My Soul to Take Read online

  Fana had muted her aunt’s thoughts from herself, but she saw the irritation in her eyes. Fana accidentally had left her aunt in a coma a year before, repeating a similar accident she’d had with Moses when she was three. Since the latest incident, Fana tried to speak to her aunt in gentle tones, and Aunt Alex chose her battles.

  “There he is!” Aunt Alex pointed at someone through the windshield. “It’s Chris!”

  The Land Rover ahead slowed as Berhanu, their driver, alerted Fasilidas to stop. The two drivers were powerful telepaths who could communicate mentally beyond fifty yards. Ahead, Fasilidas pulled over toward a waiting army truck. Two dozen young Nigerian soldiers in black berets waited while their fates were decided by others, hands on their rifles.

  Uncle Lucas held up his finger. “Remember: we’re with the CDC.”

  STAY INSIDE, Dawit told Fana.

  Aunt Alex climbed out of the Land Rover, waving to the civilian.

  A man in a dusty office suit walked toward them, flanked by three men in the bright blue shirts of Nigeria Police. Walking at a brisk pace, the man in the suit stumbled in the uneven soil. The man looked forty, with a solid build. His stylish black eyeglasses were almost too small for his square-jawed face. He had not shaved in days. His dress shirt was soaked with perspiration, clinging to his skin.

  “Alex, I’d given up on finding you,” he said. “We must hurry!”

  A man’s impassioned voice from a loud radio caught Fana’s ear: “… is preceded always, always, always, by a time of cleansing. Noah’s flood cleansed the earth. We cannot walk in fear. Why should we fear death? We must walk with our eyes toward the Kingdom of Heaven and be cleansed of fear …”

  Fana sharpened her focus, clicking a dial in her mind, and knew who the speaker was: Amadi Owodunni, an excommunicated cardinal who had been exposed as a thief. Owodunni’s repetition of the word cleansing made Fana’s heart race. The phantom signal grew faint, lost in the crowd’s furor.

  “We’re here to do whatever we can, Chris,” Aunt Alex said, and introduced them all to the health minister’s police escort using their phony new names.

  Her veil’s anonymity worked in Fana’s favor. She had been on good terms with the previous president, invited to dinner at his palace once, but Glow distribution in Nigeria had slowed dramatically since the election; the new president was being swayed against Glow by pressure from the United States. Fana had avoided controlling the new president outright. That was what Michel would do. Michel might already have him.

  “You’re sure no bodies have been transported?” Aunt Alex was asking Dr. Ogunyele. “The virus might live for days in a corpse. It happened in North Korea….”

  “Not a single one,” Dr. Ogunleye said. “They’re still in tents at the outbreak site.”

  “… This world is your prison … God calls you home with love, so do not fear …” The radio sermon went on, quickly drowned out by a helicopter landing in the clearing. The crowd backed away from the thick dust cloud, clasping their clothes flying in the gale.

  “Murderers!” a man shouted in Hausa from the crowd. One voice set off an angry chorus, and the crowd surged closer. Fana’s eardrums popped from their outrage. The day’s light grew dimmer as her mind pulled away.

  Someone barked an order, and the soldiers piled out of the truck, shouting for quiet, weapons ready. The troops ran in formation to the barbed wire barricade, which stretched far past either side of the road, patrolled by more armed soldiers.

  Dr. Ogunyele huddled closer to be heard over the helicopter. “Relatives of the dead!” he said. “More turning up all the time. Aunts, uncles, cousins. Either crying ‘murder’ or won’t believe they’re dead. There are parents who left children behind!”

  “You’ll need more troops,” Dawit said.

  “More are coming,” Dr. Ogunyele said, resigned. “Many more.”

  “What’s our driving route?” Dawit asked.

  “No one drives in or out,” Dr. Ogunyele said.

  He pointed to the helicopter.

  Fana only blinked her eyes, it seemed, and she was flying. Pitching through the sky.

  She made out Aunt Alex and Jared below as they stood guarded by Fasilidas and the health minister’s soldiers. Aunt Alex shielded her face from the sun with her forearm as she stared up, as if she could meet Fana’s eyes.

