Monthly Exclusives August, 2010 Dear Readers I want to thank all you readers that have shared your interests, questions and concerns about Daughters of the Stone over the past few months. At readings, book discussions and through my email, you have shown me that you have embraced my characters and hunger for more from all of them. When some of you find out that the manuscript was originally much longer, you often ask when you're going to get the rest the two hundred plus pages that were cut from the original. I thought this web page would be a great forum for that. I plan to post a monthly feature of unpublished or background material that will go a long way to enhance what is already in print. In this way, you will get to know the world of Daughters of the Stone as well as I do. ~ DAHLMA'S JOURNEY ~ DAUGHTERS OF THE STONE ~ MONTHLY EXCLUSIVES ~ BOOK REVIEWS ~ SHARE YOUR STORY ~ NEWS AND EVENTS ~ JUST FOR EDUCATORS ~ MY BOOKSHELF ~ CONTACT DAHLMA August, 2010 A Visit It took him months to the find opportunity and the strength to see the child. He had heard that Fela had delivered a healthy child and that she had died in childbirth. He had seen to it that she had had a good funeral. Her people took care of her burial as they did with any slave. She was just a slave, like all the rest. He kept repeating these words to himself over and over, like a novena. But in the darkness of his soul he had to admit to himself that no, she had not been just like the others. She had been different and he couldn’t lay her to rest so easily. The child was a reminder of all of that. He found that he could not contain his restlessness. He paced up and down his room. And when he could not stand the closeness of his room, he went down the corridor to the room he hadn’t entered in twenty-five years, the room that had held their hopes, their future. As he walked in he could still hear his wife’s wailing, bouncing off the walls, trapped beneath the ceiling. He could still smell the scent of decay that had lain like a film over his baby. He couldn’t escape the odor of illness clinging to the drapes, saturating the tiny mattress that had supported that other child for so little a time. He ran down to the library and poured himself a brandy. He was about to drink it down in one gulp when he saw the feeble light coming from Las Mercedes, a late night vigil of the newborn, he imagined. And then there was the thin, piercing wail that he heard on so many otherwise quiet nights. His throat muscles contracted and he returned the amber liquid to the liquor cabinet. Slowly, he returned to his room, knowing this would be another night of sleeplessness. He had decided that he would treat this child like every slave child on the plantation. But he had already seen to it that she was kept close at hand, out of the sun, near the house. He had decided that she would be found something to do in the house as she got older but he knew Filomena would never hear of such a thing. Las Agujas was the only place for her. But other than those arrangements, he would treat her as any other slave. After all, that is all she was, just another slave. After weeks of sleeplessness and the disembodied crying of the baby just below his window, he knew he had to get away, find some distance from the uneasiness, which clung, to him day and night. Early one morning he mounted his best horse and headed for the mountains on an extended coffee buying trip. He didn’t have to go. He could have let his agent handle it as usual. But he needed breathing room. He wanted to visit some old friends, find some willing country girls whom he could charm with his city ways. The mountain air would do him good. The trip would free him. When he came down from the hills months later, he was just as tired, just as burdened. He kept himself from going to Las Agujas until the day after his arrival; when he thought his wife was busy at her own tasks and the women were preparing a large order for delivery. Quietly, almost casually, he walked into the building he had not visited for over a year and asked to see Fela’s baby. Don Tomás looked down on the child. It was definitely a black child, thick black hair curled around an almond-colored face. This baby’s father was not a black man, at least not any of the black men on this farm. Romero? No, he wouldn’t dare, not with Fela, not on my land. One of the hands, the seasonal men? No, Fela would never. He had watched her, thought he knew her. Could it be true? My child? My child laying out here in this wooden box... and upstairs in the house, the room with the crib and the lace, empty, empty all these year? His attention was brought back to the child, the one that was so different from other. He looked closely and decided this baby was like no other baby he had ever seen. Something was ...what was it? What made her so different? Her eyes were open now. And these too were...somehow different, dark yet light, strange. It was the eyes that unnerved him, for the baby looked up at him, with an odd look that made him aware of the very air he breathed in. It was a look of intensity, a look of recognition. Don Tomás ran out of room, tripping over cots, stumbling over baskets, upsetting the needlework. He ran out so fast that he forgot about Tía Josefa sitting quietly in a corner, a knowing smile on her face. As she set about collecting the overturned baskets that el patron left in his wake, she hummed an old tune to herself and sent up a message to her friend, He's back Fela and he cannot deny the truth. 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