Root Magic

by Eden Royce

  I sucked in a mouthful of thick air and held it in while I lay on the ground. Somewhere in all of that smoke were the potions and herbs Doc, Jay, and I had created together. It was full of our family’s magic, made by our own hands with love and intent. Protection magic. Root magic. My lungs full of rootwork-rich air, I relaxed every part of me. Slowly, I felt myself lifting up, up away from my body.

  The sounds of fear fell away as I lifted into the air. Looking down, I saw my uncle. Collins had him on the ground and was hitting him with his nightstick. The blood on Doc’s skin was shiny under the firelight. Doc was trying to turn over and cover his face, but Collins kicked him in the side. Neither one of them noticed me above them. Or noticed my body on the ground where it lay not far from the car. Drizzling rain started to fall. I couldn’t feel it, but I could see the drops plink off my body. Now was the moment I had to do something.

  I couldn’t do anything to make him stop, not from where I was. So, fast as I could, I flew down our path to the marsh. Through the cool night I flew, deep into the woods and away from the stink of smoke and hate.

  As I went, I cried out for help. I remembered my root bag, still hidden under the house, full of my own breath that brought it to life. I concentrated on that little orange bag, and I hoped it had worked. I hoped I had a friend, somewhere, that would answer my cries.

  Under my floating body, I heard a bush rustle. I heard the scrabbling of feet on dirt and dried leaves. Then I heard another sound, one I’d been hoping for.

  Wow-oo-wow, wow-oo-wow.

  Will you come? I asked. I need your help.

  The big red wolf I’d saved stood up from a thick bed of leaves, pawed the ground. The smaller red wolf I’d seen with the first did the same. Soon, five wolves stood in a circle under me, yipping softly and prancing around.

  Thank you, I said. Thank you so much. Follow me!

  I flew back through the trees, edging around the marsh and back toward home. The wolves followed, used to traveling quietly to catch their food. I lost sight of them as I returned to my body with a hard jolt.

  I opened my eyes and they stung with smoke. I shook my head to clear out the dizziness. Then I got to my hands and knees and crawled along the ground, around to the back of the police car, where Collins had Doc.

  “There!” I yelled, standing up and pointing to the deputy. “He’s the one!”

  Collins looked around at me. His eyes had an angry fire in them and his lips pulled back from his teeth. He glanced at Doc, then back at me.

  He pulled his gun from the holster at his waist. I froze, unable to move. My heart jumped in my chest, then it felt like it fell down into my stomach and lay there like a huge weight.

  Thunder boomed as a fork of lightning shattered the night. Rain poured down, soaking me to the skin in an instant. I saw a glimpse of evil as Collins grinned at me. His finger moved, white against the dark of the gun.

  I closed my eyes and put all my effort into thinking about that root bag. Help. Please. Someone.

  As I spoke, a wind blew up, a sulfur-scented hurricane. But this was no normal storm. It had come up too fast, and it smelled like the marsh, full of life and the promise of freedom. The wind brought the rest of the burning cabin down to ashes, soaking it with icy rain.

  It raged on, and I thought I could hear the call of a screech bird—an owl or a hawk—within it.

  A furious growl sounded behind the deputy. There was a gasp that reached my ears even over the wind, then a wail unlike any other sound I’d ever heard. When the wind died down, I finally opened my eyes. A blue-skinned creature was kneeling in front of me, and Collins was on the ground moaning in pain.

  “Hello, Jezebel.”

  “Susie?” I asked.

  When the creature nodded, I gasped. She was bigger than last time, and her fingers were longer than any I’d ever seen. Her nails were sharp like claws. In the firelight, the claws looked dark and wet.

  My legs almost gave out, I was so relieved to see her. “You came!”

  “Of course,” she said. “We’re lunch buddies, remember?”

  There was a scrabbling that came from the ground, and I looked over to where Collins lay.

  Or used to lay. He was now standing, leaning one injured hand against his car. The other hand still had his gun trained on both me and my friend.

  “I don’t know what kinda monster you are, but I’m pretty sure you ain’t bulletproof.”

