on the bench, or even near the promenade. I was standing in that kitchen, and I saw on the counter cookies, pastries, and all manner of sweet things, on trays lined with parchment paper, just as they had been back at Mars’s bakery. And there was another counter adjacent to that one, and I saw behind it a colored woman, singing softly to herself, kneading dough, and when she saw me she smiled and said, “Why you always so quiet, Hi?”
Then she went back to kneading and singing to herself. Some time passed before she looked up at me again and laughed. “I see you there eying Master Howell’s ginger snaps,” she said. “You might be quiet but you fixing to get me in a whole mess of trouble.”
She shook her head and laughed to herself. But a few moments later, I saw a look of caution on her face as she brought an extended index finger to her closed lips. She walked over to the door and peeked out, then walked back over to the other counter, filled with treats, and pried two ginger snaps loose from the paper.
“Family got to watch for each other,” she said, offering these to me. “And furthermost, as I see it, all of this belong to you anyway.”
I took the two cookies from her hands. I must have known what was happening. I must have realized, amidst it all, that wherever I then was, it was not the Lockless of now, was perhaps not even the Lockless of then. It was as though I were in a dream. And this woman before me, I could not name her, though I felt a pang of recognition, and a pang of something more—of loss. And so strong was this feeling that I ran to her, the ginger snaps still in my left hand, and hugged her, long and hard. And when I stepped away, she was smiling big as day, big as the baker Mars had smiled at me only that morning.
“Don’t forget,” she said. “Family.”
And then I saw the fog return, float into the kitchen from all around, until the counter disappeared before me, and the trays disappeared before me, and the woman disappeared before me, and she said to me as she faded from my sight, “Now get on.”
And then I was back, seated on a bench. I felt tired. I looked at my hands, which were now empty. I looked up and out past the promenade to the river. The man on the unicycle rode past again. He waved. I looked to the benches to my left and then my right. The line of benches continued on both sides with little difference, save this—three seats down I saw a piece of half-eaten gingerbread on the bench, and in the grass the parchment in which it had been wrapped, blowing gently in the summer breeze.
16
NOW I KNEW. THAT was Conduction. The power was still with me, even if I did not quite understand how to call it forth. I dragged myself, exhausted, back to our building and fell asleep as soon as I returned to my room, with the sun still out, and did not wake again until early the next morning. I thought to try to access the power again, but the fatigue and malady that I now saw accompanied every Conduction dissuaded me. Instead, I decided to visit Mars’s bakery again and apologize for my rude manner. Then, perhaps, walk through the city more, to test the freedom, perhaps east this time toward the Delaware River, maybe even across it and into the small hamlet of Camden, where Raymond and his family lived. But just as I pulled on my brogans, I heard a knock at my bedroom door and then Otha’s voice.
“Hiram, you there?”
I opened my door and saw Otha already descending the staircase. He looked back up at me, still bounding down, and said, “Gotta go.”
I followed him down the steps and into the parlor, where we found Raymond pacing with a letter in hand. When he saw us, he walked to the door, grabbed his hat, and, without a word, dashed out. We followed him out onto Ninth Street and then to Bainbridge, which was already by then flush with the flow and miasma of Philadelphia.
“The law of our state is quite clear,” he said when we caught up to him. “No man or woman can be held under bondage—even if brought here under bondage. Haven,