Incarnate

Chapter 14 Recognition

THE LIBRARY HAD its own wing of the Councilhouse. If not for the conversation with Sam, I’d have been giddy when he heaved open the mahogany doors and we entered the enormous chamber.

The walls were bookcases, and every shelf was full.

There were no separate rooms for different sections, like I’d imagined, but high bookcases gave the illusion of privacy in corners or on balconies over the main floor. Solid mahogany tables dotted the empty spaces, along with delicate lamps with stained-glass shades. Tiny sparrows and squirrels glowed.

Soft rugs covered the aisles; hardwood floors peeked from beneath the edges. I stepped over diamonds and snowflakes, inhaling the scent of leather and ink and dust.

“Maybe,” I said, turning to find Sam watching me explore, “we could just move in here.” The heavy air blanketed my words, even though the chamber was a dozen stories tall. “We could move the bookcases in the middle of the floor for the piano.”

He made a noise that was not quite a laugh and let the door close behind him. “The acoustics are terrible, though. And where would we sleep?”

I swept my hands through the air, toward the giant cushiony chairs and sofas, blankets draped across their arms and backs. Subdued, velvety colors matched the wood all around. Everything was so cozy and sleepy; I couldn’t imagine why people weren’t fighting to stay here forever.

“But the acoustics,” he protested.

“We’d rearrange things to help.” I dropped my head back and relaxed. “Where’s the section on music history? I’m sleeping there.”

He gave me a look I couldn’t decipher.

I cringed and turned away to hide the heat on my face. “I guess we do have that at your house, huh?”

“Let’s have a tour. I’ll show you where everything is so you don’t get lost.” He offered an arm, but I didn’t take it and he let his hand drop as if he’d never tried.

“I might need a map and emergency flare.” I brushed my palms across a smooth leather chair, which hissed under my skin. The polished wood squeaked when I touched the desk Sam was opening.

He pulled out a pad of paper and a pen and handed them to me. “You can fold paper into a glider. Don’t know anyone will see it to rescue you, though. You’ll have to make your own map.”

Of course.

With exaggerated pride, he motioned toward the far side of the library. “Everything on the north wall and nearby bookcases is personal diaries. On all floors. Professional diaries are kept in sections related to their studies.”

I glanced up again. Twelve stories packed with nearly five thousand years of diaries for a million people. My brain hurt just thinking about it.

“Feel free to look at any of them you want. That’s why people bring them here — for others to learn from.” He reached for the nearest bookcase and hooked a finger on the top of a book’s spine, tipping it out of its resting place. “In the beginning of every new life, people usually go back and write an end for their previous lifetime. Usually they mention how they died so others can avoid that fate.” He grinned and winked, but it didn’t sound funny to me. “Genealogies are on this floor—”

“Can we look at something first?” I’d rather have tried on my own, but someone had to tell me if I was right. If anyone was going to see me make an idiot of myself, it might as well be Sam.

He waited, of course saying nothing about the rude way I’d interrupted him. Li would have hit me for that.

I let the dusty peace of the library soothe me before I forced out the words. “Are there photos or videos of you? From before?”

Silence for a stuttering heartbeat, then he nodded. “Some.”

My head swam. “I need to see them.”

He bit his lip — first time I’d seen him do that, and I wondered if he’d picked it up from me — and gazed upward. “Will it change anything? Between us?”

I wanted to remind him there was nothing to change. Nothing had happened this morning. Still, it wasn’t exactly true, and after all my thoughts in the Council chamber, things had already changed. It was just a matter of discovering how. “I don’t know.”

Sam bowed his head, then led me upstairs and around a maze of bookcases packed with stuffed photo albums and videos from various ages of technology.

We entered a secluded area where the full shelves would muffle sound. He motioned at one of the big chairs and bade me sit while he searched for memory chips and photos on the shelves. At a button click, a panel slid aside to reveal a large, blank screen. He pressed the chips into appropriate slots, and while they loaded, he placed a photo album on the desk between our chairs. An egret lamp made cheery light over the glossy cover.

He flipped through album pages and indicated a color photo of two men in their early forties, arms around each other’s shoulders. They grinned at the viewer, one wider and with a hand on the brim of his hat. The other had a slier smile that turned up one corner of his mouth more than the other. He wasn’t attractive; he had bad skin and limp hair, but that smile and the energy he radiated— “That’s you.” I pointed.

Sam — the young, handsome one — eyed me askance. “Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.”

He gave a single nod. “The other is Stef. He died in an accident a week after this was taken.”

As hard as it was to believe the Sam in the photograph was the same Sam sitting next to me, it was even more difficult to believe the woman I’d met this morning was also the fellow in this picture.

Sam flipped to a photo of two men and a woman playing music. A man sat at the piano, and my first instinct was to say that was Sam, but it didn’t seem right. I studied them more closely, searching for something familiar.

I glanced at Sam for a hint, but he just leaned his elbow on the desk and stared at the photograph, expressionless. I wished I could tell what he was thinking.

The man at the piano definitely wasn’t Sam. Something about the way he sat over it. I’d only seen Sam play a few times now, but he never possessed it. He caressed it. The other man had a flute; he wasn’t playing, so his expression was easy to read. It wasn’t a Sam-I-knew expression. Too… someone else. I turned to the woman with the violin.

She was tall, soft, and curved, wearing a wistful expression as she cradled her violin. Something about her relaxed posture and the way she looked at the piano or its player. I couldn’t tell which. I touched her face. “Found you.”

“Did you recognize the dress?”

I looked again. Sure enough, she was wearing the dress I’d worn this morning. She — he — filled it out better, too, and I tried not to be envious. “No, I hadn’t noticed it.”

The videos had long since loaded, and the screen glowed brightly, waiting for instructions. Sam obliged, and we watched a group of people chatting in the market field. The images were low quality, but the faces were clear enough. “This was shortly after we learned how to record videos. Someone, I won’t name names, went around recording everything he could. We have years’ worth of videos like this. No one watches, but no one will recycle them, either.”

I might watch. But I didn’t say so out loud.

It seemed we sat there for hours, watching old videos and looking through photo albums. I found him in crowds in the market field — Heart hadn’t changed at all in the last three hundred years — in groups of musicians, or giving rude gestures to whoever was recording while he mucked horse stalls. I found him holding someone in a rainstorm, or being held, and leaning toward a stranger with a smile. Twice I spotted him kissing a man or woman, and my throat closed up so I just nodded that I’d seen him, and he believed me.

The screen went dark, and the stained-glass lamp was the only light in our alcove. I’d heard him sing, seen him shuffle away when someone approached with a video recorder — his friends usually grabbed his arms and made him stay — and watched him laugh until his face was red. I’d seen him old and young, skinny and fat, male and female, ugly and beautiful. None of those Sams looked like my Sam. I just knew they were him.

“Are you okay?” he whispered. Other than my thudding heart, the silence was complete.

I couldn’t figure out how I was supposed to feel about this. It was like drowning, the cold and the aching lungs and heavy limbs, with things bumping you, and not being able to tell which way was up. I pulled my hands into my sleeves. His sleeves.

“No,” I said, “but it doesn’t matter. We have work to do.” I stood up and pretended to be brave.