Crowned (40 page)

“Stop it,” says Dad firmly. “Honestly, Connie! You’ve just saved the gifted world – the whole world, really – and you still don’t think you’re good enough for our little university?” He touches my cheek. “You’re a smart, talented, special girl. Deal with it.”

Coming from Dad, those are powerful words. “Well…if you insist.”

He laughs.

* * *

When people die something lingers. Depending on your relationship with the deceased, this can be a comfort or a burden. In my case it’s a little of both. The ghost of the Puppetmaster is everywhere. I hear a whisper and stop to listen for his voice. I feel something tickle the back of my neck and freeze, but it’s only a mosquito, or a leaf, or my collar.

He’s gone from this world, but his energy has taken up residence in my head and refuses to leave. I dream about him. He’s wearing the old face, the friendly human one with the benevolent smile and the glasses. When I get up, in the fraction of time between dreaming and wakefulness, I forget that he’s dead. And when I remember I feel both relieved and bereft.

The newspapers have leapt on the UFO notion and the front page of the next edition of the
GC Chronicle
reads “Aliens in Africa?” The country is divided between those who maintain that witchcraft was behind the kidnappings, those who now believe it was the work of alien invaders and those who are convinced it’s a political cover-up.

In the week following the Final Battle, as my friends have dubbed it, most of my time is spent dodging reporters and telling the story repeatedly to my friends, my grandfather, the drifters, and the gifted who were trapped in the Loosening.

Ntatemogolo has been working overtime trying to help the victims deal with the loss of their gifts. The Loosening was designed to be irreversible, but I can’t help hoping that one day a solution will present itself. The idea of these people going the rest of their lives without the gifts that are their birthright is unacceptable to me. Then again, I’ve had to accept a lot of unacceptable things lately.

The drifter council has been patient, allowing us time to recuperate from the ordeal, but Temper says they’re eager to get our plans back on schedule. Ntatemogolo and I are still expected to travel to D’Kar to convince Maria to join her cell. In the meantime the council has made contact with Sangu, the other first-generation drifter, and expect to meet him soon.

Of all the Puppetmaster’s abductees, only Thuli sustained any serious injuries. The Loosening was designed to remove something that, in Thuli’s case, wasn’t there to start with. Ntatemogolo says it’s a miracle he survived at all. Kelly’s family has visited Thuli twice already. He suffered a stroke and can barely move or speak. I can’t even imagine how he’s feeling. Thuli’s been obsessed with control as long as I’ve known him, and now he can’t even get his body to do what he wants.

I quit my job at the production studio so I can devote my time to helping Ntatemogolo with the Loosening survivors. Once upon a time they came to him seeking help coping with their gifts, and now they seek help coping without them. The only abductees who haven’t come to Ntatemogolo are Henry Marshall and Jafta.

On Friday morning, exactly a week after the Final Battle, I wake up early and head to the Puppetmaster’s yard in Block 8. The place is quiet. The gate is ajar; I push it open and walk in.

I don’t sense him, but I sense something, as though his energy still hovers in the air, faint and neutral, waiting for another gifted to come and channel it. I don’t know why I came here. I guess I’m looking for closure, though what kind of closure I hope to find isn’t clear.

The gate creaks behind me. I whirl around, afraid it might be one of those damn reporters, but it’s Emily. She’s lost weight. Her face is haggard, her eyes dull. I remember that she’s lost all her borrowed powers now that her master is gone.

“Emily! Where have you been?”

“Around.” She glances around the yard. “I guess you’re proud of yourself. You finally got rid of him.”

“I would rather not have been put in that position.”

She walks around the yard, her gaze sweeping over every corner as though she hopes to find him hiding somewhere, waiting for her.

“How are you surviving on your own?” I ask. “I mean, you don’t have money or anything, do you?”

“I’m staying in his house. He kept a lot of money there.”

I stare at her. I think after being with the Puppetmaster for so long she’s forgotten that she’s just a kid. How old is she now? Fourteen? The idea of her living on her own is terrifying. She can’t protect herself any more, and Gaborone is not the idyllic little town it used to be.

“Emily, I think you should–”

“At first he wasn’t going to tell you,” she interrupts softly.

