Incarnate

I didn’t lower myself gracefully so much as collapse into a trembling heap. My entire body ached. From cold, from hitting the water. From the fiery shadows chasing me through the woods.

If he’d known I was the nosoul, he wouldn’t have knelt and helped me sit up. He wouldn’t have pulled a blanket tight around my shoulders and scowled at the burn on my cheek. But he didn’t know, so he did. Which meant maybe he wasn’t one of Li’s friends after all. “Sylph?”

I cupped my hand over the burn. If it was obvious, why was he asking?

He retreated to his bags, filled a portable water heater, and flipped the switch. When bubbles rose from the bottom of the glass, he produced a small box. “Do you like tea?”

I forced a nod and, when he wasn’t looking, held my hands toward the space heater. Hot waves prickled across my skin, but the cold burrowed deeper than that. In my feet especially, from running outside. The wool socks — which must have been his, because I could have fit my hands in there too — were damp with snow.

He poured two mugs of boiling water and dropped in tea leaves. “Here.” He offered one. “Give it a minute to finish steeping.”

Nothing he did was threatening. Maybe he had saved me out of the goodness of his heart, though he’d probably regret it if he knew what I was. And now I felt stupid for dragging both of us into the cold night again.

I took the offered tea. The ceramic mug was dimpled from either long use or poor craftsmanship, and a choir of painted songbirds decorated the side. It was nothing like Li’s stark, serviceable belongings. I wrapped my hands around the mug to soak up the warmth, breathing in steam that tasted like herbs. It scalded my tongue, but I closed my eyes and waited for my insides to stop shivering.

“I’m Sam, by the way.”

“Hi.” If not for the risk of melting my insides to puddles, I’d have gulped down the tea all at once.

He peered at me, searching for… something. “You’re not going to tell me who you are?”

I frowned. If I admitted to being the nosoul, the thing born instead of someone named Ciana, he’d take my tea and kick me out of the tent. This wasn’t my life, Li had sometimes told me. She hadn’t revealed Ciana’s name then, but I knew I’d replaced someone. I’d overheard her gossiping about it once. Every breath I took should have belonged to someone whom everyone had known for five thousand years. The guilt was crushing.

I couldn’t tell this man what I was.

“You didn’t have to chase me outside. I’d have been fine.”

He scowled, shadowed lines between his eyes. “Like you were fine in the lake?”

“That was different. Maybe I wanted to be out there.” Stupid mouth. He was going to know if I couldn’t control my stupid mouth.

“If you say so.” He wiped the inside of the water heater dry and stuffed it back in its bag. “I doubt you wanted to die. I was filling my canteens when I saw you jump. You screamed, and I saw thrashing as if you were trying to swim. When you reached the lake a little while ago, you startled like a mouse realizing there was a cat in the room. What were you doing in the woods? How did you run into sylph?”

“Doesn’t matter.” I scooted closer to the heater.

“So you aren’t going to tell me your name.” A statement, not a question. He’d start guessing soon. He could rule out all the people who I definitely didn’t behave like, all the people reborn in the wrong time to be eighteen right now, and all the people my age he’d seen in the last few years. “I can’t remember offending anyone so much they wouldn’t trust me with their name. At least not recently.”

“You don’t know me.”

“That’s what I said. Did you get water in your brain?” It only half sounded like a joke.

I didn’t know of a Sam, but considering the meager collection of books in the cottage library, that wasn’t a surprise. I didn’t know about a lot of people.

I gulped the rest of my tea and lowered the empty mug, mumbling, “I’m Ana.” My insides were warm now, and I wasn’t drowning. When he kicked me out, I’d be no worse off than before, as long as I could find my backpack.

“Ana.”

Shivers crawled up my spine when he said my name. And what a name. When I’d gotten the nerve to ask Li why they chose that, she said it was part of an old word that meant “alone” or “empty.” It was also part of Ciana’s name, symbolizing what I’d taken from her. It meant I was a nosoul. A girl who fell in lakes and got rescued by Sam.

I kept my face down and watched him through my eyelashes. His skin was flushed in the warm tent, with steam from the tea. He still had the full cheeks of his apparent age — close to mine — but the way he spoke held authority, knowledge. It was deceptive, the way he looked like someone I could have grown up with, but he’d actually lived thousands of years. Hair fell like shadows across his eyes, hiding whatever he thought while he studied me in return.

“You’re not—” He cocked his head and frowned. I must have been as easy to read as a sky full of rain clouds. “Oh, you’re that Ana.”

My stomach twisted as I pushed off the blanket, torn between anger and humiliation. That Ana. Like a disease. “I’ll get out of your way now. Thank you for the tea. And for saving me.” I moved for the door, but he held his arm across the zipper.

“That’s not necessary.” He jerked his head toward the blanket again, no room for argument in his tone. “Rest.”

I bit my lip and tried to decide if, as soon as I fell asleep, he would contact Li, tell her he’d found me in a lake, and I wasn’t capable of caring for myself yet.

I couldn’t go back to her. Couldn’t.

His tone gentled, like I was a spooked horse. “It’s all right, Ana. Please stay.”

“Okay.” Gaze never straying from his, I lowered myself again, back under the blanket. That Ana. Nosoul. Ana who shouldn’t have been born. “Thank you. I’ll repay your generosity.”

“How?” He was motionless, hands on his lap and eyes locked on mine. “Do you have any skills?”

Nerves caught in my throat. This was one of the few things Li had explained, and she’d explained often. There were a million souls in Range. There’d always been a million souls, and every one of them pulled their weight in order to ensure society continued to improve. Everyone had necessary talents or skills, be it a head for numbers or words, imagination for inventions, the ability to lead, or simply the desire to farm and raise food so no one would starve. For thousands of years, they’d earned the right to have a good life.

I hadn’t earned anything. I was the nosoul who’d taken eighteen of Li’s years, her food and skills, pestered her with questions and all my needs. Most people left their current parents when they were thirteen years old. Fourteen at most. By then they were usually big and strong enough to make it wherever they wanted to go. I’d stayed five extra years.

I had nothing unique to offer Sam. I lowered my eyes. “Only what Li taught me.”

“And that was?” When I didn’t speak, he said, “Not how to swim, obviously.”

What did that mean? I’d figured out how to tread water when I was younger, but everything was different in the winter. In the dark. I frowned; maybe it had been a joke. I decided to ignore it. “Housecleaning, gardening, cooking. That sort of thing.”

He nodded, as if encouraging me to go on.

I shrugged.

“She must have helped you learn to speak.” Again, I shrugged, and he chuckled. “Or not.”

Laughing at me. Just like Li.

I met his eyes and made my voice like stone. “Maybe she taught me when not to speak.”

Sam jerked straight. “And how to be defensive when no offense was intended.” He cut me off before I could apologize, though my mouth had dropped open to do so; I didn’t really want to leave the warm tent, especially now that the herbs and overall exhaustion were taking effect. I grew drowsy. “Do you know anything about the world? How you fit in?”

“I know I’m different.” My throat closed, and my voice squeaked. “And I was hoping to find out how I fit in.”