He heard the plantation workers whispering of a “Moses” aiding slaves in escapes far off in the old states. He heard them planning their own revolt. When that night came around, he was ready for the rifle shots and the screams of torment, the chaos and commotion. He had prepared himself for the deaths or recapture of the slaves he had considered family, but all of it still made him cry.
He and Mama fled north for a few days after the uprising. They hid from the bloodhounds in the cold woods at night. Mama kept him warm in her tight embrace. He tried to wrap his arms around her to keep her warm, but he was too small, and she wouldn’t let him anyway. She claimed she was warm enough, but he could feel her shivering.
“Tell me about paradise again,” he said. “I like to hear you tell it to me.”
“Paradise,” she said, her teeth chattering. “Oh, it’s a place where the sun is always shinning. You never want for nuffin’, never need for nuffin’, and the work ain’t too much you can’t handle. It’s all that is good in this world. It’s peace. It’s freedom. And only one master rules in paradise. God A’mighty. Our Lord, Jesus.”
Her words warmed him up. Every time she spoke of paradise, a calmness set over him. All his worries washed away. Then he fixed him mind to ask something he had never thought to ask before. “Where is paradise?”
“A long long, long way from here.” She pointed to the sky. “See that star right there. It’s the brightest one in the sky. It’s called the North Star. We follow that, its gon’ take us all the way to paradise. Keep your eyes on that star. Don’t let it out of your sight.”
He did as told and kept his eyes pressed onto that North Star every night. They passed over hills and through meadows, swam across stinky swamps. One evening they crept into a town so Mama could steal some food for him. It was odd to Charles that she didn’t include herself in the plan to eat, but he stayed quiet. Mama knew best.
The town was crawling with men holding shotguns and rifles. On the edge of Main Street, Mama shoved Charles behind a wagon filled to its brim with wooden beams.
“You tell them I made you do it,” she said. “You just a boy, they’ll believe you. And they won’t whip you too bad. No matter what, don’t you look now, hear?”
He nodded and she took a long gaze at his face as though drinking him in, stamping that moment in her memory for one last time. She stepped around the wagon.
“Hey you,” said a man Charles couldn’t see, but the voice snapped through the air like a whip. Footsteps shuffled. “Hold it right there. Where you goin? Hey, we got one, boys!”
A thump pounded the ground as though a body had fallen. A scream exploded in Mama’s voice. Charles crouched. Through the space under the wagon, he viewed his mother being dragged across the ground by her hair, kicking and flailing.
Charles shut his eyes in obedience to his mother’s last wish. A whip cracked through the air. He covered his ears, but that only muffled her screams. He buried his head between his knees in an attempt to silence the world around him, but with each lash the crowd boomed with boisterous glee and carried on as if they were attending a festival. Charles rocked back and forth, pretending his Mama was holding him in her arms again, and when all went quiet, he sat there, still too afraid to look.
He worked up the courage to stand, and he peeked around the wagon. To both his joy and horror, his mother remained alive. She sat horseback with a noose around her neck. Her gaze fell onto him. She blinked tightly, and nodded, signaling him to close his eyes, but he froze.
He squeezed the wood in front of him. A splinter stabbed his palm. By the time he looked back up to Mama, she was drifting at the end of the rope in a slow swing. He had missed it. He knew seeing his mother drop would have been devastating, but in an odd way he wished he had seen her last moment, if only to see where her soul went, so he could follow her.
His body flushed with coldness. The world around him wobbled and turned black, little glimmering lights appeared in his eyes, blocking his vision. Nothing felt real. The splinter in his hand no longer hurt. He became aware of a presence near him, but he couldn’t bring himself to turn his head from Mama.
“You better get low,” said a young girl’s voice beside him. Small hands gripped his shoulders and guided him into a crouching position. The girl disappeared around the wagon as heavy footsteps pounded toward the wagon. Under the wagon, he saw a man’s boots and slacks and pale legs extending from the bottom of a girl’s dress.
