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fiction: serial fiction
the crown, book one: chapter 3
Tonya sipped water from the glass, and looked over the rim at James, his patient gaze resting on her shoulders like a warm shawl. "You're taking this all a lot better than I expected," she admitted
"Have you ever read any comic books?" James asked jovially.
"I remember looking over some in the 60s or 70s," she said thoughtfully. "I overheard some kids talking, about which character could beat up who, and they sounded like stuff I'd seen, so I went to look for some. Told the man at the newsstand they were for my sick nephew. Why?"
"If what you're telling me is right," James smiled, "that dating you not only lets me curl up with a staggeringly gorgeous deep chocolate sista, but it also gives me super powers and a historical archive better than an encyclopaedia. I may be shopping for a ring tomorrow."
Tonya laughed, a relieved sound, unaccustomed to feeling so relaxed and being able to talk truthfully to someone after so very long. "So should I start sewing you a spandex outfit?"
James tsked the idea with a dismissive gesture. "You ain't gonna see my black ass in no tight ass spandex like Richard Simmons."
They both laughed at that. James leaned back on the couch, and Tonya took the opportunity to settle underneath his arm.
"So what happened with you and this Sanu guy?" James asked.
"Oh. Well, he asked me if I would object to him taking up a position at the temple with the Mysteries professors," Tonya continued, "studying and learning. With his work chronicling Ktenge's life and me on his arm, everybody'd want him to work with him. Like I said, the woman a man loved was very important societally, it was really still based on matrilineage. I was still very overwhelmed by Kemet -- remember, I'd spent all my life in that little village -- and I made him promise that I could go with him, studying as well. He agreed, the Vizier set it up, and we spent the rest of his life traveling around Kemet."
Tonya leaned back to rest on James as she spoke. "It wasn't much more than an extension of the great Nubian empires of the time, but it was so amazing to me, more than the later periods where everything kind of just expanded on that basic idea. Sanu died about ninety years later, which was an incredible lifespan back then. He sang to me on the banks of the Nile after the flood, every year, and he'd always surprise me with love poems or some amazing gift he'd come up with. It was one of the happiest times of my life."
James nodded, pulling her braids through his fingers as she spoke.
"Mmm, that feels good."
He smiled and kept it up. "Go on, you're tellin' me all of this."
"Well, I made a good living for myself working in the Mysteries System. I never seemed to catch on to the whole thing, which was all right. Most people never finished it, kind of destiny thing, they said. I learned a lot, and even joined the teaching staff for first and second quarter students. The whole program was supposed to take forty years, and that's way easier to do in a big society than in some village in the sticks. Anyway, I basically stuck with that, because the Mysteries professors were way used to weirdness and I was actually kind of mundane by comparison. I did that for the next four thousand years."
"Didn't you get bored?" James asked.
"Looking back, I'm surprised I didn't. Still, remember, this was all I knew, and it was a very different time. Much of the time, in the Mysteries system, you spend the time communing with spirit. You kind of give up any notion of a normal life, which is why I spent a lot of that time alone. I wasn't bored, no, but I guess 'lonely' is the way I've spent most of my life."
James kissed her on the forehead comfortingly.
She smiled bitterly. "Thank you. I have to accept that one day you're gonna leave me alone too."
James sat up and looked at her. "Have you ever thought maybe there's a way I could be immortal too?"
Tonya shook her head. "Sanu had the same idea. 'Our love can transcend time!' he kept telling me. If you were gonna find a way to be immortal, you'd have found it in the Mysteries system, and the oldest person in that system only managed eleven hundred years, a sister named Ka-het. Sanu did everything he could, everything anybody could, and magic is way more effective than science in this case. Sanu was 138 or so when he died, and he was crying so terribly, thinking he would lose me and I would be alone. My love can make you bulletproof, but not immortal. Time can't be defeated."
James bit his lip and thought about that. He sat back, and Tonya moved back under his arm after a moment.
"Anyway," she said conversationally, "there was a plan for a great exploration, an expedition of Mysteries professors and scholars, and I signed up for it. I figured I wanted to learn as much as I could about the world, and this was the way to do it. So we were way out in the Pacific Ocean when the Hyksos invaded. Lots of people set up colonies and just stayed wherever we went -- Mexico, a real rural thing in Australia, and so on. After a few hundred years, I figured out that Kemet was pretty much the most interesting place in the world, so I led a group of people back, interested in finding the glorious homeland they'd never seen. The trip took generations, something they planned for, and lots of the kids wanted to see what all the fuss was about Kemet. We came back just in time to join Ahmose's rebellion that destroyed most of the Hyksos influence. The Mysteries system was a shadow of what it used to be, nobody remembered me, so I kind of faded into anonymity. I learned ways to disguise myself and make myself look older, so to avoid people's interest. I faked a death every few decades and changed lives, doing all kinds of things. I even pretended to be a man once, and served in the army for a few years, 'til I got bored of it. I bounced from life to life until I met the man who would be Ramses III. I was a courtier in the noble court, and we fell in love. I was his second wife, his marriage to Tiye being one of political arrangement. You know much about Egyptian history?"
