Otherbound

12

Amara’s legs trembled with energy. So did her hands. She couldn’t afford them to. A seam of Cilla’s topscarf had torn, and putting a needle into Cilla’s hands was asking for trouble, so it was up to Amara to carefully push gold thread through the scarf’s patterned maroon surface. She bit down hard in concentration.

Putting a toothbrush into Cilla’s mouth was asking for trouble, too, but Jorn insisted. Nearby, Cilla boredly ran the brush past her teeth, her shoulders bare to avoid stains on her topscarf. Her winterwear was just as chic as the scarf Amara was repairing, with finely stitched cuffs at the ankles and golden satin lacing running down the thighs and back and sides. A lace pattern adorned the very top where it sat snugly around her breasts, even though that part would be hidden under a topscarf most of the time. Now, though, her sternum and arms were bare, revealing muscle flexing under the skin of her arms and that faintly glowing palace tattoo above her breasts. It was the same as Amara’s—the shape of an Alinean volcano surrounded by a star’s spikes—but Cilla’s tattoo was larger, and it sat free while Amara’s was encircled. And if Amara were looking at Cilla at all—which she shouldn’t—she should look at that tattoo and not the softness of the flesh underneath.

She cleared her throat, both to distract herself and to get Cilla’s attention. There was something she needed to ask. She chose her gestures with care, though tension showed in every flick of her fingers, and said, “If those blackouts happen again, Jorn will punish me.”

Anything more explicit was too dangerous.

Amara stared right into Cilla’s eyes. Looking away meant disrespect; it meant fear. Fear meant distrusting your betters. That was unacceptable. She’d already taken a risk saying this much without a lead-in or a specific request for Cilla’s time.

Cilla lowered the brush, looking surprised. “I … understand.” She bit her lip, then caught herself. Teeth and skin were a risky combination. “Well, I’m certain you won’t black out again.”

Promise? Amara wanted to ask. Promise you won’t tell him if I do?

It didn’t matter. Cilla could swear up and down that she’d keep quiet, but she’d already told on Amara once, and she was still her better. She remained a danger.

“Let’s hope,” Amara said, and checked the bowl near Cilla for pinkened spit. Clean. She picked up her needle again.

Cilla lowered her head, her expression hidden behind pointy locks of hair that Amara could never make sense of. Most Alineans wore their hair shorter than Cilla’s chin-length locks, even shaving the sides; since they tattooed their servants’ necks, long hair meant you had something to hide. When the Alineans had crossed the Greater Ocean and founded the Dunelands as a trading outpost, they’d taken both their servants and hairstyles with them. The shorter hairstyles had rubbed off on some settlers from the Continent, but most of them wore it long, especially given the Dunelands’ persistent, wet chill.

Amara didn’t know whether it was a statement or vanity, but Cilla had opted for the middle road: short enough to reveal her neck, long enough to run her fingers through. Amara’s hands twitched wanting to do just that. Her feet twitched, too. She couldn’t sit still. She had all this pent-up worry and anger and nothing to do with it, nothing but pricking this stupid needle into Cilla’s scarf, studying patterns that reminded her of flames—nothing at all like her own scarf, which was drab and thin.

Her legs wouldn’t stop moving. Muscles pulling, her feet wrenching back and forth. Amara held them down, but then her head shook, too, tiny tugs in all directions. Her sight faded for a second without her ever shutting her eyes. She willed her neck still.

It didn’t work.

She wanted to raise her hands to press them to her cheeks, but they hung unresponsive by her sides, as though she’d slept in the wrong position and a million needleseeds were about to stab her skin with every movement. Those pricks refused to come. Her arms simply didn’t listen.

Her head stopped moving. It came to a halt with her face turned right, looking at Maart still cleaning the fish on an old grain cart across the room.

“Amara?” Cilla made a sound of hesitation.

Amara’s lips moved. But she didn’t move them.

It wasn’t just her head or her arms she couldn’t use. She tried to wiggle her toes. To direct her eyes back to Cilla, who was getting up from her seat, based on the sound of her chair scraping against the floor. None of it worked. This wasn’t like needleseeds. This was worse.

Amara felt her heart speed up—so maybe she could control that, at least, her heart was still hers, still listened to her panic—and then her hands rose, and her head turned back to Cilla, all of it without her say-so.

