The Book of Phoenix (10 page)

“No,” I said. “They'll kill you if they see you're armed.”

The bedroom window cracked, then chunks of glass fell to the floor. Big Eye soldiers started to climb in.

“Get on the floor!” one of them yelled.

I ran in front of Kofi as he brought up his rifle.

“Leave him!” I screamed. “PLEASE! Take me! Take me!”

“GET ON THE GODDAMN FLOOR!”

“No! Get out of my HOUSE!” he screamed. “You've taken enough from me! You will NEVER have her.” Tears flew from his eyes, spittle from his lips. He turned to me, his eye twitching and blazing with warrior's blood and rage. “I won't let them take you, Okore.”

I loved Kofi. He was the gentlest man I'd ever met. Wulugu needed him more than anything. Who else had been born and raised here, educated and trained elsewhere, yet
returned
to give back? Who else?

Kofi stepped in front of me as he raised his gun. He was as tall as me. I wondered what it was that his family members could do. Maybe I had even known them. Most of the others in Tower 7 were Africans— Egyptian, Cameroonian, Kenyan, Senegalese, Nigerian, and yes, Ghanaian. Yes, maybe I knew his family. I grabbed him and shielded us both with my wings. But not before I heard what sounded like the chirp of a small bird. Kofi's blood sprinkled my face, as my wings closed around us. All went dark.

He dropped the gun. He started choking. I opened my wings a bit to give us some light. He was bleeding from his neck, his eyes staring at me in shock. Not from the fact that the Big Eye had shot him, that I know. I didn't know what they did to his family, but Kofi did not expect it to end this way for him. Not for him. His body bucked as his life blood ran over my arms, reddening my white garments. All he'd had to do was get behind me. He'd gotten in front of me, instead.

I loved him.

And now the Big Eyes had taken him, too. Just as they'd taken Saeed. They were always taking from me. Always taking the best. Of my people. Of my world. Take take TAKE!
Sssss
. I was hot, now, glowing orange. Kofi choked and gurgled weakly. He was leaving. He was in pain.

The tears evaporated on my face as they crowded around me. I looked down at Kofi, he was still staring up at me, his mouth open as he tried to speak. I shut my wings, blocking off the Red Red-Eye.

“GET OUT!” I screamed at them. “GET OUT NOW!”

I didn't wait.

I put Kofi out of his misery.

That's why I burned. I burned hot. Hotter than I'd burned the first time. I could do that. To make it quick for him.

Everything went brilliant all around me. Hues of red, orange, and smoke. Kofi was growing lighter in my arms, so I looked up. I wanted to remember him as he was. My flesh was pain. But I held my consciousness. I held Kofi in my arms. In my head I heard that song from last night about the reaper . . .

We'll be able to fly . . .

Around me, the house blew away like castles of ash in the wind. All of Kofi's life disintegrated. As I died with it, I noticed something in the space before me. There was fiery chaos everywhere, except for this strange black slit. I raised my hand. I paused, looking at my fingers, which had burned down to the bone. Bones that weren't
bone
. They were
metal
, red from the heat.

I slipped the metal bones of my hand into the pocket of blackness before me and that part of me disappeared. I brought it out, and it was there again.

Curious
, I thought.

Then I was gone.

I'm alive, again.

I am the villain in the story. Haven't you figured it out yet? Nothing good can come from unnatural bonding and creation. Only violence. I am a harbinger of violence. Watch what happens wherever I go.

The Big Eye have no idea. Below, they travel on a tanker heavy with crude oil. It's on its way to the United States; I ride the angry winds just behind it. How arrogant they are to believe that I am compliant. How naïve. I thought scientists learned from experience.

 • • • 

This second time I returned to life, I woke to the smell and sight of rich red earth. Then the stench of burned dirt.
First my Saeed
, I thought, staring blankly at the moist soil.
Now my Kofi
. I moaned as the grief of both their deaths washed over me. I kept coming back, but I could not bring them back. Not even once. They were dead. Before their times. I didn't believe in God. How could I believe in God? So this meant that they were gone. Both of them, forever.

