Asunder (Incarnate) (21 page)

He kissed me, warm and hard enough to make me dizzy,
but his arm around my waist stayed; he didn’t let me spin away. “I love you.” It was his voice, but his lips rested against mine so my mouth made the shape of the words.

“I wish I could tell you that, too.” My heart thudded too quickly. “Whenever you say it, I feel so good and happy. But guilty for keeping the goodness to myself.”

“That’s not how it works.” He kissed me again, as if the act would force me to accept his way of thinking. “Besides, I can wait.”

Another benefit of being ancient: immeasurable patience.

My feelings were deep and overwhelming and confusing, but at the same time the emotion filled me with a sense of belonging. This boy. This soul. We were tied together with something stronger than anything physical. With him, I was not a soul asunder.

A quiet rumble came from the front of the house, drawing me to my feet. “What’s that?” I grabbed my things from the nightstand and wandered into the hall, to a front-facing window.

“A plow.” Sam followed. “It’s like the drones we saw on the way back to Heart. There it is.” He held a curtain aside, revealing a vehicle with a large scoop on the front. It heaved up to the steps—shoving a pile of snow to block the door—and turned to clear the other half of the walkway.

“Okay, so it works here, but what about people like Cris who have about three places you’re allowed to step?”

“The price of filling your walkway is the plows don’t clear it for you. And they’re not very good about the doors. It’s going to be tough to escape. I might need your help.”

Because I was so strong. Right. But I caught the way he tried to stop his smile, and I rolled my eyes. “I’m worried about him and Stef.” I could see slivers of her house from this window. Or maybe that was just more snow.

Sam released the curtain and leaned on the wall, something I still couldn’t make myself do. “Me too.”

I checked my SED, but she hadn’t replied to my messages. I sent another, and one to Cris, asking again if they were okay. I hated that neither were home during a storm. “Where could they be?”

“Wish I knew.” The thinking line deepened between his eyes. “After the explosions and what happened downstairs, their absence is especially worrisome.”

“I think it was Deborl. Merton. Their other friends.”

Sam frowned. “He’s a Councilor.”

“So was Meuric, and he tried to lock me in the temple. He got Li and Merton to attack us after the masquerade. Being a Councilor didn’t stop him, and it wouldn’t stop Deborl.”

Sam gazed at nothing down the hallway. “You think he’d set explosives to kill people who
might
be pregnant with newsouls? Or break into our house and destroy”—his voice hitched—“my instruments?”

“I have no doubt.”

Sam reached for my hand, squeezed my fingers. “All right, so what do we do? If he’s attacking newsouls, we need proof.”

“Sine is having someone watch them.”

Sam nodded. “That’s a start. Who knows? Maybe he’ll get himself caught.”

I rather doubted that, but since I’d definitely get caught and thrown in prison—or worse—if I tried to sneak into Deborl’s house and see if he had my things, Sine’s people would have to do. “You know what still bothers me?”

“I can’t even count that high.”

I stood on my toes and messed up his hair, then started down the hall. Just being close to the exterior wall made me squirmy. “If the explosions were coincidence—not a response to the meeting—all right. But how did they know about the books and Menehem’s research?”

Sam shook his head. “Did you talk to anyone else about it?”

“No.” I leaned on the balcony rail. “Well, Cris told me he had some ideas about my symbols, but no one else was with us. Sarit, Lidea, and Wend had just walked away.”

“Cris wouldn’t have done any of these things.”

No, he wouldn’t have. “So now they have the key, the books, and the research. They have everything and we don’t have anything.” I slouched, despair building inside me. How
could I protect newsouls if I couldn’t even protect a few inanimate objects?

Sam put his arm around my shoulders. “They don’t have everything.”

I shivered deeper into his embrace. I wanted to say something nice to him, anything to let him know how much I appreciated him and how glad I was we weren’t fighting anymore. But I didn’t want to sound stupid. There was one way to show him.

I pressed my palms on the balcony railing, overlooking the ruined parlor. “I’m ready to share something with you.”

He waited.

I refused to hesitate. “My notebook isn’t a diary.” I pulled it out and flipped it open to the first page to reveal hand-drawn bars of music, scribbled words in the margins, and doodles everywhere. “Maybe it sort of is, I guess. Just not like the ones everyone else keeps.” I gave Sam the notebook. “I don’t think I’m very good at being like everyone else.”