  Below, women’s colorful scarves wove like thread through a quilt of dark skin. As the helicopter rose, the babble of furious emotions receded, so Fana lowered her mind’s defenses to accept their pain. She saw a panorama of the faces of the dead, most of them idealized in memory. Parents racked with guilt for being away at market or working in Kano imagined their children crying out for them. The children’s names came to her, vivid: they mourned Yusuf and Aliyah and Mahir and Jamilah and Hafiz and Ibrahim and Gamal and Safiyah. They mourned Anan and Kubra and Umar and Lina. They mourned Ali and Givon and Fatima.

  The parents’ grief followed Fana into the sky, her mother’s grief reborn.

  Fana closed her eyes, hearing Phoenix’s music. Phoenix’s voice came to her in delicate, feathery strings of golden light, and she showered the crowd below with gentle sparks.

  Do not be afraid: they’re gone, but they are not hurting, Fana whispered to the mourners. They knew they were loved. They will wait for you.

  Below her, the crowd seemed to exhale a single, shared breath.

  Fana whispered to the soldiers, Treat them as if they are your mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers. Have patience with them.

  And felt a succession of fingertips loosening against rifle triggers.

  Then came their collective aches, weaknesses, and ailments, and Fana nearly gasped from the weight they carried. Another dusting of golden sparks, and viruses and cancer cells died. They would mourn, but their bodies would live long after the worst of their anguish.

  Fana was dizzy, not sure if the floating sensation was from the helicopter or giddiness from her mind’s fusion with the mass of people below her. Fana’s blood gorged her. Even her earlobes tingled and pulsed. Without wanting to, she remembered Michel’s touch. His face.

  If Michel were with me, we could heal for miles.

  A terrible stench reminded Fana of why she could never unite with Michel.

  The lost village appeared below, draped in gray burial tents.

  For appearances, the immortals wore the same white protective suits as Dr. Ogunyele and his two staff people, covering themselves head to toe. They were all anonymous behind their plastic masks as they climbed from the helicopter, their feet sinking into muddied soil.

  The smell was so thick that it lodged in Fana’s throat, a smell from her childhood nightmares.

  Dr. Ogunyele led them with a handkerchief pressed to his face to fortify his mask. “The president wants the bodies burned today,” he said. “I won’t be able to stop it.”

  “That’s outrageous!” Uncle Lucas said. “We’ll lose the tissue samples.”

  “Collect what you can,” Dr. Ogunyele said. “We have two hours. Three at most.”

  Fana walked in her customary formation: her father to the right of her, Berhanu left. Berhanu was mentally scanning the outlying areas for unexpected intruders, so Fana left that job to him. Berhanu rarely spoke a word aloud, nearly as immersed in his thoughts as Fana was. Even powerful telepaths could be surprised, as Michel had reminded them all last year. If they were knocked unconscious, they would be helpless. As helpless as a mortal, as the saying went in Lalibela.

  The village was small, a collection of only fifty or sixty mud-walled homes. The shell of a nearby home smoldered from a cooking fire left untended, but the fire had burned itself out.

  False signs of life lingered everywhere. Bicycles leaned against walls. Clothes on clotheslines blew in a frenzy from the helicopter’s propellers, shirtsleeves waving with invisible arms. Somewhere, loud Afrobeat pulsed. The sound of pages turning caught Fana’s ear, a book flapping on the ground.

  Fana reached down to
pick up the book, which was damp, swollen, and smudged. It was a paperback copy of the novel Kindred, by Octavia E. Butler. A classic, one of the first books her mother had given her to read. The desire for freedom is a deep part of human nature, Mom had said, always knowing that Fana would need to remember the lesson. Fana could see the book clutched to the breast of a sturdy young woman in a white blouse: it had belonged to Gabrielle, Jared’s fiancée’s sister. Fana slipped the book into her bag for Jared. She would bring back any memories she could for her family.

  “Be careful what you touch!” one of Ogunyele’s staff warned her sharply. “How old is dis girl?” He made a move to give her a reproachful tap, but Dawit caught his wrist and held it.

  “You be careful, sir,” Dawit said. He held the man’s wrist a long time before he let it go. His polite voice was soaked with peril.

