My Soul to Take

by Tananarive Due

  THE NEW DAYS

  Live as if you were to die tomorrow.

  Learn as if you were to live forever.

  —Mahatma Gandhi

  It is very beautiful over there.

  —The last words of Thomas Edison (1847–1931), upon waking from a coma

  Epilogue

  New York

  Two Years Later

  It was overcast in Manhattan, but the crowd in Central Park sounded like sunshine. The cheers were the sound of joy. GLOW FOR LIFE, the banners on the trees read, reminding everyone why they were celebrating: Glow was finally legal in the United States. The law had finally caught up with the people.

  Phoenix sang “The Bees” from the stage overlooking the North Meadow, crammed with vibrant human life snaking through every visible corner. Thousands more spilled into nearby meadows even if they couldn’t see her. The police had told her there might be a million people at the concert. More would have come if she had given more notice.

  Her last note hung over the crowd in the trial-roughened voice she had brought back with her from Nogales. A new voice; not as smooth, but so much stronger.

  In a flash, she saw Fana’s laughing face. Music was the only place where Phoenix and Fana still met. Phoenix felt Fana coursing through her as strongly as she had at the first Glow concert, an electrical shower. Fana sent gold dust floating over the listening crowd, into stray windows, and into the cars that honked as they passed. Spreading healing.

  Most of them hadn’t known they were sick, or why. Doctors caught so little.

  That was what bees did—they spread life. Most people preferred to heal at concerts, if they had the chance, but now they could have Glow in the privacy of their homes. Legal Glow would make it easier to get it to everyone who needed it. Clarion had bought and leased hundreds of buildings for Glow clinics across the country, taking control of hospitals in poor neighborhoods. The U.S. revolution was about to begin.

  “Thank you!” Phoenix said to her old-school mic, the one she asked for especially because it reminded her of concerts she’d seen as a child. “That’s a song I wrote in Mexico.”

  The crowd roared gratitude and love. People chanted her name, but Phoenix knew they were chanting to the music, the healing, not to her. She hadn’t asked for any of it. Until the music came with its sad beauty, Fana’s wedding day had been hard to live with.

  “Heal!” she told New York. The country. The world. “Safe journey, everyone!”

  They were still calling her name, but Phoenix left the stage. She’d already done three encores. Everyone was giddy backstage, even roadies, who weren’t used to giddiness at concerts. Glow made everyone giddy.

  “Mom, you’re a rock god!” Marcus said, giving her a bear hug. Not even ten years old, and he was nearly as big as a roadie in his Phoenix Glow Tour T-shirt. Marcus looked more like her father every day. Like his grandfather and namesake, Marcus was her biggest fan.

  “I’m not a god,” Phoenix said. “I’m just making music.”

  Phoenix never used the term god lightly. Her best friend, her sister, might as well be a goddess, but she’d never used the word. Maybe the word for Fana hadn’t been invented yet.

  Carlos was in his usual spot backstage, by the curtain stage right. Trying to be invisible. Phoenix would never have thought Carlos would come with her on a Glow tour. Time truly healed everything.

  Carlos rested his forehead against Phoenix’s. “Beautiful, Phee,” he said. “So beautiful. I wish Mami had been here.”

  She nodded. She’d seen a woman near the stage with braids like Carlos’s mother, and another who’d looked just like Mom. Reminders that they were always nearby.

  Police swarmed everywhere. Phoenix would never look at police the same way, but at least they were trying to protect her these days. For now, Sarge’s voice reminded her.

  “Are they here?” Phoenix asked Carlos, and he nodded, taking her hand to walk with her down the metal steps on the other side of the stage. They were led and trailed by an army.

  The women’s glowing faces were waiting for her in a roped area. Two hundred women waited for her in folding chairs beneath a hanging tarp, barely covered from the drizzle. It looked too much like a pen for Phoenix’s comfort, but the women’s shining eyes didn’t mind. Most of their faces were wet with tears, not rain. When they saw her, they rose to their feet, rocking upright, many of them holding their chairs for support.

