SAGITTARIUS
SAGITTARIUS
BEFORE HER SISTER had come back from the Big House to tell her, Hetty knew good and well someone had run off.
“You heard the alarm?” Esther asked as she plopped down on her pallet.
“Didn’t have to,” Hetty grunted. The heat of flames ran along her neck, and it was all she could do to keep from tugging at her collar. “Punishments started. Don’t look at me like that,” she added when Esther’s head whipped around. “This ain’t nothing that hasn’t happened before.”
Esther settled, running a finger through the dirt floor of their cabin, her next words soft and filled with resentment. “It shouldn’t be happening at all.”
The silver collar at Hetty’s neck, at the neck of every slave that could do magic, was always on Hetty’s mind. There was no way it couldn’t be. It was always there. Pinching as she slept, rubbing her skin raw every time she moved, and leaving her shivering when cold weather reared its head. The overseer took pleasure in grabbing it whenever she looked at him funny, jerking her head up so he could blow stale smoke in her face. The collar marked her. It told everyone that set eyes on her she was magic enough to be trouble. And the ones that didn’t know that would know she was a runaway when the collar started ringing like a bell.
This was all very bad, but not as much as the Punishments.
The Punishments sent sharp pricks like needles jabbing into your neck, or made your skin burn like fire that seared until you couldn’t breathe.
Hetty got enough of them that she knew how to push down the pain—to reduce it to a dull ache, one that never quite went away. But usually she had time to prepare. Just like you knew you were going to get slapped for saying the wrong thing. You do magic, you hurt for it.
But this morning was too new for her to have done anything wrong. That meant the pain she’d just felt was from someone else kicking up dust.
“Who was it? I know it was someone magic.”
“Solomon ran off last night,” Esther said. “I heard them talking as I left Little Miss’s room. I hope he makes it to freedom.”
Hetty could only grunt, not wanting to tell her sister it was his only option if he wanted to live.
Usually, Hetty worked in the weaving room, stitching and sewing the day away. To keep their mother’s garden patch, she had swapped places with Nan for the change of a moon. That put Hetty working in the kitchen under Tilly’s blistering tongue, but it was a worthwhile trade. Esther had been worried they’d lose the patch, which still had plants their mother had touched and cared for. This arrangement put that worry aside until the spring. But Esther was happy, and that was all Hetty cared about.
Hetty kept thinking about those plants and her sister’s smile all morning as she helped prep supper. Her pleasant thoughts made a strong barrier against the rough side of Tilly’s words.
The pain at her neck was harder to ignore. With each breath it got sharper and sharper, until Hetty put down the knife—before she lopped her thumb instead of the carrot.
“Stop your cloud gazing,” snapped Tilly. “You might be Connie’s girl, but unless you got a bit of her skill, you don’t get to sit around. Shoo—get that pan into the fire. You can do that, can’t you?”
Biting down on her tongue, Hetty held the pan over the flames, shifting and shaking it as needed. When she lifted it to shake it once more that fire kissed her skin. The pan slipped right out of her hands, and fear plunged her forward as she saw every terrible thing that would follow if she burned Master’s breakfast. When her hands grabbed the bottom of the pan, relief was her most prominent feeling—before flames lapped against her palms.
She didn’t scream.
Others did. But somehow the noise never left Hetty’s throat.
She felt the pain but nothing else. Everything flowed around her. People pulling her back, the hot pan being stepped over, Tilly’s horrified face. And then, finally, Esther was there to do something about Hetty’s red and bubbling hands.
The wrappings hadn’t been replaced twice before Hetty was summoned into the parlor the next day.
Mistress lounged on a chaise, rubbing the ears of the evil creature in her lap. The dog didn’t growl at Hetty, not like it usually did. Perhaps it found something to pity with the bandages.
The room was full of beautiful things: the curtain, the rug on the floor, the pictures hanging on the wall. Painted pictures, she remembered. These folks called it art.
The only thing that wasn’t beautiful in the room was the overseer. He was perched on the edge of one of the dining room chairs, sweat dripping off his forehead and mud clinging to his boots.
“Mister Tibbs,” Mistress said. “Take a look at her hands. See those bandages? She got burned because you went above and beyond your place.”
“She’s collared.” Tibbs stumbled over his words. “I was told—”
“Yes, I know,” Mistress sliced into his words. “My husband gave you orders to punish the collared slaves. I have no problem with that. But this girl is mine. I came into this household with five slaves, and any children they bore became my property. I can’t breed her since she has too much magic, but she’s the best seamstress in the county. I’ve gained favor by lending her out to my neighbors and gotten invitations I only dreamed about. You best pray her hands heal properly, for you’ve cost me a great deal of money.”
