Incarnate

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.”

“His full name is Not as Shaggy as His Father, but that’s a mouthful.” Sam’s grin turned into a grimace when he tried his coffee. “Drink up. It’s not worth lingering over, trust me.”

I inhaled steam as I took a careful sip to test the temperature. Hot and bitter, with a strange sweetness to it, like honey. I gulped down the entire mugful. “I like it.” My skin felt warm enough to glow. “Li never let me drink coffee. She said it would make me short.” And it was too expensive to waste on a nosoul, but I didn’t need any more of his pity.

“Li was tall last time I saw her. What happened to you?” He suffered another taste and held the mug toward me.

“Apparently Menehem was short and I’m unlucky.” I eyed the coffee, judging whether he’d yank it back at the last second. If he did, he’d spill it on me. Better to ask. “You don’t want that?”

“A companion on a caffeine high will wake me up just as well, without the aftertaste.” He set the mug between us. I snatched it up and drank before he could change his mind. “Wait until you try real coffee, grown in special greenhouses in Heart. You’ll never want to drink this chemical imitation again.”

I couldn’t help but be intrigued. Something better than this? I looked forward to finding the greenhouses he described.

“Now pay attention to where everything goes. I’ll pack this morning, but if I’m going to help you get to Heart, you’re going to do your share.”

I stared. Why would he help me? Weren’t we supposed to talk about how I’d pay him back for saving me last night? Now that he’d offered, however, I couldn’t bear if he took it back. He seemed— Well, he seemed like he didn’t hate me, and he’d rescued me. Not that the latter meant anything, since he’d assumed I was someone he already knew. Not Ana the nosoul.

“That’s fair.” I cleaned the mugs and water heater. Everything went into the pouches I’d watched him store things in last night. “What else?”

He went outside to feed Shaggy, leaving me to roll blankets and check the tent floor for anything that had escaped its bag.

Only one thing. A brass egg the size of two of my fists together. A thin silver band circled the middle, covering a seam where you turned it. And to keep your grip on the slick metal, the top half of the egg had shallow grooves.

It was pretty, if you didn’t know it was for catching sylph.

Sam walked in as I turned the sylph egg over in my palms, inspecting the delicate latch that held the flat lid on one end. “You only carry one of these?”

“I wasn’t planning on leaving Range.” He crouched in front of me and closed my fingers over the device. “You hang on to it.”

My first instinct was to decline. Did he think I was afraid? I didn’t deserve to be coddled or given special things. I’d done well enough last night. No, I’d ended up in the lake.

I tried not to let my relief show. “Thanks.”

“Get your coat and boots. We’ll take down the tent while Shaggy eats, then drop our things off at my cabin. It’s only a few hours south, so we can sleep there tonight. Your bag shouldn’t be too hard to find.”

Considering I didn’t even know where it was? Maybe it wouldn’t be hard for someone who knew every inch of the world.

I followed him outside. Morning hovered on the other side of the mountains, bathing the clearing in shades of indigo. Ospreys and smaller birds took flight, dark against the clear sky.

My first full day of freedom from Li.

I helped Sam pack the tent and load Shaggy, trying to memorize where everything went so he’d know I wanted to earn his help. It annoyed me that he’d just assumed I needed help, like a poor little nosoul couldn’t even get to the city on her own. But it bothered me more that he was right.

“Is the cabin the reason you’re out here?” I couldn’t fathom why anyone would willingly traipse about the wilderness in the middle of winter. Maybe this body was insane. Madness didn’t carry through different bodies, according to Cris’s books. There was a physical component to it, which geneticists and the ruling Council had mostly removed from society by allowing only certain people to have children, but every now and then there were surprises.

Sam took Shaggy’s lead and tugged him west. “Yes.” We walked, and he never answered my unspoken question of why. Not that I’d expected it. “You and Li were staying in Purple Rose Cottage, right?”

I mm-hmmed.

“It’s been, what, eleven years?”

Maybe not insane, just stupid. “Eighteen. She moved us when I was still an infant. I thought everyone knew all about the nosoul.”

He winced. “You shouldn’t call yourself nosoul. New doesn’t mean you don’t have a soul. The Soul Tellers would have known the day you were born.”

Like he knew anything about it.

“Why did you decide to leave yesterday?”

He sure was nosy. Instead of answering, I watched a family of weasels scramble into the brush as we approached; they continued their play hidden in a tangle of snow-covered branches.

Sam was still waiting for a reply.

Fine. He should know exactly what kind of thing he’d offered to help. “It was my birthday. I decided it was time to find out what went wrong.”

