Incarnate (5 page)

“I’m not willing to let you suffer.” He reconnected the SED with my earpieces, and a dozen-person symphony began again. “I’ll be back before nightfall.”

And he was. I wasn’t clear on how far the cottage was from his cabin — I’d never found this place during my explorations — but he returned well before dark. Maybe he’d run. I was just happy to see him again.

“Was she terrible?” I asked from where I sat on the chair with the SED. Now it played a piano song with a strange, bouncy rhythm.

He dropped the bag of supplies on the counter with a clatter of pills and
thunk
of glass. “She wasn’t there, but the door was unlocked.”

“So you just took things?” That idea made me smile.

“You need them.” He frowned toward the stove, in spite of our good fortune. Li wasn’t there. She wouldn’t come after me. He should have been relieved, but he just looked pensive. “I wonder where she went.”

“Maybe she went to fight dragons and they ate her.”

Sam just shook his head. “I do have good news.”

Li’s absence was great news. If that didn’t count as good to him, I was eager to find out what
did
.

From the bag, he drew out a glass jar filled with golden-amber liquid. “I found where she hid the honey.”

Emotions tangled inside of me, like vines. Carefully, I nudged the SED off my lap and onto the chair. The earpieces followed.

Sam watched as I moved, and as I walked toward him. “Ana?”

The way he said my name, I must have been some mysterious creature; he’d thought he’d known my habits, but now I threw my arms around him and hugged him as tight as I could. I shook with nerves — with touching someone voluntarily, and allowing him to trap me in his embrace — and I shook with warring confusion and gratitude.

Why would he do something so nice?

I didn’t understand. If he’d been Li, he would have used my desires against me somehow, but every time I told him something about myself, he gave me something in return. Music. HoHugging him felt nice, safe almost, but it lasted too long. Not long enough. He pulled away first and began checking my hands. “Looking much better.” One side of his mouth pulled up. “Think you can hold a spoon?”

“Maybe. Why?”

One eyebrow raised, he glanced at the jar of honey on the counter.

“You aren’t serious.”

“Only if you can hold a spoon.” He gave me a look I couldn’t decipher. Amusement? Challenge? It wasn’t like Li’s challenge look. “But if you can’t…”

“Oh, I can. I’m just not sure whether you can keep up and eat your share.”

He grinned and riffled through drawers for a pair of spoons. “We’re going to make ourselves sick.”

“It’s going to be fun.” I tested my right hand. Though it certainly didn’t feel good, when Sam offered a spoon, I was able to hold it.

Soon, we were both perched on the counter, jar between us, and desperately trying not to dribble honey all over our clothes. He told stories, and listed all the things he thought we should do when we got to Heart, and I couldn’t remember ever smiling so much.

AT THE BEGINNING of the third week, we quit the cabin before dawn. The weather had warmed and the sky was deep sapphire as we made our way through the graveyard, the silence as delicate as hoarfrost. The predawn air was crisp, but pleasant. Elk pushed through the forest, while eagles and hawks called their territory boundaries at one another. I couldn’t help but hum as we crossed the river bridge.

“You’re chipper.” Sam tugged Shaggy down a stair carved into the path; the pony snorted and swung his head toward the cabin again, and his warm stall with endless food.

“Yep.” Finally, we were going to Heart, the great white city I’d heard about since I was a child. “The idea of learning what I am is”—I rolled my shoulders to keep the backpack straps from digging—“it’s terrifying, because I might not like what I find out. But it’s exciting.”

“There’s always the option of deciding for yourself who you are and what you’ll become.”

The sky turned paler shades of indigo as we walked. I couldn’t ask him to understand the
need
to know what had happened, why Ciana was gone forever. He couldn’t understand the guilt, knowing everyone wished I was her.

I tugged at the gauze. “For a year after Councilor Frase’s visit, I convinced myself I was Ciana. I called myself Ciana in my head and told myself I’d somehow lost my memory between lives. I read everything in the cottage library about her, tried to imagine myself weaving and inventing ways to mass-produce cloth. It turns out I can barely imagine how that would work, let alone discover ways to synthesize silk to avoid the mulberry trees and worms. So there’s that. Plus, the Soul Tellers are never wrong.”

“Not these days, anyway.”

