“Okay, my ignoble savages. How many of you have noticed our visitor?” They all turn to look at me with varying degrees of interest.
They all popcorn in a rowdy din.
“What can you all tell me about him?”
“He was sick.”
“He’s angry.”
“It hurts to look at his eyes.”
“He hasn’t smoked.”
“He knows Samantha.”
“Ah, but see, I didn’t ask each of you. I asked all of you.” They close their eyes in harmony, youngest to oldest, and begin humming. After a minute the hum goes hymnal and begins to form consonants and syllables. Two. It takes them longer to figure it out than it takes me.
“Healer,” each says in their native tongue and accent at the same time.
“I am so impressed with you all.” He’s forever genuine when he speaks. He stands and gives the Indian girl his banjo. “Seriously. I don’t even think you all will need to smoke when you come of age.”
They grumble their displeasure, and Mico laughs. “Go off and teach each other useful things.”
“That’s the most well-behaved group of mini killers I’ve ever seen,” I tell him slow, unaccustomed to the fatigue in my voice.
“Not all of them are,” he says, shaking my hand. “Some are children of the collective. But tell me, how could you tell they had taken lives—the ones that have?”
“Can’t mute cortisol depletion or overly taxed trigger fingers. I’ve been reading fight-or-flight responses since way before Nordeen. I know fighters when I see them. And fighters that young, with that much reflexive behavior? Only way they survived is by killing. You gonna have them kill for your god now?”
He looks at me with pity, and I almost feel ashamed.
“The Manna calls those who need it just as it called Samantha years ago. I am not training baby assassins, even if the Manna were to ask. The children are under our protection. We’ve pulled them from war-torn lands all over. Sri Lanka, Medellin, Cambodia . . . .”
“Liverpool?”
“Not all wars are public. None of the kids are allowed to smoke until they comprehend the gifts and the burdens. Now. How are you?”
“Standing.”
“Despite touching the absent soul of an Alter. You are impressive, healer.”
“Your boy was nothing to slouch at.” Mico nods with a grin and calls me to walk with him through another door at the end of the ballroom. We descend a narrow flight of stairs to a pantry without windows. Laid out on the table are non-perishable foodstuffs in red wooden bowls.
“Samantha says that you’ve got to eat a lot after a major healing.”
I’ve half a pound of sunflower seeds down my gullet and ten dried apricots in my hands before I can speak. He doesn’t seem shocked.
“The kindness,” I call out. “It coming from you, or your god?”
“It’s not always easy to distinguish.” He considers it while I suck down three boiled duck eggs in under a minute. “In its four billion years of awareness, Manna has never reached out so deliberately to another life form. It’s made me . . . crafted me since before my most ancient ancestors ever met. There isn’t a thought I’ve ever generated the Manna hasn’t predicted a thousand years before.”
“Better question then,” I say, biting down on a dark, dry sausage. “Why the kindness in the first place?”
“Initially, Samantha. She refused to share much more than your names before Tamara’s . . . tantrum. We knew you were liminal and that you were the one who took Alia down.”
I could correct him. Tell him it was Tamara who sliced the illusionist in two. Better he doesn’t see her clearly. I can see his annoyance whenever she speaks. If she has to go against this mystery messiah, he’ll underestimate her.
“But after we met I recognized you from Manna-induced whispers. Nordeen’s former protégé.”
“Most smart folks gain distance from anything associated with him.”
“Most people aren’t engaged in a cold war with his masters.”
“And as unaligned Liminals you think Tamara and me would be excellent soldiers in your Manna army.”
“Look around you, Taggert. Do you see armaments and battalions? Our war happens decades from now. Neither side dares advance on the other before we’re at our maximum strength. Narayana’s defection and earlier blows have severely shaken the confidence of the Alters. But in truth, you’ve met all my allies, and the Alters number in the hundreds. Each impossibly strong, fast, and powerful in terms of trickery and trappings.”
“So you want me as general.”
“No,” Mico says quickly. “I offer friendship.”
