I have learned a few things: I have learned that Jefferson is considered a “good” master, compared to many others, because he doesn’t beat his workers or whip them. Still they are not free. Unwhipped or not, they cannot choose whether to be here.
Clink!
The boards on these shacks are loose, compared to Jefferson’s own grand home. I wonder how cold these people get in winter. Or at night. Fortunately, it’s been warm lately.
Or maybe that’s just me. The hot flashes, actually, are why I’m on my way to see a horse.
Clink-clink ting!
Sooysaa. Ever since I fell and tangled with him, the wagon-horse has been reported as acting strangely, or “touched,” as Sally says.
He’s touched, certainly. With a lingo-spot.
I need to see what the effects are.
Clink ting.
Show me…
I brush at my ear, like there’s a fly buzzing there, but of course there isn’t.
The horse grew so unpredictable, they moved him from the main stables out here, behind the blacksmith’s on Mulberry Row. Since the animal was potentially dangerous, they decided to let the slaves deal with him.
Did the idea of slaves get invented in the first place when someone realized life had suddenly become too complex, too much for one person, or one family, to handle on their own?
So you force someone else to help handle it for you.
“Can I help you, miss?”
I had followed Sally’s instructions. I was at the last building on the row, with the wooden fence behind it.
“I’m looking for Isaac.”
“That’s me. You have permission to be out here by yourself?”
Sally said Isaac actually grew up with Jefferson. His family was “inherited” by Jefferson President from his own father. In other words, the slaves are treated just like horses.
“I don’t want no problem with no runaway on my hands. I don’t want no blame for nothin’.”
What’s he so scared of? I’ve just come to look at a horse.
“You’re that runaway slave girl, right?”
“No. No slave,” I tell him, with my newly-practiced English.
“What do you mean, ‘no slave’?”
I don’t try to answer. I see the horse I’ve come for. He’s tied to a post in the small stable area behind Isaac’s workspace. Even in the shadows, I can see the animal is still scared, pulling against the bridle ropes that keep it tied to the fence.
Poor thing. If the lingo-spot is working, it’s probably overwhelmed with information.
“No slave.” I repeat absently, making my way toward the horse.
“Really, you shouldn’t—” He’s almost pleading with me, but I don’t listen.
Then another voice starts up. Someone ahead of me. In the shadows.
“No slave but Brassy.”
I recognize the speaker.
It’s Mr. Howard. He’s waiting for me by the horse.
No wonder Isaac seemed so nervous.
Howard probably told him I wanted the horse because I was trying to escape.
I probably should tell him I am escaping, though I’m not. It would make more sense than the truth. But why talk at all? He’ll grab me at any moment, so I have to focus on the horse.
“Sooysaa… ”
The animal flicks its head in my direction, eyes widening.
Show me…
Show me what?
Howard is advancing toward me, the same wild look on his face that he’s had ever since trying on Eli’s cap. He takes a whip off a nearby post.
Horses are whipped to control their behavior. And so are slaves who are caught trying to escape. That’s what I was told, though it hasn’t happened to me, so far.
I’ve had a couple of days of rest and recovery here, at Jefferson President’s estate. After my fall from the horse, they wanted to make sure none of my bones were broken. I suppose there was some genuine concern there. “But they also have to return you to Louisiana’s governor in one piece,” Sally told me. “They want the merchandise to be in good condition.”
Unless I can find a way to leave this place, I am apparently to be sent to this territorial governor within the week. No wonder Mr. Howard thinks I’m trying to escape. He’s been telling Jefferson to have me watched more closely and to stop leaving me alone with Sally.
“All of America appears gripped by fevers and fugue states,” Jefferson said in response to one of Howard’s warnings. “At least, all of Monticello does. It would behoove you to be sure of your facts.”
He often said such things in Latin, for my benefit. He imagines I understand him, and is intrigued by that. Or amused.
“She will be wasted on that governor,” he said.
Apparently, if one is a slave, one is better off amusing the master than angering him, and better off still being thought of as particularly useful. None of it flatters me.
Jefferson’s use of the Roman tongue does allow me to listen more intently with my actual ears, while trying to tune out the lingo-spot. More and more, the Saurian translation device seems to be creating a type of noise that can become quite disturbing. Like an unbidden thought that startles you.
As it did during my carriage ride with Sally. It’s as if the spot were becoming an extra mind to direct my own. I have tried to remove it, putting the residue in a small crystal jar I retrieved from the cooking quarters. Honoré, Jefferson’s chef, was there, standing by the long wooden tables and knocking carved spoons over large iron pots.
“Get out! I am busy! Can you not see?”
“I need —”
“I have been ordered to sabotage perfectly good fromage on another of Monsieur Jefferson’s experiments, and if he has sent you here to tell me about another idée he has for an entrée, well, mon Dieu! It will have to—”
“I just need a jar,” I said. In Latin. He didn’t understand.
“Can you not speak français?” he asked, but after I gestured with hand signals, he let me take what I wanted.
I wanted to preserve the lingo-spot in order to examine it later, when I get back. But back to where? Eli’s home? K’lion’s? Certainly not mine.
