A Radical Act of Free Magic

by H. G. Parry

  A castle. And yet her initial impression of a fort was perhaps not too far from the truth. From outside, voices and footsteps could be heard, whispered at first, then shouted. Even muffled through the stone, she could recognize the sounds of a battle.

  “Stop this,” the stranger said. He said it very calmly, but his face in the shadows was so pale as to be translucent. And more than that: she could feel him now. Faintly, very faintly, a glimpse through a crack that he had unwisely opened when he entered her head. She could feel his fear. “Whatever you’re doing, stop it at once.”

  “Why?” Her magic throbbed, thrilling and powerful. “Where is this? Where are we?”

  “Childhood.” The answer came against his will. His muscles were rigid, so that his smile, when it came, was almost a baring of teeth. “The inside of my head. The place I can’t escape, the place where our minds meet—where my mind always meets the oppressed and the ambitious and the enraged. I can usually keep it from encroaching upon conversation. Have you seen enough?”

  “If you answer my question.”

  A loud crack split the air: the sound of wood splintering. The stranger flinched.

  “That’s the door to the castle,” Fina said. “They’re breaking it down.”

  “I know they’re breaking it down.” It was as though his voice had cracked with the door, and something dark and scared threatened to burst out. She watched as he visibly drew a breath, then exhaled—the most human thing she had ever seen him do, in a world where they had no physical bodies, and there was no real air to breathe.

  “My mother died,” he said, in a voice more like his own. “So did my father. Both blood magicians. Cousins, actually, I believe. It was the way, in those days, to keep the bloodlines pure and territories intact. Our territory wasn’t all of France then. There were far too many of us for that. We held Marseilles. I still remember the summers, and the sound of the ocean. It was summer when our armies fell and the Templars came. You don’t want to be here in my head when that happens.”

  “I will have seen worse things.”

  “You haven’t seen those things from inside my head.” She knew what he meant. The air was colored thick with more than three hundred years of rage and terror.

  A voice came from outside the door: a man’s voice, deep and rough-edged with urgency. Unlike the stranger, it spoke in French—Fina recognized the word vite. Quickly, hurry.

  She didn’t turn her head, but the moment of distraction was all the stranger needed. She felt a rush of cold, and then a wrench, as though an icy hand had taken hold of her magic and pushed. The castle walls dissolved; the plains unfurled. The stars kindled in the sky, and a warm breeze ruffled her hair. She was home.

  “That was my father,” the stranger said. He tried to speak as if nothing had happened, but she knew him better now. He was trembling, perhaps with rage as much as fear. “In a moment, he and my mother would have come through my door. They would have told me we were going down to the shore, to get in a boat and head for safety. But there’s nowhere to go. Before we could leave my bedroom, the Templars come through that door after them and stab my mother through the heart. My father dies at her side. I remember their bodies on the ground very clearly, so you would have seen every detail. Does that answer your question?”

  She nodded.

  The stranger laughed a little, a laugh that was more like a shiver. “You see, we have something in common, you and I. We are both of us members of a persecuted race. We both of us had our homes and our birthrights stolen from us. And we both of us escaped to become more powerful than before.”

  “It isn’t the same,” she said. “Your race is persecuted because you kill people.”

  “I never said the parallels were exact. You’re an escaped slave, and I’m the rightful possessor of the world. There isn’t much similarity at all, really. I was only being polite.”

  “I’m sorry for what they did to your parents.” She meant it, as far as it went. She had seen too many children orphaned not to be sorry for one more.

  “You needn’t be. Those who did it got what they deserved. And your old masters—don’t you think they should get what they deserve too?”

  “Yes,” she said. Even now, after so many years with Toussaint, she thought it. “But I’m not crossing the world to save them. I’m crossing the world to save my people.”

  “I’m helping your people to rebel.”

  “By enslaving them anew. That isn’t freedom.”

  “Perhaps it could be,” he said. “I might be willing to come to terms. I could agree to release them after they’ve served my purpose.”

  “The ones that survive, you mean? Besides, there’s one thing you’ve forgotten.”

  “And what might that be?”

  “You betrayed and murdered Toussaint Louverture,” she said. “I will not, and could never, let that pass.”

  “He was never going to free the people you loved. He promised England that he would leave them Jamaica, after all you did for him.”

  “He was going to build a better world,” she said. “He gave his life for it. And you took it. If we weren’t enemies before, then we are enemies now.”

  “I see,” the stranger said. “Well. Thank you for explaining so candidly. May I be equally frank?”

  She didn’t reply.

  “If you attempt to stop me,” the stranger said, “then I won’t stop at enslaving the minds of your people. I will kill them all. The Saint-Domingue rebellion will be nothing compared to the carnage that will visit Jamaica. The island will be a mass of corpses and blood. And if, at the end, there are any of your people still left standing when their masters are dead, I will tell them to take up their blades and turn them on themselves.”

  It didn’t frighten her. She needed to stop him before; she needed to stop him now. Whatever threats he made were a matter of detail. But still she felt her heart turn cold and her resolve grow firm.

  “And that,” she said, “is why we will never come to terms.”

