Passion

NINE SO WE BEAT ON

Łuce found herself balanced on a splintery wooden beam.

It creaked as it tilted slightly to the left, then creaked again as it eased very slowly to the right. The rocking was steady and ceaseless, as if the beam were attached to a very short pendulum.

A hot wind sent her hair lashing across her face and blew her servant’s bonnet off her head. The beam beneath her swayed again, and her feet slipped. She fell against the beam and barely managed to hug it to herself before she went tumbling down—

Where was she? In front of her was the endless blue of open sky. A darker blue at what must have been the horizon. She looked down.

She was incredibly high up.

A waterlogged pole stretched a hundred feet beneath her, ending in a wooden deck. Oh. It was a mast. Luce was sitting on the top yard of a very large sailboat.

A very large shipwrecked sailboat, just off the coast of a black-shored island.

The bow had been smashed violently against a cluster of razor-sharp lava rocks that had left it a pulverized mess. The mainsail was shredded: tattered pieces of tawny canvas flapping loosely in the wind. The air smelled like the morning after a great storm, but this ship was so weathered, it looked like it had been there for years.

Every time the waves rushed up the black-sand shores, water sprayed dozens of feet up from the crevices in the rocks. The waves made the wreck—and the beam Luce clutched—sway so roughly she felt she might be sick.

How was she going to get down? How was she going to get to shore?

“Aha! Look who’s landed like a bird on a perch.” Bill’s voice broke over the crashing waves. He appeared at the far tip of the ship’s rotting yard, walking with his arms extended from his sides as if he were on a balance beam.

“Where are we?” Luce was too nervous to make any sudden movements.

Bill sucked in a big lungful of air. “Can’t you taste it? The north coast of Tahiti!” He plopped down next to Luce, kicked out his stubby legs, stretched his short gray arms up, and clasped his hands behind his head. “Isn’t it paradise?”

“I think I’m going to throw up.”

“Nonsense. You just have to find your sea legs.”

“How did we get—” Luce glanced around again for an Announcer. She didn’t see a single shadow, just the endless blank blue of empty skies.

“I took care of the logistics for you. Think of me as your travel agent, and of yourself as on vacation!”

“We’re not on vacation, Bill.”

“We’re not? I thought we were taking the Grand Tour of Love.” He rubbed his forehead, and flinty flakes showered from his scalp. “Did I misunderstand?”

“Where are Lucinda and Daniel?”

“Hang on.” He hovered in the air in front of Luce. “Don’t you want a little history?”

Luce ignored him and scooted over toward the mast. She stretched an unsteady foot to the highest of the pegs that spiked out from the mast’s sides.

“Don’t you at least want a hand?”

She’d been holding her breath and trying not to look down as her foot slid off the wooden peg a third time. Finally, she swallowed dryly and reached out to take the cold, rough claw Bill extended to her.

As she took Bill’s hand, he pulled her forward, then off the mast entirely. She yelped as the wet wind battered her face, sending the skirt of her dress billowing around her waist. She shut her eyes and waited to plunge through the rotten decking below.

Only she didn’t.

She heard a throosh and felt her body catch in the air. She opened her eyes. Bill’s stubby wings had ballooned out and caught the wind. He was supporting her weight with just one hand, carrying her slowly to shore. It was miraculous how nimble he was, how light. Luce was surprised to find herself relaxing—somehow the sensation of flying was natural to her by now.

Daniel. As the air encircled her, the ache to be with him overtook her. To hear his voice and taste his lips—Luce could think of nothing else. What she wouldn’t have given to be in his arms just then!

The Daniel she’d encountered in Helston, however happy he’d been to see her, had not really known her. Not the way her Daniel did. Where was he right now?

“Feeling better?” Bill asked.

“Why are we here?” Luce asked as they soared over the water. It was so clear she could see inky shadows moving underwater—giant schools of fish, swimming easily, following the shoreline.

“See that palm tree?” Bill pointed forward with his free claw. “The tallest one, third from the break in the sandbar?”

Luce nodded, squinting.

“That’s where your father in this life built his hut. Nicest shack on the beach!” Bill coughed. “Actually, it’s the only shack on the beach. The Brits haven’t even discovered this side of the island yet. So when your pops is off fishing, you and Daniel have the place mostly to yourselves.”

“Daniel and I … lived here … together?”

