Incarnate n-1

by Jodi Meadows

  Swearing, he used a spatula to prod at the pan, and a few minutes later we had runny-in-the-middle-crispy-on-the-outside fried eggs. He was usually a better cook than this, and though I considered skipping what he referred to as “breakfast” and I considered “gross,” I didn’t want to insult him further. I ate the parts that looked like eggs should, and cut the rest into bits. With luck, he wouldn’t be able to tell how much I hadn’t eaten.

  “I need to go out for a few hours.” He sat back. His plate looked like mine.

  “All right.” I scraped my eggs into the compost bin. “You don’t have to tell me everything. Some things can be private.”

  He sighed and pushed off his chair. “Ana…”

  I put my plate in the sink and faced him. “Look, you asked me to live here. Your walls are not exactly soundproof. I’m going to overhear things. I don’t snoop around or bother your belongings, but if you’re talking in the house, I’m probably going to hear it.” I dragged in a heavy breath. “I don’t want to go, but if you don’t want me to live here anymore, all you have to do is say.”

  Sam crossed the kitchen in four long strides and stood as close as we had the day he hadn’t kissed me. His mouth opened and shut, whatever he’d been about to say trapped inside. “Don’t leave.”

  There were a thousand things I could have said, mostly rude, but he actually looked worried — as well as a dozen other emotions flickering across his face too quickly to read. Too complex. “Then I won’t leave.” I kept his gaze. “I wish you’d tell me what’s going on.”

  He closed his eyes and again, I wasn’t fast enough to comprehend his expressions. “I promise I’ll tell you, just not right now. I really have to go.”

  “If you’re not telling me so I’ll still have fun tonight, you’re stupid. Now I’m going to worry about everything.” I balled my fists in my sleeves. “I mean, you gave me a knife. How am I supposed to feel after that?”

  “I’m sorry, Ana. There’s just too much to explain right now.”

  “When you get back, then.” I didn’t lower my gaze, even though he towered over me and my neck pinched from holding my head at this angle. “If it involves me, I have a right to know.”

  “Very well. As soon as I return.” His smile was forced. “Please don’t leave.”

  “You’d have to be a lot meaner than ruining breakfast to drive me away. After all, it took me eighteen years to leave Li, and you know how awful she was.” My equally forced smile dropped when we both realized how those last words could have sounded, like I could really compare Sam to Li. My tone hollowed. “I’ll be here.”

  He nodded, brushed hair off my face, and headed from the kitchen. “I hate being a teenager.”

  “Why?”

  “Hormones.” With a sad half smile, he left.

  Since he was out for the morning and I had no engagements — the library was closed for masquerade preparation, and no lessons had been scheduled for today — I took the opportunity to try on my costume to make sure I liked the way everything fit. It made me look like not-me, and took ages to put on right, but I was satisfied with the results.

  Carefully, I removed everything and returned it to its hiding spot.

  I went outside to take care of chores. Animals didn’t feed themselves. Just as I finished everything, I heard Sam and Stef over the murmur of cavies and clucking of chickens. I dropped the old work gloves on a shelf and started around the house to tell them I was outside and could hear their very private discussion.

  “It explains a lot about Ana, doesn’t it?” Stef asked.

  I stopped by the walkway. They were just beyond the trees by the street, close enough that their voices carried clearly. With the rustle of pine boughs, they might not know I was here. I didn’t want to eavesdrop, since I’d just told Sam I didn’t sneak, but if their private discussion was about me, it wasn’t fair that I was excluded.

  Sam said, “When we were warming up by the lake, she kept waiting for me to toss her back into the cold. I think she was afraid I’d take her food, too.” His tone was all disbelief. How ridiculous I must have been. “She was convinced that everything I did was somehow a joke against her.”

  “She doesn’t act like that now.” Stef’s voice came from the same place as before. They weren’t moving. Probably so they wouldn’t carry their conversation into the house where I could hear.

  “She doesn’t, but it’s taken a lot of convincing, and I’m not sure her first reaction isn’t still defensiveness. Eighteen years of Li doesn’t seem like a long time to us, but that’s her whole life.”

