Nebula Awards Showcase 2013

EXCERPT FROM THE FREEDOM MAZE Delia Sherman

“Where’s here?” Sophie asked.

Her only answer was a fading giggle.

And wasn’t it just her luck, she thought, to the get the kind of magic creature that would transport her somewhere and leave her without explanation? Just like the Natterjack in The Time Garden, come to think of it. And the Natterjack had always shown up when the children really needed it. Irritating as the Creature was, she was sure it would, too.

In the meantime, here she was, back in the Good Old Days, in a room that both was and was not hers.

Every piece of furniture seemed to come from somewhere else. The princessy bed with its high headboard, was from Mama’s room, but what was that gauzy material hanging from the half-tester? The mirrored armoire and dresser belonged in Grandmama’s room, and the last time Sophie had seen that desk, it was in the parlor. The familiar faded wallpaper was gone, and so was the ratty rug, replaced by deep rose paint and pale matting. The only clues to the room’s occupant were the striped scarf across the bed, and the scribbled paper scattered across the desktop.

Sophie padded over to the desk to investigate, picked up an ivory pen, its gold nib crusted with dried ink. Beneath it was a half-written letter. She couldn’t make head or tail of the scrawly handwriting, but the date was clear enough: June 12, 1860.

Sophie’s hand shook a little.

The War Between the States was due to start in—Sophie thought for a moment—less than a year. She wondered whether she should warn her ancestors about it, decided she shouldn’t risk changing the course of history by mistake and returning to the present to find out she hadn’t been born. She might, however, let the slaves know that they’d be free in a few years—nothing too specific, just a hint, to give them something to look forward to.

But that was for when she’d actually met a slave. She put the letter back where she’d found it.

On the marble-topped nightstand, she found a white leather Bible and a copy of “Hiawatha” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, which had been used for pressing flowers. Inside the nightstand were a white porcelain pot and a faint stink that reminded her of a not-very-clean public bathroom. She shut the door quickly. Chamber pots were a part of the past she’d never thought much about.

Neither were corsets, which she found in the big mirrored armoire, hanging on hooks next to mysterious white cotton garments and pastel dresses with long, bulky skirts. She touched a flounce, wondering whether the Fairchild it belonged to was old or young, and if she might let Sophie try on her clothes.

Next, Sophie went to the window. In 1860, there was no window seat, just a square bay with a vanity table set it in to catch the light. A white gauze curtain framed the view she’d glimpsed by moonlight two nights before. Then, it had disappeared like smoke. This time, it wasn’t going to go away.

Sophie caught sight of her reflection in the triple mirror on the vanity. She looked like she’d been dragged through a hedge backwards. There wasn’t much she could do about the mud on her dress and arms, but she couldn’t bear to meet her ancestors with her hair looking, yes, like a hooraw’s nest. Sophie searched through the clutter of bottles and jars and ribbons, until she found a silver brush. It wasn’t polite to use some else’s brush without asking, but this was an emergency.

As she raised the bush to her hair, the door opened. Sophie spun around to see girl staring at her—a real Miss Lolabelle in a poufy white dress and a striped silk sash around her tiny waist. Her dark hair was bundled into a net and her skin was pink-and-white. With her eyes and mouth all round with surprise, she looked just like a doll a tourist would buy on Decatur Street.

The girl put one hand to her throat and gave a very Miss LolaBelle-like little scream. “Antigua!” she gasped. “Antigua! Come here!”

A Negro girl appeared at her shoulder. “Yes, Miss Liza.”

A slave. A real, live slave. She was very pretty, with rosy-brown skin, and eyes the same Coca-Cola brown as Miss Lola—Miss Liza’s. Sophie noted the bright yellow turban wrapped around the Negro girl’s head and the little silver cross strung on a red thread around her throat and was surprised. She’d thought a slave would look more down-trodden.

“You put Miss Liza’s brush down!” the slave girl said. “Right now, you hear?”

Sophie dropped the brush with a clatter.

“I do believe she was fixing to steal it!” Miss Liza’s voice was a high-pitched whine, not nearly as pretty as her face. “Bring her along to the office, Antigua. Papa will know what to do.” She disappeared in a flurry of white ruffles.

Antigua grabbed Sophie’s arm and shook it. “You in trouble, girl! What you doing here, anyway?”

This was not how Sophie had imagined her adventure beginning. She licked her lips. “Um. I got here by magic.”

Antigua gave her a vicious shake. “Magic? I never heard of no magic that put folks where they don’t belong to be. You crazy, girl? Or just foolish?”

“It’s the truth,” Sophie protested.

“Crazy and foolish,” Antigua said. “Listen here, now. You don’t want more trouble than you already got, you best find some other tale to tell Dr. Charles. Magic! I never!”

The slave girl took a firm grip of Sophie’s arm and dragged her out to the gallery and down the back steps. Sophie was too shocked to resist. Were slaves allowed to hustle white people around like that? Wasn’t that the reason the old days were good? Because Negroes knew their place?

Antigua entered the house through a door that didn’t exist in 1960, and hustled Sophie down the back hall to Aunt Enid’s office—or what would be Aunt Enid’s office, a hundred years in the future. When she’d knocked, she propelled Sophie across the room to the fireplace, where Miss Lolabelle was sitting by a lady on a sofa, carrying on while a tall gentleman patted her shoulder.

Antigua released Sophie and stepped back, leaving her staring at her illustrious ancestors.

The lady on the sofa was blond and pale and thin as a rail, and dressed in grey silk and a lacy cap with long side-pieces. Wool and knitting needles lay on the sofa beside her. The gentleman, got up in a stiff high collar that made Sophie’s neck itch to look at, had a long, sad face and an aquiline nose. A Fairchild nose, in fact.

The gentleman seated himself in what looked exactly like Grandmama’s big wing-chair. “My daughter says she discovered you in her room with her silver hair brush in your hand.” His voice was firm, but not unfriendly. “I trust you have some reasonable explanation?”

Sophie was so astonished to hear someone talking just like a character in a Dickens novel that it took her a moment to realize he was actually talking to her. It took another moment to realize she was going to have to answer him.

The lady picked up her knitting. She was working on a sock. “Perhaps a whipping will loosen her tongue, Dr. Fairchild.”

Sophie went cold all over. It occurred to her that adventures might not be as much fun to live through as to read about.

“I think we can get to the bottom of this without whipping, my dear,” Dr. Fairchild said.

“I cannot agree. The wench is a thief. Even your mother believes in whipping thieves.”