  “Nobody touches Phoenix!” Gloria, Phoenix’s cousin, barked. “Please stay where you are and let her come to you one by one.”

  Phoenix walked through the lines of women, one after the other, the faces of the world. Africa, Asia, Europe. Phoenix had always loved New York for its faces. Pregnant women always sought her out, some from great distances.

  One by one, Phoenix rubbed her hand across the rounded bellies.

  “Bless this child,” Phoenix said, touching each woman’s stomach, gazing into her hopeful eyes. Bless this child, Fana. And bless this child. And bless this child.

  New York had been hit hard.

  Birth rates were dropping. In New York City, just like in regions of China, researchers estimated that two out of ten men and women might be infertile. The percentage of live births was higher internationally, so the babies were born healthier, but fewer and fewer people could conceive. Scientists didn’t know why. There were already reports of stolen newborns.

  Outside this Central Park sanctuary of music and joy, the world was panicking. Fana had explained it to Phoenix in her typical blunt way: WE THINK THERE ARE TOO MANY.

  Fana’s compromise with Michel; their shared vision.

  “Bless this child,” Phoenix said, pressing her hand to a warm, living belly.

  Fana, bless this child.

  Phoenix shied away from the thirsty, longing eyes of the woman she was touching. The woman trembled so much that Phoenix thought she was cold. “You’re … an angel,” the woman said, barely able to speak the words.

  “I’m just a singer,” Phoenix said.

  Lalibela

  The young man called himself Mark, although it was not the name his parents had given him. He had forgotten his birth name, and his age, but so had many of his Brothers.

  He should not be alive. His teacher had told him he should be dead because of what he had done. There were stories that he had faced down a demon. He had challenged a king. All the stories were fantastic, and none of them sounded true.

  The truth was a lost memory.

  He hoped his punishment was just, but it was hard to imagine that he had done anything bad enough to warrant being robbed of his memories. He would never want to hurt anyone. He wanted to dedicate himself to healing the sick.

  His Brothers took the Blood for granted, but Mark knew he was newly immortal, so the Blood fascinated him. He eagerly followed news about Glow from upworld, and had donated Blood for use by the new clinics in the United States and Mexico. Mark agreed with Yacob, his teacher, that their Blood was a gift to everyone. He agreed with Fana and her Blood mission.

  But that was all he could do for Fana’s mission. For fifty years, Mark would be confined to the Lalibela Colony. He had forty-eight years left to serve—that, and his memory wipe, had been the sentence for his crime. His spirit was restless, but how could he consider an apprenticeship in the House of Science a sentence? It was a privilege. In some wings of the House of Science, the laws of physics had their own mind.

  Yacob waited in the garden, as he always did, to show Mark his way. Yacob wrapped his arm around him like a father. “Mark, our walls are empty but for us,” Yacob said. “For the first time in centuries. We’re the only two who aren’t in the delegation.”

  The Lalibela Brothers were on their way to meet with the Bloodborn in South Africa, where the new colony was being built. Mark had tried not to think about it, but now he would think about nothing else. He had never felt more like a prisoner.

  “I wanted to meet Blessed Fana,” Mark said, choosing the Fananite
s’ title for her. Seeing her would be blessing enough. To be in the room with her.

  Yacob sighed. “You think of her too much. Your head is filled with free space doing nothing. You need to meditate more, youngster.”

  Yacob had warned him not to overlook his studies in the House of Meditation. If he studied his meditation diligently, Yacob had said, one day he would learn to hear thoughts and send visages. He must follow the path of the Rising, not the busy sounds in his head.

  But today, Mark would think only of Fana. He had been enchanted by her since he first heard the stories about how she had started the Underground Railroad to share her Blood when she was only a child. She’d had so much vision so young!

  Fana’s parents visited Mark from time to time. They had known him in his former life, where he had first met Fana as a child. Her parents shared stories about Fana’s days living like a mortal, or the time her father chased him from a window in the woods. Sometimes, her mother brought him photographs of Fana as a child—to look at, not to keep—and he could almost remember himself. He might not deserve their kindness, but he was grateful.

