Remembrance

by Rita Woods

  She turned to find Dix studying the ground. When the water stopped he looked up, and the misery in his eyes caught her by surprise. He saw her watching him and gave her a weak smile, just the corners of his mouth twitching upward.

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  The boy shrugged. “About a half day north of Cuyahoga Falls.”

  This meant not one thing to her. She had never been more than a few feet past the boundary of the Edge, and never for more than a few minutes. She knew the name of the town nearest them that they traded with, Ashtabula, but had never been there. It was just a name to her, the way New Orleans, Kentucky, Virginia, and all the other places the runaways came from were just names to her. She was out in the world. She may as well have been on the moon.

  “Long ways from home,” muttered Dix, half to himself.

  Winter peered at him. “What?”

  He sighed. They were walking again. The damp from her washup was quickly seeping into her bones. “Colm and Frank don’t hardly ever come this far north to track runaways. If they wasn’t tryin’ to settle a score they’d a’ stayed closer to home to hunt. Like usual.”

  He glanced at her as he said this last, his cheeks flushing pink. Winter ignored this. It was suddenly important that she keep him talking.

  “Where’s home?”

  “West Virginia.”

  She hesitated, unsure of how hard to push him, but he was walking beside her easily, studying the farm and the rolling hills: just two friends out for a morning stroll.

  “What did you mean … ‘settle a score’? With who?”

  Dix slowed. “Colm and Frank had a brother. Came up here this way a while back, trackin’ a slave. A special slave. Had a way with horses. Could break any animal livin’. Worth a powerful lot of money. When their brother finally made his way back home, he didn’t have no slave and…”

  He stopped and licked his bruised lips.

  “… and what?” she prodded.

  The boy swallowed hard and looked fully at her for the first time. “And he wasn’t right in his head.

  “Kept talkin’ about this place here in Ohio country. Said it was a damned place. Said a big nigra woman lived there, a nigra woman what had the power to make coloreds just disappear up in thin air. Said she was a witch, that she got inside his head. Cursed him.”

  She gazed steadily at him even as her heart started to race. She saw that he had eyes the color of a winter sky.

  It couldn’t be. The slaver who’d followed Zeus into Remembrance. She remembered the screams as they’d turned their backs to climb back into Remembrance. Clay. That was his name. She licked her lips.

  “He wasn’t right never again after that,” Dix went on. “That’s what Frank and Colm said. Said it was their family duty to find that witch and all her nigras and teach them a lesson. They didn’t believe none a’ that mess he was talkin’, but they headed back up this way lickety-split. Said it was their family duty to find that place and make the nigras pay. Plus, they still had papers on that runaway.”

  His pale gray eyes looked into hers. “Are you one of them? Are you a witch?” he asked.

  The laughter was out of Winter’s mouth before she could stop it. “What pure foolishness! There’s no such thing as witches!”

  His cheeks turned a deep red. The bruise on his cheek darkened into an ugly shade of purple-black. He frowned.

  “What are you then?” he demanded. “You’re somethin’! My Gram told me about folks that had the sight. And I can see it in you. I was there, remember? I heard them voices comin’ out the trees. Wasn’t nobody there and then there was!”

  The boy licked his dry lips “The whole place just filled up with y’all folks. That bewitchin’ woman? I saw her, too. I surely did. And they was an old man, with funny lookin’ eyes. He killed Zeke and his horse.… Didn’t lay a finger on ’em. Just looked at ’em. Just held up his hands and that horse reared up like he was snake bit. I saw it all. There’s somethin’ unholy about that place, about you!”

  Winter fixed him with an acid stare and Dix flinched.

  Suddenly, Winter found herself yanked off her feet and into the air. Frank held her by her collar, dangling her three feet off the ground as if she was no more than a feather he’d plucked up.

  “Boy, I’m startin’ to sour on you for sure,” he roared at Dix. “This nigger ain’t no plaything. I told you to go walkin’, not talkin’! This here is money! Nothin’ but silver money walkin’ on two feet. But talkin’ to you is like barkin’ at a knothole, ain’t it?”

