Root Magic

by Eden Royce

  We ran and didn’t stop until we got back to the edge of our farm.

  Finally when we caught our breath back, me and Susie laughed so hard we had to grab our sides. Then we headed to the pecan tree near our house for a rest. I dropped my notebook and flopped down on the cool grass, and Susie did the same.

  “That was fun!” I felt light and free and excited from the run.

  Susie turned to me. “That was the most fun I’ve had in a long time. Maybe ever.”

  We talked for a while, lying in the shade of that tree. We talked about our favorite things to do. Susie told me that she spent whole summers running through the marsh barefoot, and I told her Jay and I did the same. I couldn’t believe we’d never seen each other; the marsh was big and wide, but it seemed so unfair that we’d never met before.

  Soon the sun was dipping low in the sky, and the cicadas were singing. It was almost time for dinner.

  “I have to go soon,” I told her.

  Susie looked disappointed, but she nodded. “I’m glad you’re my friend, Jezebel.” The words rushed out of her like she had been holding them in for a long time.

  “Me too.” An idea popped into my head of something I could share with my friend. “Oh! Stay right there. I’ll be back.”

  I hopped up, ran up the path to the house, and burst in the front door. Mama looked at me the way she would when I did or said something she didn’t expect. But I didn’t have time to explain what I was doing. I put a palmful of salt in my pocket, kissed her cheek, then took off out of the back door. Over my shoulder, I yelled, “Thanks, Mama!”

  I sped back down the path to the fields. It felt good to be among all the plants and herbs. I walked along the edge of our farm, past the beans and peas to the corn and the watermelons across from them, until I got to the tomatoes. Even though we were getting closer to the end of their growing season, ours were still full and round and deeply red. Their scent was strong and rich, especially when you rubbed their leaves.

  “I thought you weren’t coming back out.”

  I jumped at the sound of Susie’s voice. “You scared me! I didn’t hear you coming.”

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “I . . . um, wanted to say I had a good time too. I, um—” Nervous, I pulled on one of my pigtails. “I don’t have lots of friends. Any, really.”

  Susie pulled on one of her braids too. “That’s okay,” she said. “Me either.” Her dark eyes reflected the fading light like a mirror.

  I cleared my throat. “So I wanted to give you something.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  But I was already tiptoeing down the rows of coiling tomato vines. “Come on.”

  She followed, careful and silent, until we got to the biggest tomato plant. I pulled the green, fat-bodied hornworms off the stalks and tossed them into a patch of weeds. Then I twisted off a ripe tomato and presented it to Susie.

  She looked at it like she was afraid it was poisoned.

  “It’s okay,” I promised. “This is the best way to eat them. Fresh off the vine and still warm from the sun.” Even though I wasn’t craving any food except rice, I took a tomato so Susie wouldn’t feel like she was alone. I wouldn’t want someone offering me food they weren’t going to eat. I bit into it. The firm skin popped, releasing its sweet liquid. “And here’s the best part.” I sprinkled some of the salt from my pocket where my teeth marks were and bit again.

  Susie took a tiny bite from her tomato. When she looked up at me, her grin was wide. She didn’t want any salt, but she ate the whole thing up.

  “That was great!”

  I giggled. “I know. It’s one of my favorite things.”

  Susie placed her hand on my arm. “Say we’ll be friends no matter what. Promise?”

  “Jezebel!” Mama’s voice cut through the early evening.

  “I have to go.”

  “Promise,” she urged.

  “I promise!” I trotted back toward the house, but when I looked over my shoulder, Susie still stood in the middle of the twisted vines, almost like she was trapped and didn’t know how to get out.

  17

  At bedtime, Jay fell asleep right away, snoring as usual. It was the sound I was waiting for. I wanted to see if I could float again. I put Dinah on the windowsill and lay down on the bed, again not touching anything. Deep breaths in and out helped me to relax enough to try and forget all my worries.

