“Sometimes,” he finally says, “I imagine that we never met. I sit without you in that classroom and make friends with someone else. You live in some other place in the world. We go about our lives just like billions of other people, never crossing paths.”
His eyes hold an endless grief. It should be a good thing, because at least grief is real and alive. Sam thinks of how, someday, there will be a lack of light in both their gazes. A fragment of soul, chipped away each time they give it up for a transmutation. A piece of themselves, sacrificed each time they use their talent. She can already see the first slight dulling in Ari’s eyes, the dying of those embers. Perhaps he sees the same in her.
She can’t be here. She can’t do this.
But she just looks away and out at the black ocean. “It’s a useless way to think,” she says.
“It would have made life easier.”
“And yet we’re here.” She shakes her head. “Echoes of who we used to be.”
“Who did we used to be, Sam?”
“Two kids who needed each other.”
“I still need you,” he says softly.
She doesn’t answer, but she doesn’t move away either. The moon shifts, and the light quivers. After another moment, Ari leans down toward where the water meets the rocks and puts a hand into the gentle tide, letting his fingers skim the surface.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
He nods back at the tide and moves his fingers.
The surface of the sea lights up, a million pinpoints of blue-white glitter hugging the shoreline in both directions, then expanding out toward the quivering reflection of the moon, as if a sheet of bioluminescent creatures has suddenly come to life in the water.
Sam sucks in her breath at the beauty of the undulating light, the way it thickens where the waves lap against the rocks and thins farther out to sea. She isn’t ready for the feeling that hits her now, a pain so visceral and sharp that she can hardly catch her breath. Her eyes go to the dark ocean and then to the night sky, as if performing such a ritual might make it possible for her to see her mother’s spirit. Some final parting between the two of them. She tries to hear her mother’s voice in the whistle of the wind. If she lets herself be deluded into it, she can believe it, that there in the breeze is the thin sound of her breathing.
But she isn’t there. It’s all just a vast nothingness that surrounds her. Sam sits on the rocks and stares for a long time, letting herself be lulled by the rocking of the waves. What had her mother thought, when she first came here by ship so many years ago, an infant Sam snuggled to her chest? Had she stared out at these same waters and looked for the outline of a new land, a place that would hold all the answers for her yearning soul? Sam searches her vast memory bank for a hint of the open ocean, but if her mother had let her see it all those years ago, if she had held her up near the railing to look at the water, Sam can’t remember it.
Somehow, it is this unremembering that overwhelms Sam in the end, here where she finally feels everything build up and up in her chest until it crashes over.
Mama,she thinks, face contorting, tears spilling down her cheeks.Mama, Mama. I’m so sorry.
The ocean answers her weeping as it crashes against the stone arches.
“I’m so sorry, Sam,” Ari says gently.
She wipes the tears away, ashamed to let him see her weakness here. When he says her name again, she looks over to see him standing, holding a hand down to her. She realizes that she’s still clutching the glass blade, but he doesn’t bother looking at it.
It’s dangerous to touch a bioalchemist. The warning flashes in the back of her mind like a red light. Once he touches her, he can alter the chemicals in her body, could flood her with pain, could force her to go unconscious, could kill her.
But tonight, she doesn’t care. It’s all over, anyway. She stares at his hand, then up at his face. He looks somber, the anger having burned out in his eyes. He waits patiently.
She takes his hand. His palm is warm against hers. He pulls her to herfeet and faces her, studies her gaze, then brings her close, wrapping his arms around her in a quiet embrace.
The solid warmth of his body breaks something in her. She leans into him in exhaustion, wraps her arms around him and rests her head against his chest. At last, she lets herself drop the glass blade in her hand. It splashes into the foam of the waves and shatters against the rocks. Her eyes close. It is as if the ocean has quieted. Their little world turns inward, silences, encasing them in their own shield.
As they hug, his hand turns slightly against the small of her back. At first she stiffens, thinking he’s about to hurt her. Then she feels a gentle wave of calm coursing through her veins, a steady stream of something that stills the anguish churning in her stomach. Her muscles relax somewhat, and she takes a deep breath. The calm steadies her against him, loosening the knot of pain in her chest and the unbearable grief blanketing her heart.
He pulls away slightly to look down at her. His lashes are tinted silver by moonlight. He lifts a hand and carefully traces a finger along her cheeks, transmuting away her tears, caressing her skin so that she feels the tension lift where he touches her. He traces across her forehead and along the furrow between her brows, and where he goes, she relaxes, her body easing. She knows that these transmutations hurt him, just as they hurt all alchemists, knows that he is giving himself pain in order to smooth hers away.
He presses a hand gently against her cheek, thumb brushing idly across her skin. There, he stays. He is near enough now, his lips so close to hers that the smallest movement would turn into a kiss. But he doesn’t. Instead, he closes his eyes and sighs, breath shallow. After a while, she realizes that he is crying silently too, tears staining his cheeks. His sadness is so complete that she can sense it through their touch.
They stay locked in this moment, calmness sweeping and ebbing through her like a tide. Her breathing comes evenly now, her eyes steady with his. Around her, the surface of the ocean still glimmers with blue light.
All she wants in this moment is to stay, to pretend like they are still children together, to pretend that it might be possible for them to linger on the shores of this other world.
“Sam,” he whispers. “Sam, listen to me.”