“Wrong?” He sounded appalled.

I struggled to stay calm, keeping myself deep inside my coat, and my eyes on the ground. “When I was young, I overheard Councilor Frase telling Li that a soul named Ciana was supposed to be reborn. It had been ten years since she died — twenty-three now — and that was the longest it had ever taken someone to come back. And she didn’t.” I could barely say it, but he’d asked. “She’s gone because of me.”

He didn’t disagree, and his gaze was far off, like he saw worlds I didn’t. Couldn’t. Lifetimes, anyway. What if he and Ciana had been friends? “I remember the night she died. The temple went dark, like it was mourning.”

I said the first thing I could think of that didn’t have anything to do with Ciana. “When is your birthday?”

“I don’t—” He flashed a smile, uncertainty evaporating from his voice. “Yesterday. I think that puts us at the same age.”

Sure, physically. Counting from the 330th Year of Songs. But his soul had been around the 329 before that, and all the years between. “I think you’re missing about five thousand years in that math.”

Silence was, apparently, his favorite response. He gave me a breakfast bar, thick with oats and dried fruit, and continued leading Shaggy down the road. Sunlight reflected off snow, making my eyes water. I pulled on my mittens and hood.

I strode ahead, though he could easily catch up with his long legs. It was nice that he didn’t try to outpace me like Li would have, though maybe it was just because of the pony, and being mindful of hooves on slick ground.

Pine boughs draped across the road, heavy with shiny snow. I ducked around them, underneath them, but still got powder on my coat. I brushed it off.

“That Li’s coat?” He maneuvered around the trees without difficulty.

“I didn’t steal it.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

I shrugged.

“What about those boots? Passed down as well?”

What was his problem? I stopped and turned on him, but there were no words sharp enough for what I wanted, so I mumbled, “A nosoul doesn’t need her own things,” and ducked my face.

“What was that?”

“I said”—I glared up—“a nosoul doesn’t need her own things if she’s only going to live the one life.”

“Newsoul.” His expression was a mystery. Li’s tended to range from anger to loathing, and though his eyebrows were drawn in and that was definitely a frown — he didn’t look like he was about to lock me in my room for a week. “And don’t be ridiculous. You should have your own things. Your body is still unique, and not only do these old things not fit you, they’re… old. They’re falling apart.”

Old. He should know. “Doesn’t matter. She’s not part of my life anymore. Ever again.” I started back in the direction we’d been going. “I’m not going to waste time being angry about things I can’t control. If I only have one life, I should make the most of it.”

Sam and Shaggy caught up with me. “Wise.”

“Just what Li insisted every time I said I hated her.” Maybe he wasn’t like Li, but he certainly wasn’t like me. Then again, no one was. I was alone. “She said I shouldn’t waste my time hating her, or Menehem, or anyone else. That’s her wisdom. I just happen to agree.”

He hesitated, and his voice lowered like he didn’t want the wind to hear. “The last time I felt like this much of a jerk was when I told Moriah his idea for keeping time by using gears rather than sun on a slab of stone was stupid. And then I found out he’d built a huge clock in the Councilhouse and was unveiling it later.”

Okay. I could forgive him. A little. “Don’t worry about it.”

He sounded more cautious when he spoke again. “Does it scare you, knowing you might not come back?”

“Not especially. Death seems so far away.” Last night notwithstanding.

I climbed onto a snow-covered stump, careful of the slickness beneath my boots. That was where I spotted my backpack, a brown and gray thing trapped in a tangle of pine boughs. I hopped off the stump, trotted into the brush, and retrieved my bag. Before I could put it on, though, Sam loaded it onto Shaggy, like he didn’t think I was strong enough to carry my belongings.

Or maybe he was just being nice, because I did ache after my leap into the lake. “Thanks,” I muttered. “So, would you be scared if you knew this was your last time?”

We walked in silence while he pondered and the sun reached its zenith. I hummed, echoing melodies made by shrikes and wrens. The sky was a perfect, clear blue over the mountains, hardly a cloud in sight. Last night might have been only a bad dream, except for the presence of Sam, who kept eyeing me like I might do something crazy.

After we crossed a river bridge and shadows stretched away from the lowering sun, Sam said, “I’d live differently, I suppose.”

It took me a second to realize he was answering my question. “How?” I liked it better when I could make him uncomfortable, rather than the other way around.

“If I knew there wasn’t much time left, I’d get things done more quickly. See more places, finish all my projects. I wouldn’t waste time daydreaming or starting new things. Seventy years isn’t that long.”

Seventy years sounded like eternity to me. I couldn’t imagine being seventy years old. “But that’s not being afraid.”

