The Liminal War

by Ayize Jama-everett

  “Yes, you fucking will.” I hold her until she gets it. Or until Mico frees himself from Sally’s rubble.

  “Who’s that?” she asks.

  “Name’s Mico.”

  “The DJ? Jah Puba?”

  “Long story.”

  “When that guy punches you it’s like all the bad things that ever happened to you happen again. Only you’re the one doing the bad things,” Mico informs us once he brushes half the building off himself.

  “Hi, name’s Prentis. I’m a fan. Legit like.”

  “Finally some recognition.”

  “Cut it—” Fucking rookies. I manage to push Prentis out of the way, but Kothar gets to pitch that doorless car right into Mico’s chest. The whole pig-ironed car. Back into Big Sally’s rubble pile he goes.

  “Enough!” Kothar yells. “This distraction has already cost enough!”

  “Agreed.” Poppy descends from the sky with an unconscious Tamara suspended by her ponytail. He lands right next to Kothar. “This one is powerful, but sloppy.”

  “Tamara!” Prentis shouts. I want to as well, but it’s like I’m having another heart attack. I thought—I knew—she could beat him.

  “Idiots,” Kothar scoffs at us. “Kill the girl and let’s be done with it.”

  “What do you mean? She’s already dead.”

  I love my sneaky little daughter. She masked her vitals, took a beating so she could get close. Close enough to get one in for Chabi. Take one to land five. The quick-movement Entropy of Bones technique. Not done as gracefully as Chabi, but with telekinetic aid it doesn’t have to be. She manages to break chunks off of every one of his impossible bones.

  “Psyche!” Tam grins, flying quickly over to our side. I pull blades, keeping an eye on Kothar as Poppy writhes in the ground in an agony even his worst enemies would pity. “We’ll hug later, Prentis, yeah?”

  “After we kick this wanker’s head in?”

  “Sure thing.”

  “You broke . . . who taught you how to break our bones?” Kothar hisses.

  “A friend in a storm,” she tells him. Kothar starts marching toward us, but a fridge in the face knocks him over. Mico. He clears himself once again from Big Sally’s; awkward, but able. He’s about to race forward to meet Kothar, but I stop him.

  “Mico, you’re not a fighter. Don’t get mad. You’re a singer. A unifier. It’s not in your nature.”

  “I can do this!” he tells me.

  “No. You can’t. But they can,” I tell him holding up his arm. “Give them your eyes and step out the way. Trust me.”

  Countless sets of African eyes flicker through his, taking the scene in. Big Sally’s, Kothar, us. The tattoo surges. Outlines of radiant darkness—more suggestive of human form than representational—flow from Mico’s arm and into direct combat with Kothar as he fights against Tamara’s telekinetic push backwards. As they issue forth, Mico stops flicking, opting for a more direct combat.

  Mico’s not the best singer in the world. But when he does sing, or strum a banjo, or even DJ, he communicates clearly. He makes everyone feel like he’s talking just to them. So he communicates our need, our want, our desperation to the Africans on his arm. Whatever ancient dark powers Kothar taps into, I don’t think it can handle the collective suffering of the Middle Passage. They tear and break at Kothar, holding him, punching, infecting him. We stand back amazed and impressed. Until the tearing actually works.

  All pretense of humanity ends when the Africans tear at Kothar’s heart. What gives way isn’t flesh and blood but a true vacuum, a hole in reality. A deep cold space refraction with a hunger for all matter and energy around us. Kothar is a human-sized black hole on Earth. Immediately half the number of spirits are sucked into it, but the remainder keep fighting. Big Sally’s refuse, the car, stray rats—all of it gets sucked into this implacable void. We’re next.

  I stab into the ground with two hands as Mico and Prentis hold on to my body tight. Tam tries to stay aloft, but it’s all she can do to push back against the vacuum. I can’t . . . I can’t reach her.

  “You’ve already lost!” is the last thing I hear Kothar say. His legs then arms and head are sucked into his beating free space of a heart, along with more African spirits. But as he collapses on himself, the nothingness is sealed. The remaining spirits return to Mico’s tattoo.

