I came back.
Mind.
Wings.
And other flesh.
Under the blue sky. In the city.
This time it is different. I will be different. I am different. I was different. You must know that by now. You’ve watched me, heard me. I speak my life into existence with each expressed breath I take. I tell you a story within which are more stories. Universes within universes. We are all spinning like small suns. I am like my own sun.
I could feel my lips. “Praise Ani,” I breathed, for Mmuo’s story was on the tip of my mind when I finally found I could speak. Mmuo laughed loudly. I blinked as I looked at him. It was the first time I’d ever seen him wearing clothes. He wore white pants, leather sandals, and a beaded necklace. This was a lot for a man who never wore clothes at all. He looked different.
“What is Ani?” Saeed asked, frowning, as he grasped my hand. He must have wondered if I’d lost my mind.
“She’s the goddess of the land,” Mmuo said. “I spoke of her to Phoenix while she was recovering. I guess Phoenix heard me.” He looked at me knowingly. “Good.”
“She’s the sister of the Author of All Things,” I said to Saeed. Then I smiled. I was weak but I felt so good. The air was fresh and I inhaled it deeply.
Saeed helped me up. My muscles worked and my skin prickled, absorbing the sunshine. Mmuo averted his eyes from my nakedness. Saeed didn’t. His eyes swept from my body to my wings. “When they made you,” he whispered. “Something good was touching their minds.”
I smiled, basking in his gaze.
“When they made you, planets must have aligned,” he said. “When they made you, they made one of a kind.”
Saeed, always the artist. Maybe he’d draw me next. I looked up, through the trees, at the sun. I shut my eyes and was happy. Absolutely, completely happy.
Saeed gave me a small jar of yellow raw shea butter. “Thank you,” I whispered. I coated my skin with it, the nutty smell reminding me simultaneously of my happier days in Tower 7 and my happiest days in Wulugu, Ghana. The dress Saeed gave me was yellow and the back was open for my wings. It wasn’t heat resistant. It fit perfectly. Then he handed me the black burka. I looked at it, perturbed, as I stood tall in my dress. Then I looked back at the sun, and then back at it. Thick, black, rough. I put it on. I was the veiled hunchback, again. This time on a different continent. But I had plans. We had plans. The first was to get out of there before the Big Eye spotted us.
Mmuo reluctantly shrugged a t-shirt over his lean muscular chest. “We leave these walls and enter barbarism,” he said.
• • •
It was broad daylight and I could see the tall tall buildings clearly. We had to walk several blocks to get to Mmuo’s car and as we walked, I held Saeed’s hand and gazed up. The palm, iroko, and ebony trees that grew between the buildings reminded me of Ghana. In Ghana, men would climb the palm trees to tap palm wine. Here, they pruned the palm trees until only the top had the bushy leaves. I could never see this from the top of Tower 7, and when I was running I didn’t care. Now, I had to smile. The trees looked naked.
Beyond the trees loomed the tallest human-made structures I’d ever seen, aside from The Backbone. At first, I clung to Saeed and listened hard for the sound of walls crumbling and buckling. I’d seen Tower 7 and the Axis fall. It was more than easy for me to imagine these ones doing the same. When I realized the appearance of the buildings falling was just an illusion created by the sheer height of them, I began to relax and enjoy their enormity.
The buildings flashed and chattered even in the daylight with commercials, TV shows, the latest news. One building was covered with a giant screen that only showed a little girl smiling and smiling. As we passed it, the girl puckered her lips. People around us exclaimed and started moving quicker. Some laughed, two women yelped and started running, covering their heads with their briefcases. I found out why moments later when a spray of mist burst from the mouth, dampening everyone. We were right in the middle of it all.
Mmuo loudly sucked his teeth. “These people dey craze,” he muttered. “Waste of solar power.”
The mist felt wonderful in the heat. It blew beneath my burka and dress, cooling my entire body. I giggled, delighted. It was all so silly. It was nice to see a lighter side of the city for once.
The sidewalks were packed with people coming and going, Asians, Africans, blended, Hispanics, Muslims, Hassidic Jews, Hindus, suited businessmen, a blind woman carrying a very loud navigation companion. Americans and visitors. All kinds of people who unknowingly accepted the existence of the towers. Who reaped the fruits of the tower’s callous labor. Few of them looked twice at me.
They talked on their portables. They drove in solar and hybrid vehicles. They sat in office buildings draped with eco-clean vines. I wondered how many of these people were “mild speciMen,” speciMen who turned out too normal to work with; these people were released and begrudgingly accepted and integrated into American society. And who in amongst these people was a “quiet clone”, always hiding his or her belly-button-less waist? Who had a cybernetic limb that had replaced one damaged by an accident or by a birth defect?
“It’s going to be a tight fit,” Saeed said when we got to Mmuo’s car.
I turned to the side, squeezing in. My second time in a car was an even tighter fit than my first time, when I’d gotten into Sarah’s car in Ghana and fled my soon to explode home. My wings were bent in such an excruciatingly awkward position that I hissed with pain. The seats were not made for a Phoenix. But it was the only way to get away from the area without the Big Eye seeing me. I decided this would be the last time I got in a car. It didn’t turn out to be true, but the sentiment certainly was.