  Fina woke after that. She lay in her hammock for a long time, listening to the thud of boots overhead without reaching out to any of them with her magic. The ship heaved and groaned beneath her. As daylight began to creep through the tiny window, a knock came on the door. They had crossed into British waters and depending on the weather would dock in London within a day or so. She knew she wouldn’t be hearing from the stranger again—and, if she did, it would be very, very dangerous.

  It was cold in England. It was summer, but the skies were gray when the ship carefully maneuvered its way up the Thames. She hadn’t expected the ports of London to be so full. There seemed barely an inch of water between their ship and the next at times, and the masts were like a forest creaking and groaning in the chill wind. The Upper Pool was built for more than five hundred ships, one of the sailors told her, but it usually held three times that these days. This wasn’t helped by the countless smaller ships that ferried the cargo to the docks. When Fina stepped into one of these to go to shore, the bulk of the ships above them seemed to swallow her up. It was the first time she began to understand the enormity of the city she had come to.

  “Take care,” one of the men called to her.

  She inclined her head, carefully, and didn’t let them see her nerves. They had taken the very last of her money, but they couldn’t know it. It wasn’t too late for them to bundle her back into the hold and sell her after all. None of the thousands of rough-edged white men swarming the docks looked as though they would stop them.

  It rained that night, and she curled up hard against a wall and shivered as it soaked through her clothes. She had never been so cold.

  But she was there. After so many years, she had completed the second leg of the Triangle. She had found her way to the city of London.

  It was easy to find where William Wilberforce lived—everybody on the street seemed to know it—but not so easy to find him. In the summer, wealthy people left London. The man who answered the door of
the house in Old Palace Yard was a servant, and he told her in no uncertain terms to go away.

  “There’s nobody here,” he said. “And if there were, I doubt you could have any business with them.”

  It wasn’t that he suspected her of being an escaped slave, she thought. He would probably have done worse to her if he had. It was simply that her skin was dark, her clothes were ragged, and her accent was wrong. But still, it raised a flutter of fear in her stomach.

  “I need to speak to Mr. Wilberforce,” she said. She raised her head, as she had seen Toussaint do, and cast her voice back to the fine English ladies she had once seen at her old plantation. “He would want to speak to me too. I have important information for him.”

  The servant looked at her with open doubt, but obviously didn’t quite dare to challenge her further in case she was telling the truth. “He’s at his house in Clapham,” he said. “Broomfield. It’s only a few miles from here.”

  A few miles. Even on foot, she could make that by the afternoon. Her spirits rose. “Could you tell me how to get there?” she asked.

  But she did not reach there that afternoon. The roads that they told her to follow took her close once more to the Thames, and she didn’t dare go so near the ships. She walked through narrow alleys and pathways to avoid them, ducking in and out of doorways, and more than once became hopelessly lost. Long months on a ship had wasted her muscles. Her sore knee ached first, then all of her. Her ill-fitting boots, borrowed from the sailors, rubbed blisters at her ankles and more than once caused her to trip on the uneven cobbles. She considered taking them off, but her feet would be cut to bloody ribbons without them. The ground here was different from any her body knew.

  Something was happening to her that she couldn’t understand. She had been free for many years—she had fought and lived at the side of the leader of Saint-Domingue. And yet she could feel herself retreating inward, as though she were an escaped slave once more. Her magic lay coiled within her, but she didn’t dare touch it. Magic was illegal in England still. If somebody knew what she was, and what she could do… The gray country around her reached out to chain her; the harsh English voices caught at her heart; the pale faces glared at her with suspicion. She wondered how she could ever have felt safe.

  A cold wind blew up as she entered Clapham; at least, she thought it was Clapham, though by now it was dark and the roads were empty of people to ask. By then, the close streets had opened out to grass and trees. She was so numb with exhaustion that it took her a while to realize that the wind was not only cold, but streaked with rain. It was going to be another bitter night.

  The big white house on Clapham Common, she had been told. She could see a white house, though she had no idea if the enormous grassy space she was approaching was Clapham Common. She walked toward it anyway, her legs trembling with fatigue.

  And then, halfway across the open space, she saw a tall, stocky figure wrapped in a warm coat. A man, she thought, though it was hard to make out more than an outline in the darkness. Still, it was a person who might know where she was. She gritted her teeth, gathered her strength, and raised her head.

  “Excuse me,” she called. Her voice was barely a whisper, and she didn’t think it would carry over the rising storm.

  The man turned. He looked at her. “Who are you?” he asked. “What are you doing here?”

  She caught her breath. It was only a man, his face in shadow—but somehow, impossibly, it was him. The stranger. He was far from England, but he was looking at her from someone else’s eyes.

  She didn’t wait for the man to move toward her. She turned, and she ran.

  “Stop!” The man’s voice was whipped away by the wind, and the raindrops on her face had the thickness of blood.

  The white house was dark and shut up—everyone in it must have been in bed, asleep. The door, when she threw herself against it and rattled the doorknob, was locked. She ran around the side, frantic for a way in, and struck at one of the closed windows with her fist. Her blow was pathetically weak; she barely felt the impact of the glass. There was no way she could break it, not in time. Panic rose in her throat.

