Free Invisible World by Suzanne Weyn

grass baskets, only they were large and cone-shaped. They sat upside down on small wooden tables. There was a small hole in each one; occasionally a bee would fly in or out. “Those are Aunty Honey’s bee skeps,” Aakif explained as he eased me toward the steps to his cabin. “There’s a real beehive in each one. Aunty Honey believes honey will cure almost anything that ails a person.”
    The moment I turned my attention away from the bee skeps and back to the cabin, I was faced with a person I assumed was Aunty Honey herself.
    Though very short in stature, she was also wide, especially at the hips. Her plain blue skirt appeared scrubbed yet stained and it had been mended in various places. She wore a shirt with wide black stripes, and wisps of cottony white hair peeked from the black head wrap she wore. Her skin was as black as Aakif’s, and her small onyx eyes gleamed angrily at me.
    Feet planted on the top step, and with her hands on her hips, Aunty Honey barked furiously at Aakif in a language I assumed was Gullah, but which I couldn’t begin to make sense of.
    Aunty Honey turned her piercing stare back to me and the rapid-fire syllables of her unfamiliar language — words she was thinking but not voicing — flooded my mind. It was a torrent of images: a mother, a father, a husband, a girl baby born, friends, cooking, tending the baby … then men from a nearby tribe attacking her village. Shouting. Screams. Running, running, running through a wide savannah, howling baby clutched to her chest. A net hurtling through the air.
    After that, the next images came quickly but not in the same jumbled torrent. These were horrible pictures that I didn’t want to see. They rushed in just the same, and there was no way I could shut them down, even though I was trying.
    Black African slaves were chained together at the ankles and wrists, packed so tightly in the lowest chambers of a ship that there was hardly enough air for them all. Aunty Honey lay shackled to another slave. The sound of wailing and anguished cries filled the space.
    I saw a white man pulling at the baby girl Aunty Honey clutched. Aunty Honey screamed for her child and was hit with a metal bar from behind. I saw her crumple onto a dock where other Africans were being sold.
    My mind filled with the image of Aunty Honey grinding her back molars as she was whipped by a white slaver, searing agony shooting through her. Men were nearby, laughing.
    I saw things I don’t ever want to see again or remember even now.
    Tears flowed from me — gently at first, then harder and harder still. Rolling despair washed over me and I fell to my knees, my hands over my face, weeping from the depths of my being. Was this Aunty Honey’s deep sadness or my own? I couldn’t tell.
    Another, different, but still overpowering emotion swept through me. Ferocious, red rage. Aunty Honey herself entered my mind, younger and stronger than she actually appeared. She glowered at me with pure hatred.
    Never had this kind of malice been directed at me. It was terrifying. In my mind, I saw her grab my throat and squeeze. Each time I tried to push her off, she’d tighten her grip.
    â€œGafa!” Aunty Honey shrieked at me.
    She tossed a white powder into my face.
    The powder burned my eyes.
    â€œGafa! Gafa!”
    From somewhere very far off, Aakif shouted urgently at Aunty Honey, speaking in the Gullah language. It was the last thing I heard before my eyes rolled up in their sockets and my knees buckled out from under me.

W HEN MY EYES OPENED, I WAS STARING UP AT THE LEAVES of an oak. Aakif was beside me and, as I struggled up to lean on my elbows, he offered me a kind of yellow cake.
    â€œCorn bread with honey,” he explained. “Here, take it.”
    It was warm and wildly delicious. Aakif then handed me a carved cup filled with cool water. “She says you’re a witch,” he stated calmly. “She won’t