Hand in hand, Luce and Bill touched down on the shore with the soft elegance of two dancers in a pas de deux. Luce was grateful—and a little shocked—at how smoothly he’d been able to get her down from the mast of the ship, but as soon as she was firmly on the ground, she withdrew her hand from his grimy claw and wiped it on her apron.

It was starkly beautiful here. The crystal waters washed against the strange and lovely black-sand beaches. Groves of citrus and palm trees leaned over the coast, heavy with bright-orange fruit. Past the trees, low mountains rose up from the mists of the rain forest. Waterfalls cut into their sides. The wind down here wasn’t as fierce; better still, it was thick with the scent of hibiscus. It was hard to imagine getting to spend a vacation here, let alone an entire life.

“You lived here.” Bill started walking along the curved shoreline, leaving little claw prints in the dark sand. “Your dad, and all ten of the other natives who lived within canoeing distance, called you—well, it sounded like Lulu.”

Luce had been walking quickly to keep pace, balling up the layered skirts of her Helston servant’s clothing to keep them from dragging in the sand. She stopped and made a face.

“What?” Bill said. “I think it’s cute, Lulu. Lulululululu.”

“Stop it.”

“Anyway, Daniel was a kind of rogue explorer. That boat back there? Your ace boyfriend stole it from George the Third’s private slip.” He glanced back at the shipwreck. “But it’ll take Captain Bligh and his mutinous crew another couple of years to track Daniel down here, and by then … you know.”

Luce swallowed. Daniel would probably be long gone by then, because Lucinda would be long dead.

They’d reached a gap in the line of palm trees. A brackish river flowed in swirls between the ocean and a small inland freshwater pond. Luce edged along a few flat stones to cross the water. She was sweating through her petticoats and thought about stripping out of her stifling dress and diving straight into the ocean.

“How much time do I have with Lulu?” she asked. “Before it happens?”

Bill held up his hands. “I thought all you wanted to see was proof that the love you share with Daniel is true.”

“I do.”

“For that, you won’t need more than ten minutes.”

They came upon a short orchid-lined path, which curved onto another pristine beach. A small thatch-roofed hut rose on stilts near the edge of the light-blue water. Behind the hut, a palm tree shuddered.

Bill perched above her shoulder, hovering in the air. “Check her out.” His stone claw pointed toward the palm.

Luce watched in awe as a pair of feet emerged from the fronds high on the quaking tree trunk. Then a girl wearing little more than a woven skirt and an enormous floral lei tossed four shaggy brown coconuts to the beach before scampering down the knobby trunk to the ground.

Her hair was long and loose, catching in its dark strands diamonds of light from the sun. Luce knew the exact feel of it, the way it would tickle her arms as it swayed in waves past her waist. The sun had turned Lulu’s skin a deep golden brown—darker than Luce had ever been, even when she spent a whole summer at her grandmother’s beach house in Biloxi—and her face and arms were etched with dark geometric tattoos. She existed somewhere between utterly unrecognizable and absolutely Luce.

“Wow,” Luce whispered as Bill yanked her behind the shelter of a shrubby, purple-flowered tree. “Hey—Ow! What are you doing?”

“Escorting you to a safer vantage.” Bill dragged her up again into the air, until they were rising through the canopy of leaves. Once they cleared the trees, he flew her to a high, sturdy branch and plunked her down, and she could see the whole beach.

“Lulu!”

The voice sank though Luce’s skin and straight into her heart. Daniel’s voice. He was calling to her. He wanted her. Needed her. Luce moved toward the sound. She hadn’t even noticed that she’d started to rise from her seat on the high branch, as if she could just walk off the treetop and fly to him—until Bill gripped her elbow.

“Precisely why I had to drag your popa’a ass up here. He’s not talking to you. He’s talking to her.”

“Oh.” Luce sank back down heavily. “Right.”

On the black sand, the girl with the coconuts, Lulu, was running. And down the beach, sprinting toward her, was Daniel.

He was shirtless, gorgeously tanned and muscular, wearing only cropped navy-blue trousers that were fraying at the edges. His skin glittered with seawater, fresh from a dip in the ocean. His bare feet kicked up sand. Luce envied the water, envied the sand. Envied everything that got to touch Daniel when she was stuck up in this tree. She envied her past self the most.

Running toward Lulu, Daniel looked happier and more natural than Luce could ever remember seeing him. It made her want to cry.