  Wilberforce’s house was called Broomfield, the man at his town house had said. She thought the first letter on the gate had been a B. Was this it? She had no way of knowing. Perhaps it didn’t matter. The man was behind her. She needed to get inside.

  “Molly, Toussaint, I need you,” she said out loud, in their own language. It sounded strange in the English darkness. “Help me.”

  Around the last corner, the last window was open. She slipped through, and then she was inside the house.

  It was a small room, with sofas and chairs and a wide fireplace, the kind of room where she imagined people could read or talk by daylight. It might belong to Wilberforce, or it might not. She didn’t really know anything about him. She didn’t know anything, except that the man with the stranger in his eyes had not followed her, and she was shaking and dizzy and past the point of endurance.

  She sank onto the long pale sofa, too tired even to feel the softness of it, and sat there.

  Hours went by.

  A girl came in with a candle, her apron a flash of white in the darkness. A servant, but not a slave. The servant went to the fireplace and knelt in front of it. The candlelight must have caught Fina’s shape where she sat on the sofa, because the girl flinched suddenly and turned toward her. Fina felt the light full glare in her face, and then the girl screamed and ran from the room. Her pan and brush fell to the hearth with a clatter.

  She sat there.

  She didn’t mean to; she wanted to move, and speak. She simply couldn’t, even when she tried. Her body had turned to lead. It was as though she were under a spell once more. Terror gripped her that perhaps she might never move or speak again.

  She sat there in the dark for what seemed like hours more, but was probably only minutes. The light around the edges of the curtains was beginning to turn to gray. Rain still lashed the windows.

  Finally, two white men came into the room. The first was tall, wore dark clothes, and carried a musket; the other, far smaller and more delicate, carried a lantern. He looked as though he had been roused from bed: his graying hair was tousled, and a dressing gown was wrapped around his thin frame. When he saw her, he flinched, then turned and said something in a low voice to the man behind him. The man lowered the musket and left.

  The other man set the lantern down then and came toward her. She saw him sit in the armchair opposite, but she couldn’t raise her eyes to his face.

  “I’m sorry we kept you waiting so long,” he said. He had a low, cheerful voice, like the English birds outside. “I would say we had no idea you were coming, but in fairness I tend to do that to guests I’ve invited as well. There are so many people coming and going here that I can never keep track of them all. Our maid should have welcomed you, of course. I’m afraid you frightened her. Did you come through that terrible storm last night?”

  She didn’t answer, but the knot inside her loosened. Her magic was awake again. She sent it out, tentatively, to peek behind the man’s eyes. To her surprise, his mind opened to her touch like a flower to sunlight; she spilled into his head with the least resistance she had ever encountered. She saw herself, her features blurred and softened as his weak eyesight tried to adjust to the poor light. She felt the bite of cold on his face, his heart beating rapidly, and, beneath the surface, a mixture of concern and curiosity and desire to help. She could go deeper still, but she refrained. Her own heartbeat had calmed. He, at least, meant her no harm.

  She blinked, came back to herself, and straightened her shoulders. “I’ve come from Toussaint Louverture,” she said. “He’s dead.”

  He stared, but recovered quickly. “I know,” he said. “At least—we know that he’s dead. The news came from France. Did you know him?”

  She nodded, just once.

  “I’m so sorry. I never had the pleasure of his correspondence, but I know he was a g
reat man. May I ask your name?”

  Her name had been taken from her when she was five. But it didn’t matter. What she had told the stranger was true: her name was what she said it was. It was the name Molly and Jacob and Toussaint had known her by. It didn’t matter who had given it to her. It was hers now, to cast away, or to remake, or to own.

  She raised her head and looked the man directly in the eyes. His were dark, like hers, and very kind. “Fina,” she said.

  “It’s very nice to meet you, Fina,” he said. “My name is William Wilberforce.”

  England

  August 1803

  Her second day in England she never left her room. Mrs. Wilberforce helped her strip her filthy clothes, and found a nightgown for her to wear while Fina submerged herself in a tub of hot water by the fire until the warmth seeped through to her bones and burned away her shivers. They offered her tea and plain toast, she ate and drank without tasting, and when she had finished, they asked her if she would like to sleep. Her eyes were closing involuntarily by then; she nodded, and soon she was nestled in a soft white bed beneath clean sheets. She didn’t really want to sleep—she didn’t feel safe to sleep—but her body or her magic knew better. She sank into dreams so deep that even when a doctor arrived to gently examine her bruises and ask her questions, she barely surfaced to answer before they pulled her back down. Another white woman came later to give her more tea; she drank, and then she turned and closed her eyes once more.

  She woke in the dark. Outside, the faintest blush of dawn was in the sky; a bird called once, hesitant and hopeful. She could still feel the motion of the ship in her bones, and the shapes in the dark confused her; she couldn’t sort them into any room she knew. She lay still and empty, as she had in Jamaica every night by Molly’s side, until she remembered. England. She was in England, in the country of her enemies, safe and free. Toussaint was dead.