Incarnate

Chapter 8 Song

“WHAT DO YOU mean?” I stepped outside, into Heart, onto a wide avenue. Conifers and hints of white stone houses filled the left side of the road. Smaller streets wound through the trees, which gave an illusion of privacy, though I got the feeling the plots of land each house stood on were large.

Sam motioned to an odd assortment of buildings on the right, stretching to the far side of the city, visible only because the wall was so big. “This is the industrial quarter. Warehouses, mills, factories.”

“Who does all those jobs?”

“Whoever wants whatever is necessary. Or, for example, if you want bolts of cloth, you can buy them during market day, since there are a few people who like working on those things, and produce more than they can use. It’s their job, and how they earn enough credit to buy food.”

“And those?” I pointed at a maze of huge pipes that ran between buildings. “You could fit a person in them.”

“Used for conducting geothermal energy. This part of Range is on top of an enormous volcano; there’s a lot of power just beneath the ground. We moved to solar energy almost a century ago, because it’s less potentially destructive, but we keep the pipes in place for backup.”

“I see.” I gazed up at windmills that reached higher than the wall. Above everything, the temple pointed at the sky. I couldn’t drop my head back far enough to see the top. Shivering, I turned my attention back to Sam. “Why do you need so much energy? It seems like there’s a lot more coming in than even a million people can use.”

“A lot of the power is used for automated city maintenance systems and mechanical drones that don’t need people to control them. Like snowplows or sewage.” He flashed a grin. “And when you get in trouble a lot, like Stef, you become very familiar with monitoring and cleaning those systems as punishment.”

“What if no one does anything wrong?”

He snorted. “There’s almost always someone. But on the rare occasion there’s not, we have to take turns.”

“Yuck.” I decided to behave. I didn’t want to spend my first — possibly only — lifetime scrubbing unspeakable things.

“I’m surprised no one’s come to greet you,” Sam muttered.

“Gawk. Not greet.” I followed him down the cobblestone avenue, doing my best to avoid dropping my bags while still taking in my surroundings. My first time in Heart since I was born, and the place was dead. “What did you mean before when you said ‘They planned that’?” He couldn’t avoid my question forever.

“What it sounds like. While they were taking their time getting to the guard station, they were deciding what they would offer. They made it sound like they were doing you a favor.”

I hmmed because I hadn’t caught that, but when I considered the conversation again, I agreed. “They don’t seem to respect you very much. Aside from insulting me, what did they mean by ‘projects’?”

He gave a dry chuckle. “Just that I tend to try something new every lifetime. Lots of people learn new things, because it’s simply easier to know how to do everything yourself than it is to realize your plumbing is broken and the only two people in Heart who could fix it are either away from the city or between lives.”

“So you know how to fix your plumbing. That’s not a crime.”

“But if I make it a point to learn something new every life and try — and sometimes fail — to keep up with old projects from previous lives, it makes me appear directionless. They think I’ve taken on too many things and don’t stick with enough of them.”

“Very contradictory.” I struggled to keep up with his long strides, especially now that I was carrying double what I had been. I didn’t blame him for his haste now that we were this close, but the day was considerably warmer than the past few weeks. My head buzzed with strain.

“That’s life.”

Apparently. “What did you tell Corin to make him change his mind about calling Meuric?”

Sam didn’t quite manage to shrug, thanks to the bags on his shoulders.

“About how useless I am? How I need help and would die if left on my own?” It was all probably true. I hadn’t lasted a day after leaving Li’s house.

“No, nothing like that.” His focus was straight ahead.

After fifteen minutes of trotting after Sam in silence, I said, “I don’t like Corin.”

“He isn’t a bad person. He’s just stiff and follows too many rules. Don’t blame him for what happened today.”

We turned down a street wide enough for five people to walk shoulder to shoulder. Bushes and tall evergreens lined the way. Other streets and walkways broke off from this one, but everything was still so far apart. Half the city’s population lived in this quarter, but I doubted they could hear one another if they hollered out their windows.

I caught sight of only a few houses, since most were guarded by trees and distance. They were all made from the same white stone as the city wall and temple, but their exteriors had been decorated differently. Some were plain, with merely serviceable shutters or glass in the stone openings. Others were more opulent.

