My heart beats so hard it’s all I can hear as I run. The lush flowery trees become a blur. My lips move in silent prayer.
First the forest. Then the shoreline. The hidden boat. And finally, onto an ocean of possibility.
Fog rushes through the weeping willows. Pink petals rain down on us like blood. As we dash, the haze melts into the form of a woman racing behind us. Missus Sabine.
“Never run. Stay in the big house,” Mama had told me before she and my older brother were sold off. Her voice drums through me now. I wish I had listened. “Getting caught would be worse than just up and dying,” Mama had warned. The memory of her worried face flickers through my head. Her warnings echo.The overseer’s whip will be unforgiving. The sounds of the hounds will ring in your ears. Bloody ribbons of flesh ripped from your back or worse… that room.“Let the clock run down. The Master and Missus don’t have no children. When they die, that’s it,” she’d claimed. “You’ll be all that’s left of that man on this godforsaken earth. That ought to count for something.” I’d wanted to believe her, to just bide my time, but I couldn’t stay away from Titus Baldwin. And I couldn’t say no when he asked me to run before they sold him away from me. His bright smile soothed the fear inside me. For the first time since they’d taken Mama and my big brother, I found someone to love—someone who valued me. Someone who dulled the pain all around and made me wonder what freedom might feel like. Even when freedom was a drink neither of us had tasted.
Master bought Titus and his little sisters three years ago from a plantation in North Carolina. At the time he and I were both fourteen. He’d arrived in a carriage, playing his fiddle as his little sisters giggled and clapped, unaware that they were arriving in hell. I hadn’t stopped thinking about his dark, haunting eyes since. I loved the way he adored his sisters. The way he always made them smile. That day, his shirt was as brown as the tree trunksI’m now running through. My heart had rushed; my hands had longed to hold his. Mama had called him “uppity.” She’d said, “A boy with a smile that pretty can’t be trusted.” But she didn’t trust any man. Not after the Master. My father. The man she’d had to stomach for decades. Of course, he didn’t deserve trust. He let his wife torment Mama for things beyond her control.
My mind flashes to Mama screaming and flailing, her hair wild, as white men brutally dragged her away. She’d shouted to me, “Don’t let that Devil woman break you!” I cried so many tears, my heart stuck and stumbling because Mama’s mind hadn’t been right in years. But Master wouldn’t let Missus Sabine kill her. He called what happened to my mama a mercy. I called it evil. Mama had blamed her troubles on the mistress and her dark magic, but no one believed her. My chest tightens thinking of the heartbreak of being forced to have a child with a man who owned you. Being forced to serve his even crueler wife.
“Hurry, Titus!” I shout. We run faster.
I look over my shoulder. Sabine is so close that I can make out her ghostly nightdress. I speed up. We need to get through the forest and down the hill to the boat that will carry us to freedom.
Tired. Panting. Sprinting.
The forest’s witch grass slaps me, leaving red marks on my legs as I dart through it. Nature’s punishment for the foolish risk I’ve taken to be with Titus.
To love him.
My mind flashes to the songs we sang, the all-night talks and stolen moments we’d shared, to how he is the first boy I’ve ever kissed. Was it worth it? The wordyesechoes inside me. A life away from the plantation with my love.
I curse the slashing grass and the branches under my feet for their loud crunching sounds.
Titus grabs my hand, pulling me forward faster. We race down the hill. I risk another quick glance over my shoulder. A silhouette of movement flickers between the trees.
The figure behind us is raising a gun.
A bullet hits a tree branch above. The limb crashes down, blocking mypath and narrowly missing my head. We quickly scramble left, my bare feet slipping on mud and leaves with each movement. I steady myself, placing a palm against a tree trunk. Panic floods me. My stomach threatens to empty itself.
Titus yanks me again, nearly dragging me off-balance. We dash through the bushes into a clearing.
The full moon casts its silver light, illuminating the bayou and its peculiar black sand. Stars blink out a message of hope above the shore. Just ahead, across from the dock, rises the mountain of branches that hide the boat Titus made us painstakingly, piece by piece.
I smile at him. My thundering heart slows a beat. We’re going to survive. We have to.
I quickly toss branches from the massive pile, trying to free the boat. I survey the sparkling beach, which ends at a ragged, rocky cliff. The dock, a frayed road to the unknown, juts into the water. A dry road to hope. Stones, dark sand, and sharp branches that will not stop me.
“Hurry!” I say. We need to be in the water and well on our way.
I toss more debris, trying to uncover the boat.
“Don’t move.” It isn’t Sabine’s voice.
It’s Titus’s.
I turn.
He stands, trembling. The gun in his hand is pointed squarely between my eyes. My mouth falls open, and my arm goes limp. I don’t understand what’s happening.
Tears well in my eyes, matching the ones spilling from his. “What— Titus, please…”
His hands shake. “I—I don’t want to hurt you,” he sobs.
“What are you doing? Let’s go. Let’s get out of here!”
“I can’t let you. Sabine—you don’t know what she’ll do if I let you go.”