I want to trust his words, his body, my liminal eyes. But I’ve got nothing to judge him against. No grown man has ever spoken to me with such naked sincerity before. Every Razor Neck had proper cause to fear me, if for no other reason than my relationship with the boss. And even my enemies’ shouts of hate were lies. Usually they were just scared. But Mico stands before me not only unafraid but asking for nothing but good will with the hope that I will reciprocate.
“I’ll think about it. But as soon as Tamara wakes up . . .”
“You’re on the hunt for Prentis and Nordeen. Samantha said I should bring you to her after you’ve eaten.”
We walk half the length of the island. It’s early and the sun hasn’t decided to grace the isle with its full presence, sending a typical London gray sky in its place. Inside a weathered pony stable I feel Samantha and a woman with low blood pressure/sugar in a wheelchair, working hard. Their skins are being cooled in the same shape as another person’s ambient heat would hit them. A.C. is in that stable with them.
“Yes I! I and I’s champion donkey dick herb solidify Jah healer power, WhatIsay?” Bingy man slaps me on my back out of the blue.
“It was some good weed man.” I give him a pound.
“Nah the manna you smoke,” he says. “Da herb I and I offer over your body as you healed. Raised Zion from the clutches of Babylon, Donkey dick. Yes I!”
“Thanks.” I’m so confused.
“Visitations and sightings come upon I and I, with Manna’s aid.”
“Not the Donkey dick weed?”
“Cha!” he clucks with his tongue. “I man nah receive unknown numbers. Prophecy from sensimilla can nah compare with groundation of the Manna.”
“My bad.”
“More than bad. To make right, visit I man with the council this evening.” He rooster-struts away, gray thick locks swinging from his small head.
“What the fuck was that?” I ask Mico.
“Strange as it sounds, it was an invitation to his house.” I block it out and head into the barn.
A.C. must stand for air conditioning. This barn should be hotter. An insulated two-foot bowl rests on a black hearth that juts four feet up from the ground, perfect eye level for someone in a wheelchair. Mrs. Low Blood Sugar/Pressure is that wheelchair-bound person, and her cortisol levels are as high as her temperature should be. The bowl seems to be holding nothing but heat. The wheelchair lady keeps working levers with gloved hands next to the forge, maintaining the heat as jets of steam issue from below the hearth.
“This is the definition of a bad idea,” A.C. barks at Samantha.
“Too bad there’s nothing you can do to stop it.” She pulls my two butterfly knives from a brown sack with a gloved hand, oblivious to our presence.
“I can’t keep this heat going forever, you know,” the blacksmith says.
“No need,” Samantha says as she drops my blades into the forge.
Instantly they melt into a dark and silver mélange. I catch a gasp from Mico, but I’m deep into my own sense of mourning.
They were gifts from Samantha. I spent a few months trying to forget my old life when I took the role of daddy. That meant forgetting my own family, but mostly Nordeen and the savage things he made me do. Samantha bought me the blades so that I might stay in practice. My ability to hurt others
wasn’t my problem, she told me. It was the inability to choose who I hurt. I got the message, understood where she was coming from at least. But I have no idea what she’s doing now.
The blacksmith dons eye protection and stops fiddling with the levers on her right and begins working on ones on the left. The room chills as a silver and black effulgence drains from the forge to a metal cast I can’t see.
“I can still see the blood,” the blacksmith shouts as she points it out to Samantha.
“That’s the point.” Sam nods, slipping off her glove and getting closer to the hot, pooled metal.
“Your god cannot be okay with this,” A.C. shouts.
“So only elemental children can carry entropy weapons?” she shouts back.
“I shouldn’t even have these.” A.C. touches his guns. “I’m barely up to the task. Now you want to put them into his hands?”
Sam catches my eye finally and smiles. “He’s handled far worse.”