“Now, Lucy, we don’t know she’s a thief.”

The lady raised her almost invisible brows scornfully. She had a good face for scorn, with ice-blue eyes and a thin mouth. She was knitting without looking at what she was doing. Sophie found her terrifying. “She’s bold enough for one. You, girl. Didn’t anybody ever teach you not to look at your betters?”

Hastily, Sophie dropped her eyes to her feet.

“You’ve nothing to be frightened of,” Dr. Fairchild said. “If you’re innocent. Now. What is your name and where you come from?”

“Sophie,” she said, her voice shaking slightly. “I’m from New Orleans.”

“There! We’re making progress. Can you tell me, Sophie, how you got here from New Orleans?”

It was all too obvious neither of the Fairchilds would believe any story involving magical Creatures and time travel. Why didn’t any of the books mention that adventures were like taking a test you hadn’t studied for?

“You got here somehow,” Dr. Fairchild prompted. “Did you come by boat?”

Sophie had had teachers who couldn’t wait for an answer. If she just stood there looking dumb and scared, he’d probably just tell her what he wanted her to say.

“Yes, Sir,” she answered eagerly. “A boat from New Orleans.”

Mrs. Fairchild clicked her needles angrily. “That’s a bare-faced lie, Dr. Fairchild. There hasn’t been a steamboat by in weeks.”

“They probably put her off at Doucette,” he pointed out. “Saved themselves some time.”

Miss Liza gave an impatient little bounce. “What does it matter where she came from? She was stealing my hairbrush, and she ought to be whipped!”

Mrs. Fairchild turned her icy glare on her daughter. “Your father is conducting this interrogation, Elizabeth. It does not become you to interrupt him.”

Miss Liza scowled.

“The truth now, Sophie,” Dr. Fairchild went on. “Did you get off the steamboat at Doucette?”

This might have been a trick question, coming from someone else. But Dr. Fairchild looked to be what Grandmama would call a Perfect Gentleman, and Perfect Gentlemen didn’t lay traps. “Yes, Sir.”

“Nonsense,” Mrs. Fairchild said. “We’re a good five miles from Doucette. Did someone drive you here?”

Mrs. Fairchild, on the other hand, was not a Perfect Lady. “No, ma’am,” Sophie improvised. “I walked.”

“Walked! Dr. Fairchild, I do believe this wench is a runaway as well as a thief. Just look at the state of her!”

“I disagree, my dear. She’s not much more than a child. She couldn’t have made the journey from New Orleans alone. It’s more likely she lost her way between here and Doucette and fell into a ditch. She seems a little simple.”

Mrs. Fairchild gave a laugh. “All slaves are simple when they’re in trouble.”

Sophie looked up, shocked. “But I’m not—”

Mrs. Fairchild laid her knitting aside and pulled something from her waistband—a leather strap, about an inch wide. Sophie looked down hastily. “—a runaway,” she finished.

“If you want us to believe you,” Dr. Fairchild said sternly, “you must tell us exactly who sent you here, and why.”

Sophie hardly heard him. How could anybody think she was a slave? Slaves were Negroes. She was white. In 1960, white people were white and colored people were colored and nobody had any trouble telling them apart. It was true she was barefoot and she had a tan. Couldn’t they tell the difference between tan and black? Hadn’t they noticed her Fairchild nose?

The silence lengthened: Dr. Fairchild wasn’t going to help her this time. Sophie was on the edge of panic when Mrs. Fairchild said, “If you look at her carefully, Dr. Fairchild, I think you’ll see why she’s reluctant to answer. Elizabeth, you may leave us.”

“Mama!”

“Do as your mother says, puss,” Dr. Fairchild said.

“But, Daddy!”

“Now, Liza.”

Miss Liza flounced away. Dr. Fairchild took Sophie’s chin in his large, warm hand and studied her carefully, just like Grandmama. Sophie felt her face heat uncomfortably.

“Well.” Dr. Fairchild let her go. “Your master is Mr. Robert Fairchild, isn’t he?”

Sophie nodded numbly.

“Robert always did spoil his servants,” Mrs. Fairchild observed.

“My brother,” Dr. Fairchild said, “treats his servants as he was taught to treat them.”

“Which includes sending them on a long journey up-river without so much as a sack? And what about her traveling pass?”

“Very true, my dear. Do you have a traveling pass, Sophie?”

Sophie tensed. “I lost it?”

“You lost it.” Dr. Fairchild made an impatient noise. “Don’t you know how dangerous it is for a girl like you to be without a traveling pass? If the patrollers found you, they’d put you in chains and drag you back to your master, and that would be a lot of trouble for everybody.”

Mrs. Fairchild said, “This is all very well, Dr. Fairchild, but it doesn’t tell us what she was doing in Elizabeth’s bedroom.”

Dr. Fairchild sighed. “Very well, Lucy. Sophie. Why were you in Miss Liza’s room? The truth, now.”

Because it’s my room, a hundred years from now. “I—got lost.”

“A likely story! If you ask me, Dr. Fairchild, there’s more to this girl than meets the eye. Have you ever seen anything like those spectacles?”

Sophie touched her glasses. They were just ordinary, blue plastic frames with little metal flowers on the temples. “My father gave them to me.”

Mrs. Fairchild sent her a glare that could have stripped paint. “If you refer to Mr. Robert as your father again, I will have you whipped.”

“Now, Lucy, the girl probably doesn’t know any better. It’s like Robert to have spoiled her, just as it’s like him to send her without writing to warn us. Unless, perhaps, he wrote Mother. Or she might have a letter with her. Do you have a letter from your master, child?”

“I lost that, too.” Sophie found it all too easy to sound pathetic. “I lost everything.”

“Convenient. I don’t mind telling you, Dr. Fairchild, I don’t believe I’ve ever heard such a collection of untruths since the day I was born.”

Dr. Fairchild sighed. “Well, she’s a Fairchild—no question about that. I’ll talk it over with Mother tonight and write Robert in the morning. In the meantime, we’ll just presume she’s a new addition to the family. Antigua?”

The slave girl had been standing by the door so quietly, Sophie had forgotten she was there. She acknowledged her name with a little curtsy. “Yes, Dr. Charles.”

“Get this girl something to eat, then take her to Mammy.”

Mrs. Fairchild took up her knitting again. “You, girl. How old are you?”

“Thirteen, ma’am.”

