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They found nightmarish things tucked away in the quietest of homes. Revealed culprits and caught thieves. And they found lost loved ones.
“Because that’s how it was back in slavery times.” Hetty kept her voice earnest. “Magic users were snatched up so their bones could be ground up into wands.” “That’s only a story,” Darlene said, but her eyes flicked around. “Isn’t it?” “The stories have to come from somewhere.”
Her marriage to Benjy hadn’t been a love match, but theirs was an agreement that suited them rather well. She often thought their understanding made a stronger marriage. Hetty had seen the pain love matches caused in both the past and the present. She was glad to be spared it.
Dreadful was not a big enough word. People sold the moon and the tides as far back as anyone could remember, winking and laughing as they cheated people out of their hard-earned money. Doing it with brewed magic was just the latest variation.
These swindlers sold potions and brews to straighten hair, lighten skin, even to make a womb comfortable for a child. However, as with most claims, the small promises delivered but the big ones didn’t.
The death was an accident, but Emily Wells would have not died if her mother, her husband, and even her friends didn’t pressure her to have a baby her body could not carry.
While Charlie had climbed up into society with a skip and jump, George had clawed his way upward inch by inch, enduring taunts and gentle rebukes from all sides.
The Punishments sent sharp pricks like needles jabbing into your neck, or made your skin burn like fire that seared until you couldn’t breathe.
“The Great Weaver is the one who creates the thread of life, measures it, and cuts it when your time is done.”
“White folks don’t understand a thing about our magic.” “Both the stars and the herbs,” Esther added with a laugh as she wound string around a bundle of herbs. “The skies and rivers, and rain and sunlight,” Hetty recited. “The wind and soil, the storms and the calm,” they said together, repeating the words their mother had sung to them. “The magic is the world and it moves through us. There are words and rhyme and—”
But whispers came around only when there was something interesting sitting out there for some time.
It was hard to be impressed when she still remembered the scamp of a boy who had yet to grow into hands, ears, and the unwieldy and unfamiliar words that tumbled out his mouth.
Papers spoke boldly of the federal forces helping to rebuild the South. But more trustworthy reports suggested that the New South under construction seemed to be the old one, just remade with a different pattern.
The body only held the secret to a person’s death. The surroundings were what told you how it might have happened.
What makes it a curse comes from the part of the tale where white folks get their revenge. They don’t know a whit about our magic, or even how the sigils work, but they know enough to memorize that one.”
If these people were willing to run, how could she refuse to help them? How could she refuse anyone with the courage to walk down this dark and twisting road?
Why were other people’s husbands like this? Benjy didn’t act like this at all. Shuffling about to hide things that weren’t a problem to begin with. It was needlessly tedious, and showed just how little they cared for each other.
There was a long history to the art of Sorcery, with convoluted rules about wand waving and chanting strange words that sounded made up. It started in Europe, but as it spread around the world with conquerors, pilgrims, and missionaries, it took on different forms. One thing remained consistent: Sorcery was for white folks. Mostly because there were laws that prevented anyone who wasn’t white from learning. Some of those laws were formalities that confirmed what generations of spilled blood already made taboo. A wand in hand, a whisper of an incantation, or even a glance at a spellbook meant
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Laws, after all, were only words printed on paper. The consequences of ignoring them were left up to interpretation.
No laws stopped white folks from trying to use Celestial magic, just jeers and taunts.
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. With
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This woman was going to loan her out like a pair of scissors to a man who was only halfheartedly indulging his daughter. Hetty had endured this before, but that was back when she’d had no choice. Now she did, and she knew exactly what to do.
Eunice had done nothing wrong—she just filled all of Hetty’s friends’ stories with cheery exploits and charming escapades Hetty could never match.
Charlie chased after shooting stars while still scrambling after seashells to make his riches so quickly, but did he really deserve a cursed sigil carved into his chest?