Her hit of Manna is deep. With her mouth parallel to the cooling forms, the Ethiopian exhales her smoke. Poppy’s blood reacts with the Manna smoke, heating the metal again, only no smoke rises. Quickly the molds go from red to white then threaten to burn though the cooling form. But the smith dunks the whole pan into a vat of ice-cold water. Steam dominates the room until A.C. blows it out. Without form or mold, the blacksmith pulls my two butterfly knives out of the water. But they are different now. Small and curved with a small ring at the end, they look more like an Indonesian kerambit.
“The next time you stab an Alter with these, I promise they will feel it,” Samantha says, offering me the blades still wet and hot.
“Not sure I’m worthy of such a gift.”
“Then become so.”
“Anyone, anything those blades cut will never stop bleeding.” A.C. knows how to crush a mood. “Like, forever.”
I open them, play with them. They are heavier, yet hold the same balance as before. They fit into my sleeves easier than their previous form, but . . . they don’t like being put away. I can feel that in them.
“Taggert will be leaving us soon,” Mico announces.
“That’s the healer?” The blacksmith perks up. She rolls to me and extends a naked hand. “I’m proud to have forged these for you.”
“I’m in your debt.” Bingy man’s earlier resistance hits me and so I ask, “I’m happy to reciprocate if you’d like.”
“I need no healing,” the wheelchair-bound smith says with a smile. “But thank you.”
Outside of the barn with A.C., Sam, and Mico, I choose to put my mind back on task.
“Your god won’t help me. A.C. can’t see any further with his wind than Tamara can see with her mind. Mico, unless you’ve got some skills I don’t know about, you guys can’t help me any more than you have. And you’ve done a lot. Tam and I are going to bring some heat down, and your cold war can’t tolerate that. So we’re gonna cut out. Not as enemies but not as allies. Just . . . acquaintances in a mutual admiration society.”
“Alters will be on you like white on rice once you leave this island,” A.C. says.
“And we haven’t asked the Manna straight out if it would help.” Mico adds.
“It’s a question worth asking,” Samantha chimes in.
“Guess no one heard me say I’m leaving.”
“Where?” A.C. asks. “Your Prentis isn’t anywhere on Earth. How would you find her?”
“She might be in those subtle realms Samantha has access to,” I say quickly. “I’m sure we can find another way to them.” Sam can travel to the subtle realms by herself with ease. To carry another, the cost is coitus with Samantha. That’s not a toll I’ll have Tamara pay.
“Bingy!” Mico blurts out. “He said he has a message for Taggert from the Manna.”
Before I protest, Samantha walks into my chest and speaks gently in my ear. “It witnessed the birth and death of thousands of species humans never had names for. It predicted the fall of Atlantis. It grows everywhere on the planet, from tundra to desert. It’s as old and mysterious as it is powerful. To have the Manna as your ally is worth the inquiry, my love. I promise.”
“He asked for the council,” I concede.
“Narayana’s off island until tonight,” Mico says then asks, “Can you sit on your girl until then?” Speaking as though he were referring to a mad dog. I know her as student, disciple, and daughter. They only see her as the girl who paralyzed London and just tossed an Alter into the sea.
“She’ll be fine.”
“She’s coming.” A.C. points at her smiling face as she tries not to run toward me from the Hotel.
“See ya’ll tonight.” They take the hint and clear out before she gets to me. By the time she’s in earshot I slap her across the face hard.
“What the—” She starts. Her cheek is red. Good. She didn’t have time to throw up a shield. She felt it.
“What the fuck did you think I would do if you went missing?”
“Taggert?”
“Did you honestly think I would let you walk into any fight, especially with Nordeen, alone?”
“Taggert . . .”
“Don’t you know that my life means nothing—less than nothing—without you girls?”
“Taggert . . .”
“What?”
“Why are you crying?”
Bingy man’s two-room shack is dwarfed by the wilderness of a backyard he maintains. It feels like its own microclimate; almost completely divorced from its Thames location, it stretches a good half an acre. Clinging vines mix with sloping tropical trees that shouldn’t be able to grow anywhere near London to form a canopy that connects the Rasta’s low-roofed house to the full garden outside. The dense, perfumed moss is a padded ground covering that invites bare feet. Scents of mint, skunk weed, saffron, and pine dominate different sections of the yard. Denser greenery wraps around the plot providing shelter and warmth. It’s the perfect place for the Manna people to throw a party. It’s more adult themed than the previous ones, with half-naked men and women lounging in the rare warmth of the evening.
