Orson Card - Heartfire

Then he took the bellows, put the end in one of Calvin's nostrils, then waxed the other nostril closed. "You," he said to Denmark. "Hold him mouth closed."

"No," said Denmark. "I can't do that. That too much like drowning him."

"I'll do it," said Margaret.

"What you tell husband then, this go bad?"

"It's my fault anyway," said Margaret. "I told you to do it."

"I do it, ma'am," said Fishy. "I do this."

Margaret stepped back. Fishy got one hand under Calvin's jaw and the other atop his head.

"I say go, you close him tight the mouth," said Gullah Joe.

Fishy nodded.

"Go."

She clamped Calvin's mouth shut. Calvin feebly resisted, desperate for breath. Nothing came in except a thin stream of air around the nipple of the bellows. Gullah Joe slammed the bellows together just as Calvin inhaled desperately. A cloud of dust emerged from around the bellows. Gullah Joe was ready for it. He picked up a bucket of water and doused Calvin with it, catching and settling the dust at the same time.

Calvin jerked and twitched violently. Then he sat up, pulling away from Fishy's grip, tearing the bellows and the wax out of his nostrils. Then he choked and coughed, trying to clear his lungs.

He looked no healthier. Indeed, patches of his skin were sloughing off, sliding like rotten fruit thrown against a window. But he was alert.

"Calvin, listen to me," Margaret said.

Calvin only choked and gasped.

"The slaves are about to revolt. It has to be stopped. Alvin's too far away, I need your help!"

Calvin wept. "I can't do nothing!"

"Wake up!" Margaret shouted at him. "I need you to be a man, for once! This isn't about you, this isn't about Alvin, it's about doing the decent thing for people who need you."

Some of what she was saying finally penetrated Calvin's hazy mind. "Yes," he said. "Tell me what to do."

"Something to take their minds off their anger," she said. "What we need is a heavy storm. Wind and rain. Lightning!"

"I can't do lightning."

"How do you know you can't?"

"Cause I grew up trying." He looked down at his hand. The bare bone of one finger was exposed. "Margaret, what's happening to me!"

"You were too long out of your body," she said. "Alvin's hurrying here to save you."

"He don't want to help me, he wants me dead!"

"Stop thinking about yourself, Calvin!" she said sternly. "I need something that feels like a force of nature."

"I can do fires. I can set the city on fire."

As he spoke, a couple of tiny flames danced around on the floor beside him.

"No!" cried Margaret. "Good heavens, are you insane? The slaves will be blamed for setting the fires, it would make everything even worse! Not fire."

"I don't know how anything works," Calvin said. "Not deep enough to change it. Alvin tried to teach me but all I wanted was the showy stuff." He wept again. Margaret had to seize his wrists to keep him from rubbing the skin off his face.

"Get control of yourself," she said. She turned helplessly to Gullah Joe. "Isn't there something--"

Gullah Joe laughed madly. "I tell you! No good this way! Zombi no good! All he think be, I so dead! He be sad, all sad, him."

"What about the water?" she asked Calvin. "I know you and Alvin played with water, he told me. Making it splash without throwing in a stone-- that's a game you played. Remember?"

"Big splash," he said.

"Yes, that's right. Make it splash out there. In the river, really big splashes. Slosh the water up on the shore. Make it flood."

"All we did was little splashes," said Calvin.

"Well this time do a big one!" Margaret shouted, her patience wearing thin. If, in fact, she had any patience left at all.

"I'll try, I'll try, I'll try." He cried again.

"Stop that! Just do it!"

She felt someone kneel down beside her. Fishy? No, Denmark's wife. She had a damp cloth. Gently she pressed it against Calvin's forehead. Then his cheek. She mumbled something unintelligible, but the music of it was calm and comforting. Calvin closed his eyes and began trying to make the water in the river splash.

Margaret also closed her eyes and cast about for heartfires near the river. She skipped from one to another, up and down the shore, on the north side of the peninsula and the south. No one was looking toward the water. They were all watching inland, fearful of the howling from the slaves.

Then one of them noticed that the boats were rocking in the water. Masts tipped, then tipped back again. He looked out at the water. Wave after wave was coming, as if from giant stones falling, or perhaps something pulsing deep under the water. Each wave was higher than the one before. They began breaking onto the docks.

More and more people were seeing the waves now, and those near the water began to run farther inland. The waves were coming up onto the streets, forming rivers that flowed over the cobblestones. Farther inland the water came until it was streaming across the peninsula. Ships battered against the dock and began to break into kindling. People ran screaming through the streets, pounding on doors, begging to be let inside.

And the slaves also pounded on the doors. Where a moment before all they could think of was murder and vengeance, now in their groundfloor quarters a new passion had taken hold: to get to the first floor before this flood drowned them. Wave after wave swept through the slave quarters. The howling and singing stopped, to be replaced by a cacophony of panicked cries.

Many of the Whites, seeing the flood, opened the doors and let their slaves, now chastened and afraid, come up to safety. Others, though, kept the doors locked, and more than one discharged a weapon through the door, warning the slaves to stay back.

There were no more thoughts of killing the White families they worked for. Already the slaves were telling the stories that made sense to them. "God be telling us, Thou shalt not kill, or I send a flood like Noah!" "Lord, I don't want to die!" Terror took the place of rage, damped it down, swept it out, drowned it, for the moment, at least.

"Enough," said Margaret. "You did it, Calvin. Enough."

Calvin sobbed in relief. "That was so hard!" He lay back down, rolled over, curled up and wept. Or rather, tried to curl up. As he dragged his legs across the floor, his right foot was pulled away from his body. Margaret gagged at the sight. But Denmark's woman reached down, picked up the foot, and put it in place at the end of the damaged leg.

"He just about dead," said Denmark.

"No," moaned Margaret. "Oh, Calvin, not now, not when you finally did something good."

"That the best time a-die," said Fishy helpfully. "You get in heaven."

Margaret turned again to Gullah Joe.

"No look me, you!" he said. "I do all you say, look what happen!"

"What if he sent out his doodlebug again? Like before? Even if he dies, can't you hold on to it? Keep it from getting away?"

"What you think I be? I a witchy man! You want God, him!"

"You held him captive before. Do it again! Try it!"

Even as she insisted, she could see the paths of the future change. When she finally saw one in which Calvin was still alive at dawn, she shouted at him, "That's it! Do that!"

"Do what?"

"What you were thinking! Right when I shouted."

Gullah Joe threw up his hands in despair, but he set to work, making Denmark and Fishy help him, moving charms into a new circle, then putting an open box in the midst of it. "Tell him go in box. Put him whole self in box."

"Did you understand him, Calvin?"

Calvin moaned in pain.

"Send out your doodlebug! Let him catch it and save it. It's your only chance, Calvin! Send your doodlebug to Gullah Joe, go into the box he's holding. Do it, Calvin!"

Panting shallowly, Calvin complied as best he could. Gullah Joe kept tossing a fine powder into the circle. It wasn't till the tenth throw that he shouted. "You see that? Part him go in! Look a-that!"