“I thought you were younger. Thirteen is much too old to be running around with your legs showing. Get her something decent to wear, Antigua. As for you, girl, I can’t even begin to imagine what you’re used to in Mr. Robert’s household. In my household, you will behave with proper humility, or you will be punished.”

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.”

Dizzy with relief, Sophie curtsied and followed Antigua out of the office. She thought she’d done pretty well, all things considered. A member of the family, Dr. Charles had said. Maybe things were going to work out after all.

It had been raining in 1860, too. The sky was a patchy grey, and the wet grass clung to Sophie’s legs as she followed Antigua around the back of Oak Cottage and along the edge of the garden.

A whiff of something good brought water to her mouth. “What’s that?”

Antigua snorted. “You don’t know roast chicken when you smells it? I thought you just acting simple so’s Dr. Charles feel sorry for you. Maybe it ain’t an act, huh?”

Sophie was stung. “I’m not simple.”

“Then don’t ask fool questions.”

Sophie shut her mouth and wondered when the friends she’d wished for were going to show up.

They walked up to Aunt Enid’s garden shed, looking bare and business-like without its blanket of vine. Sophie peered through the open door into a noisy, smoky room full of women in long dresses shelling beans, stirring pots, chopping vegetables, and kneading bread on Aunt Enid’s potting table. The mammoth fireplace was all cluttered with pots on hooks and a long spit with chickens strung along it like beads on a string. The air was hot and sticky as boiling molasses and hummed with flies.

Sophie stepped back, hoping Antigua would bring her food outside.

“Well, looky there!” a voice exclaimed. “A stranger!”

Next thing she knew, Sophie was standing at the center of a semicircle of curious black faces asking questions faster than she could answer them.

“Where you from?”

“Ain’t you light!”

“What-for them things setting on you nose?”

Sophie hadn’t been this close to so many Negroes since she was eight and Mama had stopped her going to church with Lily. She’d liked Lily’s church, where the singing was a lot more lively than at St. Martin’s Episcopal and the ladies were all got up in Sunday dresses and fancy hats. These women, in their faded dresses and tightly wrapped headcloths, frightened her.

Sophie pushed her glasses up on her nose and smiled nervously.

“Well, Miss High-and-Mighty!” a short, round woman exclaimed. “Can’t you answer a civil question?”

“Don’t act more foolish than God made you, China. Can’t you see the child’s scared half to death?”

The woman who had spoken was tall—as tall as Papa, with reddish-brown skin and a blue headcloth. The other women moved aside to give her room.

Knowing authority when she saw it, Sophie held out her hand. “How do you do?”

“Well, I never,” China said, and everybody laughed.

“Hush yourselves, now,” the queenly woman said. “Ain’t you never seen a body with manners before?” Her hand, hard and scaly with work, folded around Sophie’s. “I’m Africa, Old Missy’s cook.”

Antigua appeared at Africa’s elbow. “She belong to Mr. Robert. Or so she say.”

A dozen pairs of eyes turned to Sophie with a new and intense interest. She felt her ears burn.

“Oh, she Mr. Robert’s, sure enough,” said a dark, skinny woman.

Someone else laughed. “And ain’t it just like him, sending off his high-yellow girl for his mammy to raise up for him?”

Africa ignored them. “What’s your name, child?”

“Sophie.”

“Sophie.” Africa’s smile showed missing teeth. “And what’re them things on your nose, Sophie?”

“Glasses.”

Africa held Sophie’s chin and lifted her glasses off her nose. The world disappeared into a multicolored blur. Sophie squeaked and made a blind grab.

“Don’t fret, child. I’m just looking,” said Africa.

“But I can’t see! You don’t understand!”

“I sure enough don’t.” Africa dangled the glasses by the earpiece. “Old Missy, she don’t have spectacles like these. Dr. Fairchild, he don’t have spectacles like these, and he’s a medical man. How come you got them?”

“So I can see,” Sophie almost wailed. “Give them back to me. Please!”

Africa held the glasses up to her eyes, yanked them away as though they’d bitten her. “Whoo-eee! You blind as sin, child!” She handed them back. “Better take good care of them. Oak River ain’t New Orleans. If they get broke, you’ll just have to do without.”

“Not less you ask Mr. Robert to get you some more,” said Antigua nastily. “What work you do at Mr. Robert’s house, anyway?”

Sophie settled her glasses back on her nose. “Work?”

“Yes,” Antigua sneered. “Work. You know—what black folk do and white folk don’t?”

Sophie looked down at her feet, sun-darkened and streaked with dried mud. There was a scratch above one arch and a bug crawling on her big toe. The feet surrounding her were mostly darker, but two or three might have been as pale as hers under the dirt. She tried to imagine what would happen if she raised her head right now and announced that she was not a slave, but a genuine white Fairchild, brought into the past by magic.

They’d think she was crazy, just like Antigua had. And if she insisted, they’d probably tell Dr. Fairchild, who would think she was crazy, too. Maybe if she just went along, and was agreeable and polite, she could keep out of trouble until the Creature showed up to rescue her.

Africa clapped her hands sharply. “Y’all get back inside, and get on with dinner. Unless you’re hankering to tell Mrs. Charles she ain’t going to eat until three?”

“No, ma’am,” said China with feeling. “I likes my black skin just fine on my back where it belong.”

The other women laughed and went back into the kitchen. Africa looked down at Sophie. “I ’spect you wants a corn cake.”

Sophie hesitated. That kitchen was probably as full of germs as it was of flies. And none of those slaves looked very clean. Still, she was hungry, and she loved corncakes. Lily used to make them, light and spongy and a little sweet. Besides, she was the heroine of this adventure, and heroines never got so much as a head cold.

“Please, ma’am. If it’s not any trouble.”

Africa led her through the flies and heat to a wooden bin full of flat, grayish things that looked like cardboard cookies. The corn cake tasted even more like cardboard than it looked, but Sophie was empty enough to choke it down anyway, and even remembered to thank Africa for it before going outside, where Antigua sitting on the bench waiting for her. “Come on, if you done stuffing you face. I gots work to do.”

She got up and trotted purposefully away, Sophie at her heels.

As they came into the yard, Sophie was hit with a truly eye-watering stink. “What’s that?”

“Soap boiling.” Antigua pointed to where three Negro women with their sleeves rolled up were stirring a big iron pot over an open fire.

Sophie sneezed. “That’s not what soap smells like.”

“How else pig fat and lye supposed to smell? What you make your soap from in New Orleans? Manna?”

“I don’t know. We buy our soap at a store.”

Antigua rolled her eyes. “I ’spect everything better in New Orleans.”

