The lark is a mediator between heaven and hell. If you hear the lark sing, you must utter “I choose heaven” if that is where you wish to go.

The man stopped in midswing.

“Don’t you dare to hit my slave girl!” I shouted. “She’s near breedin age. Can you pay my father a thousand dollars for her?”

Zenobia pushed up from the ground and turned her head toward me. Her golden eyes looked dead.

The man set down the shovel and swiped his sleeve acrost his sweaty face.

“This girl and a boy was took from my mother and father’s farm, stolen from my mother and father’s farm. They been missin near a month.”

“What’s their names?” the shovel-man asked.

“Her given name is Zenobia. Our boy’s name is Brightwell. Did you steal him too?”

At the sound of her name, Zenobia turned toward me.

I’m some sure she wouldn’t never think that I would be all drest up in such finery and right in the middle of this hornets’ nest of trouble. And me claimin to be her owner.

All the men set to talkin. Zenobia were lookin at me, her head cocked to one side. I cupped my hands around my mouth while the men shouted at Shag, and I whistled the lark’s song. From somewhere nearby, a lark answered. Out of habit, and for the pure luck of it, I whispered, “I choose heaven.”

None of the men noticed the lark’s song, but Zenobia nodded her head. She knowed who I were.

Two of the men walked over to Zenobia. Would she remember the name Auntie give me? One man grabbed her by her hair and yanked her head back.

“What is yer name, girl?”

“My name Zenobia. I always has belong to Miss Abigail’s family.” She pointed to me.

I breathed again.

The men walked back to the noisy group and set to talkin again.

The big man who had knocked me out and hauled me to here turned and asked, “Then why was she and the boy hidin at the Quaker woman’s house?”

I walked right up to him, put my hands on my hips the way our neighbor lady Mrs. Stone always done when she were piqued, and looked up. “I cain’t say why they was in a Quaker house, but they was took from our farm a month ago. Slave traders come through late one night and stole them from us. My father said he thought they wanted to move them further south so’s they could sell them to someone else, but they belongs to us.”

The men huddled round me the way them buzzards ringed the carcass in the meadow.

“A fine pot of boilin pig gravy you got us into here, Shag,” the fat man said, a brown drizzle of chewin tobacca trackin down the stubble on his creased chin.

“Miss, Miss whatever-your-name—why should I believe anythin you’re tellin us?” he asked.

I laid my hands wide open and said, “Because I’m tellin the truth. Now ask yer Mr. Shag Honeybone what he done with my travelin sack. You’ll find your answers inside it.” “Shag, go get her sack and bring it here.”

Shag walked acrost the clearin to the front of his wagon, reached under the seat, and pulled it out.

I were some happy to see it and to see one patched arm of my Hannah doll pokin out of the top.

Shag dropped the sack onto the ground in front of me. The circle of men closed in.

I reached inside, felt for the envelope, and pulled out the letter.

The fat man took it from my hands. I could see his face changin—it moved from mad to worried, then right on back to mad again.

“Shag, look what you done. Now, how we goin to keep on with that slave girl of hers? How we goin to keep on with her?” He pointed his fat finger at me.

My heart dropped. What if he thought to feed both me and Zenobia to them buzzards?

“That old woman’s house is a railroad stop,” Shag said. “Nobody saw me pick up the slaves and the old Quaker woman, and no one saw me take the girl from the town. She’s mine now, and so’s her slaves. I gets the money for them all.”