by Eden Royce
Side by side, we turned, letting the beam of light cut through the darkness and the thin shadows. We saw nothing except grass, trees, crops, and the hard-packed dirt path as we moved. Doc’s cabin seemed miles away. From where we stood, our house looked tiny and impossible to reach.
A moment before we completed the circle, the flashlight hit something. It was as if there was a patch of night it couldn’t get through. Jay froze, then, inch by inch, he moved the flashlight back the way we had come. I was hoping it had been a mistake. That he had taken his finger off the switch for a minute. But the thick darkness ate up the beam again.
Then, darkness spoke.
Happy birthday.
And it reached for us.
We screamed, not caring that anyone heard, and turned to run back to the house and to Mama. As we sprinted, a crackling sound came from behind us, like someone stepping on dry leaves. The flashlight showed how far we were away from safety.
“Not gonna make it home,” I panted.
“Doc’s,” Jay huffed, and turned off the path. A heartbeat later, and he wrenched open the door to Doc’s cabin. We both fell inside, slammed the door behind us, and lowered the bolt.
The door thudded like someone was pounding on it from the outside, but it didn’t give.
Jay and I huddled together, listening to the banging and the rattling of the lock. I set the lamp down, then we broke apart to search for something to protect us.
“Gotta be some potion here to get rid of that thing,” I said, searching through drawers and on shelves. The shelves were lined with bottles and jars, maybe hundreds of them in all different sizes. Some brown, some blue, all glass. I wished I knew more about what they all did.
“But what is it?” Jay’s voice was strained tight with fear, and it cracked on the last word.
“I don’t know.” I kept scrabbling through the items in Doc’s cabin, searching for . . . “The dirt! The brick dust and graveyard dirt! Do you see any?”
Jay held up jar after jar to his flashlight, dropping them all back into the baskets he plucked them from. “Nothing. What do we do?” He had a smudge of dust on his dark-brown cheek, and his lower lips trembled. I expect I looked the same.
I squeezed his arm. “We need to find something. We can’t let that thing get us!”
“It ain’t gonna get us, Jezzie. I’m gonna give it a good licking with this.” He hit his palm with the flashlight, testing its weight.
A wooden walking cane lay in a corner. When I picked it up, I saw the tip of it had been whittled sharp. I didn’t know why Doc would sharpen a cane, but it would make a good weapon. I tested it by making little jabs at the air. When I saw my arm, I realized I wasn’t wearing the Devil’s Shoestrings bracelet Doc made for me. I’d taken it off before I went to sleep. I wanted to kick myself.
“Let’s go get it,” Jay said, moving toward the door.
I pulled him away. “Don’t get too close!”
That’s when the banging fell silent. We pressed ourselves against the back of the cabin and waited, both of us with our heads cocked, listening. There was nothing.
Then, just when our breathing was getting back to normal, we heard something under our feet. Scraping.
The floor rattled back and forth as if someone was shaking it. Jay raised his flashlight above his head to use like a hammer. I braced my feet apart, shoving the point of the walking stick outward. I told myself that I’d use it. I was sure I could. Maybe.
Me and Jay looked at each other, then back down to the shaking floor.
I heard a crack like the bolt on a door sliding open. The floor shifted again. Then a part of it slowly began to rise up.
My arm was shaking like a leaf in a storm, but I held the cane fast and pulled my arm back. My only thought was: You can do this, Jezebel. You have to protect yourself.
The trapdoor in the floor opened all the way, and Doc’s head rose up from its depths.
“Kids?”
I was so relieved to see it was our uncle that my whole body sagged. I had to lean against the wall for support. To my right, I heard Jay’s breath come out in a long, low whistle. Then I realized I was still holding the cane out, and Jay still had the flashlight.
Doc stared at both of us and said, “Looks like we might need to have a talk, huh? Pretty sure you have something important to tell me.”
Slowly, we lowered the weapons, and Doc eased himself out of the cellar. He let the flap fall back down, and the hatch disappeared into the rest of the dusty, gritty floor. I didn’t know his cabin had any space underneath it, and from the look on Jay’s face, he didn’t either.
