My Soul to Take (51 page)

There was no healing in Fana’s recitation—only hunger. Only Shadows.

I’m going to slit your throat, Michel
, Dawit taunted him.
Just as I slit your father’s. And then I’ll shovel your pieces in the furnace. Millions may die, but so will you. So will Fana
.

Yes!
Teka encouraged him.
I MIGHT HAVE FELT HIM STIR
.

The bees beat the rooftop like a hurricane.

Fana’s voice went on. “All peoples of the world shall face a time of Cleansing,” she said. “The Cleansing will bring weeping, but it will bring feasts and rejoicing. The Cleansing will bring sorrow, and it will bring new life. During the Cleansing, husbands will cling to their wives, and mothers will sit vigil over their children. Without Cleansing, wars shall flourish. The air will be choked with smoke. The sun will scorch the earth like fire. The oceans will turn to poison. The very world itself will die.”

What about Fana?
Dawit asked Teka.

SHE APPEARS RIGHT BEFORE ME, DAWIT, YET HER MIND IS QUIET
.

Fana would not fight her way back in time. Fana might have been erased from herself.

If only he had a gun! Even a mortal’s gun would be faster than his blades. To reach Michel and Fana, he would need to be virtually two places at once. He could envision a dozen swift strategies with Berhanu and Fasilidas by his side, even if Fana flew like a peregrine falcon across the ceiling. Teka was a mighty telepath, Khaldun’s most loyal student and Fana’s finest teacher, but he was an untested warrior.

I WILL DO WHAT I CAN, DAWIT
, Teka said.
I WILL GO TO MICHEL
.

They both knew that Teka couldn’t bear to destroy Fana, even if he could reach her first.

“Today,” Fana’s voice boomed, “you will be both witnesses and participants …”

Dawit received an excited pulse from Teka, a nudge to look to his left. All he saw, at first, was a sea of robes. Then an olive-skinned young man wearing a beard leaped to his vision.

Mahmoud was within ten yards of Michel, then gone. Dawit knew Mahmoud’s stealthy approach well. He planned to strike.

Tell him to wait!
Dawit told Teka. Mahmoud was too far out of his range for a pulse.

Mahmoud straightened, suddenly still, and turned over his shoulder to meet Dawit’s eyes. Teka had already sent his message, and helped Mahmoud find them.

Dawit’s oldest friend inclined his head in a joyless, respectful bow.

Mahmoud would wait. For now.

Jessica nearly drowned in conflicting emotions when she saw Mahmoud bow to Dawit. She’d almost forgotten how much she despised him.

Her terrible burden with Dawit felt heavier, more inevitable, with Mahmoud so close to Fana. Mahmoud did not love Fana. He would celebrate to see her die.

“Where are you, Michel?”
Jessica suddenly heard herself scream out in the open when she’d only been trying to send him a thought.
“Are you too weak to protect your new wife?” Yes, Lord, let him come
, Jessica prayed.
Let him come in a rage and strike us all down, but let him save Fana. Give Fana time to bring him to her Light
.

Appalled followers grumbled and shouted at Jessica. She saw a commotion in the crowd as Sanctus Cruor guards made their way toward her to remove her.

Phoenix looked at Jessica with wide, startled eyes. Her song faded on her lips.

“Keep singing to her,” Jessica told Phoenix. “Stay close to Teka’s mask.”

Dawit’s eyes on her were as childlike as Phoenix’s.
JESSICA, NO
—

Jessica pushed through the crowd in front of her, struggling to make it as close as she could to Fana, to stand beneath her daughter’s shadow. Jessica moved only ten feet. Rough hands clawed at her arms, her robe, her hair, nearly staggering her from her feet. A man’s elbow knocked Jessica’s jaw so hard that her vision went white, and she would have fallen if not for the bodies smothering her.

“Do not touch her,” Fana’s voice said, somehow gentle despite trembling the floors.

As quickly as she’d been surrounded, Jessica was alone, penned into a wide, empty circle. Jessica’s heart pounded. Which Fana was floating above her? The gentleness in Fana’s voice brought hopeful tears to Jessica’s eyes.

“Fana?” she whispered. “Sweet baby?”

