The bus lurched around a tight turn on the mountain road, and Fana’s father grunted at the steering wheel. The Africans were alert at the front of the bus, watching the road through dark windows. Fana’s father had said there might be soldiers in the woods. He and his friends spoke quietly to each other in their language, preparing for war.
Fana’s mother was asleep with her face against the window while a boy slept with his head on her lap. She had fought sleep, refusing to lie down, but she had earned her rest. Johnny saw her sadness on her face even while she slept. Grief was hard.
Fana and her parents might live forever, but some days felt like death anyway.
God makes a way out of no way, Johnny reminded himself. “Thank you, Lord,” Johnny whispered.
The back of the bus was lively with conversation. The closer Johnny walked to the voices, the faster his heart sped. His injury still ached—although not as much, as if it had been weeks old—but Johnny felt light-headed with excitement, not pain.
Lucas Shepard had found a scrap of legal paper, and he was scrawling Xs in a makeshift map, holding it against the window. Fana’s aunt and cousin were huddled in back, too, squeezed beside Caitlin as she watched them write, eyes attentive. The fervor Johnny felt growing between them was powerful enough to light the predawn sky.
“…our plan to wipe out AIDS,” Doc Shepard was saying. “But we’ll need a much more aggressive program. No more cherry-picking.”
His wife sat beside him, nestled beneath his arm. She was tall, like her husband, and her Afro reminded Johnny of photos he had seen of Angela Davis, back in the day. A revolutionary. “We go in strong,” Alex said, pointing to Xs on the map. “Chicago. Los Angeles. New York. Sierra Leone. Kenya. Tanzania.”
“I can be in Dar es Salaam in two days,” Jared said.
“And we rely on no one,” Caitlin said, ever cautious. “Our people are on the ground.”
Johnny felt his mind stretch to its limits, but it didn’t break. Within his lifetime—within his hearing!—he was in the company of people planning the future of the world.
Fana sat behind them in a row by herself, eyes closed, but Johnny knew she was listening because she was nodding her head. The others looked as exuberant as a Sunday-morning choir, but Fana’s face was empty. Fana licked her lips, her eyes still closed. “I’ll meet with the leaders in person. The health ministers. The presidents. Once I’m in the room with them…”
Her voice trailed off, but she didn’t have to finish. At dinner, Johnny had learned that Fana could influence anyone to do anything. Did you find a way to control him the way he controlled me? Is that why he let us go?
Johnny slid into the empty seat beside Fana. The damp, gleaming spots of blood on the kneecaps of her jeans reminded him of why he couldn’t help staring at her; it wasn’t just because her face had captured all of her parents’ best features. Johnny hoped she wouldn’t mind his stare.
Fana’s bloody clothes made Johnny think of Him, and shivers banded his bones. Johnny’s throat and stomach locked, as if he would be sick. That feeling wouldn’t go away soon.
“He’s making plans, too,” Johnny whispered to Fana, out of the others’ hearing. “The Cleansing. Ten years will be here before we know it. Do you have a plan for that, Fana?”
Fana was quiet so long that Johnny thought she hadn’t heard. Or that she had drifted to sleep.
“Learn,” Fana said finally. “Grow.”
She reached for his hand and held it, sisterly. That was all it took. Johnny believed in her.
There was something about Fana’s touch.
It was exactly like sunlight.
Fana wears the artist’s dress from a painting she loved at first sight: The traditional embroidered dress is bright red, flowing out into a long skirt with careful white creases, as lovely as a wedding dress. Fana sits in the center of a bed of cactuses and wide-leafed plants as green as life. From Mexico, she remembers.
The church sits high above her, behind the moon. The sky is half light, half shadow.
Michel sits next to her, uninvited. Like the man in the painting, he is nude; golden brown skin set against green. She turns away from his beckoning skin, but his face fills her vision.
“I don’t want you in my dream,” she says.
“Yes, you do,” he says. “I felt your dream call me, so I came to say good-bye.”
There is no way to know if he’s telling the truth, so Fana decides to believe him. Again.
“Don’t follow us,” Fana says.
“I promised not to interfere,” Michel says. “But of course I have to follow you.”
The white Spanish Mission–style church looks like a palace atop the hill, encircled by dead, craggy trees. The sky’s clouds are thick, aflame with twinkles of green lightning. The skies are preparing for a hurricane. In the bell tower, two bronze bells toll in cacophony, swinging in opposite directions. Roaring winds devour their sour music.
“Our ways are so different, Fana,” he says. “How can you ever love me?”
“One of us has to die, Michel.”
His face clouds with the memory of their struggle. “You promised me,” he said.
“I don’t think I could kill you if I wanted to,” she says. “Even if I had fifty years to learn. But it’s like the song said: ‘With you I’ll go my saintly one / Though it may cause me to die.’ One of us has to let go of what we were. One of us has to change.”
“Or both of us,” he says, wisely.
Townspeople flee the thrashing rains, but the doors to the church are locked. A man and woman lean out of the dome’s window, only their silhouettes visible in the Shadows as they gaze down at the people below. The townspeople surge to a throng. Many of them hold small children above their heads, begging for shelter. Others are thin and frail, reeking of illness.
