Incarnate

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 outside 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