My chest burned. My back burned too, though I dared not touch it. I remembered the lash from waking life—how it had carved rivers into my skin. In the dream, those rivers were weeping. I felt blood trickle down my thighs, warm at first, then cold as the swamp air found it.
You will be, he said. When you wake up. You will be him forever. slave's nightmare
The door hung open. Inside, a woman sat rocking. She had no face. Only smooth, dark skin where her features should have been. But I knew her. She was my mother. The one sold away when I was seven. My chest burned
“I’m not him anymore,” I said.
Because the nightmare was not the running. The nightmare was the waking. In the dream, those rivers were weeping
The boy smiled. It was the worst thing I had ever seen.
The chains never came off, not even in sleep. In the dream, I was running—always running—through a swamp that had no end. Moss hung from the trees like gray ghosts, and the mud pulled at my bare feet with every step. Behind me, I heard the dogs. Not barking, but breathing. Heavy, wet, hungry. And behind the dogs, the horn. That low, moaning horn that meant the master was coming.