Sophie didn’t bother to respond. It was obvious the slave girl was bound and determined to take everything she said as a slight and an insult. There’d been girls like that at school. The only thing to do was keep her mouth shut and hope Mammy was friendlier.

Antigua picked her way across the yard with her pink skirts held up out of the mud, with Sophie trailing behind, gaping at the busy slaves like a tourist on Bourbon Street. Each cabin was a workshop, and the work done there spilled out into the yard: barrel making, carpentry, leather-work, forging iron. They fetched up at a cabin where a woman sat in the door, stitching at a cloud of white stuff. A mysterious, rhythmical clacking came from inside.

“Afternoon, Asia,” Antigua said. “This here is Sophie. Mr. Robert send her on a boat from New Orleans. Mrs. Charles say give her some decent clothes.” Antigua wrinkled her nose. “Better wash her first. And be quick. I taking her to Mammy, and there ain’t much time before dinner.”

Asia bundled the white cloud into her arms. “She better come on in, then.”

Sophie followed Asia into the cabin. The clacking came from a huge wooden loom worked by a shadowy figure, arms flying, flat, bare feet working the treadles like a giant spider.

Asia shook her head. “That Antigua. She so full of herself, she liable to bust like a bullfrog one fine day. This here’s Sophie, Hepzibah. She need some decent clothes, right quick.”

The clacking died away, and the weaving woman disentangled herself from the loom. When she stood up, Sophie saw she was thin, and would have been tall if her back hadn’t been curled like a hoop. “Welcome, Sophie. That a mighty pretty dress you got there.” Hepzibah took a fold of the blue gingham shirtwaist and rubbed it between her fingers. “I ain’t never seen such fine weaving. Where this fabric come from?”

Sophie pulled away nervously. “New Orleans. My mama bought it for me.”

“Then your mama ain’t got good sense,” Asia said. “That dress ain’t seemly for a big girl like you. Make a nice Sunday dress for one of the childrens, though.”

“No!” Sophie crossed her arms tightly, panicked. What if changing her clothes meant she couldn’t go home? What if she left her dress in the past and Mama was mad? “It’s mine. You can’t have it.”

Hepzibah frowned. “It ain’t Christian, keeping something ain’t no use to you when there’s a plenty other folks could use it.”

Her expression told Sophie that Hepzibah wouldn’t hesitate to remove the dress by force. Reluctantly, she took it off—and her bra, and her underpants—and, miserably embarrassed, stood in a corner while Asia sponged her briskly with cold water out of a bucket. Hepzibah gave her a pair of coarse cotton drawers and a nightgown-like chemise, a long brown homespun dress and a sacking apron. When Sophie was dressed, Asia raked through her hair with her fingers and braided it in six tight plaits, tied a white cloth she called a “tignon” over them, and knotted the ends into rabbit ears.

“There,” she said. “I ’spect you be getting something nicer directly. Light-skinned girl like you bound to end up in the Big House.”

Sophie came out into the yard, feeling awkward and itchy and hot. Antigua sauntered away from the young stable hand she’d been teasing, and gave Sophie a contemptuous once-over. “Well, you clean,” she said. “Ain’t nothing ever going to make you decent.”

Sophie spared a wistful thought for the Natterjack, whose magic made the time-traveling children fit in whenever they went. What with wondering what was going to happen to her and Antigua hustling her from pillar to post, she was much too worried to pay much attention to the scenery. She passed the maze without even thinking to look at it.

And then she saw Oak River Big House.

It stood on a rise surrounded by gardens and flowering trees, three stories of bright red brick, with a wide gallery, tall white columns, and a double stair that curved graceful arms around a marble fountain in which a stone nymph poured water out of an urn. It was splendid and proud and any Fairchild who entered it must be proud, too.

Sophie stood up straighter. She’d asked the Creature for an adventure, and adventures had to be full of misunderstandings and hardships, or what was the point? She was a Fairchild, and this was her ancestral home.

She followed Antigua around the fountain to a blue door that opened onto a long, stone-floored corridor. A young black man in a short blue jacket came out of a door carrying a glass on a silver tray. “Careful, Antigua,” he said. “Young Missy send her a note, make her cross as two sticks.”

Antigua shrugged and herded Sophie into a room furnished with a big desk and shelves full of papers.

“Mammy, this here’s Sophie,” she announced, curtseying. “She from New Orleans.” And then she left.

Sophie, who’d been expecting someone fat and jolly and Aunt Jemima-ish, studied the Negro woman behind the desk with a sinking heart. She was thin as a rake, nunnishly dressed in black and white, and looked about as jolly as Mama in a temper.

The woman up from the note she was reading, adjusted her narrow steel spectacles, and fixed Sophie with a sharp gaze that reminded her uncomfortably of a particularly strict math teacher she’d had in fifth grade.

“Mrs. Charles has told me about you, Sophie. She says you are rude and spoiled and possibly a thief. I won’t tolerate a thief and I won’t tolerate uppity behavior, whatever color you are. The law doesn’t care who your father is, and neither do I. If your mother was a slave, so are you. Do you hear me?”

Sophie gaped at her. “You can’t talk to me like that!”

Mammy got up from her desk and slapped Sophie across the face.

Sophie put her hand to her stinging cheek. “You hit me!”

“If you don’t keep your thoughts and your eyes to yourself, I’ll do more than that.” Mammy took Sophie’s arm in a firm grip. “You need to learn your place, girl. You can sit in the linen room for a spell, think things over.”

Locked in the linen room, Sophie had plenty of time to plan what she was going to say to the Creature when it showed up, about throwing her into an adventure and then just abandoning her. She tried to think what she might have said to the Fairchilds to persuade them she wasn’t a slave, moved on to imagining how Mama would have handled Mammy, and spent some time worrying over whether Mama would think she’d run away and call the police.

If Mama even noticed.

Sophie closed her eyes, clicked her bare heels together, and repeated “There’s no place like home” until she started to cry. When she was cried out, she wiped her face on her apron and distracted herself by poking through the sheets (heavy linen) and towels (heavier linen). She stood by the window and watched the shadow of the Big House creep slowly over the geometrical beds of the formal garden. Mid-afternoon, she saw a procession of slaves trotting into the house carrying big tin boxes slung on poles. She wondered what was in the boxes. She wondered if anybody was going to give her anything to eat.

Time passed. The shadows crawled. She wished she had something to read.