“If you’re looking for the other one,” said the girl. “I saw him go around the building. Hurry, you might can catch him.”
The man ran off in the opposite direction of Charles’s hiding spot. The girl waited for a while then shuffled her way back behind the wagon.
“Hurry,” she said. “You better shin out while you got time.”
Finally, he gazed upon her, a girl about his age with angel eyes that bore into his soul with grace and kindness. The glint in her gaze was like a light leading out of a deep dark underworld. A North Star.
“It’s ok,” she said. “My name’s Kate. What’s your name?”
“Charles,” he said softly, surprised that he could still speak.
“Where’s your momma and poppa?”
He wiped his wet cheeks and gestured out into the area where his mother hung.
“Oh.” Kate’s mouth hung open, and she stared down for a while. “I think you should come with me. My father will know what to do. We were just getting inside our coach when I saw you standing here.”
Another man raced up to them. Unlike the wild men who hung Mama, this man was well dressed and clean shaven. “Kate, don’t you ever run off like that again,” he said. “These mobs can turn dreadfully ugly.”
“Father, this is Charles.”
“Hello, Charles. Come on, Kate.”
“That’s Charles’s mother.” She pointed to the short drop.
Kate’s father removed his hat. A lock of his hair curled down to his forehead. He placed his hat on his chest. A ring on his finger glistened in the dark as though it bore its own light. “My condolences,” he said. “I’m deeply sorry for your loss, Charles, but we have to go. This town is getting restless.”
He placed his hat back on his head and grabbed Kate’s arm. She grabbed Charles’s arm and hauled him along to the center of the dirt road.
Her father halted. “Let him go, Kate.”
“We can’t just leave him here.”
“He isn’t our responsibility.”
“You always tell me to care about all life. He’s all alone.” She gripped his arm tighter.
“I’m very sorry for him,” said her father. “Truly, I am. I can’t imagine what he just experienced. But he can’t come with us. He belongs to someone else.” He nodded to Charles. “You understand? If these were honest men, they’d have returned you and your mother to your master, jailed you or at least sold you to the highest bidder. But these aren’t men of reason. Those vigilantes don’t care about reward money, only punishment. They’ll hang us all for aiding runaways. Now, I don’t know who your master is, but for your own sake I suggest you find your way back to him as soon as you can, all right. I’m afraid that’s all the help I offer you.”
Kate’s father spun around and came face to face with the barrel of a rifle.
“What you doin’ with that boy?” said the rifleman. A bristly blonde moustache covered his mouth. His chin was clean shaven. Nothing about the man was familiar to Charles except the man’s voice.
He was the man who dragged Mama.
Kate pulled Charles closer to her. “He’s with us.”
The rifleman eyed Charles and then Kate’s father. “Is that right, Mister? This nigger boy yours?”
Kate’s father opened his mouth to speak but said nothing.
“Lower your weapon!” A bearded man raced over to them. “Put that rifle down, you idiot. Do you have any idea who you’re addressing?”
“I’m addressing a runaway and his possible aide,” said the r
ifleman.
“You’re a guest in my town only for as long as you capture your fugitives, but this man here is a friend of mine. And that little girl is his daughter. I will not tolerate this inferior treatment directed towards them. Nor do I take to either of them as liars. If they say this boy is with them, I’ll take their word as bond, understood?”
The rifleman hesitated, glanced down at Charles and flipped his rifle to his shoulder. “Apologies, Mr. Garrett.”
“Don’t apologize to me,” said Mr. Garrett. “Apologize to Miss Katie, whom you’ve just frightened with your crude brutality.”
The rifleman gave a quick nod to Kate. “My apologies, Little Miss.”
Mr. Garrett shuffled them off to the side of the road, ran his hand along his beard, and sighed. “Now, please tell me I didn’t just help you aid a runaway, Mr. Carson.”
Cross’s foot sank into the barren wasteland of Sheol. A hazy river of fire snaked before him. The underworld had led him deathly close to the pits of Hell where he belonged.