  Bushes rustled as streaks of red-brown fur bolted toward Collins. He didn’t have time to face the attack. Before I could draw breath again, he fell to the ground with a loud grunt. His gun slid out of his hand and spun across the hard dirt to land at my feet.

  The largest wolf had Collins pinned to the ground, its huge fangs bared. The other four wolves snarled and moved in closer, making a tighter circle to make sure he couldn’t escape.

  “Good babies,” I said.

  Collins turned to look at me, and his eyes were wide and full of fear. “Get . . . get it offa me. Get this dog offa me!”

  “It’s actually a wolf,” I said, smiling.

  One wolf grabbed Collins’s ankle in its teeth, and the deputy howled with pain. Another wolf snapped its teeth around his wrist, and they dragged him off, away from the fire, until I couldn’t see them anymore.

  Doc groaned, and I rushed over to him.

  “Can you walk?” I asked, taking his arm. He tried to turn over, but he was so weak and hurt, he collapsed in my arms. I pulled, trying to lift him up, but he was too heavy. I couldn’t move him at all.

  “Come on, Doc! Please get up!”

  “Do you need my help, Jezebel?”

  I nodded. “Yes, please.”

  Susie lifted Doc’s limp body in her long, thin arms as her patent-leather black eyes searched my face. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  I scrambled to my feet and headed for the house, with Susie carrying Doc behind me.

  On the way, I carefully picked up the gun by its handle, using my dress. We went up to the house, where Mama stood on the porch. I gave her the gun, and she went inside and wrapped it in one of her old aprons. Even in the dim light from our lamp, I could see the blood on Doc. I went inside, but Susie stayed where she was on the porch.

  “Your house is blue, Jezebel. I can’t enter on my own. You have to bring me in.”

  Even though Susie looked different, I wasn’t scared. I took her arm and led her inside. Her skin was warm to touch and it slid around on her bones a little, which was strange, but I didn’t let her know I thought so.

  The blue-skinned hag laid Doc down on my bed. He was in bad shape, with bruises and cuts all over his face and neck. He was bleeding from somewhere on top of his head too; I could see the red trickling down from his salt-and-pepper gray hair.

  Mama looked at Susie. Her eyes widened, but she didn’t say anything. Instead, she checked Doc over, then wet a few rags with cool water and a little dish soap. She gave one to Jay, then plopped down on Jay’s bed. “Help me clean your uncle up, please.”

  “Is he dead?” Jay asked.

  “No, thank the Lord,” Mama said. “I’ll have no more ghosts in this house. Bad enough beating, but he’ll live. He’d better.”

  “What about you?” Jay asked me.

  “Now that everyone is home, I’m okay.” I hated to ask the question, but I felt like I needed to know if I ever wanted to sleep safe again. “What about Collins?”

  “It’s a good thing you opened that circle, Jezebel,” Susie said. “Circles hide you from beings like me. I wouldn’t have been able to help if you hadn’t.”

  I opened my mouth to say that wasn’t an answer, but Susie wasn’t finished. “He won’t be bothering you again, if those wolves have anything to say about it.” Susie put her hand on my shoulder. “That was some impressive magic, there.”

  “Thanks,” I whispered. I ran my teeth over my lip. “I need to take care of Mom and Doc.”

  Susie gave me a soft smile wi
th her blue lips closed. Then she turned to go.

  “How can I repay you?” I asked to her back.

  She made it to the porch, then turned around. “I’m repaying you. You saved my life. Let’s call it even.”

  “Does that mean we won’t see each other anymore?”

  “I said I consider you a friend and I meant that. Do you still consider me your friend?” She looked a little worried about my answer, but I smiled.

  “Yeah, I do. You’re my best friend.” I ran out to the porch and hugged her. Her dress was too thin for this type of weather, but she didn’t seem to be cold. “Except for Doc and Mama and Jay.”

  “You’re my best friend too, you know.” She hugged me back. “Remember that, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said as she leaped from the porch into the night sky.

  Doc woke up as Jay and Mama washed his wounds, then covered them with a healing oil we’d made. He drank a little medicine, then went back to sleep. Mama stayed up to watch Doc, sitting in the chair in our room. Me and Jay lay on Mama’s bed in opposite directions: his head near my feet and mine near his head.

