He held on to me like I was a rock, the only thing keeping him from drifting out with the tide of dark memories.
It was the first time I realized he needed me, too.
.....................................................................
Chapter 17
Footsteps
“NO SAM TONIGHT?” Sine asked from across the library table. It had only taken her an hour to bring it up. She’d made it sound casual, but I didn’t have to be five thousand years old to know she’d been waiting for an opening. Apparently silence was as good an opening as any.
I gave a one-shouldered shrug and turned the page of my book. Philosophy. Lots of guessing why people were reborn. Why some took a year to return, while others took up to ten. No one agreed on anything, but because these were where my questions began, this was what I had to read. “We don’t do everything together.”
“Don’t you? I don’t think I’ve seen you apart since the market.”
I’d been under the impression people in Heart valued their privacy. My alternate theory—that people already knew everything about one another, so they didn’t bother prying—sounded more likely now. I was the exception, of course. If I was involved even remotely, people asked questions. The afternoon I’d dragged Sam outside the city so he could show me all the nearby geysers and hot springs, gossip had spread like wildfire. I still couldn’t figure out what made fumaroles so scandalous, but maybe people were desperate.
“I’m just surprised he’s not with you, that’s all. You two have been spending as much time here as Whit, always off in your own corners, studying.”
I flashed a smile. “He said he wasn’t sleeping well and wanted to rest this evening. Everything should be back to normal soon.” Maybe. He hadn’t actually said anything. I’d made him stay in.
“Oh, good. I hope he feels more rested soon.” She ducked over her book again, pen scraping against the paper grain.
“I hope so, too.”
We worked in silence for a few minutes more, time dripping by like water from a leaky tap. But I couldn’t focus on the philosophy book in front of me. The author seemed conflicted on his views about Janan, whether he was real and responsible for reincarnation, or whether humans were doing it on their own, by virtue of being human.
“Sine?”
She glanced up, eyebrow raised.
“Do you believe in Janan? Do you think he created everyone and reincarnates them every lifetime?”
She lowered her pen and sat back. “Sometimes I think I don’t, simply because it annoys Meuric and Deborl. But honestly, I want to believe we humans aren’t at this alone, perpetually reincarnated in a world where dragons, centaurs, griffins, and rocs are always trying to kill us.” She shrugged and found my gaze. “Like you, I want to believe there is a beginning to all this. Life.”
My beginning was so much more recent, yet no one could tell me what had happened. People who’d been there.
“What about the walls? Do they feel strange to you?”
“The heartbeat?” She shook her head. “Everyone can feel it, certainly, but it’s comforting, and part of what makes me want to believe in Janan and his promise to return.”
Or maybe he’d never left.
The heartbeat certainly didn’t feel comforting to me. Sam seemed to think it was funny or cute how I tried to avoid touching the white stone, but it gave me the sensation of worms crawling beneath my skin.
“Thanks,” I said, turning back to the book with a sigh. I really wanted to find someone else who didn’t like the walls and see if they had any thoughts on it, but there seemed a definite connection between my newness and the creepy feeling.
“Perhaps philosophy and guesswork aren’t where you should be looking.” Sine eyed my book. “I never thought Deborl’s views were all that astute, anyway.”
I checked the cover of the book. Sure enough, Deborl, a Councilor who looked younger than me, had written it over sixty quindecs ago. Astute or not, these views were almost a thousand years old. I closed the book and slid it toward the middle of the table. “Maybe you’re right. I thought the answers were in the distant past, but I could be wrong.”
She slipped a marker into her book and nodded for me to continue.
Thoughts collated as I gazed around the dim library. “I know Li reasonably well.” Better than I wanted. “She’s a warrior. When I misbehaved as a child, she told me about the times she killed dragons. Before lasers and air drones were invented.” Having seen dragons recently, I could finally appreciate what a feat that was.
“Li has always been formidable.”
No doubt. “What about Menehem?”