Heartfire

The images were too terrible for Margaret to bear. She had already seen them herself, in the blazing heartfires of angry slaves. What Gullah Joe imagined, she had seen down ten thousand paths into the future. Until Calvin tore up the name-strings, that future hadn't shown up anywhere. She couldn't predict it. Calvin had the power to change everything without warning. Margaret was unaccustomed to surprise. She didn't know how to deal with a situation that she hadn't had time to watch and think about.

She walked away, into a corner of the room. She began to pray.

But she couldn't keep her mind on the words of her prayer. She kept thinking of Calvin. As if she didn't have enough to worry about. Wasn't it just like Cal? Set loose forces that could cause the deaths of thousands of people, and he was going to lie there dying through it all.

As for Gullah Joe and Denmark, she hadn't the heart to tell them, but the likeliest future, whether the slave revolt happened or not, was that the King and his men would be looking for the person who pla

She hadn't the heart to tell him that. Nor did it matter, in the end, for one thing was certain in Denmark's heartfire: If this happened to him, he would believe that he deserved it, for the sake of what he did to his woman.

Calvin. Again he kept intruding in her thoughts. Something about Calvin. What? He can't heal himself, so what is he good for?

For something that he does know how to do.

Margaret got up from her prayer and rushed to Gullah Joe. “You've done this before, Gullah Joe. I've heard the stories, I've seen them in the slaves' memories, legends of the zombi, the walking dead.”

“I no do that,” said Gullah Joe.

“I know, you don't do it on purpose, but there he is, dead but alive. There must be something you have, something in your tools, your powders, that can wake him up. Just for a little while.”

“Wake him up, then he die faster,” said Gullah Joe.

“I need him. To save the people he did this to.”

“He no heal him own body,” said Gullah Joe scornfully.

“Because he doesn't know how. But he can do something.”

Gullah Joe got up and went to his jars. Soon he had a mixture– a dangerous one, to judge from the way he never let any of the powders touch his skin and looked away when mixing so as not to breathe in any of the dust. When it was mixed, he poured it through a hole in a small bellows, then plugged the hole tightly. Even at that, he wetted down cloths for the rest of them to breathe through, in case any dust got loose in the air.

Then he took the bellows, put the end in one of Calvin's nostrils, then waxed the other nostril closed. “You,” he said to Denmark. “Hold him mouth closed.”

“No,” said Denmark. “I can't do that. That too much like drowning him.”

“I'll do it,” said Margaret.

“What you tell husband then, this go bad?”

“It's my fault anyway,” said Margaret. “I told you to do it.”

“I do it, ma'am,” said Fishy. “I do this.”

Margaret stepped back. Fishy got one hand under Calvin's jaw and the other atop his head.

“I say go, you close him tight the mouth,” said Gullah Joe.

Fishy nodded.

“Go.”

She clamped Calvin's mouth shut. Calvin feebly resisted, desperate for breath. Nothing came in except a thin stream of air around the nipple of the bellows. Gullah Joe slammed the bellows together just as Calvin inhaled desperately. A cloud of dust emerged from around the bellows. Gullah Joe was ready for it. He picked up a bucket of water and doused Calvin with it, catching and settling the dust at the same time.

Calvin jerked and twitched violently. Then he sat up, pulling away from Fishy's grip, tearing the bellows and the wax out of his nostrils. Then he choked and coughed, trying to clear his lungs.

He looked no healthier. Indeed, patches of his skin were sloughing off, sliding like rotten fruit thrown against a window. But he was alert.

“Calvin, listen to me,” Margaret said.

Calvin only choked and gasped.

“The slaves are about to revolt. It has to be stopped. Alvin's too far away, I need your help!”

Calvin wept. “I can't do nothing!”

“Wake up!” Margaret shouted at him. “I need you to be a man, for once! This isn't about you, this isn't about Alvin, it's about doing the decent thing for people who need you.”

Some of what she was saying finally penetrated Calvin's hazy mind. “Yes,” he said. “Tell me what to do.”

“Something to take their minds off their anger,” she said. “What we need is a heavy storm. Wind and rain. Lightning!”

“I can't do lightning.”

“How do you know you can't?”

“Cause I grew up trying.” He looked down at his hand. The bare bone of one finger was exposed. “Margaret, what's happening to me!”

“You were too long out of your body,” she said. “Alvin's hurrying here to save you.”

“He don't want to help me, he wants me dead!”

“Stop thinking about yourself, Calvin!” she said sternly. “I need something that feels like a force of nature.”

“I can do fires. I can set the city on fire.”

As he spoke, a couple of tiny flames danced around on the floor beside him.

“No!” cried Margaret. “Good heavens, are you insane? The slaves will be blamed for setting the fires, it would make everything even worse! Not fire.”

“I don't know how anything works,” Calvin said. “Not deep enough to change it. Alvin tried to teach me but all I wanted was the showy stuff.” He wept again. Margaret had to seize his wrists to keep him from rubbing the skin off his face.

“Get control of yourself,” she said. She turned helplessly to Gullah Joe. “Isn't there something–”

Gullah Joe laughed madly. “I tell you! No good this way! Zombi no good! All he think be, I so dead! He be sad, all sad, him.”

“What about the water?” she asked Calvin. “I know you and Alvin played with water, he told me. Making it splash without throwing in a stone– that's a game you played. Remember?”

“Big splash,” he said.

“Yes, that's right. Make it splash out there. In the river, really big splashes. Slosh the water up on the shore. Make it flood.”

“All we did was little splashes,” said Calvin.

“Well this time do a big one!” Margaret shouted, her patience wearing thin. If, in fact, she had any patience left at all.

“I'll try, I'll try, I'll try.” He cried again.

“Stop that! Just do it!”

She felt someone kneel down beside her. Fishy? No, Denmark's wife. She had a damp cloth. Gently she pressed it against Calvin's forehead. Then his cheek. She mumbled something unintelligible, but the music of it was calm and comforting. Calvin closed his eyes and began trying to make the water in the river splash.

Margaret also closed her eyes and cast about for heartfires near the river. She skipped from one to another, up and down the shore, on the north side of the peninsula and the south. No one was looking toward the water. They were all watching inland, fearful of the howling from the slaves.

Then one of them noticed that the boats were rocking in the water. Masts tipped, then tipped back again. He looked out at the water. Wave after wave was coming, as if from giant stones falling, or perhaps something pulsing deep under the water. Each wave was higher than the one before. They began breaking onto the docks.