The slaves brought the boxes out again and carried them around the corner of the house and out of sight. The light faded, palmetto bugs whirred against the ceiling and shadows of hunting bats flitted silently across the sky. And then it was night, and a slave she hadn’t seen before was at the door with a lantern, telling her to come along.

“Mammy, she say you sleep in the Quarters tonight, maybe it teach you to mind you manners.”

As the slave girl led her through the fragrant, buggy darkness, Sophie leaned that her name was Sally, that she was a housemaid, and just about the nosiest person Sophie had ever met. Too tired to think of any answers to her questions about New Orleans and Sophie’s mother and Mr. Robert, Sophie just shook her head, which brought on a furious speech about folks who thought they were better than other folks that kept Sally busy until they reached the oak grove.

“See this here?” Sally swung the lantern to illuminate the first few feet of a narrow path. “Just follow it on a ways, and you come to the Quarters. Africa say she take you in, the good Lord know why. First cabin to the right.”

It’s not easy to follow a path you can’t see. Sophie groped her way forward step by step, jumping at every noise and stubbing her bare toes on every stick and stone. By the time she reached the end of the trees, she was jumpy as a cat. She also needed a bathroom.

In front of her, a double row of cabins glowed faintly in the moonlight, their doors open to catch whatever breeze should happen to chance along. Behind them, a field of young cane rustled sleepily to itself, and cicadas fiddled wildly.

Sophie climbed to the porch of the first cabin to the right and peeked cautiously through the uncurtained window. Firelight flickered on the face of the slave woman who’d given her the corncake, stirring an iron pot hung over the fire on a hook. On the floor, a child was playing with a baby, and three men sat around a rough table, their faces grim in the flickering light of a smoky candle.

Sophie’s pulse stuttered nervously. The men looked just exactly like the kind of dirty, ragged Negroes Mama had warned her against, except they were all working. One was stuffing a sack with what looked like a tangle of black thread; the second was sewing another sack closed. The third man sat in the only chair in the room whittling with his head bent like he was too tired to hold it up. Around them, the walls were covered with clothes and tools hung on hooks; baskets and bunches of herbs dangled from the ceiling. The air was still and hot and thick with grease and sweat and small, biting insects.

If there’d been anywhere else to go, Sophie would have crept away again. As it was, she hesitated until the child looked up and saw her at the window. “Who that?”

Sophie moved shyly to the door. “Sophie.”

The child scrambled to its feet. Sophie couldn’t tell whether it was a girl or a boy, its hair trimmed like a lamb’s wool close to his head, its bony body covered by a coarse brown shirt. “My name’s Canada. You come to supper?” The child took Sophie’s hand and pulled her forward. “This here’s Sophie. She ain’t borned here.”

“She sure as shooting ain’t,” one of the men said. “Dr. Charles a good Christian gentleman. Ain’t it just like Mr. Robert, though?”

Africa turned from the fire. “Hush, Flanders. Ain’t her fault who her pa is. Come here, sugar.”

Sophie edged around the table, clutching her skirt so she wouldn’t touch anything.

“This here’s my husband, Ned.” Africa laid a gentle hand on the skinny man’s shoulder. He raised his face, pale brown and deeply lined.

“Pleased to meet you, sir,” Sophie said shyly.

Ned showed a graveyard of yellow teeth in a wide smile. “I pleased to meet you, too, child.”

“The boys are Poland and Flanders,” Africa said. “The baby’s Saxony. Tote me some water, Canny girl. I’m making us some spoon-bread to welcome Sophie to Oak River.”

By this time, Sophie was ready to burst. Not wanting to ask about a bathroom where the men could hear, she followed Canada outside. But she couldn’t make her understand.

“I don’t know ’bout no bathroom,” the little girl said. “The water in the cistern here’s for drinking. Sometimes we washes in a barrel, but in summer, mostly we swims.”

“I don’t have to wash,” Sophie said. “I have to tinkle.”

“Tinkle?”

Sophie was ready to die of embarrassment. “Pee.”

Giggling, Canada led her to a little wooden house out in the field behind the cabins. It smelled foul, it was full of flies, and there wasn’t any paper, only a basket of scratchy moss to clean up with. Sophie was past caring.

Supper was greens and a little chicken and the water they’d been boiled in—pot liquor, Africa called it—and a deliciously creamy spoon-bread, eaten more or less in silence, which suited Sophie just fine. She was tired and frightened, and hadn’t the first idea what slaves liked to talk about.

As soon as the last crumb of spoon-bread disappeared, Canada and Africa cleared the table, Poland put the baby to bed in a basket, and all three men went out into the night—to hoe their vegetable-patch, Canada said. Sophie sat in Ned’s chair, trying to keep out of the way and wondering where she was going to sleep.

A woman came to the door asking Africa to step round to the Big House, as Korea’s baby was on the way. Africa bustled around pulling gourds and dried plants from the rafters and tying them in a sack, then left in a hurry.

Canada yawned. “Time we go to bed. Momi, she sometimes out all night when a baby come.”

She took Sophie’s hand and led her into a tiny back room. Sophie could just make out two ticking mattresses, covered with pieced quilts, taking up most of the floor space. Canada gestured to the smaller one. “This my bed,” she said. “But you can share.”

Sophie had never shared a bed in her life, and didn’t want to start now. But there wasn’t any place else to sleep. She began to cry helplessly.

“Aww,” Canada said. “You homesick for you Momi?” She put her skinny arms around Sophie’s waist and her head against her shoulder. “Don’t you cry. She send you a message, I ’spect, next boat from New Orleans. You going to like it here. Folks is nice, mostly, and Old Missy and Dr. Charles, they don’t believe in whipping ’less you do something real bad. Lie down now and go to sleep. Everything look better in daylight. You wait and see.”

An iron clanging woke Sophie while it was still dark.

“Morning bell,” a child’s voice informed her. “Momi say I supposed take you to Mammy. Can you watch Saxony while I do my chores?”

The mattress crackled as Canny scrambled away. Sophie sat up and rubbed her face. She felt grubby from sleeping in her clothes, hungry, and even more tired than she’d been when she lay down. The adventures of the day before hadn’t been a dream after all. The Creature had really taken her back in time and her ancestors had really mistaken her for a slave. The magic hadn’t ended at midnight or when she went to sleep. It looked like she was stuck in the past until the Creature took her home.

If it even intended to. Maybe, Sophie thought, the Creature was an evil spirit, whose treats were really tricks. Maybe it was laughing itself sick in whatever betwixt and between place it lived. She just hoped leaving her here until the war started wasn’t its idea of a good joke.