“Are you joking? He planned to keep the Loosening under wraps? How?”

She glares at me as if I’m the one in the wrong. “He knew you would find the Loosening, but he didn’t want you to know it was his fault it got out of control. The idea of making a mistake like that has haunted him. He doesn’t make mistakes. And your opinion meant so much to him.”

I swallow hard. “Because of the Ultima.”

“No.
Your
opinion. At first you were just a vessel to him, but the longer he watched you the more he started to admire you. He’d never admit it, but I know it hurt that you hated him so much. He wanted your respect. Even if you’d never like him, at least you could admire his abilities. But you can’t admire someone who screws up the most dangerous spell in history, so he didn’t want to tell you. In the end he realised it made no difference. You’d hate him no matter what.”

I’m quiet for a while, digesting this. I don’t know how to feel. “I
could
have liked him,” I confess. “If there had been no Loosening. If he hadn’t messed with my life and Rakwena’s. If he hadn’t messed with you.”

“That’s a lot of ifs.”

I sigh. “You have to go home, Emily.”

She laughs bitterly. “Home? They don’t know me any more. John was my family.”

“John is dead. Your real family thinks you’re dead, too. They love you; they mourned you! You were nothing but a tool to John.”

“I know. But at least I was useful.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

She kicks a rock. “At home I was just a kid who was in the way. They gave me money and left me alone. No one expected anything of me. They didn’t care what I did with my time. When I was under John’s power, I was
somebody
. For the first time in my life I was more than a pretty rich kid.”

I listen, realising that these are things she’s wanted to say for a long time.

“I know it was cruel to do that to my family. They didn’t pay me much attention until I wasn’t there, but I guess they loved me. But there was no way I could be dedicated to John’s mission and still live with them, and there was no way I could tell them the truth.”

“But you can’t wander around by yourself! Come stay with me.”

“Your dad would love that,” she sneers.

“He’d be happy to help,” I reply, with far more conviction than I feel.

She lapses into silence. “I’ll think about it,” she says finally.

I take a deep breath before speaking again. “John didn’t make a mistake with the Loosening.”

Her eyes narrow. “There was a flaw. The marker…”

“That wasn’t John’s fault. It was Senzo’s.”

“Rakwena’s father?” Emily’s features twist into a puzzled grimace. “How?”

“He’s the one who tripped the marker. John concealed the markers with spells that would hide them from ordinary eyes, and gifted eyes, too. But when he set the markers he had never seen a drifter. He didn’t take their lower energy levels into account.

“Senzo lived close to the flawed marker. As a child he went into that field. The concealments didn’t register his low energy; they treated him like an ungifted. He sensed that there was something in the ground and tried to dig it up with his gift. The concealments kicked in, but it was too late. His energy had tainted the marker, and the marker had tainted him. That’s how his genes mutated. That’s why he and Rakwena are different. And that’s how the marker was thrown off balance.”

She stares at me in horror. “You never told John.”

“Uh, I was kind of busy trying to keep him from turning me into a robot.”

“You should have! It would have eased his conscience!”

Conscience? John? “If he had a conscience, he would never have set those markers in the first place. Look at all the lives he destroyed!”

She shakes her head at me. In her eyes I’m the bad guy, the one who ruined everything. “He wanted to give you the world,” she whispers.

“I don’t want the world! It’s not mine to have. It’s not anybody’s.”

She turns on her heel and marches to the gate.

“Emily, hang on. Emily!”

By the time I reach the gate she’s halfway down the street. Looks like her super speed wasn’t entirely magical, after all. I turn to look into the yard. Somehow I don’t think she’ll come back here. I know I won’t. I say goodbye to the ghosts, step outside and slide the gate shut.

* * *

“Thuli doesn’t want to see you.” Kelly lifts her shoulders in a helpless shrug and bites her lip. “Sorry.”

I stand back to let her into the house and she sashays in, her high-heeled boots clicking against the floor. “Because he’s in such bad condition?” I close the door and follow her to the living room, where Lebz, Wiki and Rakwena are waiting.

Kelly peels off her jacket and waves Lebz to the other side of the sofa so she can sit beside Wiki. “He
is
in bad condition – he’s still struggling to speak properly. But it’s not that. He’s kind of…” She sighs and rolls her eyes. “Angry. Every time I mention your name he has a fit.”