“Oh?”

He chuckled. “The tests weren’t always as accurate, but we figured it out when toddlers started cursing at the Soul Tellers. It took some doing to remember Whit was actually Tera and we should call him that. A few of us might have had faulty memories for the next few years, just to make him angry.”

My grin appeared before I could hide it. “You’re lucky you have any friends left if you treat everyone so badly.”

“That’s why I had to go out and find a new one. The others all left me.” He winked before I could wonder if he was serious. “When we get to Heart, I’ll introduce you to anyone you want to meet. Even the friends I don’t deserve.”

“I can think of a couple.” I blushed, remembering the confession about Dossam, but Sam kindly didn’t say anything. That was part of a conversation I still wasn’t ready to have.

We followed the path around spruce trees and rotting logs, down to the road, which would take us to Heart.

Just before midday, Sam came back to our earlier discussion as if we’d never left. “Seems to me you’re in a unique position to be anything you want.”

“I doubt that.”

“You have the benefit of learning from others’ experiences. You don’t have to make the same mistakes we did in the beginning, or the ones we’re still making.” He led Shaggy to the side of the road and looped the rope around a low cottonwood branch, leaving enough slack for the pony to nose around in the sparse foliage. “And
who you are
isn’t already cast in everyone’s eyes. No one knows what to expect from you. Some would say society is in a rut. Stagnant. By virtue of being new, you have the power to shake us out of that.”

He was crazy if he saw that in me. A nosoul couldn’t do that. “What if I don’t want to? De-stagnate you, that is.”

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.” He spread a blanket on the road and motioned me to sit. “But I don’t believe you want to be just another person, doing the same thing every generation. You have more power than anyone, Ana. It’s up to you whether or not you use it.”

“I don’t feel very powerful.” My hands hurt, I could barely feed myself, and Sam kept rescuing me. “I feel like the smallest, most insignificant person.”

“Small, maybe. Definitely not insignificant.” He sat next to me, and we watched the empty road. “Everyone knows who you are.”

That didn’t sound like a good thing. I was
that
Ana. “Aside from you, no one bothered talking to me. Not even Li.”

“Last life, no one could get him to shut up.”

I almost corrected, “Her,” but bit my lip. It was hard to remember that my mother, definitely a woman, had been male before. Different body. Different life. Instead, I said, “What about everyone else? Did Li forbid it? Or did they just not want to bother?”

Sam took a knife and a wedge of hard cheese from his bag and began cutting. “Honestly? I think people aren’t sure it’s worth getting to know you. It would be like you deciding if it was worth befriending a butterfly, even though it wouldn’t be there in the morning.”

It hurt to breathe. “What about you?”

“Surely you know by now.”

I didn’t, but I didn’t want to admit it. “Nothing stopped you from seeing me before. I could have used”—not a friend, that was too familiar—“someone to talk to me.”

He gave one of those half smiles. “Li stopped me. We haven’t gotten along in lifetimes. And I didn’t know how she was treating you. If I had, I can’t say I’d have been able to do anything, but I might have tried.”

Might have. It didn’t matter what he said about me being powerful. I was just a butterfly to everyone, and why would anyone in their right mind rescue a butterfly from being ignored by a cat?

He offered a slice of cheese, but I wasn’t hungry anymore. “You have to eat.”

“Says the man who just told me I can do whatever I want.” I flinched away — Li would have slapped me for that — but he just turned back to his lunch.

“Okay.” He ate the entire meal by himself and didn’t offer anything else. When he was done, he folded the blanket and slung the bag over his shoulder. “Time to go.”

Part of me felt like I should apologize, mostly because I didn’t want him to ignore me, but neither of us had actually done or said anything wrong. We’d just kind of… gotten mad. I sighed and fiddled with my bandages for the next mile before I rested my palm on his shoulder, gently so as not to irritate my healing skin. “Sam?”

He stopped walking. “Are you hungry now?”

I shook my head. “I’m glad you talk to me.” In the cabin, especially. Maybe he’d only rambled for hours to keep me from weeping in agony — maybe he’d only wanted to save his own ears — but he
had
, and he’d been careful and gentle. That meant everything. If only telling him that didn’t mean
telling
him that. “I won’t expect anyone else to be like you.”

