by Londyn Skye
THE PRODIGY SLAVE
Book One:
Journey to Winter Garden
Londyn Skye
The Prodigy Slave
Book One:
Journey to Winter Garden
(Revised Edition)
ISBN: 978-0-578-24039-8
Londyn Skye Novels
Copyright © 2020
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020920199
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever without express written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Please refer all pertinent questions to the publisher. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper without permission in writing from the publisher.
Reference information for Slave Codes: District of Columbia Slave Code Manual of 1860
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
About the Author
Prologue
Slave:
A human being who is by law deprived of his or her liberty for life and is the property of another.
Slave Code
Article II Section IV
A slave cannot become partially free. The law recognizes only freedom on the one side and slavery on the other. There is no intermediate status. The status of any Negro child’s mother is the status of the child. Therefore, a Negro child born of one parent who is a slave and one parent who is free is considered free only if the free parent is the child’s mother. All Negro children born of slave mothers shall be slaves during their natural lives, regardless of their father’s status.
Virginia
Slavery Era
January 14, 1845
The shrills of an innocent little girl paralyzed an entire field of slaves, as they watched her mother fighting with the strength of a wild beast to hold on to her during a vicious battle that had kicked up a massive cloud of dust. Somewhere in the middle of the haze, Maya, a slave, held on tightly to her daughter’s arms, while her master, Levi Collins, stood at the opposite end yanking at her little legs. They were locked in a tug-of-war, with the little girl nearly being torn apart in the middle. Levi was hell-bent on selling the little girl. Maya was prepared to die before such a thing transpired. The mere thought of life without her daughter inhibited her fear of the punishment she would receive for disobediently fighting and pleading with her owner, in heartbreaking cries of desperation. Her cries were like the sounds of a woman who was being tortured to death. They were sounds born from the immediate pain of the inevitable loss of her child … the only child God had ever blessed her with.
Just minutes before their struggle ensued, Maya and her daughter were taking laundry down from the clothesline. When Maya removed a sheet, Levi was directly in her line of view, stalking toward them. The way he walked and the look on his face was a sight she had seen before. It was a walk that said he was on a mission, a mission to steal another innocent child away from its parents, no different than grabbing a bag of cotton to take into town for profit.
Maya was usually just a bystander during Levi’s despicable missions. She was typically unable to do anything but watch from a distance in horror, and then help comfort the distraught parents after they had seen their child for the last time. But this day was different. Levi stalked toward her and her child now with that familiar menacing look in his eyes. Maya looked to the right and to the left and saw that she and her daughter were the only ones in his view. When she realized that her little girl would be the lone casualty of his mission, tears instantly erupted from her eyes. For the entire nine years of her daughter’s life, Maya was convinced that Levi would never sell her, the way he had with other children, because he was not only her child’s master … he was also her father.
Levi had come into Maya’s cottage the day their baby was born. He walked over to where she lay in her mother’s arms and reached down to pick her up. Remembering that Levi had sold other children, Maya pulled her baby from his reach and held her tighter. Despite Levi being her daughter’s father, she suddenly feared that it would be the last time she would ever see her. That fear, however, quickly subsided when Maya finally let Levi hold her, and she saw a heartfelt smile emerge on his face as soon as he looked at the beautiful newborn girl he had created. “Lily,” he called her, because she had initially come out of the womb of a brown-skinned woman so pale and lily-white, before settling into an almond-brown complexion months later.
Levi’s wife, Emily, had bore him six children. But of the seven Levi was responsible for producing, the child he had created with Maya was the only little girl. Emily always assumed that her husband had secretly indulged with his slaves from time to time, like so many other slave owners in the South. But, oddly, it was not her husband’s infidelity that made her rife with unrelenting envy and anger. She simply could not handle the fact that he had given some other woman the little girl she was desperate to have, and to a lowly slave at that.
It further sickened Emily to watch Lily grow and morph into her father. Lily resembled Levi far more than the sons Emily had birthed for him. Lily’s skin tone and the texture of her hair were a blend of her parents, but her father’s traits dominated every other one of her features. Lily was in nearly every way a honey-brown female version of her father. And it was impossible for Emily to gaze at her and not see her husband’s seed staring right back at her, with his sparkling green eyes.
Levi did his best to keep his distance from Lily after his wife learned the truth about her paternity. Despite Levi’s distance, Maya was confident that he would never hurt or sell her beloved child. Her belief in that had been so strong because of the sentimental reasons behind the brilliant smile she had seen on Levi’s face the day of Lily’s birth, as he cradled her in his arms and whispered her name while gazing at her for the longest time. It was not until Maya stood in the middle of a dirt field, fighting Levi with the strength of ten men, that she realized how wrong she was. She was forced to accept that her confident belief was an illusion she had created to give herself a sense of peace. As Levi tried to wrestle Lily away, he was proving to Maya that money was worth far more to him than his own child. But those painful realizations did not stop her from fighting mercilessly with Levi to free her little girl from his death grip.