James shook his head. "Not nearly enough, even before I knew all this."
"Well, Ramses III, who we called Ra-ma-se, went to battle with the Hittites and killed 10,000 of them. By himself. Chopped off their heads with the jawbone of a donkey and offered 'em to Amen. Now, admittedly, he was a full graduate of the Mysteries System, and he could do all kinds of crazy things like teleport and conjure spirits, but according to what I was told, he just waded into them and killed them all himself. He was so powerful, he never realized that my love was giving him an extra boost. But again, back then people were a lot more used to weirdness than they are now. 'Impossible' wasn't a word most people used."
"Mm," James said thougtfully.
"I'm getting caught up in the old days, because it was really the best part, I'm sorry. Moving along. Ra-ma-se died, and the Hyksos were sniping at Kemet's heels, so I decided to go look around the world again. I didn't make it back to Kemet for centuries. I spent a few hundred years in Asia, mostly in Japan, China and India, before I came back to what's now called the Middle East, during the Roman Empire. Saw the whole Jesus thing go down. Saw Muhammed get started. Decided that was a little too exciting for me. I wandered around Europe, mostly in France and Ireland, watching people do crazy stuff, until the Battle of Hastings. I had enough of that part of the world and headed back to Asia. Stayed there until the 1500s. I missed Africa, so I ended up back in Madagascar, married a sweet guy because it was convenient, and was OK for a while, until he was killed by ... heck, I don't even remember. I felt so guilty for not loving him, he'd have been able to live through it if I had. So I set sail for Australia and stayed, pretty much by myself, until the 1950s, when I started to notice more and more people to avoid. I figured I should check it out, got some money, got pretty current on the way the world had changed, ended up in San Diego. Very different world than the one I left in the 1600s. Wandered around the US, soaked up the new way of things. I finally bought a tiny art gallery here in LA, which works as a good cover. Discovered hip hop in the mid 80s, at Fresh Fest. Which led me to that Medusa show and meeting you."
After a moment, James asked quietly, "Why me? Just because I look like that guy?"
"That made me stop," Tonya admitted. "But no, you were ... I haven't seen anybody as up front and funny as that since maybe the 70s. Your whole approach to life was just ... fresh. I've been so guarded and so alone for so long, and you're so sweet and so funny and so handsome ... how could I resist you?"
"What if I turn out to be nuts? What if I play nice when I'm around you and take the power and hurt people?"
"Well, funny you ask," Tonya laughed. "In China, I'd been with this guy Tsang Hu for maybe three years. He was the most romantic man I ever met. I came back from a trip visiting some friends early and found him hovering over the river, extorting some guy. He'd been using the power as an enforcer for a crimelord. In a second, my whole perception of him changed. So he fell, and they both died. It only works as long as I love you, and unless you're really very good at being secretive, there's no way to really get away with it. I don't have to work, and since then I've used other methods to make sure I don't pick a loser."
"I'll let 'other methods' rest while you tell me how you don't have to work."
"Albert Einstein once said that compound interest was the most powerful force in the universe. I started a savings account in 1950, after I'd hocked some jewels I had from the old days. I have more than seventy billion dollars in bank accounts around the world right now, under seven or eight different names. I haven't had to work since Ford was in office."
James nodded thoughtfully.
"I'm just amazed that you're so calm about this. A Moorish trader I loved was so scared by the floating that he had a heart attack."
"I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop," James replied nonchalantly. "You're telling me I won the lottery basically. You love me, for doing nothing more than living my life and being me, and I get super powers, one of the hottest women I ever saw sleeping with me, oh, and she's a millionaire. What the hell? I'm waiting to wake up or something."
Tonya stood up and pulled James to his feet. "I'm going to teach you how to fly now."
"Excuse me?"
"This is the most impossible thing you can do, so if you get used to it, everything else should be fine. You're gonna fly, and you're gonna take me with you."
"Oh, question. I guess I understand why you were so reluctant to make love, now. Did us having sex make this happen?"
"You've probably been able to do this for about two weeks," Tonya smiled pleasantly. "Sex normally makes men so happy that they can float on air, if they have the power. Anyway, time to learn how to fly."
"You're not gonna throw me out the window, are you?"
Tonya laughed and shook her head. "Come on, don't make me laugh, we have to be finished before sunrise, less chance anybody will see us. Okay. Think 'up.' Imagine yourself floating."
"Just like that?" Before James could finish the sentence, he was a foot in the air.
"Now, don't panic," Tonya said quickly. "Don't think 'this is impossible,' because when you think that, it is. It relies, in part, on your belief in what you're doing. Just like loving me." She smiled again at him, and James felt his heart swell ... and his head bumping the ceiling.
"Ow, dammit!"
"Oh, strong emotions can send whatever you're doing into overdrive. So if you're flying and feel suddenly happy, you fly higher."
"I guess I shouldn't ask how this works."
"Well, they say the normal person only uses 10% of their brain. Near as I can figger, you can now tap into a lot more, and part of that mental energy simply decides that your reality is airborne."
