“Who is he?” I ask.
“Alters have different duties,” Mico says reluctantly. “Narayana’s, for instance, was to sink the wealth of pirates. The rat twins’ is to increase the pestilence that feeds on humanity. Kothar’s duty, his only reason for existing, is to destroy the Manna.”
“He doesn’t know if they have any connection to you.” Again the Alter points to us. “He’s still reeling from the fact that a Liminal could affect an Alter. The last time that happened, it was my daughter.”
“’K, quick question here,” Tam interrupts. “Your kind, Mr. Scary, you come from like a void of nonexistence right? I get it—more, I feel it. Your whole ‘looking like a person, talking and waving your arms around’ is like a big ‘fuck you’ to life. Totally understood. But with all of your kind issuing from the grand Darkness beyond the stars and whatever, how is it you’ve got children? How’s it there’s twins and everything?”
“She was my daughter.” The Alter’s growl of a voice finds its mournful tone. I feel the call of the knives, secured in my sleeves for easy access. He makes one step toward Tamara, I gut him.
“Kothar is smart enough to connect this disturbance of his calm with me, my friend.” Mico steps between them, getting on eye level with the Alter. “Though I agree it will take time.”
“Go then!” Bingy shouts at Narayana. “Your purpose been served, zene?” The thing in the small-framed Indian body walks away quietly into the bush, and everyone seems to breathe easier.
“Storm clouds in the distance nah disturb the tribe of Judah. For only the judgment day ride upon the sky morning,” the Rasta says. “But I and I can connect directly and find the will of Jah Manna, zene?”
He produces three small tubes of a white, gray pulpy material from behind his ear. I recognize the double punch of excitement and caution that flares up in Samantha as the Dread places one in her hands. Bingy lights two. One for himself, one for Mico.
“No god smoke for you?” Tamara asks A.C.
“Me and the mad god Manna have a special connection. Not this public.” I can hear his low-level grin.
“Healer,” the God says, speaking from Mico’s mouth. “You are not my ally.”
“True,” I say after a few hits in the arm from Tamara. I was caught up in the full-body transformation my liminal sight privileges me to in Mico’s body. Every molecule in his body is infused with the Manna. His body is designed for this ‘possession’.
“Yet you ask for favor,” it says from Bingy’s mouth. While it’s throughout Bingy’s body as well, the efficiency of the domination is not so complete as it is with Mico. “While at the same time fomenting disobedience in my children.” I look over and see Samantha with the unlit manna joint in her hands.
“I didn’t tell her . . . .”
“Of course not, healer,” Mico-Manna says. “You take no active stance unless it involves your children. Why should I behave any differently? You ask for my resources but offer none of your own. You are selfish.”
“Hold on!” The shrill posh accent of old lets me know Tamara is pissed. “Taggert’s a bit of a bell end, no sense denying that. But you’re out your ancient mushroom godhead if you call him selfish. Look at him! Man can barely dress himself. Selfish means you take for yourself, yeah? So what’s he got to show for all his selfishness then? He’s here, I’m here for one reason: she’s 5’6” nine stone four if she’s eaten that day, pale as an albino’s ass, and is so confused about fashion she thinks pink ponytails equal riot-girl chic. Her name is Prentis and she’s my friend. Say what you will about me, even the old man if you must, but that girl’s been through enough. They call you the god of connections—well, help us connect then.”
“No!” it says, and fades from their bodies.
“You are quite brave,” Sam says rubbing Tamara’s back. Not like my girl will tolerate that for long.
“Fat bloody good it did,” Tam says, shrugging the Ethiopian off more gently than I thought she would.
“Y’ah a teach ya seed proper!” Bingy accuses me as I stand.
“She’s got her own mind, her own voice. It’s obvious your god isn’t feeling either, so . . . .”
“You track blood to the door of the god then ask for help?” Bingy barks, angry.
“I’m to blame,” Samantha says, getting between us. “I made Mico bring them here.”
“Me nah protest the aid, but the manners. When Manna speak, noneya listen.”
“I heard,” Mico interrupts deftly. “The Manna wants something from you, Taggert.”