“Are all the windows and doors in the same places on every house?” I huffed, trying to keep up with him as he walked even faster. Maybe if I got him talking he’d slow down.

“They are. Like I said, the city was waiting for us. The houses were already built, but they were shells with holes for doors and windows. The insides were hollow. We had to build interior walls, stairs, different floors — everything. You’ll see.”

I stopped walking. Jogging, rather. Trying to catch my breath, I knelt and let the heavy bag rest on the street. It had to weigh at least half what I did. My heart raced, and a cramp jabbed at my side.

“Ana?” Sam turned around and finally noticed I wasn’t there. He came back for me and crouched. “Are you okay?”

“No.” I scowled and pressed my palms on my face, damp with cold sweat. “No, I’ve been chased into a lake, burned, babied for weeks, then I walked half of Range to get here so a bunch of people who don’t know me can direct my life, and now you’re practically running away from me.” I slapped my bag, wincing at the shocks up my wrists and forearms. Darkness tinged the edges of my vision, receding as I took deep breaths. “You have all this time. Can’t you walk slower?”

A mask fell away from his expression as he dug a handkerchief from his pocket. He dabbed the cloth across my forehead and cheeks. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t paying attention.”

“You’re preoccupied.” I’d seen it before, a few times in the cabin when we talked about sylph or Li. Not that he ever admitted it.

“Excited to get home.” He stuffed the handkerchief away.

Liar. Well, maybe not completely a liar, but I wasn’t stupid. The mask had been there since we’d left the guard station. No, before. Sometime between standing up for — and interrupting — me, and the Council deciding what to do. Maybe in the same way I didn’t want another parent, he didn’t want a child. Though he’d said he’d take the responsibility…

But I wasn’t a child.

I lurched to my feet, bag gouging my shoulder, and nodded for him to continue. His mask returned, but he kept a slower pace this time. We didn’t speak as we turned down a few more streets and headed up a long walkway, and I caught my first glimpse of Sam’s house.

Like all the others, it was tall and wide, with a white exterior and the same placement of doors and windows. Nothing like Purple Rose Cottage, which had been small and wooden, perpetually dusty.

Shutters were painted pine green, and below each one rested a thick bush. Roses, perhaps. I glanced at my hands, thinking of the scars the purple roses had left. They were gone now, burned off in the sylph fire.

The outside had a generous garden, a few bare fruit trees, and small outbuildings scattered on the sides and back. Chickens clucked nearby, and cavies made quiet wheeking and bubbling noises in another building.

Sam walked beside me as we approached the door, green like the shutters. “What do you think?”

“Pretty.” But the stone walls and roof, the perfectly tended lawns… It all seemed cold. Ancient, and watching. When I glanced over my shoulder, the temple rose into the sky, even more sinister than before.

Sam didn’t notice my lack of enthusiasm, just found his key — what did he do with it between lives? — and opened the door wide to let me in first.

The interior was cool and dim, only slivers of light leaking through cracks in the shades. Aside from the staircase and a second room at the back — a kitchen? — the parlor took up the entire first story. White sheets fluttered over huge pieces of furniture, much more than one parlor should possess.

I started to ask about it, but Sam flipped a switch, and light poured across the hardwood floor, making me blink and squint to adjust.

“Pull off the sheets and put them in a corner for now,” he said. “I’ll make sure there’s a room for you upstairs.” He left the big bags by the doorway and headed up the spiral staircase with my backpack. An L-shaped balcony overlooked this quarter of the parlor, guarded by a thin rail carved from wood. He checked on me before disappearing beyond my line of sight.

Carefully, in case there was something fragile hidden beneath the sheets, I drew the lengths of synthetic silk aside to find bookcases and shelves, chairs and stands of some kind. The furniture was all hard, polished wood, and decorations carved from pieces of obsidian, marble, and quartz. Sam had told me about learning these crafts, and I hadn’t been sure why he bothered. It seemed like a lot of work. But now that I saw the glossy curves of a stone shrike, the delicate etched feathers, I understood.

It was beautiful, and if I was going to live somewhere for five thousand years, I’d want to enjoy looking at it, too.

