Death smells like sugar and dirt. When a hard Louisiana rain mingles with a lightning strike in the cane fields, the scent chokes the plantation, a bittersweet reminder that the only way out of here is burial in shallow ground.
No one wastes a marble crypt on people like us.
Fog swirls through weeping willows and rolls low in the fields, and a full moon glares, teasing me with its freedom in the starry night sky.
Ahead, a haze bends into the form of a woman, gliding through the grass separating the big house from the field. Missus Sabine is out of bed.
I freeze and consider running back inside the big house, but that will make me look guilty. I’m not supposed to be out at this time of night, and she’s already seen me. I fight the tremble rumbling through my body. My mind turns over the lie I must tell.
She slowly walks closer. Her heels stabbing the dirt. A specter like death himself closing in. I wonder who’s getting whipped tonight, who has angered her and yanked her away from her beauty rest.
The broad expanses of cane fields merge with the trees of the distant wood. She ignores the slave quarters, glancing ahead to her two-story plantation home.
My heart races. My fingers grip my bag as I tuck it behind me. Guarding my plan and all I own. She’ll demand to know why I’m not asleep in my attic room or preparing her breakfast for tomorrow morning. I hold my breath.
Sabine’s skin blends with her white nightdress. Her hair looks like flames tied up in a bird’s nest of a bun. Her sharp angular features and icy blue eyes are as hard and jagged as the two stone chimneys rising above the house. She belongs here.
But I won’t stay on this island and be worked into the grave. I’ll take my chances with the handmade boat hidden on the other side of the wood. I’m not sure if freedom or anything else exists beyond the bayou, but I’m willing to die to find out.
Sabine nears the porch stairs now. Please don’t let her notice my bag, I think. She’s more brutal than the overseer, laying down fury with her whip and tongue. Her eyes, laced with crow’s-feet, find me. “Venus,” she shouts, nearing the porch. “It’s dangerous to be out at this hour.”
You’re out. That’s the danger. I bow, then tuck a curl under my scarf, knowing the sight of it will cause her to slap me. She hates everything about me. My skin. My eyes. Every part of me that reminds her of the Master. My father. Her husband. I lower my eyes and fixate on the freckles of blood scattered across the columns of the big house. Or “the big evil” as we call it. I wish my mama was still here. She’d know the best way to handle Sabine. She knew how to tuck her fear away in times like these, but my hands shake.
“Did you hear me, girl?” Sabine says.
“Yes, ma’am. I’m heading round to the cookhouse now.” I knit my fingers and thank God the kitchen is at the back of the house, that you can reach it from outside. “Mabel wanted me to sleep there with her so we could get an early start on breakfast. She’s making something that tastes real good, and it’s gonna take hours.”
“Oh, well, get to it.”
My muscles tense as I prepare to get as far away from her as possible.
Sabine catches sight of my ragged little bag. Realization lights her face.
“What are you up to, Venus Davenport?”