when that day came, I knew that all paths led to Natchez.
I rode out in thrall to those feelings of the past hours, the dream, the terror, the rage, the unending night, the sun of Sophia fading over the mountains, my lost mother and my aunt Emma. And too there was a want, a desire for an escape from Maynard and the doom of his mastery. And then it came.
I caught sight of the river Goose, and saw a strange mist coming up off the water—a thin fog and now rain that echoed the day’s dark turn. And there it was, a blue mist coming up, obscuring the far end of the bridge. And then, and I remember this most directly, because we had been moving at a good clip, the steady and quick clopping of the horse’s shoes faded. I could see the horse right there before me pulling us along but without a sound, and I thought perhaps it was me, some temporary deafness, but I did not think much because I wanted to get home, I wanted to be free of Maynard, if only for what remained of that evening, and we were on the bridge, and the thin fog had suddenly parted, and that was the moment when I saw her, saw the woman, saw my mother water dancing on the bridge, water dancing out of the blackness of my mind, and I tried to slow the horse, I remember this, pulling at the reins, but the horse barreled on, though I wonder now if I was even pulling the reins, if I was even there in that space, on that bridge, because even now, having done the thing, I cannot say I truly understand the entirety of Conduction, save this essential thing—you have to remember.
5
I WAS IN THE WATER, and then falling into the light, guided by my dancing mother, until the light overwhelmed, and when it dimmed, and faded away, my mother was gone, and I felt the land under my feet. It was night. I saw the fog drawing back like a curtain, until the sky was clear and the stars blinked in and out above. When I turned back, looking for the mist-covered river out of which I had just emerged, all I saw was high grass waving black in the wind. I was leaning on a large stone and in the distance, past the field, I could see the forest, looming. I knew this place. I knew the distance from this stone to the trees, I knew this grass, that it was a field of fallow, my Lockless. And I knew that the stone was no random place-mark, but was the monument to the progenitor, Archibald Walker. My great-grandfather. The wind gusted through, shivering me, so that my waterlogged brogans were like ice against my feet. I took a step forward, wheeled, fell, and down there in that grass I became aware of a powerful desire to sleep. Perhaps I had entered a kind of purgatory, modeled after a world I knew, that must be endured before my reward was revealed to me. And so I lay there shivering, making no effort to move. I reached into my pocket for the coin I carried everywhere, feeling its rough edges, as darkness closed in around me.
But there was no reward. At least none of the sort the old ones spoke of down in the Street. I am here, telling this story, and not from the grave, not yet, but from the here and now, peering back into another time, when we were Tasked, and close to the earth, and close to a power that baffled the scholars and flummoxed the Quality, a power, like our music, like our dance, that they cannot grasp, because they cannot remember.
It was our music that I followed out from the darkness, out from three days, as I was later told, of straddling the line between life and death, of senseless murmuring and frightful fevers. My first note of consciousness was someone humming softly in what seemed to be the distance, and then the hummed melody repeating itself, trailing away for a minute or two, and then returning, and then came the dim realization that I knew the melody, and I began matching the words in my mind:
All the heavenly band a-churning
Aubrey spying and good girls turning.
There was the smell of vinegar and washing soda, so sharp I could taste it, the warmth