“What? What does it want? Seriously, this shit is getting on my last nerve. Billions of years old and it hasn’t learned to ask for what it wants?”
“The time has come for Bingy man, the true rough of Portmore to lay down his burden,” Bingy says, sitting on a large boulder covered in a light red moss.
“What are you talking about?” Mico is the first to his side.
“In the west, Babylon doctor call it Parkinson’s Disease. But true Rasta nah call his body by no other name than Jah Rastafari.”
“Can you heal him?” Sam asks. I nod but gesture to Bingy. He shakes his head no. With a gentle grip, he embraces Mico’s cheeks with one hand.
“See, a new tender for the Manna is now required. In I and I vision, him a liminal. Known by that man healer him.”
“Both/and.” Mico’s desperation is slight in his voice but heavy in his body. “We find the new root tender and you are healed. We can do that.”
“I sacrifice only my skill, nah my life, blood. And sacrifice is what Manna need in order to aid them that need it.” They all see his hand shake for the first time as he points to us.
“I have no idea what’s going on,” Tamara says, stretching her legs. “You’re telling me old dread thinks if we find a new tender, whatever that is, your god will help us?”
“His name is Bingy. It’s short for Nyabinghi, a celebration of life and love that happens among certain True Rasta people around the world. The tender is someone who sees to the physical needs of the Manna’s growth. It needs to be shaped, manicured, and coaxed in order for us to use it appropriately. That is his calling, his purpose in life. He’s refusing aid from Taggert because he believes another person, a liminal your father knows, would do that job better. I’m trying to treat you as a guest in the house of my god, Tamara Bridgecombe. Do me a favor and start acting as such.” Mico’s fury, contained as it is, has me reaching for the blades again, given that he’s a nose hair away from Tamara. But my girl surprises me.
“I’m sorry.” She’s soft when she says it. I circle over to Bingy and offer my hand. Hesitantly, he accepts it.
“Thank you. But this may be a moot point. I crippled or killed almost all the liminals I met when I was with Nordeen.”
I didn’t mean for it to sound as harsh as it did. But they all stare at me hard. It’s their fault for calling me healer all the time. Nordeen called me something else. My girl isn’t fazed.
“What about the African?” Tam shouts.
“Want to be more specific?”
“Before Nordeen. You told me and Prentis about the little kid. . . .”
“Who could make things grow.” The barefooted Mogadishu kid crawls from my memory.
“Yes I!” Bingy nods triumphantly.
“Hold on. I don’t even know if he’s still alive.”
“Got a name?” Mico asks, already on a cell phone.
“Ahmadi Suleiman. His dad ran a cell phone company in Somalia. But that was over ten years ago.”
“It’s enough,” Mico says. “Pack your bags. We’re going to Somalia.”
Chapter Six
In under an hour Mico had us helicoptered off the island. A far classier ride than any of the rock hoppers Nordeen ever had me in. Sam, Bingy, A.C., and some of the more conservatively dressed followers of the Manna jumped on the helicopter for the transport directly to Heathrow. Bingy and Mico argued in hushed tones while Sam calmed the followers. As good as
the helicopter was, it’s nothing compared to the jet. It’s plush, air-conditioned, with room for fifteen easily. Narayana disappeared after a whisper from Mico.
I opt for rest on the plane, not out of fatigue, just preparation. I don’t like what happened at Nordeen’s. Poppy didn’t so much hurt me as shake my skill, my powers. Plus, I’m not sure what these micro tremors I keep feeling mean whenever I yearn for my knives. The healer in me is not a fan of A.C.’s comment: “They never stop bleeding.” I shut out the world and retreat into body meditations that go so deep they might as well be called sleep.
I’m searching for stray incipient bacterial infections in the humans’ stomach linings as I review my near-death experience. Hasan was a damn-near vegetarian. Before Nordeen got his claws on him, word was he was studying to be an imam. He held on to physical cleanliness with a desperate passion, to compensate for the Nordeen damage. So where the hell did he get hookworms from? Tam’s flirting from the seat behind me interrupts my meditation. I keep what concrete thoughts I have on the bodies so she can’t pick up on my ear hustling.
