Asunder

22 ABSENCE

WHEN I GOT up a few hours later, I started coffee and took care of all the chores. I hadn’t slept wellor at all—and even during a crisis, chickens and cavies needed to be fed.

Then, at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee, I closed my eyes and inhaled steam, absorbing the silence of no explosions and no fighting with Sam.

The scrape of ceramic on stone yanked me out of my peace. Sam poured coffee at the counter, his face lined with exhaustion. Just seeing him from the corner of my eye, he might have been a stranger. Even his clothes were rumpled.

I settled into a comfortable glower when he faced me.

“Do you want to see if we can talk to the survivors in the hospital?” His voice was hoarse with no sleep. “See if they saw anyone?”

“I was already going to do that.” I gulped down the rest of my coffee and stood. “Are you ready to go?”

“I guess.” He combed his fingers through his hair—it didn’t make much of a difference—and finished his coffee.

When we were dressed for the chilly weather, we headed toward the Councilhouse. He didn’t try to make excuses for earlier this morning, which was good. He didn’t even talk to me. Just as well. It left me time to focus on not paying attention to the ashy reek, or the rubble strewn around Geral’s property.

Charred bits of something littered the road. Sam picked them up. To carry to a recycling bin, I supposed. I couldn’t let him feel morally superior, so I grabbed some, too.

We dropped everything in the appropriate bins when we reached South Avenue, then turned north, and I couldn’t help but see the temple. White on gray sky, though it wasn’t just smoke up there now. Clouds thickened, threatening snow or sleet.

I shivered and eased my strides closer to Sam. He was nice enough to pretend not to notice.

“Tonight,” I said, so he’d think my walking closer to him was about secrecy rather than comfort, “I’m going to work on translating the books. Cris said he meant to bring over the paper I gave him before, so I want to get that, too.” I had the notes I’d gotten from Meuric safe in my pocket.

“Okay.” Sam kept walking.

We wandered through the hospital wing of the Councilhouse until one of the medics told us where Geral and the other two survivors were being treated. I wrinkled my nose at the scent of rubbing alcohol and burned flesh—a reek too familiar to me. My hands were folded up and tucked beneath my chin before I realized.

Sam touched my back. “This way.”

I flinched, but followed through double doors that led into a reception area the size of Sam’s parlor, with walls of white synthetic silk sheets, pinned in place by steel shelves; the walls seemed to glow in all the light. People at the desk glanced up at our entrance, then back to their work.

“Sam. Ana.” Sine approached, her gray hair pulled into a tight bun. She wore a medic’s smock and gloves, and a deep frown. “Is something wrong?”

“We came to see Geral and the others,” Sam said. “Do you know anything about who caused the explosions?”

“I think you mean what caused them.” She glanced around the room; a lanky teenage girl watched us, while another man—Merton?—muttered into his SED as he vanished behind a partition. Sine spoke at a normal volume. “It was only gas leaks and corroded wires. Walk with me over here.”

Sam’s face was stone as he nodded, and we headed into a hallway off the main chamber. Several curtained rooms waited on one side. Recovery rooms.

We went all the way to the end of the hall and took the last room. It was unoccupied, as were the five before it. Sine must have wanted a lot of privacy.

She motioned at the chairs around the bed. “Sit close so I don’t have to yell.”

Sam and I scooted our chairs toward hers.

“For now, the Council is giving the gas story.” Her voice was so quiet I strained to hear. “But I assume you two have already figured out what really happened.”

“Someone hates newsouls.” I wanted to be sick.

“Yes.” She leveled her gaze on me. “I can stop you from investigating this, but I won’t. I know this is something you’re passionate about, Ana. I want to caution you, though, before you do anything reckless.”

Because someone had told her about the meeting last night? Or she just knew?

She went on. “Whoever planted those explosives is already willing to risk Council repercussions, not to mention several lifetimes of people exacting revenge. Hurting—or killing—either of you isn’t going to be a problem.”

“But the law about killing me—” She shook her head. “They don’t care, Ana. Any of those unborn could have been newsouls. The law protects them, too, but…”

“There should be better laws.” I crossed my arms, and neither Sam nor Sine disagreed. “What about Lidea and Anid?”

