Incarnate

by Jodi Meadows

Page 11

  Author: Jodi Meadows

  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? B
ut 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.

  Chapter 9

  Reprise

  HE’D BEEN RIGHT about my needs being met.

  In one of the cubbies, I found cozy shirts and trousers made of wool and synthetic silk. I laid them out for after I was clean. He had feminine underwear, too, but that was too weird; I left them.

  After a quick shower to remove the worst of the road grime, I ran a hot bath to soak my poor muscles. When I turned the water off, strains of music floated upstairs. He was playing my song again. But just as I relaxed into it, the whole thing stopped in the middle of a phrase, then started again. He continued like that, sometimes only a few notes. Perhaps he was writing it down, like he said.

  I closed my eyes and listened until the water grew cold, then dried and dressed and braided my hair.

  When I peeked over the balcony, he hadn’t washed yet, just sat at the piano with a stack of lined papers and a pencil. He hummed as he made circles and dots across the bars, and tested the notes again with the keys.

  I tried to be quiet going down the stairs and to a wide chair, soft with pillows and a lace coverlet.

  He didn’t acknowledge me, too engrossed in his work. I let my gaze drift over the parlor with all its instruments and echoing music. No silk walls down here. Fabric absorbed sound. I’d read that in one of his books.

  Shelves sectioned off the kitchen, though few actually held books. They were filled with bone flutes, something made of osprey feathers and pronghorn antlers, and wooden boxes of various shapes. It was hard to tell in the wan light, but I thought I detected etchings of animals in the wood, like at the cabin.