“Good people are suffering,” she says.
“Yes,” he sighs, genuine sadness. “I do mourn for the Good.”
“They’re thirsty, Michel, and we have water. We can be the Bringers of the Blood.”
“Yes,” he says, enraptured.
“And we know each other’s minds,” she says. “We can see through each other’s eyes.”
“Yes.” His whisper bathes her from head to toe.
Fana smells Michel’s breath, a scent of mango. More tart than before, but still mango.
“Then time will tell,” she says.
In the church dome, the man and woman open their arms to welcome the storm, which drenches the townspeople. Their upturned faces are pelted with raindrops.
The rain is the color of blood.
Acknowledgments
First, heartfelt thanks to the faithful readers who began this journey with My Soul to Keep in 1997 and followed Jessica and Dawit to The Living Blood in 2001. I know it took many years to revisit my immortals’ story with Blood Colony, but I wanted to have a story worth telling. Hopefully, the wait will not be nearly as long next time.
It took a village to create this novel. I enlisted assistance from many corners; but any mistakes contained herein are the fault of the author, not my sources.
Thanks to my husband, novelist Steven Barnes, for his ready and willing wizard’s mind. He always suspected there were other immortals lurking out there somewhere! He is my living proof that our predestined mates are waiting for us.
Thanks to Darryl Miller, a writer, reader and editor, whose dedicated page-by-page input was more helpful than I can put into words. I don’t always listen, Darryl, but you are a lifesaver. Thanks so much!
Thanks to writer and Senior Editor Robert Vamosi, an award-winning columnist for CNet, who first mentioned the names Octavia E. Butler and Harlan Ellison to me when we were undergraduates at Northwestern University in the 1980s. Thanks for your input on near-future technology, and for your constant support since our days in CRC.
Thanks to Dr. Lee Pachter, cohead of the division of general pediatrics at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine, and lectur
er on pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. He is also a pediatric researcher at the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center in Hartford, Connecticut. His research interests include multicultural health care and sociocultural influences on child health. Not only did he lend medical expertise, but he served as a sounding board on the social implications of Glow.
Also, thanks to Dawit Worku, a reader and writer from Ethiopia who, like Lee, first contacted me through email as a reader. Thank you for your input on Ethiopian culture and history, especially the Battle of Adwa. (For readers who would like to learn more about the Battle of Adwa, I also suggest the documentary Adwa: An African Victory, released in 1999 by director Haile Gerima. It can be hard to find, but it’s worth seeing! Try www.sankofastore.com.)
I gave myself a crash course on the history of Christianity while I was writing this novel. I would especially like to acknowledge the lectures of Professor Luke Timothy Johnson of Emory University in his course Jesus and the Gospels, which is offered through The Teaching Company. I also enjoyed the lectures of Professor Bart D. Ehrman, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in his course Lost Christianities: Christian Scriptures and the Battles over Authentication, also offered by The Teaching Company. If you love learning on many college-level subjects, visit www.TEACH12.com.
For musical inspiration, thanks to the group Conjunto Céspedes and its album Una Sola Casa for its beautiful version of the Cuban classic “Lágrimas Negras.”
For translations, thanks to Lydia Martin, Dan Moran and Giovanni Micheletto. For advance reading, thanks to Amy Stout Moran, Trisha R. Thomas and Leslie Banks. Also, thanks to my golden circle of longtime friends: Olympia Duhart, Luchina Fisher, Kathryn Larrabee, Craig Shemin and Sharmila Roy. Thanks to Blair Underwood, Nia Hill and D’Angela Steed, for their trials and commitment on the battlefield called Hollywood. Thanks to Blanche Richardson at Marcus Books in Oakland, just because. And thanks to Harlan Ellison, for his vision, friendship and generosity of spirit.
At Atria Books and Simon & Schuster, Inc., thanks to Malaika Adero, Krishan Trotman and Judith Curr, for always believing in me and my work. It has been wonderful to have a place to call “home.” Thanks also to my literary agent, John Hawkins of John Hawkins and Associates; and to my film agent, Michael Prevett of The Gotham Group in Los Angeles.
Thanks to my parents, civil rights activists John Due and Patricia Stephens Due, for their example in how to create social change. And thanks to my sisters, Johnita Due and Lydia Due Greisz, for carrying on the fight for a better world in their own ways.
Thanks to Nicki and Jason, for reminding me every day that the future matters.
Last, I would like to thank all of my readers who will vote in 2008 and beyond. I am happy to report that I believe the actual world of 2015 need not be as trying as the world Blood Colony depicts…but much of that will be up to us.
It is long past time for universal health care in the United States. Period. Rather than believing empty rhetoric and scare tactics, I urge my readers to investigate the systems in other industrialized nations—we are the only holdout—and draw their own conclusions. Then vote for the leader who will help us all build the future we deserve.
The Living Blood is a creation of my imagination. Unlike Fana, we are not immortals. We will all age. We will all get sick one day.
Luckily, we don’t have to be like Fana to change the world.
www.tananarivedue.com
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Tananarive Due, Blood Colony
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