Mine’s been burned.
The most startling effect of the lingo-spot happened shortly after I was brought here and put to bed to recover from my bruises suffered in the fall. Evidently I not only slept deeply but also experienced a kind of “waking trance,” according to what Jefferson President and Sally told me later.
This was one of the “fugue states” Jefferson made reference to. While in it, he said that I “talked so vividly, it was as if you’d actually lived in ancient Egypt.” I resisted the urge to tell him, “I did.”
But what did he mean by “ancient?”
In the lingo-spot vision, I had been with my mother, Hypatia. I was lying on a marble bench, covered in a light cotton cloth, shivering with fever. “Mermaid,” she said to me softly, using her favorite nickname for me. “Mermaid. You are not yourself.” She smiled. She took a pitcher of lemon juice, honey, and water, and dribbled a little on my lips.
“Come back, Mermaid.”
“Where — where have I been?” I managed to ask her. “And… what am I becoming?”
She looked at me and just kept smiling. I wanted to kiss her, to thank her for a lifetime of touching, of whispered love. For warm food and lazy naps and needed healing. For letting me see her in her sadnesses and rages, and letting me know she still loved me then, too.
I wanted to do all that, and it felt —in that vision — like that balmy afternoon stretched infinitely in front of me, giving me all the time I’d ever need.
You always think you have all the time you’ll ever need.
Show me…
But you don’t.
Show me…
And yet it was so vivid to me, it was as if the lingo-spot were trying to show me… the things I really meant to say, if I only had a chance…
As if its task had now become a
different kind of translation, that of making a deeper self known, intelligible, to me.
But when I woke, I was in Jefferson President’s house, still a slave named Brassy who was supposed to be returned to the one who “owns” her.
“Show me…” I whisper to the horse as I draw close.
The animal is frightened. According to the rumors I kept hearing in the house, the one I call Sooysaa has been fearful ever since the accident. In Alexandria, people often regarded sudden skittish behavior in their animals as an augury of some human disaster.
Sooysaa was acting spooked, haunted. Jefferson even mentioned having the animal destroyed.
I had to find out if I could help it. If I talked to it, calmed it, then maybe it wouldn’t have to be killed. There’s been too much death around me lately.
But, of course, I couldn’t tell anyone any of this. Especially not if they’re all insisting I’m really this —
“Brassy!”
I won’t answer to the slave name. I step toward the horse, but out of the corner of my eye, I see Howard stepping over the stacks of hay, holding the whip, and it’s hard not to flinch.
“Here, Sooysaa.” I’m trying to keep the horse calm. “Don’t be scared.” I just want to get close enough to whisper a single question to it before I’m hauled away.
I see now that the horse is also restrained by chains around two of its ankles. Otherwise, it would bolt.
“Easy, Sooysaa.”
Mr. Howard’s right behind me.
“I’m not trying to run away,” I tell him, without turning around.
I don’t say it in English, so he doesn’t understand. In fact, my speaking at all — in a foreign tongue, no less — seems to make him even angrier.
Then the whip cracks.
And lands on the horse.
“Obey!” Howard hisses
And again on the animal.
Sooysaa is screaming, kicking against his stall with his free legs.
Crack!
This time the whip lands on me.
The pain is stunning: the leather coil has sheered off some of my skin above the shoulder.
Howard is getting ready to land another blow.
“Mr. Howard. Stand down.”
It’s Jefferson. He stands in the rear with Sally and Isaac.
“No more hurt. No more hurt.”
Another voice. Near me. But I feel it, more than hear it.
Show me…
Sooysaa. Yes. A lingo-spot that can translate… emotion… wouldn’t require a specific language to work. On animals. Or anyone else.
“No more hurt.”
It’s the horse.
“No more.”
I can feel blood start to run down my arm.
The horse and I are talking. Both thinking we’re about to explode, or go under, from the feelings inside.
Mr. Howard stands nearby, the whip raised, uncertain whether to strike or not.
“You will not hurt the girl, Mr. Howard. She is the new governor’s property, after all, and she’s in our care now.”
I’m nobody’s property. But if it keeps another blow from landing, I’ll let the comment pass. For now.
Sally walks over to me. She has a rag, which she touches gently against my shoulder.
“Horse,” I tell her. In English. “Horse. Much scared.”
“Who can blame it, child?” Sally says. “It’s a frightening world for a horse.” She looks at Jefferson. “We need to get this one back inside.”
She means me, since the horse isn’t going anywhere.
“She was trying to escape. Sir,” Howard says, in an attempt to explain his actions. “it would hardly do to allow the governor’s property to disappear.”
“When I need your counsel on slave matters, Mr. Howard, I shall ask it. Please prepare my carriages. I can no longer put off my return to Washington, and fear we must return there in the morning.” Then he turns to Isaac. “I am sorry for this interruption in your commendable duties, Isaac.”
Isaac nods, but doesn’t say anything.
Howard quickly fills the silence. “She’s a danger, sir. I can feel it.”
