A Collection of Souls by J. C. Miller

Author:J. C. Miller [Miller, J. C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781475917093
Publisher: iUniverse
Published: 2012-06-30T00:00:00+00:00

The man followed the boy on the retreat to the river. He was not sure about the causes of events he had witnessed. The boy had been raised on a diet of magic and conjuring. Powerless to control the circumstances of their own lives, slaves often turned to the guidance of powers beyond their mortality. Some obeyed the Christian God of their masters. Others, those whose forbearers had depended on the wisdom of village shamans and elders in the old country, sensed the potentials of protective spirits around them to work their ways against an enemy. They sought the way of the mojo. They knew the power of words. They lay their thoughts in the laps of spirits of the wood and field. They became the hands and human will of these forces. No white master dare follow them down this path and return whole and full of the life he had known.

Had the man just witnessed the power of these spirits? Or was this the meting out of some inscrutable justice by the Almighty both Yank and Reb called upon to protect them in this time of corruption that marched across the land?

He knew the boy thought he had controlled the events that had roiled forth in that meadow. Perhaps the belief was enough, for it gave the boy a fearlessness and resolve that might help them through the coming days. He thought of his own ragged condition. Twice, now, others had looked upon him in horror. Twice that horror had disarmed or sent them away. He still did not know himself. Perhaps he was, indeed, a monster. But his sense of himself was muddled. If he was such a wretch, that identity must be hidden away beneath layers of trauma and forgetfulness. Perhaps he would, some time, heal and remember himself, look into the mirror of his soul, and find the devil looking back. The character of the man had yet to emerge within his own consciousness. This he knew: he saw the tenacity of the boy. He liked and respected the lad.

The man also now remembered a woman, not his Lorena, but another woman with black curls, full lips, an easy smile, and skin as soft and smooth as dark satin. But if this was his woman, he knew he would never see her, for she had been taken from him and sold to another. He would walk to no door and find her open arms.

Fear and uncertainty ran through him like an icy underground stream. It licked at his bones and wrapped itself around a heart turned to mossy stone and then swirled fragments of memory within his head like so much pea gravel. It surely would have burst through his skull to wash all the light of stars from the sky if he had not awakened to the sound of his own screaming.

And there was Dime, startled from sleep as he nestled beneath the man’s right arm for warmth. But the boy quickly regained his usual collected demeanor and placed a finger to the man’s lips.

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