“No one knows if you’ll be around very long. If people have been less than welcoming, that’s the reason why.”

“I’ll be around my whole life,” I whispered, not quite under the breeze in the forest, the pounding of my heart and the beating of my invisible and incorporeal wings. “That’s a long time to me.”

He brushed a strand of hair off my face and nodded.

AS WE BROKE through the forest, a white wall soared high into the air, like smooth clouds below the cobalt sky. It stretched in both directions as far as I could see, flowing like water on the dips and crests of the plateau that carried the city of Heart.

Gates of iron and brass guarded the Southern Arch into the city, but as wide as the entrance was, I couldn’t make out anything beyond. Just darkness.

“Look up.” Sam stood next to me, one hand twisted in Shaggy’s lead, and the other shoved into his pocket.

His cheeks were bright with chill, but his smile was wide and relaxed. Stubble darkened his chin like shadows, and his lips were chapped from wind. It had been a long walk, and he’d chatted constantly. He’d pointed out ruins, mostly derelict cabins, but there were a few mysterious mounds of rock. We’d walked by five immense graveyards, which we’d stopped to look at while he told me stories about the people buried there.

Apparently I hadn’t responded quickly enough. He glanced at me, his expression a cross between teasing and curiosity. “Not at me.” He nudged me with his elbow. “Look at Heart. Look up.”

Above the wall, an enormous tower jutted into the sky, taller than a hundred ancient redwood trees stacked on one another. It vanished into a cloud, white stone making that vapor look dirty in comparison. “What is it?” My chest felt too tight, like something squeezing and reminding me I was a nosoul. I resisted the urge to back away from it, lest it see me.

“The temple.” Now he peered at me with concern, something he did too much. “Are you okay?”

Evidently he saw nothing wrong with the tower, felt nothing wrong. So it was probably a side effect of my newness. “Yeah, of course.” I crossed my arms, mindful of my bandages. They were fewer today; the burns didn’t hurt nearly as much. Generous application of lotion helped. “So it’s a temple? For what?”

He started walking again, his gaze on the city. Or the temple. “It’s an old legend. Many stopped believing in it thousands of years ago.”

The reminder was a slap. He was
old
. He only appeared my age. “Why?”

“Because nothing ever happened, not once since we discovered Heart and made it our home.”

I searched my memory for anything about that, but Li’s library had been small. And if Sam had read anything about it in the cabin, it must have been one of the times I dozed off. “Maybe start from the beginning? What’s your very first memory?”

“Si—” He smiled and flipped a strand of hair off my face. “Maybe later. To be honest, some of the earliest memories are lost, which is one of the reasons we started keeping journals. The mind can hold a lot, but after a while, less important things fade to make room. You don’t have crystalline memories of everything in your life, after all. Or do you?”

I shook my head. There were some things I didn’t want to remember, either. How many memories had Sam willingly given up?

“One of the things everyone agrees on is that we started out in small tribes scattered across Range. Some say everyone appeared there, fully grown. Others insist that only a few did, and the rest were born.” He looked askance at me. “I don’t remember that at all. That truth is gone forever.”

“No one wrote it down?”

“We didn’t have writing yet. We had language, but I suppose we didn’t talk about it because we’d all been there. A lot of our early lives were focused on survival. It took time to learn what was safe to eat and what wasn’t, that not all the hot springs were safe to drink or bathe in, and the geysers — remind me later to tell you about the time one erupted while Sine was standing over it.” He started to grin, but other memories overshadowed whatever had been so funny about Sine’s misfortune. “We also had to focus on staying away from dragons and centaurs and… other things.”

“Sylph.”

He nodded. “We drew pictures in the dirt or on walls, but those weren’t permanent, and we couldn’t always translate one another’s — for lack of a better term — artwork. Things got lost and misinterpreted. I suppose we just gave up.”

“Okay.” As we neared the city, I could make out smaller metal tubes protruding from the southeastern quarter of the city. Antennae, perhaps, or solar panels. Maybe both. “So everyone was out wandering one day and you stumbled across Heart?”

“More or less. We fought over it for a while, before we realized how huge it is. There’s more than enough room for everyone.”

“Did that ever strike you as odd? That a city was waiting for you, complete with a temple right in the center?” I winced preemptively, but Li wasn’t here to hit me for my curiosity. Either Sam didn’t notice, or he was good at pretending.

