I WALKED THROUGH THE DARKNESS, across a wide valley, muddy in its trough. I saw fires dotting the far side and imagined, hoped, that it was Edina. I could hear more human sounds. There was nothing scarier than human sounds. Voices, laughter, whimpering. I saw a ring of shacks that I guessed were slave quarters. I smelled the waste from an open latrine and moved away from it. There was a group of four slave men shackled to a common post, a bowl of mush in the center of them.