She would have liked a real bathroom with running water and Cheerios for breakfast. What she got was an outhouse, a bucket to wash in, and a hunk of cold cornbread, just like everybody else.

The sky grew pearly with dawn. Africa and her men-folk left for work. Canada handed Saxony to Sophie, who held the dark little thing gingerly while Canada rolled up the mattresses and swept the floors with a straw broom nearly as big as she was. By the time everything was tidy, the sun had burned away the mist and Saxony was fussing.

Canada heaved the baby onto her hip. “I fetch Saxy here down to old Auntie Europe—she look out for the picanninies. Then I show you the bestest way to the Big House.”

It had rained in the night, and the morning smelled clean and damp. Sophie waited for Canada on the front steps, scratching at some new bug bites on her leg and trying not to think about whether Mammy would slap her again or if Dr. Fairchild’s Mama was as mean as his wife.

There was certainly plenty to distract her. Chickens scratched and squabbled in the dusty road between the cabins, ignoring scrawny dogs, who ignored them back. From the cabin next door, a tethered goat gazed with yellow, slitted eyes through the fence-slats at the rows of vegetables in Africa’s garden. Birds sang from the oak grove and dipped and soared above the restless cane.

The Good Old Days were sure livelier than the present. Sophie thought she’d like them just fine, if she didn’t have to be a slave.

Then Canada ran up, and it was time to go to the Big House.

Thinking it over, Sophie decided that Canada must be her official magical sidekick and guide. She certainly acted like one—pointing out the fastest shortcuts to the Big House and the yard, warning her what parts of the gardens were off-limits, telling her how to deal with Mammy.

“She bark like a mad dog,” Canny said, “But she don’t hardly ever bite ’less you sass her. You just bend real respectful, say yes’m and no’m and keep you eyes down, and she be happy as a goat in a briar patch.”

Like Miss Ely, Sophie thought, remembering the strict math teacher. It’s just playacting. I don’t really have to mean it. She grinned at Canny, knocked on Mammy’s door, went in, and bobbed politely.

“There you are,” said Mammy. “That headcloth looks like a possum’s been nesting in it.”

Sophie glanced up, caught a fierce dark glare, and looked down again. “I’m sorry. I didn’t have a mirror.”

“Sass and excuses!” Mammy whipped off Sophie’s tignon and refolded it. “If it were up to me, I’d send you right back to Mr. Robert. But Mrs. Fairchild’s a kind, Christian lady and she takes her responsibilities seriously. Just you keep in mind that kind is not the same as weak. Mrs. Fairchild ran this plantation all alone when the Master passed and Dr. Charles was off North learning to be a doctor. She still runs it. She’s not likely to be impressed by a mongrel slave-wench who thinks she’s as good as white folks.” Mammy yanked the tignon tight. “Follow me.”

A few moments later, Sophie was on the gallery of the Big House, curtsying to her five-times great grandmother, Mrs. Charles Fairchild of Oak River Plantation with her eyes fixed on the spreading pool of her wide black skirts. She felt slightly sick.

“So you’re Sophie,” a sweet, slow voice said. “Look up, child. I want to see your face.”

Shyly, Sophie lifted her gaze to a round, rosy face framed by a frilly white cap, a little rosebud mouth, a very unFairchild-like button nose, and clear blue eyes.

“What an adventure you’ve had!” Mrs. Fairchild said merrily. “And how like Mr. Robert not to tell us he was sending you. I’ve written to scold him. Now. What shall we do with you? I suppose you do fancy sewing?”

Sophie considered lying, decided it would lead to disaster. “No, ma’am.”

“We shall have to teach you, then. Dr. Charles tells me you’re well-spoken. What are your accomplishments?”

“Accomplishments, ma’am?”

“Can you dress hair, for instance? Starch and iron?”

What did slaves do, anyway? Sophie wracked her brain for some useful skill. “I like to read. And I won a prize once, for my handwriting.”

“I declare!” Mrs. Fairchild produced a fat leather book from the folds of her dress. “Can you read this?”

The spine was stamped in gold: Little Dorrit, by Charles Dickens. Sophie opened the book eagerly. If there was one thing she was good at, it was reading aloud. Whenever teachers wanted something read in class, she was always the first to be called on. She found the first chapter and began: “Thirty years ago, Marseilles lay burning in the sun, one day. A blazing sun upon a fierce August day was no greater rarity in southern France then, than at any other time, before or since.—”

“You read very well, child.” Mrs. Fairchild sounded surprised. “Isn’t it just like Robert to have you taught! He never did give a snap of his fingers about the law. What do you think, Mammy?”

“I think she’s next-door to useless. But she can fetch and carry and help Aunt Winney see after your things.”

“You’re right. Winney will be glad of the help, and there’s no one better to train her up as a lady’s maid.” Mrs. Fairchild gave Sophie a friendly smile. “It will be nice to have a bright young face around me. Not dressed like a yard hand, though. You ask Winney if she can find something in that armoire full of gowns Miss Charlotte left behind when she married.”

Aunt Winney, it turned out, was Mrs. Fairchild’s body servant. She was older and even stouter than her mistress, and couldn’t go up and down stairs without puffing and groaning from the pain in her legs and back. She’d traveled from Virginia to Oak River with the former Miss Caroline Wilkes Berry when she was a bride, which was why, as she told Sophie, she had a Christian name instead of one of them heathenish Oak River names.

“You be grateful you ain’t called New Guinea or Mexico,” the old woman said. “Missy Caro say old Massa’s grandpappy begun it when he buy the firstest slaves for Oak River. He name them Asia, America, Africa, Europe, Australia, and England.”

Aunt Winney reminded Sophie of the old ladies at St. Martin’s, chatty and cozy and full of gossip and pats on the cheek. So what if she was leather-colored and had her hair tied up in a jaunty red-checked tignon? She was friendly and more than happy to answer Sophie’s questions.

“England? The other names are continents. Why not South America or Antarctica?”

Aunt Winney chuckled. “You so sharp, you going cut youself. Old Massa’s grandpappy come from England, that why-for. Now, lets us see what Miss Lotty got you might could wear.”

By the time the bell rang at noon, Sophie was the proud possessor of two high-necked calico dresses, two petticoats, white calico stockings that tied at her knees with string, a crisp white apron, and a pair of scuffed brown boots with buttons up the side that were too big and had to be stuffed with rags to keep her feet from sliding.

Aunt Winney smiled. “You pretty as a picture, sugar.”

