Finding Luna was a miracle that gave me sweet joy, but that joy was laced with pain and I found the first few nights in her presence extremely difficult.
My desire for her was an ever-present wound. I hungered for her so much more than I lusted for blood. It was agony to see her hand on the table when I sat down to teach her how to read, and not reach for it. Or to see her hair sticking out from under the rag she used to cover it and not reach over to tuck it back, letting my fingers caress the tight, springy ebony curls. Sitting beside, or opposite her, it was difficult not to lean in to drown in the scent of her skin or look into her eyes and not take her into my arms.
One night, she was absentmindedly eating an apple whilst I taught her how to read. She bit into the apple and licked her lips, her focus on what I was showing her. That small movement of her moist red tongue against her dark lips sent a jolt of desire through me, bringing heat to my loins. I paused, but not long enough for her to notice, and it was difficult not to keep envisioning my lips on hers, imagining how sweet she would taste, so much sweeter than the apple in her hand. Every movement she made, the hypnotic sway of her hips when she moved across the room, her skin moist and dewy with sweat, the small amounts of exposed dark skin (her neck, the taut smooth flesh of her arms) brought agony and ecstasy in equal measure and I would lie awake day after day in the cool, frigid earth, recalling her scent and those dark eyes. Her voice was like deep honey, an electrifying husky undertone beneath, the drawl of the particular vernacular of slaves like music to my ears.
I left her every night and killed, needing to bury my desire for her in the crimson tide that drowned me. But I was always left with a corpse, my self-loathing, the anguish I felt in her presence and the desire that could never be assuaged.
Was what I felt for her like that of those slaveholders with their fascination in exotic dark skin? Was I lusting for the power they exercised over these lush women whom they only saw as wanton sex objects? No. Luna was so much more than her external beauty. Her mind, her thoughts, held a million mysteries I could sit and ponder and still not be able to unravel. I heard her thoughts nightly, and knew all her memories, but still did not necessarily understand them or her emotions, which were always quite volatile and conflicting, her experiences and memories of her oppressors dominating and tainting everything else in her mind.
Alone with her in that drawing room, I often wished I was back in the secluded, anonymous woodland where no one, and nothing, could lay eyes on me and know what I was. An aberration. Trapped in the glow of the drawing room by my love for this woman, I kept away from the light of the candle by her side and would often retreat to a shadowy corner whenever I was able, usually the fireplace. The first night, she was too engrossed with what she was being taught to notice. The second night, I found her staring at me.
Why’s he all the way over there? It be like he hiding from me. I’s having to hurt my neck craning it just so’s I can see where he be.
She gave a discontented sigh.
There was nothing wrong with her neck, but she continued to moan inwardly and even rubbed at it.
The second night, I found my little refuge by the fireplace ablaze with candlelight. She had put at least ten candles on the mantelpiece.
I said nothing, but when I had an opportunity to move away from the table I sought refuge by the window, which was blissfully free of candles. The shadows it offered soothed me, especially when I gazed out on the benevolent night outside.
Luna got up and crossed the room to the fireplace. Moments later, she was by the window with four candles, which she placed on the windowsill, showering me in light. She returned to her seat, and when I glanced at her, she glared at me before returning to the exercises I had set.
I remained by the window, upset and not sure what to do, my shame and self-loathing so very difficult to overcome.
After a few moments, I moved to the table and sat down.
This woman was my life now, if she wanted me where she could see me, then that is where I would be regardless of my discomfort. I moved one of the candles closer, letting the light fall across me.
She glanced up from the words she had been copying, a soft, gentle smile on her lips, as if she had been rewarded with something merely from that small act. I allowed myself a small smile in return. She returned to the work I had set her.
She was beautiful. And kind, so kind. One night we were sitting outside in the field of flowers surrounded by candlelight. She was staring at the mansion, her brow puckered.
All it be needing is a lick of paint, she thought to herself. Then it be beautiful again.
Her gaze came to rest on me and her eyes softened.