“Wend took everything they needed to my house. Whoever is doing this won’t suspect Lidea and Anid are with me, at least for a few more days. Hopefully we’ll have answers by then.”

“I suppose you’ve already questioned the survivors?” Sam asked.

She nodded. “As much as we could. Some were badly burned, and their medication is making them, ah, interesting to talk to. But Geral was asking about you, Ana. And you’ll be relieved to know that, while the shock did send her into labor, she gave birth this morning. They’re both fine.”

“She did? They are?” I twisted in my chair like I’d be able to see through the layers of silk walls.

“When can I see her?”

“Now, if you’d like. She’s in the first room in this hall.”

I was up and at the curtain before I realized they weren’t with me. “You aren’t coming?”

“We have a couple of things left to discuss,” said Sam. “I’ll join you shortly.” He sat straight with his hands on his knees. How had they both known to stay? How had one communicated to the other there was something they wanted to talk about without me? There must have been some signal I’d missed.

I hated being new. I hated being excluded. “Okay.” I shoved the curtain closed behind me, though it wasn’t terribly accommodating with slamming. It swished and floated back into creepy templelike perfection.

I found Geral’s room. There was nowhere to knock, so I swished the curtain around until she laughed and told me to come in.

She reclined on the bed, a swaddled baby in her arms. The medics and birthing assistants had cleaned her up, but there was a bandage on her forearm and stitches along a cut on her jaw. I should have found her sooner, before she’d gotten injured.

“Would you like to come the rest of the way in? If someone else stops by, they’re going to run over you.” Her smile would have been serene if not for the flinch at her cut. “I was hoping you’d visit,” she said as I crossed the room.

“Oh.” I tucked my hands into pockets. “I actually came to ask if you saw who blew up your house, but

—”

“It was a gas leak and corroded wires.”

I tipped my face downward and raised my eyebrows. Stef had used that look on Sam several times, and it always made him tell the truth.

She gave a breathy laugh and hugged the baby tighter. It was sleeping, and I couldn’t tell if it was a boy or girl. “Well, no, I didn’t see anyone. Neither did Orrin. Cris was there a while, but he wouldn’t have hurt us.”

“No, of course he wouldn’t have.” I stared at the wall, wishing I knew why the arsonist had chosen last night. Coincidence? My meeting?

“Would you like to see my baby?” Geral whispered, tired and hopeful and sad, and I managed to feel even worse than I already did. She’d just wanted to share her newborn, and I’d been caught up in other problems.

“Sure.” I stood. “I’m sorry. Everything is just overwhelming. Who did you have?”

“Ariana.” She tugged the baby’s knit hat downward, though it had been just fine a second ago. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Why would I?” And then: “Oh.” There’d never been an Ariana. It was a new name for a newsoul.

“Oh.” The last came out perhaps more startled than I’d intended.

“I’m going to be a good mother.” Defensiveness edged Geral’s tone. “And you of all people should be accepting—”

“I am!” I pressed my hand to my mouth. “Sorry. I keep getting surprised. I’m as used to people being reborn as everyone else. I may not have had five thousand years for it, but it’s still been my entire life.”

And that felt like a long time.

Her gaze flickered toward the curtain as someone entered. “It’s all right. After last night, I’m nervous about how people will react to her. I already love her so much.”

Why couldn’t she have been my mother? Or Lidea? Aside from the fact that they were currently too young.

“I understand.” I gazed at Ariana, her dark skin and silky hair. I wanted to tell her how she’d escaped Janan, how others hadn’t been so lucky. Even this life where people threw rocks at newsouls—it was better than never having the chance.

And I wanted to tell her I’d do anything to protect her, because we newsouls had to stick together.

I didn’t say any of that, though. Not in front of Geral and whoever else had come into the room. Sam. I recognized the sound of clothes rustling as he shifted his weight. “I was just alarmed by her name,” I said at last. “But I’m honored.”

“You saved her life.” Geral blinked away tears.

My face burned. “Next time a newsoul is in danger, I’ll send Sam. So far I’ve got two named after me, and he doesn’t have any.”

“I am a little jealous,” he said from the foot of the bed. “She’s beautiful, Geral. Congratulations.”