Amara stumbled, and for that split second she was falling to the floor and couldn’t stop herself, couldn’t move her feet forward or extend her arms or cover her face—

She caught herself. That unseen something tugged at her lips again. Like fingers playing with her face, pulling her muscles left and up without her consent. She was trapped.

And this time, she was aware of every second of it.

“Eh worrgee,” her mouth said, pushing air from her lungs past her lips. What did that mean? The sounds came from her own mouth, but they sounded alien, foreign—Jélis, maybe, or some language from the northern continents.

Her hands still hovered by her chest, then spread apart. They signed, unfinished and too quickly and nothing like her normal gestures, “It’s working. I’m here. This is me I’m doing this I’m using her hands, this is working, it’s working—”

“Amara, what are you—what do you mean?” Cilla’s voice caught.

Behind Amara came footsteps. Maart. Her body turned to face him a second later than she would have. “Anything wrong?” Maart asked.

Yes, she wanted to say. This isn’t me. I’m trapped. This isn’t me!

Instead of signing, Amara stomped her feet. Her hands clapped. Her lips pulled in a grimace. She filled her lungs, held that breath, let it shudder out. “It’s real,” her hands said. Her eyes looked at those hands, moving without her commands. She never watched her own signs. There was no point. But now her eyes stayed glued to her hands as they tumbled over themselves. “It’s real it worked I’m here.”

“What are you talking about?” Maart asked.

Cilla shuffled closer, but not too close, leaning in with only her head and her still-bare shoulders. She laughed nervously. “How many mushrooms are you on, Amara?”

Amara’s head shook, slowly at first, then stronger, enough to send hair slapping against her cheeks. She laughed. The sound was not her own. “No. Not Amara.”

What kind of spirit would take control like this? What kind of mage would have her stand here laughing and make her smack her lips?

“I think you’re doing something magical,” Cilla said slowly. “Something mage-like.”

Amara’s hands said something else, but with her eyes sliding up to watch Cilla’s face, she couldn’t see what. Cilla’s nostrils flared, and she kept her distance.

Amara concentrated on sensing her hands to identify their movements. The signals didn’t come from her, but she could recognize the tug of her muscles, the brush of skin. “—but doesn’t know. She never knows,” her fingers said.

Amara wanted to scream.

Someone was doing this to her. Someone was pushing and shoving around her muscles. Someone was shutting her out.

“Stop this,” Maart said. “Jorn will be back soon. Please stop.”

“If you’re not Amara,” Cilla asked, “are you a spirit? A mage?”

Amara felt her lips stretch. Was she smiling? She never smiled like this. Not with her lips parting, her teeth visible.

“Then who?” Maart shook. Frustration—and fear, too, Amara thought, but she couldn’t comfort him, couldn’t tell him his fear and anger helped as little as her own.

“I am not a mage. I am—” Amara’s hands paused there. The next movements came slowly. “N-OO-L-U-N. S-A-N-D-I-AA-K-OO. The letters aren’t the same. We have a separate letter for the d. It’s a hard sound, like in Maart, and the k is softer. But this is close. This is how you’d say it.”

“Nolan,” Cilla repeated, almost a question.

Nolan, Amara repeated to herself. She didn’t know the name. How could she not know the name? This person was in her body. This person was in the tips of her fingers and the heat of her belly and the squish-and-pull of her lungs.

She should know the name.

“You’re not a mage,” Cilla stated. “Why are you possessing her?”

Maart’s hands kept rising and moving together as if he wanted to say something, but Cilla had said all there was to say. She looked calm. She was good at that. Even when she was afraid, nervous, she hid it under tight smiles and nods.

This calm was new. Regal.

“Possessing her? No, no, Amara’s the mage, not me. I’m just a boy. Amara she pulls me in, she makes me see through her eyes,” her hands said. “Her mage powers they do this but she doesn’t know it. You have to tell her. You have to explain.”

The hands moved too fast. The inflections were wrong, as was the grammar—but not when Nolan wanted his words to work. When he cared enough to slow down.

Amara wanted to shake her head. She wanted to dash away, move backward, as though that would leave Nolan behind in the space where she now stood and leave her free. Her body didn’t listen. Her connection to it was severed. Amara was thoughts, nothing more. She couldn’t even move that lock of hair out of her eyes.

“So Amara’s responsible for doing this?” Cilla asked.