  “Okay, I’ll be needing that hug right now,” Prentis says. Then she starts crying. Can’t say I blame her.

  Epilogue

  The Unplanned Future

  Kothar was right. The Manna was right. The wind boy was right. We were wrong.

  Not that we knew it for the first three days after Kothar’s void. Sally had converted a stable a few miles upcreek into a decent-sized five-bedroom spot for travelling musicians. She came running with her shotgun, danger be damned, when the death cries of her business shook the county. We were in such a state by the time she got to us, the woman felt she had to take us in. Johnson disappeared into the night to meet his fate in a few short months. Whether male Poppy was sucked into the void or crawled into some secluded blind with half his bones liquefied, he was gone before we left. Prentis took comfort in knowing Nordeen’s face would never see daylight again. She’d been through enough. I’d tell her later that I’ve seen him come back from worse.

  It took a full dreamless day for me to heal. Sally’s oil-drum heater kept me warm. Her comforter-covered straw-from-the-field bed was surprisingly comfortable. The dream silence from Samantha was not. When I finally managed to blink my eyes awake it was an expectant Mico that stood guard over me.

  “Touching the heart of an Alter is never a good idea,” he told me, putting a curved green glass of milk in my hand.

  “Haven’t you heard? I’m filled with bad ideas.” Through the second-story barn opening I saw Prentis walking the banks of the creek with thousands of yellow, blue, and red butterflies behind her.

  “You were right,” Mico said, following my gaze. “She was worth it.”

  “I agree, but we still don’t know the full cost.” I told him about my Samantha dreams, including the last one. It was not shock or horror that grabbed his face. We’d been through too much for that. But it was close.

  “But we won, right?”

  “You asking or telling?”

  “She told us to win. We did. Everything should be fine.”

  “Cool,” I told him. “Then get us home.”

  He claimed it was a problem on his end. The African spirits were definitely an aid, but they were also a lot to carry. Without Chabi, who wasn’t likely to come running, he’d have to negotiate the journey with them. He said it would take a few days. I didn’t care.

  It was like vacation for me and the girls. A secluded house by a river and woods filled with food for the smart and willing. Sally, being first and foremost a business woman, had done right and had her establishment insured as a “restaurant” by a black-owned bank in Harlem against “Acts of God.” She told me if what hit the juke joint wasn’t, she didn’t know what was. She went North, claiming to be thankful she met us and in her words, “Prayerful that I never see y’all again.”

  Prentis and Tam sat and talked like sisters by the banks of the river for hours on end. Sometimes I heard tears, other times hysterical laughter. I gave them their space when I felt the need and went fishing. From across the banks I’d see them pointing at me sometimes.

  “Yeah, we’re talking about you, old man!” Tam would shout. Prentis sent butterflies and bunnies to keep me company. Our heart.

  Mico spent all manner of hours doing his African spirit Tai Chi, trying to talk them into the journey. Without imminent threat of an Alter, the blood sacrifices of the juke joint or the hard-driving banjo guitar playing, they were proving a hard group to summon. Had I known what was waiting for us, I probably would’ve told him to stop trying so hard.

  “I can’t do it,” he told us all over dinner one night. He didn’t want to have to say it.

  “Not enough juice
?” Prentis’s usual compassion was amplified a thousand times over when she heard what Mico gave up in order to come get her. She soothed his sadness with a gentle back rub.

  “It’s just . . . there’s a block, something has changed . . . been . . .”

  “Altered.” Tam found the word for him. We all sat with the implication for a while. “No way in hell I’m staying in nineteen thirty whatever in the States, yeah? Shite, I thought ’71 London was racist. Open your mouth around here and we’re all liable to get lynched. ’Cept you, whitey,” she joked at Prentis.

  “Shut it, slag,” Prentis quipped back. “Is there no one to call upon? To help?”

  “The wind boy.” In truth it was all I remembered. That nickname.

  “He won’t help,” Mico came back.

  “Who the bloody hell is the wind boy?” Tamara asked.

  “I don’t know, but . . . He was around, wasn’t he?” I tried to pull the image into sight.

  “He won’t come,” Mico protested. “His god won’t let him.”