Heat. I heard the ground below me hiss and then crackle as it smoldered. Heat. Within my body; outside of it. I grabbed handfuls of dirt and squeezed, curling my body in on itself. Heat. Nothing eased the pain.

I was in Ghana. It was a hot sunny day and I was me. I was brown, but as I stared at my skin, just beneath, I saw the hint of glow, now that glow was red. I didn't need to inspect myself this time. I knew. And I remembered everything. Saeed. Then Kofi. I tried to curl tighter and couldn't.

Click click
.

These people again.

“Don't move,” the woman's voice firmly said. Her accent was not American. Bumi. The Yoruba woman from Tower 7. How was she alive? She pushed the barrel of her gun against the back of my head and waited for me to comply. As if I were afraid of dying. Why did they always think I feared death?

“Get up,” she said in her flat voice. I turned to face her as I sat up. She now had a network of sharp light brown scars on her cheek, and her short straightened hair was streaked with grey. She wore the black uniform and there was a fist grasping lightning bolts on her left breast pocket. The symbol for the Big Eye was always stitched over their soldiers' hearts like a blindfold. She certainly couldn't see me. Not really. Even if she'd known me from when I was a baby.

I looked up. All around me was red dirt. Then the blue sky and the yellow sun. I was in a pit the size of Kofi's house. This was where his house used to be. Where on the second floor, his body had died. There were about thirty Big Eye standing around me, some more on the rim. All pointing their guns.

Slowly I stood up. Tall, naked, bathed in bright sunshine. The ones closest to me, moved steps away. I stretched my back and then my wings. In the corner of my eye, I saw shiny red gold. My feathers had changed color. I stretched my wings again and again, giving them big flaps that sent half the Big Eye running for cover. I laughed, folding them behind my back. The ones who hadn't moved away probably wanted to shoot me. But they didn't.

“There is no need for all this,” I said. But in my head I thought,
It is the calm and silent water that drowns a man
. An old Ashanti woman once said this to me as we'd angrily watched one of the Big Eye men lead a young local girl to his hotel room.

 • • • 

I gave myself over to them. No fight. No flight. They gave me a heat resistant white dress. The back was cut to accommodate my great wings. I dressed there in the pit that used to be Kofi's house.

Seven days and nights had passed. And for all seven days and nights, Big Eye soldiers were stationed in the ditch watching for me. I do not know what they saw when I came back to life. Did I simply rise from the ashes at the bottom of the pit? Did I appear cell by cell? Or did I just appear? I don't know. I never asked. I didn't care.

There had nearly been a riot when they escorted me into the Big Eye truck. In many of the American movies I watched in Tower 7, whenever terrible things happened in African towns, the Africans would flee like a pack of primitive unthinking beasts. Hooting and scrambling, their black skin powdered with dust, mindlessly stepping on jutting rocks and sharp branches with their rough bare feet.

For the first year of my life, in Tower 7, I'd wondered if I was made from inferior DNA. Then I started mixing books written by Africans about Africans into the ones I was reading. These stories were different. My time in Ghana taught me even more. So when they escorted me out of the pit and walked me at gunpoint past what used to be the hospital and was now mostly rubble, past the empty market, the mosque which still stood, and the burned bicycle shop, toward the waiting truck, I only smiled when I saw the armed crowd.

For days, the Big Eye had been watching for me and they didn't realize that there were people watching them, too. I was loved by the people of Wulugu. And I loved them. We all loved Kofi. I'd told Sarah to tell everyone to flee. But they didn't. Even Sarah stayed. They had given me another name when I arrived in Wulugu, Ghana. They named me Okore, which meant eagle. But they also knew the name I was given at birth. And they knew its meaning. So they knew to wait. The people of Wulugu had probably started gathering at the armored truck as soon as the lookouts saw me come out of the pit. Everyone was probably flashed or sent text messages.

