My Soul to Take

by Tananarive Due

  Yes, Phoenix thought. She’d had to do that, too.

  Carlos sighed. “And then … I was thinking, ‘They won’t let us go. How can they?’ I thought you were gone, Phee. All of us. Just gone.”

  In separate cells, she and Carlos had been making the same hard contemplations.

  “They were afraid of me,” Phoenix said, one of the lessons Fana had taught her during the helicopter ride. “If I preached Glow, I would reach too many people. They tried to shut me down for the same reason Fana came to me. They’re fighting Glow with everything they have.”

  “Screw Glow!” Carlos whispered fiercely, his teeth gritted. Carlos didn’t believe in anything easily, and captivity and torture had soured him. “It’s not our fight.”

  “The healing is real,” Phoenix said. “I got punched in the stomach today—I was hurting.” Carlos winced, feeling her pain with her. “Fana healed me by touching me. I had a bad cough too, maybe bronchitis. It’s gone because she touched me.”

  “Phee, I know you believe that’s true … and maybe it is …”

  “None of this would have happened to us if the healing weren’t real.”

  “Healing you is the least she could do!” Carlos said. “Phoenix, they have destroyed us. Everything we had, everything we were … everything you were … it’s gone.”

  Phoenix’s grief mounted. So much more could be gone soon.

  “Yes,” Phoenix said. “You’re right, Carlos. It’s all gone.”

  “We have to tell the public what—”

  “You can’t go public now,” Phoenix said. “This is wider than the government, Carlos.”

  “Then now what?” he said. “We can’t go home. We can’t …”

  “Fana’s people are taking you to a safe location outside of the country,” Phoenix said. “South Africa. It’s Glow friendly, and they’re sheltering other families there.”

  Carlos’s eyes squinted, confused. “What?” he said. “We’re going to South Africa?”

  “Not me,” Phoenix said. Her voice broke. “You and Marcus.”

  Carlos had begun to slouch against the enclave’s wall, but he sat upright, his eyes locked on hers. “Phee …” he began, already begging.

  Phoenix’s jaw quivered. She stared at her sweet baby, safe and warm beneath his blankets, but she had to look away immediately. Her grief scorched her insides. “She needs me, Carlos.”

  “You have a seven-year-old son who just went through hell,” Carlos said. “Please forgive me, Phee, I hate saying this … but you’re not in your right mind. Maybe what you’re saying makes sense in your head, but you sound crazy right now. Remember when we talked about how they could be a cult? This is what cults do—they twist reality.”

  “Your mother didn’t die by coincidence,” Phoenix said.

  Carlos looked stunned, his eyes glimmering. “What?”

  Phoenix told him the story, starting at the beginning, choosing her own words. Fana had offered to walk Carlos through her memories, too—that surreal sensation of being immersed in someone else’s place and time—but Phoenix wanted to bring Carlos along herself, the way she had convinced him that she had to settle her debt to Scott Joplin’s ghost in her own way.

  As hours passed, she told him about Fana’s incredible powers, and how her people had created the drug the world knew as Glow. She told him about Fana’s engagement to Michel, who had abilities beyond hers. She told him about the prophecy, and Michel’s beliefs that the world should belong to only a few. She told him how Michel had spread the Praying Disease as a precursor to his Cleansing. Carlos had already seen his mother’s corpse in Puerto Rico, but Phoenix described the images Fana had shared with her from Nigeria. The ten-year-old girl.

  While she talked, Carlos paced the cabin and occasionally interrupted her with sighs and questions. Carlos had known ghosts before she had, so he couldn’t ignore her stories just because they were extraordinary and inconvenient.

  “She wants all of us with her—her mother, her father, her teacher. And me. My music … helps her because she loves it. It opens up something in her,” Phoenix said.

  Carlos stood over Phoenix where she sat on the bed, holding her shoulders, trying to rub his message into her muscles. “They all love you,” he said. “Your music. They want pieces of you, Phee. Remember what you learned? They’ll eat you until there’s nothing left. You told me you would give yourself to Marcus first. You promised me. You promised yourself.”

  “That was before I knew about this. Don’t you understand? This isn’t a story she told me—she showed me. I walked with her. I saw what she saw, heard what she heard. This man, Michel …” Phoenix had never met him, but his name felt like bad luck on her tongue.