  Stef hmm-ed. “It’s a shame our first newsoul had to grow up like that.” In the pause, I imagined her pushing back her long hair, or doing something else thoughtlessly graceful. “Do you think what Li said about Ciana could be true? It’s been, what, at least twenty-three years since she died. She isn’t coming back.”

  I didn’t want to hear this. Not about Ciana. But my feet were too heavy to lift, as if the hot sunshine had melted them to the grass.

  “I don’t know,” Sam said, and I couldn’t breathe. “Ana had nothing to do with it, just as we have nothing to do with being reincarnated.” At those words, I started breathing again. “For a while, I thought there was a finite number of times we could be reborn, but you’ve died a lot more times than Ciana.”

  “Weaving isn’t usually explosive.”

  He ignored her sarcasm. “Ciana and I became close after you cleverly crushed yourself in the compactor—”

  This time it seemed my heart stopped. He’d said as much before, but now I wondered. How close? Lovers? And I’d taken her away forever. How could he stand to look at me?

  “A laser went off and I fell,” Stef insisted. “It hurt a lot, just so you know.”

  “You didn’t spend the next three weeks cleaning you out of there. I have just as much right to complain as you.” Sam gave a tired laugh. “Anyway, after you died, Ciana and I became close. I guess I felt like we hadn’t done much together in a long while, so it was time to catch up. I’m glad we did.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut, hugging myself so tight my ribs hurt. Save the occasional mention, he’d never talked to me about Ciana. Of course he wouldn’t.

  “We all expected her to come back,” Stef said gently. “It’s good she wasn’t alone at the end.”

  “Li would have had her, and Ana wouldn’t exist.” Sam’s tone was impossible to read. Sad, melancholy. But that didn’t tell me if he wished I were Ciana.

  I wished I were Ciana.

  “That’s if Li is right about”—Stef’s voice hitched—“replacements.”

  Sam heaved a sigh. “Even if we had a say in the matter, how could we choose between them? Ciana had a hundred lives, and Ana might not have had any. What if there are more like Ana, not yet born? They could be waiting for someone to not come back. And how could anyone choose between someone they’ve known five thousand years, and someone… like Ana?”

  I had to make them stop. One foot in front of the other. I forced myself onto the walkway.

  Stef sounded just as melancholy. “Wish I could tell you. I think you’re right, though, that we don’t have anything to do with it. Maybe it’s Janan. Maybe it’s something else.”

  “Janan isn’t real.”

  “Don’t say that around Meuric. He’s worse than ever about it, since Ana joined us. He’s getting others convinced, too. They think we’re being punished.”

  “For what?”

  “Not believing in Janan? Not worshiping enough? I don’t know, but ask anyone. They think Ana’s just the beginning.” A flash of bright blue became visible through the pine boughs as I walked. Stef’s dress. “All I was getting at is, it’s not up to us. Good thing, too, because I’d never be able to choose.”

  “Me neither,” Sam whispered.

  I stepped onto the street to find the two of them facing each other, expressions drawn and shoulders hunched. When they both looked at me, I said, “I came to tell you I was outs
ide and could hear you.”

  “Ana—” Sam reached for me, but I stepped back, turned around, and raced for the house.

  My legs got me to the door, but I couldn’t make my hands work right on the knob. My fingers were too stiff and my arm shook, so when Sam appeared next to me, I was still biting my lip and staring at the door. I focused on the wood, the pine green paint and how it soaked into the grains. I didn’t want to look at him.

  “Ana.” His hand moved toward mine, but I sidestepped out of the way.

  “Will you open the door, please?”

  He did, like it was the hardest thing in the world. But he hadn’t just overheard friends contemplating whether he’d replaced people they loved, or talking about him like he was a feral puppy hesitant to accept scraps.

  I really was a butterfly.

  The floor thumped hollowly beneath my shoes as I dashed through the parlor with all its instruments, piano in the center. I wondered if Sam had written Ciana a song, too.