  After a few minutes, I just felt . . . not tired, exactly, but more like my mind was wandering and going nowhere in particular. Practice, practice, I reminded myself, so I wouldn’t get frustrated. I closed my eyes and counted backward, letting go of everything my mind and body was tied to.

  Up.

  I lifted, slow and steady, until, once more, I was up in the air above my body.

  For a moment, I was scared to open my eyes, wondering how it would work. Would my real eyes open? Would it be like the time in the marsh? I couldn’t remember exactly how it happened because that day was a fight to survive. It was a reaction—I wasn’t concentrating and trying to float then like I was now. Worry crept in again and I felt myself sinking.

  Deep breath in and out. Relax. Loose, feel loose, stay loose.

  I bobbed up again, and this time, my ghost eyes were open. I didn’t remember doing it, but it was like I wanted them to open and they were. The room was almost dark, but there was no need for light. A little streamed in from outside: the moon was full and I could see me lying there on my single bed, Dinah looking up at me.

  My body’s eyes were closed and my arms and legs were slack like I was deep in sleep. Jay sprawled out on his bed, mouth open and snoring. I floated up and over his bed. He didn’t wake up. I sorta wanted to know if he or anyone else could see me, but I also had more I wanted to do.

  Turn.

  The spirit of me turned toward the window.

  Open.

  Nothing happened. I guessed I would have to open it, so I reached out to grasp the handle. But my hand went through the closed window, quickly followed by the rest of me.

  Now I was outside the house, hovering like a dragonfly. I couldn’t feel the temperature of the air outside, but I knew it must be pleasant and sweet with late-year crops. Moving in this spirit body took time for me to get right, even though I was eager for this new freedom. I looked down and saw the damp dirt road leaving the farm, hard-packed in the middle of all of that moist dark soil. If I could just . . .

  Suddenly, I was moving. It was slow and I was, for a moment, nervous of what would happen. Could anyone see me? The chickens, shut up in the coop for the night, cooed to each other as I went by but didn’t make too much fuss.

  Intent. That was the word Doc always used. He had said root worked with intent, and you had to have what you wanted to accomplish in mind.

  I looked at the pecan tree Susie and I had sat beneath earlier. I want to go there. I thought it, and then I lifted and moved to the tree without a care in the world. From there, I raised and lowered myself, up over the top of the highest branches, and down under low-hanging ones.

  I lost track of time, until the thudding crack of something dropping inside Doc’s cabin scared me. I gasped and felt my body pull back on the free part of me, drawing me in like a crab on a fishing line.

  My spirit plunged back into my body like jumping into a cold lake. I shivered hard and I woke up with a shout.

  No one woke up, not even Jay, which made me wonder if I’d cried out in real life. I sat straight up in bed, looking around the quiet room filled with moonlight. I blinked, and the world looked different through my eyes for a moment, thin and see-through; then I blinked a few more times and it was back to normal.

  Dinah was at the foot of the bed. I picked her up gently and rubbed my face against hers. Everything else around me was still, and I didn’t feel any different. But what I did feel was hungry.

  That was how Mama found me: barefoot and in my nightclothes eating out of the pot of rice from dinner, Dinah propped up against
the sugar bowl facing me, in the dark kitchen.

  And that was when she called the doctor.

  A short, sturdy brown man in a bow tie and a starched white jacket over his white shirt came to the house. He looked me over: eyes, ears, mouth, and nose. He had me go to the bathroom in a little jar and he put it in his black leather bag.

  “Nothing wrong with the child that I can see, Mrs. Turner. But once I hear anything back about this”—he patted his bag—“I’ll let you know.”

  “But she won’t eat,” Mama said, biting her lip. “Nothing but rice.”

  The doctor nodded. “Be okay for her for a while. We’ll see about it.”

  Mama didn’t look any less worried, but she left me alone about it.

  A week later, my test came out clean, and there was nothing the doctor could say about what they called my strange habits.

  I wondered what he would say if he knew of my traveling.

