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NEW FACES
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SHE FELT THE EYES ON her skin through the darkness, eyes as deep as space itself. They were a new addition to her dream. The shadows, the menacing laugh, the screams, they all played out as they had many times before, but the eyes, deep as space and mournful in their gaze, they were new.
Savara’s eyes shot open. A dream, she thought. Just a dream. The beating of her heart echoed in her ears. She took a breath, feeling a dull pain in her spine against something soft. Where am I? She scanned her memories for an explanation, but everything came up blank. Her body was slow to wake, but her already burning mind scoured the world around it for something to save her from the darkness.
A tiny gas lamp stood on the table beside her, illuminating only as far as she could reach. Savara unhitched a breath and rolled over, finding a similar lamp on the bedside table next to her. Its gentle glow cast shadows on the familiar face of a snoring young man, whose two pairs of glasses rested on the table. She tried whispering to him to get his attention, but he was sound asleep. There was no telling what lay just beyond the bounds of the lamplight. Hesitantly, she stretched her hand over and turned up the flame.
The room had the distinct qualities of a hospital, from the beds to the odd bits of medical equipment resting on every available surface. Behind her, Savara found that the wall was made of thick cloth, akin to the tents used on a battleground. The discovery did nothing to soothe her nerves.
Savara made to stand, but she couldn’t muster up the strength it took to push off the bed. A sharp pain shot up her left arm and she slumped back down, clenching it fast until the pain subsided. She almost tried again when, out of the darkness, an unfamiliar voice spoke up.
“Slowly,” it said. A man’s voice, deep and spiced, reminding her of cinnamon. It had a soft, grainy texture that was pleasing to the ear, and listening to it made her stomach yearn for something sweet. If cinnamon were a voice, this was it.
Savara scanned the darkness beyond for some sign of life or movement but found nothing. “Who’s there?” she finally called back.
A light breeze sauntered around the beds as a man stepped into the light. She spied his eyes before his body, despite appearing at roughly the same time. They shone like twin moons on the darkened canvas that was his face. He was short and trim, with a head that gave her the distinct impression of being carved out of pure chocolate, with symmetrical proportions, soft angles, and a reflective shimmer where his hair would be.
“It is good to see you awake,” he replied in the same seasoned voice. “I was beginning to worry.”
“Where am I?” she asked apprehensively. Her question was punctuated by Jasper’s snoring in the bed beside her.
“Camp Saar. Refugee camp on the outskirts of the Araldin Fields. We are in Argia lands if that makes you feel better,” he added, noticing her confusion. His answer seemed informative, but half of the words sounded like gibberish. Savara wondered if she wasn’t still dreaming. “How did you sleep?” he asked as he approached. Her skin prickled as he neared, and Savara decided it best to keep her mouth shut. When she didn’t answer, he placed his hand to his heart and added, “I mean you no harm, I am the camp medic.”
“Fine, I guess.” The air around her felt different; lighter. Her lungs fought to keep it in. “My body hurts.”
“That is normal. You were already unconscious when you got in last night. I patched up any superficial wounds. You should be good as new in a few hours.” Almost as if he heard her heartrate accelerate, he added, “The jump between worlds is both physically and mentally taxing.”
Jump. Savara might have written off the strange but already disappearing injuries as having fought with herself in her sleep, but that not-so-innocent word jump forced her to remember what she’d done, and where she’d jumped from, though she was hazy on where she’d jumped to. Her eyes made their best attempt to adjust to the scene as her mind tried its best to stitch her memories back together. A static consumed her brain, and each time she tried to focus she was met with a sharp pain around her temples.
“You have questions. Is it okay if I ask a few first?”
In the dim glow of the fire, her eyes shifted over to where Jasper lay sleeping. His features took on a softer quality under the lamplight. The bags under his eyes had subsided, and the stray curls that fell over his face reminded her of a sleeping baby. Unlike her, he could sleep and sleep well. It didn’t matter where or when; if his body needed it and his mind allowed it, he was asleep.
Stay sleeping for now, until I figure out where we are and what trouble I’ve managed to land us in this time, she hoped of him as she gazed upon his resting face.
Savara turned back to the man, dipped her head in a singular, tentative nod, and was met in return by a warm and gentle smile.
“Do you remember your name?”
“Savara,” she replied easily. “Savara Clarimonde.”
He furrowed his brow. “And your companion?”
“Jasper. Harrow.”
“How much do you remember from before you woke up, Savara?”
“Not a whole lot.”
“Anything will do.”
Maybe it was the air itself, or maybe just his cinnamon-kissed voice and gentle manner, but one of the two had managed to charm the memories out of her. The mental static cleared just enough to take her back to a storm on the horizon, a darkened house, two corpses, and a cloaked figure. Her breath hitched but her tongue loosened.
Savara followed the strange thread of events that had resulted in her jumping, all the while searching for a conclusive end, or possibly, a beginning, but it all seemed like a string of coincidences. Some of the details were hazier, while others were all too accessible: the image of the door flapping in the breeze; of Ms Short splayed lifelessly across the floor; of her uncle’s corpse, complete with all the strange markings; and a pair of hauntingly blue eyes.
“I’m not dreaming, am I?” she concluded.
“No,” he replied. “Though it seems your memory is intact. That is a good sign.”
Neither response consoled her in the way she figured he had intended. Savara bit her lip, remembering that talking to strangers in unknown places, however gentle they appear to be, might not be the best of ideas.
