The Water Dancer

As Hiram resumes his duties, he realizes that Lockless is in worse shape than he thought. Howell is not the man he was. He is sad and feels like he failed Maynard by not giving him more guidance after the death of Howell’s wife. Howell also gives an indirect apology for selling off the Tasked, including, it seems to Hiram, Rose. Hiram meets with Corrine and Hawkins the next day to tell them that Lockless is propped up with debt, including several big loans from Nathaniel. Corrine advises Hiram to keep an eye on the books because she believes there may well be an opportunity for the Underground as a result of the debt.

Because of how diminished the family is at Lockless, Howell allows Thena to take in laundry in Starfall (Thena, of course, hopes to buy herself out of slavery). One day while Hiram is taking Thena to do her laundry rounds in the town, Sophia rides along, making Hiram uncomfortable. Later that night, Thena takes him to task for his behavior. Hiram goes to Sophia’s cabin on the Street to make peace with her as a result. Eventually, he realizes the Sophia in his head is just a series of stories about Sophia, not the real Sophia. As a peace offering, he gives Caroline a wooden horse he rescued from the wreckage of Georgie Parks’ cabin.

Hiram, Sophia, and Thena, as the last of the old crew of the Tasked on Lockless, fall into a routine of helping each other and visiting. To relieve the burden of the backbreaking laundering that Thena does, Hiram and Sophia begin helping Thena with her work. As they work, Hiram’s time with Sophia helps him come to terms with his resentment of her. Watching Sophia play with Caroline one day, Hiram is stunned by the love he sees there. He tells her he understands that love between Tasked people and relationships with people like Nathaniel are complicated. Nevertheless, Hiram tells Sophia that he recognizes this child as his kin and wants to be a part of both Sophia and Caroline’s lives. Caroline’s eyes—the typical Walker green-gray eyes—prove to Hiram that Caroline is Nathaniel’s child. Caroline will never be Hiram’s child, but she certainly is his kin.

Sophia finally tells Hiram what happened to her after she was recaptured. It turns out that Corrine freed her from Ryland’s Jail and likely covered for her since Nathaniel never mentioned anything about the escape attempt. Corrine also told her that Hiram would be back. In exchange for this secret, Corrine asked Sophia to pass on information about Lockless. As Sophia shares this story, Hiram realizes that he loves Sophia and that he has been suppressing all feelings—both painful and joyful ones—to deal with separations from those whom he loves. Sophia and Hiram make love. This lovemaking bonds Hiram to Sophia, and her expression of love for him afterward makes Hiram realize that he will have to use his feelings—not just memories—to Conduct. With this newfound knowledge, Hiram takes the wooden horse down to the Goose River and Conducts intentionally for the first time.

The Conduction drains Hiram completely, but he eventually recovers. The next few weeks are happy ones that Hiram spends with Sophia. His joy is marred by worry about what will happen if Nathaniel, who holds legal title to Caroline and Sophia, will do if he discovers the relationship. This danger becomes more urgent when Nathaniel, who has been away out West, returns and calls for Sophia to come to his plantation. Hiram is the one who drives her there.

The conversation they have on the ride to Nathaniel’s place is a tense one. Sophia needles Hiram about his refusal to discuss what he did while supposedly at Bryceton. She tells him that if she were him and managed to escape to the North, she would leave everything—including Hiram—behind to be free. Hiram is hurt at first but manages to ease the tension as he remembers that being Tasked forces tough, morally ambiguous choices on people for the sake of survival.

They arrive at Nathaniel’s house, only to be turned away because Nathaniel does not want to see Sophia. Both Sophia and Hiram are scared that this change in plans means that Sophia and Caroline may be in danger of being sold. Hiram asks Sophia if she can imagine a future in which the two of them and Caroline manage to escape being sold south, but Sophia takes him to mean running away again. She tells him she cannot do this again without having a solid plan.

When they return to Lockless, they discover that Thena has been attacked and robbed of the money she was saving to buy her freedom, likely by one of the new Tasked. Sophia and Hiram move Thena into Sophia’s place on the Street. They also learn that Nathaniel never came back from Tennessee, ominous news that may mean Sophia and Caroline are in danger of being sold to fund Nathaniel’s Tennessee holdings. Sophia suspects that Hiram may even want Sophia to become his “Tennessee wife” (367), a real possibility because white men taking up with black women is not unheard of in the looser social structure of the West. Although Sophia says she wants nothing more than freedom and so would never consider going West to be Nathaniel’s mistress, Hiram is not so sure.