  “I knew Daddy didn’t leave us,” I said, holding Dinah while she nestled in the crook of my arm.

  “Yeah,” Jay said. “He wasn’t that kinda person. He wanted to stay with us.”

  “But Collins . . .” I couldn’t say the words, but I thought them. Collins killed our dad.

  “I know.”

  The look in Jay’s eyes told me he really did know how I felt. He wasn’t just saying it. Sick inside, hurt, and maybe a little tiny bit of relief that we now knew for sure what happened to our dad.

  “Do you feel better?” I asked him. “Now that you know?”

  He thought about it a long time before he answered. “I don’t know when I’m gonna feel better. I imagine it’s gonna hurt for a long time.”

  Dinah’s hair wrapped around my fingers and her hums turned into a lullaby I remembered Gran singing to us. The ache squeezing my heart eased up a little, and somehow, I was able to fall asleep.

  First thing in the morning, when the sky was lightening up, I heard a sharp knock on the front door. When I answered it, Sheriff Edwards stood there, hat in hand.

  I didn’t feel afraid of him the way I had been of Collins. I led him to the room I shared with Jay, where Mama had fallen asleep in the chair beside Doc. He kneeled down next to her. Slowly, Mama woke up, frowning and rubbing her eyes. When she saw the sheriff there, she jumped up out of the chair with a gasp, looking around the room.

  “Everybody okay?” he asked her.

  Mama nodded. “I’m fine, and so are the kids. Doc’ll be fine after a while. Collins did a number on him.”

  “Speaking of,” Sheriff said, “I need to deal with Collins. What happened to him?”

  Mama stared him straight in the eye and said, “Justice.” She walked over to where she had the gun Collins used in her apron and gave it to the sheriff.

  Sheriff Edwards looked right back at her like he was searching for something. Then he took it carefully and nodded. “All right, then. So are the rumors true?” he asked, a half smile on his face. “Have I got myself a family of witches within my jurisdiction?”

  I tapped him on the shoulder and he turned to me. “A family of rootworkers,” I said, proud to admit it for the first time. “Or witch doctors is fine too.”

  “So we haven’t scared you away?” Mama whispered so she wouldn’t wake Doc up.

  “I want to help make things better, Mrs. Turner.” He sighed. “It might take some time, but I’m here to stay.”

  They both focused on me—Mama standing in front of the rocking chair and Sheriff kneeling on the floor at her feet. Mama took my hands in hers when she told me, “You know this can’t get out to anybody, Jez. If it does, we could all be in real big trouble.”

  A little worry still lived inside me, but I knew we could handle anything that came our way. We were Turners, and Turners don’t run from anybody. I touched the Devil’s Shoestrings bracelet on my wrist. It no longer scratched my skin when I wore it. The bracelet had become part of me, just as rootwork was a part of who I was. Who my family was.

  “That’s okay.” I smiled, full of hope and promise. “I know how to keep a secret.”

  23

  When Gullah people die, babies in the family are passed over the coffin so the dead person won’t come back from the beyond to take them away. No one did that today with me and Jay. Not because we were too old, but because Daddy didn’t have a coffin. We didn’t have to dig a big rectangle for him to be buried in. There was no way to find where his body was to bury because the water would have taken him away long ago.

  Even so, we as a community on this island still came together to say goodbye to one of our people. Me and Jay had learned enough rootwork to add our own handmade powder to the line of protection surrounding the marsh as people walked in, carefully stepping over the line we made to get to the water’s edge. Some of the kids at the funeral service were girls from school, who had laughed when Lettie told me how stupid and backward rootworking was. But they lifted their feet and stepped over my line of protection powder just like everyone else. I looked at them until they turned away and kept their eyes on the ground. Today, not even they would dare to say anything nasty. Another death in this community was a reason for all of us to come together, not tear each other apart. I shook my head and poured out the rest of my powder, then tucked the bag into my pocket.

  Me and Jay were old enough to share stories of the man we remembered our daddy to be when the pastor asked. We were old enough to add our voices to the songs of mourning and rejoicing that he was in a better place.