“What am I doing here?” Speaking the question aloud, Savara realised she’d posed it to herself as well. She remembered why she wasn’t home—if she could even still call it that—but her heart constricted at the lack of judgement she’d shown in blindly following a stranger, especially across worlds. What would her uncle have said? Nothing, he’s dead, she reminded herself. Even thinking the word sent shivers down her spine.
“I cannot say,” the man replied after some contemplation.
“Is there a way back?”
“I would not know.”
“You’re not one for words, are you?” Savara grumbled. She didn’t mean to sound harsh, but she had expected a more satisfying answer, and this man only left her with more questions.
He grinned knowingly. “Depends.”
“Figures.” She exhaled heavily. “Is there anyone in this place that might know anything at all?”
“The captain.”
“Is he as great a wordsmith as you?”
“Not at all,” the man replied with a laugh that flowed through the room, filling the air with warmth. “But he will have your answers.” Somehow, she knew he meant more than just the where’s and the how’s. Her heart didn’t know whether to steady itself or stop. “He is waiting for you in one of the other tents. We can leave whenever you are ready.”
Savara turned to Jasper again, still sound asleep, as she contemplated their situation. She wasn’t ready to wake him yet. At least here he was safe. “Will he be okay?” she asked softly.
“He is in good health. I imagine he will be up in a few hours. His body systems are a little different to ours.”
Ours.
Jasper’s words echoed in her mind: that’s what it means to be human—something she apparently wasn’t. Deep down, Savara had known there was something different about her, more so after the over-empathising began, though she never would have imagined this.
When she was younger, Savara used to listen to the stories her uncle would tell with rapt attention, wishing that they were real. Fantastical beasts, fires that lived, oceans that sang, people who moved like gods... Sometimes she even wished to be one of them, the people who could move stones with their mind, summon fire at the twitch of their fingers, create gigantic waves or powerful winds with the flick of their wrists, or even steal light from the world around them.
“My uncle used to tell me stories...” she said cautiously, unwilling to divulge too much of her memories. “I think they were about this place. About the creatures that call it home, and what they’re capable of...” When the man didn’t reply, she added, “They weren’t just stories.” Savara waited for an answer to the not-quite-question that might ease her worries.
His pause felt eternal. The flickering of the lamp’s flame filled the space where words should’ve been. Finally, he took a breath. “No.”
Back then, his stories seemed to resonate with something inside her, which she mistook for longing. Now, she wasn’t so sure. Besides, from what she now remembered, none of his stories ever ended well.
“They weren’t happy stories,” she continued.
“Not all stories are happy, no matter the world.”
Thinking back on all the strange tales her uncle had filled her head with over the years, she realised that part of the pleasure in stories is that they are just that, stories, things to imagine without facing consequences. No one gives a second thought to the monsters that lurk in the shadows so long as the hero is safe at the end. But hearing a story is different from living it. She couldn’t simply close the book when she got scared or skip to the end to know everything would be alright. Savara didn’t like the new sensation taking root in the pit of her stomach, the one that left her wondering what exactly it meant to not be human, and in Jasper’s case, to be one in a world that wasn’t.
A world away, Uncle Hyrum’s corpse was probably collecting cobwebs on the plush armchair by the window, rotting in peace. What would he think of her now? Falling headfirst into all that which he’d tried to protect her from. He, along with Ms Short, the only family she could remember, had been victims of the monsters of this world, and he’d known of their capabilities. Savara was woefully ignorant, and Jasper even more so.
Jasper slept peacefully, unplagued by the monsters of her memories. Savara imagined him squaring up against the beasts she was told of as an adolescent and guilt trickled into her stomach. What have I done?
“Is he in danger?” Savara asked meekly. “Since he isn’t like...us.”
“His appearance might be passable for Argia, the people of the southern desert are generally more tanned. His eyes might give reason for concern, as they are quite strange in colour.”
“And what about the powers?”
“There are many in this world without powers, your friend will pass for one of them.” The man turned back to her with a small vial in hand. “Here,” he said, offering it to her. Savara looked upon it apprehensively. When she didn’t move to take it, he added, “If I had wanted to kill you, I would have done so while you slept. This is for the pain.” He rested the vial on the table beside her.
Savara picked it up and sniffed it before gulping it down. Every muscle in her body tensed as the vile liquid burned its way down her throat and into the pit of her stomach.
“Yuck!” she exclaimed as she gagged.
The man smiled. “I never said it would taste good.”
She trembled, waiting for the fire in her body to dissipate, and as it did, the numb throbbing in her back and legs subsided with it.
“Thank you,” she replied, curling her toes.
He nodded. “You are all set,” he said, pulling clothes from an old chest elsewhere in the tent and resting them on her bed. “Put these on and meet me outside.”
“Wait,” she called out before he reached the door. “I didn’t get your name.”
His smile beamed in the mostly darkness. “They call me Brass.”
“Brass.” Savara smiled back, taking in that eerie glow of his again. He reminded her of the shiny metal and the instruments made of it, charming and warm, and incredibly unique, like a saxophone. She imagined he played his own tune and moved to his own rhythm. Still, there was something in his air that seemed almost melancholic, cold like the metal of the instrument.
“It suits you,” she concluded. Brass flashed her a brief smile before slipping out into the sunlight. Savara waited for the mesh to drag shut and began to undress.