They reached each other. Lulu threw her arms around him, and he swept her up, twirling her in the air. He set her back on her feet and showered her with kisses, kissing her fingertips and her forearms, all the way up to her shoulders, her neck, her mouth.

Bill reclined against Luce’s shoulder. “Wake me up when they get to the good stuff,” he said, yawning.

“Pervert!” She wanted to slug him, but she didn’t want to touch him.

“I mean the tattooing, gutter-brain. I’m into tats, okay?”

When Luce looked back at the couple on the beach, Lulu was leading Daniel to a woven mat that was spread on the sand not far from the hut. Daniel pulled a short machete from the belt of his trousers and hacked at one of the coconuts. After a few slashes, he split off the top and handed the rest of it to Lulu. She drank deeply, milk dripping from the corners of her mouth. Daniel kissed them clean.

“There’s no tattooing, they’re just—” Luce broke off when her past self disappeared into the hut. Lulu reappeared a moment later carrying a small parcel bound in palm leaves. She unwrapped a tool that looked like a wooden comb. The bristles gleamed in the sun, as if they were needle-sharp. Daniel lay back on the mat, watching as Lulu dipped the comb into a large shallow seashell filled with a black powder.

Lulu gave him a quick kiss and then began.

Starting at his breastbone, she pressed the comb into his skin. She worked quickly, pressing hard and fast, and each time she moved the comb she left a smear of black pigment tattooed on his skin. Luce could begin to make out a design: a small checkerboard-patterned breastplate. It was going to span his entire chest. Luce’s only trip to a tattoo parlor had been once in New Hampshire with Callie, who wanted a tiny pink heart on her hip. It had taken less than a minute and Callie had bellowed the whole time. Here, though, Daniel lay silently, never making a sound, never moving his eyes off Lulu. It took a long while, and Luce felt sweat trickle down the small of her back as she watched.

“Eh? How ’bout that?” Bill nudged her. “Did I promise to show you love or did I promise to show you love?”

“Sure, they seem like they’re in love.” Luce shrugged. “But—”

“But what? Do you have any idea how painful that is? Look at that guy. He makes getting inked look like being caressed by a soft breeze.”

Luce squirmed on the branch. “Is that the lesson here? Pain equals love?”

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

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

“It’s a symbol, Luce.” Bill let out a raspy sigh. “You’re being too literal. Think about it this way: Daniel is the first 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.”

“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!” Bill 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 first sight for Lulu,” Luce murmured. This was what she was afraid of: the same thoughtless, automatic love that had bothered her in Helston.

“Right,” Bill said. “She didn’t have a choice but to fall 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 fish to cure, or exhibit C”—Bill pointed at the lovers on the beach—“agree to tattoo 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 matter 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 tattooing, 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 Bill.

“Really?” Bill blinked, standing up on the tree branch as if she’d startled him.

“Yes, really. I’ve gotten 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.” Bill 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.”

Bill’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 call 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 all her might until the Announcer began to tremble.

“Come on,” she said, gritting her teeth.

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

“Easy now,” Bill said, hovering above the branch. “Desperation and Announcer-travel do not mix well. 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 matter 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, Bill?”

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 smell it, too,” Bill said. “This is an old one.” He gestured her forward. “Ladies first.”

A snowflake kissed Luce’s nose.

Then another, and another, and more, until a storm of flurries filled 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. All 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 chilling 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 jutting out of the white like jagged, dirty teeth.

A few feet behind her, someone whistled. “You sure you’re ready for this?” Bill. He sounded out of breath, like he’d just caught up with her.

“Yes.” Her lips were chattering. She didn’t turn around until Bill 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 off a broad coming home from the market back there. Don’t worry, she had enough natural padding already.”

“Bill!”

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

He draped the thick coat over Luce’s shoulders, and she pulled 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,” Bill said, squeezing her hand. For a moment, Luce felt an odd warmth in her fingertips. But then it was gone, and Bill’s stone fingers were stone cold. He took a deep, nervous breath. “Um. Uh. Prussia, mid-eighteenth century. You live in a small village 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 lived. You’ve actually, just—well—”

“Bill?” She craned her neck to look at him sitting 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, Bill 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 off to one side. He hung his bare blond head.

