BUT HE WAS DEAD. SHE’D SEEN him die! She’d seen the blood from his skull on the stones.
No. He’d clearly survived. She couldn’t feel his anima, but she didn’t need to. His life force was palpable in his brown skin, his blood pumping against her hot fingers. His high cheekbones and full lips. His large, angular dark eyes that welled up when he embraced her.
“I missed you, Iris.” That familiar whisper. His musky smell. Jinn’s smell.
How could she not recognize him? They were partners. They would dance together on the tightrope. She would feel his hands supporting her back and her buttocks as he lifted her high in the air, above the roaring crowds. And after he’d toss her, she’d fall back into his arms, linking her leg in his to keep herself steady. She knew his body.
He cupped her chin in his large, rough hands and pressed her against his chest. “I’m never leaving you again.”
That was all she needed to hear for her to believe. As the weight of death threatened to swallow her whole, she buried her face in his neck and wept. So much death. So many gone at her hands. And now this. It was too overwhelming. She thought she might break in half from the force of it all.
“It’s taken me so long, but I’ve found you,” whispered Jinn. “I needed to tell you—”
But Iris pressed a finger to his lips. She already knew, and she didn’t want to speak or cry any longer. The time for both had passed.
Tragedy had a way of destroying inhibitions. Actions she’d been desperate to take for so long but held off on, too frightened to make the first move. Words she’d wanted to say but kept silent for fear of what they could lead to. There was nothing stopping her now.
The cloth the One had given her to cover her nakedness—she gently slid it off her body. The humid air nipped at her stomach, her chest, and her legs. Jinn’s clothes were the same as she remembered them in the Coral Temple. Wordlessly he pulled his shirt over his head and let his pants drop against the grass. He laid her down against the forest floor and buried himself in her. A kiss, long and deep. Lips wet, ravenous, relentless. He kissed her deeply, and as she wrapped her arms around his neck, she made sure to feel all of him. His hot tongue against the roof of her mouth. His hips pushing against her. She gasped and moaned in pleasure as he touched every curve of her flesh and filled every crevice with her body with his.
Bring me back to life so that I can kill that man and his human race.
That was what she had told the One who’d created her. But it had been before she’d realized the truth. Her mind had tricked her. Was her mind tricking her now?
But he felt so real, as she grabbed on to his protruding shoulder blades with one hand and his backside with the other. The pressure of his body rocking against hers, her back sliding against the abrasive grass and dirt. When she wrapped her legs around the small of his back, and he whispered her name in her ear. It all felt so real.
So she let it be real.
He hadn’t given her time to sleep, so her eyes were a bit blurry as she saw a monkey shake loose an extra coconut from the tree branch above them. Iris was too sluggish to catch it as it fell. No matter—Jinn did, lying on his back and reaching a hand above her head. Sighing, she continued to rest upon his chest.
“Do you want this?” Jinn asked, waving the coconut in her face, and his casual tone slightly irritated her. How could he be so casual with her wrapped around his body like a blanket? With her legs intertwined with his and her hair pooled in the crook of his neck? She was barely holding it together. His body was just so hard, and his muscles sturdy. The little hairs on his chin were so kissable. She’d have a fit if he ever shaved them.
“I don’t need to eat,” she said with a shrug. “I mean, I do eat. I have to eat or else I’d die, but—”
What was she saying? Her mind was still in knots from last night. Jinn chuckled softly.
“But if you die, you’d just come back to life.” He thought about it. “Sounds tedious. Eat.”
So bossy, as usual. “Later. Later.”
Jinn sighed impatiently, like he always did whenever she acted like a child. But from that she knew he’d given in. Truthfully, Iris didn’t want to move. She felt a kind of solace in his arms that she hadn’t felt since her body had stitched itself back together on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. She just wanted to rest here. Rub her hands along his slender, sculpted forearm. Feel the grit of dirt against her behind. Slide her leg up and down his almost absentmindedly.
So that was what she did that morning, breathing in the clean forest air, listening to the parrots chirping above their heads. She never thought to ask if he wanted to eat. Instead, she tilted her chin up and let him swallow her lips with kisses that lasted all the morning.
“You know, I could never once feel your anima when I came back,” Iris said at the dawn of the afternoon, when Jinn had finally decided to crack the coconut open on the rock.
