Asunder Read online

Page 5

  Author: Jodi Meadows

  I smiled again, squeezed his hand, and we both relaxed. “So whatever he was doing in the market field,” I went on, “there was some kind of minor explosion, and a vapor went up. That’s when the temple went dark. ”

  “From the gas,” Sam said. “Then he came here to figure out how to reproduce the mistake, because he didn’t know what he’d done to get that reaction. ”

  “Right. ” I flipped a few pages and pointed at a list. “These are the chemicals he used. ” It was a long list.

  “I don’t know what those are. ”

  “Hormones, some of them. I recognize a few from Micah’s biology lessons. ” I glanced toward the lab in the back. “There are stores of the chemicals in there. Most of them are labeled, even. And he wrote down the final recipe, though I’d like to study his experiments a bit more first. ”

  “First? Before trying it yourself?” Sam frowned. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea. ”

  I flinched. “You don’t think I’d try to make another Templedark, do you?”

  “No, I know you’d be doing it for research, but what if the Council finds out? We both know what they’d assume. ”

  I slumped and planted my chin on my fist. “You’re right. ”

  “Besides, you’ve told me that sylph were fleeing Menehem during Templedark. That makes me think he was hurting them. ”

  “Are you worried about hurting sylph, Dossam?” I flashed a dry smile.

  He spoke gently. “I just don’t think you’d want to hurt anything, even sylph. ”

  I lowered my eyes. “No, not even sylph. ” After the weeks it had taken for my hands to recover from sylph burns, I might not have minded. But the night of Templedark, when Meuric had led me into the temple and tried to trap me, I’d stabbed him in the eye with a knife and shoved him beneath an upside-down pit. He’d fallen upward, body still flailing. That had been self-defense, but the guilt still writhed inside me. I should have come up with a better solution to my problem, but it was too late now.

  Sam put his arms around me.

  “I don’t want to hurt them,” I said, “but the more I understand about this, the more I understand about Janan. Whatever Menehem did, it stopped Janan for a little while. The rest of you don’t feel it, but the white walls feel horrible to me. And the temple makes me feel—” I blinked away tears. “He’s not good, Sam. Whatever Janan is, it’s bad. It’s evil. ”

  “All right. ” Sam pressed himself against me, as though he could shield me from something like Janan. As though he could even comprehend my fear of Janan when he didn’t fear Janan at all. I probably sounded crazy to him, thinking the heat and pulse of the walls were wrong. My seemingly irrational dislike of sleeping close to the exterior walls of buildings was unique, but I couldn’t even lean against the wall. It made my stomach twist with unease.

  I was right, though. There was something off about Janan. Inside the temple, he’d called me a mistake, which implied that he had a plan. He’d also said I was “of no consequence,” which implied that he didn’t view me as a threat.

  I aimed to be a threat.

  Sam combed his fingers through my hair, down the back of my neck. “I wish I understood what it feels like for you. I wish I could make it right. ”

  He didn’t want to make me right. He wanted to make things with Janan right.

  I liked that he didn’t think I was wrong. I liked that he believed me. That he trusted me, in spite of how I must have looked.

  The building creaked in the wind as night settled, and my hair muffled Sam’s words. “I’m just worried that if we go too far into Menehem’s research, regardless of our intentions, someone will think we’re creating another Templedark. ”

  “Even our possessing his research will be too much for some people,” I whispered. “Maybe I have more friends now, but Meuric wasn’t alone in his feelings about newsouls. Not nearly. ” Right off, I could think of five people who’d made their dislike clear, and lots more who just didn’t bother acknowledging me.

  Sam nodded, his expression etched with frustration.

  “I don’t want anyone to think I want another Templedark, but Menehem’s poison is the only thing I know that affects Janan. I just—I want a weapon, Sam. You gave me a knife when I told you someone followed me home one night. A knife won’t work against Janan. We only know one thing that affects him, and this is it. I want to understand how. I want to discover if maybe there’s another way I can protect myself. ” I wanted to feel safe, but that would never happen in Heart, and I wouldn’t ask Sam to spend this lifetime in a dusty cabin just for me.

  “Let’s go through the rest of Menehem’s research,” Sam said. “I’m sure he recorded videos and every possible variation in his results. Will that help?”

  “It’s a start. ”

  4

  WATCHERS

  SAM WAS ALREADY sleeping on the sofa when the noise came, a soft shriek of wind that sent splinters of fear through my chest. I scrambled for the window.

  Dusk had fallen, and the view from the window nearest my bed revealed only twin mountains against starlight, and lots of trees in between. Brittle leaves rushed in the wind, and I relaxed. Real wind. Real wind in a strange place. I didn’t know the sounds of this building like I knew those of Purple Rose Cottage. I wasn’t familiar with the particular way wind cut across the iron corner in the northeast, or which trees groaned. I didn’t know their voices.

  The sound remained, but the branches, half-dressed with autumn, became motionless.

  A square of light fell from my window onto the grass when Sam clicked on the nearest lamp. “What is it?” He stopped at the foot of the bed, yawning.

  “They’re watching. ” I grabbed my flashlight from the nightstand, gave the tube a few sharp twists, and shone the light toward the woods.

