Liz paused. “I ask myself that a lot, Beth. I don’t want to believe there is, and yet how else do we explain it all? Every element of what happened to us and to your father has a rational account, yet taken together, it’s hard to deny. But ‘is Agbado real?’ may not be the important question. The important question might be, what is Agbado? How much of him is us? Is he the dark place in our hearts that rages at what hurts us or threatens us or that we cannot control or understand? Vengeance, fear, hate and the urge to control are the opposite of love, which embraces risk and forgiveness and even death; sacrifice for the sake of another, the helping hand that asks for nothing in return. I think the world is full of Agbados, the people who open our hearts and minds to hatred. We are constantly invited to indulge our worst demons by the merchants of terror, who live off of, and profit from, the dark pleasure it gives us to indulge our fiercest and most destructive impulses.
“Agbado was a choice, I think. Remember what your father said about Bill and how he died because he refused to amputate the arm of that child?”
Beth nodded. “But Bill died, and the child lost the arm anyway.”
“Yes, Beth, but Bill made a choice. He said no to madness, and yes to freedom. We all die. If Agbado showed me anything, it was the stark terror of immortality. Trapped forever and horrifyingly isolated because he cannot grow or change. As Bill said, it’s not that we die, but how we die that makes the difference.
“And your father said no to Agbado. He said no to anger. And I said no to Agbado when I threw the stone into the lake. We can say no.
“But was he real?” Liz nodded, her fingers tapping her chin and frowning. “Yes, I think he was. Is. Sometimes I still hear him. Or it. Late at night in the dark. I think that was one of the reasons I adopted Gem. She sleeps with me and when I hear that voice in the dark, I draw her close.”
Liz reached down and scratched the dog behind the ears. “She knows, somehow, and lets me put my arms around her and the voice weakens until it’s quiet again. It’s the power of love, I think.”
Liz smiled. “Sounds corny, I know, but it’s not. I always think of the boy your father told us about, Muctar, and his pigeon. As wounded as that child was, he had a connection to that bird. It was love in the only place where he could still find it, and it was his only hope for emerging from that dark journey his life had been up until that time. No one understood better than him the importance of that love, which is why he was so fierce in defending it.”
They were silent again, thinking and watching people walk by on the sidewalk, each one an unknown universe of hopes, desires, dreams and, thought Liz, fears and hates. Just like them.
“Do you think you might see Dad again?”
Liz smiled. “I thought he’d come out the last week you’re here and join us. What happened was difficult, Beth, for him and for me. But I’d like to see him. What do you think?”
“I think he’d like that.”
“We’ll just take things one step at a time, sweetheart.”
THE END
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Also by Christopher Datta
TOUCHED WITH FIRE
“Christopher Datta’s Touched with Fire is in that fine American tradition of the works of Howard Fast and John Jakes. His characters are richly drawn and he has great command of the history to which he has attached his narrative. Also, as Datta’s deliberate and sincere historical fiction wends its way through this abject time in our nation’s youth, he keenly goes about Forest Gumping the reader through a Who’s Who of the Civil War. Touched with Fire is a welcome addition to the ever-increasing canon of Civil War fiction.”
-E. Warren Perry, Jr., author, Swift to My Wounded: Walt Whitman and the Civil War
Ellen Craft is property; in this case, of her half-sister Debra, to whom she was given as a wedding gift. The illegitimate daughter of a Georgia plantation owner and a house slave, she learned to hate her own image, which so closely resembled that of her “father:” the same wiry build, the same blue eyes, and the same pale—indeed, lily-white—skin.
Ellen lives a solitary life until she falls, unexpectedly, in love with a dark-skinned slave named William Craft, and together they devise a plan to run North. Ellie will pose as a gentleman planter bound for Philadelphia accompanied by his “boy” Will. They make it as far as Baltimore when Will is turned back, and Ellie has no choice but continue. With no way of knowing if he is dead or alive, she resolves to make a second journey—South again. And so Elijah Craft enlists with the 125th Ohio Volunteers of the Union Army: she will literally fight her way back to her husband.
Eli/Ellie’s journey is the story of an extraordinary individual and an abiding love, but also of the corrosive effects of slavery, and of a nation at a watershed moment.
“I was completely on edge the whole time…a fantastic story that engaged in its action scenes and tempered them with its easy dialog.”
-Sabrina at Romantic Historical Lovers (Four-star review)
The Demon Stone Page 23
