I looked again. Sure enough, she was wearing the dress I’d worn this morning. She—he—filled it out better, too, and I tried not to be envious. “No, I hadn’t noticed it.”
The videos had long since loaded, and the screen glowed brightly, waiting for instructions. Sam obliged, and we watched a group of people chatting in the market field. The images were low quality, but the faces were clear enough. “This was shortly after we learned how to record videos. Someone, I won’t name names, went around recording everything he could. We have years’ worth of videos like this. No one watches, but no one will recycle them, either.”
I might watch. But I didn’t say so out loud.
It seemed we sat there for hours, watching old videos and looking through photo albums. I found him in crowds in the market field—Heart hadn’t changed at all in the last three hundred years—in groups of musicians, or giving rude gestures to whoever was recording while he mucked horse stalls. I found him holding someone in a rainstorm, or being held, and leaning toward a stranger with a smile. Twice I spotted him kissing a man or woman, and my throat closed up so I just nodded that I’d seen him, and he believed me.
The screen went dark, and the stained-glass lamp was the only light in our alcove. I’d heard him sing, seen him shuffle away when someone approached with a video recorder—his friends usually grabbed his arms and made him stay—and watched him laugh until his face was red. I’d seen him old and young, skinny and fat, male and female, ugly and beautiful. None of those Sams looked like my Sam. I just knew they were him.
“Are you okay?” he whispered. Other than my thudding heart, the silence was complete.
I couldn’t figure out how I was supposed to feel about this. It was like drowning, the cold and the aching lungs and heavy limbs, with things bumping you, and not being able to tell which way was up. I pulled my hands into my sleeves. His sleeves.
“No,” I said, “but it doesn’t matter. We have work to do.” I stood up and pretended to be brave.
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Chapter 15
Market
WE MANAGED TO finish the library tour, and he showed me how to escape the wing without needing to trek through endless halls of the Councilhouse. Then, awkwardly, we made our way through everyone in the market field and went back to his house. I clutched my crude library map—and crude street map—against my chest as we walked. I went upstairs.
Everything in me hurt. For over an hour, I didn’t leave my room, just sat on the soft bed and tried to sort through feelings.
Mostly, it was seeing a dozen different Sams that confused me. “He’s still Sam,” I told myself, the bedcovers and lace and walls. Anything that would listen and not talk back. “He is who he’s always been.” I’d always known he was old, had previous lives, and probably had a thousand different lovers.
It didn’t matter. It couldn’t.
I needed to focus on the Council threatening to take me from him. No matter what didn’t matter, I couldn’t let them put me back with Li. I couldn’t risk being exiled.
Which meant I needed to take everything seriously, do better than they expected. Awkward or not, I needed Sam. I could take my time sorting everything else out.
I washed my face and went downstairs to find Sam on the sofa, writing in a notebook. Not words. Music? He lifted his eyes as I sat at the piano, tugging on a pair of fingerless mittens.
The keys were cool and smooth, and when I pressed down on one, a clear note resonated through the house. I closed my eyes and smiled. No wonder Sam loved this so much. Maybe this was something we could share without awkwardness.
I played a few more notes, went seeking patterns and familiar things. A series of notes almost like what Sam had played earlier sounded under my fingers, but I was doing something wrong. I played it twice again, discovering the correct rhythm as I went, but not the right note. I tried the keys around the one I knew was wrong. Nope.
“Black key.” Sam’s eyes were on his book, but I could feel his attention. “Then you’ve got it.”
I wasn’t surprised when it worked, only that my hands did it. Stabbed by rose thorns, frozen, burned—and yet they still made music. “Will you show me the rest?”
He laid his pencil and notebook aside so quickly I wondered if he’d even been working to start with. “Nothing would make me happier.”
Market day brought freezing weather, but I bundled up in one of Sam’s old coats, found a hat and scarf and mittens to match, and waited for him by the door, bouncing on the balls of my feet. “Hurry!”
At last he came downstairs, dressed warmly, but without so many layers. “You look ready for a blizzard.” He offered a canvas bag, which I looped over my elbow. “Everyone is going to be there. You might get hot.”