“When you came back, eh?” As Jinn looked at the two halves of the coconut and inspected the milk, Iris inspected him. Neither of them had put on their clothes. There was no need to for her. She was more comfortable like this, in nature as she was made and as it was made. But Jinn seemed well suited to braving the elements with his sturdy form, earned through years of difficult training and performances.
“Yes, when I came back.” Iris lifted herself into a sitting position.
“You mean, when you came back for revenge because you thought I’d killed you?”
Jinn didn’t look at her when he said it. He sat down from his crouch and tasted the coconut milk, letting some dribble down his chin. Iris pressed her lips together, half ashamed, half indignant.
“In the Coral Temple, I saw your reflection in the glass of Hiva’s Tomb. I thought you’d killed me.”
“No, that was Max,” he said rather casually after swallowing the milk.
“I know!” Iris blushed and crossed her arms over her chest. “I only realized later. You were trying to protect me….”
Jinn didn’t answer. And when he didn’t, Iris got to her feet and threw herself upon his curved back, feeling his spine as she hugged him.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, with her arms around his chest. Sitting down, she wrapped her legs around his back and stomach, hugging him so tightly, not even a sigh of gentle wind could pass between their connected bodies. “I’d gotten everything wrong. I never should have come back.” She buried her face in his neck.
His body was as hot as hers. Even with this gentle breeze, the sun was still unforgiving. A bump against her nose gave her a start. The rough surface of the coconut had tickled her skin. When she pulled herself away from him, she realized he was offering one half to her.
Groaning a little, she took it, sat down, and began drinking.
“We all make mistakes,” Jinn said. “Though I don’t regret what I did at all in that split second. Not even for a moment.”
It was only after they’d been drinking in silence that Iris noticed his back was smooth. There was no scar on his brown skin—not even a mark on him. Lowering the coconut from her lips, she inspected it.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” she said, only after finishing. “The wound Max gave you was deep enough to pierce through me. And in the valley…”
She shut her lips. How exactly had he survived? That was what she wanted to ask, before her heart shook and the words died in her throat. Before she could muster up the courage to try again, Jinn had turned around and embraced her.
“I’m just sorry I couldn’t protect you like I’d set out to. I’m sorry, Iris.”
His body was so much larger than hers that he enveloped her fully. His long arms crushed her to him.
“It’s all right,” she said. And it was. Finally it was. Because as he fell on top of her again, as they tangled together upon the grass, as she let him brush his lips upon every part of her body, she realized she could finally let her frantic thoughts disappear into the ether.
“I’m just so tired of worrying,” she moaned as Jinn’s lips lingered on her chest.
“You’ve always been far too anxious,” Jinn agreed without stopping.
Iris let her arms fall upon her forehead. “I don’t want to think anymore.”
“Thinking was never your strong suit.”
Iris’s laughter shook the trees as she let Jinn’s wet kisses trail down to her stomach and then to her burning hips, and then her laughter became joyful sighs that continued into the night.
But it was in the night that she heard strange sounds that didn’t belong to the forest. The sounds of ghosts calling out to her.
Iris…
Iris!
Iris…!
The sound of her name, soft in the stagnant air, jolted her awake. She lifted herself off a sleeping Jinn and sat up, startled. The forest was as it had been—trees, shrubs. Nests in the canopy of leaves, vines blocking certain paths from view. Nothing had changed. No human was here but her and Jinn. So where were the voices coming from?
Her body was on alert. She could feel the adrenaline pumping in her arms, electrifying them. She was ready to strike at any movement of the bushes.
Iris…
Iris!
Iris…!
Three different voices. Words with no masters. They howled in the night along with the chirps of crickets, calling her name, each becoming more distinct, more recognizable, as they grew louder. She covered her ears, her eyes darting around her, looking for the source. But she couldn’t block out their screams.
Iris… go back to being yourself. Please!
Iris…! Don’t give up on yourself!
Don’t give up!
“Stop!” Iris pounded her ears with her hands so roughly, she could feel her brain rocking in her skull. “Stop!”
She screamed it over and over again until she couldn’t take it anymore. She grabbed Jinn’s shoulders, shaking him awake.
“Help me!” she told him, ignoring his surprised expression. “They won’t stop talking!”
Iris figured he’d ask her who. There was no one here but them. That was the logical thing to say in this situation for Jinn—for anyone. Instead, he tilted his head to the side.
“If they won’t stop talking, then maybe you should listen to them.”
Iris drew her hands to her chest and stared at him, confused. “What?”