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

By the time she reached the back of the small crowd, the burial was drawing to a close. A name was carved into a flat gray tombstone: Lucinda Müller. 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 Müller must have meant something to them as well. Maybe she’d meant everything to them.

But Luce Price didn’t know these people. She felt callous 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 really mattered 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 scattered with flowers, 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 flakes getting tangled in her eyelashes, wetting 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 still 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 finally whispered.

Bill appeared behind her and flitted 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.” Bill tossed his head, seeming to recall something unpleasant. “Okay, not always. Most of the time. Must be pretty 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 coffin lay beneath this.

Her coffin.

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 frostbitten 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 flowers laid so neatly on it were scattered 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 fingers hit something hard: the wooden lid of the coffin. She closed her eyes and waited for the kind of flash 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,” Bill 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.” Bill nodded. “Every Müller 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 doll. Your copy of the Bible. That sort of thing.”

Luce swallowed. 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.” Bill swooped down so close to Daniel that the buzz of his stony wings rustled Daniel’s hair. Luce almost pushed Bill away. “He’ll try to sleep until your soul is settled 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.

He stirred in his blanket of snow. An agonized groan escaped his lips.

“What’s happening?” Luce said, dropping to her knees and reaching for him.

“Don’t wake him!” Bill said quickly. “His sleep is riddled with nightmares, but it’s better for him than being awake. Until your soul is settled in a new life, Daniel’s whole existence is a kind of torture.”

Luce was torn between wanting to ease Daniel’s pain and trying to understand that waking him up might only worsen it.

“Like I said, on occasion, he sort of has insomnia … and that’s when it gets really interesting. But you wouldn’t want to see that. Nah.”

“I would,” she said, sitting up. “What happens?”

Bill’s fleshy cheeks twitched, as if he’d been caught at something. “Well, uh, a lot of times, the other fallen angels are around,” he said, not meeting her eyes. “They get in and they, you know, try to console him.”

“I saw them in Moscow. But that’s not what you’re talking about. There’s something you’re not telling me. What happens when—”

“You don’t want to see those lives, Luce. It’s a side of him—”

“It’s a side of him that loves me, isn’t it? Even if it’s dark or bad or disturbing, I need to see it. Otherwise I still won’t understand what he goes through.”

Bill sighed. “You’re looking at me like you need my permission. Your past belongs to you.”

Luce was already on her feet. She glanced around the cemetery until her eyes fell on a small shadow stretching out from the back of her tombstone. There. That’s the one. Luce was startled by her certainty. That had never happened before.

At first glance this shadow had looked like any of the other shadows she had clumsily summoned in the woods at Shoreline. But this time, Luce could see something in the shadow itself. It wasn’t an image depicting any specific destination, but instead a strange silver glow that suggested that this Announcer would take her where her soul needed to go next.

It was calling to her.

She answered, reaching inside herself, drawing on that glow to guide the shadow up off the ground.

The shard of darkness peeled itself off the white snow and took shape as it moved closer. It was deep black, colder than the snow falling all around her, and it swept toward Luce like a giant, dark sheet of paper. Her fingers were cracked and numb with cold as she expanded it into a larger, controlled shape. It emitted that familiar gust of foul-smelling wind from its core. The portal was wide and stable before Luce realized she was out of breath.

“You’re getting good at this,” Bill said. There was a strange edge to his voice that Luce didn’t waste time analyzing.

She also didn’t waste time feeling proud of herself—though somewhere she could recognize that if Miles or Shelby had been here, they’d have been doing cartwheels right now. It was by far the best summoning she’d ever done on her own.

But they weren’t here. Luce was on her own, so all she could do was move on to the next life, observe more of Lucinda and Daniel, drink it all in until something began to make sense. She felt around the clammy edges for a latch or a knob, just some way in. Finally, the Announcer creaked open.

Luce took a deep breath. She looked back at Bill. “Are you coming or what?”

Gravely, he hopped onto her shoulder and grabbed hold of her lapel like the reins on a horse, and the two of them stepped through.

Luce gasped for breath.

She’d come out of the dark of the Announcer into a swirl of fast-moving fog. The air was thin and cold and every lungful stabbed at her chest. She couldn’t seem to catch her breath. The fog’s cool white vapor blew her hair back, rode along her open arms, soaked her garments with dew, and then was gone.

Luce saw that she was standing at the edge of the highest cliff she’d ever seen. She wobbled and staggered back, dizzy when she saw her feet dislodge a pebble. It rolled forward a few inches and over the edge, plummeting forever down.