“. . . you being Mr. Wind Man, yeah?” she says with her street-tough accent. “Figured you to just fly us to Africa.”
“Propriety must be observed, Ms. Bridgecombe. This is a Manna mission. That means Mico has to figure his way to the Mog. Now, when you were in jeopardy, well, that was an affront to nature itself. I had to intervene.” I feel A.C. take a drink of something.
“Thought you was part of his crew. Inner council, ennit?”
“To a degree. I’ve got loyalties but I’m non-monogamous. That’s the thing with giving your life to an elemental force. They are jealous and forgetful lovers. The wind will allow me to have other friends, paramours even, so long as it’s not a big deal. But once I get serious, that’s when the wind comes and sweeps all memory of me away.”
“You telling me you’re fucking a cyclone?” I’m embarrassed as a parent.
“Not in the physical sense. But when I was younger I was given the option of being trained by the wind to fight and thrive. To know and make others forget. It was an honor, so I said ‘Yes.’ But I was too young to understand the full weight of my decision.”
“So you’re not Liminal?” She sucks her teeth hard at him. “Thought you was something special.” There’s a warmth in his weight as he leans back in his chair.
In the back of the plane Bingy fills his lungs with a mix of his god and marijuana. The humans sleep deeply and quietly through the night flight. Sam’s ears are occupied with a low meditated hum coming through headphones. Mico music. It’s only in the cockpit that I feel any tension. I pop up quickly and head there.
“You OK?” I ask past the salt-and-peppered Arab of fifty years or so who opens the door.
“I’m fine,” Mico says from the co-pilot’s seat.
“Wasn’t talking to you.” I’m looking at the pilot. She’s that golden brown you can only get from living under a Saharan sun. Strength stakes its uncontested claim to her small oval face, but there’s not a hint of muscular rigidity. Her blue-rimmed black eyes belie a practical genius as they dart from me to the plane’s instruments, to the sky, to Mico, then back to me in under a second.
“You’re the one with the friend in Mogadishu, right?” Her voice is deliberate, speaking in a non-native tongue.
“Something like that.”
“If you’re really his friend don’t introduce him to this one.” She signals toward Mico then turns her attention back to piloting. Mico has nothing but sadness in him now.
“Perhaps it is better we go to sit down, yes?” The elder Arab, I see in his bones, in the same blue-rimmed black eyes, is the pilot’s father. As I go back to my seat he makes his rounds to the council. After a minute or two he sits with me.
“You are known healer,” the older man says. “Salaam. I am Munji Ibn Shah.”
“Might be better you call me Taggert,” I tell him, taking his hand and feeling the Manna throughout his body.
“From back in your days with the demon Nordeen, do you remember the Men of the Shah?”
“Hash dealers along the Moroccan Atlantic. Had contracts in Marseilles and Brighton as well, right?” I’m remembering with an approximation of fondness.
“You see? That was me, Fatima, my daughter, and even Mico for a time. We are old business associates.”
“You guys ran a tight ship. Nordeen always complained you made enough noise to be annoying but not enough to be worth dealing with.”
“I call that the sweet spot.” He laughs. “My daughter disagrees. She would prefer to go totally unnoticed.”
“She seems angry.”
“That’s only because Mico is around.” He keeps laughing. A.C. joins in from the back seat. “Maybe you can heal some of the hurt from her heart.”
“My skills don’t work that way.” He sounds a bit too sincere in his request. But the old man is already on his knees on the chair looking over at Tamara.
“Well, then maybe it is for this young beauty to help me. Munji Ibn Shah, at your service.”
“Wot?” my girl says, half stunned.
“Your power and beauty precede you, my dear. Tamara, she who drowned an Alter, may Allah curse their names for a thousand years, no?”
“’Ear that, Tag? Proper respect.”
I feel the yawn of the plane and know we’re heading east. It’s the smart flight plan. Going anywhere near the Mediterranean might tip off the Alters. But straight south from London, like we’re heading to Morocco, then southeast, gives us proper traffic camouflage.