Then again, he’d said some people did these things as a job. He could buy them, if he wanted. So what was his job? I’d ask when he returned.

Once the edges of the room were uncovered, I turned to all the items in the middle, starting with a particularly strange lump.

The sheet rippled off a large plane of maple wood, over a length of keys, and slipped off a bench.

A piano. A real one.

My chest constricted, and I wanted to call up to Sam and ask why he hadn’t told me, but I hadn’t yet finished my task. There might be more treasures.

In a giddy daze, I moved through the parlor uncovering things I’d seen only as drawings in my favorite books. A large harp. An organ. A harpsichord. A stack of cases with various instruments engraved in the polished wood. I didn’t recognize most of them by sight, but I could identify the violin, another — bigger — stringed instrument, and a long one with a reed and intricate metal keys. Clarinet?

This was too wonderful. Had he called ahead and had a friend bring these over, just because he knew I’d like them?

I couldn’t imagine why, but it did seem like something Sam would do. He was so nice to me, always doing things just to make me happy.

I drifted back to the piano in the center of the room. Carved wood framed the instrument and its bench, and rows of ebony and yellowed ivory keys glimmered under the light. My fingers reached to touch them, but these weren’t my things. I snatched my hand back at the last moment, pressed my palm against my racing heart.

A real piano. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

“You don’t like it?” Sam’s voice, tinged with annoyance, came from the balcony. I jumped and stared up at him, struggling to control the questions crowding my mouth. “Does it feel wrong too?”

“Fingerprints.” First thing that came to mind. “I didn’t want to smudge anything.”

His tone lightened as he headed downstairs, fingers trailing along the banister. “Play something.” He’d washed his face and changed his shirt, but he was still flushed from the walk. Or maybe something else, because he hadn’t been the one panting outside. “You won’t hurt it.” Maybe that hadn’t been annoyance after all, but I didn’t let down my guard.

I chose a key in the middle. A clear note resounded through the airy room. Sparks traveled up my spine, and I pressed another, and another. Each note was lower than the last as my fingers crept toward the left end of the piano. I tried one on the right, and the note was higher. It wasn’t like a song at all, but hearing the sound bounce across the polished stone and furniture — my cheeks hurt from grinning.

Sam sat on the bench, dragged his fingertips across the keys without pressing any, then picked out my four notes. They came staccato. Tuneless.

But there was something about the way he sat there, something familiar. This wasn’t a borrowed piano.

Lots of people probably had pianos.

The four notes sounded again, this time in a slow rhythm, and when he glanced at me, some indecipherable expression crossed his face.

I couldn’t stop staring at his hands on the piano keys, the way they fit there so comfortably.

He played my notes again, but instead of stopping after, he played the most amazing thing my ears had ever heard. Like waves on a lakeshore, and wind through trees. There were lightning strikes, thunder, and pattering rain. Heat and anger, and honey sweetness.

I’d never heard this music before. There seemed no room to breathe around my swollen heart as the music grew, made me ache inside.

It went on forever, and not long enough. Then my four notes came again, slow like before. I struggled to breathe as the sound echoed against my thoughts. And quiet blanketed the parlor.

I couldn’t remember sitting. Just as well. My legs didn’t feel strong enough to hold me up.

“Sam, are you—” I swallowed the name. If I was wrong, I would be really embarrassed. But I was already on the floor, the music still thick inside me like the first time I’d stolen the player from the cottage library. A hundred times more, though.

This was here. Real. Now.

“Are you Dossam?”

His hands rested on the keys, at home there. I willed him to play again. “Ana,” he said, and I met his gaze. “I wanted to tell you.”

“Why didn’t you?” If only I could stop thinking of my drug-induced confession of infatuation. If there’d been a hole to crawl into, I would have.

He caressed the keys again, some strange expression crossing his face. “At first I didn’t think it mattered. And after”—he shook his head—“you know. I didn’t want you to feel different around me.”

That was either really kind of him, or really moronic. “You told me your name was Sam. Everyone else called you Sam, too.” I was really sure I’d have noticed people calling him Dossam, at any rate.

His face reddened. “It’s shorter, and everyone’s been using it forever now. Back at the lake, when I told you my name, I didn’t know you wouldn’t know. I should have clarified, but—”

“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.