The Liminal People (24 page)

I get off the train but stay on the platform until it's relatively empty. I give everyone a bright flash in their eyes with my power and then jump on the tracks. I follow the path Tamara blazed for me what seems like ages ago. Halfway there and I can feel a familiar heartbeat. She doesn't have the raw strength to move cement blocks, so Prentis had the rats burrow a nice-sized hole for her. It
is
her old apartment after all. She's got a right to be here.

When I go in I find more animals than I thought possible huddled behind, around, and under her. The rats, cats, and dogs are all remarkably quiet. The pigeons and smaller birds can't seem to help their squawking. None of them attack. All of them are quaking in fear of the big bad man. Me.

“I'm trying to send them away!” she begs. “I am. Please don't kill them. I'll do whatever you want. Please, just don't kill them.” Then she snaps. “You kill them, you better kill me first. I'll send them all, every dog, cat, insect. I'll send them all after you.” My first assessment of her was right. She's not a soldier. Trained troops don't announce winning strategies. Nordeen is right to want her. A day in his care, and she would be unbeatable.

I take a seat on the bed, unbutton the deep red peacoat my friend with the townhouse left for me. I take her in for a second. All of her. Then I speak.

“Why won't they leave?” I ask, genuinely curious.

“They . . . they know what you did to the others. They know what you want to do to me.”

I nod my head in agreement and think before I speak. “About the others, the dogs and rats when we first met. I'm sorry. I didn't know they were your friends.” One of the dogs, a pearl-eyed border collie who was silently baring his teeth, stops snarling but keeps his tail rigged in the air.

“You can leave,” Prentis offers. I'm a little confused. “I mean, if you leave, I'll leave. I'll go to a new county maybe? Like France? Is that OK? Someplace else. I won't tell about Rajesh or Alia. I swear, I can—”

“I don't want to hurt you.” The dog bares his teeth again, and the whole mass of animals trembles, pulling in even closer. I realize what an implicit threat I've made. “I won't hurt you.”

It takes Prentis a long time to ask the question we both have. “Why?”

“Me and you, little girl. We're a lot alike. No family. No friends. Not a lot of people knowing what we can really do. Those that do know want to use us, as if we were wrenches or hammers or something, you know? Me and you, we don't really know any better way. We've been used our whole lives. I don't want to speak for you, but sometimes I really believe that if I don't have someone telling me what to do, telling me what they want and need, then I wouldn't know what to do with my time.”

“Animals.” She says it just a little larger than a whisper. “The animals, what they do with their time is simple. Find food, sleep, poop, play. That's it. That's the day-to-day. I like that world. People are different.”

“Are we though, Prentis? Are we that different? Because to be honest, all I want is to take a good rest when I'm tired, let go of bad things that build up in me, and enjoy myself. That's all I want. I just never thought that was possible.”

“I didn't mean to bring Tamara into all this trouble.”

“I know. She knows. You were trapped.” She nods a little. A small dog, a black puppy with way too much baby fur, leaves her side and comes to mine. He sniffs a lot. I don't pet him. “You do that?”

“No. I mean, kind of. It's not like on the telly with the superheroes, you know? Where they, like, have all this control and the animals do what they say. These are my friends. If I've got questions, they want to know the answers. Someone's attacking me, they want to protect me.”

“So I should take this pup as you being curious about me?” She shrugs her shoulders, revealing a massive python resting behind her. “Fair enough. So let me just say this, then. I'm sorry for killing your animal friends before. I didn't realize what was going on.”

“It's all right,” she says, wiping the tears from her face. “My fault really. Putting them in harm's way and all. I had asked them to do a lot before. Most of it they didn't understand. Never asked them to go to their deaths. Didn't think they'd do it. Figured they'd run away after you did . . . whatever it was you did to them. But they kept fighting for me. Even when I told them not to. I told them all to get away from you, but they wouldn't hear it. They was all, even this lot, everyone, willing to die for me. How's a body supposed to handle that?”

I give her a completely honest shrug.