  “You turned on your god,” Tam said harshly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . . Well, look, I’m just saying if this wind guy is your friend, yeah? Like for real and all. Well, you see what we just put on the line for a friend. Maybe he’s, you know . . .”

  “As nuts as us,” I said. “Besides, it won’t hurt to try, right?”

  “Right, ’cause I swear if we’re stuck in this time, we’re moving to someplace that doesn’t hate black people. Jaysis, you should hear this mental chatter. Makes me want to start a bloody racial war.”

  “I’ll need your help,” Mico finally consented. At the table we linked hands as Tamara projected the image of the wind boy into all our minds after she secured it from Mico. It was like seeing an old forgotten friend. Not someone dead, just forgotten. When we had the image fully rooted—his bandanna, his nutty little trench coat, his six-shooter, his entropy sword—Mico had us all say his name in unison: A.C.

  The wind tore up our dinner table and sent everyone flying, but there he was. But what was once bright and light in him was haggard and bruised. Still, he gave everyone hugs. Even Prentis. When he got to me, I got a handshake like I’d done something important.

  “I honestly didn’t think you guys were going to make it,” he told me.

  “Don’t feel bad, most people underestimate me and mine. Besides, I thought the Wind didn’t want you associating with us types.”

  “None of that matters now. All the old truces and détente are over. There was a war. We lost.”

  A.C’s ride back for us all wasn’t as difficult as present-day London. Everything has . . . slipped. It’s like that radiating cold from Kothar’s heart infected the world. The entire globe. But its outward manifestation wasn’t the Alter. It’s Eel Pie Island under the benevolent control of my psychotic brother, Baron.

  A.C. explained after he secured us in an abandoned movie theater in Brixton. It was all Mico could do to not shout from the rooftops as soon as he saw a dark brooding man on the telly screen, backed by an ultra high tech and modern hotel on his home island. It was the hot new story. Baron and his non-profit organization, The Amphictyony, was launching its latest venture to help the youth of the world by opening free health clinics for children throughout the U.K. and all its former colonies.

  “You jumped in time,” A.C. started, once we could all calm down. “So did they. At first I thought they were going for the Manna, but no. They were going for you, Mico. It’s always been about you. I cut them off, with help, so many times. But they were relentless. They got an earlier version of you. Don’t ask me which one. They replaced him—”

  “With my brother.” I hadn’t told anyone initially. But A.C. knew. Tam almost choked. “How is my brother conscious, aware?”

  “Because you weren’t born.” A.C. told me reluctantly.

  “Fuck that, if he wasn’t born, then . . .”

  Tam’s shock pulled me out of my own. “Easy, girl. You’re here. You exist.”

  “The Alters have increased their power while radically reducing the Manna’s,” A.C. continues. “In our original time, the Alters already had control and predominance over finance and commerce as well as some cultural norms. But the underground—in terms of culture, psychology, aesthetics, even underground economies, Mico still had a chance to impact that kind of stuff. That’s why the Manna made you link up with Fatima and Munji, see? But now the Alters exploit through explosion. Massive uncontrolled growth of everything is the new norm. That cool local cafe you loved? Well, now it’s a multinational chain. The Oaxacan Mescal only made once a year that only select families knew about is now on the shelves at every major grocery outlet. Everything has been made unsustainably big and mass-marketed. They’ve made unlimited growth an agreed-upon goal for everything from ideas to weapons. The effect is subtle but incredibly destructive.”

  “Jaysis,” Tam whispers after scanning the mind of the sea. “Everyone is exhausted, depressed. Fucking worse, it’s normal for them. Everyone is just passively accepting it.”

  “The animals,” Prentis almost cries, reclining in her movie seat. “It’s wholesale massacre out there. Not just for food. They’re killing everything.”

  “Music,” Mico shouts. “The music has to reveal the truth. The real music has to be able to make people feel something, anything.”

  A.C. turns on a tube-amplified transistor and brings in pop pablum so bad even Prentis wouldn’t dance to it. Then another station, and another. It’s endless.

  “Come on!” Tam snaps. “You’re telling me all music sounds like this now? No one’s singing with any soul?”

