Incarnate n-1

by Jodi Meadows

  “You never said whether I will be.”

  “I can’t. I’m sorry. I mean, you’re here now, so maybe it will happen. It’s impossible to say for sure until you die. Same for all the other newsouls who’ll be born after this.”

  That was not comforting. If we replaced people Janan had been reincarnating for millennia, why would he bother reincarnating us? Or would he know the difference?

  “Don’t be angry,” Menehem said. “Aren’t you glad you had the chance to exist? Don’t you want others to have the chance, too? There could be billions more like you, waiting to be born.”

  Maybe he was right. I had to come from somewhere, so maybe there were other souls waiting for their turn to live, too. But that didn’t make his actions moral. “So you’re killing your friends out of benevolence?”

  “No. Well, I suppose. Really, it’s for science. I had questions. I wanted to know if my theories were right.”

  “Were they?”

  “More or less. I’ve proven that Janan isn’t all-powerful and worthy of worship, like Meuric and his friends keep saying.” He glanced at me. “Don’t you hate them? I can’t stand listening to them argue about how we’re here for this or that purpose. Now, even though I think I’ve proven Janan is real, I’ve also proven that whatever he is, he can be stopped.”

  I didn’t want to think about Meuric. My stomach twisted, remembering the way I’d thrust my knife into his eye. “So that’s what you’ve been working on these last eighteen years? How to halt reincarnation?”

  Menehem nodded.

  “I thought it was about sylph. And controlling them.”

  “No. Well, yes, it started out that way. But I never discovered a way to control sylph.”

  Which meant Li couldn’t have stolen his research and used it to send sylph after me. Menehem wouldn’t be able to tell me why there’d been two sylph attacks in as many days, back when I left Purple Rose Cottage.

  “I thought you wanted to find Sam.” He waved me toward the avenue again. “I saw him earlier, heading toward the north wall.”

  Of course he knew what Sam looked like if he’d been following me. I shuddered.

  Targeting lights streaked across the air, lasers piercing dragon flesh. We splashed through chemicals — probably Menehem’s concoction — meant to neutralize the dragon’s acid, and darted around dead beasts littering the ground. The creatures provided cover for humans and sylph alike, though the latter seemed more intent on finding a way out of the city. They wafted toward the wall, then jumped and fled when they saw Menehem.

  I grabbed the nearest stranger. “Have you seen Sam?” He shook his head and started to pull away, but I didn’t release his coat. “Don’t die tonight. You won’t be reborn. Tell everybody.”

  The stranger narrowed his eyes, but nodded. “Good luck finding Sam.”

  I shouted for Sam as loud as I could, but my voice was useless under the din. When I asked people about him, some of them pointed to places they thought they’d seen him; most of those places were in opposite directions. Nevertheless, I told everyone about Menehem’s plan, pointed at the darkened temple for proof, and followed their leads through the press of people. Five said they’d seen him in the northwest quarter.

  My shoes squelched in mud. The crops were ruined from the acid and neutralizing chemicals; the ground was safe to walk on, at least.

  “Sam!” My throat ached with cold and screaming. I ducked behind a dead dragon and shot at another as it swooped through the air, homing in on a nearby section of the wall. The beast shrieked as I shot it again. I ran for a ladder. Maybe someone on the wall had seen Sam.

  I’d lost Menehem. Didn’t matter. I’d find him if he lived. If not…

  He wasn’t my concern. I hauled myself up the ladder, aching bone-deep now, and paused only to shoot at the enormous wing as the dragon landed on the wall. The structure shuddered, and my ladder trembled, but I leaned all my weight forward and it held the rest of my ascent.

  The wall was thick enough for ten people to stand abreast. It was still too small for a dragon to perch on, but this one tried. It hooked its front talons on the wall, hovering over a prone figure. Lights glared, making me squint as I took aim and fired.

  A lucky shot; I hit its eye. With a deafening roar, the dragon spewed acid in my direction, but its depth perception was gone with its eye. My ladder sizzled as the dragon fell backward, clawing at its face. It flailed, its wings scooping air so hard I couldn’t breathe, but I didn’t think it would attack again, at least for a few minutes.