The attack on Thena, his ability to control his power, and the danger of losing Sophia and Caroline force Hiram’s hand. When Corrine comes to Lockless to oversee Christmas celebrations, Hiram meets with her to demand that she make good on her promise to get Thena, Sophia, and even Caroline out. Corrine denies his request because it may endanger important Underground plans to which Hiram is not privy. She also tells Hiram that she already has Sophia’s title and will free her when she needs to do so to further the Underground’s plans. Corrine forces Hiram to promise not to endanger these plans. Hiram is lying by omission, however, because he believes he can get his people out without running afoul of Corrine.

Hiram tells Sophia about where he was during his absence from Lockless, the Underground, and his power. Sophia is angry that Hiram has kept all this from her. Hiram presses on by revealing that he intends to use this power to get Sophia, Caroline, and Thena away from Lockless; he even shows her how the power works by Conducting her across the Goose. During the Conduction, they see a woman water-dancing.

Sophia later tells Hiram about water-dancing's origins. A king and his people mutinied against the crew of a slave ship from Africa and tried to sail home, but armed Americans moved to intercept them. When all seemed hopeless, the West African water-spirit/goddess Mami Wata (Mammy Water) granted them the power to dance themselves back to Africa from America. When Sophia and the other Tasked do the water dance, they are memorializing this gift and celebrating their desire for freedom. Sophia reasons that Conduction is just like the water dance.

When Hiram tells Sophia that he will stay in Lockless to serve out his duties, she refuses to accept his plan to send her and Caroline away: They are a family and must not be separated. Thena also rejects Hiram’s plans for her. Hiram tells her about Kessiah living as a freedwoman in Philadelphia. After years of numbing herself to her grief by accepting the loss and death of all her children, Thena is unable to deal with this small bit of hope. She angrily forces Hiram to leave and tells him never to talk to her again. After this scene, Hiram realizes that he has no right to ask Thena to remember her traumas unless he does the same.

Hiram sends Kessiah and Moses word of his plans to liberate his loved ones. After helping his father with some tasks, Hiram sneaks into Howell’s study to rifle through Howell’s desk. He is hoping to find some clue to what happened to his mother. His efforts are rewarded when he finds a shell necklace, the same one he has seen on his mother’s neck in past visions. The necklace is a talisman of power: When Hiram puts it on, his blocked memories of his mother are fully revealed to him. Rose gave Hiram the necklace just before Howell sold her as punishment for running away with Hiram. Hiram feels a killing rage toward Howell but simply conceals the necklace under his shirt. Hiram serves the old man and Corrine dinner that night as if nothing has happened.

After dinner, Corrine sends Hiram to talk with Hawkins. Hawkins tries to convince Hiram to give up his plans, but Hiram refuses. Hawkins ends the conversation by telling Hiram that he must do what his conscious tells him is right. He is not shocked at all when Hiram explains that Sophia and Thena refuse to go along with his plans. Hawkins tells him they do want freedom, just not by the means and terms Hiram offers. Hiram slowly makes peace with Thena, who tells him that dangling freedom and reunion with Kessiah brings up all those old feelings of helplessness, rage, and grief she experienced when the Walkers sold her children. The financial situation worsens at Lockless. Hiram knows he must get Thena out, and she finally agrees to go with him.

Hiram waits for several weeks to hear back from Moses and realizes that he will be on his own in trying to get Thena out. He Conducts Thena away from Lockless one night, powered by the shell necklace, an invocation of all the mothers parted from their children, and the full story of how he lost his own mother. Hiram successfully conducts Thena to the Philadelphia docks of the Delaware River, where Kessiah and Moses are waiting. Hiram, exhausted and sick, Conducts himself back to Lockless.

When Hiram wakes up, he is in town being tended to by Hawkins. After the Conduction, Hiram fell ill with a fever. Sophia found him outside her cabin. Rather than risk Hiram blurting out some damning information about the Underground, Corrine sent word to Howell that Hiram was ill and convinced him to allow them to take care of Hiram in town. This illness is a piece of luck because it makes it appear that Hiram had nothing to do with Thena’s escape.

When Hiram recovers more, Corrine once again demands that he put his powers to work for the Underground. He agrees to cooperate with her, but tells her that Conduction predates the Underground, and that he will always prioritize his service to it and the Tasked over the Underground. The two manage to come to an accommodation. Corrine has acquired Lockless and all the Tasked on it. Howell sold it to her because he could no longer pay his debts. He dies within the year. Corrine then does the unthinkable: She sets up an Underground station at Lockless, right in the heart of Virginia, with Hiram as the house agent.