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“Hetty is true as the North Star.”
Hetty lifted her head toward the stars dancing over her head, breathing in and out slowly.
One thing remained consistent: Sorcery was for white folks. Mostly because there were laws that prevented anyone who wasn’t white from learning.
Laws, after all, were only words printed on paper. The consequences of ignoring them were left up to interpretation.
They had this idea that magic existed to make their lives easier. But magic was more than that. It was in everything that made life. It was life itself. The magic Hetty’s mother taught her was a mixture of lore brought over from Africa, from the West Indies, and even from the native peoples of this land. Mingled together, it created a magic system that was greater than the sum of its parts. It incorporated traditions that found ways to brew magic with herbs, to enchant candles for protection, to use song to rejuvenate, and, most important, to develop sigils from the constellations.
After all, grave robbers were not the problem. It was the value placed on Black bodies and circumstances that allowed theft to occur in the first place.
“Don’t accept the burdens they cast onto you. They don’t take them on themselves for a reason.”
A story is a living creature, and they need a personal touch to live on. You breathe in your woes, your loves, your troubles, and eventually they become something new. They aren’t the books you love so much. Stories change with the tellers.”
“but these are not the best stars to meet under.”
Charlie used to call them the conductors.”
“Life rolls on.” Benjy shrugged. “It’s too big to slow down or to pause over something as commonplace as death.”
“We belong nowhere. Our past is stolen, our present is lost, and our future hangs in the balance. That won’t change for a long, long time. This country thrived with our people in chains. You think it’ll take just a few years to change all that?”
Stars, she couldn’t remember the last time when she woke up next to him—most mornings he was long gone before she even stirred.
To my first friend in my new life, may we always share good times under happy stars.
“Friends,” Penelope concluded for Hetty, “they may stay in your life always, but there may come times for them to go separate ways.”
When you’ve known someone for a very long time, you gain a certain understanding of what they will say or do. You know how they speak. You know when to really listen; you know what course of action they’ll take when there’s a decision that makes them choose between their life and yours. This happens with people you like, people you hate, and people you once called a friend but now speak with only once in a blue moon. But just because you know this person so well, it doesn’t mean they can’t still surprise you.
Sorcery overpowered. It devoured. It put people in chains and destroyed nations in the name of gold. It sucked resources from foreign lands in the name of spices and trade routes and allowed untold horrors to continue unchecked.