  He threw Winter to the ground and snarled at her. “Constitutional’s over, lass. Back to the barn with you.”

  She scrambled to her feet, struggling to stay out of his reach, but he had turned his attention back toward Dix.

  “Me and Colm’re gonna have to ride to the next town over for supplies. Won’t make it a week without,” he snarled. “Those damnable Yankees in Ashtabula wouldn’t even give us the time of day.” He spat at Dix’s feet. “Hate this place. Can’t wait to get back to West Virginny, where white folks are civilized. Can you watch this girl while we’re gone? Can you at least do that?”

  Dix nodded and Frank strode off with a growl, kicking at Winter as he passed. She rolled, just managing to avoid his boot. Mutely, Dix picked up the free end of chain and jerked it. This time Winter said nothing. She silently let herself be led back toward the barn.

  Without a word, Dix fixed her chains back to the hook in the floor. As he turned to leave, she grabbed his arm. The boy jerked as if struck but he didn’t leave. He stood, staring at the top of his boots.

  “Dix?”

  He raised his head and she was startled anew by the paleness of his eyes.

  “Why’re you doing this? You’re different from them. You’re no slave man.”

  So many expressions flew across his face that she barely had time to register them before his eyes went dead. “Shut it!” he said.

  He turned and left, pulling the barn door closed behind him.

  34

  Mother Abigail

  That terrible pain, that blinding agony in her head was suddenly gone. Mother Abigail opened her eyes and sat up.

  Quiet. It was so quiet.

  She was standing in the clearing but something about it was different. She frowned. Where was everyone?

  She was dreaming. No. Not dreaming. A vision. A message from the loa. So they were speaking to her again?

  The sun was rising over the ridge, bathing the clearing in a fiery orange light. And then she saw what it was that was different. The clearing was much wider and the trees were different. And the air, the air was different, too.

  Mother Abigail closed her eyes and inhaled. She could smell …

  … the river, sunbaked grass!

  “Bone Girl!”

  Her eyes snapped open and she whirled. Walking toward her, the sun at his back, was a man. She squinted. There was something familiar about that walk, that voice. And no one had called her Bone Girl since …

  … since they’d stolen her body away! Since the ghost men, the white ones, brought her from the place they call Africa.

  When he stepped out of the sun’s glare she saw him clearly and clutched at her chest, trying to steady the erratic beating of her heart. She knew him. It had been more years than she could count—she’d been young, so very young—since she’d seen him last, herding their father’s goats into a pen, but she knew him still.

  “Ajani!” she cried.

  The man smiled. He was tall, as was all her family, and broad of shoulder. The last time she’d seen him, he’d been a boy, but it was him. She knew his spirit.

  She made to go to him, to fling her arms around his neck and never let him go. What had happened to their mother and father after the ghost men had come and dragged her away? What had happened to the rest of their village?

  Her brother held up a hand, warning her back.

  “Am I dead then?” she asked.

  He shook his
head. “No, not dead. Not yet.” He grinned, his teeth white in his dark face. “And also not so bony anymore, Kianga.”

  Mother Abigail laughed out loud at her true name, the name her parents had given her. “No, not so bony. Not in a long time.”

  They smiled at each other, a wide swath of sunlit grass separating them.

  “It is not yet your time, sister,” said Ajani, his smile fading. “You have to go back. Your work is not done.”

  The priestess started. For a moment she had forgotten Remembrance. She was with her much-loved brother and she felt no pain—in her body or in her spirit. She shook her head.

  “No! I cannot,” she cried. “I am tired! Old! Why can’t I go with you?”

  Ajani laughed. “Girl, you were always the lazy one. Hiding in the reeds like a grasscutter to avoid pounding the cassava with the other girls.”