I keep listening for a while as Hasan and A.C. take turns mildly flirting with my girl. She eats it up. Feeling valued and coveted is rarer than it should be. I’d rather she feel their respect and admiration than the weight I’ve got right now. It’s not just Prentis. A.C. was right: these blades should not exist. I feel their desire to spin and cut even when I’m still. They call from that illustrated abyss that I touched in Poppy. My arms keep tensing against their absent weight.
We land in Kufra, the most southeasterly series of oases in Libya. Ibn Shah tells us we’re here to refuel, so we’ve got time to stretch our legs. We’re all happy for the fresh air, hot as it is. I’ve been here once before, barefoot and savaged from a life of service to a proto-human warlord. It’s a destination point for Sub-Saharans trying to make their way north, which means it’s a recruiting post for pimps and Al Shabab proselytizers. That’s what I’m prepped for when I get off the plane in the desert morning sun and see three jeeps approaching from the western hinterlands, loaded with men with weapons drawn. Nomads.
“We good?” Tam asks me. I mean to point with my finger but a blade rests in my hand as I gesture. I understand the completeness of her question when I spy A.C. out of the corner of my eye with his hand on his hilt.
“The nightmares of demons speak your name in hushed tones,” Samantha’s soothing voice whispers behind me. “The god of connections is cautious of you and your lineage. Is your will to be consumed by mere weapons?” I feel the choice—that thing inside of me that is entirely too stupid to ever stop fighting—flex. I slap the blade closed and pocket it.
“And what’s that one doing now?” Tamara asks. From the three-room excuse for an airport, Fatima drives out, alone, to intercept the jeeps in an old Volkswagen Thing.
“I’ll go,” Tam says and starts levitating.
“Not if you value your peace and sanity,” Ibn Shah says gently. “Fatima doesn’t endure interruptions well.”
She’s slight, dressed in the style of the West, with exposed arms and slacks. She carries no weapon. But as soon as she steps from her ride, it’s clear she’s in control.
“Who is she?” I ask Samantha.
“Mico was hers before the Manna,” she says. “She’s the smuggler princess of the Maghreb. Munji brought Mico into the life, but it was Fatima who schooled him. Together they converted him from privileged American into a card-carrying underground denizen. Legend is, their lo
ve was palpable. It is said they possessed each other. They say the three of them were inseparable until he went to the desert.”
“What happened in the desert?” Tam asks, looking deep into the vast expanse herself.
“He found the Manna,” I tell her.
“He found himself,” Sam corrects me.
Turns out the nomads were the water and fuel hookup. The water is ancient and pure. The fuel is sufficient to make it to the Mog.
As soon as Samantha tries to put a head wrap on Tamara it’s clear my girl will be staying with the plane. Hijab and Tamara will never go hand in hand. I’m glad. I hear Somalia is safer. They even put lights in the Bakaara market. But one wrong move, and it’s Tamara versus Al Shabab. And I don’t know how to feel bad for Al Shabab.
“Where to?” Mico asks me as soon as we disembark and clear the outside of the airport. Bingy and Hasan flank him.
“Central Market. But we need a gun crew to get to town.” I point to a crew of skinny, shiny black men in camouflage standing by armored vehicles. Before Mico can take five steps, Hasan is making friends using impeccable Benadir, coastal Somali speak. I lived here for years and could never get their cadence right. In under fifteen minutes we’ve got an escort to town for free.
Take the Grand Market in Istanbul; darken it. Replace tourists with automatic rifles and add more internet shops and you have the outermost layers of the six-block-wide Central Market. The deeper we go, the more I feel the need for the blades. We form a tail of junior pickpockets from jump. The older and wiser know to stay clear, waiting for a long con. I beeline through the crowded market to the site of an old cell-phone shack. The wrinkled woman behind the counter remembers me from the war days and cringes as a digital bell heralds my entrance into the doorway. Samantha carries the sense for both of us and walks behind me, taking my hand. This is her part of the world. She knows the non-verbal language. Hand-holding means she is mine. I’m a family man now. Not a threat. I ask for Ahmadi, her boss’s son, and she says, “Lido.”
The Liminal War Page 6
