The sun blazed , sending angry rays below. Shifting, chopping with their backs bent, sweat dripping down their black skins were the slaves of the Tucker plantation. For miles spread tall vegetation , towering over everyone except the overseers. They rode around on their horses staring the slaves down.
One overseer with fiery orange hair and angry blue eyes screamed.
"Stop daydreamin' Lizzie!"
The slave woman he addressed exhaled deeply and bent her back once more, chopping down the stalks of the sugar cane. Mosquitoes buzzed in her ear and she slapped at them.
The leaves were sharp, slicing through her skin. Blood oozed out but the worst part was the sweat. It stung, like pouring alchoal into a wound. Despite the pain she could not stop to tend to it.
The young overseer would shriek at her again and beat her black and blue this time around.
Thinking about his grating voice saddened her. He could talk and people would listen. They would hear him speak, for they either feared him if they were slaves or respected him if they were white.
No one would heed Lizette. She tried to open her mouth, but all the sounds just mushed up together into gibberish with the overseers laughing, sometimes even the slaves too.
There was a bell ringing and a bark that the slaves had 5 minutes to eat lunch before starting work back up again.
Lizette put down her blade and stood upright, her muscles cramped up together and sore.
She stretched out her arms and quickly followed the other slaves to Cecille, who threw pieces of cornbread at them. It was hard, stale, but better than nothing. She had managed to keep working despite her blurry vision and growling stomach.
It had been dusk when Lizette rose up and now it was afternoon. The sun stubbornly rose above her, refusing to fall over the horizon, refusing to be-
"...Sun down," said a deep voice next to her. "We got til sun down. "
She turned to her right to see Timothy with cornbread in his hand. Lizette only stared and he sighed.
He sometimes forgot she was a mute. Her eyes would stare straight into everyone and she would either stay quiet or make unintelligible sounds.
But, she nodded finally, as if in agreement and smiled a little.
"Don' know why you talkin' to her. She cain't say nothin'," Alice sneered, hands on her hips.
Timothy groaned and turned around.
"That ain't nice to say Alice. She just like anyone else."
Alice shook her head. In a gentle voice , as if trying to reason with someone she said, "Timothy. She dumb. Ain't got no sense in ha head."
"Alice! Don' say that!" Timothy hissed, apalled.
"But she is," Alice insisted, unperturbed.
"We both knows it."
He turned around to apologize for Alice's foul attitude and to console Lizette. But when he looked, she was gone without so much a trace.
YOU ARE READING
Divided
Tiểu thuyết Lịch sửA mute slave woman working in endless sugarcane fields. A vampire that tends to keep the fact that he drinks blood a secret. Henry and Lizette were two very unlike people in more ways than one, but when they meet by coincidence, will something spark...