  She knew he was trying to make her smile, comparing her to the giant rats that lived in the marshes of their childhood, trying to take the sting out of his message, but all she felt was despair. “Never! I was never that! I have given, Ajani. So much … too much already. More than you know. You can’t leave me again. I am old and worn out. What more could the spirits expect of me? Can they be so cruel?”

  He took a step toward her. She wanted to reach for him but knew somehow that her hands would never find his. “I’ll never leave you, Bone Girl. None of us will.”

  She saw then that there were others with them, watching. In the glare of the rising sun she couldn’t make out faces, but she felt them. Her mother, her father. And there, standing between them, Hercule, young and strong and as beautiful as the day they’d met in Far Water. He was smiling at her, they all were. She was moaning but all she heard was the sound of her own heart breaking.

  “Finish what you started, Kianga. We are here with you. And when it is done we will come for you.”

  “No, I will not,” she cried. “I am a useless old woman.”

  Her brother laughed. She could no longer see his features. They all seemed to be fading in the light.

  “No!” She gave an anguished scream. “Take me with you! Ajani! Hercule!”

  Her head filled with such pain she could hardly bear it. She covered her face in despair and fell to her knees gasping for breath. When she finally pulled her hands away, she saw that she was not on the warm, bright riverbank of her childhood village, but in the smoky cabin in Remembrance. She let loose a scream that was equal parts grief and rage.

  “Abigail?”

  Josiah hovered at the foot of her bed. The new girl, Margot, sat slumped near the door, her eyes wide, bewildered. Mother Abigail tried to speak but her tongue felt heavy and thick. The scream had said it all, in any case. She had no words left. She shook her head and turned her face away.

  You should have let me come with you, Ajani. You left me here! What more do you want from me? What more? You should have let me come.

  She felt wet on her face and slowly raised one hand to her cheek. She stared at her damp fingertips. It had been so long that, for a moment, she had no name for what it was. And then it came to her. They were her tears.

  * * *

  She let old Josiah pull her up because, truth be told, she couldn’t have done it on her own. She was emptied and hollowed out as a gourd. Her thoughts kept drifting away from her. Memories, old and new tangled up in each other, confusing her.

  Winter screaming her name. Men, boys from Remembrance with guns.

  She’d seen her brother, a boy when she’d last laid eyes on him and now a man, most likely long dead. She’d heard the voices of her mother and father. Simona. Her sister. And Hercule … Hercule had been there, too. At the thought of her long dead love, Mother Abigail clutched her chest, as if that might keep her heart from breaking all over again. The world had shattered into bits and she had lost her way.

  Her head had been hurting, the worst headache she’d ever had in her life. And she’d fainted. Hadn’t she? She couldn’t quite remember. The worst pain was gone, but there lingered the slightest ache, like a ghost hovering at the place where her head met her spine.

  “Careful, Abigail.” Josiah held her fast under one elbow, supporting her until she found her feet.

  “Well, quit pullin’ at me, old man,” she snapped irritably. “I haven’t forgotten how to stand at least.”

  Josiah snorted but did not release her elbow. The priestess sucked in a sharp breath as the room swayed beneath her feet. Wordlessly, Josiah tightened his grip, pushing her walking stick into her other hand. Mother Abigail noted the new strands of gray streaking his hair, the thickening of his knuckles, and felt a surge of fear. She grimaced and gave him a quick pat on the shoulder.

  “Best to put on your cloak,” he said. “The weather’s turned.”

  “Dieu, Josiah! You are my wet nurse now?”

  The old man chuckled. “Fuss all you want to, Abigail. Don’t change the fact that you weak as a kitten and it’s colder than a snowman’s teat.”

  Without further protest, she reached for her warmest cloak. The stiffness in her fingers made the simple act of putting the cloak over her shoulders and fastening it difficult. By the time she stepped gingerly out into the dooryard, she was trembling and out of breath. The cold air felt sharp against her face, wonderful after the stuffiness of her cabin.

  Remembrance.

