Page 15 of Bought By the Revenant
“Sorry,” I say, clearing my throat and looking down at my hands. It’s a miracle they’re so steady on the needle when I’m so stupidly overcome with emotions. “Sorry.”
“I’m fine.”
She thinks I’m talking about the pain I’m about to cause her as I stitch up the wound, and she’s half right. I’m also apologizing for how much of an idiot I am. I push the needle through her skin for the first stitch. She tenses but doesn’t pull her arm away, and instead she watches me work. I close the wound one stitch at a time, making sure each one is perfect.
“You’re good at this,” she says as I tie off the final stitch. “I suppose you’ve had practice.”
I pull back from her and turn away. I grab a clean bandage and start wrapping it around her arm, making sure not to look at her face. Then I feel her hand touch my arm.
“Riven,” she says softly, “how did you come to be this way? Are revenants born or made?”
Her question is direct and unexpected. It catches me unprepared, and I take a step back. Now that she’s safe, I need to put distance between us.
“It’s better you don’t know.”
“I’m not that fragile,” she says. “I decided I wouldn’t run from you when I chose you at the market, and I’m not running, am I? I see the way you look at me, like you’re expecting me to bolt. I won’t, Riven.” She waves her good arm around the workshop. “This room tells your story, right? I don’t understand it, but you can explain it to me. I want to know you, that’s all.”
I look at her face and search for any sign of fear or disgust, but all I see is determination to know the truth. After thinking about it for another minute, I pull a stool over and sit down, realizing that my legs are about to give in. There’s a weight on my shoulders, and I curl within myself, elbows on my knees and face in my hands.
“Revenants aren’t born,” I begin. “We were once formless souls, pure energy drifting through the cosmos without purpose or identity. The event that happened on your planet, the one youcall the Shift, sent out a sort of signal into the universe. Like a message. It was so strong that it pulled our spirits to Alia Terra.”
She hums softly, and I wonder if she truly understands. Maybe I don’t know how to tell this story. I’m so bad at this.
“We arrived as ethereal beings, unable to interact with the material world. We observed the creatures here, beings with solid forms, distinct identities, the ability to touch, build, and feel. Before, we had no concept of an individual self, no names, no individual histories. These were human concepts we witnessed and began to yearn for. But to live on Alia Terra, to become something tangible, we needed bodies.”
I stop to gather my courage for what I need to say next. From between my splayed fingers, I steal a glance at her. She’s watching me intently, not moving. She’s barely breathing, as if she thinks that if she makes the smallest move or sound, I’ll stop talking. Do I seem to be that flighty? Maybe between the two of us, I’m the one who’s ready to run, not her.
“The very first attempt to give a revenant spirit a material body was made by a human scientist named Franklin. He was a rare individual who could communicate with our kind. His first attempt was a complete failure. Both the stitched body and the soul perished.”
I stand up and walk to the window, where light falls across my mismatched hands. I don’t want to run away from her. I want to run away from myself.
“I was his second attempt.”
I don’t say another word for several minutes.
“What was it like?” Amity asks.
I sigh and turn back to look at her. What am I doing? Why am I dragging this out? I decide to tell her everything without hiding any of the terrible parts. If she wants the truth, then I’ll give her all of it no matter how horrible it sounds.
“Imagine your consciousness – formless, weightless – suddenly being forced into a rigid container made of disparate pieces. Every nerve ending raw and screaming as your essence fills a dead space. My soul had to weave itself into dead tissue, find connections between parts that were never meant to join. Each segment of this body came from somewhere else, someone else. Each carried its own echo of pain, its own fragment of memory.”
I touch the stitches on my face and trace the black threads with my fingertips.
“I felt the death of each piece as if it were my own. One hand remembered breaking glass before it died. A leg recalled running through mud. The heart remembered stopping… the shock of it.”
I keep watching her face to see when she’ll finally show disgust for what I am.
“When the process was complete and I first opened these eyes, Franklin held a mirror. What I saw...” I shake my head. “I screamed until my vocal cords became so sore I could barely swallow, let alone speak. A monster stared back at me, stitched together from the dead, animated by a soul – my soul – that should have never been bound to flesh.”
“And yet you continued…” Amity whispers.
I nod. “Despite the pain, despite the horror of my new existence, I found I wanted to live. I wanted to learn. Franklin was a scientist and a kind man. He saw my suffering and devoted himself to improving the process.” I point to the books that fill the shelves. “I worked alongside him, combining his knowledge with my unique spiritual insight to improve the soul-to-matter transference method.”
I explain to her how I spent centuries making the process better for other revenants, finding ways to make it work without so much pain, and creating results that looked more and more human.
“Newer revenants now look almost entirely human, with only subtle scars marking the joining of parts. They don’t feel the phantom memories I do. They don’t suffer like I suffered.”
“But you...”