Benjy was smart in a way Hetty did not have words for. It was something greater than the books he read, or his ability to craft something out of metal. It was in how he saw the world, not just for what was there but what it could become. When things fell apart, he saw how the pieces moved back into place. He figured solutions to problems that hadn’t occurred yet.
“Grave robbers will keep coming as long as hospitals make it worth their while,”
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. Unlike white cemeteries where even simple tombstones were dusted with enchantments to protect the dignity of the dead, a series of laws forbade enchantments in the few cemeteries they were given access to. These were laws that gnawed at even the most conservative and placating members of their community. For without those protections, the dead remained vulnerable to harm from the living.
She should have turned around at the first sign of yelling. Because she hadn’t, she was now required to do something or risk the situation going further off the rails.
It was an object of many ironies. Such a watch would have been invaluable in its assistance in escaping to freedom. But for a Freedman, it was just a pretty token.
People who could pass for white often did. Many of the runaways that escaped the plantation leveraged their light complexions to hide in plain sight. While it was often a temporary act dropped the moment trouble ended, some chose to live their lives out in full this way. For most, it was not an easy choice. Passing meant cutting ties to family and friends and living in fear of the smallest mistake that could end everything. While some used that privilege to aid others, some passed purely for personal advancement.
One of Penelope’s younger cousins, Sy had run off the plantation to join up with Union soldiers at the tender age of fifteen. Not wanting to spend his time doing laundry or playing nurse, he cut his hair and changed his name. Doing this left him tasked with leading supply wagons instead, and he soon discovered that what had been a disguise was something that reflected his true self.
She wasn’t sure she wanted him to grab her hands and say everything would be fine and he’d take care of it, but this wasn’t much better. Looming over her with concern just made the distance between them greater than what it was.
Moonleaf was the only scrap of herbal lore Hetty still remembered from her mother. A plant whose leaves eased the pains of monthly bleeding and kept a baby from growing. The only protection her mother could give. It didn’t protect from unwanted attentions, but it did prevent a baby being born from violence and pain.
“How can you be so sure? Can you divine the future?” “I can.” The man tapped his nose. “White folks won’t let it happen. Either he’ll be pressured to fall in the last few rounds, or he uses the good sense he was born with and gets as close he can and then loses.
“Yes, stay,” Benjy remarked as he leaned against the bedpost. “You won’t end up with a slit throat come morning.”
I’ve seen my fair share of the dead, but this was the first time it felt personal. The person most likely to have done it was someone he knew, which means we knew them as well.”
She loved him. Not as a friend. Not as family. But differently, in a way that all the words she knew weren’t enough.
“No, but I need you. I can’t do this without you.” Benjy said this easily, the same words he said when he teased her about doing some chore that needed doing. Hetty usually rolled her eyes, unswayed at these lighthearted words, but this time . . . this time, she hastily asked, “What can I help with?”
She never shot anyone before and wasn’t keen to start with a spineless coward.
“I got nothing to lie about.” “There’s always something,” Hetty said,
“He won’t admit he’s your brother. Though none of them do, even when their father’s faces are staring right back at them.”
“I’ve mourned.” “You have not had even a spare moment to do so. They expect you to be strong, to not show a bit of weakness no matter what you’re going through.”
“Don’t accept the burdens they cast onto you. They don’t take them on themselves for a reason.”
“You do too much work and no one knows it.”
“You bury the dead with your own two hands, and nothing else.”
“We don’t belong here. We belong to the past Charlie tried to scrub away. There was no mention of him being a runaway, not even once throughout the ceremony. It was struck from his personal history, and that means he struck us away too. You weren’t even a pallbearer.”
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.”
The students were taught various subjects, but they did not learn. Nor were they inspired to seek knowledge unless they already had the taste for it.
“Poor teachers are what you end up with when you get recommendations from your rich donors. They always have a younger sibling that fancies themselves knowledgeable of the world because they took some fancy courses.”
One thing was clear. Darlene might be her friend, but until they found Charlie’s murderer, she had to question as much as she could.