Like him. All he be needing is some attention, someone to care so’s he kin come back to life again.
Her words shocked me and also dangled the hope that was all too often near me only to be snatched away. Someone to care, she had said. Someone to care.
I was in love with her and would have died for her, but I knew she would never return that love. I saw it in her mind daily, her fear and revulsion of white men, and although Master John was miles away at the plantation, the violence she had endured in his presence haunted her and I suspected it always would.
One night we were in the mansion whilst rain beat heavily down outside. It had been raining for most of the day. To me the raindrops were like a chaotic orchestra, my vision heightened by the silvery drops of rain whenever I glanced at the window at the scene outside. But to Luna, the rain was a reminder of something else. She sat wrapped in a shawl, although it was warm in the mansion, and kept glancing toward the window, her raven eyes hooded, a faint light of anxiety lighting them as she searched for some hidden danger. The memory that was playing through her mind was of her running through the woods under menacing storm clouds as rain beat down on the earth. I felt my hands clench as I stared at her, for I had seen this memory before and knew the heartbreaking conclusion to the chase she was remembering.
She turned abruptly and caught me staring at her, haunted lights behind her eyes as she gazed at me.
“Why you looking at me like that? Has I done something wrong?” He gonna take me back, he gonna take me back to him. I can’t go back. I can’t—
“No,” I said quickly, cutting through that heartbreaking train of thought. “I was merely thinking about something I wish I had been able to prevent from happening. You could never do anything to make me angry.”
She relaxed visibly and the expression on my face was what she kept in her mind. Whenever the phantoms tried to lay claim to her mind and fears over the next few nights, she pictured the way I had looked at her, and my words, and they were pushed back.
When I left her that night, I made my way through the dark to the Holbert plantation. I stopped outside the main house. The new mansion was not anywhere near as magnificent as its sneering predecessor. Smaller and without the ostentatious flair of the other, it was more like its humble cousin. The power that repelled whenever I stood outside a home was stronger now so that even being within a few metres of the mansion left my head swimming and sent a tremor over me. This no doubt had something to do with the witch. I lingered outside Master John’s bedroom window but then moved to stand beneath his father’s. I sought Henry Holbert’s mind, letting him know I was there and that if it wasn’t for the witch, I would have torn his throat out.
His fear reached me in a long stream of wordless terror. The witch had cursed him and he had suffered a stroke which he had never recovered fully from. Paralysed down one side of his body, he could barely speak and spent all his time in bed. The menacing figure that inhabited Luna’s memories and nightmares had long disappeared and in its place was this pathetic old man.
When he was first confined to his bed, he used to occupy his time thinking of Luna, among other children on the plantation, and the vile things he had done to them. But then every time his mind brought up those sickening memories he still received pleasure from, his broken body had been wracked with pain as if a vice of flames had been embedded in his flesh. Then Mama Akosua began inhabiting his dreams, making sleep a hell from which he could not wake. She inhabited his dreams less and less now. But sleep still evaded him and he spent night after night awake and staring at the ceiling, unable to relive those moments with those young children, which had been his only reason for living.
I moved away from his window, admiring the witch’s power and how well she had avenged her daughter. But John Holbert was another matter entirely, and I would not rest until he was dead. The spell the witch had placed around the mansion was powerful, but provided no real protection as it did not extend to the minds of its inhabitants. But there was a reason why she was trying to protect them, and since Luna’s wellbeing was always behind everything she did, I did not wake John Holbert and try to lure him out of the mansion.
But I remained outside the mansion, delving into his diseased mind, looking for weaknesses which I could use to punish him for the things he had done to Luna. That was when another much stronger mind called to me through the dark.
I had felt her presence lurking on the edges of my consciousness for days, her words always the same. Bring her back to me. Bring my child back to me.
I walked away and made my way to the Marshall plantation.