  I ran for the man who’d nearly been dragon melt. He wasn’t moving.

  “Ana?” Stef was just beyond the man I crouched over. Blood streaked her face and matted her hair as she struggled to her feet. “What are you doing here? Is he okay?” She swayed and dropped to her knees on the other side of…

  Sam. He was on his stomach and wearing a coat I didn’t recognize, but shifting lights illuminated his profile. I touched his throat, searching for a pulse. His skin was cold, and for a moment I thought he was dead, but then I found the flutter of blood through arteries. Sam coughed and tried to pull his elbows in so he could push himself up. “Not dead yet?”

  I choked on a sob. “Not yet.”

  He moved quickly, pushed up and onto his knees, and stared at me with wide eyes and disbelief. “Ana.”

  More than anything, I wanted to hug him. I didn’t.

  “No time for ‘I missed yous.’” I found my feet and grabbed my weapons. “Menehem did something to Janan. No one who dies tonight will be reborn. We need to be elsewhere until it’s safe to be dead again.”

  Stef looked dazed. “What?”

  “The wall doesn’t have a heartbeat.” Sam frowned at it. “Wait, Menehem?”

  They both had concussions, no doubt. Nevertheless, I jabbed a finger toward the temple, illuminated by floodlights. Three dragons had wrapped themselves around it while others flew in wide circles, spitting at people on the market field. “And the lights aren’t on there. Let’s go, both of you. Is Orrin around? Whit or Sarit?”

  Sam shook his head. “They were somewhere else.”

  I didn’t know whether to be relieved or afraid as I helped Sam and Stef to their feet. They were both taller than me, so I wasn’t much use for keeping them upright as we staggered over debris, but I tried.

  On the way to the north guard station, where there’d be medical help, we told anyone who’d listen that they’d be gone forever if they died tonight. Several came with us, but even more didn’t believe us and kept fighting. Some who hadn’t been hurt yet went to spread the word.

  Sam had sylph eggs in his coat pockets. When sylph got too close, I trapped them, but mostly the shadows seemed to be looking for escape.

  Finally we made it to the guard station, where people shouted orders and others ran to obey. I led Sam and the rest to the medical station tucked in the left side, the cots on wheels all brightly illuminated and surrounded by machines. I helped everyone onto cots while medics and less-injured patients rushed to help.

  “What happened to them?” a girl asked. She looked about nine years old, and her trying to sound authoritative in her tiny voice might have been funny in other circumstances. She climbed onto a stool and eyed me distastefully. “What happened to you?”

  “I don’t know. Sam and Stef were on the wall. I think they were both unconscious.” I couldn’t watch while the girl and her assistants took care of my friends, so I ran to the window and stared at the temple, willing the light to come back on.

  Menehem staggered across my view. I shouted his name, but when he looked my way, half his face was blackened and blistered.

  “What happened?” The question of the night.

  “Sylph,” he said. “Mad at me for bringing them here. In eggs, if you were curious.”

  I was too exhausted to be surprised. “Did you bring the dragons too?” I’d read a lot about the old wars, but none had ever had both dragons and sylph. Nothing in or out of Range
liked the sylph, no matter how powerful an ally they’d be.

  “No.” He coughed and squinted beyond me. “That was just good timing. I see you found Sam.”

  I wanted to leave Menehem to suffer on his own. But I couldn’t. “Come inside. We’ll get a medic to look at your face.” I took off for the door as the fighting waned outside. The whine of vehicles and bang of cannons dimmed. Shrieks of dragons grew and faded as they fled over the guard station and north, chased out of Heart and Range by a flight of air drones.

  When Menehem was safe in a cot, medics shooed me away so they could work. I lingered, listening to groans and curses, catching only glimpses of him between the medics’ bodies while he confessed his sins. At last they stood back, blood soaking their white smocks, and said there was nothing more they could do.