Pretty? Sophie turned and stared in the mirror.

A stranger stared back at her with dark, surprised eyes. With her hair hidden by the white tignon and a shape created by layers of petticoat and a fitted top, she looked almost grown-up. But pretty? Mama certainly wouldn’t have thought so.

Aunt Winney’s dark, round face appeared over her shoulder. “Now don’t you go running away with the notion that yaller skin make you better than other folks. You hear what I say?”

Why did people kept telling her to be humble? The girl in the mirror looked meek enough to Sophie. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Good. Now, run on down to the kitchen and fetch me a bowl of mush. You can catch a bite while you down there, but no lollygagging.”

The shortcut to Oak Cottage passed behind the maze. Sophie was tempted to run in to look for the Creature, remembered it was off-limits, decided she’d let it go. Being a slave wasn’t as bad as she had feared, now she’d been assigned to the Big House. She liked her many-times-great grandmother, and it seemed like her grandmother liked her, too. Maybe they’d get to be friends, and Sophie could tell her about the present. That would make a good adventure.

When she reached the kitchen, Sophie asked a slave woman shelling lima beans on the bench outside for two bowls of mush. The woman glared at her. “Bowls is in the blue dresser and mush in the iron pot. Wait on your own self.”

Sophie took two steps into what felt like a steam bath perfumed with pepper and onion and browning butter and her stomach turned over. She’d been feeling off all morning—nerves, she’d thought. Maybe it was just hunger. Careful to keep out of everybody’s way, she found the blue dresser and the bowls. The iron pot hung at the side of hearth. Sophie looked in and saw yellow mush mixed with unidentifiable lumps that might be potatoes or yams or chunks of fatty meat. There were flies struggling on it—and probably in it, too.

Heat washed over Sophie like scalding water, her stomach clenched, and she threw up on the stone hearth.

First she thought she’d die of shame and then she just thought she’d die. Everything inside her seemed to be trying to get out and her head beat like a thousand drums. Shrill voices pierced her ears, pinching hands pulled at her as she was heaved up like a bundle of laundry and carried out into the air.

After that, Sophie was conscious of very little except how miserable she was. At some point, her fouled clothes were taken off. She felt water cooling her burning skin, then a coarse gown that rasped her like sand paper. Large, cool hands touched her rigid belly and her forehead. She heard a voice she knew was Dr. Charles’s saying that Robert should never have sent a city girl to the swamp in fever season.

She dragged her eyes open, saw her arm stretched over a white basin. Dr. Charles was beside her, holding a knife as bright and painful to look at as a bolt of lightning.

The knife bit into the crook of her elbow, and she felt very weak and sleepy and Papa was squeezing her arm and telling her that he’d come to take her home.

“I miss my Punkin-Pie,” he said, and opened his mouth wider and wider, swallowing her arm clear up to the elbow. Sophie was wondering, without real interest, whether he intended to eat her clear up when she noticed the Creature floating in the air beside her, its face all puckered like a baby about to cry. She opened her mouth to give it a piece of her mind, then got distracted by Papa turning into an old man with a tall hat like Abraham Lincoln’s. But he couldn’t be Abraham Lincoln because Lincoln was white and this old man was black as his hat, black as the crooked stick he carried, wound with red thread and white shells.

He waved the stick towards a door outlined with a thread of blinding light. As Sophie watched, the thread widened to a scarf, then a ribbon. The door was opening.

“Fetch Africa,” a woman’s voice said. “This girl going fast.”

What girl? Sophie wondered. And where was she going?

“Papa Legba.” She saw the Creature crouched at the old man’s feet. “Can you save this-here white girl? I go to a lot of bother to get her, and there ain’t another one will do as well.”

The old man gave the Creature a look that could have skinned a mule. “Serve you right, duppy, if she do die. You can’t just go dragging folks through time like it was a railway station!”

One amber eye peered up impudently. “Don’t serve her right, though. Dead, she ain’t worth nothing. Live, she might could do some good.”

The old man studied the Creature, his face still as a carving. Suddenly he laughed. “That plan of yours, duppy, is like something Compair Lapin and Bouki might hatch when they been drinking corn likker. Going to be fun to watch. But you best remember all doorways belong to me. I choose when they open, where they lead, and who may pass through.”

The Creature touched the old man’s boot. “I remember.”

Sophie was about to ask the old man if he could open a door and send her home when a dark blue void opened over her bed. She saw a light sparkling in the heart of it, crystal blue. The scent of salt water tickled her nose; the taste of molasses filled her mouth. The bed rocked under her, floating on a gently swelling sea. A wave leapt up, caressed her body coolly, withdrew. The void filled with a velvety voice singing a wordless song, and a queenly figure appeared, crowned with gold and veiled with strings of pearls.

“Yemaya,” said the old man in the hat.

“Don’t you know better than to lead a child through into this time with no preparation? The water and the food are poison to one who is not used to them. You play a dangerous game, Legba.” The musical voice was stern.

“I am dangerous,” said the old man silkily.

“And I am not?”

For a moment, the air around the two entities crackled and buzzed. Then the old man laughed. “You’re barking up the wrong tree, Yemaya. This game belongs to the little trickster, who plots but never plans.”

The Creature grinned sheepishly.

“You play with forces you do not understand,” the woman told it, angry and amused. “Do not do so again.”

“No, ma’am,” the Creature said. “Not ’less I needs to. Can you fix her?”

“I can,” the velvety voice said. “I will.”

The door snicked shut, darkness fell, and Sophie was asleep.

After a dreamless, drifting time, Sophie woke to an unfamiliar room, the crimson glow of a fire, and a woman bent over a big-bellied pot like a witch in a fairy tale. She felt like she’d done three thousand sit-ups and run fifty miles in a desert, but she wasn’t sick any more.

The woman turned. Without her glasses, Sophie couldn’t see her face, but she was dressed in blue with yellow around her head, like Yemaya, and held herself like a queen.

“Bout time you woke up,” the woman said. “I ain’t got no root for sleeping-sickness.”

It was a beautiful voice, but it was human, and Sophie recognized it. “You’re Canada’s mother. Africa.”

“That’s right, and I’m right glad you know it. You been clear off your head since Dr. Charles bled you yesterday.” Africa put aside a curtain of gauzy fabric, slid an arm under Sophie’s shoulders, and held a steaming cup to her lips.

The mixture was bitter and mossy and thick with bits of leaves. As Sophie choked it down, Africa said, “I don’t know what to make of you, and that’s the truth. The Master of the Crossroads, he goes his own way. That way sometimes bright and sometimes dark, but it ain’t never what I’d call easy.”