IT IS NOT FANA, DEAR JESSICA
, Teka’s voice said sadly in her ear.

Jessica glanced at Dawit, who seemed ready to spring to her. She shook her head
no
, and his face withered … but he stayed back, his eyes expecting the worst.

No one could say Jessica hadn’t known love.

The room swayed, and Jessica let out an involuntary gasp, her fingers trying to grab something to hold; fistfuls of air. She waved her arms for balance and found none.

Her feet weren’t on the floor!

The room grew bigger beneath Jessica as she floated higher. She braced for a wild swing, but she hovered until she was ten feet above where she had stood. Jessica hadn’t realized she had such a deep, primal fear of heights until her limbs flailed in panic.

Jessica looked up, hoping to see Fana’s face, but Fana was too far behind her. She whipped her head around to search for her. Instead, she felt a wave of dizziness as she saw the crowd staring at her, moony faces upturned.

I CAN EASE YOUR FEAR
, Teka said.

“I’m not afraid of you!”
Jessica shouted, her answer to Teka. Almost the truth.

I LOVE YOU, JESS
, Dawit said, faint but unmistakable. Jessica
didn’t have to touch the warm dribbling from her nose and ears. She knew her blood from the smell.

I have faith in you, Fana
, Jessica said, a whisper from her mind.
I know it isn’t you
.

Fana’s voice flowed like wind through the Cleansing Hall.

“I love humankind so much,” the Fana-thing said, “that I sacrifice my mother.”

T
he world was all tumbling and mud, until she heard the Words.

“I have faith in you, Fana.”

She stuck out her hand, or where she imagined a hand should be, and caught something. It was rough, and would have scraped her if she’d had skin, but she held on tightly. A tree root in the mud! Freed from the mud’s tumbling, she hung on to work on the puzzle of the Words.

I have faith in you, Fana
. She remembered the precise order.

Who was the “I”? What was faith? Who was Fana?

Asking the questions exhilarated her. Shaped her.

Who was the “I”?

She
was the “I.”

What was faith? (Knowing?)

Who was Fana?

The last question niggled at her. She was certain she had known, once.

Who was Fana?

She
was Fana.

She had a name.

Her name meant Light.

When Light remembered her name, the Shadows parted.

Michel, where are you? Please wake up
.

Years seemed to have passed, but it might have been only minutes.

Fana swam to the surface of the mud, gasping at the thin sheen
of air. She spit the syrupy sweetness from her mouth, looking for flickers of Michel in the dark hallways.

Heal, Michel. My mother is dying!

She heard something rolling slowly back and forth below her, the length of a room. Every sound was a clue. She was too far above the surface of him, looking for him in his reflections. She had to dive back down.

Fana took her mother’s Words to guide her, so that she could remember herself again.

I have faith in you, Fana
.

Fana dived again, this time without pausing or fighting. The Shadows washed away some of her remembering, but she knew she was looking for Michel.

The muddy waters were rushing now, gaining speed, moving toward something larger, a place too deep to swim. The waters tried to carry her, so she swam the way her teacher had told her, riding the current for a while instead of swimming against it. When the water felt no resistance from her, the current let her go.

Fana swam the way she chose again. When she got lost, she followed the singing.

The waters brought her to a dreary office building, flooded nearly to the ceiling in mud. Ruined light fixtures above her dripped in Shadows. She saw an open door, the first open door she’d found, so she floated inside with the tide of clouded water. The office was flooded, too. Rows of submerged file cabinets stood in regimented lines, only the top drawers dry.

But the drawers were locked.
TERU
, the typed labels read.

She had been in this office before! Had she found Michel’s thoughtstreams?

He had opened one drawer for her.

Fana heard a young child’s laughter. She swam in the mud, following the laughter, until she found a file cabinet in a corner against the far wall. The top drawer was cracked open exactly the way Michel had left it for her.
MAMA
, the label said in crayon.

The child’s voice was a very young boy’s. His laughter giggled from the rusted drawer.

Fana pulled open the drawer and found a soccer ball. Michel’s mortal friend. (
Nino’s ball?
) When she touched it, the waters lurched, rising to Fana’s chin. Fana tossed the soccer ball behind her and reached deeper into the drawer before it could flood with the mud.