  She inhaled deeply, then gasped, shocked, filled suddenly with a true and terrifying certainty. Remembrance—her Remembrance had come undone!

  She remembered now. She’d been in the clearing. There’d been shouting and horses. White men on horses!

  The Edge had collapsed and slavers had come bursting into Remembrance!

  Pressing her lips together, she gripped the walking stick until her knuckles ached.

  “What has happened here, old man?” she whispered. A hush gripped the settlement, a flat, unnatural quiet. Remembrance was many things, but it had never been quiet. Beside her, Josiah had gone stiff and silent.

  “Josiah?” She clutched her walking stick, bracing for the terrible words she knew must be coming, afraid she might start howling in despair.

  “Abigail…” He seemed unable to go on. She moved her hand until it was gripping his. He was trembling but it felt more like fury than fear. “You’ve been laid up for a couple of days. We thought…”

  She stared at him, her heart stuttering painfully in her chest, stealing her breath away.

  “Tell me,” she rasped. “Tell it all.” The words burnt her throat.

  “Winter is gone. Taken. Louisa.” His voice was dead, and for a moment she held on to the hope that she had never woken up, that every word from his mouth was happening only in some terrible dream. But the wind on her face was real. The screeching of the jays in the trees was real. And Josiah’s worn hand in hers was warm, and real enough. For the first time in many, many years she wished that she had died. Once again, she felt a spasm of grief, that the ancestors had abandoned her, left her here to … what?

  “Abigail … Thomas is dead.”

  “Enough! Enough!” she cried. “Il es fait! Enough!”

  She jerked her hand from his and stumbled backward.

  “… and the Edge has given way. Remembrance is in the world.”

  The weight of his words forced her to her knees. She knelt there, eyes closed, dull with sorrow. She would never rise again. It was impossible. What was the use? Winter was gone. Her people unprotected. And this place that she had made—Remembrance—had broken apart, and her spirit had broken with it.

  “Abigail, get up.” Josiah spoke directly into her ear. “Get up, old woman! The peoples is scared. You gots to go to them. Give them back their faith. Give them their courage.”

  If her breath had not been like a lump of coal in her chest, if she could have inhaled to do it, she would have laughed then.

  Faith? Courage?

  “Remembrance is gone,” she murmured.

  Josiah grabbed her arm and yanked her upright. Pain shot thr
ough her shoulder, forcing her to turn and face him. “Shame on you, Abigail! Shame and shame! All these peoples still here!” Anger blew off him like fire. “I’m still here! You still here! What about the herds and the smokehouse and the gardens? What about the smithy and all those babies in they little cabins? They gone?”

  She was silent. She willed his voice to stop. He shook her hard.

  “Wake up, woman,” he snapped.

  “The Edge…,” she began.

  “Remembrance ain’t the Edge. Never was.” He dropped his voice and said, “We comin’ to the end of our time, Abigail. We mayn’t have much left in us, but we got to make sure the peoples ready for whatever comin’ next.”

  “And how shall this happen, Josiah? Just answer me that. I’m to know what comin’ next? And what about Louisa? What about…” She could barely say the words. “What about ti fi yo? What about Winter?”

  Josiah released her and she slumped back to the porch. He stood and turned his face toward the quiet settlement, his head cocked. He seemed to be listening to something. With the last of her strength, she pulled herself to standing.

  “Josiah?”

  A gust of wind blew across the dooryard and she felt icy wetness on her cheek. Shivering, she pulled her cloak tighter.

  “What is it, old man?” she asked, watching him closely.

  Josiah stepped from the porch without answering. Closing his eyes, he held his arms away from his body, palms down, his dark fingers moving slowly, as if strumming invisible strings.

  “Josiah?”

  He shot a hand out to shush her. The old woman ground her teeth, trembling with impatience. It seemed as if an eternity passed before he turned back to face her.

  “Bad things out in the world, Abigail,” said Josiah.

  Mother Abigail gave a short bark of laughter. “That right? The spirits tell you that?”