“Masa’ Lee, don’t do this! Nooo!” Maya cried repeatedly, as she attempted to snatch Lily from Levi’s hands. “Pleeease! Dear God, don’t let ’em take my baby!” she prayed aloud, as tears flowed down her cheeks. “Pleeease, don’t take our baby! She’s yo’ daughta’ too! Why you doin’ this t
o yo’ baby?” she pleaded, in a desperate, last-ditch attempt to make Levi feel some sense of connection to his child. Then, with the searing burn of a lash across her back, Maya was instantly brought to her knees and lost her grip on her beloved child.
Unexpectedly, Levi’s eldest son, Wyatt, had whipped Maya from behind. When she dropped Lily, Levi immediately picked her up and placed her into the back of his wagon. As the wagon pulled away, Lily watched through tear-filled eyes as Wyatt brutally beat her mother into unconsciousness. Levi’s wife, in turn, took twisted pleasure in watching the entire scene play out from the porch with a joyous smirk etched on her haggard face.
Chapter One
Slave Code
Article II Section I
Sundays and holidays are to be strictly observed. No slave shall be permitted to work more than 15 hours per day in summer, and 14 hours in winter, or on any holiday or Sunday, except as a punishment or unless they are paid. All Negroes otherwise found at work on these days shall be confiscated.
Fourteen years later
Fayetteville, Virginia
January 14, 1859
Lily sat quietly at the piano, on this, the fourteenth anniversary of the day she had been stolen from her mother. Although she did not know how to read a calendar, she was certain that this was indeed that fateful day. No different than one’s circadian sleep rhythm, Lily’s internal body clock set off an alarm to reawaken her misery and anguish on every January fourteenth. Today, much like every January fourteenth before it, she had woken up in a cold sweat, gasping for air, after the grisly lingering memories of that life-altering day began haunting her dreams. From then on, those revitalized memories continued to relentlessly invade her mind, making it nearly impossible for her to focus on anything else. Having gone through this torture in the past, though, Lily now knew that playing the piano was the only thing that had the power to halt the persistent painful imagery from that nightmarish day.
Preparing to play a song she had composed in memory of her mother, Lily lifted the key cover to the piano. She then sat there a moment, blankly staring at the keys, as visions continued to roll through her head of the momentous day that had landed her in the place she now considered as her own personal prison. With the curse and blessing of Lily’s photographic memory, those horrific images were now locked in her mind. With crystal clarity, every miniscule detail from that day began replaying in her head, drumming up every excruciating emotion, as if she was experiencing it all over again. She recalled the cloud of dirt that surrounded her during her mother’s struggle to save her, the desperation in her mother’s voice, the pain in her extremities as her parents nearly tore her apart, the sound of the whip as it snapped across her mother’s back, and the sight of her mother lying motionless on the ground after her severe beating.
In vivid detail, Lily still remembered being dragged from her father’s wagon and being put up on the auction block at Virginia State Negro Auctioneers. She still recalled standing there barefoot in her tattered dress, riddled with terror as tears poured from her sparkling green eyes, making tracks through all the dirt still left on her honey-brown cheeks. Lily remembered being deaf to the pale faces in the crowd, who yelled out bids in hopes of becoming her new owner; she was far too focused on the man who had put her up for sale. Up until that day, she had only known him as Master Lee. But after hearing her mother’s desperate pleas, Lily had inadvertently learned that the man who had placed her on that auction block was her very own father. As Lily shivered there alone, she could not pull her eyes away from Levi, noting the lack of expression on his face as he stared unblinking back at her, waiting for the final bid to come in. When it did, he took his daughter by the hand and ushered her down the steps to take her to the man who had just won the rights to her life.
“A-are you r-really my fatha’?” Lily cried, looking up at the profile of Levi’s face as he dragged her along.
Levi did not reply.
“A-are y-you?” Lily sniffled, asking him again after he had lifted her into the back of her new owner’s wagon. After securing shackles around her legs, Levi looked up and met a set of eyes that were undoubtedly his, penetrating him with their innocence, as tears careened in steady streams from within them. “Daddy?” Lily whispered. She had spoken the solitary word in a sorrowful tone that pleaded to know why her own father would do this to her.
After looking deep into his only daughter’s eyes, Levi turned and walked away, without a word or even a second glance at the beautiful child he had created.
“Daaaddyyy! Pleeease! Take me back to my maaama! Daaaddyyy! Pleeease!” Lily erupted, as her new owner began to roll away with her in tow. Still, though, Levi never broke stride.
