crawls toward her. The limbs slide as she puts her weight on them. Some of them feel squishier. She can’t see the bodies clearly. All she can see is Adesina-who is still curled in a ball, but rocking back and forth. Her hand trembles as she reaches out and touches Adesina’s temple. And as soon as she touches, images explode in her mind.
Adesina runs through the forest. The leopards give chase. Clothes tear on branches and thorns.
She’s in a village. There are ugly little houses made of concrete blocks and corrugated tin roofs, painted in bright colors: yellow, blue, and green. Children play in the unpaved street, their feet kick up puffs of dirt that hover in the still air.
Michelle sees Adesina among them. She’s wearing the same blue-and-white checkered dress. Her feet are bare. Her hair is braided, and someone has wrapped the braids around her head so they look like a crown.
The children are laughing. In the shaded doorways of the houses, women gossip while they watch the kids. It’s warm and the air smells heavy with rain.
Bursting into the town come a trio of jeeps. Each has three men riding in it. The men are armed and shots ring out. The women grab the children and cover them with their bodies. Michelle wants to bubble-wants to do something to help. But she knows she would be useless. This memory is stuck in Adesina’s head.
The men are dressed in green camouflage uniforms. Their heads are shaved and some of them wear leopard-skin fezzes. Machine guns are slung over their shoulders. They train the weapons on the women and children, then start shouting orders in French. Michelle understands about half of what they’re saying. She tries not to feel afraid-it’s difficult. She’s in the well of Adesina’s fear.
Michelle looks around the village, trying not to let the fear distract her. There are tires piled up at one end of the street. A couple of thick-wheeled bicycles lean against the tires. No help there.
The guns go off again. The women and children moan and cry. Michelle looks at the soldiers. Some have their guns pointed in the air. The rest have their guns trained on the villagers.
And then she knows it’s time to go. It doesn’t matter what happens next in the dream or vision or memory or whatever this is.
Adesina woke Michelle from her coma. And now it’s time for Michelle to repay the favor. But she can’t do it trapped in her fat and afraid to use her power.
Kawi
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
“Wally.” Jerusha Nudged him. “We’re here.”
Wally jerked awake, and accidentally scratched the window glass with his ear. Nuts. He looked around, ready to apologize to that nice fella from the embassy, but he had already stepped out of the car. Jerusha looked like she was trying not to laugh. They shared a look and shrugged at each other.
Wally followed Jerusha from the cool, air-conditioned cocoon of the embassy limousine into an equatorial steam bath. He’d first felt it when they landed, but he’d been so comfortable dozing in the car that he’d almost forgotten where he was.
When he and his brother were kids, before his card turned, one of Wally’s favorite things was visiting their aunt Karen and uncle Bert up in Ely, Minnesota. Bert had built a sauna into their basement. A proper sauna, lined with spruce, and an exterior door that opened just a few dozen feet from their dock. Wally loved the smell of the spruce, the tingle in his nose, the sizzle of the stones.
He and his brother used to take turns pouring water on the stones, until the sauna was so steamy it hurt to breathe. They’d stoop lower and lower as the steam rose, until it was unbearable. Then they’d dare each other to run down and dive in the lake in their skivvies. It wasn’t cold at all, even in October and November, if you were fast enough. On a crisp, still night you could see the steam rising from your skin when you stepped out of the sauna.
Tanzania in December felt a little bit like that sauna. Except you couldn’t control the temperature, and saying “uncle” didn’t make your brother stop pouring water on the stones. Wally didn’t handle humidity as well as he had before his card turned.
It was the rainy season here. The shorter of two, Jerusha said. That meant it was ninety degrees every day, with three inches of rain in both November and December.
They were parked on a patch of hard-packed red earth, along a road bounded by dense greenery on both sides. Wally made a mental note to ask Jerusha about the trees; everything was so green. Across the road, a handful of temporary huts clustered around a large, open-ended corrugated steel Quonset hut. Part wood, part metal, the huts looked like they’d gone up quickly and wouldn’t be around very long. Wally could just make out an airplane in the shadows of the Quonset, and what might have been a landing strip in a clearing through the trees. They weren’t too far from the ocean; Wally could smell it, on the strongest gusts. Mostly, though, he smelled humidity and what might have been the stink of burning garbage.
A trio of kids ran past them, laughing and shouting to each other. They were kicking a ball down the street. It appeared to be a crushed-up plastic water bottle wrapped with tape. Wally wondered what they were saying, if their game had any rules, and if Lucien played something similar.
“Uh, Jerusha?” said Wally. “Where’s here?”
She said, “I think this is a town called Kawi. We’re just a few miles north of the embassy. There’s a bush pilot here who can fly us to Lake Tanganyika.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I told him”-she nodded her head in the direction of the aide, who was knocking on a door next to the hangar across the street-“that we’re on Committee business, meeting somebody at the lake. If anybody asks, I sort of implied that it’s all very hush-hush. So just play along and we should be fine.”
“Okeydokey. That sounds real good,” he said. “Way to go, Jerusha!” He gave her a thumbs-up and a smile.
She didn’t respond. Instead, she stared at his shoulder. Her eyebrows rose. “Wally? Did you know you’re… rusting?”
Wally craned his neck to peer over his shoulder. Little splotches of orange dusted his skin. Sure, it was wet here, but he’d hoped this wouldn’t have started quite so fast. “A www, heck.”
“Does that hurt?”
Huh. Nobody had ever asked him that before.
“Nah,” said Wally. “Not when it’s just on the surface like that.” He fumbled through his pockets until he found some steel wool. A few quick rubs turned the splotches into a red dust. The slightest of breezes carried it away.
Jerusha still looked upset. She was frowning. “Does that happen a lot?”
“Sometimes. When it’s humid outside.”
“Humid? We’re heading into the jungle. During the rainy season.”
“Don’t worry. I got lots of S.O. S pads with me.”
Jerusha frowned, looking doubtful. She started to say something, but stopped when the sound of raised voices echoed across the street.
They turned. The aide was talking to a fellow with grey skin, dark little eyes deep in his round face, and a snout topped with a thick horn. He was a big guy, too, built like a fire hydrant. Wally remembered the Living Gods, jokers that had taken the forms of the gods of ancient Egypt. Kinda like the way Wally had grown up around open- pit iron mines and ended up with iron skin. This fella seemed to be something similar, only here in Africa his jokerism had taken the form of a rhinoceros.
The aide waved Jerusha and Wally over. They joined him. To the rhino guy, he said, “Here they are. Jerusha Carter and Wally Gunderson.” To Wally and Jerusha, he said, “This is Denys Finch. He’s the pilot I mentioned.”
“Best pilot in the bush,” said Finch.
Wally held out his hand. “Pleased to meetcha, guy.”
Finch looked him up and down, his stubby little ears twitching like crazy. He did the same to Jerusha, then looked at the aide again. “Oh, no,” he said. “Not this time. I’ve had it with your bloody tourists.”
The aide looked embarrassed. “Not tourists, Mr. Finch. I told you, they’re here on business for the Committee. The United Nations.”
“Yeah, you and your so-called dignitaries.” Finch spat in the dirt. “Comin’ all the way to Tanzania, askin’ me to fly them around. ‘Ooh, Mr. Finch, show us Kilimanjaro. Ooh, Mr. Finch, show us the lakes, show us elephants and hippos and the real bloody Africa so we can take a few holiday snaps before going home to brag about our safari