She sat at the table in her cabin and had not slept very much since Luna and I disappeared. I felt a twinge of guilt but then remembered how Luna had been soothed merely by the expression on my face, and how radiant she looked in her new clothes. Clothes which were fitting much snugger than they had a few days ago now she was well fed and rested. I showed all this to the witch along with the zeal with which Luna took to my lessons every evening and just how quickly she was learning to read.
I would do everything again if I had to. I spoke into the witch’s mind. Let her go and I will give you your freedom.
She scoffed. You think you can change your dark heart the way you have changed your clothes? You have the soul of a demon and the heart of a man. A white man. I see you with her in that house and I know you lust after her, the same way every white man that has ever seen her has lusted after her, even when she was only a child. And just like them, you will give into your base nature and let the lust you have for her body, and her blood, overcome you.
Never.
She laughed. Poor creature. You think you love her. She spat out the word love. Her laughter rang through my mind, again bringing my anger to the surface. Luna will never love you, she concluded.
Her words ripped a large, bleeding hole in the contentment I had allowed myself to feel, for I knew all too well the truth in them.
I do not need her to love me. She will stay with me and there is nothing you can do about it.
I plucked one of her memories from her mind, one which she had tried, and failed, to keep hidden from me, and threw it back at her in spite. It was of an event that had occurred the night Luna agreed to stay at the mansion with me. It had terrified her mother for it was something that had never happened to her before, and which was unheard of in the supernatural world she dipped into from time to time.
The night had almost drawn to a close and the witch was sitting outside her cabin in the dark, a small wooden bowl before her. She was weak and dawn would be here soon, so she had to hurry and perform the ritual to conjure help from the spirit realm.
She performed the usual incantations and made a deep cut in the palm of her hand, letting the blood drip into the bowl. She dropped a lit rag into the bowl and its contents burst into lilac flames. She held her hand over the flames and the cut healed as the lilac flames were snuffed out. The air was thick around her now. They had heard her and were beginning to break through to our world in response to her call and her dark cry of desperation.
Abruptly, the air around her contracted sharply, sucking the air out of her lungs. The bowl was knocked over, spilling its murky contents. She was on her feet immediately as the spirits receded. They were gone but something else hung in the air around her. She listened intently, assuming the demon had come back, but the area around her was tense and frigid with expectation and she could not sense the demon’s presence in the powerful energy around her.
Then she felt something brush her face. But there was nothing there. And then she heard it.
Gyae, gyae.
She heard the words clearly, words spoken in her mother tongue, which few recognised and even fewer spoke.
‘Stop,’ it meant. ‘Stop.’
A powerful breeze erupted, sweeping through the trees toward her, knocking her back a few paces.
Gyae, gyae, it insisted.
Bewilderment replaced the anger and rage and she stared around her in confusion. And then a flower fell to her feet. She looked up, and for a moment, the night sky was blotted out by white flowers which had materialised out of nothing, the sweet scent completely overwhelming her senses as the first light of dawn broke over the trees.
Gyae, it said, much softer now. Gyae.
Then it was gone.
She stared down at the carpet of flowers at her feet, knelt and picked one up. They slowly began to fade away before her eyes like melting snowflakes. Only the one in her hand remained. Days later, it was still impossibly there in her cabin as white and crisp as the night it fell out of the sky.
To add to the mystery, she had tried the ritual again, one she had performed many times in the past when she needed information and help from the netherworld, but nothing had happened. There hadn’t been a repeat of the phenomenon with the flowers, but, for whatever reason, something was blocking her from summoning supernatural help.
There was something else that had been hidden from me when I chased that memory, something disquieting she had realised about the entity that blocked her efforts. But the truth behind whatever it was that had blocked her was something she didn’t even want to admit to herself, and so it was hidden from me.
Whatever her disquiet, the unusual event bode well for me and I was relieved when I left the plantation, leaving quickly after throwing my discovery at her.
But Mama was not one to taunt. She may not have been able to use her spirits to locate Luna and myself, but she had no intention of leaving me alone.