“I wouldn’t want you to be.” He sat on the top stair and turned pages, reading the words and music; they were both his language.

I sat next to him, elbows braced on my knees while I fidgeted and felt naked. Paper fluttered as he turned another page, and another. When he hummed a couple of measures, I cringed, but he kept reading without comment. Then he closed the notebook.

“It’s not finished,” he said, giving it back.

“Not yet.” Maybe not ever, but I hadn’t been writing it to finish something. I’d been writing emotions, because I didn’t always have words for what I wanted. But there was always music, and sometimes it seemed like the most powerful thing in the world.

“Have you played any of it?”

I held the notebook to my chest, pressing the music against my heart so hard it might leave permanent impressions. “I’ve been too afraid of what it might actually sound like outside my head.”

Sam stood and offered his hand. “It may be time to find out.”

Maybe he was right.

DAYS LATER, WE walked to the street and South Avenue, past walls of snow rising as high as my shoulders. Sunlight glittered across the ripples and made the whole city bright. So much light hurt my eyes, but not in the way the temple did. There were still drifts and shadows, dark evergreens against the brilliant snow. White veins shimmered between the cobblestones, and the sky was pale blue, a color almost too impossible to be real.

It was the perfect day for the monthly market, and everything I had planned.

The entire market field had been plowed, along with the wide half-moon stairs leading up to the Councilhouse. It was early, so a few sellers were still assembling their tents and
tables, spreading their wares for viewing.

In spite of my coat and mitts and scarf, I shivered as we approached the field, the Councilhouse, the temple pushing into the sky. Cris and Stef were still missing—no one had heard from them—but everyone else had contacted their lists and were prepared to make their speeches this morning. Anticipation and defiance surged through me. Today, my friends and I would show everyone that newsouls were worthwhile. We’d show the Council that some people welcomed newsouls and wanted them to be safe.

I touched my flute case, a velvet-lined tube with a strap that went across my chest; it was easier to carry than the wooden box the flute had come in.

“You’ll do fine,” Sam said. The market’s joyful din clattered across the field as we came in sight of the Councilhouse stairs and wide landing that would double as the stage. Sarit, Lorin, and Moriah were already there, winding evergreen boughs around the columns. “I have to help move the piano from the warehouse. Will you be okay up there?”

“Yep.” I stood on my toes to kiss him, then trotted up the stairs, holding my flute case to my chest to keep it from bouncing.

Sarit, Lorin, and Moriah all hugged me, and I began adding the blue roses to the evergreens.

“Sam’s getting the piano?” Sarit asked.

I nodded and slipped a rose into the strap on my flute case;
I wanted one for my hair later. “The piano they keep over there.” I waved my hands toward the industrial quarter with its warehouses and mills. “He already went twice to tune it, but he said he wanted to do one more pass because it’s been so long since anyone has played it. And he’s, you know, Sam. It has to be perfect or it’s not worth playing.”

“How’s he doing with”—Lorin gave an awkward shrug—“the parlor?”

I bit my lip and glanced at the market, which grew more crowded by the minute. The only space not filled with colorful tents and stalls was an aisle to the steps, where there was a ramp for the piano. Several people watched our work, and rumors about an impromptu concert trickled through the tents. I tried to find anyone looking especially surprised or upset that I hadn’t given up on my plan, but most people seemed to be looking forward to hearing Sam play. They didn’t know what had happened in his parlor.

“Sam’s angry, of course,” I said. “Someone destroyed his work. But he could be worse.”

“But they didn’t get your flute,” Lorin said.

“Because
someone
popped out a spring when she was playing with it, and I had to take it upstairs for repair. It wasn’t in the parlor, or they would have.” I tried not to imagine my flute twisted up, keys ripped off and holes gaping like empty eye sockets.

Lorin gave me a sideways hug. “Sorry about the spring.”

“Thanks for breaking it.” I turned to Sarit. “And thank
you
for getting the roses. I don’t know what we would have done without you.”

“You would not have roses.” Sarit’s tone was light, but she glanced northeast, toward Cris’s house, and her expression tensed. “I hope he and Stef are okay. I wish they’d call or send a message.”

If Stef had been the only one missing, I could have blamed it on her being angry with Sam. Cris, though, wasn’t angry with anyone. As far as I knew.