She gasped again, this time from fear of heights.

“Breathe,” Bill coached her. “More people pass out up here from panicking over not getting enough oxygen than from actually not getting enough oxygen.”

Luce inhaled carefully. That was slightly better. She lowered the dirty mink on her shoulders and enjoyed the sun on her face. But she still couldn’t get used to the view.

Stretching away from the cliff where she stood was a yawning valley spotted with what looked like farmland and flooded rice paddies. And to either side, rising into misty heights, were two towering mountains.

Far ahead, carved right into one of the steep mountainsides, was a formidable palace. Majestically white and capped by deep-red roofs, its outer walls were festooned with more staircases than she could count. The palace looked like something out of an ancient fairy tale.

“What is this place? Are we in China?” she asked.

“If we stood here long enough, we would be,” Bill said. “But right now, it’s Tibet, thanks to the Dalai Lama. That’s his pad over there.” He pointed at the monster palace. “Swanky, eh?”

But Luce wasn’t following his finger. She’d heard a laugh from somewhere nearby and had turned to seek out its source.

Her laugh. The soft, happy laugh she hadn’t known was hers until she’d met Daniel.

She finally spotted two figures a few hundred yards away along the cliff. She’d have to clamber across some boulders to get closer, but it wouldn’t be that difficult. She hunched in her muddy coat and started carefully picking her way through the snow, toward the sound.

“Whoa there.” Bill grabbed her by the collar of the coat. “Do you see any place for us to take cover?”

Luce looked around the bare landscape: all rocky drop-offs and open spaces. Nothing even to serve as shelter from the wind.

“We’re above the tree line, pal. And you’re small, but you ain’t invisible. You’re going to have to hang back here.”

“But I can’t see a thing—”

“Coat pocket,” Bill said. “You’re welcome.”

She felt around in the pocket of the coat—the same coat she’d been wearing at the funeral in Prussia—and pulled out a brand-new, very expensive-looking pair of opera glasses. She didn’t bother asking Bill where or when he’d got them, she just held them up to her eyes and twisted the focus.

There.

The two of them stood facing each other, several feet apart. Her past self’s black hair was knotted in a girlish bun, and her woven linen dress was the pink of an orchid. She looked young and innocent. She was smiling at Daniel, rocking back and forth on her feet like she was nervous, watching his every move with unbounded intensity. Daniel’s eyes had a teasing look in them; a bunch of round white peonies were in his arms and he was doling them out to her one by one, making her laugh harder each time.

Watching closely through the opera glasses, Luce noticed that their fingers never touched. They kept a certain distance from each other. Why? It was almost startling.

In the other lives she’d spied upon, Luce had seen so much passion and hunger. But here, it was different. Luce’s body began to buzz, eager for just one moment of physical connection between them. If she couldn’t touch Daniel, at least her old self could.

But they were just standing there, now walking in circles. Never getting any closer to each other or any farther apart.

Every once in a while, their laughter would carry over to Luce again.

“Well?” Bill kept trying to squish his little face next to Luce’s so he could look through one of the lenses of the opera glasses. “What’s the word?”

“They’re just talking. They’re flirting kind of like they’re strangers, but at the same time they also seem to know each other really well. I don’t get it.”

“So they’re taking it slow. What’s wrong with that?” Bill asked. “Kids today, they just want things to go fast—boom boom BOOM.”

“Nothing’s wrong with taking it slow, I just—” Luce broke off.

Her past self fell to her knees. She began to rock back and forth, holding her head, then her heart. A horrified look crossed Daniel’s face. He looked so stiff in his white pants and tunic, like a statue of himself. He shook his head, looking at the sky, his lips mouthing the words No. No. No.

The girl’s hazel eyes had gone wild and fiery, like something had possessed her. A high-pitched scream echoed out across the mountains. Daniel fell to the ground and buried his face in his hands. He reached out for her, but his hand hung in the air without ever connecting with her skin. His body crumpled and quaked, and when it mattered most, he looked away.

Luce was the only one watching as the girl became, out of nowhere, a column of fire. So fast.

The acrid smoke swirled over Daniel. His eyes were closed. His face glistened—wet with tears. He looked as miserable as he had looked every other time she’d watched him watch her die. But this time, he also looked sick with shock. Something was different. Something was wrong.