***
I was sitting in the drawing room with Luna. She had been pouring over some lessons I set for her when she abruptly faced me. She was wearing an exceptionally beautiful cornflower blue dress, one of many I’d had made for her, although I don’t recall any of them having such a low cleavage. It was so low I could be sure I saw the dark shadow of her areolae peeping over the top of the fabric and it was an effort not to gaze at her cleavage.
“Does you think I’s pretty, Avery?” she asked innocently.
“Of course, of course,” I answered with much enthusiasm.
“Then show it.”
She was before me in an instant, gazing defiantly up at me, the chest I had been trying to avoid looking at thrust forward.
“Luna, I...”
She grasped me by the side of the head and kissed me. I kissed her fiercely before she abruptly pushed me away. The coquettish expression had disappeared and I was looking at a face full of wrath.
“Luna?” I said in confusion, my desire drying up.
I didn’t see the knife until she plunged it into my chest.
I screamed, the pain in my chest radiating out to every inch of me as Luna looked on, a triumphant smile on her lips.
I woke up with a start. It was silent in my daily grave, but I could still feel the pain in my chest and I was stunned at such a lucid dream. And then I heard laughter in my mind, a soft faint chuckle that could only belong to one woman. Mama Akosua.
She was gone moments later, leaving me angry and embarrassed at the dream, which she had no doubt seen. I did not sleep for the rest of the day. Sleep had been difficult with Luna nearby and her face was always so clear in my mind. But it was worse now and I stayed awake lest I have more dreams which the witch would no doubt see and use to taunt me.
That evening, I kept an even greater distance than usual from Luna, ashamed of myself for having impure thoughts of such a gracious, kind and generous woman, especially since she was beginning to trust me.
The dream was especially painful because I knew it would never become a reality. As I observed her thoughts, my pain increased, for the one man, the one who had a hope of capturing her heart, was in her thoughts regularly. Jupiter.
Often she would be staring at me, admiring something, maybe my eyes or mouth, and then she would come to an abrupt halt and consternation would cloud her thoughts. As if seeking safety from her errant musings, her thoughts would automatically turn to Jupiter and he would intrude on our little world like a dark giant, in all his gentle, quiet beauty. I would often jump out of my seat as if burned and move to the shadows lest she see the emotion that had been stirred, the hatred and spiteful twist of jealousy whenever I saw him. It was undeserved, for he was a good, kind man. But it was there all the same. It was there.
I turned to Luna again and saw she had gone back to the work I had set her. Feeling my gaze on her, she looked up. A soft smile touched her lips before she dipped her head back down. The smile slowly melted away as she concentrated on the task before her. The dark cloud her recollection of Jupiter had produced lifted. No matter what she thought of him, she was here with me. Watching her lit in the half-moon glow of the candlelight, her mahogany skin shimmering in its gentle light, she appeared otherworldly. It wasn’t that she was bathed in light, she was the light in my world. She may never be mine completely, or in any way, but she was here with me and I could hope and dream that one day, she could come to have some sort of regard for me.
So I went to ground that morning somewhat reassured. She was here with me and the witch could not take her away. I fell into a restless sleep, where another unwanted dream closed in on me.
This time Luna was completely naked. I stared at her in awe as she walked toward me. The control I exerted over my desire for her was not only torn away from me, my desire was intensified, and I felt myself harden. I tried to resist, but I had no control over my actions and I reached for her and kissed her, losing myself completely in her soft lips as she pushed me onto the sofa, straddling me. Again, she pulled abruptly away, but it was no longer Luna before me but Mama Akosua, fully dressed, her face a mask of hatred.
“You,” I gasped, realising this was not a real dream and that she had been behind this one and the other.
This time it wasn’t a knife that was in her hand, but an axe. She brought it down on the centre of my head.
I awoke, again feeling the pain from the wound inflicted in the dream. The sound of her laughter filled my mind. To make matters worse, the desire I felt in the dream was still upon me and a huge erection added to my discomfort and embarrassment. The witch caught this from my thoughts and her mirth increased until she was howling with laughter.