Doc sat at his worktable and emptied his pockets. A few clear bottles with cloudy liquid in them, some dried branches, and a balled-up brown paper bag. He laid the things out in a pattern particular to him and hummed a soft, light tune I hadn’t heard before. After a while, he said, “Well? I’m waiting.”
“Dinah jumped up and ran off—”
“We was following Jezzie’s doll—”
Doc waved his hands to stop us from speaking at once. “Wait . . . wait . . . easy now. One at a time. I can’t hear myself think when y’all are chattering like magpies.”
Jay looked at me, then started talking. “When me and Jezzie was at the marsh earlier today, she said something talked to her, then she got stuck in the mud and couldn’t get out, then after we went to bed she woke me up and said we had to follow her crazy doll down the path and something in the marsh ate the light from the flashlight and then chased us into here.” He took a deep breath like he was going to say more, then he clamped his lips shut.
Doc sat there, hands still, looking at Jay while he talked. He always liked to give a person’s story his full attention. Then he turned to me, his eyes all serious, but calm. “Is that right?”
I nodded. “And it talked to us. It wished us a happy birthday.”
“What about getting stuck in the marsh?”
For a minute I didn’t say anything, even though I knew I had to. “Well . . . I got stuck in the mud. It was like the marsh held me still and wouldn’t let me loose. But I figured it out, Doc! We used one of the blue paint sticks to get me out.” I took a deep breath. “So there’s really nothing to worry about—you can still keep teaching us rootwork.”
If Doc was angry with us about what happened, he didn’t show it. He just asked, “What about then? Did you hear anything when you were stuck?”
Jay and I shared a look. “I heard a voice. Clear as day, saying it was time.”
“Time? Hm.” He stroked his graying beard. “Did it hurt you?”
From the way he said the word ‘hurt,’ I knew the answer was important. I had been scared, but . . . “No, it didn’t hurt me.”
“Okay,” Doc said. “Did it feel like it wanted to hurt you? This is important for both of you.” He glanced at Jay. “But womenfolk mostly trust what they feel more than menfolk. It’s called intuition. Think hard now, Jezebel. Did you feel, somewhere deep inside, that it was going to hurt you?”
Intuition? I’d never heard the word before, but I knew what Doc meant. Oftentimes, I heard Mama and even Gran say they could feel things. Mama could feel when rain was coming on, when something was wrong with me or Jay, when someone was trying to fake her out at the market charging a higher price than was right. And Gran knew—she always said she knew, not that she felt—when someone was guilty or innocent. One time, we heard on the radio that Mr. Mackie from the garage got arrested for stealing, and she said the police had the wrong man. Turned out she was right.
I closed my eyes and tried to remember. Remember through my fear. In my mind I pulled away the layer of strangeness that had covered everything. Was it bad? Did I feel it being hateful? Time, it had said. It’s time. The voice was one I didn’t know, and it sounded like speaking was hard for it, like trying to walk through the knee-high mud in the marsh. Whatever it was hadn’t hurt me and I felt—no, I knew—that if it had wanted to, it could have easily done so. But inste
ad, it had kept me still and made me listen. I thought of the words to the song we sang in church. Peace, be still.
“No, it didn’t mean me harm. I—we—were running around so much, hollering and everything. I wasn’t paying attention.” I looked over at Jay, who was giving me a strange look, like he’d never seen me before. “It wanted me to listen.”
“Have you been listening lately?”
“I . . . I’ve been trying,” I said, and pulled a loose string on the hem of my dress.
“I know you have.” Doc gathered both of us together in a hug then.
I’d been so scared I was going to get in trouble. That Doc was gonna say he couldn’t teach us anymore because it was too dangerous. I slumped into his hug with relief.
Jay squirmed to get free. “Doc, what was it out there? You must know.” My brother crossed his arms in front of his chest and stuck his lower lip out.