“Fucking all they do is dance,” Tam starts as soon as we arrive.
“When your enemy is entropy, it’s important to keep spirits up,” Samantha corrects.
Ten minutes into the food, drink, and dancing, I see a slight relief in the burden on Tamara’s face. Turns out she didn’t need my slap. Earlier in the day she let me know dealing with the raw power of an Alter trying to molest, infect, and dissect every atom of her being with rabid, rat-like ferocity was enough to convince her of her mistake.
“They aren’t . . . ,” she tried to tell me.
“Human?”
“Alive. But more. They only look like people, Tag. They are made of something different, something abhorrent to life. It’s not evil. Not bad. That rat bitch is something worse.”
I told her that’s why we have to be smarter. We’re strongest as a team for now, and luckily she agreed. Still, I know I’m going to pay for that slap.
But I’m focused on the slap of Mico’s hand on an old seven-string steel guitar as he wails out his version of Jimi Hendrix’s “Angel.” His singing is like his speech: nothing but sincerity. He’s not pure or clean. That’s easy to feel. But he fears nothing inside of himself, so he lets everyone see it, feel it, hear it, this naked self. I scan him gently and somehow he feels it and gives a smile of approval. There’s a wisdom in the design of his deep structure. His brain operates with an energetic efficiency I’ve never seen before. He could look brain dead on the wrong scanners, given how little energy his cortex uses, but his glial cells number in the trillions. There’s a highway between his audio cortex and the Broca and Wernicke areas of Mico’s mind. It’s not that he’s just a good musician: he hears everything, and feels it all as well.
“Hmmm.” Bingy’s wearing a gray wifebeater and soccer shorts that go down past his bony chicken knees. He walks up behind Mico from a path no one knew was there, puffing a joint like he was in his ho
meland and not its colonizer.
“Long time I and I call Mico blood.” The garden quiets to a hum at the sound of his pronounced voice. “Babylon would say before Manna. But I man see no place, no where, no when, what Manna na grow. I and I come upon Mico as a young youth, even then him nah touched with Manna and good, as him search for the missing and abandoned him call family. But through the ganja I see him, Mico strong in music true and knowledgeable of the Prophets of the East and West. Yes I! So it’s fittin with men of knowledge I expanded my knowledge of plants alongside him. Then what? Decade later still, when the Manna find him, where does Mico return? To one blood. No him and I now, ya zene? Now one blood, now I and I. Jah bless!”
Samantha looks concerned but silently asks us to sit on the moss with her. Many of the low-key group members move to the other scented sections of the field garden to speak and dance. Soon it’s mostly the council and us.
“Speak foul thing!” Bingy shouts at Narayana, again slinking in from the shadows.
“You two.” The Alter points in our direction with more annoyance than insult. “You impacted that rat queen seriously.” I deaden Tam’s arm so she can’t high five. I heal her quickly when she gets the point.
“The physical violation the girl did only served to heighten the deeper insult of Nordeen’s old dog.”
“Be civil.” Samantha almost rises.
“He speaks the truth,” I interject, asking the tame Alter to continue.
“Will she share her insult with the rest of the Alters? Or will that betray too much weakness to them?” Mico asks.
“Only her brother,” Narayana responds.
“That’s a problem.” Tamara jumps when A.C. speaks, again forgetting his presence. “Last time those two got together they almost sunk Sri Lanka. No hyperbole. Literally they almost sunk the whole damn island. The other Alters made a rule that they can’t be on the same continent anymore.”
“The annoying wind boy is right,” Narayana says. “The twins are a threat. But they don’t know Manna is involved. Or you, Mico. They are not the biggest concern. Kothar Montague knows what happened. And he is not pleased.”
The Liminal War Page 5
