Orson Card - Heartfire

"Who?"

Margaret sighed. "Whoever it is, he knows how to shut me out of just that part of Denmark's memory. That's never happened to me before. Or perhaps I simply didn't notice it. I must have skimmed past this man's heartfire before, searching for the taker of names, but because only part of his memory was hidden, I would never have noticed." Then she thought a little more. "No, I daresay I never looked in his heartfire, because he has his name, and so his heartfire burns brightly enough that I would have assumed he was a White man and not looked at all. He was hidden right out in the open."

"You a witchy woman, ain't you, ma'am?"

"Not in the sense that White folks use the word," said Margatet. "I don't do any cursing, and what hexes I have to protect me, those were made by my husband. I do no such work. What I am is a torch. I see into people's heartfire. I find the paths of their future."

"What you see in my future?"

"No, Fishy," said Margaret. "You have so many paths open before you. I can't tell you which one you'll take, because it's up to you."

"But that man, he don't kill me, right?"

Margaret shook her head. "I don't see any paths right now where that happens. But I don't tell futures, Fishy. People live and die by their own choices."

"Not even your own future? Your husband?"

Margaret grimaced. "I did try to get my husband to change his life. You see, on every path where he doesn't get killed sooner, he ends up dying because of the betrayal of his own brother."

Fishy took only a moment to realize the connection. "Be maybe you don't mean this brother?"

"No, I do mean this brother."

"Then why you not let that name-taker man cut his throat?"

"Because my husband loves him."

"But he going a-kill him!"

Margaret smiled wanly. "Isn't that the strangest thing?" she said. "Knowing the future doesn't change a man like my husband. He does what's right no matter where the road leads."

"He always do what's right?"

"As much as he understands it. Most of the time he tries to do as little as possible. He tries to learn, and then teach. Not like Denmark Vesey. He's a man who acts." Margaret shuddered. "But not wisely. Cleverly, yes, but not wisely, and not kindly, either."

"He squatting under that tree yonder."

"Now is the time, Fishy. Go to him, tell him I want to talk to him."

"Oh, Miz Margaret, you sure he don't hurt me?"

"He'll think you're pretty." Margaret touched her arm. "He'll think you're the most beautiful woman he's ever seen."

"You joking now."

"Not at all. You see, you're the first free Black woman he's known."

"I not free."

"He bought a slave once. Hoping to make her his wife. But she was so ashamed of being owned by a Black man that she threatened to expose his ability to read and write and tell the authorities that he's a free Black in Camelot."

"What he do?"

"What do you think?"

"He kill her."

"He tried. At the last moment he changed his mind. She's still his slave, but she's crippled. Mind and body."

"You didn't have to tell me that story," said Fishy. "I wasn't going to let him talk love to me. He scare me too bad."

"I just thought you should know."

"Well, you know what? It take away some of my scared, knowing that about him."

It stabbed Margaret to the heart, watching the smiling girl change before she turned around and walked among the Whites promenading on the battery. The smile fled; her eyelids half closed; she bent her shoulders and looked down as she made her way, not directly toward Denmark, but off at an angle. After a short time she doubled back and came to him from another way. Very good, thought Margaret. I didn't think to tell her to do that, but it keeps it from being obvious to onlookers that I sent her to fetch Denmark.

Fishy handled it deftly. My mistress want a-talk to you. What about? My mistress want a-talk to you. No matter what he said, she answered like a parrot. Maybe he knew she was pretending or maybe he thought she was stupid and stubborn, but either way, it got him up and walking, following Fishy's roundabout course as she walked two paces ahead of him. They couldn't walk side by side, or it would seem to White folks that they were promenading, and it would be taken as outrageous mockery. Instead it was obvious she was leading him, which meant they were on an errand for their master, and all was well with the world.

"What you want to talk about?" Denmark asked her, keeping his head downcast. But in the tone of his voice she could hear his hostility toward her.

"You're looking for me," she said.

"Am not," he said.

"Oh, that's right. It's Calvin you're looking for."

"That his name?"

"His name won't give you any power over him greater than what you already have."

"I got no power over nobody."

Margaret sighed. "Then why do you have a knife in your pocket? That's against the law, Denmark Vesey. You have other hidden powers. You're a free Black in Camelot, doing account books for-- let's see, Dunn and Brown, Longer and Ford, Taggart's grocery--"

"I should have knowed you been spying on me." There was fear in his voice, despite his best effort to sound unconcerned. "White ladies got nothing better to do."

Margaret pressed on. "You found out where I lived because the valet at Calvin's former boardinghouse led you. And you have a woman at home whose name you never utter. You nearly drowned her in a sack in the river. You're a man with a conscience, and it causes you great pain."

He almost staggered from the blow of knowing how much she knew about him. "They hang me, a Black man owning a slave."

"You've made quite a life for yourself, being a free man in a city of slaves. It hasn't been as good for your wife, though, has it?"

"What you want from me?"

"This isn't extortion, except in the mildest sense. I'm telling you that I know what and who you are, so that you'll understand that you're dealing with powers that are far out of your reach."

"Sneakiness ain't power."

"What about the power to tell you that you have it in you to be a great man? Or to be a great fool. If you make the correct choice."

"What choice?"

"When the time comes, I'll tell you what the choice is. Right now, you have no choice at all. You're going to take me and Calvin and Fishy to the place where you keep the name-strings."

Denmark smiled. "So they still some things you don't know."

"I didn't say I knew everything. The power that hides the names also hides from me your knowledge of where they are."

"That be the truth, more than you know," said Denmark. "I don't even know myself."

Fishy scoffed aloud at that. "This ain't no White fool you can play games with."

"No, Fishy," said Margaret, "he's telling the truth. He really doesn't know. So I wonder how you find your way back?"

"When it time for me to go there, I just wander around and pretty soon I be there. I walk in the door and then I remember everything."

"Remember what?"

"How do I know? I ain't through that door."

"Powerful hexery," said Margaret, "if hexery it be. Take me there."

"I can't do that," said Denmark.

"How about if I cut off your balls?" asked Fishy cheerfully.

Denmark looked at Fishy in wonder. He'd never heard a Black woman talk like that, right out in public, in front of a White.

"Let's hold off on the mutilation, Fishy," said Margaret. "Again, I think Denmark Vesey may be telling me the truth. He really can't find the place unless he goes there alone."

Denmark nodded.

"Well, then. I think we have no further business together," said Margaret. "You can go now."

"I want that man," said Denmark. He glanced at Calvin.

"You'll never have him," said Margaret. "He has more power than you can imagine."