Passion (17 page)

“You tel me,” Bil said. “It may surprise you to hear this, but the ladies aren’t exactly banging down Bil ’s door.”

“I mean, if I tat ooed Daniel’s name on my body would that mean I loved him more than I already do?”

“It’s a symbol, Luce.” Bil let out a raspy sigh. “You’re being too literal. Think about it this way: Daniel is the rst good-looking boy Lulu has ever seen. Until he washed ashore a few months ago, this girl’s whole world was her father and a few fat natives.”

has ever seen. Until he washed ashore a few months ago, this girl’s whole world was her father and a few fat natives.”

“She’s Miranda,” Luce said, remembering the love story from The Tempest, which she’d read in her tenth-grade Shakespeare seminar.

“How very civilized of you!” Bil pursed his lips with approval. “They are like Ferdinand and Miranda: The handsome foreigner shipwrecks on her shores—”

“So, of course it was love at rst sight for Lulu,” Luce murmured. This was what she was afraid of: the same thoughtless, automatic love that had bothered her in Helston.

“Right,” Bil said. “She didn’t have a choice but to fal for him. But what’s interesting here is Daniel. You see, he didn’t have to teach her to craft a woven sail, or gain her father’s trust by producing a season’s worth of sh to cure, or exhibit C”—Bil pointed at the lovers on the beach—“agree to tat oo his whole body according to her local custom. It would have been enough if Daniel had just shown up. Lulu would have loved him anyway.”

“He’s doing it because—” Luce thought aloud. “Because he wants to earn her love. Because otherwise, he would just be taking advantage of their curse. Because no mat er what kind of cycle they’re bound to, his love for her is … true.” So then why wasn’t Luce entirely convinced?

On the beach, Daniel sat up. He took hold of Lulu by the shoulders and began kissing her tenderly. His chest bled from the tat ooing, but neither of them seemed to notice. Their lips barely parted, their eyes never left each other.

“I want to leave now,” Luce said suddenly to Bil .

“Real y?” Bil blinked, standing up on the tree branch as if she’d startled him.

“Yes, real y. I’ve got en what I came here for and I’m ready to move on. Right now.” She tried to stand, too, but the branch swayed under her weight.

“Um, okay.” Bil took her arm to steady her. “Where to?”

“I don’t know, but let’s hurry.” The sun was sinking in the sky behind them, lengthening the lovers’ shadows on the sand. “Please. I want to hold on to one good memory. I don’t want to see her die.”

Bil ’s face was pinched up and confused, but he didn’t say anything.

Luce couldn’t wait any longer. She closed her eyes and let her desire cal to an Announcer. When she opened her eyes again, she could see a quiver in the shadow of a nearby passion fruit tree. She concentrated, summoning it with al her might until the Announcer began to tremble.

“Come on,” she said, grit ing her teeth.

At last, the Announcer freed itself, zipping of the tree and through the air, floating directly in front of her.

“Easy now,” Bil said, hovering above the branch. “Desperation and Announcer-travel do not mix wel . Like pickles and chocolate.” Luce stared at him.

“I mean: Don’t get so desperate that you lose sight of what you want.”

“I want to get out of here,” Luce said, but she couldn’t coax the shadow into a stable shape, no mat er how hard she tried. She wasn’t looking at the lovers on the beach, but nonetheless she could feel the darkness gathering in the sky over the beach. It wasn’t rain clouds.

“Help me, Bil ?”

He sighed, reaching for the dark mass in the air, and drew it toward him. “This is your shadow, you realize. I’m manipulating it, but it’s your Announcer and your past.”

Luce nodded.

“Which means you have no idea where it’s taking you, and I have no liability.” She nodded again.

“Okay, then.” He rubbed at a part of the Announcer until it went darker; then he caught the dark spot with a claw and yanked on it. It worked like a sort of doorknob. The stink of mildew flooded out, making Luce cough.

“Yeah, I smel it, too,” Bil said. “This is an old one.” He gestured her forward. “Ladies first.” PRUSSIA • JANUARY 7, 1758

A snowflake kissed Luce’s nose.