Just as we finished decorating the stage and setting up microphones, Sam and some of his friends appeared with the piano. A few people from the market cheered, while others wore expressions somewhere between curiosity and suspicion.

When Sam had the piano where he wanted it and sat to warm up, I went inside the Councilhouse with Sarit.

“Are you ready?” she asked as we moved away from the glass doors.

“No. Yes.” I handed her my flute case so I could take off my coat. No one would take me seriously when all my layers made me look like a bundled-up child. I could shiver for a little while if it meant people paid attention.

“Oh, pretty!” Sarit laid my coat on the back of a chair and started braiding my hair. “When did you get this dress?”

I smoothed the gray ripples of wool and synthetic silk that
hung to my ankles—concealing a pair of thick tights so my legs wouldn’t freeze. The sleeves hugged my wrists, delicate fingerless mitts covered my hands, and I kept a synthetic silk scarf around my neck. The blue matched the rose Sarit threaded into my braid.

“It’s one of Sam’s dresses. From before. We had to do a lot of work to make it fit.” A few generations ago, he—she?—had been taller and curvier, and wore a lot of dresses. Maybe when you were a boy most lifetimes, you wore dresses when you got the chance. “But I thought it suited today perfectly.”

“It looks perfect on you.” Sarit stepped back and admired her work with my braid. “Beautiful. Now warm up, or Sam will frown at both of us. I’ll get your music.”

I pulled my flute from its case and played through warm-up exercises and scales. Outside, Sam played similar exercises on the piano; the powerful sound rattled the series of double doors.

By the time I was warmed up, Sarit had finished organizing my music, which was now written on real music paper and given a temporary ending.

She grabbed the music stand she’d stashed here earlier and nodded toward the doors. “Let’s go, dragonfly.”

I laughed at the attempted endearment, but just as we reached the door, Councilor Sine burst inside.

“Ana, finally. I’ve been looking everywhere for you.” She took a deep breath, eyeing my dress and flute with
uncertainty. “I haven’t had any luck locating Cris or Stef. I’m sorry, but I’m sure they’re fine.”

I scowled, far less sure. “Okay. What about Deborl and Merton? And the guy who shoved me?”

She shifted her weight and shook her head. “I had a few people watch Deborl and Merton, but it sounds like they didn’t do anything more suspicious than shovel snow.”

I snorted. “I find it suspicious they get up and pee in the morning.”

Sine cringed. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be of any more help.”

Maybe she really was. Mostly, I hoped she was ready to listen to what I had to say, and what my friends had to say.

Sarit went first, taking my stand and music onto the wide landing. She placed it just enough away from the microphone that it wouldn’t screech—I hoped.

I clutched my flute and went outside, greeted by cold air, the piano’s rich sound, and the fade of conversation around the market as people crowded to look.

“You can do this,” Sam murmured from the piano bench. This instrument was dark, as though stained with midnight; it was ink against the white stone and evergreens and blue roses.

My smile felt tight, fake, but as I stood behind the music stand, positioned so I could see both Sam and the crowd gathering below, I reminded myself why I had to do this: for Anid and Ariana, held in their mothers’ arms as they paused by a
tent with mittens and scarves; for the others who’d be born soon and needed care and protection; for those who would stay trapped in the temple, consumed.

I lifted my flute.

There was a soft
click
as Sarit turned on the microphones.

Sam nodded. I breathed. A long, low chord rang from the piano. The sound vibrated through stone and into my legs, and the world grew silent as we began to play.

My flute whispered at first, evidence of my fear, but I’d played this before, and I could do it again. At home, I’d practiced with Sam, him humming the chords he’d play on the dark piano, because he’d listened to my music and gazed at me with such wonder that I might have flown.

I’d played it a hundred times with Sam correcting my posture and reminding me that cold air would make me sharp. Now on the stage, I pulled myself straight and let my flute sing.

Melancholy melody drifted across the stage, the deep piano chasing after it. I played loneliness and fear, yearning for things unnameable and shining. The sound caught around people, pushed through tents, and heated the air as I gained confidence. My flute stretched, warm and full and silver, and I played as I never had before.

Music grew, shifted into the richer sounds of courage and hope and desire. The piano provided foundation, encouraging
my playing, lifting it and somehow revealing new layers of the flute’s voice.

I played of sunsets and snow, the way leaves shifted and fell, and the anticipation of a kiss.