But Jinn nodded in a comforting way and reached out to touch her face. “It’s okay. Try listening to them.”
Iris’s heart was beating so fast, it was all she could hear. Breathing in and out deeply, she waited for her pulse to even out. Then, closing her eyes, concentrating on Jinn’s steady hand on her skin, she listened.
Iris… go back to being yourself. Please!
Iris…! Don’t give up on yourself!
Don’t give up!
It went on like that. Desperate. Loving. Fearful. Iris listened to the ghosts’ howls until they went silent.
“Who are they?” Jinn asked, brushing the back of his fingers against her cheeks.
Iris didn’t answer, because the answer was too painful. Jinn brushed his lips against her temple and asked her again.
“Who are they?”
And Iris sucked in a breath. “Max,” she whispered. “And Rin.” And someone else. But she wouldn’t say it.
“Max and Rin?” Jinn blinked, confused, and looked around them. “I don’t see them here. Where are they?”
“I’m not sure,” Iris whispered. As her memories began to whirl, she went to hug Jinn again, but this time he refused her.
“Iris, not now,” he said in that serious and hyper-responsible Jinn way. He gripped her shoulders. “Where are they? You should be able to tell. Just feel their anima.”
But that was the thing. She couldn’t feel their anima. Their life forces were gone.
Jinn wrapped a braid around his finger and tugged it gently. “Can you explain it to me, then? Where they’ve gone? Go slowly.”
There was something too deliciously comforting about Jinn’s presence. He shifted her around and let her fall into him. He cradled her like a child, his arms shielding her from the world. She felt foolish and weak, and yet somehow her strength was growing bit by bit all the same. Jinn didn’t push her. He waited until she could finally answer.
“When people die,” Iris told him, “their bodies return to the earth in some fashion or another. But their souls don’t disappear. They travel.”
Jinn’s chin rubbed the crown of her head. She nestled into his chest more deeply.
“They travel?” He seemed genuinely surprised. Why wouldn’t he be? No human would know this. “Where do they go?”
“To the planet’s core.” Iris’s fingers traced a path down his chest. His hairs brushed her skin lightly. “Where they wait for rebirth.”
It was the cycle of life and death. Whenever Hiva would destroy humanity, the souls she’d released were sent to the planet’s core, the abode of the One who created her. And what an abode it was. The souls were never lonely. In that crystal kingdom, where the sky matched the color of the ground, where soft shades of peach and blue attacked the senses among glittering flora, each soul could live out their happiest fantasies. The souls waited to be reborn for years. And then, once Hiva had finished her mission and returned to the earth’s core, they’d be released to live again in new forms. They’d be free to create new societies and civilizations in the hopes that humanity would get it right this time. In the hopes that Hiva would not need to be called again.
And yet, without fail, Hiva was always summoned. Again and again. The same souls in different bodies, living different lives, could not create a different outcome. Corruption, greed, power, and conquest. The story was always the same.
“So,” Jinn said calmly, as if he’d heard all this. As if he knew what she was thinking. “Max and Rin are dead.”
Each word pounded her like a hammer. The feeling disappeared from her body. Suddenly she felt cold in the humid, still night. Suddenly her pulse had quickened.
Her bloody hand holding Max’s heart.
The Titans rising out of the destroyed Atlas Mountains, blasting the earth with energy that seemed equal to the output of the sun. Rin’s letter floating and then drowning in the river.
Granny’s letter.
Iris pushed Jinn down upon his back and straddled him desperately. She pushed her hands against his chest, sitting upon his hips, trying to feel his flesh. But Jinn gripped her arms.
“No distractions,” he said, sitting up, holding her still. “Max and Rin are dead. Say it.”
She shook her head, whimpering something. She wasn’t sure what.
“Say it!”
She tried to cover her face, but Jinn wouldn’t let her. He tugged her hands down and forced her to look at him. Those intense dark eyes, so supernaturally fierce that it had inspired Coolie’s nickname for him, “Jinn.” She shook her head again in protest but couldn’t deny it any longer.
She opened her mouth. “Max and Rin are dead.” She said it and went limp.
Jinn rubbed her arms without saying a word. As the night passed, she considered their last moments. Both trying to reach her.
“I did it to them,” Iris said with a solemn nod of her head, her eyes unfocused. “I did that to them. That’s why I can’t find you, Rin. That’s why…”
The stars were relentlessly bright. She wondered if they agreed with her.