“But she wasn’t supposed to be in the kitchen,” the overseer stammered. “She switched her placement around—”
“Doesn’t matter. You’re still fired.”
“Mistress, I—”
A wand slid into her slender, milk-pale hand, though no words came to light it with a spell. “You’re fired. Leave before I have my husband forcibly remove you. And you,” Mistress said to Hetty as the overseer stumbled out. “If your hands are not healed by the end of winter, you’re going to the fields. Your mother was my favorite. I took good care of you on account of her. But if you can’t sew, you’re no use to me.”
Hetty said the right things, mumbling and stumbling over words just as Mistress wanted her to, all while staring at one of the paintings on the wall. And as she did, she realized that it wasn’t just art. It was something far more important.
It was a map.
“The healing salve won’t work if you keep drawing in the ground with your fingers,” Esther said as she tended the little plants in their mother’s patch, keeping her body in the way of anyone who might look over at Hetty. “You ain’t drawing star sigils?” She paused and considered something worse. “Or words?”
“No,” Hetty said. Esther’s shoulders had just relaxed when she added, “This is a map. I saw it in the parlor. It shows the land around here and beyond.” Hetty pointed at the messy marks. “I don’t remember most of it. There are lines and colors, and words. I need to get it all in my mind, tell it over and over like a story, and then I’ll—”
“Run?” Esther whispered.
They talked about running after Mama died over the summer, but it was just talk and wishes.
Grown men couldn’t make it past the edge of the farm without being dragged back beaten to the edge of death’s door. What chance did they have? The few words she had learned to read wouldn’t be enough. The magic she knew was of no help either, not with this collar on her neck.
Hetty turned her hands over to stare at the blood and dirt mixed on her bandages.
Papa had played the fiddle at fancy dinners in the Big House and got paid plenty by the white folks who liked his music. He was even lent out to play at nearby farms. When Mistress found out he was saving to buy them all free, she pointed her wand at his hands and broke every single bone. She must have slipped a curse in as well, because his hands wouldn’t heal right no matter how many healing balms and prayers Mama wrapped around them. When he couldn’t even lift a hoe without it slipping from his curled fingers, they sold him the next time a minor debt needed settling.
The day her father went away was the only time Hetty had seen tears in her mother’s eyes. Not because he was gone, but because they couldn’t do a thing about it.
“Yes, I’m running,” Hetty said. “And I’m making a plan for both of us.”
“It should be just you.” Esther shook her head. “I’d just slow you down.”
“I’m not leaving you here. Even when Mama was bleeding everywhere and crying out in pain, she grabbed me, looked me in the eye, and made me swear to look after you.”
Esther stiffened. “Don’t make up stories about things like that.”
“No story,” Hetty said. “It’s the truth. She asked me with her dying breath. I promised I would. That’s the sort of promise you don’t break unless you want something bad to happen.”
The moon had grown full once and then halfway again before Hetty’s hands fully healed. During that time, she slipped into the parlor whenever she could to study the map, spending each night tracing it back into the dirt. She even started to make sense of the words. She kept in her mind the letters of each word and matched them with words she saw in other places. They didn’t all fit, but the bits and pieces started to make something.
Nan did poorly in the weaving room during this time. Mistress complained about the poor quality of her dresses and linens, while still threatening to sell Hetty if her hands didn’t heal properly. Out of spite, Hetty kept the bandages on a full week more, taking a tip from a housemaid who complained about stomach pains each month to get out of work.
Even though she waited on purpose, the day Hetty chose to take the bandages off for good was the very day Solomon was dragged back to the Big House, more dead than alive.
“How can someone be mostly dead?” Hetty asked later that night. Esther crept back into their cabin after hours spent healing the dying man.
“His spirit was already leaving,” Esther said. “It was being pulled away by the Great Spider.”
“Not spider,” Hetty corrected, dragging her left finger to make new lines in the dirt. “The Great Weaver is the one who creates the thread of life, measures it, and cuts it when your time is done.”
“Don’t matter who it is.” Esther turned over, her eyes reflecting the light of their candle stub. “Solomon should be dead. He’s got nothing but horrors waiting for him.”
“They’re selling him?”
Esther shook her head. “They’re going to do to him what they did to Martin.”