  “Sure. Small pockets. But they know if they want to get recorded, get money, they have to convert to this soulless religion. The Manna held the heart aesthetic. Without its champion—”

  “Manna would never allow this!” Mico shouts.

  “The Manna didn’t have a choice.” A.C. can’t help but sound accusatory. Very little of what they were saying mattered to me. I have one overriding concern.

  “Where’s Samantha?” Everyone goes silent.

  “You’re all going to want to sit down for this,” the wind boy warns before calling up a video clip on a large desktop at the front of the theater. It’s the grand opening of the Amphictyony, whatever the hell that is, on Eel Pie Island. The other Baron grins and waves to a crowd of people as excited as this version of reality tends to get. My brother—I’ve never seen him as an adult—suited in a $3000 get-up, is in his stride, at a podium about to make an announcement. Beside him, Samantha leans against the podium in a deep green dress looking gorgeously, sneeringly dangerous.

  “No . . .” I hear my daughter cough. I swear I almost go hysterically blind. On the other side of the podium in a low-cut black evening dress, Yasmine, Tamara’s mother, takes Baron’s arm. Tam slams the computer into the back of the theater with her power. None of us move.

  “How is my mom alive?” She stands.

  “None of you are getting this. That’s not your mother. She’s a fire-starting Liminal under the Alter’s sway. That woman never had a daughter. She never met Taggert. He doesn’t exist in this timeline. That’s the one thing you all have going for you in this era. None of you exist here.”

  “Bully for us,” Prentis scoffs.

  Mico gets up and walks away.

  “This is all because you came for me?”

  “Don’t even think it,” I tell Prentis.

  “That it for you, then?” I ask Mico after a few hours. I find him in the projection booth laying on a discarded cot in the corner of the room, not a light on. I bring him the crap fast food A.C. pulled in for us. I guess flavor died in this time as well.

  “Damn it, Taggert. Can you give me just a little time to grieve?”

  “Screw you. The two loves of my life are hanging off of my brother’s arm like a pair of matching bangles.” I smile and offer him a burger.

  “I can’t. I can’t even hear the Manna.” He takes a bite
reluctantly and is instantly regretful he did. “Everything is muted now.”

  “I know how important hearing is to you. And the Manna. We’ll have to get them both back if we’re going to fight this.”

  “What are you talking about? We did fight. On the wrong front. All your hitting in the face bullshit was . . . The Alters came up behind us and donkey-punched us right out of time!”

  “And brought back some severe problems from the dead. Not to mention co-opting your friends and place of power. You left before A.C. showed us the Amphictyony website. Your little killers: I think Baron’s turning them into his own personal army. Every kind act you did on that island Baron has twisted into something reprehensible.”

  “We lost!” he cries with tears larger than I’ve ever made.

  “But we’re still alive,” I tell him softly. “You want me out of the game, you’ve got to kill me. I’m not dead. And I’ve got two knives designed to cut things that shouldn’t exist. Like this entire fucking reality. Wind boy says he’s down for the fight, so that’s three sets of Entropy weapons down for the fight. Prentis is itching to avenge her animals and pay her debt to you. And you know Tamara loves a good scrap. Plus they resurrected her mom. Someone’s got to pay for that.”

  “But without the Manna . . .”

  “You’ve got countless angry African spirits that can tear apart an Alter living on your arm.” He smiles a little. “I checked the footage. Ahmadi is with my brother. But there’s no sign of Bingy or Narayana. Chabi’s in the wind. No doubt she’s dying to scrap with Alters again. And I bet that pilot girl might give you another shot now that you broke up with your god.”

  “Do you honestly think we can restore this world to sanity?”

  “Was it sane before?” I laugh. “I don’t know. Look, back when this all jumped off, you asked if we were friends. I judge my friends by their actions. And you, Mico L’Ouverture, are a bona fide action hero. You helped save Prentis. Now it’s our turn to help you . . . and the world. I get your god now. It called me selfish because I was just thinking about what was important to me. Prentis. It was considering a larger world. I failed to see those implications, and, well, reality has paid the cost.”