Freedom Stone by Jeffrey Kluger Read Free Book Online Page B

tight and put it in a bowl. Still, there was one place the water didn’t run so quick, and that was on my granddaddy’s land. When it flowed through there, it flowed like syrup. But if you scooped the water out and poured it on the ground, it spilled as quick as any water ought to. Ever see any other water behavin’ like that?”
    Lillie nodded.
    â€œI reckoned you had. My granddaddy never could understand why his stream behaved that way. Then he dug beneath the mud where the fish and turtles fed and found black rock everywhere just like this chip—long, hard bones of it runnin’ through the ground. The Africans called the rock firestone, ’cause it come from the hot rocks the mountains spit out. Granddaddy reckoned it was the firestone what held the magic that slowed his river, figuring stone that flowed fast and then turned hard could share its changin’ nature with the water. He broke some bits offa the rock and carried them with him for luck. When the slavers caught him, he hid two of the chips under his tongue and promised himself he’d never spit them out—not when he got chained, not when he got whipped, not when they closed him in the belly of a ship and carried him across the ocean. He held on to ’em till he was sold to a plantation where he could hide ’em well and pass ’em on to his children and to their children who came after.”
    â€œAnd this here piece is all that’s left?” Lillie asked softly.
    Bett smiled again. “No, child,” she said. “I got the other one too.”
    Bett stood again and gestured to Lillie to follow her. She walked the three steps to her still-hot oven and crouched down in front of it. Lillie did the same, flinching at the heat coming out of the bricks. Bett pointed into the oven and Lillie followed where her finger indicated. At first she noticed nothing, but then she saw what Bett wanted her to see: a single brick in the oven wall, just the same as all the other bricks except that in the middle of it was a shiny piece of black stone, about as big as a small coin. The stone was plain to see once you knew where to look, but no one other than Bett would ever have cause to use her oven, much less crouch down low and peer inside.
    â€œI reckoned I needed a place to keep at least one of ’em safe,” Bett said. “So I baked me a brick and mortared it in where no one would ever look. What I didn’t figure on was that when I lit the fire, the magic o’that stone would get carried on the smoke. It flows out of the chimney and just like it slowed my granddaddy’s river—”
    â€œIt slows the bees!” Lillie finished. “And the stream and the smoke!”
    Bett nodded.
    â€œWhat about the whip—the one what missed Cal?” Lillie asked.
    â€œThat too,” Bett said.
    â€œBut how did you make it work just right—so the whip didn’t hit nothin’ but the air?”
    â€œThat sort o’ thing comes with practice. Part of it comes from just when you light the fire and just when you put it out. Part of it’s how you bake. If I bake my bread the regular way, I can slow things down a little; if I bake it too long, I can slow ’em down a lot. I can even bake it too short and speed things up. There’s other things them stones can do too, but they don’t bear foolin’ with.”
    â€œWhat other things?” Lillie asked.
    â€œNever mind. Didn’t I just say they don’t bear foolin’ with?”
    â€œBut why not?”
    â€œThere’s magic you touch and there’s magic you don’t,” Bett said firmly, “and I’ll tell you which is which.”
    â€œBut s’posin’—” Lillie began.
    â€œI said never mind!” Bett answered, and this time she spoke with a bite in her voice Lillie had never heard before.
    Lillie fell silent and looked awkwardly down at her hands.
    Bett softened her