  His shirt had been cut away, and gauze covered most of his exposed skin. The rest was angry red. He grimaced, but painkillers ran through a tube into his arm. “Sorry, Ana,” he rasped.

  “Tell me what you know.” Not what I wanted to say, but he looked ready to die, and I couldn’t ask whether he ever cared that he had a daughter. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer.

  “It’s too late.” Menehem gave a weak smile as the guard station walls crackled and a loud pulse filled the room, then dulled into white noise. “See you in another life, butterfly.”

  I shivered. How did he know?

  He died before I had a chance to ask.

  I stayed for only a moment longer, a miasma of emotions tumbling inside me. Then I turned away and wove through the mess of patients to find Sam.

  His eyes were closed, but machines beeped comfortingly and he murmured, “Hi, Ana. What was that noise?”

  “Janan is back.” From the corner of my window, familiar templelight filled the sky. I touched Sam’s wrist to feel his pulse, just for reassurance. Blood had been cleaned away from his face and arms, revealing bruises and the laser burn from a couple of weeks ago. The latter was still bandaged, and IV fluid dripped through a tube into his near arm. I couldn’t find anywhere burned by acid, but when I blinked, I saw the huge dragon head hovering over him. If I’d been just a little slower… “But don’t die just because it’s safe.”

  “And leave you alone with my piano? Not a chance.”

  Mindful of cuts on his face, I leaned over and brushed a kiss across his lips. He smiled wearily.

  “What about me?” Stef mumbled. “No kiss for me?”

  “Sorry, Stef. I’ll hold your hand, though.” The aisles between the cots were narrow enough for a small chair and nothing else. I slipped one hand into Stef’s as she fell asleep again, and leaned my head on Sam’s pillow, next to his.

  When I awoke, all my muscles creaking, daylight illuminated the ravaged city. Search parties went out for the missing, but they’d never find Meuric. I kept waiting for someone to blame me for his disappearance, but when Sine came by, she just told me that Sam and his friends had been exonerated and I could live with him again.

  As our vehicle drove over debris and through the market field, I peered up at the temple. The crack the dragons had made mended itself while I watched, and I could almost hear the echoes of Janan’s words in the rumble: “Mistake. You are a mistake of no consequence.”

  I hugged my backpack and tried not to listen as the driver talked about the seventy-two people who’d died while the temple was dark.

  Seventy-two people who’d never come back.

  Chapter 30

  After

  MORE THAN ANYTHING, I wanted Sam to myself for a few days, but Stef invited herself to stay with us. She didn’t want to be alone.

  I didn’t blame her, and I didn’t protest. She’d been his best friend since the beginning. I couldn’t comprehend how deep their feelings for each other ran, but I knew what it meant. When the driver stopped in front of Sam’s house, I helped Stef out, too. She took my room and I took the parlor.

  While they recovered, I did what I could to put their homes back in order. Li and the Council had ransacked Sam’s house, and dragons had marauded through every quarter, spitting acid. Though the exteriors had healed themselves once the temple began to glow again, the interiors and outbuildings were wrecked.

  I took care of what I could on my own, starting with gardens and cavies and chicken coops, other things that would provide food during the last month of winter. I swept shattered glass and dragged off useless wood boards for recycling. I cooked and cleaned, did anything I could to keep myself busy while search parties found more survivors and the Councilhouse hospital sent medics around to check on everyone.

  I did anything to keep from thinking about Templedark, what they called that night, and all the people I hadn’t saved. I tried not to think about Menehem, either. Sylph fires had killed him — medics said it had been very painful — but he’d be reincarnated, since he’d hung on until the temple lit itself again. A hundred others had managed to wait to die, too.

  But seventy-two would be gone forever. Probably more. There were a lot of people they weren’t sure about.

  Sam and Stef rested and ate when ordered, and did various exercises to regain strength. After a week, Stef thanked me and said she was going home. She promised to look in on us; her expression, behind the mask of fading bruises, was filled with worry. I just nodded.

  After she left, I sat on the stairs and hugged my knees. Pieces of me felt hollow. No amount of putting Sam’s house back together would fill them.

