Page 39 of Bound By Fury

Swiping my phone from the side of the desk, I touch my throat to make sure my necklace is still there. I find the letter from Gigi in my sock drawer and shove that into my pocket too. For a moment I consider bringing Lovey, but regardless of the emergency, that’s still just a little too embarrassing, even for me.

When I burst into the hall, I’m engulfed by a sea of students and pushed toward the staircase. I crane my neck in search of Daisy, who’s too short to see in this crowd anyway, and Sam, who seems too far ahead to hear me if I call their name. It’s not until I’m halfway down the stairs that I notice there’s no alarm blaring.

I’m the only one wearing pajamas.

And I’m the only one who seems scared.

All those screams, they were excitement, not fear.

Confused, I let the wave carry me out past the courtyard and into the quad where the students gather around the central fountain.

“Welcome—” someone bellows through a bullhorn, “to Invocation Night!”

OCTOBER 20, 1926

“Witch” might as well be more dangerous a word than “negro” around here. It sure don’t help to be both.

Down inside Black Mountain are tunnels. Real deep and dark. Closed mines that smell musky and sweet, tinged with the bitterness of mineral runoff and time. Slowly though, they starting to turn. Sometimes I go there to commune with my ancestors. Sometimes I go there to catch a vision. But lately I can feel the shadows creeping in.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had the ability to walk through memory. I got my powers earlier than most do. According to Mama, my second birthday was spent with my fingers on the face of anyone I could get ahold of, my eyes all glassy and distant.

Since then, I can see things that have happened, see the premonitions of those long past, even though I don’t got premonitions of my own. Through touch and spiritual essence, I can see through the eyes of others. Sometimes the predictions I see are right, and sometimes they not all the way true, but magic’s not supposed to be science, that’s why it’s called magic. Least that’s what Ms. Bessie say.

She knows a lot about where we come from. Her head is full of stories. She likes to tell them on the front porch with some of us younger girls all around. She tells them good, too. She make you see what she see. Feel what she feel. People like her are how we keep our past alive.

She makes us understand how special we all are, even if it makes it hurt more, knowing that our power come from something so full of sorrow.

I try to make up for that when I can. I try to see what the ancestors want to show me.

That’s how I know something big is coming.

Yesterday I snuck out to the tunnels and dug my hands into the soil. That’s where Mama Mae is. Or where she was when she tried to make her escape. She ain’t get to though.

She’d come all the way from southern Georgia, returning to the land her mama was stolen from before the war. Mama Mae had heard rumors of a strange power woven beneath the layers of this mountain—and the peculiar group of escaped folk who called upon it.

When she got here, aided by the negros who had settled the land, they built a schoolhouse and a covenstead, homes and gardens, a place to finally be free in more ways than one.

What she ain’t know is that they wasn’t the only ones drawn to that land. To that power humming underneath them.

The forest was alive with all kinds of things. Creatures of a sort. Beasts of flesh and smoke with glowing red eyes and poison teeth. Nightwalkers with a thirst for blood. Mimics and the like.

But none were worse than the men who called themselves “Guardians.”

We call them hunters.

The hunters were a starving bunch—still are. Greedy, odious beings. No amount of power ever seems to be enough. That’s how come they took Mama Mae. Did unspeakable things to her, trying to get her to lead them to the power running through here. But she ain’t say a word.

When she died, my grandma June was only a baby.

Motherless, June was born angry. She come up with a fury that could only be traced back to the very beginning. June dreamed of a world where we ain’t have to be wet nurses and the men ain’t have to work down in the mines.

But e’rybody know that kinda dreaming is for white folk.

Even when they started building around us, we stayed put. No matter how many times they offered us money for our land. Or how many times they tried to drive us out with threats and burning crosses on our lawns. No matter how many nooses, no matter the bloodshed, no matter… because we was here first. And they ain’t no match against our power.

Usually white people come around asking us about the land. Our homes and the covenstead. Say they boss want to buy it up. Build a church. Turn the estate into a school.

But lately they been quiet. Too quiet. Like they planning something. Between them and the hunters, some people starting to worry. Ms. Bessie tell us not to. But she ain’t fooling me. I see the way she watches those men ride by the house real slow in the evenings.