As I came up the road, the crowd started shouting, and the Big Eye pointed their guns. “Okore! They took Dr. Kofi Annan, we will not let them take you, too!” Sarah shouted in Twi. Yes, in all the noise, I heard her.

“Phoenix Okore lives!” several men shouted.

Some women started singing a jubilant song praising Jesus.

“Leave her!” a young man shouted, a cudgel in hand. He was one of the men who sold bicycles. He wore a tattered t-shirt, old shorts and flip flops, but he looked ready to take down a dragon.

“Let her go!” roared a muscular dark-skinned man in old jeans and a dashiki, shaking a machete in the air. He was a shea nut farmer who owned several of the healthiest trees in Wulugu, including the one where I'd buried the alien seed. Several enraged men stood menacingly behind him, equally armed with machetes, knives, and probably a few guns.

All of their protests were in Twi. How did they expect the Big Eye to understand them? Or maybe they didn't care or want understanding.

Someone threw a stone at one of the soldiers. The soldier ducked. He looked at the largest group of men, bared his teeth and started raising his gun. In that instant, I had a flashback of what happened to me in Tower 7. If the Big Eye started shooting, I knew they would not stop. I met Bumi's eye. She smiled a smile that said, “Just give me a reason.”

“Please!” I shouted in English, spreading my wings wide. The deep golden red shine of them had the desired effect. Everyone quieted and stared, Big Eye and Wulugu townsfolk, alike. A soft breeze blew through the lush trees behind the old houses, beside the road.
Shhhhh.
I quickly spoke to the people. I spoke in Twi. “I don't want any more of you to die! Wulugu must survive all this!!”

I hoped that they understood
exactly
what I meant. It was too risky to say
exactly
what I wanted to say, even in Twi. The Big Eye were in Wulugu because of the alien seed, directly or indirectly. That had always been clear to me. They might have known it was here and were searching for it. Or maybe they were scouting out unique people (like Kofi's family) affected by the seed; people they'd then take to one of the American towers to “enhance.” Or maybe they merely sensed something exceptional about the shea products here—the nuts, the fruits, the unprocessed butter. That “special-ness” was because of the alien seed. The people of Wulugu may not have all known I'd replanted the seed, but they knew I'd done something there. They had to survive to
guard
it.

“You will give them a good challenge but they will wipe you all out in the end,” I said in Twi. “Save it for a better day. I will be fine.”

There was a moment where they angrily surged forward, but thankfully the Big Eye held their fire. Then the people of Wulugu who'd come ready and willing to risk their lives to defend me—mostly men, a few women, and no children—reluctantly pulled back. They let the Big Eye shove me into the truck, my wings painfully bending in the restricted space. Bumi got in and sat beside me. “Nice wings,” she said.

I looked out the window at the people who were the only family I had. The truck drove off before they could say goodbye.

 • • • 

So I agreed to return to the United States with the Big Eye. Across the ocean. However, they couldn't bring me by airplane. It was too dangerous for them, and my wings would not fit. Thus, they made a quiet deal with an oil tanker set to leave from the coast of Lagos, Nigeria, two days later. The cramped drive from Wulugu to Lagos took twenty-eight hours. Even when we stopped for breaks, I was only allowed out of the truck to relieve myself. My wings throbbed, the muscles twitching and constricting. The Big Eye didn't want people to see me and start talking. Africans like to tell stories, and stories travel and germinate. And sometimes, stories evolve into trouble.

Bumi dismissed my suggestion of wearing a burka while outside. “I've chased you to the other side of the world, all the way to my native land, how stupid do you think I am?” she asked, looking at me with cool eyes. “I know you. Stay in that truck, you will be fine.” Before, she'd have had three or four Big Eye point guns at me, but allowed me to stand in the fresh air for a few minutes. Bumi was still the short pretty Yoruba woman I'd known in Tower 7. However, now she had deep scars on her cheek, a slight limp and a state-of-the-art cybernetic arm she'd been given after the helicopter crash. She could snap my leg bones in two with that arm and wouldn't hesitate to do so if I gave her the slightest reason. She was hardened. We'd both changed so much since our days in Tower 7. I wondered if she'd been given her American citizenship yet. I didn't ask.

