The Book of Phoenix

by Nnedi Okorafor

  The tears of anticipated pain blurred my vision. When the pain didn’t come, they ran down my cheeks and I was looking at Sarah. She was wearing jeans and a t-shirt. Her nose was bleeding, the side of her face scratched and swollen. For once, she wore no make-up, and she looked younger than her 16 years, even with the wounds.

  “Sarah!? What . . . ?”

  “I’m sorry!” she screamed and then grabbed me in a hug. Every part of me tensed. Not since the first day here, when I planted the alien seed, had I hugged anyone. To allow a hug was to allow the person to feel my hump and understand that maybe it was not a hump at all. But Sarah already knew this. She hugged me tightly, pressing my wings. So frail in my arms, she was only a child.

  I looked over her shoulder. A helicopter was disappearing over the palm treetops. Its chopping sound was fading. Was it landing nearby? Moving farther away? Where was it going? Regardless, I knew it was not gone. The Big Eye never just left.

  Sarah took my hand, tears falling from her eyes as she looked at me. “I couldn’t help it!”

  “Help what?”

  “They beat me, Okore!” she said. “My mother beat me.” She took a deep breath to calm herself. “They found him yesterday. He’s dead. I was the last person people saw him with, so they came to my house. My mother, she was so angry that I’d been with one of those men. She beat me until I told them what happened.” Horror passed over her face. “I’ve betrayed you! Oh my God, I have betrayed God’s messenger!”

  She burst out crying. And I hugged her to me again. More than a small part of me had known that this would be the last night I spent in the comfort of my home. “I’m not God’s messenger,” I said. I felt so tired. The Big Eye knew who I was, what I was, and I had killed another of their own. I might as well have sat down right there in the doorway and waited for them to come and kill me. I had flown across the planet, yet here I was again.

  “You are one of God’s messengers,” she said, her voice muffled as she pressed her face to my chest. She pulled back and took my hand. “Please,” Sarah said. “They’re coming for you. Come!”

  She pointed to the car she’d driven to my home. It looked over thirty years old, at least the body did. All the doors were different colors from different cars.

  “Come come come!” she screeched, dragging me toward the car. “No time for anything. They are on their way right now!”

  No shoes, no money, no nothing. I was in my white nightgown and burka. I could have resisted Sarah. I was certainly stronger than she. But in me, no matter how hopeless I feel, is the instinct to survive.

  I squeezed into the back seat, my wings painfully pressed against the cushions. The leather had worn away, leaving a layer of foam and wires. There was a fire extinguisher mounted to the passenger seat door. To make matters worse, the floor of the vehicle was nonexistent, eaten away from rust and age. It was my first time in a car, but I didn’t have time to really consider this fact.

  “Lie down!” she said.

  Just as I lay myself sideways on the seat, pressing my wings more tightly against my back, I heard the sound of vehicles pulling up.

  “She’s not home!” I heard Sarah yell to someone as we drove off. Still I heard the sound of car or truck doors opening and shutting. Then we were on the road. As I lay there, I stared down at the road through the floor. The smell of exhaust filled the car. I hated that smell. It was the smell of self-inflicted death.

  “Good,” Sarah said, looking in the rearview mirror. “They’re not following. Not yet. My God, that was scary. What are they . . .”

  GBOOM!

  “Oh my God,” she moaned, staring into the rearview mirror.

  We were moving away from it, but the car was not very fast. And it had no windows and parts of the floor were gone. The sound was loud and clear.

  We were both quiet. I didn’t want to get up and see what they had done to the only home I had ever had. I had no family. I was created in a lab. I was an ABO, an ‘accelerated biological organism.’ My body had stopped accelerating at what looked like the age of forty, yet I was only about three years old. I had no history. That house was all I had. I whimpered, curled into a ball, and shut my eyes tightly.

  “Take me to Kofi’s house,” I whispered.

  His home was the last one in the village. We were already heading in that direction.

  • • •

  Kofi was standing outside his house when we pulled up. He’d heard the explosion, too, along with everyone in the area. Crowds of people were heading up the road, toward where my house used to be.

  “Okore! Sarah!” he said running up to the car when he saw us. He spoke in Twi, which he normally didn’t do. “What’s going on? I was about to go . . .” He looked into my eyes. He always looked into my eyes first.

  “I’ll tell you when we get inside,” I said, also in Twi.

  “All right,” he said, frowning and looking at my bare feet.

  “Tell everyone to leave town for a few days,” I told Sarah. “There’s going to be trouble.”

  She nodded. I took her hand through the window. “This was not your fault,” I said. “Be glad I was there last night to save you. Make better choices from now on.”

  “I will,” she said, tears coming to her eyes again.

  For a moment we all just stood there. Sarah in her car, me beside her car, Kofi behind me. We were frozen in time, in that tight instant of intense tension. There were powerful events just ahead of us and we all knew it. I squeezed her hand tighter then leaned forward and took her face, “It. Wasn’t. Your. Fault,” I said. “You hear me?”

  She started sobbing.

  “Go, Sarah,” I said.

  Again, she went. As she slowly drove off, I stood with Kofi.

  “Let’s go inside,” I said. “I have something to show you.”

  • • •

  I took him to the center of his small house. The living room. The ceilings were highest here.

  “Sit down,” I said.

  He sat down. Outside, I could hear the chopper, again.

  “Last night I killed a man,” I told Kofi.

  “What?”