“It should have, but we were so busy being grateful for shelter, we didn’t think about it. By the time we did, if there’d been a trace of a previous civilization, we’d destroyed it simply by living there. People still search for evidence, but there’s almost nothing in Heart.”

“Almost.”

“Well, there’s the temple, which is actually where we discovered writing.”

“But the books said—”

“That Deborl came up with the system? It’s not entirely false, but not accurate, either. He deciphered it. He’s always been good with patterns. There are words carved around the temple, which talk about Janan, a great being who created us, gave us souls and eternal life. And Heart. He was to protect us.”

I stared at the temple protruding from the center of the city. “None of that was in Li’s books.”

“Deborl has taken the liberty of editing a few things.” He tipped his head back, following my gaze. As we approached the city, the wall blocked more of the horizon. “At any rate, Janan never revealed himself to us, or helped during times of trouble.”

“Like drought and hunger, or some of the other year names?”

Sam nodded. “Exactly. The Year of Darkness was named because of a solar eclipse that happened early on. It seemed the entire sun went out. And Janan wasn’t there to help us when we were afraid.”

Until recently, no one had ever been around to help me when I was afraid, so the betrayal didn’t sit so sharply with me. But maybe it was different if someone promised, then didn’t follow through.

“The temple doesn’t even have a door. A few people firmly believe in Janan, and that he’ll return one day to rescue us from the terrors of this world, but most of us decided a long time ago that he wasn’t real.”

“But if what’s written on the temple is true — having souls, being reborn — doesn’t that mean he’s real too?”

“Maybe he was a long time ago. Some stories say he sacrificed his existence to create us, and that’s why there’s no door.” The sky vanished as we came to a stretch of barren land that ran up to the city wall. Steam puffed from a nearby hole in the ground. A geyser? “When it came time to write new copies of histories, some things got left out because people decided they weren’t real or important, which is why you’ve never heard about Janan.”

“You’ve said his name, though. You use it as a curse?”

He grimaced. “Some felt betrayed when Janan never saved us from griffin or centaur attacks. It’s been five thousand years, after all.”

I’d probably give up waiting on someone after that much time, too.

“It started out as a simple oath, not an imprecation, but it grew and became a habit some of us can’t shake.”

“The people who still believe in him probably don’t like that.”

Sam chuckled. “No, not really. Try not to pick up my bad habits if you want to stay on the Council’s good side. Meuric
really
believes.”

As I left the road, my boots crunched on the ground, an odd mix of ash and pebbles. Sulfur-reeking steam tickled my nose, but it blew toward the forest, leaving white deposits of rime on branches. I started toward the geyser — I wanted to look inside — but Sam touched my shoulder, silently reminding me of his cautions as we’d entered the immense caldera: The ground was thin in some places, and would crack and drop you in scalding hot mud before you could leap away.

Since he tended to keep silent when I did potentially stupid things like scramble up old rock walls to get a better view of our surroundings, I’d taken the warning about the ground seriously.

“So did
you
feel betrayed? About Janan, I mean.” I drifted toward the wall, like I’d been heading that way all along.

“A little. I wanted to believe we were here for a purpose.”

“I know that feeling.” The wall bore no cracks or dapples of color, and was as hard as marble when I removed a bandage to feel if it was as smooth as it looked. The sun-warmed stone was frictionless on my tender palm.

“Wait,” Sam said as I was about to withdraw. He stood unnervingly close. “Just a moment.” Then his hand rested on the back of mine, fingers threaded between mine, carefully. “Do you feel it?” More a breath than a whisper.

Feel what? His touch? Heat radiating off his body? I felt it all over.

The stone wall pulsed, like blood rushing through an artery.

I jerked back, away from Sam, away from the wall. Sunlight hadn’t warmed the stone; heat emanated from inside. “How did it do that?” I itched to scrub my hand on my trousers, but the new skin was too delicate to risk. Instead, I wrapped the bandage around it again, sloppily and likely to cut off circulation to my fingers.

His gaze followed my hands. “It’s always done that. Why?”

“I don’t like the way it feels.” I edged away, not that I knew where I’d go. Just
away
.