“That stupid, ungrateful piece of crap,” growls Rakwena. “Connie saved his life! He does realise that, doesn’t he?”

“What can I say?” Kelly shrugs again and looks at me. “He thinks you turned the Puppetmaster against him and he holds you responsible for all his problems.”

Rakwena looks like he’s about to blow. I hurry to his side and take his hand, absorbing the little sparks that are forming on the skin. “Calm down.”

“Calm down?” he snaps. “The bastard screws up his life and he has the nerve to blame
you
?”

I lace my fingers through his. I’m not surprised by Thuli’s behaviour. He’s Thuli, after all. “It’s not like I expected a thank-you note. I just wanted to see how he’s doing.”

“Sounds like he’s doing fine,” says Wiki wryly.

“The doctors think he’ll make a full recovery.” Kelly reaches up to smooth her hair. “But I think his mental issues are incurable. He’s an even bigger ass now. You should see how he treats the nurses.”

I can imagine. Some people would be humbled by what Thuli’s been through. Some people would take a long, hard look at their lives and decide to do better. But I suppose in many ways Thuli and the Puppetmaster are the same. They’re intellectually superior to mere mortals like me, but when it comes to the important things they just don’t get it.

“You know what?” I lean into Rakwena’s side. “I’m relieved. It wasn’t going to be easy visiting Thuli in hospital, and now I don’t have to.”

“I have more news,” says Kelly, reaching into her handbag. “It’s bad.” She pulls out a copy of today’s newspaper, unfolds it and holds it up.

I gasp. The headline reads: “Kidnap Victim Commits Suicide”. Beneath it is a photo of Jafta, standing at the side of the road with his artworks on display. I reach out to take the paper. By the time I reach the middle of the article I can’t read any more; my vision’s too blurry.

Rakwena takes it from me and reads aloud. Jafta was found in the small room in Old Naledi he shared with four other young men. A length of rope, a broken beam in the roof and a chair indicated that he had initially tried to hang himself, but failed. In the end he stabbed himself in the chest. He must have died in agony.

After the first wave of sadness I feel angry. At the world, at myself, and at John, for taking away the only power Jafta knew. And then the sadness hits again. I should have tried harder to track Jafta down and get him to my grandfather. I saw his despair when he realised he had lost his gift. He was already desperate. I should have seen this coming.

But this isn’t about me. Maybe there was nothing I could have done. A part of me understands Jafta’s choice. A life without my gift would make no sense. I wouldn’t be Connie any more. I’d be a stranger. Maybe that’s how Jafta felt when he looked in the mirror. His art was good, but his gift is what made it special. With no gift and no art, he didn’t know how to function.

Rakwena’s grip on my hand tightens. “You can’t save everyone,” he whispers.

I slide my arm around his waist. “I know.”

The next headline I see, two days later, eases the sting a little. “Dead Girl Comes Home.” The wording could have been better, but I’m so thrilled to see it I’ll forgive the editor. Emily’s home. She’s claiming abduction and amnesia, an easy story to believe after everything that’s been going on, so she’s spared the trauma of explaining who exactly is buried beneath her expensive tombstone. The article says her father plans to have the body exhumed. I guess the conspiracy theorists will come out in full force when he finds an empty coffin, though by now nothing should surprise anyone.

This is Botswana. Anything’s possible.

* * *

I have one day left before me and Ntatemogolo are due to travel to D’Kar. I spend the morning with Dad, and Rakwena comes over in the afternoon. We spend most of our time in the kitchen; I’m baking cupcakes and Rakwena’s eating all the icing. We’re discussing the latest news in the Bennett household – Dad and Ntatemogolo’s first spat in over a month. Fortunately it’s not about me. It’s about the Salinger project.

“The thing with your father and grandfather is they’re too alike,” says Rakwena. “Both are very smart and always think they’re right. Your grandfather thinks your father doesn’t respect him and your father’s jealous of your relationship with your grandfather. But now that they’re both on the same page, the competition has faded. They both feel secure in their relationships with you, and it’s easier for them to bond.”