“Until I come,” she clarified.
“Yes,” he said. “Until you come.”
“And after?”
Michel stared toward the waiting castle hidden in rising river mist.
“We begin,” he said.
Nineteen
Although the late-afternoon sun is still bright above them, the zoo is unusually empty for a Sunday. Jessica is tired, but Kira won’t rest until she sees the white Bengal tiger. The tigers will be their last stop, Jessica decides. Then she’ll be ready to go home.
It is daylight, but Kira is amusing herself by reciting her nighttime prayer in singsong: “Now I lay me down to sleep …”
The day is so bright that Jessica’s vision is clouded, forcing her to blink to see more than a few yards in any direction. All the animals must be hiding from the sun, because the grassy hills, ponds, and trees beyond the fenced-in ditches are empty.
Is the zoo even open? How did they get in?
Bea is walking ahead of her, never far out of sight. Jessica reaches out to grab the sleeve of Bea’s lilac batik blouse, her favorite Sunday-outing clothes, to slow her down. When Bea turns around, her face is nearly washed out in the brightness. “Lord, I’d forgotten about this sun,” Bea says. “Kira and I shouldn’t be out here today, Jessica.”
Bea looks younger every time Jessica sees her. The wrinkles that lined her face have smoothed out, and her arms’ muscles are springy again. This face is the one Jessica remembers from her parent-teacher meetings and Sunday-school programs and Girl Scout campouts.
Jessica is holding Kira’s hand, all warm stickiness from Kira’s ice-cream cone. Kira grins at her with a wide smile, showing off her missing bottom tooth that fell out last night. Her tongue is coated with light brown chocolate. Jessica hoards the details.
“Mommy, where’s the tiger?” Kira says.
“We’re almost there. Pinky swear.” Jessica hooks their free pinkies together, but Kira unhooks herself. She doesn’t like childish gestures in public. She also doesn’t like Jessica holding her hand, but that’s the rule: Kira always has to walk right beside her.
Loose strands of Kira’s hair are escaping their barrettes, so Jessica lowers herself to one knee to smooth out her daughter’s soft curls, clipping her two pigtails back into place. Jessica wipes a dab of dried ice cream from the corner of Kira’s mouth.
Kira’s brown eyes, so much like David’s, take on an adult aspect. “You shouldn’t look at me so much, Mommy,” Kira says. “You should look where you’re going.”
“I know, baby,” Jessica says.
Bea sighs, impatient. “Well, I don’t care if it’s a tiger, a bear, or a flying dragon, I need to head back,” Bea says, fanning herself. “You two go on.”
Jessica searches the zoo’s empty pedestrian walkways for David, but he’s nowhere in sight. She is sure that David was with them, but she can’t remember where he went.
Jessica holds tightly to Kira’s hand. “Mom, let’s not separate now. We’ll get lost.”
Bea laughs, smoothing Jessica’s hair away from her forehead the way Jessica fixed Kira’s. “Pumpkin, you can’t get lost when you always know where you’re going.” Her brown eyes are flecked green near her pupils, a detail Jessica had nearly forgotten. How can she remember it all?
The growling sky steals Jessica’s gaze. Not far from them, the bright light is cleaved by a bank of heavy, dark clouds. In Miami, summer storms appear from nowhere.
“Whatever you need here, better hurry,” Bea says. She covers her head with the loose pages of the Miami Sun-News, which flap in the cooling breeze, hiding her face. “You hear me? Better keep that girl out of the storm.”
“She wants to see the tiger, Mom!” Jessica calls after her, but Bea is already hurrying away. Bea takes the path that forks right, but a sign reading BENGAL TIGERS steers Jessica left. Jessica fights tears as she watches her mother go.
But at least she is still holding her child’s soft, warm hand.
“Come on, sweetie,” Jessica says. “Let’s hurry, before it rains.”
They run together, giggling like playmates. Breathlessly, Kira sings “I Am the Hare that Stays in the Road,” a children’s song from Botswana. The song isn’t in English, but Jessica understands her daughter’s words. Where did Kira learn it? Where did she? Neither of them has ever been to Africa.