  “One of the white men, the Red Red-Eye,” I quickly said. “He was raping Sarah. I shoved him off her.” I shut my eyes. I could feel Kofi staring at me, unsure of what to say. I opened my eyes. “But then he came at me again when he saw me. I slapped him away.” I met Kofi’s eyes and looked away. “I am stronger than I look. And I was angry.”

  “What do you mean, ‘When he saw you’?” he whispered.

  “I was not wearing my burka,” I said. Then I threw it off.

  You must know something about Kofi. He’d been born and raised in Wulugu. Like everyone else, he’d used the shea butter, called nkutu, for his skin during the dry Harmattan season. And he knew there was something in the soil that the trees absorbed. He knew that that something was in him. He knew that at night sometimes certain trees glowed a soft green. He had seen plants grow faster than normal, even before I came. He had seen nature’s mysteries and accepted them. And Kofi was a medical doctor. So he also understood that these mysteries were complex.

  I stretched my wings out, filling the room.

  “Okore,” he whispered. Then he said it in English. “Eagle.”

  “My name is Phoenix. That is what the Big Eye named me in Tower 7,” I said as he stepped forward and stared up at my wings.

  “In America?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is what you have been hiding?”

  “Yes.”

  He blinked and then reached into his pocket and brought out his portable.

  “Can I?” he asked.

  A story is not a story until it is told. I’ve always believed that a story is best told in many ways. “Will you stream it live?”

  “Do you want me to?”
r />   “Yes.”

  He pressed the on button and there was a soft winding sound and the top slid open and a camera lens came out. The electronic eye looked at me. “I’m Phoenix Okore,” I said to it. “And I am in Wulugu, Ghana.” I didn’t know the year or the date. Something in me had stopped keeping track since my rebirth.

  He turned it to himself, “I am Kofi Atta Annan, M.D. We are in my home and all that you see is happening now. It is real. She is real.”

  Kofi stepped around me. “May I touch them?”

  I hesitated.

  “Phoenix, I won’t . . .”

  “Yes,” I said. “You can touch them.”

  I felt him run the edge of his hand between my shoulder blades. He pressed the powerful muscles there. He kneaded them with his fingertips and slowly ran his hand over the feathers of the long bones. He was gentle. The hands of a good doctor.

  “So then, how old are you?” he asked running his fingers through the longer feathers of my left wing. My wings were sensitive, and I was beginning to feel blood rush into their flesh. I began to sweat. He touched the tip of my left wing and I shuddered.

  “Does that hurt?” he asked. But he laughed as he said it. “Should I stop?”

  “No,” I said.

  He moved to my right wing. “They are so natural. These belong on you. You’re a work of art.”

  “There is nothing natural about me.”

  “It doesn’t matter where or how you were made. You are God’s creature.”

  “I’m an ABO from Tower 7, an accelerated biological organism,” I said. “I am only three years old. I was supposed to be a weapon. My name suits me, Kofi.”

  “But then you obviously escaped,” he said. “You have died and risen, then?”

  “Yes.”

  He poked a finger between my feathers to see the skin. It felt like heaven. “You are brown even beneath the wings. Is your blood . . .”

  I laughed. “Yes, it is red.”

  “Can you have children?” he asked. “Do you have a womb? Can an immortal bear life?” He spoke the question more to his portable than to me.

  “I think I am too old,” I said.

  He chuckled to himself. “He saw you and attacked you because you could not possibly be an angel from God. You are African.” He laughed harder.

  When he came to face me, he turned his portable off and put it in his pocket. There were beads of sweat on my forehead, and my heart was beating faster than a small bird’s. I know what you are thinking. Yes, we needed to leave, but this moment felt more important. I had never had anyone inspect me. Not with love. He said I was God’s creature. I didn’t believe in God, but those words were like magic to me. They said that I, too, was an earthling. That I belonged here. I belonged.

  Every part of my body was heated and my thin nightgown hid none of it. My nipples poked right through and I was glowing. Not green, however. Beneath the rich brown of my skin, I was a soft orange red like the rising sun or the inside of a sweet mango.

  “Chali,” he said. “You are lovely.”

  The front door burst open. Through the doorway in the living room, I could see the Big Eye had black uniforms and guns. They were looking around, spreading to all the rooms, screaming. “Anyone in the house, Get DOWN, GET ON THE FLOOR NOW!!” They hadn’t seen us yet. With the door open, the sound of the chopper was clear. We’d both been hearing the sound of the chopper since I arrived. We’d both ignored it.

  Kofi grabbed my hand as I grabbed his. We turned just as we heard the back door bursting open in the kitchen, too.

  “Step away,” I told Kofi. “They want me, not you.”

  “No.”

  He met my eyes. We ran up the stairs to his bedroom. He shut and locked the door just as someone banged on it. I looked at the window. I could carry him. We could have flown away, but there was a chopper hovering over the house. They had me, again. We pushed the bed in front of the door.

  “Kofi, you don’t know what these people are capable of.”

  “YES, I do!” he snapped. There was a bang at the door, as they tried to beat it down. He looked at me with wild eyes. “They took my family! My parents, my sister! Maybe they took them to one of the towers, maybe even your Tower 7.”

  Bang!

  “They were like you, I think. Different. Possibilities,” he said. “I wasn’t, so they left me.” He ran to his closet and threw it open. He brought out a rifle.

  “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.

  CHAPTER 8

  No Fight, No Flight

  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.