We chatted a little more, and then it was time to go. “Keep her safe,” I whispered as I hugged Geral.

“Don’t trust anyone.”

Sam and I finished speaking with the other two survivors, but they knew even less than Geral. We left the Councilhouse and sat on a market field bench as the sun dipped toward the west. Not that it made much of a difference. The clouds from this morning had thickened, and delicate snowflakes spiraled toward the ground. I caught one on my mitten, but it melted.

“How do you feel about it?”

I couldn’t tell if Sam was asking about the snowflake or the direction the planet rotated, so I just raised my eyebrows and waited for him to figure out why I wasn’t responding.

“Ariana. Anid. People naming newsouls after you.”

The temple loomed behind me, already lit with shifting patterns: signs of the evil entity inside. He’d wanted to consume us, the newsouls. So we had that in common already. Now our names. “It doesn’t matter how I feel about it.”

“Of course it does.”

If how I felt about anything mattered, why didn’t he tell me what he and Sine had been so secretive about? He could have asked how I felt about not understanding the sylph, or not having had a chance to study the temple books.

Instead, he wanted to know how I felt about newsouls being named after me?

“I think a lot of people whose names sound like Ana are going to consider changing them.”

“So as not to be associated with newsouls?” He sipped from a bottle of water like he didn’t really care about my answer. I wanted to rip it from him and hurl it across the market field.

There were people out, though. Councilors loitered on the steps—Deborl kept glancing at me—and a couple holding hands walked by. One muttered, “Sylph lover,” and probably wished she had a rock to hurl.

A trio of children caught snowflakes on their tongues; I’d done the same thing when I was that age, but it was surprising to see anyone else do it. These children were five thousand years old. A characteristic of their physical age, perhaps, like people currently teenagers were attracted to other teenagers.

I didn’t look at Sam as I spoke. “We should speak to everyone who was at the meeting last night.

Everyone who knew our plans. Not to accuse them of anything. Just—Just to see if they have any ideas.”

Sam capped his water and checked the time on his SED. “Where first?”

I hadn’t expected it to be that easy. Maybe he knew better than to argue with me. “Let’s start on the far side of the city and work our way home.”

“That could take a while.” Ah, there was the disapproval I’d been waiting for.

“Did you have plans this evening?” I wanted to work on the temple books, but I could do that after he went to bed.

He glanced at the sky, snow dropping harder now, and shrugged. “Best start with Cris. He’ll be out covering the plants, if he hasn’t done it already.”

Sam set a brisk pace, leaving no breath for talk. No problem. I lengthened my strides, but still had to take two for his every one. Also no problem. It helped stave off the cold.

Darkness loomed by the time we reached Cris’s house, though in the temple light, and light from our SEDs, it was easy to see nothing had been covered or moved into greenhouses like Sam had predicted.

Nor could we hear Cris’s movements.

Most flowering plants had closed themselves for winter, but they were still vulnerable to the cold; I’d lost several roses at Purple Rose Cottage before I realized they needed protection, just like people.

“Where is he?” Sam marched down the path and headed toward one of the greenhouses. “Check the other one. If he’s not there, we’ll look inside.”

I almost snapped at him for telling me what to do, but the last thing we needed was another argument.

Fuming silently, I did as ordered.

Inside the greenhouse, warmth and humidity washed over me, a sudden and unpleasant shift from the crispness outside. “Cris?”

There was no response as I walked between the rows of orchids and other flowers I didn’t recognize.

This was the second greenhouse, the one I hadn’t been inside yet; I wished Cris were here to tell me what all these flowers were.

I turned off the light and shut the door behind me, and met Sam on the front steps, picking the lock.

Why did anyone bother to lock things?

He ushered me in first, out of the falling snow. “I called his SED. He didn’t answer.”

“He might have gone back to Purple Rose Cottage to get those roses. He said he might.” I stepped farther into the cluttered house. “Cris?” I yelled again. Only the eerie quiet answered, thickened by the sheet of white forming outside. If he’d gone to Purple Rose, surely he would have covered his garden here first.