When Daniel had first told her about his punishment, he’d said there had been some lives in which a single kiss had killed her. Worse, in which something short of a kiss had killed her. A single touch.

They had not touched. Luce had been watching the whole time. He’d been so careful not to come near her. Did he think he could have her longer by holding back the warmth of his embrace? Did he think he could outwit the curse by holding her always just out of reach?

“He didn’t even touch her,” she murmured.

“Bummer,” Bill said.

Never touching her, not once the whole time they were in love. And now he’d have to wait it all out again, not knowing whether anything would even be different next time. How could hope live in the face of that kind of defeat? Nothing about this made sense.

“If he didn’t touch her, then what triggered her death?” She turned to Bill, who tilted his head and looked up into the sky.

“Mountains,” he said. “Pretty!”

“You know something,” Luce said. “What is it?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know anything,” he said. “Or nothing I can tell you.”

A horrible, desolate cry echoed across the valley. The sound of Daniel’s agony resounded and returned, multiplied, as though a hundred Daniels were crying out together. Luce brought the opera glasses back up to her face and saw him dash the flowers in his hands to the ground.

“I have to go to him!” she said.

“Too late,” Bill said. “Here it comes.”

Daniel backed away from the cliff edge. Luce’s heart pounded for fear of what he was about to do. He certainly wasn’t going to sleep. He got a running start, picking up inhuman speed by the time he reached the cliff’s edge, and then launched himself into the air.

Luce waited for his wings to unfurl. She waited for the soft thunder of their grand unfolding, opening wide and catching the air in awesome glory. She’d seen him take flight like this in the past, and every time, it struck her to her core: How desperately she loved him.

But Daniel’s wings never shot out from his back. When he reached the edge of the cliff, he went over like any other boy.

And he fell like any other boy, too.

Luce screamed, a loud and long and terrified cry, until Bill clapped his dirty stone hand over her mouth. She threw him off, ran to the edge of the cliff, and crawled forward.

Daniel was still falling. It was a long way down. She watched his body grow smaller and smaller.

“He’ll extend his wings, won’t he?” she gasped. “He’ll realize that he’s going to fall and fall until …”

She couldn’t even say it.

“No,” Bill said.

“But—”

“He’ll slam right into that ground a couple of thousand feet down, yes,” Bill said. “He’ll break every bone in his body. But don’t worry, he can’t kill himself. He only wishes he could.” He turned to her and sighed. “Now do you believe his love?”

“Yes,” Luce whispered, because all she wanted to do at that moment was plunge off the cliff after him. That was how much she loved him back.

But it wouldn’t do any good.

“They were being so careful.” Her voice was strained. “We both saw what happened, Bill: nothing. She was so innocent. So how could she have died?”

Bill sputtered a laugh. “You think you know everything about her just because you saw the last three minutes of her life from across a mountaintop?”

“You’re the one who made me use binoculars … oh!” She froze. “Wait a minute!” Something haunted her about the way her past self’s eyes had seemed to change, just for a moment, right at the end. And suddenly, Luce knew: “What killed her this time wasn’t something I could have witnessed, anyway.…”

Bill rolled his claws, waiting for her to finish the thought.

“It was happening inside her.”

He applauded slowly. “I think you might be ready now.”

“Ready for what?”

“Remember what I mentioned to you in Helston? After you talked to Roland?”

“You disagreed with him … about me getting close to my past selves?”

“You still can’t rewrite the story, Luce. You can’t change the narratives. If you try to—”

“I know, it distorts the future. I don’t want to change the past. I just need to know what happens—why I keep dying. I thought it was a kiss, or a touch, or something physical, but it seems more complicated than that.”

Bill yanked the shadow out from behind Luce’s feet like a bullfighter wielding a red cape. Its edges flickered with silver. “Are you ready to put your soul where your mouth is?” he asked. “Are you ready to go three-D?”

“I’m ready.” Luce punched open the Announcer and braced herself against the briny wind inside. “Wait,” she said, looking at Bill hovering at her side. “What’s three-D?”

“Wave of the future, kid,” he said.

Luce gave him a hard stare.

“Okay, there’s an unsonorous technical term for it—cleaving—but to me, three-D sounds much more fun.” Bill dove inside the dark tunnel and beckoned her with a crooked finger. “Trust me, you’ll love it.”