway smart? But he smiled. “You made that up? Just now?”
“Some of it. Some I’ve been thinking of for a while. I’ll have to start writing it down before I forget.” He offered a hand, which I just stared at because a minute ago, that hand had been on the piano making a melody for me, and suddenly I wasn’t no one anymore. I was Ana who Had Music.
I had the best music.
“Are you all right?” He held me by the elbows, as if I’d been about to topple over from the weight of all my thoughts.
“Fine.” Overwhelmed. Dizzy. But I didn’t want him to realize I’d made more of his gift than he’d intended. I didn’t even know how to thank him.
“It’s late. Let’s clean up and rest. Does that sound okay?”
Dumbly, I nodded and let him lead me up the stairs, down a corridor, and into a bedroom decorated in shades of blue.
Lace hung over the shuttered window, covered the bed, and hid a closet alcove with hanging clothes. The walls were little more than sheets with hand-cut shelves pressed against both sides. Some cubbies held folded blankets and things, while others held books or small instruments carved from antelope horns. One wall had been made into a desk. Only the outside wall was stone, but he’d covered that with paintings of erupting geysers, snowy forests, and ancient ruins.
“Help yourself to anything that fits. I’m sure there’s something, even if it’s outdated.” He motioned at another door, made the same way as the walls. “There’s a washroom. Everything you need should be in there.”
“You have all this stuff in case a girl comes to stay awhile?”
Sam shifted his weight away from me. “Actually, it’s mine.”
I was imagining him in a dress before I remembered he’d been a girl in other lifetimes. He wasn’t the strange one.
“Right. Sorry.” It was a poor apology, but I couldn’t make myself come up with anything better. I was tired and sore, and echoes of his song — my song! — stayed in my head. My chest felt tight with need. “Sam, will you play your piano more?”
His expression softened. “And anything else you’d like to hear.”
Everything I’d felt downstairs, all my stupid childhood fantasies: They all returned, hitting me hard.
How could my insides be so taut and relaxed at once? After a lifetime of hoping to meet him, imagining what he might be like, he was not what I’d expected, mostly because he put up with me.
Chapter 9
Reprise
HE’D BEEN RIGHT about my needs being met.
In one of the cubbies, I found cozy shirts and trousers made of wool and synthetic silk. I laid them out for after I was clean. He had feminine underwear, too, but that was too weird; I left them.
After a quick shower to remove the worst of the road grime, I ran a hot bath to soak my poor muscles. When I turned the water off, strains of music floated upstairs. He was playing my song again. But just as I relaxed into it, the whole thing stopped in the middle of a phrase, then started again. He continued like that, sometimes only a few notes. Perhaps he was writing it down, like he said.
I closed my eyes and listened until the water grew cold, then dried and dressed and braided my hair.
When I peeked over the balcony, he hadn’t washed yet, just sat at the piano with a stack of lined papers and a pencil. He hummed as he made circles and dots across the bars, and tested the notes again with the keys.
I tried to be quiet down the stairs and to a wide chair, soft with pillows and a lace coverlet.
He didn’t acknowledge me, too engrossed in his work. I let my gaze drift over the parlor with all its instruments and echoing music. No silk walls down here. Fabric absorbed sound. I’d read that in one of his books.
Shelves sectioned off the kitchen, though few actually held books. They were filled with bone flutes, something made of osprey feathers and pronghorn antlers, and wooden boxes of various shapes. It was hard to tell in the wan light, but I thought I detected etchings of animals in the wood, like at the cabin.
There were few doors in the house — nothing between the parlor and kitchen — which probably meant that only bedrooms and washrooms were private. Sam probably never needed to worry about strangers wandering through his house.
Light had faded. I’d fallen asleep, and a heavier blanket was tucked up under my chin.
Sam wasn’t at his piano; the silence must have awakened me. Water gurgled through pipes, stopped. New silence, deeper like snow silence. In the dim parlor, I listened for his footfalls, creaks in the ceiling, but either this house was much sturdier than Purple Rose Cottage — that was very likely — or he wasn’t moving around upstairs. Perhaps he’d decided on a bath, as I had.
I blinked away imaginings of him reclining in the tub, long limbs stretched out, and water in his hair.
No, no, no. I pushed myself off the chair, muscles groaning, and tapped a lamp by the piano. Pearlescent light illuminated the ivory and ebony, and the thick paper with music written as dots and dashes and other indecipherable things. I settled on the bench, blanket tight around my shoulders, and studied the pages.
“Figure it out?” Apparently Sam wasn’t happy if he wasn’t sneaking up on me. How unfulfilling his hundred previous lives must have been.
“Maybe.” I scooted over to give him space, then pointed at the first sheet. “So far I’ve been thinking about the dots here.”