Then another, and another, and more, until a storm of urries l ed the air and the whole world turned white and cold. She exhaled a long cloud of breath into the frost.

Somehow, she’d known they would end up here, even though she wasn’t exactly sure where here was. Al she knew was that the afternoon skies were dark with a furious storm, and wet snow was seeping through her black leather boots, biting at her toes and chil ing her to the bone.

She was walking into her own funeral.

She’d felt it in the instant passing through this last Announcer. An oncoming coldness, unforgiving as a sheet of ice. She found herself at the gates of a cemetery, everything blanketed by snow. Behind her was a tree-lined road, the bare branches clawing at the pewter sky. Before her was a low rise of snow-shrouded earth, tombstones and crosses jut ing out of the white like jagged, dirty teeth.

A few feet behind her, someone whistled. “You sure you’re ready for this?” Bil . He sounded out of breath, like he’d just caught up with her.“Yes.” Her lips were chat ering. She didn’t turn around until Bil swooped down near her shoulders.

“Here,” he said, holding out a dark mink coat. “Thought you might be cold.”

“Where did you—”

“I yoinked it of a broad coming home from the market back there. Don’t worry, she had enough natural padding already.”

“Bil !”

“Hey, you needed it!” He shrugged. “Wear it in good health.”

He draped the thick coat over Luce’s shoulders, and she pul ed it closer. It was unbelievably soft and warm. A wave of gratitude rushed over her; she reached up and took his claw, not even caring that it was sticky and cold.

“Okay,” Bil said, squeezing her hand. For a moment, Luce felt an odd warmth in her ngertips. But then it was gone, and Bil ’s stone ngers were stone cold. He took a deep, nervous breath. “Um. Uh. Prussia, mid-eighteenth century. You live in a smal vil age on the banks of the river Handel. Very nice.” He cleared his throat and hacked up a large wad of phlegm before he went on. “I should say, er, that you of the river Handel. Very nice.” He cleared his throat and hacked up a large wad of phlegm before he went on. “I should say, er, that you lived. You’ve actual y, just—wel —”

“Bil ?” She craned her neck to look at him sit ing hunched forward on her shoulder. “It’s okay,” she said softly. “You don’t have to explain.

Let me just, you know, feel it.”

“That’s probably best.”

As Luce walked quietly through the cemetery gates, Bil hung back. He sat cross-legged on top of a lichen-swathed shrine, picking at the grit under his claws. Luce lowered her shawl over her head to obscure more of her face.

Up ahead were mourners, black-clad and somber, pressed so tightly together for warmth that they looked like a single mass of grief.

Except for one person who stood behind the group and of to one side. He hung his bare blond head.

No one spoke to or even looked at Daniel. Luce couldn’t tel whether he was bothered by being left out or whether he preferred it.

By the time she reached the back of the smal crowd, the burial was drawing to a close. A name was carved into a at gray tombstone: Lucinda Mül er. A boy, no older than twelve, with dark hair and pale skin and tears streaming down his face, helped his father—her father from this other life?—shovel the first mound of dirt over the grave.

These men must have been related to her past self. They must have loved her. There were women and children crying behind them; Lucinda Mül er must have meant something to them as wel . Maybe she’d meant everything to them.

But Luce Price didn’t know these people. She felt cal ous and strange to realize that they meant nothing to her, even as she saw the pain mar their faces. Daniel was the only one here who real y mat ered to her, the one she wanted to run to, the one she had to hold herself back from.

He wasn’t crying. He wasn’t even staring at the grave like everyone else. His hands were clasped in front of him and he was looking far away—not at the sky, but far into the distance. His eyes were violet one moment, gray the next.

When the family members had cast a few shovelfuls of dirt over the casket and the plot had been scat ered with owers, the funeral-goers split apart and walked shakily back to the main road. It was over.

Only Daniel remained. As immobile as the dead.

Luce hung back, too, dodging behind a squat mausoleum a few plots away, watching to see what he would do.