"Cool."
"Now, by yourself, imagine yourself floating around the room. You'll start to get a handle on it. Maybe imagine you're a helicopter, and you're flying yourself around the room."
James furrowed his brow and started levitating towards the kitchen, backward. With another thought he spun like a top, slowly, then made a kind of swoop through the living room, tipping over a box of magazines with his foot.
"Leave it," he said, spinning himself head over heels, "I'll get it later."
She watched him learn little tricks of maneuvering for a few minutes, his remarks of surprise and joy pleasing her.
"It's like walking, just without moving my legs ... and higher. How fast can I go?" he asked as he held himself horizontal and floated close to the ceiling.
"A messenger came and told Sanu that an important floodbank had broken, and he grabbed me and flew from what's now Asyut to a place near the mouth of the Nile in about twenty minutes. That was almost six hundred miles. The bugs in your eyes and teeth are the worst part. You should probably fly slower than that, for reasons of control, these days. Lots more in the sky than there was then."
"To think that I almost left when Medusa got off stage ..." James said absently as he settled down in front of her. "You're coming with me?"
Tonya smiled and said, "we should get some clothes, something black, and then we can go. Maybe something warm, I don't remember how cold it gets up high."
In moments, Tonya was fitting herself into a baggy pair of James' jeans, cinching the belt up to its last hole. He was wearing a leather jacket, with a black turtleneck and another pair of black jeans, plus boots.
"My shoes would just fall off, and we won't be on the ground, so we're ready."
"Uh, how do we do this?"
"You can either climb out the window and float or we can walk down to the sidewalk. My feet can stand a few steps on concrete."
"Let's go downstairs, then, I don't wanna mess up and drop you."
Silently they descended the few steps to the courtyard of James' Leimert Park apartment. Tonya jumped up and clinched her arms around James' neck as he glanced up at the cloudy skies. "Go on, just hold me tight, falling really sucks."
Obediently, James held Tonya close, closed his eyes, and began to rise. He watched the city fall away from him, and absently wondered if he'd been seen. "How can I do this more carefully, so nobody will see me?"
"You'll learn how to do it fast enough not to be noticed," she said calmly, surveying the ground as it drew away from them. "Short bursts of speed. Oh, get ready to get wet."
"Huh?"
"The clouds. They're made of water. Learned this the hard way too. We're gonna get soaked if we go through one."
"Oh ... uh ... maybe I can find a way through 'em?"
"Maybe ..." Tonya said, smiling, gazing around absently.
James looked around, ignoring the city blazing beneath him, and saw an opening in the clouds to the west. He pulled Tonya closer, as they were still perpendicular to the ground, and floated rapidly towards it. Once there, he bolted upwards, still managing to catch a wisp of cloud across his face, like a bucket of ice cold water thrown at his head, which he managed to shake off. Soon, they were staring at cloudtops, still ascending, eyes taking in the curve of the world.
"It's been so long since I saw this. Oh, by the way, you'll know when you should stop soon."
"Huh?"
"If you keep going up, sooner or later you'll get what feels like a big headache. That's air pressure, too low for your brain to tolerate. Your body tells you when it doesn't wanna go any higher. Learned that the hard way, too."
"Just tell me I don't look like Icarus."
Tonya chuckled. "Icarus is a myth. Daedalus had no children."
They swooped in the crisp, clear air for a while. Tonya noted a plane and suggested they fly away from it, to avoid being picked up on radar. Before long they were floating in what seemed like an inky void of nothingness, the dark clear sky over the sea.
James looked back at the shore, a thin line of lights, and said, "This is so amazing."
"Even after all this time, I still think it's really cool. I'm so glad you're not going crazy about all this, James."
He stopped flying and held position, several thousand feet above the sea, and stopped to look at Tonya. She noticed his regard, and returned his gaze, their eyes locked. James sank his fingers into her hair and kissed Tonya, his lips hungry, his embrace tighter. Tonya curled her legs around him and squeezed, eliciting a slight gasp from his lips as they danced with hers. He began raining kisses on her neck, and she moaned, "ooh, don't get too excited ... we can, but we have to do some prep work ..."
Lifting his head to see her, he said, "Huh?"
"If we're gonna make out or make love up here, we have to think some things through. What to do about clothes, and stuff. Takes some planning. Trust me."
"You've done everything, Tonya ... Kayet. How can I ever keep you interested?"
"It's all new through your eyes, James. It's Tonya now, I haven't been Kayet since before Cleopatra. C'mon, let's get back before we're seen."
As they approached the coastline, James made a worried sound.
"What is it?"
"Uh ... I don't exactly know where I am," he admitted sheepishly. "I mean, that's the beach down there, and we're probably still kinda south, so it's maybe Hermosa or Manhattan Beach ... but I can't just fly back to my house. I don't know which way it is."
"That's why I brought my wallet. Just land us somewhere quiet on the beach, and I'll hit an ATM, and we can call a cab."
"Your feet'll get dirty."
Tonya laughed, long and hard. "Baby, I walked across most of Eurasia. I'll be fine. C'mon."
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