The shaded tiger enclosure ahead is so big that Jessica forgets that it’s a part of the zoo; she is hypnotized by the temple set against the shade of palm trees. The temple is Khmer architecture, modeled after Cambodia’s famed Hindu temple Angkor Wat. Like a holy place.
But none of the tigers is in sight.
The singing stops. Jessica feels her daughter’s pace slowing beside her.
“Don’t worry, baby,” Jessica says. “The tigers will be way over there, and we’re way over here. They can’t hurt us.”
“Where’s the white one?”
“Maybe it’s hiding,” Jessica says. “That’s my favorite, too. One-of-a-kind, like you.”
Her daughter giggles again, but she still sounds nervous, pulling closer to Jessica.
More thunder above them. The sky is growing darker. Trees sway, leaves and fronds hissing and rustling overhead. Jessica hadn’t realized that there were so many trees around her, a jungle. The path behind them is wrapped in shadows.
Jessica studies the temple’s intricate carvings, waiting for a tiger to emerge. Nothing.
She looks for her watch, but her wrist is bare. What time is it?
Jessica sighs. “Sweetie, I don’t think we’ll see the tiger today.”
The growl that comes from behind her, low to the ground, turns Jessica’s skin to ice.
Jessica whirls around to see the snowy striped tiger, massive sinews gliding beneath white fur, as it winds toward them at an angle ten yards back, herding them. The tiger’s paws are heavy, bigger than baseball mitts.
Jessica looks for zookeepers, for anyone with a gun, but she and her daughter are alone.
Tigers give chase, she reminds herself between the violent knocks of her heart. She clutches her daughter’s hand tightly enough to crush her bones. “Stand still,” she whispers.
The tiger’s attention snaps to them with alert, cool blue eyes. A hunter’s eyes. The tiger’s massive jaw falls open; impossibly sharp, yellowed teeth. The tiger’s eyes stare through to Jessica’s soul, and he issues a sound midway between a growl and a roar, close enough for her to smell the beast’s rancid breath.
Our Father who art in Heaven … hallowed be Thy name …
Armed with nothing but prayers, Jessica lifts her daughter into her arms. A tiny, terrified heart patterns against her bosom. But it isn’t Kira! Her daughter’s face is smaller and rounder with baby fat than before, familiar features mismatched. All her tiny teeth are intact. Her hair is wound in thick dreadlocks.
“I’m scared, Mommy,” Fana whispers, clinging tightly.
I know you’re scared, baby. It’s hard for you to say it, but I know. I’m scared too.
Jessica won’t let Fana feel her body’s tremors or see the fear eating her heart. She will be strong for Fana, just like when she stole her back from the Shadows.
“Mommy’s here, Fana,” Jessica says. “Mommy’s here.”
The tiger springs just as the clouds open, drenching them with rain.
Jessica sat up with a strangled cry just short of a scream. She curled herself into a ball, expecting to feel the tiger’s hot breath before his teeth ripped at her neck.
“It’s okay,” a man’s voice said. “You were dreaming.”
Jessica looked up and saw him standing over her with her drinking glass, his fingertips damp from the water droplets he’d sprinkled to her forehead. It was hard to see him in the room’s light, in the spinning walls.
“David?” Jessica wiped her forehead with her forearm. Still no watch. “What time …?”
“There’s no David here,” the man said. “It’s just me.”
; Jessica sat up so quickly that she bumped her knee against her table, and the jittering pain snapped her back into focus. Dawit, not David, she corrected herself. But the man above her wasn’t Dawit. He was much younger, with a thin mustache, a small cross dangling from his ear. His golden cross winked in the room’s light.
Johnny Wright.
At any other time, Jessica would have been pissed that Johnny had come into her room without an invitation, but she was so grateful that she wanted to hug him. She’d never had a bad trip on sticks. She was supposed to control her dream!
Jessica held in a deep breath of air. Real air. From the real world. Thank you, God.
“There was a … tiger,” Jessica gasped, trying to explain what she’d seen.
Johnny Wright nodded. The wretchedness on his face told her he already knew all about the tiger. His voice was hollowed out. “Fana …”
Jessica covered herself, realizing that she wasn’t wearing a bra beneath her oversized T-shirt. She wouldn’t want to see herself in a mirror. “Give me a few minutes,” she told Johnny Wright, her voice still hoarse from dreaming. “We can’t talk here.”