Plants and journals filled the parlor and all connecting rooms I could see. Shelves held pots and trays of seeds. Heat lamps stood in two corners, though I couldn’t tell what they warmed. It was practically another greenhouse, though some of these plants looked edible. The whole place smelled green and loamy and floral.

I followed Sam into the kitchen. “What’s that?”

He was in the process of lifting a tray of seedlings and picking out a folded sheet of paper from beneath it. “This is yours.”

How could he tell? “Yeah, he said he had a few thoughts.”

The paper was damp and smudged with soil, but Sam carefully unfolded it on the tabletop to reveal the list I’d given Cris after our gardening lesson. “Look.” He brushed away dirt.

I pressed my shoulder against his and peered at the new lines on the page. “‘Gate or portal? Arch?’” The symbol next to Cris’s guesses did look like an archway, but only if I tilted my head.

“That seems reasonable enough.”

Hmming, I swept more dirt aside. Damp grains stuck to my fingers. “I remember this one.” I tapped a symbol that was a pair of vertical wavy lines, thick slashes between them like shading. “‘Shadow.

Darkness. Nighttime.’ I was looking at it the wrong way.”

“How do you mean?”

Thoughts snapped, clicked together like the first time I’d understood a waltz had three beats, not four.

Suddenly it made sense.

I bounced on my toes. “I get it!”

Sam put on his most expectant look. “The writing?”

“No, why paper cuts hurt worse than knife wounds.” I rolled my eyes. “Of course I meant the writing.”

“All right. I don’t get it.”

I made my fingers like a spider on the paper and turned it around and around. “This is what I was doing when I was trying to read the spiral. Turning the book upside down when I reached the top of the spiral. That’s also how I copied the symbols, like this one.” I pointed at the one Cris had marked “gate.”

“But?”

“Why would anyone write like that in something as unwieldy as a book? They’d spend all their reading time turning the book around and getting dizzy. This symbol”—again I pointed at the gate symbol

—“was on the side of the spiral when I copied it. That’s why it’s sideways now.”

Understanding bloomed on Sam’s face. “So you read in a spiral, but all the symbols are oriented the same, no matter their location.”

“Exactly.” I bounced again, and Sam twitched a smile. “I get it! I love that feeling. I want to go read all the books right now.”

He stared at me like I’d grown a second set of eyes. “You said lo—” His mouth made a line as he looked away. “Well, Cris isn’t here. Shall we try the next person?”

As soon as he spoke, I halted mid-bounce. I’d said love. Out loud. Did I mean it? Did he expect me to say it to him now? There was a huge difference between loving a feeling or event—and loving a person.

I felt like a whirlwind, with all my thoughts and emotions. Or maybe they were whirlwinds, and I was just a butterfly or blue rose.

“Sure.” Trying—and failing—to pretend like nothing happened, I shook the rest of the soil off the paper and put it in my pocket. Cris had left only a few guesses, and they might be wrong, but they’d be good places to start.

“Whit is next.” He led me through the maze of potted plants and out the door. Snow fell thicker, a solid white coat. “I don’t think the weather will let up any time soon. We may have to quit early, before it gets too difficult to walk. Home is on the other side of the city.”

As we emerged onto the road again, I looked southwest toward our house, but there was only dark and snow. And the temple light making a million flakes shimmer as they fell.

The dark streets remained empty, our passage the only sound. I wished we were at home having music lessons, because playing in a group last night had given me ideas. And music was far less hurtful than thinking about the explosions, or our argument.

Cold swirled and made me shiver as we passed by a white shell, which had once been someone’s house. Now the occupant was gone, lost to Templedark. Someone had cleared away the debris from outbuildings. I wondered if there was anything left inside, or if the darksoul’s belongings would stay there until they rotted—a memory of someone loved and lost.

We kept walking. The silence and weight of history drowned me.

“What happened between you and Cris?” My words turned into mist, barely visible in the temple light.

“It’s nothing.” Roughness edged Sam’s voice.

I knew better than to push, but—“I don’t think it was nothing to him. I see the way you are together, and the way he looks at you.”

I didn’t think he was going to say anything at first, but then: “It was two lifetimes ago.” He had that somewhen-else tone again. Good memories or bad? Suddenly I wished I hadn’t asked. “Cris was working on the roses, and I was composing a nocturne about them, so I asked to stay with her a while and study how they grew, how she cared for them.”