Music moved around the market field, raining from speakers to make people look up, look around. Friends and teachers smiled. Councilors tilted their heads, expressions unreadable. Strangers wore a range of emotions, some I didn’t want to see, so I turned back to my music, back to Sam, and he smiled.

The music gasped with a kiss, surged with fear, and loomed long and low and lonesome where I’d written my experiences in the temple. Heavy chords were billowing smoke across the stage, and I ended with the four notes that began the waltz Sam had composed for me when we met, a haunting echo of blossoming love.

I lowered my flute, and no one in the market field moved.

They were waiting, which was exactly what I’d hoped, but it was much scarier when it was actually happening, all their eyes trained on me.

I’d played. I could do this, too.

Heart thumping, I stepped around my music stand and up to the microphone. I lifted my chin and found the words I’d practiced; it wasn’t much, because others would do most of the talking. I only needed to make an impression.

“I am Ana, a newsoul. The music you just heard is mine,
and this”—I held out my flute, which gleamed in sunlight—“survived in spite of someone’s attempt to destroy it and stop me from playing for you today.”

A few people in the crowd shifted. Some went back to shopping.

“I’ve been attacked,” I said, lifting my voice. “People have thrown rocks at me. Beaten me. Spread rumors about me. All in response to one transgression: I was born. The same is going to happen to Lidea’s baby, and Geral’s, and maybe some of yours.

“The reactions to our new knowledge—that more newsouls will be born—have been varied and complicated. Some people have been welcoming. Others have not. I can’t ask that everyone accept us. I know that won’t happen. But this is my plea to you, the people of Heart, and the Council: protect newsouls. Before dismissing us as inconsequential, give us a chance to prove that we are worthwhile.”

I smiled—sort of—and walked toward Sarit, who waited by a column, wearing a wide grin. Sam got up to speak, and I tried to relax. My part was over. Everyone else would do the rest.

“You were great, firefly,” Sarit whispered. She took my flute and headed inside to put it away while I listened to Sam.

His words came like a song. “I met Ana when she escaped a swarm of sylph by leaping into Rangedge Lake. That was
the first thing I knew about her: she would rather choose her own destiny.

“The next day, we encountered another sylph. In order to rescue me, she burned her hands, even after having been told that any significant sylph burn would grow and kill the victim. A lie, as we all know. But that didn’t stop her. That was the second thing I learned about Ana: she is selfless.

“Ana taught herself how to read, memorize music, and survive. Many of you have had the privilege of teaching her and have seen how quickly she acquires new skills. Her very first night in Heart, I left her in my parlor while I cleaned up. When I returned, she was sitting at my piano”—his voice cracked—“and she’d already figured out how to read music. Not long after, she composed her own minuet. The beautiful piece you heard today is only her second composition.”

My face ached with heat, from the people staring at me. He wasn’t supposed to brag about me, just encourage discussion. This was embarrassing.

“Yet when she arrived in Heart, she was not welcomed. In her absence, a law had been made to keep her from living as an adult, though she was already three years past her first quindec. She wasn’t allowed farther than the guard station until she agreed to lessons and curfews and progress reports, as though she were less than human. Less than everyone else simply because she is new.”

I wanted to find a cozy rock to hide under. If it were possible for a face to glow with so much blood rushing upward, mine did. People kept looking at me and hmming.

“During Templedark,” Sam said, his voice deeper, “when Menehem told her his intentions, Ana did everything in her power to save souls. She warned everyone of the price of dying during those hours. She sought me out when I’d gone to fight—and she rescued me again, this time from a dragon.

“Have any of you ever seen me
not
die when a dragon was trying to kill me?”

A few people chuckled nervously.

“That is what I want you to understand when I tell you we need newsouls. We need them to have privileges and rights, just like the rest of us. We need to encourage their talents and growth. No one will deny education is necessary, but Ana has proven ten times over that she can be trusted, and she will do anything in order to protect our community. It’s her community as well.”

Just as Sam finished speaking, screams flashed throughout the crowd. A commotion pushed its way between tents, coming toward the stage. Men in black coats dragged something behind them.

I walked back to Sam and the microphone to get a better look. “What’s going on?” My voice carried from speakers everywhere as screams grew louder and people hurried to get out of the black-coated men’s way.

One was Merton; his huge frame was impossible to mistake as he crashed up the half-moon stairs. Deborl hurried after him, and between them…