An hour after she’d bathed and changed, Jessica was still looking for the tiger. Her eyes searched the colorful rock garden and its unpredictable, coral-like formations that reminded her of her dream zoo’s jungle, expecting a blur of white fur to leap at her. It might be another hour before her fingers stopped shaking.
No more Dreamsticks, Jessica promised herself as she splashed her face with warm water from the garden’s soaking pool. She had promised to stop burning the sticks before, but the tiger might help her keep her word. Her fears had tracked her into her haven. She wanted dreams, not nightmares.
“Michel won’t let her go again,” Johnny said.
No. Michel would not let Fana go. Maybe Fana couldn’t see it, but that had been plain to Jessica in his white silk robe, his languid eyes. Jessica had known he would not let Fana go since she first saw the blood on her clothes. Since she’d seen the look in Fana’s eyes—the look every daughter’s mother dreads—saying she had been touched. Jessica’s pupils narrowed with rage as she thought about the way Michel had played with Fana, sowing lies to trap her.
Jessica couldn’t answer. She stared at the towering stones.
“But I know a way, Mrs. Wolde,” Johnny said.
Johnny’s face came into crisp focus, down to his razor stubble and eyes swollen from half-mad tears. Something irreparable was about to happen between her and Johnny Wright, a moment that couldn’t be backed away from. Ideas became plans. Plans came to life. She glanced around again, this time looking for listeners hidden among the wonderland of stones.
“Go on,” Jessica said.
“I shot two of Michel’s men last year. I rescued Caitlin.” Johnny’s voice as calm as the garden’s pools. “Michel thought he was controlling me … but he lost me for at least ten minutes. I was myself again. I had free will. I’ve been praying, Mrs. Wolde, and God told me a secret. It’s a secret I already knew from Mexico, when I fired the gun, but I’d forgotten….”
Suddenly, Jessica knew the secret, too. Like Johnny, she had only forgotten.
“Fana distracts him,” Jessica said. “When she’s with him …”
Johnny finished, his voice hushed, “He’s vulnerable.”
Jessica assessed John Wright with new eyes: he wasn’t the frightened, confused child fresh from Hell. The oft-told story about Johnny Wright shooting his way past Michel’s men hadn’t fit the jittery young man who had first come to Lalibela. But now, this was the Johnny Wright who risked instant arrest every time he went upworld to help spread Glow. This was the Johnny Wright who’d faced Michel in Mexico and fought his way free.
God help them, was Michel listening to them now? Jessica was too weary to be afraid.
“He would take precautions,” Jessica said. “It might not happen again.”
“But what if it can?” he said.
“Fana won’t help you,” Jessica said. “Or Dawit. They’re both dead set against a direct confrontation. But there might be others.”
“Who?” Johnny said.
“They would never confide in a mortal, Johnny. A stranger.”
“What about Teka?”
Jessica smiled weakly. What a waste! Fana’s teacher knew enough about the weapons in the Life Brothers’ arsenal to wipe Michel from the planet. “Teka would never go against Fana’s wishes,” Jessica said. “Don’t even approach him—he’ll see through you.”
“Who, then?”
“Mahmoud,” Jessica said. Mahmoud’s name tasted like burnt dust in her mouth. She rolled her tongue in the caverns of her cheeks to feel moisture again. Was she fully awake, or still dreaming? Jessica checked her reflection in the water, one of the tricks she’d had to learn after too much time on Dreamsticks: in her dreams, she couldn’t see her reflection.
But she was there. She splashed her face again, trying to forget how Mahmoud had tried to kill her and Kira in her old life, and then Fana, too. Mahmoud had tried to destroy her family from the beginning. How could she speak his name?
Jessica dried her face on her shirt, forcing herself to go on. “Mahmoud would want to see Michel dead, and he wouldn’t care what Fana says. Or Dawit. Mahmoud always does what he thinks is right for the colony.”
Jessica’s stomach gurgled, so she walked to the orange tree a few paces beyond the washbasin. The oranges were as big as grapefruits here, all of them ripe for months at a time. More decoration than food. Jessica chose an orange at random, since they all looked and tasted the same. She buried her thumb in its heart to peel it.