Doc reached for his pipe. “I know you grew up seeing me and Gran make potions and such all your lives, but there are things in this world that you’ve never experienced before.” Doc let out a heavy breath. “Your mother didn’t want me doing spirit work around you two and I never did. Never talked about most of the other parts of rootwork. Hexes, spirits, and creatures from the next. She wanted you to go to school and get real jobs rather than feeling like you had no choice but this life.” He smiled, but it seemed sad. “Looks like even though I hadn’t introduced you to this aspect of rootwork, things got outside of my control. My mother was right. I needed to prepare you kids for this world, and I didn’t do that properly. Anyone can learn recipes and rituals, but not everyone has a natural connection to the earth and the creatures that share our world.” He nudged us at the same time. “That’s something both of you have, in different ways. You’re new, so it’s delicate, but it’s strong.”
Doc turned up the wick on his hurricane lamp, an old oil one with a tall glass cover to protect the light when it was windy. The cabin got brighter and my worry faded some in the warm light. “I wanted to wait to tell you both about the true world of rootwork, but seems like an expert thinks it’s time you both know.”
The only person I knew who had more root understanding than Doc was Gran. Everyone on the island knew that. I didn’t know what expert he was talking about, but at that moment, I wished so much that Gran could have been here to teach me alongside Doc.
Before Gran died, I used to climb onto her big bed and tell her my dreams. Once, after she heard one of my dreams about a crow and a crab, she got quiet. She took a deep breath and told me I’d do great things one day, but before I did, I was going to have troubles. I don’t know if all this is what she meant, but this was definitely trouble.
I crossed my arms in front of me. “Who is this expert?” I asked, suspicious.
Doc said, “You two need to talk with your grandmother.”
Our mouths dropped open. “What?”
“It’s a lot to introduce you to in one day,” Doc said. “But sometimes, we can speak to those who’ve passed on, just like we’re all speaking to each other now. Other times, ancestors come to us in dreams. Or we have to seek them out to ask for their advice.” He smiled. “This is a very special thing, your gran crossing to speak to you. It’s an honor.”
“Jez?” Jay was looking at me, scared. I knew he was scared because I was too.
I bit my lip. Rocked back and forth on my heels. “It must be hard to cross over.”
Doc nodded. “Takes a lot of energy for a spirit to communicate.”
“Then . . . then it would be rude not to talk to her if she came all this way.” I took Jay’s trembling hand and squeezed it. “Right?”
“Right.” He squeezed my hand back. “And Gran always made time to spend with us. We can spend time with her.”
“Proud of y’all,” Doc said as he stood up and walked over to the cabin’s front door. He lifted the wooden bolt and opened it. We held our breath.
The dark shape from the woods lay flat on the ground outside. It rose, hovering at the doorframe, before carefully folding itself inside. It touched my hands, then my head and shoulders. I wasn’t so scared this time, but I stayed still, unsure of what would happen next. The shadow didn’t feel cold or evil; it felt curious and somehow—pleased. It did the same with Jay, and while he scrunched away from it at first, he eventually relaxed and let go.
Once he did, everything changed.
The dark shape fluttered and flapped, then it folded itself again and again until it was a rectangle as small as the palm of my hand. Then it fell to the floor.
From within the dark rectangle, another shape rose up. This one was a shadow shaped like a person. As it floated up and out of the shape on the floor, I smelled the scent of lemon and pine. Then came gardenias and benne candy, all bubbling sugar and toasty seeds.
It was Gran’s smell.
The shadow stood there unmoving. Stars twinkled within the dark shape. Without thinking, I raced over and hugged the shadow. It felt like her too: warm and solid with a little softness under a long, starched-crisp skirt.
I couldn’t believe it.
All of a sudden, I felt her, intensely. Smart, and wise, and how she knew—she always knew—the right thing to say. No matter what. She protected us, loved us, gave us everything she had, everything she loved: stories and songs and recipes and magic. And I missed her so much.
I mumbled into her skirt, “Ah muss moo.”
Her chuckle was a soft and gentle puff against the top of my head. It was comforting, like a fire when you come in from a walk in the cold.