  “How can I see her?” Mark asked Yacob. “What if I petition?”

  NOT NOW, Yacob said. Yacob was sad for him when he mentioned Fana. NOT YET.

  Mark wondered again what he had done to deserve his punishment. His banishment.

  But there would be other delegations, and he wouldn’t always have such strict prohibitions. Yacob had promised him that he would be free one day. Until then, he only needed the Blood in his veins to help heal the world—even if it was a world he couldn’t see.

  And Mark didn’t need to go to South Africa to be closer to Fana.

  She was with him always. She came to him if he only thought her name.

  In his dreams, she called him Johnny.

  The New Colony

  KwaZulu-Natal

  South Africa

  Their lovemaking stirred the still morning.

  She had dozed off in the woven rope hammock swinging in the balcony overlooking the mountains and valleys in every direction. At dawn, he slipped in to entwine himself with her. His touch was as fresh as his first caresses, when she had known him by another name. A new promise. So much better than a dream.

  When their bodies squirmed, she wasn’t shy with her calls. Two eagles answered her, breaking into flight. The moment brought wonder to her waking mind. Her mate in her arms, so close to the basin that had given birth to human life. The earth seemed to rumble with its history, shaking the treetops with footsteps across the vast valley, past open bushveld and acacia forests.

  She could see and feel so much more now that she was meditating properly.

  Thank you, Lord, for blessing me. Please help me bring your blessings to others.

  Her daily prayer.

  Jessica closed her eyes to feel the sun on her face. God spoke to her in the sunlight, and in the evergreen valley that spilled below them in an endless tangle toward the lush mountains that ringed the reserve. The reserve was in the heart of Elephant Country. A large herd moved slowly through the thin morning haze, at least a dozen adults and six smaller elephants in an unbroken snake toward their water hole. Once, these had been hunting grounds for Shaka Zulu and his storied warriors. Hunters were banished now.

  “Good morning, mi vida,” Dawit said to her ear.

  “Morning, baby.”

  They knew each other’s bodies and movements so well that they nestled with ease on the hammock, slipping hips and elbows free. Would it be such a bad thing to stay in a hammock all day? Maybe there were virtues to uninterrupted communion.

  An hour passed before she noticed.

  “Jess,” Dawit said, hushed. “Look.”

  His eyes were trained to the woodland. His grin could mean only one thing.

  Where?

  THERE. BY THE SCRUB TREE.

  They were sending thoughts to each other. She was learning telepathy! She couldn’t send thoughts to just anyone, but she could reach Dawit. Teka said that neither of them should be strong enough to carry the other—not without more training—but they were doing it more and more.

  Jessica saw forest canaries circling the trees.

  The birds? Jessica said.

  NO—LOWER. NOT QUITE TOUCHING THE GROUND.

  She blinked, and there they were, almost too far to see without binoculars, speeding through the scrub brush. They undulated like they were swimming, coasting on their backs, relying on their inner eyes to see for them.

  But so, so fast! Like watching lions hunt. Here and then gone, hidden in the low trees.

  Fana took Jessica’s breath away; a rare sighting of a creature nearly more myth than real. At least she had recognized Fana that time, with her hair flying behind her. Fana hadn’t been hidden in feathers or fur. Or in the empty air itself.

  “I miss her,” Jessica said.

  It was strange to miss someone who shared the grounds, whose door was only ten minutes’ walk away. Fana had come to the breakfast table with her and Dawit yesterday—Fana’s body, anyway. Fana had smiled, asked about Alex and her cousin, and smiled some more. But only a part of Fana came for breakfast every Sunday; the rest was too far to touch.

  Dawit rested his chin on Jessica’s shoulder and sighed. He might miss Fana more. He had been more of her friend, less a devil’s advocate. More accepting of her path.

  “I wish …” Jessica began, but she stopped herself. Out of respect for Fana and Michel, she left her lost wish for the past unspoken. Maybe her deepest wish was that Fana had been born without the Blood, with the chance to live a different life.