Martin had been gone from the plantation for several years before Mistress came here as a young bride, but everyone knew what had happened to him. He was wrapped to a post with chains, and Master’s father had slashed a knife in his flesh until a carving of the Cursed star sigil was left in the wood. This was the final punishment for the Collared who dared to use more magic than what they were allowed. Many with the mark died within days—the lucky ones by nightfall. Martin lived on for weeks, forcibly given water and food to prolong his suffering. Whispers in the quarters said only his body lived, that his spirit had been long since snatched. But that did little to change the end of the story.
“Solomon broke his collar and fled. They can’t sell him now. Price is too poor, and when that happens . . .” Esther fell silent for a moment. “I don’t think he’ll make it,” she said. Then added hopefully, “His heart is weak, and his spirit is confused. He keeps mumbling these things that don’t make a lick of sense. Like this bit: ‘Ask the Aspen on the Hill and check the gourd in the little bear.’ ”
Hetty stopped drawing.
“What? It’s just nonsense,” Esther said.
“No, it’s not.”
Sketched in the ground before them was not the outline of the county. It was a world bigger than Hetty could ever imagine.
“Aspen Hill.” Hetty pointed to a space where she had only attempted to draw out the letters. While in the dirt it was nothing, she saw the words as they appeared on the map. “That’s a place near here. What else did he say?”
“Lots of things.” Esther drew back. “Funny names and such. It’s a song of a confused spirit.”
“It’s a song, but he’s not confused. Tell me the rest.”
Esther still frowned, but she repeated the bits and pieces she remembered. Her confusion turned to wonder as Hetty pointed to each place on the map.
“It’s a song that tells us the way to leave. It’s probably how he left in the first place. This tells us how to stay away from the traps and safeguards!”
“It’s not a good one.”
Hetty’s excitement faded. “No, it ain’t.”
Still, Hetty studied the map far longer than usual before she swept it away.
Solomon wasn’t made an example in the end. He died a few days later, writhing in pain from a sickness Esther claimed was too far gone to be cured with any herbal remedy.
No one questioned Esther too hard about that truth.
As Solomon died, he screamed out curses and a jumble of words at such a frightful pitch, Master actually had Mistress and Little Miss sent away so the house could be checked for any evil curses cast with a dying man’s last breaths.
“Not sure how they know what to find,” Hetty said as she sewed up the tears in Esther’s good dress. “White folks don’t understand a thing about our magic.”
“Both the stars and the herbs,” Esther added with a laugh as she wound string around a bundle of herbs.
“The skies and rivers, and rain and sunlight,” Hetty recited.
“The wind and soil, the storms and the calm,” they said together, repeating the words their mother had sung to them. “The magic is the world and it moves through us. There are words and rhyme and—”
Hetty’s words cut off with a cry as the collar turned iron hot against her skin.
“What’s wrong?” Esther crouched next to her. “You didn’t do any magic!”
“Something else,” Hetty spat. “Words have magic!”
“Hetty,” Esther said, and what else Esther had to say was lost as the pain reached the point where Hetty couldn’t breathe. This was just like what happened in the kitchen—but to make matters worse, now it was happening in front of Esther. Esther had never seen her like this. Never saw her crouched over in pain and unable to do more than let it run over her like rain. Hetty had always tried to keep this from her sister, to protect her like Mama had made her swear to. She was failing. Failing the only thing she could do in this terribly cruel world.
“Stop,” Hetty said, as she grasped at the collar, pulling uselessly against it, her sewing needle prickling against her skin. “Stop!”
Hetty kept pulling and pulling, and then the pain was gone.
The metal cooled and Hetty’s hands fell away . . . and so did the silver collar.
It fell into the dirt. Perfect twin halves spotted with blood.
If it had been a snake, they couldn’t have moved away faster.
“What did you do?” Esther whispered. “Was that magic?”
“Don’t know.” Hetty prodded the closest half to her with her sewing needle. It didn’t spark. No bells rang. “Don’t care. Did it glow when it came off ?”
Esther shook her head.
“Then it’s dead. We have time. They can’t use it to follow us.”
Esther swallowed hard, but her voice didn’t tremble. “Where?”
“North.” Hetty clawed at the packed dirt. “We follow the stars.”
“That’s not a place,” Esther said rather seriously. “That’s a direction.”
Hetty almost laughed. She could always count on her little sister to find humor in the most terrible of times.
“It’s not. I don’t know where I want to go. I just know we can’t stay here.”
“I know a place,” Esther said. “I heard it healing some sick folks in the next farm over. They were talking bad about it, so that means it’s a good place for people like us.”
“Where’s that?”
“Philadelphia.”
“I don’t know where that is,” Hetty said as she buried the collar. “But let’s find out.”