“Didn’t I say we all make mistakes?” Jinn crossed his legs. “Max. You. Me. All of us. I think we all just did the best we could.”
“My best wasn’t good enough.”
Millions dead at her hand. All because she’d felt betrayed. She’d found Rin in that valley and had been ready to murder her, all because she was scared of feeling something other than rage. She’d lost friends. She’d taken lives. How could she call that her best?
“I don’t think anyone’s best is good enough. Not yet,” said Jinn. “But even in a terrible, hopeless world, a lot of us try so hard to do good. My father did his best. He became a Young Ottoman and fled to France because he wanted to change things.”
He was right. Despite how gruesome this world could be, there were too many across history who hadn’t yet given up on it. They hadn’t thrown up their hands and opted out of life. They worked for the public good. For the goodness and safety and protection of their communities. Why, in all the lives that Hiva had returned to destroy humanity, had she never noticed them? Why had she only seen the wickedness rather than the potential?
“I’ve been wondering.” Jinn lay back down on the grass, cushioning his head with his arms. “What kind of world do you want to live in? Hiva arises from the earth to destroy civilizations judged as too wicked to continue. So what’s your ideal world?”
Iris didn’t have to think at all. She answered immediately. “One where humans and the natural world can exist in harmony. Where nobody would hurt each other.” She looked at the redness of her palms. “And where people can be who they wish to be.”
“Seems so simple.”
“It should be.”
“So then why don’t you make it?”
Surprised, Iris stared at Jinn as he ran one of his hands through his curly hair. “Make it?”
“Why not?” Jinn shrugged. “You can destroy worlds. Surely you can make them too.”
A little shaken, Iris shook her head quickly. “Only the One who created me can release souls from the earth’s core. Even then, she doesn’t guide them in how they re-create their societies, she just… waits. And watches.”
And then calls Hiva up to judge and destroy them. Such a pointless cycle.
“It frustrates me,” Iris admitted finally to herself. “It really frustrates me.”
“Then do something about it,” Jinn said. “Maybe Hiva can do more than just destroy.”
The other Hiva had asked her once before if there was another way. But she couldn’t fathom it then. Even now it was frightening to wrap her mind around it. The system had been set in place for millions of years. Who was she to change what was already in etched in stone by a power so much greater than she?
“What’s that? You look a little scared.” Jinn gave her a sidelong look. “Like the time we were about to perform in Germany, and you stepped out on that stage completely unprepared because you’d knowingly missed practice.”
Iris’s face flushed. “I didn’t knowingly miss practice.”
“You did. You were mad at me because I’d called you a blockhead for falling out of your turns. So you kept making excuse after excuse not to practice with me until it was too late.” Jinn shook his head. “What a disastrous performance that night.”
It had been disastrous. Coolie had let them have it that night. Jinn hadn’t said anything. But after they left Coolie’s trailer, he’d nudged her in the ribs and told her, “Practice. Every day. No more excuses,” before leaving her to sulk in her tent.
“You really thought I didn’t know the real reason you kept avoiding me? Surely you didn’t think I believed it was because you had really found your long-lost twin in a Munich pub.”
“Well, I’m not good at coming up with excuses on the fly, and… Ugh! Quiet, you crank. Just leave me alone.”
“Ah. That’s more like you.” Jinn laughed. Such a gorgeous sound.
She was so used to his eyebrows knitted in a brooding scowl. But this time he seemed so at peace. His immaculate chest and curved hips. His strong legs. Perfect without a single blemish. As if he’d never experienced the gruesome death of his father. As if he hadn’t hunted the murderer, Gram, across the planet. As if he hadn’t lost his life trying to shield her from a killing blow. He looked so at peace. Exactly as Iris wanted to see him. She smiled. Yes, this was how it should be.
It was for this very reason that her eyes began to well up with tears.
“What’s wrong?” As she turned away from him, Jinn sat up to rub her arms. “Why are you crying?”
This isn’t right, she thought, even as she let the warmth of Jinn against her back wash over her. I can’t feel his anima.
“If you have something to tell me, then say it,” Jinn prodded gently. “You’ve got my full attention. When haven’t you?”
Iris shook her head, because she couldn’t say it. If she said it, that would make it real. And nothing real was good. What was real was pain. She couldn’t handle any more of it.
“Iris…” Jinn kissed her shoulder as she sniffled and wiped her wet face. “Face it.”