“Then let’s talk to Mahmoud,” Johnny said.
“I can’t know about this, Johnny. Fana wants me and Dawit to go with her to Michel. I could hide from Fana, I think, but Dawit can’t filter as well. And I couldn’t hide from Michel. Once we’re near Michel, he’d be a fool not to know us inside and out. Assume they’ll all know we’ve had this conversation.”
“That’s not a problem,” Johnny said. The determination in his eyes didn’t dim.
“Michel doesn’t have to be near you to kill you,” Jessica said. “Remember?”
“We’re just talking,” Johnny said. “I’m not worried about anyone except Fana.”
Jessica remembered when her sister, Alex, brought her the idea to open a clinic in South Africa to distribute the blood Dawit had forced into her veins. In one glorious instant, the world had opened itself up, and Jessica finally understood why Kira had been taken away from her: Kira’s death was her daily reminder of loss, so she could help others heal. Now, Jessica understood again. She might not be able to free Fana from the tiger, but she had to try.
Sometimes a mother’s power wasn’t enough, but Fana needed her.
Jessica clasped the young man’s clammy hand between hers. “There’s no such thing as true immortality in the body. Evaporation. Incineration. Telepathic exsanguination; I’ve seen Fana do that, when she was only three. If Michel even loses consciousness …”
He can be killed, she finished to herself, hesitating to speak the words.
“I need your blessing, Mrs. Wolde,” Johnny said.
Jessica’s heart pounded the way it had when she’d seen the tiger, flushing her veins with adrenaline. Johnny was still a kid, no more prepared than Fana, who could be so impulsive and childish. But children always fought for the future, full of imagination, uncorrupted by doubts.
“Only Michel,” she said. “If Fana is in danger, you have to stop it. Give me your word.”
“I promise never to do anything to hurt Fana,” Johnny said. “But I need the Blood, Mrs. Wolde. I need to be one of you.”
The Blood would not keep Johnny alive if Michel went after him, but it might save him once. Or twice. It might buy him enough time. Jessica’s heartbeat sped.
“Lucas and I don’t know the ceremony,” Jessica said. “I’ve asked about sharing the Blood with you all, but Dawit doesn’t want to bypass the
council. He’s a pragmatist deep down, Johnny. There’s only one person who might do it for you.”
“Fana?” Johnny said.
“Yes. You’d have to convince her. And you won’t have much time.”
“I’ve asked her before.”
“Why did she say no?”
Johnny sighed. “She said I didn’t know my reasons yet.”
“Give her good reasons, then,” Jessica said. “As much as you can, tell the truth.”
Now it was Johnny’s turn to look sick to his stomach. “I’ll need time alone with her.”
“I’ll get you the time. You have a chance, Johnny. She’s in love with you.”
Johnny Wright’s wide eyes swept her like searching floodlights.
From the way he looked at her, Jessica might have thought he didn’t already know.
Twenty
Bells tolled somberly throughout the colony to signal the Lalibela Council meeting, one of the colony’s few acts of spontaneity. The courtyard before the entryway to the Council House was crowded and giddy, everyone barefoot and dressed in white.
Fana had never attended a meeting, although she’d held an honorary seat on the council most of her life. In the year since she had moved to Lalibela, Fana had missed three meetings while she was upworld on Glow business or meditating, leaving Dawit to speak on her behalf.
Not a great record, Fana realized. She’d kept away from colony politics, preoccupied with her race with Michel; meditating for strength through the Rising and building her Glow network so she could fight Michel’s agencies’ work to slow them down. It was exhausting.
But Fana wanted to win over her own people before she could work on Michel. To most of the Life Brothers, she was an enigma; to others, a stain.
It was time to make her mission official.
Fana walked the wide corridor, trailed by her teacher, Teka. Beyond Teka, her guardians Fasilidas and Berhanu walked in formation. The Life Brothers’ intense curiosity nibbled at Fana as she passed them. Her presence elicited extreme feelings, from bright-eyed worship to hot loathing. Which was worse? How could she deserve either?
My Soul to Take Page 19
