to touch her face, as she had so often touched mine. It was cold to the touch. I looked down and saw her lungs heaving strong, and when I found her face again, I saw that her eyes were open. She smiled and said, “Evening, friend.”
She was up in minutes. It was as if the whole thing was but a nap. We walked for some time, following a dirt road, but keeping ourselves to the woods, so we would see any patrol long before it was upon us.
“My apologies, friend. I thought I had enough spirit to make it without one of those bouts,” she said. “The jump is done by the power of the story. It pulls from our particular histories, from all of our loves and all of our losses. All of that feeling is called up, and on the strength of our remembrances, we are moved. Sometimes it take more than other times, and on those former times, well, you seen what happened. I have made this jump so many times before, though. No idea why this one socked me so.”
We walked and the woods opened into a clearing where men from the timber camps had been at work. Across the field I saw a cabin and, through a window, the flickering of a hearthfire.
“That there’s our place,” she said. “But I suppose you must have some questions. There will not be much time after this, so I suggest you ask now.” We sat on a pair of stumps. The night was cool. A slight wind blew out from the forest and across the fields.
On the Street we lived in a world of stories and tales, of hoodoo and professed conjuration, of prohibitions—no hogs slaughtered under moonlight, the floor never walked with one shoe. I did not believe in that world. Even as I knew what had happened to me, how I had come to Thena, how I had come out of the Goose, I thought the whole explicable, comprehendible through books. And maybe it is all explicable, and maybe this is that book. But nevertheless, when I was conducted, I underwent a drastic revision of the world around me, and what wonders and powers it held.
“My grandmother was a pure-blood African. Went by the name of Santi Bess,” I said. “It was said that this Bess could unwind an African tale with such effect that sometimes a first frost would feel like a prairie heat.”
Harriet, seated upon the stump, said nothing.
“And Bess’s gift for stories was so prized that the Quality would bring her up during their socials and she would put her stories to songs and rhythms that they had never heard. They were amused by her and would toss coins. Bess would smile and scrape the coins into her apron. She never kept them. She gave them to the children in the quarters. She claimed to have no need and I think I now know why.
“As the story goes, Bess came to my momma one night, and told her that she must walk to a place where Momma could not follow. They were born to two different worlds, she told her—Momma’s was here, but my grandmother’s was far gone. And now Bess must tell a story, the oldest story she knew, one that would turn back time itself, and journey her back to that place where her fathers were buried in honor, and her mothers gathered their own corn. That night Bess walked down to the river, in the middle of winter, and disappeared.
“And Bess ain’t disappear alone. That same night forty-eight of the Tasked walked off from their plantations to never be seen again. And every one of ’em was pure-bloods, just like Santi Bess.
“I have never known how to feel about this story, Harriet. My momma was left out of connection. Her father was sold off. Then she was sold off too. I thought I was done with all of that. I can barely see her face, for I have no memory of her now. But that story, and this Santi Bess…” I trailed off—shrinking back from the words forming in my throat. I turned to Harriet, stunned. “How have you done this?”
“Sounds as if you already know, friend,” said Harriet. “Imagine the islands in a great river. And imagine that normal folks must swim from island to island—imagine that is their only method. But you, friend, you are different. Because you, unlike the others, can see a bridge across