His words lingered in the hot night.
“No.”
“You have to.” He gripped her forearm. It was sturdy. Unafraid. Like Jinn was trying to transfer some of that strength into her very body. “You have to face reality.”
“But I don’t want to,” she whimpered, and buried her head in her hands. “It’s not fair. I didn’t get to say goodbye to anyone. I didn’t get to explain myself to Hawkins and Jacob, or Lucille and Mary and Henry. I didn’t get to tell Max that I’d forgiven him. And ask him to forgive me. I didn’t get to hug Rin. Tell her that it was okay—that her future would be better than her past. That she’s my sister and always will be. I didn’t get to introduce her to Granny and have lunch. I didn’t get to say goodbye to them… and…”
Her mouth opened and closed. She shivered as the truth crawled up her body, secretly, insidiously, until she couldn’t ignore it anymore. Until her body dipped forward, held back only by sheer will.
“I didn’t get to say goodbye to you, either,” she whispered, and when she inhaled a sharp breath, she dragged her tears into her throat and almost choked. “I didn’t get to tell you I loved you.”
Jinn kept holding her. “I knew.”
“I didn’t get to ask you your real name!” Iris whipped around, grabbing his arms, shaking him. “I don’t even know your real name, Jinn! Please tell me. Please!”
Jinn didn’t answer, and he wouldn’t. She knew he wouldn’t. He couldn’t.
Jinn wasn’t there.
Jinn was dead. This was all in her head.
He cupped her face nonetheless. “Maybe you’ll learn it one day,” he whispered.
Now Iris’s mind had completely collapsed. She coughed and cried, trembled and screamed, at how cruel the world had been to her. To all of them.
“It isn’t fair,” she yelled as loudly as she could. “How is any of this fair? So many are gone. Struggled and died. And this world doesn’t care! Why? I don’t want to go back. I don’t want anything to do with this world! I don’t want to remember any of it! I’m tired of it all!” And she grabbed Jinn’s hair because she needed to feel all of him—the rough texture of it against her palms and his familiar musky scent in her nose, but the more she cried, the fainter it all became. As if she were waking up from a dream.
“Don’t go,” she said desperately. “Let’s just stay here.”
“Iris…,” Jinn said. But she wouldn’t let him continue. No, she couldn’t.
“There’s nothing wrong with it,” she went on frantically. “This world will destroy itself soon enough.”
Jinn began untangling her fingers from his hair. “Iris…”
“Let’s just stay here like this forever! Please, Jinn. Please!”
“Face yourself!”
Jinn’s shout shook the trees. He grabbed her arms and forced her to look into his eyes. Forced her to realize that they were faded. Hollow. She’d never find such hollowness in the real Jinn’s eyes. Everything had been so obvious from the beginning.
“Face yourself,” Jinn said again in a whisper. “Face the world.”
Iris fell silent, sniffing back her tears, pursing her lips together.
“What did they tell you before they died?”
She closed her eyes. And slowly the resistance in her faded. Gradually she could see them, except in her mind’s eye they weren’t fearful or desperate. In the darkness they stood in their full glory: Max with his lopsided smile and his hands behind his back; Rin, tall like the warrior she was, the point of her sword buried in the ground.
Iris… go back to being yourself.
Iris…! Don’t give up on yourself.
Don’t give up! Jinn’s voice as he’d held her in the valley. His cry before he’d died there.
“They wouldn’t want to see you like this, hiding from the world. Hiding from yourself,” Jinn said, and he was right. They hadn’t died for her to be cowering in the forest, living in a dream. “You have to face reality. Face it with strength and honor, because nobody else is you, Iris.”
“And who am I?” Iris asked, because she’d been given so many names by so many people across all her lifetimes that she’d completely lost count.
Jinn leaned in close. His breath, though faint, had a distinct sweet smell. “Whoever you want to be,” he said. “This time, decide for yourself. Who you want to be. What you think the world should be. Decide for yourself, Iris.”
Iris sat back and let her arms rest upon her knees. He’d won. Jinn had won, as he always would. He leaned back. And suddenly the distance between them seemed insurmountable. She felt lonely. The loneliness crushed her. It wouldn’t go away, but it was real. It was real.
“And never forget,” he said.
“Forget what?”
“That I’ve always loved you. And will always love you, no matter where my soul goes next.”
She watched him until he faded away.