Jodi Meadows - Incarnate

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.