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fingers along one of the jointed boards of the wall.
    A finely wrought chest stood there, its wood gleaming darkly. Opposite, a velvet-covered settee …
    I shook my head, disrupting the image. No way would an ex-slave woman in Thisbe’s position have had anything so fine as what I was imagining. And yet, if I closed my eyes … I reached out and pressed my hand against the wall again. All at once, I could see it. All at once, an image rose up stronger than before, wiping away my present and pulling me back, back into a distant past …
    Strangers filled the rooms—and friends, too. But all of them wanting something. All of them needing something. All they had to give me in return was a couple of limp chickens or a few handfuls of meal.
    And they would give it.
    They’d give the fish they stole from their master’s stream, and the scuppernong they pilfered from the wild vines in the forest. They’d give near anything for one of my charms. Anything for the hope of something more than the narrow lives they clung to. Some would trade their very own soul for some protection against the dangers of this world.
    Always filling up my rooms and wanting and needing. And not one of them ever bringing what I really needed. What I’d been waiting for so long.
    I pulled my hand away, startled at the thoughts that had tumbled through my mind. The image had been so vivid that I could have reached right out and run my hand across the velvet. Still, I could almost smell the bodies with three days of labor clinging to their skin and feel the pressure of the crowd pushing down on me with their need, when all I wanted to do was breathe free. When all I craved was the cool night air and something else that I’d been missing.
    But it wasn’t me that was missing and craving something. Like yesterday, I was seeing through another pair of eyes, feeling another person’s thoughts.
    Yesterday, I’d thought that the vision happened because the charm still contained some of Thisbe’s magic, and I wondered if that explained this vision, too—maybe the cabin itself still held a bit of her power. But I didn’t sense any power here, not like I’d sensed the almost spiteful energy that radiated off that charm. I wasn’t sure what to make of that.
    I followed the rooms until I reached the back of the house. The university had recently rebuilt the fireplace there, and the new brick stood out strikingly red against the blackened remains of the hearth. The furniture in that room had been pushed up against the wall—a low bed, a worn cabinet with an amazing number of doors and drawers.
    That room felt strangely peaceful. The whole cabin was silent as a grave, but the back room was somehow even more so. It felt like a private place, but nothing there looked like the mother I knew. Nothing felt like her.
    I sat carefully on the low, platform-like bed, and the moment my hands touched the worn slats, the room around me shifted, changed …
    A fire was burning low in the hearth, the room dark except for its subtle glow. On the low-slung bed was the body of a younger man with sharp features and hair like spun gold. His face was slack with something stronger than sleep.
    I bent over him, my mouth curving into a smile. “You’re going to give me more time,” my mouth said, moving on its own. “You’re gonna give me everything.”
    I gasped, standing up and releasing my hold on the low bed, and when I did, the room came back to me as it truly was. But my heart was thundering in my chest, and my breathing was fast and anxious. It had seemed so real.
    Forcing myself to take a slow, steady breath, I considered what had just happened. Slowly, because I wasn’t sure that I was making the right decision, I reached out and touched one of the small drawers in the cabinet next to the bed.
    I pulled out the tiny man I’d made for that particular purpose, excitement coursing