Then she spoke. “I miss you too, my Jezzie Belle.” Her voice was exactly the same, and I would know it anywhere.
Jay came up beside me. “Hi, Gran,” he said, and reached out to her.
“Hi, Jay Bird.”
Gran’s arms wrapped around us, and she hugged us both. When her shadowy self lifted, she raised us up too. We clung onto her while she swung us in midair. It was flying and getting hugged at the same time and it was perfect.
When she set us back down on the ground, we were full of questions.
“How did you get here?”
“Is this real magic?”
“Can we do it?”
“How long can you stay?”
It didn’t matter that me and Jay talked at the same time and talked over each other. Gran just sparkled even more. Maybe because we weren’t scared anymore.
“I done walk, swim, and fly to get here. But I wouldn’t miss this birthday. You’s eleven now, and that’s momentous.” I could feel her smile and her happiness. “And yes, it’s real magic. And you can do it, if you work hard.” I couldn’t see Gran’s face clear within the shadow. Instead, she looked as though she was in front of candlelight in a dark room when she thanked us in Gullah. “Tenki,” she said. “Fuh la’an disya ruht.”
“How long can you stay?” I asked again.
“Jezebel.” Doc’s voice had a warning in it.
“It’s all right,” Gran said to Doc. “These chirren gotta know.”
Gran bent down in front of me and Jay. She was still in shadow, but her eyes and her smile sparkled with love. “I must go,” she said. Gran kissed me on the forehead, then Jay.
“But remember this: Hice da famblee.”
Raise the family.
“How do we do that? I don’t understand.” Gran was usually patient with us and explained things when we asked her. Her words now made me confused, like I should know something I didn’t.
“You will,” she said. “When the time come. Know I love y’all, hear?”
Once more, she hugged us tight. Then she stepped back, onto that black rectangle. As the dark shape began to fade, we heard her voice one more time.
“We gonna see each other again, you know. One day. Oh, and Jezebel, better leave your window open for Dinah.”
After that, she was gone. But I could still feel her kiss on my forehead. Still smell her scent like perfume on the air. My heart felt like it was gro
wing inside me, it was so full of love and joy. I wanted to spin around and around until I was dizzy.
She told us being eleven was special. Momentous. And it already was. I wanted to hold this moment inside me forever.
But it was time for us to go back to bed. Doc ushered us out of his cabin and we headed back inside, quiet as we could. Jay yawned and climbed under the bedspread. I sat on my pillow, remembering.
Something had opened up in me: a huge deep well that wanted to be filled. I knew now why learning my family’s magic was so important. There was more to rootwork than I ever imagined. More than the kids at school could understand. More than Deputy Collins could scare out of us. And I was ready to learn it all.
I was tired, but I felt better than I had since Gran passed away. I raised the window a little more, like Gran asked, for Dinah to get in. Then I climbed under the covers.
“I think I can do this,” I whispered to the night. “It’s scary, but exciting too. And I love knowing that I’m doing things the people in my family even a hundred years ago used to do.”
I lay back on my bed and said my prayers for the health and happiness of everyone in the family, making sure to still include Gran. When I looked over at Jay, he had his face smashed into the pillow, already asleep.
Soft light from the moon and stars came through the sheer curtains into our room, making patterns on my bedspread that I traced with my finger. Sounds of the marsh filtered in through the cracked-open window: frogs croaking, cicadas singing, and the call of screech owls.
My eyelids got heavy. “This is going to be a big, important year,” I whispered to myself before I fell asleep too.
8
When I woke up, I felt Dinah’s little gunnysack body under the covers. I rolled over onto my tummy and hugged her tight, not caring that the girls at school would make fun of me even more if they knew I played with dolls. She had a little bit of Gran inside her, just like me.
Dinah had been out in the woods all night, but her clothes weren’t dirty at all. I checked, and her dress was still clean and crisp and her hair trailing from under her headwrap was fluffy and soft. She smelled like pine trees and cinnamon. It made me think of Gran all over again, and so I pretended to talk with Dinah like she was my grandmother.
