Incarnate

Perhaps I could lead them to one of the sylph traps. But I didn’t know where they were. I didn’t know where I was.

My flashlight went dark. I thumped the butt and twisted the tube until weak light revealed bright snow and trees.

Sylph moaned and wept, closing in as I avoided a snow-covered fir. Heat billowed on the back of my neck. I hurtled over a log and skidded at the edge of a cliff overlooking the lake. Snow slipped under my boots as I threw myself to my knees to stop before falling over the rim. My flashlight wasn’t so lucky. It clattered from my mittened hands and plummeted into the lake with a splash. Three seconds. A long drop.

Wind gusted up from the water as I climbed to my feet. Sylph floated by the woods, seven or eight of them, creatures twice my height made of shadows and smoke. They glided forward, melting snow as they trapped me between them and a cliff over Rangedge Lake.

Their cries were of anger and hopelessness, ever-burning fire.

I glanced over my shoulder, the lake a stretch of darkness and nothing behind me. If there were rocks or chunks of ice, I couldn’t see them. Drowning would be a better end than burning in sylph fire for weeks or months.

“You won’t have me.” I spun and leaped off the cliff. Death would be fast and cold; I wouldn’t feel a thing.

Chapter 2

Water

A SCREAM ECHOED. Mine.

I inhaled and slapped my hands over my mouth and nose. Water slammed into my boots and up my sides, covering my face. Pressure swept the air from my chest and throat in a flurry of bubbles. Cold soaked my coat, dragging me deep.

Mittens didn’t work like fins, and my boots were too heavy to let me kick. With the numbing cold, I barely felt the chunks of ice that thumped against my flailing limbs as I scrambled to the surface. Gravity felt the same in all directions underwater, but even as I thought I’d gotten turned around, icy wind stung my face.

I spit water and gasped. I tried to push myself to the nearest shore, but my arms were too heavy to lift with my clothes all waterlogged. The weight drew me under again, leaving only seconds for me to fill my lungs.

No matter how I struggled, I couldn’t find my way back to the surface. I grabbed on to a lump of ice and tried to haul myself up, but it sent me spinning instead. A glow drew my gaze: the flashlight, drifting to the bottom I couldn’t see.

I kept my mouth sealed shut, but my chest spasmed as my lungs yearned for fresh air where there was none. If the freezing temperature didn’t kill me first, the water would. I couldn’t move.

My thoughts grew icy and splintered. My heartbeat echoed in my ears, slowing under cold and depth and lack of oxygen. No matter how I tried to reach up, I couldn’t find up, and I couldn’t convince my arms to move. The water became darker as I followed my flashlight to the bottom of Rangedge Lake.

All the air I’d trapped in my lungs escaped, bubble after bubble.

Water gurgled next to me, swirling where it should have been still. As my toes tapped the bottom, light drifted beyond my eyelids and something wrapped around my middle. I shot upward. The grip on my waist tightened and dragged me through black water.

The slow thud of my heart grew ever more distant. My chest jumped, as if that would trick me into inhaling. I couldn’t keep holding my breath. My lungs would explode if I didn’t let something in to ease the pressure.

I couldn’t stop myself. I breathed water and gave in to the cold.

Time drifted in an icy haze. Water moved around me, inside me, and everything grew obsidian-smooth and dark.

I was on my back.

Something pounded on my chest. A rock. A fist. Anger. Chill and wet pressed on my mouth, and heat blew in. The beating on my chest resumed and a bubble formed inside me, grew, and forced its way up.

A dark and dripping face floated in my vision a heartbeat before I choked up lake water. It seared my throat like fire, but I coughed and spit until my mouth was dry. I fell to my back again as the shivers came, rattling through me like the cottage windowpanes in a storm.

I was alive. The freezing wind was colder than the lake, but I could breathe. Someone else’s air filled me. I forced my eyes open, hardly able to believe anyone would bother to rescue me.

The ice and encroaching blackness must have damaged my vision, because I saw a boy’s concerned expression shift to relief. Maybe it was my fading consciousness that made him appear to smile. At me.

Then I was gone, lost in dreams.

Wool blankets brushed my face. My bulky coat and boots were gone, and I was dry, lying on my side. My toes and fingers tingled as the numbness retreated. Already I was sore from my impact with the water, but the only thing that really hurt was the graze on my cheek. Blankets trapped me in a pocket of warm air. Foggy thoughts trapped me in this dream of safety.

