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See what’s really there.
The King of Crows’s voice boomed like cannon fire. It whistled past Isaiah’s ears and made him tremble. “Tell me, Isaiah Campbell, Seer of Visions, Teller of Truths, Diviner. What do you see written here? If you can truly see it, you’re free to go.”
Isaiah squinted against the glare and stared into the great abyss of the ever-changing coat. The feather he’d taken. The reading. The strange feeling he’d gotten from his visions about the man in the hat. As the last few grains slipped through the hourglass, it came to Isaiah. He stood tall and tilted his head back, looking up at the King of Crows looming over him like an eternal predator.
“Nothing,” Isaiah said firmly. “There’s nothing there but what you steal and make your own. You’re just an empty coat.”
The King of Crows’s rictus smile twitched. His soulless eyes blinked. A single feather loosened itself from the outstretched wings. It drifted slowly down, and when it hit the ground, it shriveled into itself and blew away like dust. All the feathers fell then, like a rain of ash. Inside, the vein-like threads unstitched themselves. The coat was unraveling, thread by thread, feather by feather, lie by lie. The lining fell away, gone in a puff of smoke.
“No!” the King of Crows screamed. He tried desperately to hold the coat together, but it was hopeless. It was unwinding, twisting and tangling him up in its threads. The King of Crows screamed and cursed and cawed as his lies consumed him, until he was a scrabble of lines and squawking. Until, at last, he dissolved into nothingness. All that remained was a pile of feathers and, on the throne of skulls, the blank gray slate.
Isaiah stepped over the pile of feathers and approached the slate. He raised his chalk, scraping out the sentence he’d tried to write:
“Hello. My name is Isaiah Campbell.”
The sentence remained. It thrilled Isaiah to see his words recorded there, like they were looking back at him, waiting for more.
“Isaiah.”
Isaiah’s mother stood among the dead. She wasn’t covered in feathers anymore. Instead, she wore her favorite dress, the one she used to wear out dancing with his daddy. It was a royal purple, and it made her look like a queen.
“Mama?”
She waved to him. “Time to go, baby.”
“Time to go!” This time, it was Memphis’s clear, strong voice Isaiah heard.
Up ahead, Isaiah saw the breach between the worlds. But it was closing. Memphis had managed to heal it, just as he’d promised he would! This made Isaiah happy—until he realized he still had to get out of the land of the dead. Something else was happening, too. The trees were changing. The land was moving. Isaiah felt Jericho’s presence. He was holding something back for Isaiah, but he couldn’t hold it for long. There was a light getting brighter, like a star being born.
“Wait!” Isaiah called. He started moving toward the portal.
Around him, the dead called: “Go quickly. Don’t look back.”
Isaiah started running. As he ran, he felt within him the stirrings of his ancestors. As if he had drunk a powerful potion stirred with generations of dreams. He was bare-chested and barefooted, running across a fertile land, feet slapping against the rich earth of another continent. His soles hitting the ground with the same rhythm: Free. Free. Free. Free.
His feet showed him the way.
The stories his mother had carried here, the music of his father, they lived inside him.
They showed him the way.
The grandmothers were singing. The grandfathers, too.
They showed him the way.
He was from princes and kings.
They showed him the way.
He was from François Mackandal and his Maroons.
They showed him the way.
He was from the slaves who survived.
They showed him the way.
He was from Harlem. He was from Floyd’s barbershop and the old men arguing. He was from Mother AME Zion Church on hot summer-Sunday mornings and the soft, cool breeze from Aunt Octavia’s round straw fan. He was from his parents, Viola and Marvin, and a house that had been filled once upon a time with laughter and love. He was from the numbers runners taking dimes near the 125th Street subway stop. From jazz burbling out along Lenox Avenue with all the
