14.
I start to walk backwards, slowly, unable to rip my gaze away from the man. My feet sink into the muddy river but I can barely feel the water flowing around my ankles. When the clouds shift in front of the moon, the man is once more veiled in darkness. I turn and begin to walk more quickly, feeling lost and panicked and strangled by the silent hands of the night.
Some imaginary force guides me towards the pond and I look around for Mama, but I can't see her. I continue to walk back towards the cabins.
She is waiting for me by the door, absorbed in the thick blackness of the night.
"Where were you?" she whispers, pulling me into a warm embrace. It is only then when I realise how cold I am. The skin on my arms and legs is rough with goosepimples.
"I got lost." I say. "It was dark."
She holds me for a while. She looks up at the sky, where the clouds have revealed a full moon casting beams of light across the fields. I wonder if she is thinking of Papa.
"What did you wanna tell me?" I ask her hesitantly, afraid to ruin the peaceful moment.
"Oh," she says, "don't worry about that. It's not important."
"But Mama what was it?"
She shakes her head.
"Please, Mama..."
"Not now, Cass."
"I'm sorry I got lost. I'm sorry I didn't meet you at the pond," I say.
"That's ok. It doesn't really matter."
I leave her alone outside the cabin and curl up in my bed, trying to sleep. When I close my eyes I can see Patrick's body, cold, limp and dead. So dead. It was too late. It was too late to save him. I think about all the times people told me to be careful. They must not have told him. But sometimes adults are just as vulnerable as younger people. Sometimes they too need to be told that they can get through it. If Beckey and Hannah and Mr Willoughby and the old man and myself had warned him to be careful, too, maybe he would still be alive.
I hear Mama getting into bed. I listen to her deep, troubled breaths. I can hear her turning over and fidgeting for ages. And I know that what she wanted to tell me was important. Maybe it is linked to whatever Jack and Beckey know, that I do not. Whatever it is, it's keeping her awake. Whatever it is, it does matter.
YOU ARE READING
Mind Of A Slave
Historical Fiction"The life we're living is the easiest of the difficult." Cass Jinney Jackson is a Louisianan slave girl. She has recently moved to a plantation near the woods, but her life there is far from ordinary. Growing up as the civil war rages on, she finds...