Nevertheless, there was one time where they allowed me out for more than relieving myself. It was in a city not far from Lagos called Ikare. We'd stopped at a mosque built by the brother of one of the local Yoruba kings. We parked in the back, and Bumi got out to talk to the lean but strong old man in the white flowing sokoto and buba. The man ignored her, came up to the vehicle, and looked in at me.

First he spoke to me in a language that I could not understand. As he spoke softly, he motioned for me to come out. I looked at Bumi for guidance.

“Go out,” she said. “He wants to see you.”

“Who is he?” I asked.

“My father.”

I frowned but slowly got out. I glanced at the mosque. It was open, and I could see the room inside. It was empty, so was the compound.

“Allah is great,” he whispered, looking over my wings.

“Allah has nothing to do with it,” Bumi muttered.

“She is Allah's will,” he said. “Come, my wives have prepared a meal for all of you.
All
of you.”

His wives would not come near me. They would not serve me, though they served the four Big Eye soldiers like servants. Bumi seemed to find this hilarious. “Mommy,” she said to one of them, laughing and placing a bowl of soup and fufu in front of me. “She won't bite.”

Her mother only shook her head and quickly left the room as the other wives did. I ate fast and then asked if I could stand outside near the car. Bumi went with me, while the others finished up and made small talk with Bumi's father.

“We can cure you,” Bumi said, as we walked to the SUV.

I chuckled. I had died, lived, crossed the ocean to Africa, fallen in love and watched that love die. I was no longer so naïve. “Cure me of what?” I asked.

She considered me, then her face hardened. “Just don't give us any trouble along the way.”

“You have my word,” I said.

She leaned against the truck and took a sip of her water. “Your word is shit to me,” she said. “When I get you to Tower 6, we will finish what we started.”

“And what exactly was it that you started?” I asked.

“Never you mind,” Bumi said.

And I didn't mind. It was warm outside and the yard was wide open. I was not flying, but I felt free, for the moment. I inhaled the dry air with my eyes closed, and I opened my wings wide. The muezzin called the afternoon prayer, so there was at least one other person on the compound. I let it wash over me with the breeze. And in that moment, I felt at peace, regardless of Bumi's ugly presence. I felt in my soul that in due time, all would be well. Life was so easy.

Then Bumi said it was time to go, and I had to climb back into the truck, folding my wings close to my body.

“Pray to Allah to keep you safe and sound,” Bumi's father said, opening the door, taking my hand and patting it.

“Or maybe you can pray for me. I never had time to learn.”

“I will,” he said. “You are a fallen angel, but you can still fly. All is not lost.”

Then Bumi shut my door and we were off.

When we got to Lagos, the Exxon representative who handled the deal took one look at me and decided he didn't want me on the tanker, despite the deal that had been made by phone. This made what I had to say much easier.

“I will fly,” I flatly proclaimed. “No ship. I will never get on any ship.” I was not resisting the Big Eye, but I'd never intended to get on that ship. I'd planned to fly my own way.

It would sail to Miami, Florida, the location of Tower 6. Bumi didn't trust me to follow, so after consulting with her superiors via portable, Bumi, herself, injected tracking nanobots into my bloodstream. These slipped into my blood cells and multiplied within the cells whenever mitosis occurred. These tiny tracking devices essentially became part of me. The Big Eye would know where I was, what my temperature was, what I had eaten. Obviously, this was an upgrade that they'd made just for me. Unlike the nanobots Mmuo had used to communicate with me in Tower 7, these nanobots wouldn't melt unless I became hotter than 6000 degrees Celsius, the approximate temperature of the center of the Earth. I was back on the grid; it was Tower 7 all over again.