He nodded. “That’s a good start.”
“They’re the thing that seems consistent throughout, like the notes in the music. They go up and down like the music, too, so I was guessing they tell you which key to press.”
“And how long to hold it.” He laughed and shook his head, like he couldn’t believe I might be smarter than a squirrel who’d learned how to steal food without setting off the trap. “If I’d left you down here for an hour, you’d have been playing it yourself.”
I clenched my jaw and slid off the bench. Just when I’d thought we were getting along.
“What?” He had the nerve to sound confused.
“You keep patronizing me.” I faced away from him and crossed my arms. “You keep saying things like that, acting like I should appreciate your praise because you’re so much better than me. After all, you’re not new and trying to catch up to everyone else—”
“Ana.” His voice was so soft I almost didn’t hear. “That isn’t it. Not at all.”
“Then what?” My jaw hurt, along with my chest and head, and I was tired from the long trek, and tired from trying to guard myself.
“I wasn’t
patronizing you. I meant everything I said.”
“You laughed at me.”
“At myself, for not realizing how serious you’d been when you said you taught yourself to read. Because you were on the verge of reading music a moment ago, and you’d only been at it, what, five minutes?”
I couldn’t speak around the knot in my throat.
“Ana,” he whispered. “I’ll never lie to you.”
And how was I supposed to know he wasn’t lying now? About that? Maybe watching me was like watching a newborn kitten, blind and mewing for help, food, and love. Cute, but helpless. Little victories like finding its mother’s milk got praises. Little victories like figuring out which markings were musical notes got praises.
“A long time ago, before the Council, before we realized we were going to keep being reborn no matter what happened, there was a war. We fought each other, thousands against thousands.” Suddenly he sounded old, as if the millennia weighed down his words. “I didn’t have much of a stake in the war, and I didn’t want to fight. I stayed away most of the time, but I had friends on the battlefield. While I was experimenting with different sounds one day, I realized that a string stretched on a curved stick made a pleasant twang, and different lengths made different notes. If you used a bunch of them together, it would make music. I rushed to show my friends what I’d discovered, thinking they could use a respite from the war.”
Wordlessly, I sat on the corner of the bench again, but still couldn’t bring myself to look at him.
“They were so pleased, and since archery had just been discovered, there were a lot of strings on curved sticks to go around. But when they thought I was out of earshot, I heard everyone start laughing and plucking the strings on their bows in a tune. They’d been practicing it for weeks already.”
I let my hands fall to my lap. “It’s not the same thing.” My words didn’t come out as fierce as I’d intended.
“Certainly not in this case, because I truly am impressed. But I imagine growing up was like that. Discovering how to read, only for someone to laugh because they’d known how to do it for thousands of years. Realizing more efficient ways to do chores, only to discover someone else had always done it the easy way and decided not to tell you.”
“Assuming something has gone horribly wrong, even when it’s normal and no one had told me. And—” I shook my head. Past lives or no, I didn’t want to talk to him about my first menstruation, or pimple, or anything.
“Being laughed at.” He played a few notes on the piano and hmm-ed. “Did you have friends?”
“I’ve read about them, but I don’t believe they exist.”
“Your cynicism is amazing.”
“Even if other children had visited Purple Rose Cottage, children aren’t like me. They wouldn’t have wanted to do the things I did. They were waiting until they were big enough to survive on their own to get back to their lives. Not explore the forest and collect shiny rocks, or read books about great discoveries and accomplishments. They were there. We’d have had nothing in common.”
“I think you and I are friends.”
“Nosouls don’t get friends. Neither do butterflies. Don’t you know?”
“So all our time together in the cabin was nothing to you?”
I remembered listening to him read aloud, telling him about the roses I’d brought back to life, and falling asleep leaning against his shoulder. “It was everything,” I whispered, half hoping he didn’t hear.
Four notes sounded on the piano. “I saw how you looked at this earlier, and just a while ago you got up to study the pages. On your own. Because you like it.”
I shrugged. “That doesn’t mean we’re friends.”
“It gives us somewhere to start.” Four notes filled the silence again. “In my experience, friendship happens naturally. By talking, doing things together, learning.” He didn’t give me time to ask what he could possibly learn from me. “I like your company, which is fortunate since you’re living here now. Friendship isn’t reserved for people who’ve been reincarnated over and over. Even a newsoul is allowed happiness.”
There were still so many questions, like why should he bother with a nosoul and why was this so important to him, but I just bowed my head. “If you think it’s worth it, we can try.”
Sam touched my shoulder, ran his hand down to my elbow. “Let’s go to bed. Tomorrow will be busy.”