Sophie frowned. “Do you mean the old man, or the Creature?”

“What creature is that, sugar?”

“The one that brought me here. I have to find it, so I can go back home.”

Africa smoothed her hair gently. “This your home now, sugar, less Mr. Robert change his mind. You rest.”

Next time Sophie woke, Dr. Charles was taking her pulse.

“Strong and regular,” he said. “Mrs. Fairchild will be pleased. A couple of days of rest, and you’ll be as good as new.”

Dr. Charles gave her hand a pat and moved away. Sophie found her glasses under the pillow and put them on. The room snapped into focus. Sophie looked around at four iron beds draped in gauze, and a cabinet full of jars and bottles beside a table where Dr. Charles sat unrolling a long strip of linen around a slave woman’s arm. A second slave, an older woman in a big white apron, stood beside him with a jar.

Dr. Charles snipped off the bandage, tied the ends, and tucked them in neatly. “There, Rhodes. I don’t want you back in the fields for another few days yet. I’ll tell Mr. Akins to assign you something light.”

The woman Rhodes thanked him and left. The older woman, whose name was Aunt Cissie, fetched in skinny man with a hacking cough, followed by a big man complaining of a griping in his guts, an old woman bent over with rheumatism, and three or four more. Sophie watched Dr. Charles examine them, peering into mouths and eyes, sounding chests, instructing Aunt Cissie to give them liniment or spoons-full of foul-smelling liquid, asking after the health of a brother, an aunt, a father, a wife, listening to the soft-voiced, respectful answers. When the last patient had left, he dismissed Aunt Cissie, pulled out a long black book, and started to write in it.

The pen scratched softly, the flies buzzed lazily against the ceiling. Sophie was on the edge of drifting off to sleep again when a clattering on the porch jerked her awake. The door flew open and a man stomped in. He was dirty and roughly dressed, and Sophie thought he was another field hand until she saw that he kept his broad-brimmed hat on his greasy curls and looked Dr. Charles straight in the eye.

“Devon Cut needs a new gang-driver,” he said.

Dr. Charles kept on writing. “Give it to Old Guam.”

“Guam? That pipe-sucker?” His voice was like a street car braking. “He ain’t done an honest day’s work since the day his mammy weaned him.”

“Mrs. Fairchild has chosen Old Guam, and I agree.” Dr. Charles laid down his pen. “By the way, Akins, I’ve had a letter from Chicago. The new evaporators are on their way to New Orleans and should be here, God willing, in a few weeks. Have you read those articles I gave you?”

Akins tipped his hat to the back of his head. “Yessir,” he said. “That there evaporator’s a fine machine, but I’m thinking it’s a mite complicated for them niggers to run.”

“Given that a black man invented the apparatus, I have no doubt black men can learn to operate it, given the proper training.” Dr. Charles got up and put on a black frock coat. “Come along to the Big House, and we’ll discuss it. Why, hello, Canada. Have you come to visit Sophie?”

Sophie saw Canada, looking very small and black and meek, standing in the door with a large covered basket on her arm. “Yessir.” Her voice was so low Sophie could hardly hear her. “I brung her some broth.”

Dr. Charles patted the little girl’s head as he left. Atkins ignored her completely. As soon as they were out the door, Canada turned and stuck out her tongue.

“Who’s that horrible man?” Sophie asked.

“That old Mist’ Akins, the overseer. His Mama beat him with an ugly stick so hard, it gone straight on till his soul.”

Sophie laughed. “You’re funny, Canada.”

“White folks calls me Canada.” She pulled a canister from the basket. “You call me Canny.”

Sophie pulled herself up against the thin pillow. There was so much she didn’t know about living in the past. If she was going to be stuck here for a while, she’d better learn—preferably before she saw Mammy again. “Canny, will you tell me about Oak River?”

“Sure. What you want to know?”

“Everything, I guess. I never lived on a plantation before.”

Canny giggled. “You surely ain’t. Flandy like to bust himself laughing when he hear ’bout you asking for a bath-room!”

Sophie flushed. “I know I’ve got a lot to learn.”

“What you want to know?”

“Well, how soap is made and what a gang-driver does and why there’s a curtain over the bed, to start off with.”

Canny nodded. “Well, a gang-driver, he watch the field hands so they don’t slack off. The mosquito bar keep the mosquitoes from eating you all alive in the night. I don’t know nothing ’bout soap-making ’cept it stink to Heaven, but I know lots ’bout doves. I takes care of all the doves in the pigeon house.”

“Tell me about the doves, then,” Sophie said. “But I also need to know about cooking and washing and ironing and—”

“Ain’t nobody know all that,” Canny said. “And if’n they did, they too busy to hang round here telling you about it.” She thought a moment. “Tell you what. Tomorrow’s Saturday. Everybody gots a plenty of chores, but I asks around some, see who can maybe come by for a spell. That suit you?”

“That suits me just fine,” Sophie said. “Thank you.”

Canny unscrewed the canister and poured a fragrant golden stream into a tin cup. “Momi say if this set well, she see bout trying you on boil chicken and white bread. You gots to drink, too—water, milk, sassafras tea.”

“Your Mama sure knows a lot about sick people.”

“Momi know everything there is about everything,” said Canny. “Momi a two-headed woman.”

“Huh?”

“A two-headed woman. Sometimes, when she bring the babies and tend to folks and make gris-gris, she not just herself, but the other one, too.”

“The other one?” Sophie remembered the velvety face in her dream. “You mean Yemaya?”

“Shush—that name a special secret. Maybe Momi tell you about it by and by.” She made a face. “Maybe she tell me, too. Now drink up you soup, and tell you a story. You ever heard how come snakes got poison in they mouth and nothing else ain’t got it?”

“No,” said Sophie.

“Don’t they tell no stories in New Orleans?”

“They tell lots of stories. Just not that one.”

Canny settled down cross-legged at the foot of the bed. “When God make the snake, he put him in the bushes to ornament the ground. But things didn’t suit the snake, so one day he get on a ladder and go up to see God.”

Sophie finished the fragrant chicken broth, took off her glasses, and listened sleepily as the snake complained to God about getting stomped on and God gave him poison to protect himself. Canny described how, when the snake got a little carried away with his gift, the other animals climbed the heavenly ladder to complain in their turn. Sophie’s eyes grew heavier and heavier. About the time God was coming up with an answer to their complaints, she fell asleep.