He followed my not-so-subtle retreat, glancing between me and the geyser at my back. “Why?”

I stopped and ordered myself to breathe when the ground thumped hollowly under my steps; it was too thin to stand on safely. After weeks, I was finally at Heart, and now I wanted to run? No. I’d come here to find out why I’d been born, and I wouldn’t let a stupid
wall
scare me away.

Sam offered his hands, still shooting worried glances at the ground. “Come on. We’re nearly home.”

His home. Right. Where I’d stay until the Council decided what to do with me. “Okay.” I didn’t take his offered hands.

Sam studied me a moment more, but nodded. “This won’t take long. I can open the gate, but I suspect they’ll want to log your entrance.” He gave an apologetic smile, so I didn’t complain about the unfairness. This time.

“Why do you keep them closed?”

He walked between the wall and me as we returned to Shaggy, who swished his tail and gazed longingly at the archway. “Mostly tradition. We haven’t had a problem with giants or trolls in the last few centuries, but there were years we had to barricade ourselves in. Centaurs, dragons — all sorts of things used to attack, not to mention the sylph. Now the edge of Range is better protected, but just because they haven’t tried in a while doesn’t mean they won’t again. We don’t want to be unprepared.”

There’d been drawings of battles in some of the cottage books, most involving liberal use of red ink. If I’d died in countless wars against the other inhabitants of the planet, I’d keep my doors shut, too.

The arch was tall and wide, and deep enough for ten people to stand abreast. Still creeped out by the pulse of the wall, I hugged myself and stayed in the center.

Beyond the iron bars, the archway opened into a wide chamber. “Guard station,” Sam explained. “And this is a soul-scanner, so the Council knows who is coming and going. There are a few around armories and places they don’t think
everyone
should have access to. Normally you’d have to touch it, too, but I assume you’re not in the database, so it wouldn’t do anything.” He pressed his palm on a small panel by the gate. It beeped, and a section of the gate swung open just as yellow light spilled across the floor and footsteps echoed.

A slender man, perhaps in his thirties, appeared. “Hey, Sam. Would have been here sooner, but Darce just gave birth to Minn — who’s a girl this time — and a bunch of us had to keep Merton from getting revenge on him while he’s still so young. Her. That might take some getting used to. Minn hasn’t been a girl in ten generations.”

Sam went first with Shaggy. I followed when the hooves were out of the way, and didn’t even have time to take in the sparse furnishings before all eyes fell on me.

“Speaking of getting used to.” The stranger glanced at Sam, then back to me. He wore loose-fitting pants and a heavy, button-up brown shirt. The afternoon was warm enough to make coats unnecessary. “Ana, right?”

As if there were a question. He’d known because I hadn’t touched the soul-scanner, then started gossiping to make me feel excluded. I lifted my chin like I was about to come up with a brilliant retort, or like Sam might say something, but neither happened, and the stranger and I just watched each other, stares slowly turning into glares.

Shaggy broke the silence with a long sigh.

The guard turned back to Sam. “Still doesn’t talk, hmm? Sad.” He retreated to a wooden desk shoved against the city wall. A slim, flickering screen rested in the center — it was blank — and a few neat stacks of paper sat around that. He flicked on the lamp and leaned against the desk, casting shadows.

Sam hauled his bags off Shaggy, grunting between words; otherwise, his tone was congenial. “Actually,” I said, “I think she was waiting for you to give her your name.”

“Actually, I don’t care.” I took a bag from Sam, transferring it to my shoulder with minimal use of my hands. The one bandage was coming undone from where I’d been sloppy about rebinding it. “But I do talk, and have for quite some time.”

Sam turned his head as though to hide his smirk.

“Well then, glad to hear. I’m Corin.” The guard offered a palm, which I didn’t take, just held up my bandages. “What happened to your hands?”

“Burned them.”

“She rescued me from a sylph.” Sam didn’t mention how he’d rescued me from the sylph, too, and the lake before that, or how he’d been taking care of me for almost three weeks. It was nice of him to make me sound brave.

Corin whistled. “Impressive, but you know he’d come back, right?”

Eventually, sure, but not in time to save me from everyone treating me like Corin was. I hefted the new bag on my shoulder and addressed Sam. “It’ll be time for supper soon.”