Looking around the station (turned liminal girl flop), I realize who I'm sitting in front of. All the decorations belong to Prentis. This hardened street child, this liminal one, is a typical teenage girl complete with impossible crushes and fantasy loves. “It's been a crazy week and a half for me, Prentis. Maybe you, too?”

“Heard you killed Alia.” I nod, opting out of specifics. “Rajesh, too?” She shakes when she says his name.

“Both of them are gone.”

“I understand about Alia. She wasn't all bad.”

“I know.”

“Just the runt of the litter, yeah? Didn't like always being looked down upon, is all. Tried to look out for her. Tried to be her friend. But she wasn't hearing me, always trying to fiddle with things. . . . You probably think she didn't like me, right? Wrong. She loved me, like a sister, like a mother. See, but she couldn't understand how to show it, thought it was a limitation to love somebody.”

“It was quick.” She nods. Before she asks, I tell her. “I took my time with Rajesh.” She's smiling. More animals lounge between the two of us.

“You here for me, then?” she asks. “Want me to work for you, like I did for Alia?”

“Not so much, no. I want to try something new. See if you're up for it. If not, I swear you'll be left in peace—at least by me. See, Tamara's got this idea that she and I should live together. I'd train her, give her lessons, learn her proper in case a bigger, badder Alia came around. I'm thinking if I do it for one, I could do it for two.”

She blinks more times than I thought possible . She tries to speak, coughs. Tries again.

“I killed her mum and dad.”

“No, you didn't.”

“I swear I did. Alia she said she wanted me to keep tabs on them, so I asked the rats to keep a look out for their scent and they found them and then Rajesh he blew them up. You see? I'm responsible. I couldn't, I can't look her in the eye.”

“But when she took up refuge here, the rats knew. That means you knew. But you didn't tell.”

She nods. “Penance after the car blew up. I wasn't in favor of the killings, yeah? But still, I can't . . .” Again I nod. Then I breathe deep and tell her some truth.

“I killed my brother,” I tell her. She pulls her head back slightly. “He was like us. Had powers like Tamara. I punched his head in until all I saw was red.”

“Was he a bad man?”

“Was Alia a bad girl? My brother had the same problem she did. Didn't know what to do with someone that loved them too much. Is that bad? You tell me. That's not the point. Point is I did something that I considered unforgivable. Didn't help that no one around me would forgive me, either. I never tried to make amends. I never tried to make it right. I just assumed that if I did it once, then that's what I was, that was all I was destined to be. I spent years trying to heal people, trying to make that right wrong, never realizing that's what I was doing. I don't wish that on you. I don't wish that on anyone. Did you mess up? Of course you did. And our kind tends to mess up big. My question is, when are you going to start trying to rectify your mistakes?

“Who are we to make such mistakes and ask to be forgiven?

“Someone called us liminal people. It's the best description I've heard yet. We dance the line between humans and gods. Some of us think they're too much like gods. I'd like to see what it feels like to be human. Humans have families. Maybe the ones we're born into, but how about the ones we choose?”

“She can't forgive me,” Prentis states.

“Yeah? 'Cause if she does it'll mean you'll have to be in charge of your own life? You'll have to live a human life. No more living underground. No more dumpster diving for food. If she forgives you, it means you have to enter the real world and try to make some sense of it. I know from experience, the life of a slave can be easier than the life of a human. But don't get it twisted. You can only be one or the other. A human being or a slave.” I stand, and for the first time since I put it on, I take the razor-blade necklace off.

“This is my chain, Prentis. My master made all his servants wear them to let us know how close we were to death. He likes to joke that if god is as close to you as your jugular vein, then he is even closer. Stupid joke with no humor, you know? I'm tired of being a slave, Prentis. Aren't you?”

She stands for the first time, and all the animals flow off of her like water. In her own dirty way, she's gentle and kind with them all. She can't weigh more than eighty-five pounds. Her face is pockmarked, and her dirty blond hair is oily and reeks of garbage. Her clothes are two sizes too big for her. But she smiles, and she looks glorious to me. I drop the razor and like magic I feel lighter.