  Shadows skittered away, yelping and whining, but they didn’t come closer. When I pulled the beam toward the lab again, the shadows relaxed and resumed their places at the tree line.

  “Watching?” Sam touched my shoulder and peered out from behind me. “How many are there?”

  “A lot. ” I closed the window and pulled the shade. We were probably safe inside the iron building. Probably. “Do you think any of these are the same sylph that attacked me on my birthday?”

  “I don’t know. ” Sam clicked off the light. “If they are, why behave differently now?”

  Mysteries and more mysteries.

  The sylph didn’t leave that night, or the next, or the next. They never moved closer, never threatened or attacked, but they were always there. Watching.

  Over the next few weeks, I learned why it had taken Menehem eighteen years to re-create and perfect the results of the first Templedark.

  The process of creating and dispersing the poison was a complicated one. Sam and I watched video after video of Menehem explaining different theories and tests to the camera. The hundreds of combinations ran together until one finally gave the response Menehem had been looking for.

  Sam and I sat curled on the sofa together, his arm around my shoulders. I had a notebook balanced on my knees so I could write down stray thoughts. The screen, which Menehem had hidden in a wall, showed a summer day with my father bustling about the yard with cans of aerosol poison, which he’d created using a machine in the back of the lab.

  “Aerosol,” he explained to the camera for the hundredth time, “has proven to be the most effective delivery system. It allows the hormones to be both solid and suspended midair. For sylph, both corporeal and incorporeal, almost a paradox themselves, fighting them with a substance that behaves the same way seems the most logical.

  “The problem has been finding just the right amount of each hormone and timing the exposure, but I believe that I’ve finally found a combination that will work. I started with…”

  He droned on for a while, repeating many of the same things he’d
said before. Then he ambled toward a large speaker by the building and flipped a switch. Music crackled and settled, and a haunting piano sonata flowed across the small field and toward the nearby creek. Music streamed toward the mountains, filling the entire area with melody.

  As they’d done in nearly every other video, sylph appeared in the distance.

  Shadows glided toward the speaker, writhing like flames. Tendrils of darkness shot out of them, like hands reaching for the sky. Under the familiar sounds of Sam’s piano playing, the sylph voices rose up to sing along.

  I glanced at Sam. “Is that weird? That they like music so much?” As I had, Menehem seemed to have discovered their response to music by accident. Then he’d begun using it as a lure.

  “Maybe. Who can tell with sylph?”

  Perhaps they thought Menehem had captured one of their own. Would they have cared if Menehem had trapped another sylph?

  On the screen, sylph drifted around the yard, ignoring the small canisters placed about. When there were nearly a dozen sylph singing along to the sonata, Menehem pressed another button.

  The canisters spewed aerosol, hissing loudly. The sylph ignored it; if these were the same sylph as had been in previous videos, they were used to this part, too. The gas had never done anything to them.

  This time, the sylph dropped.

  Two or three at first. They twitched and seemed to glance around—how could they glance if they had no eyes?—and then sank into puddles of darkness.

  Another sylph shimmered and fell. And another.

  Soon, Menehem flicked off the speaker and the field was silent.

  “I did it,” he said. “Finally, I did it!” Menehem jumped and whooped, giving me an odd sense of embarrassment for him.

  Sam shifted uncomfortably, and I doodled roses in the margins of my notebook while we waited for Menehem to compose himself on the screen.

  “It looks like they just fall asleep,” Sam said.

  “The music draws them in, and the gas puts them to sleep. ” I nodded and leaned forward as Menehem approached one of the sylph puddles. I almost felt bad for them, being experimented on. Sam was right. I didn’t want to hurt them—though these didn’t look like they were hurt, exactly.

  Menehem knelt by the nearest sylph and pulled a device from his pocket. “Temperature is abnormally low for a sylph. ” He stuck his hand into the sleeping sylph. “It’s warm, but not uncomfortable. ”

  My heart jumped and sped. “Sam. ” Why would anyone put their hand inside a sylph?

  “I see it. ” He touched my hands, squeezed them. “They’re fine now. Healed completely, remember?”

  I nodded, but the sensation of burning wasn’t something I’d ever be able to forget.

  As we watched, a couple of sylph twitched and shifted in their sleep. Could sylph dream?

  Suddenly, the one Menehem had touched shot into the air, towering over the chemist. Grass sizzled, and the sylph shrieked so loud and high that Sam and I both covered our ears.

  Other sylph awoke, equally enraged. Smoke billowed where they burned the grass. They converged on Menehem and—

  And they seemed to think about it. Something passed among the sylph. Communication? I couldn’t tell. It was so fast, and they were still keening….

  At once, all dozen sylph fled the area, leaving patches of scorched earth behind. Menehem slumped to the ground, an unused sylph egg rolling from his hand. He’d almost been killed.

  He’d almost been burned alive, but the sylph decided not to do it.

  “What…” I stared at the screen until Menehem soberly got up to declare this portion of the experiment finished. The video stopped. “Did he even realize the sylph chose not to kill him?”

  “Hard to say with Menehem. ” Sam switched to the next video but didn’t play it yet. “It didn’t last very long, what he did to the sylph. A few minutes at best. ”