  I’d killed Meuric. He might come back. There was a good chance he’d been dead before the temple went dark, but what if he’d writhed in pain for hours before finally dying? What if I’d destroyed him as Menehem had Li?

  Sam sat down next to me. “I know you must live here, because things move when I’m not looking.”

  “This is living?” Everything inside me wallowed in numbness, like I had leapt off the top of the temple and was still falling. Like I’d never again have a thunderstorm inside me. At least thunderstorms involved feeling.

  “You told the medics you weren’t hurt. Did they miss something?”

  “I wish I hurt.” I slid one hand up to my shoulder and massaged the muscles around it. Still tender. The wise thing to do would have been to let them look at it, but they’d have taken me away from Sam. Not that I’d hung around him once we got here.

  I kept my gaze on my socks.

  “Can you tell me what happened after you left the prison window?”

  “Will it help?”

  He hesitated, and I imagined the line between his eyes while he considered the best way to tell the truth. “Maybe. If you don’t want to talk about it, there’s nothing wrong with that decision. I’d like to know. It would help me to know what we’ll be dealing with.”

  “What will happen to Menehem when he’s reincarnated?”

  “It’s hard to say. I imagine he’ll be imprisoned for at least one lifetime. Probably more, considering…” Sam stared down into the parlor. “I’m sure they’ll want to know how he did it.”

  “He was going to tell me.”

  All those people, gone forever. Where did they go?

  My voice sounded as hollow as the rest of me. “He thought I’d appreciate what he’d done, sacrificing Ciana so I’d be born. Sacrificing oldsouls during Templedark for more newsouls. But I don’t. I mean, I guess I’d rather be here than not, but I only have that opinion because I’m here.”

  Sam touched my hand. “Yesterday, Sarit dropped off an envelope. She’d gone to Li’s house to find your things before the Council took them.”

  “What’s in the envelope?”

  “I didn’t look. It has your name on it. Menehem’s handwriting.” Sam’s voice was soft. “Do you want to see?”

  Definitely not. But I stood and followed him into his room, and made a nest for myself in his blankets. He fetched the large envelope from a bookcase.

  Inside, there were slim leather-bound journals, filled with notes and chemical formulas, drawings and photographs
of sylph, and a map of somewhere east of Range; it was the place he’d done all his research, I supposed. I put everything away. It would take time to study, but Menehem had told me how he’d destroyed so many souls after all.

  And how I’d been given a chance at someone else’s life.

  I scooted the envelope aside and edged myself toward Sam. He put his arms around me, kissed the top of my head, and whispered, “You didn’t have to sleep downstairs all week.”

  “Stef was here.”

  He gave a one-shouldered shrug.

  Maybe he couldn’t understand how awkward that would have been, knowing his best friend and sometimes-lover was three rooms over. After lifetimes of awkwardness, they probably got desensitized. I pressed my cheek on his chest and listened to his heartbeat while he ran his fingers through my hair.

  “I can tell you what happened,” I said at last. “No one else, though. Not yet.” I traced his fingers, his hand holding tight to my waist. “They wouldn’t believe me. I don’t want them to know about Meuric, either. I’ll have to figure it out eventually, but for now…”

  “Okay.” He guided me to his bed so we could sit. “Whatever you’re comfortable saying, that will be enough.”

  I told him everything.

  The everywhere-light. The stairs and books and uncaring voice. And Meuric. When I slept, I dreamt about my knife, the pop and spray and slurp, the way I’d kicked his flailing body into the upside-down pit.

  I’d killed him, been willing to kill Li and Menehem. Only eighteen, and already I felt a thousand years old. I should have been happy Li would never come back, no matter how many lifetimes I lived, but I wasn’t. It didn’t make any sense, but when I thought about it too much, the hollow chasms inside me only gaped wider.

  Sam hmm-ed when I was finished. He didn’t ask questions or urge me to do anything about it, just breathed into my hair and tucked the subject away for a time we could both deal. “So I guess we’re not leaving Range?”