Prologue:
Memories of the Heart

There are places in the heart that keep memories as firmly as the mind remembers the images of yesterday. Sometimes in the darkness of the night, when it was still and quiet, he looked into the secret place where he kept his most treasured memories. In that safe place, he would reach in and see her as he saw her all the years they were growing up, from childhood into the blossoming people they would some day become. The anguish that came with knowing it would never be for her was a pain he spoke of to no one, not even those he called his dearest friends. No matter how hard he may try to explain it, they could never truly understand what it was like for him to lose her the way he had.

She was not a lover or anyone to whom he could give his heart in a romantic way but she was just as important to his existence as the air he breathed. When she died, all that was good and holy within him disappeared with her. In that one blinding instant of understanding, he knew she was too good for the world and to pass out of its realm into a better place was more merciful than the death she suffered. He watched her die, bleeding her life into the green grass, her face unrecognizable from a thousand abuses and twisted inside knowing he would have to call the man who did this to her; Master.

It was more than he could stand.

They had drilled God into the minds of all those like him as if the knowledge of a supreme deity in his heart would lessen the injustice of his existence. If there was a higher power, then it was one who deemed it was right a man could be considered cattle because of his skin. He had prayed to their god and begged as any angry young man would beg when left no other choice, for there to be a miracle to keep her with him, even for a second longer.

God had remained silent that night and she who was his sister, Rebecca, slipped from this world into the next. All Nathan could do when he saw the light die in her eyes was weep that she was gone from his life and he would never get her back. No matter how far he searched, no matter how much freedom he craved. She was lost and gone forever. His grief was a well into his soul with no bottom and as he clutched her lifeless body in his arms, weeping she was gone while her blood oozed all over him, the sense was driven from his world for just one brief moment.

He would never know what possessed him. Whether it was rage, revenge or the plain weariness of being a slave whose rights equaled to less than an animal for an animal at least, had the choice of laying with its own kind and not be forced by its master. For the first time in his life, he crossed the steps taking him to the big house where the master lived. It was like crossing from one world into a completely new one. It was a world of freedom, of excess, of choice and the fulfilment of any desire. It was as close to heaven as a slave was allowed to imagine.

He never reached the master but his defiance cost him nonetheless.

He remembered the laughter as they took him away, the marks the rope made on his throat as they dragged him out of the house like a fatted calf led to the slaughter, but he should have known better. Death was too good for a slave. They strung him up with that same piece of rope and he remembered the torches burning around him as the laughter ceased and the others of his kind stared in sorrow and acceptance this was the way things had to be. Their mother had died in Georgia, no doubt broken hearted because her husband and children were taken from her and sold to a plantation in Alabama. Two years later to pay for their masters debts, they were sold again to the plantation called Avalon in Georgia. Their father remained with them a little longer before he too was sold somewhere else. All he had left after they took Obediah was Rebecca. Somehow, they remained together and the bond of family was all that kept him from going insane.

When she was taken from him, the first sting of the whip hardly registered. Its pain was inconsequential to the great chasm inside his soul because she was no more. The second one brought tears to his eyes but not because of the pain. It was because she was his sister and while she lived she gave him reason to hope, reason to believe something good was allowed to exist in his bleak world. The third lash made him grind his teeth in rage and strengthened him in ways the master could not have foreseen because he had to be strong now, for she had always been that for him. No matter how much he despaired and lamented his outcast fate, she would take her hand in his and smile ever so brightly. She would tell him they were outcasts together and thus not outcast at all, because outcasts were always alone.

He did not scream but he cried for her through the agony of his flesh being literally torn from his back. None of it registered and he drew some satisfaction in knowing his failure to beg for mercy had given his master no pleasure in the whipping. They cut him down and let the others deal with him and still Nathan could think of nothing else but Rebecca being gone. The woman who tended him had cleaned his wounds, soothed the great rips in his back and whispered gently in his ears, he was strong and he would survive.

Nathan, or Ajax as he was called in those days, knew he was going to survive.

Despair had evolved into something else while he lay there on the thin sheet of bedding that passed for his sleeping place in the slave quarters. It transformed into a fierce determination to live as no one's creature and should he die in the pursuit of that dream, so be it. It was better to die like a man then live as a slave. He was allowed some measure of respite by being allowed to recover from his injuries after his punishment. He recalled with disgust hearing the others telling him how lucky he was to be alive.

Master could have you killed.