Sam had lived in Purple Rose Cottage? With Cris? I tried to imagine I’d always felt his presence there, even before I became aware of music and what it meant to me. “What happened?”

“It was fine. I went between there and my cabin, learned more about roses than I thought possible, and after a while, we grew to appreciate each other’s company—more than I want to talk to you about.”

“More than I want to hear about, I’m sure.” I wanted to pretend he was really only eighteen and everything he was telling me had actually happened to someone else. I wanted to pretend he’d only ever loved me. “The song you composed—”

“Songs have words. You can’t use ‘song’ for everything.”

I smiled. “Your song ended up being a serenade? For Cris?”

He nodded, his movement barely discernible in the darkness. “We played it as a duet. I’d mostly forgotten about it.”

Would he forget about the waltz he’d written for me? Most nights, I fell asleep listening to it on my SED. It wasn’t as good as hearing Sam play it on the piano for the first time, but it always made me happy, made me remember the evening I’d discovered he wasn’t just Sam, he was Dossam, the musician.

Oblivious to the way my heart tied itself into knots, he continued. “After that, it was my fault. We wanted different things, we argued, and she told me not to come back to the cottage until I was less selfish. So I left. I could have stayed and tried to work things out, or find a compromise, but I didn’t. By the time I was reincarnated, I realized I regretted my decision.”

“What did you fight over?”

He glanced at me and shook his head. “I don’t—I don’t want to talk about that.”

It must have been huge. Dedication-of-souls huge? What else could drive them apart if they still looked at each other awkwardly, hopefully? I couldn’t forget my first morning in Sam’s house, when Stef had whispered, Don’t let him break your heart, sweetie. He never settles.

Now I knew part of that was because she loved him. Cris loved him. He hadn’t stayed with either of them.

And did I love him? The word still made me choke. Even more frightening was the sudden understanding that my feelings for him—whatever they were—might be bigger than his feelings for me. I didn’t want to end up like Stef and Cris, pining lifetimes later.

Cold sapped moisture from my skin. I licked my lips and ducked into my scarf. “So after a while,” I said, “you regretted the decision not to find a way to work it out?”

He nodded and guided me around a corner. Snow built up in yards and on trees, reflecting temple light enough to illuminate our path. “I’ve lived long enough to know there are things worth regretting, but there’s nothing you can do to change the past. And yet, sometimes it works out anyway, in ways you don’t expect.”

Did he mean me? I couldn’t bring myself to ask. The things I wanted to say and do but didn’t know how—they felt like a wall between us. “Do you still regret it? Whatever it was you couldn’t agree on?”

“I regret that I hurt her so badly. And that we didn’t speak for a hundred years because of it. By the time he presented the roses and no one thought they were blue—that was both of our last generations—I felt like saying anything would just make it worse for both of us.”

My face did something between a smile and a grimace. “I hate admitting when I’m wrong, too.”

Sam pulled out his SED. The glow shone on his frown, and the line between his eyes. After a moment’s hesitation, he tapped the screen a few times and pressed the device to his ear.

I blinked away light and let my eyes adjust to the darkness once more. “I’m worried we haven’t heard from him. Even more worried he didn’t care for his garden.”

“Me too.” Sam replaced the SED in his pocket. “After the blue rose challenge was first issued, Cris packed up everything and built his cottage so he could work without everyone watching and criticizing his progress.

“One spring, he came back to Heart for supplies. It had been an especially unfriendly winter, but it was warm when he set out. Of course, as soon as he got home, a blizzard came through. He’d left his plants ready for spring, so they were still delicate. As soon as he realized how bad the weather was going to get, he turned his horse around. He made the entire trip in a day and a half and saved all his roses at the last minute. Didn’t lose even a leaf.”

That sounded like the Cris I sort of knew, and solidified my worry. Had something happened to him?

“There.” Sam pointed to a glow ahead. “Whit’s home, at least.”

It was almost a relief to go back to thinking about explosions. Thinking about Sam’s long history of one-sided relationships—My heart couldn’t take it.