Countless bowl-shaped pits littered that area of the underworld like prairie dog holes but on a much more massive scale. Some of the craters were the size of towns, while others couldn’t swallow anything bigger than a modest-sized house, which was still huge in its own right. All of the gaping holes in the ground drank and spat fire, joyously.
His foot sizzled with heat. Molten earth bubbled from a sinkhole and touched his boot. The pain in his burnt foot took away from the squirmy feeling in his stomach as his insides threatened to feed on him. He hadn’t had any food or drink in several periods of sleep.
He skipped forward over the fiery, blue hole, and then hopped to his other foot to avoid a second dip in the land. Several depressions in the terrain surrounded him. The ground beneath him snapped and split off from the rest of the land, carrying him into the river of fire. He leapt back across to the more solid foundation. The flaming stream carried the chunk of land around a bend where a hellish pit swallowed it whole.
Waves of torrid air carried nasty screams from the pit: yells of curses, anger and zero remorse. He’d thought those souls would’ve wanted forgiveness for their sins or something. He always expected them to be crying for help and salvation from the torture. Instead, they were filled with unrelenting hate, and their hate motivated his hate.
He hated the Raven. She was the reason he ended up there. If he ever came across her again, he would clip her wings and push her off of the highest mountain.
A bright light distracted him to his left. The A’raf rose above the trees of Limbo, and the brilliant light of paradise bloomed mightily. His final destination now laid only a few sleep cycles walking distance if he trekked through part of Sheol again, but after barely making it out of the desert, he decided to take the long cut around. There was still the matter of how he was even going to break into paradise. It seemed that the end of all his problems was closer than ever, and at the same time much more elusive.
A wicked snarl exploded behind him. A hellhound had cornered four defenseless creatures against a river of fire. Even though the four creatures outnumbered the hellhound, their fragile bodies would be no match for the dog when it started tossing them around. The tallest of them stood no higher than a child. They were shorter than Cottontail was.
The hellhound loomed over them like an angry grizzly hungry for frightened sheep. Its matted hair gave it an appearance of being covered in puffy scales. Its lizard tail didn’t have spikes at the end like Gimlet’s, but the saber-like teeth protruding from its muzzle made up for that lack of weaponry. The four weaklings trembled in its shadow.
Cross expected to find beasts like hellhounds so close to the pits of Hell, but those meek creatures didn’t belong there. The clicking sounds they made reminded him of his draggles. Were they his draggles? If so, it was their own stupid fault they had followed him. The hellhound probably would have attacked him if they hadn’t been around.
He turned his back on them, but then thought of Kate and how she had selflessly saved him from the rifleman. She made a huge difference in his life. Meeting her that night was the most positive thing that had ever happened to him.
He faced the draggles again. They were backing away from the hound. Cross was still undecided if he should risk a second death helping them. He was so close to paradise. He had already achieved several impossible goals: He’d defeated squals, evaded the Rudimen, survived the Raven and escaped Sheol. He refused to become a Nothing after all that.
A draggle reached out a claw to him as though pleading for him to help. The hellhound chomped down on that arm and gobbled the draggle up in one great swallow. Seeing death was a part of being dead, but watching that innocent draggle get eaten by the vicious monster made the whole world feel wrong to him. He was a jerk for not helping them, just like he was an idiot for giving up on Cottontail so fast. She and that draggle paid for his lack of effort with their afterlives.
“Hey!” He tossed a stone at the hellhound. It bounced off the saddle strapped to its back. The hellhound spun towards him. The reins at its head whipped.
He could tame it. Judging by its saddle, someone else already had. Hellhounds usually only obeyed demons and devils or more powerful deities. They responded to torture and abuse, which wasn’t his style. Still, he’d managed to domesticate a cornurus, and they were more deadly than hellhounds—who were menacing in their own right. But he had the benefit of surprise when he snuck up on Gimlet, and this hellhound was now galloping towards him, jaws full of bone crushing teeth.