No, he could not. For Nathan had come to understand this too, when he was hanging like a slab of meat. To be dead was to escape the cruel torture of servitude and the master did not want that at all because to die, was to be free. Slaves were not meant to know what such a thing was. It was only allowed when they were too weak and feeble to care. Nathan waited no more than a day to escape, aware they would not believe him strong enough to move let alone run. However, he was seventeen years old and he had more bravery than he had sense. Relying on his mind would come later but for now, he knew only one thing.

He was not going to reach eighteen and still call someone Master.

No Sir, he was done being anyone's property and if death awaited him at the end of the road, Nathan could accept that. For the God they would have him believe in so mindlessly had no rules to keep him out of Heaven for being killed in search of freedom. His escape was hardly planned and certainly clumsy but it got him off the plantation. Each step forward away from the den of his misery was agony as he struggled through the dense forest, his back a mess of raw flesh open and bleeding.

Eventually the scent of blood brought the dogs but Nathan kept running. He kept running because he had nothing to lose, giving him a valuable edge to keep the slave hunters at bay. There were moments when the exhaustion and the delirium of exquisite pain drove all sense from him. All that was left in place of reason, was the compulsion to keep moving. His legs forced the rest of him forward when there was no will left anywhere else. He ran through rivers and over terrain so sharp and jagged, his bare feet were cut to ribbons. He had no shoes because without shoes, a slave could not run very far and thus could not escape. He did not care and kept going, moving on sheer will alone when exhaustion threaten to break him.

He had no idea where he was when the exhaustion finally claimed him, knowing only he was done and he had run as far as he was going to go. He could accept what would happen when they found him. Nathan expected to die. He knew he wanted to. Rebecca's memory had driven him this far but with his mind descending into the chaos wrought by fever, he could no longer remember her and was defeated at last.

When Nathan opened his eyes, he found he was alive and in the back of a strange wagon. Above him, the stars twinkled pleasantly with promises of evening calm and twilight peace. The man who sat by the campfire and had apparently spent five days ridding him of the fever, was a preacher. His eyes were older than the wind but Nathan could only see he was white. Even with the rosary he clutched while praying when Nathan came to, it was all the young man could see. Colour. In later years, Nathan would feel the intense shame to know he had treated the man with no more respect than his master had judged him less than human.

"You gonna turn me in?" Was Nathan's first words to the preacher he would come to know as Josiah Sanchez.

Josiah looked at him with those soulful eyes and shook his head. "Not unless you want me to."

"I ain't gonna go back." He said defiantly, challenging the man to defy him even though he could barely stand despite the banishment of the fever.

"You don't have to." Josiah shook his head. "You're not in the south. We crossed the border into Illinois this morning."

It was too much to take in. He was aware he crossed into Kentucky because he had stolen eggs from a farmhouse and heard enough conversation from the people who lived to know he was no longer in Georgia.

Illinois? The name meant nothing to him. His destination had always been 'The North'. Its name was almost mythological and held little substance beyond the fact it existed, and it was where he had to go. He had no education and could not read to know the States or tell the difference where the South ended or the North began.

"Is that North?" He asked, not daring to believe it.

Josiah nodded. "As north as you can get."

"Then I'm free." He stated firmly as if saying it out loud would make it real.

Josiah finally smiled then. "I reckon you are."

"Why'd you help me?" Nathan looked at him suspiciously. "You could have turned me in and got a reward. My Master would have paid you."

"I could have." Josiah agreed. "But its one thing preaching something and another thing believing it. I don't believe it is right to send you back. Not even for 30 pieces of silver."

Nathan did not understand. He did not understand why a white man would help him or what 30 pieces of silver had to do with anything.

"You got kin here?" Nathan asked, suddenly curious about the man who would risk so much for a runaway slave.

"No," The preacher said lighting his pipe. "Never been here before so I thought I'd take a look. Besides, there's a war coming."

"A war?" Nathan's brow furrowed trying to understand. He was always trying to understand but Josiah was the first person who did not rebuke him for it. "What kind of war?"

"A holy war." Josiah answered. "A war of dreams and ideas, old ways and new progress, a war about slaves and slave owners."

Nathan begged Josiah to tell him more and for the next three months he remained with the preacher. He learned to read and write and discovered not all men wearing white skin were evil and not all men wearing black were good. It was an eye opening experience. He learnt a great deal from the preacher who apparently had a little difficulty keeping his temper. Josiah told him stories about people and places far away from the world he had known and was trapped in for so many years. He discovered he had a good mind for learning.

When the war Josiah spoke about finally came, Nathan and Josiah split company because the preacher understood they had different paths to walk and it was time Nathan found his place in the world.

He turned eighteen years old and enlisted in the Union Army.

And he didn't have to call anyone Master.