I give Prentis a one hundred euro note and the address where Tamara is staying. She's cautiously optimistic entering the cab. I don't blame her. A couple of days ago this would have been a scam I would have used to deliver her to Nordeen. Now, it's a genuine act of kindness so foreign to my character I'm questioning whether I'm actually doing it. I'm about to call Tamara when her quixotic voice enters my mind. “Good job,” I feel her say. I also feel her restraint in not calling me father. I wonder whose benefit it's for. I go white milk on white sheets in my mind, before I think anymore.

My conversation with the animal girl opened a possibility so simple that it had eluded me for the past thirteen years. A possibility that, if true, makes life infinitely more complicated in the long term—but easier to manage in the short. I look up in the sky and see a beneficent alien descending on the streets of London. I think they call it the sun. I take it as a good omen, a sunny day in London.

The familiar flood of pheromones is so comforting I take a full few minutes in front of Samantha's door before I regulate my body to be as immune as possible. She opens with a grin before I'm done knocking.

I took my time getting to her neighborhood again, not out of fear, just judging all the angles on the next most important conversation I'll ever have. I watched a movie and ate a great dinner. I went to the bridge where Yasmine died and said a silent prayer to my own ambiguous gods, asking that her soul be kept safe . . . and close to Fish'n'Chips, a better husband and father than I ever managed to be. I told her to keep an eye out for me, because I might be seeing her soon. Ten times during the day and night I felt the tickle in the back of my mind—Tamara, trying to talk to me. But I sensed no urgency in her, no danger. She just wanted to know where I was. Sorry, luv, if this works out you can have me for the rest of my life, but this thing I have to do on my own.

“I'm sorry, I know it's late,” I offer as Samantha opens her door, this time in a red wrap. It's two in the morning and she's smoking that sweet smelling not-pot again.

“I welcome you into my house, Taggert.” It's a formality. As soon as I step in, she hugs me hard and blows some of that smoke into my mouth. It's a bliss-filled intoxicant ride that even my regulatory powers can't shake off. “I'm so happy you made it through your journey alive.”

“As am I. I want to thank you for what you gave me.”

“And you'd like to ask me if I'd be willing to do it again.”

“But your opinion first. If you're willing.”

“I will make tea. You will sit. Then we will speak.”

I wait until she's ready, and I lay it out for her. I don't hold anything back. Not just about the past week or so. But my entire life. From Mac to Yasmine, to London the first time, the relief work, the Mog, the trek, the Dogon, Nordeen, the Aussie, South Africa, the lie I got away with the last time I was here. What I did to Rajesh, what Tamara did to Alia, every detail I can I tell her. I trust her. I shouldn't. I don't know her. But I'm trying new things, so I end with what I consider to be the most valuable piece of information.

She listens with the patience of a priestess. Her questions are only probing in that they get me to speak more. She watches me except for when I tell her about killing the liminal children. And though she doesn't look at me, I know it's not out of judgment , but because she knows I'm unaccustomed to such honesty. All she does is listen. I respect her for it. Love her for it. I describe some of the darkest bits of my history, my soul, and her implacable face doesn't change. When I'm done she pours more chocolate tea. We drink in silence.

“I was taught a name,” she says. “It's a name in a dead tongue, and so it has power. It is the name of the first growing sentience on this planet. It is the name of the first of the old gods. It was the god that was consumed by the other gods, the god which gave them the sustenance they needed to go on creating the rest of the universe. The home of that eaten god is Earth, and it is from that god that all other deities have sprung. To say its name in the presence of some causes great pain. In others it is a source of great relief.”

“Samantha, I appreciate your religion but—”

“I've told you this before, Taggert. This is not religion, this is fact.” She rises to her knees and leans over in my ear. “I give you this name, healer, so that if you have nothing else you may call on my god to protect you.” And she says the name. Like the words Nordeen used to reduce the lion, this word is weighted. But I am not heavier for hearing it. Instead, I am aware of my own contribution to the weight of the world. I want to speak it.