He positioned himself to flip onto its back like the old Bronc Busters of his day. The hound lunged. He grabbed the saddle and swung himself up to mount the beast. He slipped his feet into the stirrups, yanked the reins.
The hound’s head went up. It bucked. If Cross were alive, he’d be too old for the game, but death had given him new life. He reached for the beast’s head to give it his magic touch.
It threw him. He kicked free of the stirrups, let his body go limp, and hit the ground rolling. A soft spot in the ground vomited blue flame near his shoulder.
The hound pinned him under its paws. Acidic saliva dribbled from it jaws onto his chest, burning. The draggles mounted the beast and sank their teeth and claws through its matted hair into its flesh. The hound twirled to shake them off, but they hung on for their puny afterlives.
Standing upright, the tops of the draggles’ heads barely reached his knee, but they fought for Cross as if they were giants. The hound shook them off and mauled one of the draggles, but fortunately didn’t eat it.
Trying to tame the hellhound was too risky with the draggles around. The innocent little creatures would get hurt more.
He crawled from beneath the hound, drew his obsidian blade and chopped at the hound’s neck. A gash opened between its kinky hairs. The hound barked and snapped at Cross.
He swung the blade. The hound caught it between its teeth and stripped it away from him. He backed away. The stream of lava met his heels. Chunks of earth broke off and fell into the flame.
A crack slithered between his legs, forked and then branched. Molten froth cooked the hound’s paw. It whined and lurched backward.
The draggles scampered over to Cross. One of them handed him the obsidian blade. In a burst of wild inspiration, he hacked at the fissure in the ground. It spit blue flame, singing the hair off his exposed skin.
A shelf detached from the land with him and the draggles on top it and a blazing gouge separated them from the hellhound. All they needed to do was guide their raft to the other side of the bank to escape.
Cross stooped to use the blade as a paddle. The hellhound leapt onto the raft. The force of its landing pushed the island hard, and their floating land mass crashed into the bank on the other side and then spun away from safety.
Cross picked a draggle up. It didn’t seem to weigh anything at all, almost as if it didn’t exist. He tossed it over the raging stream and onto solid land. He grabbed the next two draggles and tossed
them at the same time.
Now the distance had grown too far for him to jump to either side. The draggles crawled along the side of the river on all fours as he and the hellhound bobbed on the slab of rock down the center of the river of flame.
The weight of the stupid dog tipped the island. Lava grabbed the edge and ate its way up the raft. The hound scrambled up the center and bumped Cross.
His heels at the edge of the island, Cross slashed the hound in an attempt to make it back up or die—whichever came first. It crunched its jaws in the air as though it only intended to scold him and not bite him.
They both returned to the center of the island and displaced their weight evenly. The raft flattened out and they sailed around a crest. Hellish screams from the pit grew louder and more hateful.
“Great plan,” Cross said to himself. “Now what?”
The hellhound growled at him. It was a sarcastic growl, bordering on laughter, as if it understood his words. He had never communicated with a hellhound before, but most creatures he encountered could understand him. Why not hellhounds? The mockery in its snarl was what shook him though. Then he realized where he was being lead.
“You’re escorting me to Hell aren’t you?” he asked the hellhound. “You used the draggles as bait. You could have burned all of us easily, but you didn’t because the underworld wants me in the pit.”
The hellhound chirped bird-like toward the pit. Up ahead, the river emptied into the crater in glopping splashes. Inside the moaning mouth of the pit, Cross spotted a horizontal breast of rock. It jutted out the wall on the opposite side of the lavafall, but was too far to jump to. He would never make it across. Another wild idea cooked in his mind and he would only have one shot.
“Well, if the underworld wants me there so bad,” he said, “Let’s not dilly-dally.” He slipped the obsidian blade in his holster and crawled onto the hellhound’s saddle. The hound bucked in surprise. He yanked the reins upward and caressed the hound’s head. His magic touch calmed the beast just as their island sailed up to the drop.
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