“Okay,” Billy says. “Great-grandson.” His hand that clutches the lantern trembles. Sweat bubbles on his brow. “Why are you here?” His face twists with worry. “What do you need?”
I take a deep breath. “I need to learn about the Tether,” I whisper, breathless. “Our family is still struggling with the curse in the future.”
Billy leans against a cold wall; his head droops. He sighs. “You’ve been Tethered.”
“How’d you know?” I ask, my blood rushing with fear and hope.
“Because,” he says in a voice thick with sympathy, “it’s the only reason you’d travel back to ask me about that.”
“You survived your Tether… How?” I plead. Before he answers, I add, “Is there a way to end it? To break free of this for good?” In a voice so desperate I barely recognize it as my own, I blurt, “Tell me everything you know.”
“Survival costs,” he murmurs. His eyes dart away from me. “Still paying and praying for forgiveness.” After a pause, he says, “Some things will be burned in my mind forever. Like the cane fields. The smell of sugar and dirt on that plantation. The black-and-white checkerboard floor of her punishment room. And Sabine’s bloody smile…” His voice wobbles as he adds, “Slaves—no,peoplewho entered that room had a way of not coming out.”
“But why does she do all of this?”
“The witch behind the Tether thinks she’s a guardian of balance.”
Anger and frustration flare. “She’s no guardian!” Bitterness boils inside of me. “A guardian protects life; she forces us to kill.”
We walk down the long, dim hallway toward cells with steel bars looming high and casting dark shadows on the floor before us.
“Family lore says that Sabine and her husband owned our families during slavery,” Billy says. “Believe it or not, they say that Sabine sees herself as an ally, a savior of sorts. She believes that she saved our family from enslavement by giving us power we could use to travel through time and escape it. She doesn’t see that the Tether is an invisible chain around ournecks and a real gold shackle on your ankle.” His eyes seem distant, lost in memory. “She believes freedom has a price and that we should happily pay her for the magical gifts she’s given. The Tether is her fee.”
“Wow.” I huff, amazed at what I’m hearing. “So instead of forty acres and a mule and more unfulfilled promises of reparations for slavery and for building generational wealth on the backs of Black people, Sabine feels entitled to compensation for cursing us? That’s crazy,” I mutter.
“A lot of slave owners thought they should be compensated for the loss of their human ‘property’ when slavery ended. Many of them got that compensation from the government too… even when most formerly enslaved people weren’t given a dime for the blood, sweat, and tears they put into building this nation.” Billy sulks, his voice echoing raw truth. “Profit and power. That’s the American dream, right? It’s what the Tether means to her. She doesn’t hate Black people. If anything, she needs us to be willing pawns in her twisted games.”
I reach out to touch the bars of the cell in front of me with trembling fingers. They are solid, cold to the touch, as brutal as the curse that haunts our family. I shiver. “Why?”
“That you’d have to ask her.”
Billy draws up next to me in the narrow corridor, adding, “My mother always says, ‘Black folks have been through storms, but we’re the descendants of those who bang drums like thunder and dance in the rain.’”
I smile, even as the frigid air cuts through my jacket and slices into my skin. My fingers go inside my jacket, rubbing at my ribs, trying to create warmth or comfort myself against the thought of mass incarceration making anyone spend every day in places this awful. It must be depressing for Billy, walking these halls daily while working here. We stare ahead at the jail cell, its floor-to-ceiling iron bars like skeletal cages. A sliver of light filters in through a high window, casting a very thin beam on the grimy walls. Ravens flutter outside the window. Inside the cell, a skinny cot rests against a wall, its thin mattress stained with yellow circles that echo nights soaked in despair. A rusted metal basin sitting on a cracked sink reflects the buzzing glow of the ugly fluorescent light overhead.
“Why would you want to work here? Wanna stay in a place like this?” I ask.
“The thing about the Tether is,” Billy says, “even if you survive, you’re never free. Sabine’s plantation… The trauma cages your mind.” He sighs. “Screaming nightmares make sleep hard.” His eyes fill. “I still feel that gold shackle, still feel blood oozing between my fingers.” His body visibly shakes at the memory. “And I still feel Sabine’s magical claws reaching inside and toying with my mind.” He sighs again. “I’m disgusted by what I had to do because of her, but I had no choice,” he chokes out through tears. “She would have killed my wife. I pray every morning that God will forgive me. But I’ll never forgive myself.”
I nod, knowing the desire to protect what you love. I’ve been doing that all my life. I take a deep breath. “I don’t want to fight. How do I end the Tether? Stop Sabine?”
He shakes his head and laughs bitterly. “There’s no way out but through. You’re shackled. If you want to live, you have to win the game.”
His words squeeze my heart in a vise.
“My advice to you?” Billy whispers. “Don’t trust anyone or anything during the Tether, not even your own eyes or instincts. Not even your own feelings. Be alert. Be ready to kill or be killed.”
“No,” I protest. “I want a normal life. Want to have a wife and kids one day. A family like yours,” I say desperately, hoping he’ll give me a spark of hope to cling to. I look at the cold cell bars and see another raven fly by the window. I’m more determined than ever to end the Tether before it starts. I want my happily ever after, I think.
“Choose love,” Billy says softly. “But first, win the game. Killing is the only way you’ll survive long enough to find a love worth dying for.”
CHAPTER SIXTEENEmma BaldwinNEW ORLEANS, 1922
Dear Malcolm,
I hope you’re taking care of your arm while you hunt for clues. Your chivalry is appreciated, sir. However, I must insist: If you want me to be a knight fighting beside you, perhaps consider upgrading your wardrobe with a bit more… sheen… you know, real armor… so you can help me kick the butt of whoever cursed our families. On a side note, I bet you and your vintage Jordans would have looked gallant in King Arthur’s court. You’d probably be the funniest knight at the round table, too. And me? I would have given Guinevere a run for her money. Tried to show her how a real queen conducts herself in love and war.
Grace’s diary was a dead end. I managed to decode it, but there was nothing about the Tether. Just her fears and hopes for the family. God, I miss her.