I shivered with the memory of waking up after drowning, his body behind mine, his hand over my heart. That probably wasn’t what he meant by ‘go to bed.’ And good thing, too. Good thing.
“Play for me again, first.” Something was wrong with me, with the way my insides squeezed up when he was near. I turned straight on the bench, next to him, and rested my hand over the keys. “Please.”
“Of course.” He adjusted the pages on the shelf above the keyboard; there were several still empty. “Pay attention, though. You’re going to learn music. I hope you’re okay with that.”
It was probably the light, or weariness, but even though his voice was as level as ever, from the corner of my eye, he looked nervous. My retort died before it left my tongue. “Please,” I said again, and before he could tilt his face away, I saw his relief.
As the music came, I tried to match the sounds to the dots and bars on the paper, but it went by too quickly for me to keep up. Over the music, he said, “Second page,” and then after a while, “Third page,” and I heard the music match what I saw for a moment before the dots were just dots again.
Music overwhelmed me, soaked into my skin like water. I didn’t have words for the squiggles and dashes across the pages, or the way his fingers stretched across the keys to make my heart race. If I could hear only one thing for the rest of my life, this was what I wanted.
He let his hands rest on the keys as the music faded from the room.
“You changed it. It’s not the same as before.” I caught his raised eyebrow and fought for the right words. I did need lessons, if I wanted to sound even halfway knowledgeable. Or at least describe what he’d done to the music. “It’s softer. Not as angry at the end.”
“Is it all right?”
I laid my hand across his.
Chapter 10
Impulse
SAM WALKED ME back upstairs as sleepiness threatened to engulf me.
The exterior wall made me uneasy, so he dragged the bed across the room until it rested in the corner of two interior walls. Then I climbed up while Sam tried — unsuccessfully — to hide dust on the floor where the bed had been.
“The first thing I want you to learn about music is that you have to hear everything.” He sat in a chair at the desk, while I perched on the corner of my bed. “This is something I started doing every lifetime to retrain myself. Close your eyes and listen to all the sounds at once, especially those that are hard to hear.”
Like I was going to do that in front of him. I just nodded.
“You can hear the cavies and chickens, the noises they make. You can hear the wind in the trees, and everything in the house. Pay attention to each sound all at once, and one at a time.”
“That sounds like a lot of work.”
He grinned. “Well, it is. But having a good ear is an important part of music, and it’s easiest to train yourself while you’re young.” He crossed the room toward me. “I’ve always enjoyed how everything is slightly different in every life. Raspier or deeper, warmer or kinder. Some bodies were harder to train. Some had better hearing.”
I hoped I got to experience that.
“Once, I wasn’t able to hear at all.”
But I didn’t want that. I almost asked how he’d coped — a lifetime without music — but he yawned, reminding me he was probably tired, too. I slipped under the covers.
“Good night,” he murmured as my eyes fell closed. He leaned toward me, so near I could feel the warmth of his breath on my skin, and I waited for whatever came next.
Nothing did.
He sighed an
d left the room, and I lay there, suddenly too awake to sleep. There was no reason for me to imagine him kissing my forehead, or remember the way he’d touched my arm by the piano. He was Sam.
That was it. He was Dossam. Of course I was going to think about stupid things now.
I lay in bed and listened to him move about the house, and after a while, he paused outside my bedroom. His silhouette darkened the silk wall for a moment before he padded down the stairs, almost silently, and the front door shut. Locked.
I sat up and glanced toward my window, but it faced the wrong direction. We’d been walking all day. I sure didn’t want to go anywhere, though I was awfully tempted to sneak after him. I’d need a flashlight; he’d spot me and be angry.
It was after midnight when he returned, muttering something — I strained my ears — about wasting time with genealogies. I didn’t know much about those because Cris’s old books weren’t explicit, and Li hadn’t bothered answering my questions. I did know that genealogies were the best-kept books in the library, because they needed to be referenced so often. The Council was careful about approving who could have children — something about genetic defects and constant danger of inbreeding. Bleh. Not something I cared to learn about.
None of that explained why Sam had gone to the library in the middle of the night. If that was where he’d gone. Maybe he’d forgotten who his parents were this life, and just needed to look it up. I couldn’t imagine trying to keep track.
Swimming in thoughts, I drifted into unrestful sleep, though it was my first night in a real bed in a week — and my first night ever in a bed that had been repaired in the last hundred years. I should have tried to enjoy it, but I could only think about all the strange things that had happened since arriving in Heart — and about Sam.
In the morning, getting dressed took some work. Sam must have been taller than me as a woman, and bustier. A dress that probably fallen knee-length on him came to mid-calf on me. Using a small sewing kit in the desk, I adjusted the shoulders and took in places to account for my smaller endowments.