As Lily continued to yell, the wagon came to an abrupt halt. With tears blurring her vision, she never saw the swift hand of her new owner as it made its way across her face. “Shut y’ur goddamn mouth, you hear me girl?!” he yelled, a devilish glare in his eyes as he loomed over her. Lily had yet to even learn her new master’s name, but his brutal introduction instantly painted a clear picture of the sort of heartless man her father had just callously sold her to.
Jesse Adams had purchased Lily to work alongside his ailing house slave, whom everyone called Auntie. Auntie had worked on the plantation with two generations of Adams family. The decades of field and housework had finally taken its toll on her body. Her multitude of health problems were making it a struggle for her to keep up with the needs of a large family. Jesse and his wife knew that it would not be long before Auntie would need a replacement. Lily was to be that girl.
The Adamses had three sons, who all lived at home when Lily first arrived at the farm as a child. Their eldest, Jesse Roscoe Junior, whom they all called J.R.; Jacob, the middle child; and their youngest, James. A few years after teaching Lily how to run the Adams household, with its three rambunctious boys, Auntie passed away, leaving Lily to handle the needs of the family alone. It was an overwhelming burden for a thirteen-year-old, but she handled the grueling responsibilities with the grace of someone three times her age.
As the years rolled by, the household duties began to lighten for Lily. In that time, J.R. and Jacob had both started their own families and moved into plantations nearby. James had gone away to medical school. And their mother, Elizabeth, passed away suddenly just a few months after Auntie.
Before her death, Elizabeth Adams was a schoolteacher, who also taught piano to children in her home on the weekends. During every piano lesson, Lily would disregard her duties and secretly stand at the top of the stairs, watching as each child attempted to play their music pieces. Those simple melodies would replay joyously in Lily’s extraordinary mind, long after the sessions had ended. The uplifting music soothed her and helped her through her daunting weekly tasks.
Before moving to the Adams farm, Lily had never even seen a piano. Once seeing and hearing one, she became fascinated at how the simple movement of fingers across the keys could create such beautiful music. Day after day, that notion obsessively drew her to the piano. Knowing that touching it was off limits, she would only move her fingers in the air near it, pretending to play.
One day, though, Lily’s obsession took control. Despite knowing the punishment she would receive for touching the piano, she could not fight off the urge to tinker on it. After seeing the Adams brood off to school and work, she hesitantly sat down on the piano bench. She was reluctant to touch the keys at first. She got up to look out of all the windows to reassure herself that Elizabeth and the boys were truly at school and that Jesse had already left to make his daily trip into town. Once Lily was confident that she was alone, she sat back down and proceeded to play a classical song that was taught to all of Elizabeth’s students. Lily played the entire song purely from her memory of the mechanics of Mrs. Adams’ fingers across the keys. She stumbled her way through the first attempt, then used her precise memory of every note’s sound to guide her fingers toward the accurate keys. With great determination, she found eve
ry appropriate combination until she could play the song in its entirety without a single note missed along the way. When Lily completed the song, her joy was instant; and so, too, was her addiction to playing.
Using that visual copy-cat method, Lily continued to sneak onto the piano and play every new song she learned from her secret hiding spot. After only a few weeks of familiarizing herself with the piano, though, she no longer needed to hide and watch anymore lessons. As she went about her chores, her mind began imprinting melodies into her memory by sound alone. When she replayed them, her fingers instinctively found every key combination with ease. Not long after that, she began creating music on her own. Within only a few months of teaching herself, ten-year-old Lily was playing as flawlessly as a professional who had had years of training.
Lily did not even realize the incredible gift she had. All she knew was that playing piano brought her joy, numbed the pain of missing her mother, and gave her an escape from the misery of her new environment. The temporary reprieve became a vital part of Lily’s daily routine. She cooked breakfast for the family, saw them off to school and work, and escaped on the piano.
And so, on this fourteen-year anniversary, it was that obsessive daily need to mentally escape that led Lily to sit down at her beloved piano. Most days she played with the need to drift away from the world around her. But today, she needed to escape the visions in her own mind. As with every January fourteenth, she needed music to override the memories of her mother’s beating and of her father callously exchanging her for money. Attempting to wrestle those torturous thoughts into submission, Lily began to play the very first song she had ever composed. Blended within the song was the melody from an old music box that her mother had. The song reminded Lily of the way that she and her mother used to dance together, just like the tiny couple spinning around inside the music box. Lily’s new extended version of the old tune allowed time for dozens of other wonderful memories with her mother to resurface. The array of cherished moments never failed to trump the yearly nightmarish visions that invaded the serenity of her mind.