  The bureaucrat met her father’s eyes. Then, hulking Berhanu’s. He stepped away. “My mistake,” he said. He dropped behind Dr. Ogunyele and didn’t speak again.

  Fana heard her uncle’s pained sigh as they walked into the heart of the village. Ahead, Dr. Ogunyele and his staff members coughed in the putrid air.

  There’s nothing contagious here now, Fana told her party silently. It did its job, and now it’s gone.

  Most of the homes were empty. The dead had been collected and moved to an area at the center, four long, narrow tents housing fifty bodies each. Despite airtight nets around the tents, the sound of flies’ buzzing was like bees’, an angry hum that burrowed beneath Fana’s skin. She’d had a bad experience with bees when she was three. Bees sowed life, but their song filled Fana with dread. The buzzing was worse than the smell.

  Fana was trancing, pulling free. Like mother, like daughter.

  “We’ve slaughtered the livestock. Burned their clothes …” Dr. Ogunyele was saying. “Every possible precaution to contain it …”

  Inside the first tent, which they carefully zipped behind them, the dead were assembled endlessly on tables beneath clear plastic bags, side by side. Nude bodies, almost all of them curled up as if they were asleep. On the table closest to her, Fana looked down at a girl who must have been only ten, still wide-eyed in death, her hands clasped beneath her nose.

  The child’s pose was mimicked from one corpse to the next. Old men. Young women. Children. Twin boys who looked five or six shared a bag, clasping each other’s hands.

  Cardinal Owodunni’s radio broadcast was far away, but the words came to Fana from the place far beyond her ears: “… Death is nothing to mourn! Cleansing is a celebration! We should rejoice, for they died with their hands in prayer, calling to their Father. Calling to the Most High to end their suffering …”

  Most High. Fana’s vision swam. For an instant, the dead girl’s face looked like her own.

  It was he, Fana told her father, uncle, and guardian. Michel did this. I feel it now.

  Her father and uncle both looked at her with resigned eyes.

  SANCTUS CRUOR, Berhanu agreed. THE SPECTACLE GIVES IT AWAY.

  “This is why they call it the Praying Disease,” Dr. Ogunyele said, ignorant of their private exchange. “Look how the bodies are posed. They went into rigor this way!”

  Arranged in rows, the praying dead could have been in pews.

  “This infection is bigger than one president, or one nation,” Dr. Ogunyele said. He sounded muffled behind his plastic mask. “If I lose my job, if I’m arrested, so be it. But the world has to know. If it reaches Kano, Jos, or Lagos, millions will die.”

  For the first time in a year, Fana truly yearned to find Michel.

  Stop this, Michel. Don’t hurt anyone else.

  “Our people need more Glow …” Dr. Ogunyele went on, his voice more faint as Fana searched for Michel, far from the physical world. “Faster, steadier supplies … Enough for every citizen—and in Niger, Benin, Cameroon. There will be panic …”

  How would Michel react if she granted them more Blood? But how could she refuse?

  “You’ll get more Glow,” Fana heard herself say. “We’ll work it out with the president.”

  Dr. Ogunyele suddenly stared at her as if she were a visage. His jaw trembled. Only her eyes showed above her protective mask, but Johnny was right: sometimes, people knew.

  “Thank you,” Dr. Ogunyele said, grasping her gloved hand.

  Leave them alone, Michel. Please. Tell me what you want, Fana said. Begging.

  Fana found Michel’s presence swinging in front of her like a ripe mango from a tree. She smelled his clove cigarette. She knew his voice as well as she knew her own.

  COME TO ME, FANA.

  He had never stopped calling for her.

  Eleven

  Nogales, Mexico

  Fana?

  Calling her was fruitless, but Michel couldn’t stray from her name’s song in the quiet of his chamber.

  Fana? Are you still there, bella?

  The world was emptiness. He had been better off before he knew her, touched her, or smelled her. Michel summoned her perfect scent from memory, but it only shook his throat with a moan. Fana was teaching him the true meaning of pain.

  She had been close to him, and still she hadn’t come. She had brought him, but she had not come to her fiancé. Now her absence rang everywhere.

  Ten years’ engagement! If he had known that Fana had planned to shun him entirely, he never would have agreed to wait. Papa thought he was a slave to a woman he’d barely touched, and Papa should know about slavery. Michel had released his mother from his father’s mental control the night Fana accepted his marriage proposal.