Something solid pressed against my back. A body breathed in time with me, steady in and out, until I broke the unity by thinking about it. An arm was slung over my ribs, and a palm rested on my heart as if to make sure it continued beating, or to ensure that it didn’t fall out. Breath warmed the back of my neck, rustling hairs across my skin.

Just as I began to drowse further into my dream, a deep voice behind me said, “Hi.”

I held my breath, waiting for the dream to change.

“It’s been, what, four thousand years since anyone thought midwinter swimming was a good idea? It’s an awful way to go. Did you just want to see if that had changed?”

My eyes snapped open as my situation crystalized. I jumped, legs tangled in the blanket, and my elbow bumped a small heater. The tent seemed to close around me. Only a tiny lamp illuminated the space, but it was enough to show me the zipped door. I lunged for it.

The boy caught my waist and pulled. I dropped to my butt, dragging the zipper with me. Winter air poured inside as I wiggled from his grasp and threw myself into the waiting night. Snow sparkled in moonlight, deceptively peaceful with its smothering silence.

Wool socks protected my feet until I got to a line of trees across a clearing, and then pine needles and pebbles stabbed through the snow. I didn’t care. Didn’t stop. I ran anywhere, as long as it was away from sylph and the strange young man. There was no telling what he wanted, but if he was anything like Li, it wouldn’t be good.

Winter caught up with me as I rounded a tower of boulders and stubby trees. Goose bumps crawled up my bare arms. I wore only a thin shirt and too-big trousers—neither were mine.

Freezing air hit the back of my throat with each ragged breath. I stumbled down a staircase of rocks and packed dirt, intent on running again, but the lake stretched wide under moonlight, right in front of me. Wavelets glinted as they lapped the shore and my toes.

I staggered backward, images of ice and a dimming flashlight on the backs of my eyelids every time I blinked. The cliff where I’d fallen—no, jumped—hung over the lake a ways to my right, silhouetted against bright starlight and snowy mountains. I should have died.

Maybe Li had paid that boy to rescue me. It wouldn’t be the first time she used me like a cat playing with a mouse until it nearly died of fright.

Pine needles rustled and snow swished underfoot. Light bled across the waves in front of my feet. I spun around. The boy held a lamp shoulder high, his gaze beyond me. “After I worked so hard saving you, I’d appreciate if you didn’t try to kill yourself again.”

I clenched my jaw against chattering teeth. Tremors racked through me as I searched for escape, but he was blocking the only path. I could try beating him up, or swimming to another shore where he couldn’t follow. Both were unlikely to work, especially since getting back in the freezing lake was the last thing I wanted. He’d probably just save me again.

He must have been strong, dragging me from the bottom like that. Stubble darkened his chin and he towered over me, but he looked my age. Tan skin, wide-set eyes, and shaggy, shadowed hair. Those must have been his arms around me underwater, and his breath that filled me when I had none of my own.

“You might as well come back.” He offered his free hand, long fingers slightly curled in welcome. “I won’t hurt you, and you’re shivering. I’ll make tea.” He didn’t quite hide his shivers, either; no coat or gloves meant he hadn’t taken the extra time to dress for cold before following me. Perhaps his concern was genuine, though I’d thought Li sincere when she reminded me about bringing a compass. “Please?”

My other option was freezing to death, which seemed less appealing now that I was definitely alive. I would watch him, though, and if he did anything Li-like, I’d escape. He couldn’t make me stay.

I followed him through the woods. Didn’t take his hand, just hugged myself and was glad he’d brought that lantern, and that he’d paid attention to where I’d run.

The forest was black with shadows and white with snowdrifts. Fir and pine trees shuddered under the weight of a million snowflakes. I jumped at noises, straining to hear the whispers and moans that had driven me into the lake to begin with.

My cheek still throbbed where the sylph had touched me and was hot to my bare fingers. It didn’t feel blistered, though; doubtful it would kill me. I was lucky it hadn’t gotten me more than that. Large sylph burns were said to grow and consume the entire body over time. Li had warned me it was a painful way to die.

We reached the tent. Outside, a small horse snorted and eyed us from underneath half a dozen blankets. When we didn’t do anything alarming, he tucked his head down to sleep.

My rescuer held open the tent for me. Our boots and coats hung by the door, still damp. Blankets on the left, a small solar battery heater in the center, and his bags on the other side. There was just enough room for one person to stretch out, two if they were friendly . . . or staving off hypothermia. He’d known exactly how to save my life, while I would have panicked in his position. I’d panicked enough in my position.

“Sit.” He nodded at the blankets and heater.

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.