It was dusk. They had the graveyard to themselves. Daniel lowered himself to his knees next to Lucinda’s grave. Snow thrummed down on the cemetery, coating Luce’s shoulders, fat akes get ing tangled in her eyelashes, wet ing the tip of her nose. She edged around the corner of the mausoleum, her entire body tensed.

Would he lose it? Would he claw at the frozen dirt and pound on the gravestone and bawl until there were no more tears he could shed?

He couldn’t feel as calm as he looked. It was impossible, a front. But Daniel barely looked at the grave. He lay down on his side in the snow and closed his eyes.

Luce stared. He was so stil and gorgeous. With his eyelids closed, he looked at absolute peace. She was half in love, half confused, and stayed that way for several minutes—until she was so frozen, she had to rub her arms and stamp her feet to warm up.

“What is he doing?” she final y whispered.

Bil appeared behind her and flit ed around her shoulders. “Looks like he’s sleeping.”

“But why? I didn’t even know angels needed to sleep—”

“Need isn’t the right word. They can sleep if they feel like it. Daniel always sleeps for days after you die.” Bil tossed his head, seeming to recal something unpleasant. “Okay, not always. Most of the time. Must be pret y taxing, to lose the one thing you love. Can you blame him?”

“S-sort of,” Luce stammered. “I’m the one who bursts into flames.”

“And he’s the one who’s left alone. The age-old question: Which is worse?”

“But he doesn’t even look sad. He looked bored the entire funeral. If it were me, I’d … I’d …”

“You’d what?”

Luce moved toward the grave and stopped short at the loose earth where her plot began. A cof in lay beneath this.

Her cof in.

The thought sent shivers up her spine. She sank to her knees and put her palms down in the dirt. It was damp and dark and freezing cold.

She buried her hands inside it, feeling frostbit en almost instantly and not caring, welcoming the burn. She’d wanted Daniel to do this, to feel for her body in the earth. To go mad with wanting her back—alive and in his arms.

But he was just sleeping, so dead asleep that he didn’t even sense her kneeling right beside him. She wanted to touch him, to wake him, but she didn’t even know what she’d say when he opened his eyes.

Instead, she pawed at the muddy earth, until the owers laid so neatly on it were scat ered and broken, until the beautiful mink coat was soiled and her arms and face were covered in mud. She dug and dug and tossed the earth aside, reaching deeper for her dead self. She ached for some connection.

At last her ngers hit something hard: the wooden lid of the co n. She closed her eyes and waited for the kind of ash she’d felt in Moscow, the bolt of memories that had flooded through her when she’d touched the abandoned church gate and felt Luschka’s life.

Nothing.

Just emptiness. Loneliness. A howling white wind.

And Daniel, asleep and unreachable.

She sat back on her heels and sobbed. She didn’t know a thing about the girl who had died. She felt she never would.

“Yoo-hoo,” Bil said quietly from her shoulder. “You’re not in there, you know?”

“What?”

“Think about it. You’re not in there. You’re a fleck of ash by now if you’re anything. You didn’t have a body to bury, Luce.”

“Because of the fire. Oh. But then why …?” she asked, then stopped herself. “My family wanted this.”

“They’re strict Lutherans.” Bil nodded. “Every Mül er for a hundred years has a tombstone in this cemetery. So your past self does, too.

There’s just nothing under it. Or not quite nothing. Your favorite dress. A childhood dol . Your copy of the Bible. That sort of thing.” Luce swal owed. No wonder she felt so empty inside. “So Daniel—that’s why he wasn’t looking at the grave.”

“He’s the only one who accepts that your soul is someplace else. He stayed because this is the closest place he can go to hold on to your memory.” Bil swooped down so close to Daniel that the buzz of his stony wings rustled Daniel’s hair. Luce almost pushed Bil away. “He’l try to sleep until your soul is set led somewhere else. Until you’ve found your next incarnation.”

“How long does that take?”

“Sometimes seconds, sometimes years. But he won’t sleep for years. As much as he’d probably like to.” Daniel’s movement on the ground made Luce jump.