  Should he have made Fana his puppet? A mindless bedroom pet the way his mother had served his father for so many years? The temptation came every day.

  A whisper to her mind. A fond memory. An instant of longing.

  She would never detect it was he. Even if she shut him out, he could find a way in.

  But no. He was not his father. He was fifty-one, an age when many mortals had been orphaned, freed from the expectations of their parents. He wouldn’t behave like a spoiled teenager just because he had a teenager’s face.

  He wanted all of Fana. Her touch must be her own. Her will was her essence.

  Michel’s bare foot brushed the top of his bedroom’s golden curtain rod as his body swung high above the floor, loose coils of hair whipping his face. He lay as if in a hammock, swinging himself in a broad U the length of his room, with the abrupt arcs and swoops that had soothed him since the day, at twelve, when he realized he could. Learning the Shadows had been like riding a wild horse. Just like that—he could fly! The novelty never wore thin.

  Michel rocked himself for hours, mulling over the puzzle: Fana both created and destroyed him. She was his fulfillment and his undoing, just as he was hers. Their union was at the heart of the Prophecy: “… And so a man and woman, mates immortal born, will create an eternal union at the advent of the New Days. And all of mankind shall know them as the bringers of the Blood.” But why hadn’t the Witness written about a long engagement? This terrible test? She was delaying their work!

  Time would erase the gap in their ages, but now she was only eighteen, and so sheltered that she could be younger. Papa had separated his mother from her family in Ethiopia as a child, but he could not. So, he had waited.

  Fana’s youthful face stared at Michel from across the wall on the nine-foot mural he’d painted, styled from her people’s murals in Lalibela. Painting was no challenge to him: he could paint without his hands. Michel’s paintbrush had followed his memories of Fana’s face, the white ribbons crowning her dreadlocks like a nest of butterflies, and the brilliant white Mexican dress she had worn at the engagement dinner with their families, a simple peasant dress made queenly because she had worn it for him. Painted her lips for him.

  In the mural, Fana sat across from him at their engagement table, demure and lovely. A smooth face and tender chin. Shiny ropes of hair. The dining hall was empty except for her … and him, barely visible ex
cept for the sleeve of his white robe across from her. His vestments signified the work they must do; his absent face immortalized his waiting.

  His painting had captured her perfectly, except for her eyes. Oh, those eyes! At the dinner, even when she’d loathed him, he had caught her large brown eyes for one startling instant; soft, gentle, wondering. Her thoughtstreams had played in her eyes like gold dust. Those eyes had convinced him that ten years was a small price to pay.

  Michel spoke to her eyes in the painting, knowing that Fana would hear him if she chose.

  Will I be good to you, Fana? You will be my daily miracle.

  Am I sorry for the grandmother I cost you? I grieve for her daily.

  Will I help you be strong? I will give you more strength than you ever knew.

  Will I steal your body? I will try never to touch you without your invitation.

  He made the solemn promises to her eyes every day, but the painting gave him nothing back. He’d captured the color and shape of her eyes just right, but no shadings of shadows or splashes of light could re-create the illusion of life.

  No, he was not his father. He didn’t want a slave. He wanted his wife.

  They had made each other bleed and hurt a year ago, but time would heal them. She must be aching for him, too, even if she hated the ache. Destiny was an unforgiving road. When Fana came, she would recognize the mural for the gift it was—homage to her people, a tribute to her father’s skills as a painter, a snapshot of the happy moment when he’d shown her Frida Kahlo’s Love Embrace of the Universe. Before her loathing. An invitation to begin again. In this very room, Fana would gaze at the portrait and tell him it was beautiful.

  If only he hadn’t broken his word to her!

  No matter how he tried to dress his needs with grand justifications, he had struck at her. The disease had forced her to call out to him. To beg him. And for a sweet instant, she had emerged from her silence. Frightened by his virus, she had called his name.

  Her presence had been so startling, he’d nearly fallen from his horse when he heard her. Now, her silence thundered. She had flickered to him only to make her plea to end the disease, then had gone. If he hadn’t smelled her, he might have thought he’d imagined her.