“Yes! She pulled me in for years, since before Jorn took her from the palace I’ve been in her head, since before the coup. Always in her head. Locked up. She sucks me in every time I close my eyes. She can do more than heal but she never knew.”

No. Amara couldn’t think beyond that single dim word: no. This was madness. This was beyond believing.

Maart was staring at Amara’s hands. Cilla scanned the rest of her. Her eyes dipped to the way Amara’s feet stood on the floor, wide and steady, then rose to the eagerness of her hands, and settled on her lips, her eyes. “I’ve never heard of this happening,” Cilla said. “Mages do odd things, but they don’t move into each other’s bodies.”

“They do!” Amara’s movements contained too much energy. “Amara does! Normally I can only watch, but now my medicine is changing something. Amara still pulls me in, but now I can … I can …” Her hands thrust out, then in, pressing to her breastbone. “I can move.”

Tears pricked Amara’s eyes. Nolan’s tears. Not hers. She knew, because if her body was her own, those tears would’ve shown up minutes ago.

“Where are you from?” Cilla asked, still calm. “Are you responsible for her blackouts?”

“Is she having a blackout now?” Maart asked.

“She must be,” the hands said. “That’s why you have to tell her.”

Yes. The hands. These were someone else’s hands, not hers, not right now. She was not in her own body but in someone else’s, deciphering what went on.

That was better. Easier.

“I’m not from here. Before, when Amara blacked out, I took over. I was the one who ran to the carecenter. I didn’t know what happened. This time, I wanted to test it. She must be having a blackout. I can’t feel her. Normally I can feel her thoughts, pain—everything—but she’s blank now.”

Not blank! she wanted to shout. I’m here I can see this I can see this! I’m here!

No point. Nolan couldn’t hear her.

But he said he could the rest of the time. For years. No, these words on her fingers couldn’t be true—she couldn’t trap anyone inside her head. Her thoughts were hers. The only things that were hers and no one else’s.

“Where are you from?” Cilla repeated. “‘Not from here’ can mean anywhere. Not from these islands? Not the Dunelands at all? Where, then? The Continent? The Alinean Islands? Eligon? The—”

Amara’s head shook. That lock of hair brushed back and forth over her forehead.

“Where?” Something insistent and hard crept into Cilla’s voice.

Another laugh that wasn’t hers. “I’m not from this world. Not from this … planet.”

The door opened. Jorn came inside with heavy boots, every step a creak and a cloud of old grain dust.

Abruptly, Amara crumpled. Her muscles sagged, her shoulders drooped, and it was as if those movements finally opened her lungs to her. She drew in air, lifted her head, pumped her lungs full, gasping for more and more and more, in and out, and—was she back? She screwed her hands into fists, curled her toes inside too-hot boots, and felt her exhales turn to near-sobs.

Her body. Hers.

“Shouldn’t you be preparing dinner?” Jorn asked Maart.

Maart bounced away as if stung. “Yes. Sorry.” He backed up to the food cart. Early winterbugs buzzed around the fish. He waved them off, no longer looking at Amara, not wanting to direct Jorn’s attention her way.

Cilla didn’t move, though. The skin over her jaw tightened. She must think Amara was still … not her. She’d be worried that this Nolan might cause trouble with Jorn.

Nolan. Amara repeated the name, committing it to memory, although she didn’t think she could forget it, ever.

She finally brushed that lock of hair away from her forehead. “One of Cilla’s brush hairs fell from the stem,” she told Jorn. Amara let her hands move slowly, deliberately, the way they hadn’t when Nolan directed them. Every sign its place and time. “It could prick her if it slipped inside her winterwear.”

“So get behind a grain cart and take off your wear,” Jorn told Cilla irritably. “Princess.”

“I planned to.” All Cilla’s reserve seeped away. “I thought, if it was easier for them to check like this …”

“It looks clear,” Amara said. “But you should make certain.”

Cilla turned toward the nearest cart, but her eyes lingered on Amara, long enough for Amara to dip her head. I’m here, she wanted to say. It’s me.

Jorn wouldn’t respond well to this development. Even the way he regarded Amara now put her on edge, made her want to escape. He knew she was hiding something.

She couldn’t let him take her back to Drudo palace as Ruudde had told him to. She didn’t want to think about what would happen there. She didn’t want to think about anything.

What did Nolan mean, he was in her head?