  “Scott’s ghost nearly killed you, and he loved you,” Carlos whispered. “It was … the nature of your interaction with that realm, playing with the lines between life and death. I understand that Fana is special. But if you die for her, what do we get? What does Marcus get? An apology? A plaque?”

  “I wouldn’t be dying for her,” Phoenix said. “Marcus deserves a world to grow up in.”

  Carlos knew then. He could not change her mind. Hope left his eyes.

  “I’ll go instead,” Carlos said. “He killed Mami. I’ll go, not you. Not you, Phoenix.”

  One last try. Phoenix only shook her head. For the next hour, the two of them cried and clung to each other, trying not to wake their sleeping son. The light through their windows flared bright orange with dusk as the plane veered, changing course.

  She was in the air, but she was not free.

  She was away from her cell, but she was not free.

  Phoenix had been a prisoner from the moment John Jamal Wright had come to her door.

  Jessica stood near the doorway at the top of the jet’s metal stairs as Vancouver’s crisp morning air tickled her scalp. The private airstrip where Teka had landed overnight was deep in the woods, déjà vu. These Douglas firs and maples had grown all over their property in Washington, a short drive south of this Canadian border city.

  Jessica could barely look Carlos Harris in the eye as he passed her to walk down the plane’s gangplank with Phoenix, holding his son’s hand. The man was a zombie.

  “We’ll take good care of her!” Jessica called, trying not to feel like a liar.

  Carlos turned over his shoulder to give Jessica a broiling glare.

  Ugh. Jessica already felt like she was carrying rocks in her stomach, but her worries about what waited in Mexico seemed small compared to separating this family. How could they justify bringing Phoenix with them?

  The boy, Marcus, was in unnaturally high spirits as he listed everything he would do while his mother was gone. “… And I’m gonna get up to five hundred points on my GamePort … and I’m gonna learn how to whistle really good … and I’m gonna learn how to pop a wheelie on my bike … Oh! And I’m gonna read a book to Daddy every night.” He had an angel’s piping voice.

  “You’re going to do all that?” Phoenix said, hugging him with one arm.

  “Yeah, and I’ll do it quick, Mommy, ’cuz you’ll be back soon.”

  Phoenix tickled him under his armpit, and the boy shrieked with laughter.

  Marcus’s laughter gave it away. Fana must have adjusted the child’s mood! Jessica glanced back at Fana in the leather reclining seat where she was drinking orange juice, waiting for an end to the goodbyes.

  A CHILD’S HAPPINESS SPREADS TO THE PARENTS, Fana said, answering Jessica’s look. I SHOULD MASSAGE HER HUSBAND, TOO.

  Jessica shook her head and wagged a finger: No. It was hard to argue with making a child feel better about leaving his mother, but where did it stop? Fana invented her boundaries according to the moment’s whims. Not everyone would be able to slap her out of their heads.

  While Phoenix and her husband hugged goodbye, Jessica left the ramp to return to her seat. She didn’t want to spy on them, and it hurt too much to watch. Phoenix’s love for Carlos Harris was beautiful; the kind she
’d had with …

  Damn. She’d been away from her Dreamsticks for forty-eight hours, but the loss of David was still sudden and new. Kira and Bea weren’t the only ghosts in her memories. The man wearing David’s face was with her on the plane—and she loved that man, too—but David was gone. And, like her, Phoenix might never see the man she loved so purely again.

  “They’re in the car,” Dawit reported, bounding into the cabin from the gangplank. “Their flight to Jo’burg will leave in thirty minutes.” He sounded relieved. When he caught her eyes, the smile he gave her was David’s. That never changed, at least.

  Phoenix came next, and Fana jumped to her feet to meet her in the galley doorway. Marcus’s laughter had left Phoenix’s face already. Jessica remembered a rainy winter day in Washington she’d brightened by playing a Phoenix music video in their living room, dancing in a circle with Fana and Alex. Fana, who would barely speak to them during her trance state after the hurricane, dancing!

  Had Fana been seven? Eight? She’d been about Marcus’s age.