  Every night now, as soon as Jay was asleep, I’d fly. I’d gone to other farms at night, down to the marsh, even along the main road to the houses of a few neighbors. And I saw some crazy things there. Games of dice and dominoes, people dancing and partying till all hours. But not all my visits were happy. There was screaming and fistfights, little kids left alone at night, and animals being hurt.

  I thought about quitting flying and staying home. But something always drew me outside. One night, I was tired of all the trouble I saw on the island, and so I just floated on my back in the middle of the air above the dying cornstalks, looking up at the sky. And somehow, I knew that was where I wanted to go. But wasn’t that where heaven was? You could only go there if you died. I didn’t want that at all. I felt the pull, but I was afraid I’d die up there and never find myself or my family again.

  I felt a tug from a different direction—from the string that bound me to my body. The tug increased, yanking me back. And I fell, faster and faster, dragged back through the air into my body.

  I woke up again with a start, like I’d hit the ground and knocked the wind out of myself. I panted, barely able to sit up. My blood was swirling in my head and I could hardly hear anything outside of the rush of liquid. But a small sound came through to me, a little girl’s voice.

  He’p.

  I felt a pressure in my chest ease up, and I was able to breathe regular and deep. What was that voice asking for help?

  For comfort, I reached for Dinah, but she was already looking at me. Her head was turned in my direction in the moonlight, staring at me, almost like she didn’t know me. I froze.

  “Zar,” Dinah said.

  I gasped and my hand flew to my mouth. “D-did you actually talk? I mean, really talk just now?” Maybe I was confused from the flying, but I definitely heard a voice. Even if her mouth didn’t move.

  She kept staring at me, her head tilted a little to the side like she was trying to figure something out.

  “Zar.” I heard the voice again, and I realized it wasn’t Dinah talking. The voice was inside me. Inside my head, talking to me.

  What was zar? And this voice . . . where did it come from? It wasn’t like when I heard the voices of my ancestors at the marsh. This was like someone speaking from within me.

  He’p, the voice said again.

  Dinah stood up from where she sat on the windowsill and pointed at me. I grabbed her up and lay back on the bed. I held her over my face and she looked at me, deep in the eyes. And I could tell she didn’t like what she saw.

  I imagined a stream of Gullah words coming from Dinah. They were almost impossible for me to follow, they came so fast: Gwine ta da Buzza’d.

  I needed to tell Doc what was happening. But what was happening?

  He’p.

  The voice came again, louder this time. More urgent. I set Dinah on the bed, and she waddled along it, sliding off the end and down to the floor. I shoved my feet into my shoes and followed her through the ink-dark night to Doc’s cabin.

  When we got there, he was at his table, scraping bark into a bowl, humming to himself. A candle was lit, smelling of a protection oil, and I wondered if it was one of the ones me and Jay had made.

  “What are you doing up so late? Or early, I should say.” Then he looked down and saw Dinah. His mouth opened and he dropped the branch he was scraping. For a moment, his mouth moved, but no sound came out. Finally, he said, “Seeing is believing, I guess. Well, your gran was stronger than even I knew.”

  Dinah tapped my leg with her cloth hand, and I knew she wanted me to tell Doc my story. I did, going all the way back to the marsh, all the way up to how I’d been feeling and the voice I’d heard tonight. The words flowed out clear and easy, even though I trembled hard, I was so scared. Doc and Dinah glanced at each other like they were having their own conversation without words.

  My uncle listened without interrupting me, and even though he tried not to show it, I could see the worry in his eyes. “Sounds like you picked up a little haint on your travels.”

  My eyes went wide, but Doc’s voice remained calm when he asked, “Jezebel, honey, how are you feeling?”

  “Fine,” I said, but I was scared. Doc had been teaching us to be cautious of spirits and beings we didn’t understand. They could be tricky and dangerous. I picked Dinah up and held her close.

  “Are you hungry, thirsty?” This time when he looked at me, he chose another candle from the shelf behind him and anointed it with oil. Then he mouthed a few words while he lit it. Smoke began to trail up to the ceiling and the scent of cloves filled the room. “What do you want?”