  Up the stairs, as fast as I could. When I reached the balcony overlooking the parlor, I faced him, resting my hands on the railing.

  He paused midway up the stairs, looking haggard, ripped open, and all his centuries exposed. I imagined I could see his first life, ended abruptly by dragon acid. His life before this, ended when Ciana had died and he’d gone north; there’d been nothing to keep him in Heart, so he’d given himself to dragons.

  My hands prickled with memories of rose thorns and sylph burns. I’d never died, but not for lack of the world’s trying.

  We stared at each other until he said my name, and I said, “I didn’t know you were in love with her.”

  I stayed in my bedroom the rest of the afternoon, pillow over my head to muffle his piano practice. It was all old sonatas and melodies I didn’t know. Maybe he hoped the new-to-me music would lure me downstairs. I was just glad he didn’t play the one he’d named “Ana Incarnate.” It would have driven me to madness.

  Sunlight lengthened beyond the lace curtains, and Sam knocked on my door. “It’s only an hour until dusk. That’s when the masquerade begins. If you wanted to get ready.”

  My throat felt scratchy when I spoke. “Go without me.”

  There was a long pause, and his silhouette shifted beyond the silk walls. “You don’t want to go?”

  “Identities are supposed to be secret.” I desperately wanted to be someone else for a while, and for no one to know who I was. What I was. Nosoul.

  “Oh, okay.” His footsteps receded, and when I heard sounds from his bedroom, I went into my washroom and began dressing.

  I wore wings, silk stretched across a wire frame. They attached to a synthetic silk dress, layers of deep ocean green and blue that draped from my shoulders to knees.

  My hair went up in a wreath of flowers and ribbons, with the back hanging long and loose between the wings. I smoothed kohl across my eyelids so when I donned my mask, the black matched the whorls.

  Purple, blue, and green silk swirled across my face. Butterfly wings.

  I found the tiny knife Sam had given me and threaded it in with my hair, among the crown of flowers and ribbons. Even that slight weight might burden me, but I hadn’t forgotten the footsteps the other night.

  “I’m going,” Sam said from the hall.

  Light doused so he couldn’t see my shadow — my wings would give me away — I said, “I’ll see you there.”

  “How will you know who I am?”

  Sometimes I wanted to hit him. “I didn’t look at your costume. I really was just going to tell you I could hear you outside. It’s not my fault you both talk so loud.” Or talked about me when I wasn’t around.

  “That wasn’t my question.” His voice cracked. “Neither of those was ever a question. Dear Janan, you’re the most defensive person I’ve ever met.”

  My lip was going to have permanent indentions where I bit it so much. I bit the top one instead this time.

  “Be careful on your way to the market field.” Footsteps sounded toward the stairs.

  “Sam.” I felt like I was choking. Or drowning. Maybe some of both. He stopped walking, at any rate. “You asked how I’d know who you were.”

  Silence.

  “I’ll always know.”

  A minute later, the front door closed and I was alone in the washroom, only the reflection of a stranger in my mirror. When I thought he’d had enough time to get to South Avenue, I checked that my mask and knife were secure, then slipped sideways through doorways because my wings wouldn’t let me pass through head-on.

  As I left the house and darkness closed in, I tried to imagine myself having fun tonight. I tried to imagine myself smiling and laughing and maybe ending up in someone’s arms by the last dance, like the magic of the masquerade was real and could help you find the match to your soul.

  I couldn’t imagine myself doing any of that, but that was okay.

  Tonight, I wasn’t Ana.

  Chapter 21

  Masquerade

  COOL AIR SLITHERED around my dress, ruffling the edges around my calves. The breeze pushed on my wings, so every step took a smidge more force than usual. It was unsettling, but by the time I reached the market field, I’d mostly compensated. If only I’d had the foresight to work that issue into dance practice.

  The market field was gloriously lit with silver-tinged lights from the Councilhouse, and poles scattered over the field. The temple glowed; I carefully ignored that, as well as the accompanying twist in my gut.

