The Book of Phoenix by Nnedi Okorafor

smiled. My skin was still brown as the ripe shell of coconut. I was me. Tall. Lean. Full breasts. Strong legs. Long feet. Did I still have the dark brown spot on my left eyeball? The birthmark on my thigh? Did I still have the scar on my belly from when they’d taken a hipbone sample? The burn mark under the nail of my left thumb?
    I frantically started swiping the dust from my skin. I swiped and swiped. My arms. Legs. Belly. Backside. Chest. There was so much dust that a cloud rose up around me. Then I stood still. The warm breeze caressing my body and blowing away the dust.
    The birthmark on my thigh was there. The burn mark under my thumb was gone. I laughed as I looked up. The night sky was indigo with a hint of red; the way the night sky had always looked to me. Except now I was seeing it with my naked eye, through no window. I had never been outdoors until now. I had never seen the stars, either. I would. I would get out of the city. Away from its light pollution.
    â€œOk,” I whispered. My voice was the same, too. I was working up to answering a most troubling question. If I was still me, was I still
me?
I stilled myself, shut my eyes and took a deep breath. Immediately, I could see it. Right through my eyelids. The soft yellow green glow that emanated from my skin.
Beacon
, I thought.
I am a beacon.
    When I attempted to escape from Tower 7, they had surrounded and riddled me with bullets as I burned to ash. My powerful light woke the plants, especially The Backbone. Then The Backbone had brought it all down, killing almost everyone and every freakish thing inside. Now I’d woken up in the ruins. I was reborn. I still glowed. I was still a phoenix. I let out a breath, a tear rolling down my cheek. It wasn’t over. Silly of me to think it was.
    When I opened my eyes, they fell on something white and blowing in the strong breeze a few yards away. A dress hanging on a piece of piping sticking out of a jumble of thick green shoots. Only two people would have cared enough to leave it for me. Only two people really understood what I was. There was Saeed. How I loved Saeed. But Saeed was dead. And Mmuo, who’d also been a prisoner in Tower 7 and managed to escape when it all came down. Mmuo who could walk through walls. Mmuo who had opened the door for me. He’d most likely left the dress.
    I walked over to it. With each step, I felt more like myself. It was cotton, stained a little from the dust, but long. It would fit perfectly. I liked long dresses, but I hoped the cotton wouldn’t burn. As I put the dress on, it felt odd on my back. I frowned. My back felt odd, now that I thought of it. Achy, as if I’d been injured there. But yet, when I touched my shoulder blade, I didn’t feel the touch as much as I should have. I smoothed out the dress on my body and then touched my back again. There was a swelling there or a sort of hump.
    I bent forward without a problem. Only the aching. A flare of heat flew through my body. Then I was cool again. “Wish I had a mirror,” I whispered.
    There was a deep groaning, and I froze. Then it came again. From behind me. I turned around. The sight took my breath away. You could not see the end of it. Surrounded by smaller trees and bushes, its great trunk was the diameter of two cars. Its rough rich brown bark was now covered with large sharp thorns. No human in his or her right mind would attempt to climb it even if the tree were at rest. Which it was not. You could sense it even from yards away. If it wanted to, it could call its roots together, pull them out of the ground and walk away. Maybe it eventually would. Stranger things certainly had happened in the last seven days.
    Its leaves were broad and oval shaped and you could see them happily waving with the wind, high high high into the sky. Until you could see no more. The leaves of The Backbone were slightly luminescent, just like me. And it had bloomed large fiery red flowers that grew high