Sukey's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Sukey did not answer the girl's offer. She turned and walked toward the great oak, its long branches hanging down like green curtains. Nell followed, dirt on her hem, the wicker basket swinging from her hand. Sukey knew this child could hang her with a single word to the big house. She also knew the girl carried paper and ink, the very things her knowing needed to survive. She had to learn what Nell truly wanted before she trusted anything. Under the oak, Sukey stopped and faced her. The chicken with the bright red and green tail feathers scratched in the roots nearby, one eye on the girl. "Why do you want to learn?" Sukey asked. Nell opened her mouth, then closed it. "I don't know." She looked down at her ink-stained fingers. "Something is missing. I think you know what it is." Sukey studied her. Rich girls did not chase after root cures. "Your daddy owns this whole island," she said. "What could you be missing?" Nell was quiet a long moment. Then she reached into her basket and pulled out folded papers. She held them out. Sukey did not take them. She only looked. They were drawings. A grasshopper splitting its shell. A leaf, every vein marked. A beetle turned on its back. The lines were careful and true. "My father saw one once," Nell said. "He walked out of the room. He didn't say a word." She folded the papers again. "Nobody wants what I keep. So I keep it under my mattress." She looked up. "You keep things too. I saw. You give them to those children so they don't die out." Sukey's chest went tight. The girl had named it exactly. Not a plan to catch her. A hunger. Nell wanted to hold onto something before the world took it, the same as Sukey did. "You understand what happens to me if your daddy learns of this," Sukey said. "Not to you. To me." Nell met her eyes. "They would hang you." She did not soften it. "I won't tell. But I know you can't believe that yet." The honesty stopped Sukey cold. The girl had not begged or promised. She had spoken the danger plain and let it sit. Sukey made her choice. She crouched and pressed her blue fingers into the dirt at the base of the oak. She pulled up a thin root and brushed it clean. "You bring your pencil," Sukey said. "You draw what I show you. Only what I show you. You come when I say, and you come alone." Nell nodded once. She knelt in the dirt beside Sukey and opened her basket. Sukey held the root in the light. She had chosen to trust a white child with her life. There was no taking it back now. If the girl ever spoke, the rope was already tied. But the knowing would live on paper, and Sukey had never asked permission for anything.