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catching and settling the dust at the same time.

Calvin jerked and twitched violently. Then he sat up, pulling away from Fishy's grip, tearing the bellows and the wax out of his nostrils. Then he choked and coughed, trying to clear his lungs.

He looked no healthier. Indeed, patches of his skin were sloughing off, sliding like rotten fruit thrown against a window. But he was alert.

"Calvin, listen to me," Margaret said.

Calvin only choked and gasped.

"The slaves are about to revolt. It has to be stopped. Alvin's too far away, I need your help!"

Calvin wept. "I can't do nothing!"

"Wake up!" Margaret shouted at him. "I need you to be a man, for once! This isn't about you, this isn't about Alvin, it's about doing the decent thing for people who need you."

Some of what she was saying finally penetrated Calvin's hazy mind. "Yes," he said. "Tell me what to do."

"Something to take their minds off their anger," she said. "What we need is a heavy storm. Wind and rain. Lightning!"

"I can't do lightning."

"How do you know you can't?"

"Cause I grew up trying." He looked down at his hand. The bare bone of one finger was exposed. "Margaret, what's happening to me!"

"You were too long out of your body," she said. "Alvin's hurrying here to save you."

"He don't want to help me, he wants me dead!"

"Stop thinking about yourself, Calvin!" she said sternly. "I need something that feels like a force of nature."

"I can do fires. I can set the city on fire."

As he spoke, a couple of tiny flames danced around on the floor beside him.

"No!" cried Margaret. "Good heavens, are you insane? The slaves will be blamed for setting the fires, it would make everything even worse! Not fire."

"I don't know how anything works," Calvin said. "Not deep enough to change it. Alvin tried to teach me but all I wanted was the showy stuff." He wept again. Margaret had to seize his wrists to keep him from rubbing the skin off his face.

"Get control of yourself," she said. She turned helplessly to Gullah Joe. "Isn't there something - "

Gullah Joe laughed madly. "I tell you! No good this way! Zombi no good! All he think be, I so dead! He be sad, all sad, him."

"What about the water?" she asked Calvin. "I know you and Alvin played with water, he told me. Making it splash without throwing in a stone - that's a game you played. Remember?"

"Big splash," he said.

"Yes, that's right. Make it splash out there. In the river, really big splashes. Slosh the water up on the shore. Make it flood."

"All we did was little splashes," said Calvin.

"Well this time do a big one!" Margaret shouted, her patience wearing thin. If, in fact, she had any patience left at all.

"I'll try, I'll try, I'll try." He cried again.

"Stop that! Just do it!"

She felt someone kneel down beside her. Fishy? No, Denmark's wife. She had a damp cloth. Gently she pressed it against Calvin's forehead. Then his cheek. She mumbled something unintelligible, but the music of it was calm and comforting. Calvin closed his eyes and began trying to make the water in the river splash.

Margaret also closed her eyes and cast about for heartfires near the river. She skipped from one to another, up and down the shore, on the north side of the peninsula and the south. No one was looking toward the water. They were all watching inland, fearful of the howling from the slaves.

Then one of them noticed that the boats were rocking in the water. Masts tipped, then tipped back again. He looked out at the water. Wave after wave was coming, as if from giant stones falling, or perhaps something pulsing deep under the water. Each wave was higher than the one before. They began breaking onto the docks.

More and more people were seeing the waves now, and those near the water began to run farther inland. The waves were coming up onto the streets, forming rivers that flowed over the cobblestones. Farther inland the water came until it was streaming across the peninsula. Ships battered against the dock and began to break into kindling. People ran screaming through the streets, pounding on doors, begging to be let inside.

And the slaves also pounded on the doors. Where a moment before all they could think of was murder and vengeance, now in their groundfloor quarters a new passion had taken hold: to get to the first floor before this flood drowned them. Wave