Silas's Prequel Journal Entries - While still at the Plantation - a sneak peek at the clues and how to solve!

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September 12, 1854

With a heavy heart, I watch the red dirt of Georgia burn like a furnace today, and my chest feels so tight I can scarce catch my breath. I am sitting in the dark corner of the blacksmith shop, my hands covered in charcoal soot, holding this sharp piece of iron lead whilst the overseer's whip cracks out in the cotton rows. Yesterday, I heard the master talking to a strange slave-buyer by the carriage house. He signed the papers to sell my sweet Charity down to the rice swamps before the pickin' season is over. My heart like to broke right out of my ribs when I heard them counting out the money for her flesh. We done jumped the broom two years ago under the big oak tree, and we swore a holy vow before the Great Master in the Sky to never be parted. I walked out to the well tonight and looked into Charity’s eyes, and she didn't have to say a single word. We are going to break away from this bondage land, even if the hounds catch us and tear our skins to pieces. God help this poor servant,

but I will not let them take my wife.

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September 15, 1854

Always the evening star hangs low and bright over the pine ridges tonight, looking like a silver spark right above the western sky.

The heavy, suffocating heat is rising off the bottomlands, and the crickets are crying in the tall grass like a choir of warning spirits.

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All through the deep woods past midnight, I walked to meet old Uncle Abram by the twin sweetgum trees. He took an awful big risk, reaching deep inside a hollow root to pull out a heavy brass compass that he kept hid from the drivers for near ten years. He put his old, shaking hands on my shoulders and whispered that the needle will always point true toward

the North Star, even when the night is dark as pitch and the briers are tearing at our legs. Charity has been secretly sewing a small canvas sack into the lining of her heavy woolen petticoat to hold our parched corn and dried meat. Every time the master looks at her, my blood turns to ice, but we must keep our faces smooth as stone so the driver don't smell the fire burning in our bosoms. Only thirty days more until the moon goes dark and the corn is high enough to hide our tracks.

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September 19, 1854

Long before the morning broke, a pale and thick yellow fog wrapped the Great House and the slave huts in a damp shroud so heavy you can't see the cotton press.

All across the timber, the old crows are making an awful racket, and the air smells of wet clay and wood-smoke.

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Down in the yard today, a free colored teamster who drives the heavy grain wagons from the western counties passed through to fix a broken axle. While the driver was inside the stable drinking his cider, the teamster secretly slipped me a scrap of coarse brown paper with a map scratched out in charcoal. It shows the jagged gaps through the limestone mountains leading toward the big river town in Tennessee. I buried that paper deep beneath the dirt floor of our hut tonight, right under the corner where Charity and me lay our heads to sleep. We are hoarding every single scrap of food we can save from our weekly rations, hiding the parched corn inside an old hollow pumpkin behind the pig pen. The anticipation is making my hands shake so bad I can scarce hold the tongs at the anvil, but I looks across the yard at my gal spinning the cotton, and it makes my back feel firm as a rock.

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September 26, 1854

North winds have done turned today, bringing the very first touch of autumn chill to the Georgia hills.

The sky overhead is a hard, bright blue, and a ring has formed around the midnight moon—a sure sign that the seasons are shifting fast.

All through the quarters, the shadows look like watchers hiding in the dark as the time draws down close.

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Every single morning, Master Wade comes down to the shop, complaining that the rice crops down south are waiting and that the traders will be coming to fetch Charity right after the first frost hits the leaves. I had to look him straight in the eye and nod my head like a faithful dog, all whilst my fingers were clenching the hammer till the knuckles turned white. Charity and me met behind the old chapel when the rest of the hands were sleeping, praying to the Lord to give our feet the swiftness of the deer when the hour strikes. We have our small bundles packed, our compass oiled, and our charcoal map memorized in our minds. In a few short weeks, we will leave this red clay plantation behind us forever, striking out into the black wilderness to find out if the Lord truly meant for Silas and his Charity to be whole folk under a free sky.