  She isn’t ours anymore, Dawit.

  SHE NEVER WAS, JESS.

  Khaldun had told her from the beginning that they would only be Fana’s shepherds. He had charged them with giving her enough love to be ready for her destiny. Had they succeeded more than they failed, or failed more than they succeeded? Some days, she still didn’t know.

  “I’m a childless mother,” Jessica said. “That’s how it feels. And I can’t tolerate what they’re doing. Infertility is cruel—taking that dream away from so many parents.”

  Dawit paused. He avoided the subject when he could, but she knew he approved of the new version of the Cleansing. Like many of his Brothers, he thought overpopulation had been ignored too long. Immortals had long memories, and they remembered different times. Most of them favored creating a smaller, healthier human population; the immortals were a unified front at last. The entire Lalibela Colony was on its way to toast the planet’s new future.

  But what gave them the right?

  “They see it as the gentlest way to regain balance,” Dawit said finally.

  “Well, I won’t stop fighting her. I know she’s sick of hearing me, if she’s listening.”

  SHE’S LISTENING, Dawit said.

  He waited, and said aloud, “We can have children.”

  He said it in a matter-of-fact way, as if they had ever discussed having more children in twenty-five years. Her pregnancy with Fana had been a surprise; they’d conceived her the night he first told her about his Blood, the end of the world as she’d known it. Now Jessica’s mind vibrated with surprise and possibilities; but mostly pain. She hoped he hadn’t expected a smile.

  “The world has enough Bloodborns,” she said.

  “Raymond isn’t.”

  Alex’s baby had been born a year ago Friday, and he didn’t even have the Blood to heal his scrapes and cuts, much less Fana’s enhanced gifts. But he’d come with his own kind of magic; he was the spitting image of their father as a boy, down to his curly hair.

  “Maybe they got lucky with Raymond,” Jessica said.

  Dawit chuckled. “I’d hardly call inheriting mortal blood lucky.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Alex had accepted the Blood Ceremony from Fana only six months before she learned that she was pregnant with Raymond, and her pregnancy had been uneventful. But Jessica and Teru had died and received the
Blood during their pregnancies, creating Fana and Michel. What if other circumstances could produce children like them? Or a percentage of all children of the Blood would be born with Fana’s gifts?

  Two Bloodborns were altering the world population like their own private game board. What would others do? Khaldun had warned of an ungovernable race.

  “If Fana gets pregnant, that baby might as well be ours,” Jessica said. “No one can raise a child while they’re staring into space.”

  It was hard to imagine Fana and Michel pulling free of each other long enough for a child, disturbing their private cocoon. Whatever Fana had given up, Michel had given up no less. They had crossed to somewhere else together, away from everyone. Michel’s father was as heartbroken over his lost son as she was for her daughter.

  “Who knows if she’ll even have a child?” Dawit shrugged. “They are the first—so much is unknown. Why should we wait for Fana?”

  He was persisting. She checked Dawit’s brown eyes, and they were earnest and unblinking. After all they had suffered as parents, did he really want to begin that journey again? Jessica would give up her Blood to undo her mistakes with her children.

  “It seems wrong that we have the choice and others won’t,” Jessica said.

  “A few others won’t,” Dawit said. “Most will. There will always be more children. You know Fana would see to that. We’re talking about us now.”

  I can ease your fear, Teka had said. The minute Jessica had first held her new nephew, she’d realized she could be a mother again. She should have known that Dawit had noticed. Pain flared deep in Jessica’s stomach.

  “I still hear them, Dawit,” she said. “My two babies screaming for their lives with those tiny voices. I don’t want to do that to a child again.”

  “We won’t.” His voice was a gentle breath. “Never again.”

  “How do we know that?”

  Faith, Dawit said. He gestured toward the South African morning. About twenty zebras had appeared near a ridge a hundred yards away, a family. For three days, they had come at the same time every morning to look for one of their missing. They looked a long time before they moved on, and they would probably be back tomorrow.