HeartFire Page 0,47

what you name it? Or if you change names do you change souls?"

"What do names have to do with..." Margaret's voice trailed off. She looked off into the distance.

"I think decipherment happens before our eyes," said Balzac.

Calvin was annoyed. She wasn't supposed to take this seriously. "I just asked a question, I wasn't trying to plumb the secrets of the universe."

Margaret looked at him with disinterest. "You were going to make some foolish joke about giving Alvin the C from your name and you could be the one that everybody likes."

"Was not," said Calvin.

She ignored him. "The slaves have names," she said, "but they don't, because the names their masters give them aren't real. Don't you see? It's a way of staying free."

"Doesn't compare with actual freedom," said Calvin.

"Of course it doesn't," said Margaret. "But still, it's more than just a matter of the name itself. Because when they hide their names, they hide something else."

Calvin thought of what he had said to start this stupid discussion. "Their souls?"

"Their heartfires," she said. "I know you understand what I'm talking about. You don't see into them the way I do, but you know where they are. Haven't you noticed that the slaves don't have them?"

"Yes, they do," said Calvin.

"What are you talking about?" said Balzac.

"Souls," said Calvin.

"Heartfires," said Margaret. "I don't know if they're the same thing."

"Doesn't matter," said Calvin. "The French don't have either one."

"Now he insults me and my whole country," said Balzac, "but you see that I do not kill him."

"That's because you've got short arms and you drink too much to aim a gun," said Calvin.

"It is because I am civilized and I disdain violence."

"Don't either of you care," said Margaret, "that the slaves have found a way to hide their souls from their masters? Are they so invisible to you, Calvin, that you haven't ever bothered to notice that their heartfires are missing?"

"They still got a spark in them," said Calvin.

"But it's tiny, it has no depth," said Margaret. "It's the memory of a heartfire, not the fire itself. I can't see anything in them."

"Seems to me that they've found a way to hide their souls from you, said Calvin.

"Doesn't he ever listen to anybody?" Margaret asked Balzac.

"He does," said Balzac. "He hears, but he doesn't care."

"What am I supposed to be caring about that I'm not?" asked Calvin.

"What the Black girl said she wished for," said Balzac. "A name. She has hidden away her name and her soul, but now she wants them back and she doesn't know how."

"When did you two figure this out?" asked Calvin.

"It was obvious once Madame Smith made the connection," said Balzac. "But you are the most knowledgeable people I know of, when it comes to hidden powers. How could you not know of this?"

"I don't do souls," said Calvin.

"The powers they bring from Africa work differently," said Margaret. "Alvin tried to figure it out, and so did I, and we think that everybody is born with hidden powers, but they learn from the people around them to use them in different ways. We White people - or at least English people - but Napoleon's like this too, so who knows - we learn to use these powers individually, binding them tightly to some inborn talent or preference or need. A little bit of it we can put outside ourselves, in hexes, but the real power is held in each person. While the Reds, they open their powers to the world around them, becoming less and less alone, more and more tied to the power of nature. It gives them great powers, but cut them off from the natural world and it's gone."

"And Blacks?" asked Balzac.

"They learn to put it into objects, or perhaps they find it there, I don't know. Since I've never done it myself, nor has Alvin, we could only speculate. Some things I've seen in Black folks' heartfires, though - I could hardly believe it. Yet it's so. Arthur Stuart's mother - she had extraordinary power, and by making something, she gave herself wings. She flew."

Balzac laughed, then realized she wasn't joking or even speaking metaphorically. "Flew?"

"At least a hundred miles," said Margaret. "Not far enough, not entirely in the right direction, but it was enough to save her baby, though her own strength and life were spent."

"This Arthur Stuart, why don't you ask him how the power of Black people works?"

"He's just a boy," said Calvin scornfully, "and he's half-White