Seething with anger, I stayed silent until her heartless laughter faded away.
I stayed awake again that day, afraid to sleep in case the witch played another little trick as I slept.
Luna’s presence that evening, along with her clear and sweet joy at learning to read, soothed my wounded pride at Mama Akosua’s cruel trick.
But I was still angry when I left Luna in the early hours of the morning, and after my nightly kill, I returned to the Marshall plantation meaning to remonstrate with the witch for using my desire for her daughter, desire I took great care to never reveal to Luna, to taunt me.
I got to the Marshall plantation to hear an odd, deep rumbling sound coming from her cabin. Then I realised what those sounds were. They were the witch’s snores. She had fallen asleep at the table she used to prepare her herbs and potions. I stood in the trees near the slave quarters, undecided now, because I knew she had not slept much at all since I took Luna away and it was hard to ignore the fact that my actions, no matter how unintentional, were causing the witch harm and distress. Then I remembered the dream again and the merciless way in which she had used my lust to mock me.
Two can play that game. Whenever she searched my mind, she unwittingly opened her mind to mine. I now knew of a few things she was fearful of—including a very unusual phobia no one knew of. So I entered her sleeping mind and created a dream of my own.
In the dream, Mama was in her cabin washing herbs when she saw a hairball on the floor from the corner of her eye.
A small sound of disgust escaped her. She reached for a broom and quickly swept it out of the cabin, shuddering as she returned the broom. But when she turned around, there were five more by the table. She jumped when the five inexplicably multiplied. A small cry escaped her lips when she looked around the cabin and saw hairballs everywhere. She backed away from them toward the door, but they were everywhere and multiplying at a ferocious speed until the floor was covered with a thick carpet of hair.
She brought her hand to her mouth as a scream welled in her throat and escaped her lips.
I woke her before the panic could begin to build. She was aware of my presence the moment her eyes flew open and she jumped up from the table and ran outside the cabin with a stream of threats and curses on her lips.
I was away from the slave quarters long before she got to the door, but the stream of curses in my mind followed me all the way to the Holbert plantation.
Suffice it to say, that is what gave me the idea of tormenting John Holbert. I stood outside his bedroom window that morning and created a very lucid dream. In the dream a hooded figure had pushed him into a coffin and began throwing dirt over him whilst he screamed and fought against it in vain. I kept him trapped in sleep and the dream, even when he began screaming out loud, waking up the other inhabitants of the mansion. It was only when one of the house slaves entered the room and began shaking him awake, that I released him from the dream.
But he continued to scream, and I heard those screams and the slave’s attempts to calm him as I made my way off the plantation.
That day Mama Akosua didn’t torment me with dreams of Luna, but I felt her with me all day, her rage and grief seemingly intensified by her silence. That wrathful silence had a much worse effect on me than those dreams and the laughter that had accompanied them.
So that night I made my way back to the plantation after I left Luna. She was awake, as I expected, and I waited by the trees knowing she was aware of my presence. But there were no threats this time, only silence and anger.
To you, my words are meaningless, I said after a while. But I will speak them anyway. I am sorry for what I did last night and for the pain you feel at Luna’s absence. Were it not for the genuine joy I see in her eyes every day, I would not hesitate to bring her back to you. That was a cruel trick you played, one that is beneath you as you know I would rather cut my hand off than touch her against her will. She is safe with me, you know this. So let us be. Let me take care of her and I will make your master give you your freedom.
There was only her silence and I sensed that a creature like me addressing her in anyway, let alone speaking into her mind, was a great offense and she would never accept my offer to free her.
Disheartened, I left the Marshall plantation and went to ground. In my lonely bed in the dirt, I lay there thinking of what to do about the witch and also wishing I had Luna in my arms. But that would only ever be a dream, so I fell asleep with her face in my mind, knowing that at least I would get to gaze upon that face come nightfall.