Nana pursed her lips. “That symbol. I just haven’t seen it in a long time.”
“You know what it is?”
“Well…” She glanced at Granddad, who’d tuned us out as soon as we started talking about writing. “It’s the spider’s web, an old African symbol for creativity and wisdom. It shows how tangled and complicated life can be. But with a little imaginative thinking, we can solve most of our problems and those of others.”
“Do you notice anything else about the journal?” I asked her.
Nana laughed, a bright, joyous sound that infected anyone listening. “Is this a test?”
“No, ma’am.”
“I don’t see nothing but procrastination. Go ’head and give it a try.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I frowned. So Nana could see the symbol, this spiderweb, but not that it was glowing. Well, that didn’t make me feel any better.
Granddad smacked the steering wheel. “Y’all need to stop filling his head with that mess about symbols. He needs to stay in the real world, think about what he did wrong last night. The boy need to focus! Boxing ain’t gonna just happen—you got to train your body and your mind.”
“Granddad, I don’t want—”
“I don’t want to hear it. You’re not a kid anymore. You’re a Strong, and—”
“Walter,” Nana interrupted, “don’t be so hard on the boy.”
“He needs some toughening up—y’all being too soft on him!”
“Now look—” Nana started whisper-lecturing Granddad, who shook his head and grumbled beneath his breath.
I slid down in my seat and tried to block out the argument. I let my thumb trace the cover of the journal, and before my brain could tell me not to, I yanked it into my lap and flipped to a random page. So what if it glowed? It was still a book, and reading it would be better than listening to any more of Granddad’s insults disguised as life lessons. Or reliving that bus accident.
I mean, really, what could go wrong?
TWO FIGURES CROUCHED NEAR THE base of a giant oak tree. Huge knotted roots sprawled in the center of twisting, creeping shadows. The first figure—a large Black man with arms of mahogany, fists like rocks, and shoulders broader than mountains—went down on one knee in the soft, damp earth. He rested his hand on a smooth log beside him.
“You sure this is necessary, BR?” His voice rumbled like a thousand trains all heading to the same place.
The second figure—a rabbit as big as a kindergartener—twitched nervously and snapped, “Of course I’m sure, John! Hurry up! We need to get this over with.” Something clanked in the distance and the rabbit jumped. “Now!”
“Okay, BR, okay,” John said. He straightened up…and up…and up, until his silhouette seemed larger than the old tree. “But you need to lend this ole tool some power. I can’t do it alone.”
“Whatever, just get on with it!”
John picked up the log, except it…wasn’t a log. It was a handle—the smooth shaft of a massive hammer. Carvings were etched up and down the wood, and it hummed as giant hands found familiar grooves.
John. With a hammer. No way…. I knew that name. Those characters. John Henry, and BR…BR…Brer Rabbit? But—
Brer Rabbit put his paws on the huge iron head of the hammer and began to speak in a low tone. His whispers swirled and grew until they sounded like shouts and drumming and stomping feet. The hammer’s head—a thick metal block marred with pits and scrapes—began to glow with blazing, red-hot light, and John pressed it against a tangle of roots.
A yawning black hole opened in the ground at the base of the tree.
John bent over and picked a small object off the ground. I couldn’t make out what it was. “Go,” he said to it, setting it gently into the hole. “Go now and find it. Find it. FIND IT!”
Click click click
I yanked my hands off the journal with a gasp. Sweat poured down my face, and I was pressed against the back seat of the Cadillac as we motored along. The storm clouds had finally dissolved, and the sun was almost at the horizon, its orange and red rays pouring through the window.
What was that? A dream? Had I fallen asleep while reading?
Then why had it felt so real? And why was the journal closed on the seat next to me?
“You okay, baby?” Nana asked without turning around.
Click click click
Her knitting needles moved furiously. Was it my imagination or was she sweating, too?
“Tristan?”
Click click click
But the pressure of that…whatever it was still sat on my chest and locked my mouth. It felt hot and cramped and smothering in the car, like I’d been tucked in with a giant itchy wool blanket, and suddenly I couldn’t breathe. I somehow managed to lurch over to the door and open the window to try to get some fresh air.
“Tristan!”
“Boy, put that window up!” Granddad barked from the front. “Lettin’ all the dust get in here. Is you out your mind?”
One breath. Two breaths.
“TRISTAN!”
Granddad twisted around, but it was Nana who placed a hand on my knee, and suddenly the pressure was gone. I reluctantly shut the window, then took a deep breath. The feelings of something pressing down on me had faded to a lurking presence. I could handle that, though it made my neck itch. Nana removed her hand but kept peering at me, a worried look on her face.
“You okay, baby?”
I nodded.
“Answer your grandmother when she—”
“Hush, Walter,” Nana scolded. “Mind the road.”
I shook my head. “Just…got a little carsick, I think.”
Nana watched me as if she suspected that wasn’t true, but she didn’t pry any further. “Why don’t you try to take a nap, dear. Only another hour or so and then we’ll be at the farm, and you and Granddad have some work to do before supper.” She turned back around, but, just for a second, I could’ve sworn her eyes glanced at the journal.
Click click click
Nana continued knitting, and I looked at the journal on the other end of the seat. After a moment’s hesitation, I reached over and shaded it with my hands, already knowing what would happen but checking anyway.
The journal pulsed quicker and stronger, with a bright green glow.
Sometime later, Granddad slowed down and turned onto a bumpy gravel road that climbed up a long hill. “We’re here,” he said.
I jerked out of a daze. I slipped Eddie’s journal into my backpack, then stretched and looked warily out the window. Everything looked…well, it looked like the country.
Yay.
“We are? Where?” I asked.
“Home, sweetie,” Nana said, packing up her knitting and turning to smile at me again. “Just in time for me to get dinner started.”
“Still about an hour left of sun,” Granddad said. “Can at least get part of that old fence fixed.”
The car chugged to the top of the hill, and I sat up as the Strong family farm sprawled out to the horizon. A patchwork quilt of green and brown fields surrounded a huge barn and a slightly smaller house. Rows of corn stood at attention as the Cadillac ambled past, like a chariot returning with the land’s king and queen. And Nana and Granddad did seem to sit up straighter as we got closer to the house. Even I could feel it, a tug from something that had been in my family for generations. This was our duchy, our territory. The Strong domain.