  People in costume drifted in as evening encroached. Hawks, bears, pronghorns. Someone had dressed as a troll — such bad taste — while an osprey flirted with everyone.

  The market field filled with bright fish and ferrets. A sparrow chased a lizard, and they embraced. Hundreds of people swarmed across the field like herds of gemstones.

  I glanced toward the landing atop the Councilhouse steps, where Tera and Ash would be dedicated later. Only a robin and house cat prowled there now, fussing with controls to something.

  The robin stepped up to a microphone and cleared his throat. Meuric’s voice carried from the speakers fastened to the light poles. “Tonight, we celebrate the rededication of two souls.”

  Costumed guests turned as one entity to face him. I was trapped in the back and couldn’t see around most of the crowd; I wondered what people on the other side of the temple did, where they were looking. The party stretched all across the market field.

  “Every generation, our souls are reborn into new and unfamiliar bodies, as are the souls of those we love. Rarely does romantic love transcend incarnations. Rarely. Some souls, however, were created as matching pairs. Those Janan-blessed partnerships have continued over centuries. Millennia. Every generation, these souls are drawn together, regardless of their physical forms. Their love is pure and true.

  “Tonight’s festivities celebrate the commitment between Tera and Ash. As they search for each other in this sea of unfamiliar faces, let us all remember that Janan created us with a purpose: to value one another, and to love.”

  He stepped away as the opening chords of a pavane came through the speakers, and lights flooded the market field with a dreamy glow. Interesting that Meuric didn’t make his announcement before he changed clothes. It lent credit to my theory that I was the only one who cared about being anonymous tonight.

  At least I knew how Meuric was dressed, so I’d be able to avoid him.

  With the music playing, people began taking partners to dance. This pavane wasn’t one of Sam’s compositions, but it was pretty, different from what I was used to listening to. A chorus of strings and woodwinds sang across the evening.

  I kept to the edges of the mass of dancers, though bodies still bumped against my wings. A few muttered apologies, while most either shot annoyed looks beneath their masks, or didn’t notice, and I felt like a jerk for wearing something so cumbersome.

  Self-consciously, I walked a complete circle around the market field, followed by the sensation of being watch
ed.

  So much for anonymity.

  Perhaps this was like my birth. Everyone already knew one another. They’d cheated, revealing identities beneath disguises, and I was the only one they didn’t know. The only new person.

  A peacock tracked my progress from a light pole, but didn’t approach. Familiarity surrounded an owl and praying mantis who kept up with me, but I couldn’t peg who they were.

  Sam had probably asked his friends to watch me. The thought had irritated me at the market, but after seeing Li again, I was sort of glad. Maybe I should have come with him. I shouldn’t have let my feelings get so bruised earlier. It wasn’t like I’d expected him to say he’d have chosen me over Ciana, even before I knew they’d been lovers.

  A gray and white shrike turned away as I sensed a gaze from that direction, toward the Councilhouse. Ahead, a hunting hound stared.

  I angled toward the southwestern edge of the field. Everything was beautiful, and the thousands of dancing people — that was wonderful. I was alone, though, with just a few of Sam’s friends staring from afar.

  Or maybe Li. No telling if she was here or what she might be wearing. Suddenly, every tall, slender figure was suspect.

  A ferret touched my arm. “Dance?”

  I jumped, but I knew that voice. Armande.

  He grinned beneath the whiskers and a mask of a mask, then drew me into the dance, allowing me to use the steps Stef had taught me. We went through the end of a galliard before he escorted me to a buffet I hadn’t seen before, filled with tiny sandwiches and pastries, upside-down paper cups next to urns of coffee and hot cider. Lace covered the table, along with dozens of portraits of a couple I assumed was Tera and Ash, though they wore different faces in each image.

  “They must really love each other,” I breathed, before remembering I was in costume. I glanced at Armande to see if he noticed, but he just smiled.

  “Your secret is safe with me. But you’re pretty identifiable, even in disguise.” He gave a one-shouldered shrug.

  “Oh.” I blushed beneath my mask and took the coffee he offered. “How many lifetimes?”