  Jessica knew why Fana had chosen Phoenix. She had been there at the beginning.

  The woman walking past Jessica on the plane looked nothing like the energetic girl who’d been dancing with her keytar in the “Party Patrol” video a decade ago. All joy had been peeled from her. Fana held Phoenix’s hand and walked her to the rear of the plane, her head leaning against Phoenix’s. Was it consolation, or was Fana massaging Phoenix, too?

  Dawit closed the cabin door, and the plane whirred to life. Jessica liked the Lineage 1000, if only because she hadn’t wanted to fly in the plane where her mother had died. The luxury aircraft had a new-plane smell that made Jessica wonder if Dawit had bought it especially for the trip, to spare her the heartache.

  When Dawit cracked the cockpit door open, a small brown ball of fur raced out with a laugh that sounded eerily like Marcus’s. Jessica gave a start. The monkey had been hidden while Carlos was onboard, and she had forgotten that the creature was with them.

  Having a chatter monkey in the cabin had burned off Jessica’s enchantment with the creatures fast. God had been wise not to create him. Adam, as Fana called the monkey, had scratched most of the countertops with his sharp nails and shattered a TV screen in the main cabin with a metal tray. He jabbered constantly, senselessly.

  “Fana, wait for me!” the chatter monkey called, scurrying after her. The monkey’s voice sounded like a tiny old man’s.

  Teka was piloting with Berhanu in the cockpit. Fasilidas, Teferi, and the musician named Rami were in the first cabin, and the music from Rami’s collection of instruments was constant. Jessica hoped the music would be a comfort to Phoenix, but much of it, especially in the higher register, was an acquired taste.

  By custom, Jessica’s family was given the rear half of the plane, the large conferencing area with reclining seats and a long leather sofa, and the separate bedroom that Fana had left for Phoenix. The large conference cabin was empty when Jessica returned. Fana, Phoenix, and Adam were in the back, behind a closed door.

  Jessica turned on the TV that still worked, which was mounted on the wall facing the cockpit. She’d been playing a satellite news channel earlier, and the story hadn’t changed: POP LEGEND MISSING, the screen’s banner headline read; “… say the pop icon is a recluse. Phoenix retired from the stage after the deaths of—”

  Quickly, Jessica hit Mute. Reporters had invaded her life after Kira died, and Jessica wouldn’t wish it on anyone. When she’d been a reporter herself, she’d hated interviewing tragedy victims. Suffering was hard enough without spectators.

  Dawit joined her in the cabin, closing the door behind him.

  “Nothing on the military channels about the singer and her family,” Dawit said. “Their strategy at this point seems to be, ‘Let’s pretend this never happened.’”

  “Lord knows it’s worked before,” Jessica said.

  “Once again, Fana gets what Fana wants.”

  Dawit’s light tone irritated Jessica. “Her name is Phoenix Harris,” she said. “You call her ‘the singer.’ She’s brought joy to people all over the world, not just Fana. Her husband is Carlos Harris, and their son is Marcus. They all have names.”

  Dawit kissed the top of her head, sitting beside her on the sofa. “I’m sorry, mi vida. I’m lazy with names. The curse of having seen too many faces.”

  “We may be about to get her killed,” Jessica said.

  Dawit nodded. “And I worry about her husband being discreet—Carlos. If I’d had my way, Teka would have cleaned his memory by a week.”

  Jessica winced. One of her best friends, Jared’s godmother, no longer had any memory of her; that fourteen-year friendship was another of Michel’s casualties. Teka had wiped the entire family’s memories for their own protection, but mostly to protect the Life Colony. And Jessica had sanctioned it, unable to persuade a family to choose their memories over their freedom.

  “Carlos would lose more than a week,” Jessica said. Fana had tried to wipe a small part of Alex’s memory to cover running away from the Washington colony, and she left Alex in a trance state. She might do better now, but it wasn’t laser surgery. “Let’s leave these people alone.”

  “Fana refused,” Dawit said. “So you two are agreed.”

  Good. Jessica exhaled. One battle at a time.

  The plane began its slow taxi, building up speed on the runway. Jessica’s stomach rattled. She leaned against Dawit, resting her head on his shoulder. “What are we doing?”