  Dinah wriggled in the pocket of my best dress. The same black-and-gray one that I’d worn to Gran’s funeral. Mama had to let the seams out for me to fit into it. Under Dinah’s headscarf, the little patch of hag skin was gone, leaving a paler brown piece of cloth. But I had stitched her crepe wool hair back down and tied the bright scarf back in place, and she was good as new. I smoothed her hair and she calmed after squeezing my finger with one of her tight curls.

  Turns out Gran didn’t need the hag skin to make Dinah alive. She was so powerful that her blowing her breath into the doll was enough to make her move, and smile, and make me feel connected to my grandmother even though she was gone. One day, if I studied hard and learned everything I needed to, I might be just as powerful as she was, and make as much of a difference in the lives of our people.

  Finally, we all gathered around the water’s edge to have a homegoing service for Daddy. Mama wore her black dress without her hat this time, and the breeze, mild for early December, ruffled her pressed hair. Her eyes looked shimmery, like they were brimming with tears, but instead she turned her face into the wind and breathed deep. She kept her eyes open, and when she looked back down at me, they were dry and calm, like some kind of peace had been returned to her. She walked through the bulrushes and cordgrass to the very edge of the marsh’s waterline. She mouthed a few words I couldn’t hear, then threw a rose made of woven palmetto leaves into the water. Doc followed and did the same. Then Jay.

  Mama turned to look at me, but she didn’t have to tell me it was my turn this time. I walked up to the marsh, a place that had held such fascination and fun and fear for me, and placed my feet at the edge of the water. Here was where I had almost lost everything, even my life, but it was also the place where I found that I was connected to the people who loved me. And it didn’t matter that some of them might be gone for now. I was here, and I would remember them, always.

  “I love you, Daddy. I miss you so much. Good luck on your journey to Zar.” I threw my own rose—the first one I’d made that held together the way it should—into the water.

  After I did, one of the older women from the church began to sing, and soon the rest of the people’s voices joined in as we stood on the bank and watched the water ebb away, taking the Gullah roses out into the sea.

  I didn’t feel alon
e anymore. Things will always change. People grow up, move away, or even pass on, but I now knew it didn’t mean they’d left me alone. I’d made friends, ones I didn’t expect. I’d found my connection to my family, my people, and my magic.

  I reached out and took Mama’s hand, then Jay’s, and watched as he reached for Doc’s. We stood together as a family, and finally, I added my voice to the song.

  Author’s Note

  I wrote Root Magic because of two Helens: my grandmother and my great-aunt.

  Big Helen was my grandfather’s sister, born and raised on one of Charleston’s Sea Islands. She was a rootworker who always told the best stories, punctuated by her table-slapping laugh. Clients came to her for helpful spells: to find jobs, do well on a test, or address a health condition if they couldn’t afford a doctor.

  My grandfather married a woman named Helen, who was the daughter of a pig-and-tobacco farmer. My grandmother wasn’t a fan of rootworking. She wanted me to stay away from it and focus on education, so I could get a good job and take care of myself.

  Because of the two Helens in my life, I wanted to write a book that showed some of the challenges of living in a family with very different views on rootwork. I also wanted to feature the two worlds many Gullah-Geechee people live in: the one they were born into and the one they learn as they grow older and enter school, meet friends, and encounter people not familiar with our way of life.

  Speaking of rootwork, it is not a religion. It’s a spiritual and magical practice whose traditions have been passed down either in families or to apprentices who have sought training. Rootwork, along with many of our food traditions, is one of the connections Gullah-Geechee people share with the African continent. Some say that Black people don’t have our own culture, folklore, and traditions, but that’s far from the truth. We have a cultural link to the African continent, inseparable from the American part of our culture where we survived chattel slavery by making a way where there was none.

  Rootwork exists in many variations wherever African-Americans are. (Although it’s sometimes called hoodoo or conjure or a host of other names.) Its original purpose was to make life better for the rootworker and those around them. In the earliest examples of this magic in the United States, protection spells took precedence. As time went on, additional spells—luring love, luck, and financial success—increased in popularity.