This time, she found a bright, shiny red ball. A younger child’s.

Fana held the ball between her hands, remembering how a ball felt when you were three. She closed her eyes, savoring the joy of it.

When Fana opened her eyes, she was on her feet, on solid ground, in a large gray living room. Piano, sofas, display tables with statues. Tall windows stood in rows across the walls, but the windows were covered in thick curtains, as if the house had something to hide.

Not a house—a
castle
, in Tuscany. A grand, fading Turkish rug spread from one side of the room to the other; a soft ocean for play in a house of cold, uncomfortable floors.

A
bounce-bounce-bounce
sound issued from the stairwell behind her, and the shiny red ball she’d dropped fell impossibly slowly behind her, until the last bounce rolled it to her feet.

A young boy near her squealed with laughter.

“Dammi la palla!”
the boy called. Give me the ball.

The child was sitting alone across the rug, on patiently folded knees. He was such a well-behaved child. All the staff marveled at it, especially his nanny.

A nest of black curls spilled across his brow. In the winter, his skin was the color of honey. In the summer, he turned nearly as brown as his mother.

“Dammi la palla, Mama!”
Michel said, his baby teeth shining at her.

He laughed when she picked up the ball. She sat on folded knees across from him. She tested her fingers on the ball’s firmness, and pushed.

The ball rolled the length of the floor, until Michel caught it on the other side. As the ball rolled toward him, the room began to lose its light. He squealed, rolling on the floor with delight.
Life rolls in cycles of good and bad
, Gramma Bea said in her ear.

“Mama’s turn now,” Fana said. “Roll it back, Michel.”

Michel pushed, firm and sure, and the ball came back to Fana.
She held it tightly. Sunlight peeked above the curtains, brightening the room, and Fana saw her face in the standing mirror beside her. She was wearing her favorite white scarf, and she looked like Teru’s twin.

But she was Fana.

In her reflection, Fana noticed two shapes on her lap: toys! One was a handmade rag doll with three heads, a gift from children who loved her and relied on her. The other was a small plastic container of jumping beans. The worms inside the beans jumped when they were too warm, because they liked to sleep. They were freed of their beans only when they became moths, and then they could fly! But they flew only for a few days before they died.

When Fana saw her face in the mirror again, she was round and fat, too. Chipmunk cheeks! She grinned at herself, glad to have her baby teeth back.

“I want to play with you,” Fana said, “but we have to go somewhere, Michel.”

Michel beckoned to her, impatience sagging his chubby cheeks.
“Per favore, Fana! Dammi la palla!”

“Only one more time,” she said, and rolled the ball back to him.

They played for an instant; a day, a night, a day, a night.

She had found Michel’s hiding place from the Shadows.

D
awit’s world fell away when the Cleansing began, everything wrong in a breath.

The terrible stream of Jessica’s life dripping to the floor ravaged his eyes. And Fana floated above her, impassive, willing her mother’s Blood to flow.

Was it all the Shadows, or was Fana angry about the wedding? Dawit didn’t know.

How could he kill any creature dressed so convincingly as his daughter? Unless Michel intervened, both he and Fana had to be destroyed, neutralized beyond simple sleep. How could he? How could he carry her to the incinerator while he trembled with sobs?

For the first time, Dawit knew that he could not trade his daughter for his wife, weighing the tragedies. Even saving Jessica could not compel him to destroy Fana before she drained her mother’s Blood. Dawit’s limbs shook with helpless frustration and horror.

But for her mission? Yes. He could.

Dawit’s knife was ready in his hand as soon as he saw the blood throughout the room, enough nosebleeds to fuel a plague. None were spared. Phoenix, Teka, and all the rest of Michel’s believers who had been so happy to envision a world made just for them shared the same fate. The Shadows were feeding from them for the Cleansing.

The virus was loose. Jessica would not be the only loss, nor a room in a single hall.

MICHEL IS AWAKE
, Teka said, just as his knife went flying toward Fana.

•   •  •

When Michel woke, at first pain made him senseless. His body was nearly dead, and Michel had never experienced the stripping of his body. He touched his face, repulsed. He wanted to flee from his skin. All of him roiled with confusion: where was he?