  I breathed in the scented smoke. I was about to tell Doc that I wanted him to maybe pick a different scent when I heard the voice inside me again, speaking as if we were sitting together talking over tea and cakes.

  “She’s not hungry anymore. She wants to go home now.”

  My words shocked me as much as they did my uncle.

  I remembered the haint in the marsh that had tricked me with the poppet doll. That haint was outside me, trying to steal my power. What could this one do if it was already inside me? My heart beat like I had run miles. Had I really picked up this ghost as I was traveling outside my body? I had never felt anything bad inside me. No evil, no pain. Just the hunger.

  “Oh my God,” I said, now letting the fear sink deeper. I could feel what this ghost wanted. It was living inside me! I started to breathe really fast.

  “No, no, no. Don’t get scared. Don’t get tight, honey.” Doc took me by the arms, gently. “I’m sorry I didn’t see this before. I should have. But I’m going to fix it, okay? With your gran’s help.”

  I nodded, afraid to speak in case it came out as someone else’s words. I focused that same way I did when I escaped the haint in the marsh. I reached out, felt the presence of my family, my ancestors surrounding me. My breath calmed down. I had support. I had help. I had love.

  “Now tell me a bit more about what you’ve been doing when you leave your body.”

  I told him about my trips, my adventures around the island at night. About how I lifted out of my body and flew.

  “You’re sharing your body right now, Jezebel,” Doc said. “Can you feel it?”

  “No . . . ,” I started, unsure. I didn’t feel any different, except for that new pull I felt tonight. The one to go up, up, farther up into the sky than I ever had. The one that scared me. “Yes. I felt like going up to heaven.”

  “Lord Jesus,” Doc whispered. “Did you feel like dying?”

  “No, just going up into the sky. Like I was being pulled up there. But I got scared and I fell back.”

  “Back into your body?”

  I nodded.

  He rubbed his beard, then got up to search his shelves. Glass bottles clinked and metal bowls clanged, so loud that I was sure it would wake up Mama and Jay way over in the house.

  “Is there really a ghost inside me?”

  “Possibly,” he said. “But something was attracted to your ability. To your power. It wanted to have some fun. Did you hav
e fun with them?”

  “Um, I think so?” I said, unsure how to answer.

  “Okay, good. But like when you play outside, with a friend, there is a time for everyone to go home. Do you understand what I mean?”

  I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me anymore, or to . . . the haint. So I didn’t say anything. But for some reason my mouth opened anyway and a voice that was not mine spoke.

  “Please for Zar.”

  I clasped my hands over my mouth to keep any more words in.

  Doc jerked back and Dinah’s little stitched mouth fell open. Doc recovered first. He stood up and came across the table to stand in front of me, motioning for me to lie down on the little cot he used when he was working all night.

  The mattress was thin and clean, and it smelled of sage and cinnamon mixed with Doc’s peach tobacco. I lay down on it, my eyes closed, listening to the sounds around me: matches lighting, glass jars tinkling together, liquid falling into glasses. He placed Dinah on the cot, next to me but not touching, and asked, “How do you do this flying, Jezebel?”

  “I just relax and . . . let go, I guess. Then I lift up like a balloon.”

  “Go on, do that now. We’ll be here with you, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said. My bed wasn’t much bigger than the cot, but I didn’t have the sheets here to cover me up and make me feel secure. I ignored that and concentrated on flying.

  I closed my eyes and breathed deep, trying not to fidget. My worries about Deputy Collins and Lettie and everything else faded away. I let my arms and legs relax, and after a few more breaths, I felt like I weighed nothing at all. There was a freedom in this feeling, rising like warm air. Nothing could harm me, not with Doc and Dinah keeping watch. I lifted up, over the cot, the tiny thin string holding me to my body stretching like chewing gum.

  Up I went, above the room where Doc and Dinah guarded my body, up above the cabin. The night was clear, and I could see what must have been millions of stars. One of them looked especially beautiful, and so far away.