“Your feelings are duly noted, Mr. Howard. But I have use of her now, in my study. I find she may help in solving a scientific anomaly I have come across in my research.”
“It would give the other slaves bad ideas, sir, if they see her doing that. Especially when they know she deserves to be punished. What would the governor say if you allow her such privilege?”
“The governor, I am sure, will want his runaway well-mended when we hand her over. Even if she is high-spirited. And frankly, Mr. Howard, as long as she can answer a couple of questions about the mathematician Hypatia, and the library at Alexandria, I am willing to risk whatever the governor might say.”
Hypatia!
Mother.
Then maybe Jefferson President knows who I really am after all.
And where I really belong.
Chapter Ten
Clyne: Spirit Mound
February 1804
“We have to get you out of here, before the little people get us.” It’s North Wind Comes.
We are someplace dark. I can hear, but can’t see well. And my leg hurts. I’m not sure why. If I ever get back to Saurius Prime, I’m seeing the student nurse before I deliver any findings.
“Is it awake now?”
That’s not North Wind Comes.
“He’s not an it. He’s a good spirit. A helpful vision.”
Click. A new sound.
“Well, there’s little honor in killing him like this, in the dark, when he can’t even see me. Can you heal him? Get him moving again. Then, at least, it would be a hunt.”
Click. Click.
Who’s speaking? Why does my leg hurt so much? I reach out… there’s blood on my leg limb. My blood.
This perhaps can’t wait for school nurses.
This perhaps reminds me, I may never get home at all.
Still feeling my gra-baaked limb, I notice a perpendicular part of that lower leg that was never there before. Sticking out. Like a bone.
“Ow! Ow! Ow!”
“Be careful, Many Lights.”
“You’ve given him a name? A demon? A name?”
North Wind Comes doesn’t respond to the other human mammal. “You are hurt, Many Lights. Crow’s Eye hit you.”
A jabberstick! That’s a jabberstick in my leg! It’s not a bone. I wonder if that qualifies as “good news?”
“And I did a fairly dishonorable job of it. Wounding, not killing.” Click snkkk.
So that’s Crow’s Eye in the darkness, next to us.
“Personally, although I am literally at pains to say it, I prefer a mere wound to the alternative.”
The clicking stops. “He speaks. You didn’t tell me he speaks.”
“You didn’t ask.”
Click. Now a spark follows the noise. Click. Another. Click-click. And another. Crow’s Eye has been striking two rocks together. I can see that now, because one of the sparks has caught in some straw and started a small fire. He blows on it. The fire grows.
“I think we will have heat now.” As the fire grows orange — citrus-colored and warm, though there’s little sweet about any of this — I get a closer look at Crow’s Eye’s face. It is brown-red like North Wind’s, somewhat like Thea’s, with very black eyes, and a kind of scowl. But it’s still a young face, and the attempt to hold on to that fierce look, regardless of what he may be heart-experiencing underneath, makes him look like a youthful Cacklaw rear guard trying a head fake on new opposition.
Thanks to the light from his fire, however, I can now not merely feel, but see the jabberstick in my leg.
North Wind points to it. “Your arrow, Crow’s Eye.”
“Yes, North Wind, that is my arrow, sticking out of your demon friend. I suppose, since we are trapped here, I should just wait for him to die from blood loss and then drag him to the village, like an old woman who has foun
d a beached trout and brings it back as if she’s a great hunter. Then again, we will be lucky if an old woman finds us here at all and fetches help. My life as a warrior is over before it has begun. Instead I will be like Coyote, chasing my own tail, acting like a fool.”
“I always thought Coyote offered much wisdom,” North Wind says. “In his own crazy way.”
“Then perhaps I should offer myself as an assistant to a Mandan shaman-in-training, cheering up his patients before he works his wonders.”
Crow’s Eye isn’t happy at all. You don’t even need to hear his words. With just the small light we have, you can see it in the way shadows move across his face.
“Crow’s Eye. Look around,” North Wind says. He’s not happy either. “We can’t wait for old women, or young girls, or the rest of your raiding party, or anybody else. We have to get out of here now.”
Yes, we do. Because I have brought some plasmechanical material to this world that has become infected, and if left untended, it could make life even more unpredictable for these mammals than they make it themselves.
I also have to find time, away from Crow’s Eye, to warn my friend that the gift I thought I was giving him — the gift of understanding, from the lingo-spot — may be doing things to his body.
Or his mind.
But first there is the problem of the jabberstick jutting out of my leg. And how we all got in here in the first place.
“Thank you, yes,” I say, trying to mimic at least a faint cheerfulness. “ My jumping limb is aching fiercely, I have lost more blood than I am comfortable with sparing, and if you could keep me awake, I’m sure I can guide one of your medical practitioners through the proper care and suturing of Saurian wounds.”
As the Saurian elders are fond of saying, You must count to one before you reach two. No need to wait for a far-off school nurse or even the lucky old woman that Crow’s Eye mentioned, who might be looking for us. I will simply use the first-aid training I learned as a vacation-time assistant in the play area for nestlings, back on Saurius Prime, and guide one of these mammals in the true healing arts.
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