“I’d be afraid of what would happen after. Where would I go? What would I do? I don’t want to stop existing.” He didn’t move, just halted on the path, his back toward a clearing and an iron-fenced yard of stones. His gaze stayed on mine, like there was something I was supposed to read in his expression, but he just looked tired to me. “That’s probably the most frightening thing I can imagine.”

My hood slipped back when I shifted my weight, my face still turned up to his. “At least you’ll never have to worry about that.” I shivered against chill and the thought of having only one lifetime. The sylph burn on my cheek stung.

Thought made a crease between his eyes. He looked ready to say something when a stray shadow in the clearing caught my attention.

I stepped back, the word like an avalanche. “Sylph.”

Had he brought me here to feed me to it?

“What?” His voice dripped with confusion.

A surprise to him, too. Okay.

I peeled off my mittens and dragged the sylph egg from my coat pocket. I felt like a girl made of ice as I shoved past him, into the clearing. “Move.” I would have revenge for the mark one left on my cheek last night.

The sylph moaned, a shadow twice my height and blacker for the white all around it. Steam hissed beneath it where its fires had melted snow. I twisted the sylph egg and thrust it at the shadow.

“Stop!” Sam cried, at the same time as hooves pounded the ground and a tendril of shadow shot out of the sylph. The egg flew from my hands, and I screamed at the heat on my fingers. I stumbled backward as the sylph loomed over me like burning night.

I was on the ground before I realized, Sam rolling with me — away from the sylph. Our knees and elbows jabbed each other, only somewhat dulled by cloth. I sat up and lifted my red, peeling hands.

Soon I would die.

“Watch out!” Sam shoved me off him as the sylph lunged again, shrieking.

I caught myself, but swayed with pain too sharp to comprehend. Then I jerked back into reality when Sam shouted.

“Get behind the fence!” He scrambled out of the sylph’s way.

Iron. Right. I sprinted toward the graveyard, but Sam was still near a copse of snow-smothered trees. He’d saved me and I couldn’t just let him—

The sylph grew thicker, darker than midnight, and a giant, dragonish head pushed out from one side like it was trying to escape a bubble. It snapped at him, and Sam became expressionless. As if he was somewhere else. Somewhen else, like I’d felt when I saw the lake again last night.

No, I had to help him. My new sylph burns would kill me, anyway.

I searched through the steaming snow and gathered up the sylph egg. From the corner of my eye, I saw Sam return to himself — return to now — and begin pelting the sylph with snowballs. The dragon head disappeared, but his snowballs melted within seconds of passing through the shadow.

“Ana!”

Ropes of shadow forced Sam to dodge and duck. The clearing reeked of ash. The sylph attacked Sam again, trapping him against a tree.

My hands closed around the egg; I could barely feel it through the numbing cold. It was slick, almost too slippery to grip, but I gave the device a final twist and flipped up the lid just as the sylph lunged for Sam with a dissonant shriek.

I thrust the egg into the burning shadow, and smoke streaked into the brass when I dropped it. Heat raced through me, and my entire world grew too hot to live in. I felt like a legendary phoenix must, consumed in its own fires so it could be reborn.

But I wasn’t a phoenix.

Just a nosoul with blackened hands.

Across the sylph egg stood a young man who looked my age, but wasn’t. He might have said my name again. I couldn’t hear through the rushing in my ears as I ran to the nearest snowdrift and shoved my hands inside.

I would not cry. Would not.

A moment later, Sam knelt in front of me. “Hey.”

“Go away.” I clenched my jaw, trying not to look at the pitying expression he wore. He knew about the sylph burns, surely. He knew how they’d spread and engulf me, and soon I’d be dead. Probably forever. At least I was near a graveyard.

“Let me see your hands.” He spoke softly, as if that would change my mind. “Please.”

“No.” I scooted away and pressed my hands into a new patch of snow. They burned no matter how much snow I packed onto them. If I pulled them out, they’d be black and flaking, like charcoal. The singe on my cheek echoed the sensation. “Leave me alone.”

“Let me help you.”

He wasn’t going to listen. He didn’t care what I wanted. “No! Just go away. I don’t need you. I wish you’d never found me.” I was hot and cold and so tired of everything hurting. For someone who’d died a hundred times, he had a poor grasp of the situation. “In the last two days I’ve been given a bad compass by my own mother so I’d go the wrong way, attacked by sylph twice, burned, and nearly drowned in a freezing lake. You should have left me there. Everyone would have been happier to forget about me.” I collapsed over myself and wept. “I hate you. I hate everyone.”

Finally, he left.