  Dawit stroked her hair. “Believing,” he said.

  The door from the bedroom opened, and Fana came out with Adam on her shoulder, his long tail wrapped around her neck. Gently, she closed the door behind her.

  “Phoenix is resting.” Fana glanced at the television news. A blond white woman identified as Phoenix’s cousin and manager was a tearful wreck on the screen, begging viewers for information about Phoenix. GLOW CONNECTION? the headline above her read.

  Fana quickly looked away from the TV.

  I DIDN’T CONTROL PHOENIX’S DECISION, MOM. SHE MADE THE CHOICE.

  Jessica spoke quietly. “Of course you controlled her, honey. Put yourself in her place—you blew her mind. She didn’t have a real choice.”

  Fana looked to Dawit for his opinion. He shrugged his agreement. “You led her, Fana.”

  I NEED HER, Fana said. WITH MICHEL, I NEED EVERYONE I HAVE.

  “What you think is best isn’t always what’s right.” Jessica’s voice was hushed. “Own your decisions, especially the ones you’re not proud of. We might as well be kidnapping her.”

  Fana inclined her head, a bow. I KNOW SHE’S IN SHOCK, BUT I NEED HER.

  The speeding plane rocked, and Fana stumbled. As she tried to step forward, the plane pitched her back. Adam squealed and leaped, swinging away by the curtain rod.

  Dawit was suddenly on his feet, catching Fana’s arm. “You see we’re taking off, Fana,” Dawit said sternly, at the same time Jessica said, “Girl, sit down.”

  Sometimes Fana seemed as awkward in her body as she had been when she was three, as if her limbs were in her way. What was it Fana had said when they flew to Lalibela that first time and she stared out her window? See, Mommy, I can touch it! I can reach out and touch the sky! Jessica heard the pealing echo of her little girl’s voice.

  Fana sat between them on the sofa, burrowing between their hips the way she had when she was young. For that golden instant, Fana was just her daughter, and she and Dawit were exactly where they belonged. Sweeter than any dream. Jessica breathed in deeply, the way Fana and Teka had taught her, filling her lungs with the moment.

  Jessica wrapped her arm around Fana and offered her daughter a place to rest her head.

  Twenty-five

  “You must take her quickly,” Stefan said. “You understand this, sí?”

  Their horses were walking so slowly that they barely moved along the rocky path above the valley. Below, Michel spotted a wedding party snapping p
hotographs in a clearing between tall Mexican fan palms and jojoba shrubs.

  The wedding party was courageous to come so close to the church palace, with so many of his soldiers nearby, but word was spreading quickly throughout Sonora State and northwestern Mexico: because of Sanctus Cruor, there were blessings in Nogales. No more cartels in Nogales. Peace in Nogales. Healing in Nogales. An oasis in the vast Sonoran Desert.

  Michel could not abide street shootouts and disorder so close to the place where the Cleansing would be born. The repetitive sirens and sporadic gunfire had been intolerable. Narcos and kidnappers had been the first to visit his Cleansing Pool.

  A table full of narcos was plotting against him even now, Michel realized, twenty kilometers southwest, in a cantina near the beach. They had called his name, so their blustery voices were as loud to Michel as they would have been if they were standing in front of him. Three of them: one from Tijuana, another from Mexico City, a corrupt city official from Ciudad Juarez, all of them incensed because of the interference of El Diablo, who lived in the grand new church in the mountains outside Nogales. They spoke of storming the church with an army, tearing down its walls with grenades.

  Michel sent a mental message to Bocelli and Romero: Bring them all to me.

  They would be his next offerings to the Cleansing Pool, with Fana at his side.

  In the valley below, the wedding party had no thoughts of war. The couple stood between two massive, wide-trunked palm trees. Michel admired the young bride in her vintage cream-colored wedding dress, her sun-browned skin peeking through eyelets in the crocheted lace. Perhaps Fana would wear a dress like hers soon.

  BE STRONG, MICHEL, his father said, intruding in his thoughts.

  “Leave it to you to spoil my good day, Papa,” Michel said.

  “Am I the one spoiling your day?”

  “It doesn’t give me pleasure to think of hurting her.”

  “Taking pleasure is your choice, Michel. It’s not the point.”