Free Freedom Stone by Jeffrey Kluger

sprinted ahead. She hopped up lightly into the seat beside Bett and kissed the old woman on the cheek. Bett patted her hand. Mama and Plato trotted up after her.
    â€œYou have your traveling pass?” Mama asked Samuel. The old man smiled and patted his breast pocket, then looked alarmed. He groped in his jacket for the paper that was the only thing that would protect them from slave catchers if they left the plantation without a white adult accompanying them. The paper was not there.
    â€œSamuel!” Mama cried.
    â€œPhibbi,” Bett said evenly, “quit your worryin’. I got it here.” She patted her apron pocket and Mama could see the edge of the precious paper poking from the top. “Samuel gave it to me already; he just forgot.” Samuel looked embarrassed, and Lillie and Bett smiled. Mama didn’t.
    â€œAll right, then,” Mama said, waving her hands impatiently. “If you’re gonna go, go. Soonest you leave is the soonest you come back.”
    â€œYes, Miss Phibbi,” Samuel said. He turned to Bett. “All right, Miss Bett?”
    Bett nodded and Samuel snapped the reins. The wagon jerked into motion, and as it did, so did Lillie’s heart, pounding in anticipation behind her breastbone. She waved excitedly to Plato—who waved back sulkily—and blew a kiss to Mama; then she watched them dwindle behind her as the horse clopped away. When Lillie could see them no more, she turned ahead, looking all about herself as the wagon bounced past the slave cabins, circled around the side of the Big House and headed for the long, tree-lined drive that led past the plantation gate and into the swirling world beyond.
    For more than a quarter hour, Lillie sat with her back straight and her head swiveling from one side to the other, taking in the strange roads and fields and fences as they passed—roads and fields and fences that were no different from the ones on the grounds of Greenfog, but utterly different all the same. After a while, her neck began to ache and Bett pulled her gently back.
    â€œLong trip and a lot to do when we get there,” she said. “Don’t work yourself up too much now.”
    Lillie nodded and settled back. Bett was right, she knew. Collecting baking supplies was not the only reason she was on this trip, nor even the one that concerned her much. She was really here to look for Henry, the one-legged slave who fought alongside Papa. Bluffton was a big place to go searching for someone—the biggest place Lillie had ever seen—and how a single person would go about finding a single other person there was beyond her. As Lillie thought of that, a feeling of worry came over her and she dropped her eyes. Her gaze fell on the traveling pass in Bett’s pocket and Bett noticed her staring at it. The old woman looked at her, then carefully removed the paper and—as was the slave’s habit even when no one was looking—glanced cautiously about herself. Then she handed the folded sheet to Lillie, who took it excitedly and unfolded it. She looked down at the curly writing on the page, trying to focus her eyes on the small fancy letters as the wagon bounced and bumped. Slowly, sometimes moving her lips, Lillie did something extraordinary: She read to herself.
    â€œKnow all men by this instrument: The slave man Samuel, the slave woman Bett and the slave girl Lillie have leave to journey from the Greenfog Estate to the town of Bluffton on plantation business on this Twelfth day of September, Eighteen Hundred and Sixty-Three. Please lend all assistance and offer no delay to their passage as they are under charge and order to return before nightfall of this day.”
    It was signed by the Master in letters even harder to read than those that filled the rest of the paper. Under his name were the words “Planter and Owner.”
    Lillie felt the pride she always experienced when she read, along with the thrill that came