The Fethafoot Chronicles: To Save a King

By Pemulwuy Weeatunga

January 7, 1811, Orleans County, Louisiana, United States of America:

The man ran as fast as the swampy terrain, the foggy night and his labouring breath would allow. Simon; bonded slave, descendant of Haitian Kings and a smart, intelligent young survivor, was on the run from his Plantation manager’s son. He could hear the dogs – literal hounds from hell for any runaway - coming on steadily in the wake of his scent. He didn’t really believe that he could get away from Massa Henry and his friends – but the alternative, was a guaranteed, public degradation of body, soul and spirit. Simon didn’t know it then, though his own descendants’ would be pivotal to his people’s survival: and to the equality, which they’d yearned so long for. When he met the strange, black-skinned warrior from Australia on that fateful night, every single thing that he thought he knew about his own life: life in general - and about the world he lived in, suddenly shifted. In that one incredible night, the warrior Nhompo, dispersed the thick, blanket of fear that he’d lived under all of his life - and along with his timely appearance, he brought the first scent of hope that the slave had ever known.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 17, 2015
• ISBN: 9781483552064

Book preview

King

Prologue

January 7, 1811, Orleans County, Louisiana, America

The young man ran as fast as the terrain, the sultry night and his laboring breath would allow. His long flowing strides covered the soft ground underfoot almost as fast as a horse could do over this cold boggy swampland – a good thing for him, as his pursuers would certainly be on horseback by now, he imagined. His dark flitting form ate up the mossy ground with his lithe stride, only slowing when a foot sank into a softer portion of the pungent earth.

He couldn’t even take the time to look back. He knew that he had to move as far and as fast as the darkness of the cold Orleans county night and his strength allowed. He couldn’t think beyond that yet, though he grasped he would have to, if he wanted to survive through this night of terror. He could hear the dogs coming on steadily in the wake of his barefoot scent. They were as yet distant sounds to his straining ears, though the faint lament of howls that he heard echoing occasionally through the thick cottonwoods frightened him badly and drove him on: running for his dear life.

He forged onward regardless of obstacles, wild animals, poisonous spiders, snakes and the other night creatures he knew would be out and hunting in the darkness and fog of this dripping ghostly space. He had to wipe away the sweat from his eyes constantly to see any obstacles as he ran doggedly onward in the chill winter air. And as he ran, he exercised a keen practical mind, retaining a reserve of energy after his initial burst of speed from an impulsive, blind fear. Even then, it was more to gain distance from the plantation than any loss of self-control; though Simon appreciated, that simple terror drove his feet initially.

He stopped often for water while it was available. Much of the sweat he’d lost soaked the loose heavy canvas trousers he wore, and he knew enough to replace the fluids or become dizzy and weak which was not an option for survival. As he ran on, bounding over large tree roots, around hanging vines, jumping over the small pools of freezing water that lay everywhere throughout the swamplands, he heard a high pitched scream close to where he passed, cut off in mid-call, as one of those night hunters struck.

Dodging low branches, skipping fallen ones and moving deeper into the marshlands with each stride, Simon, recently good-ole-boy slave but now transformed into runaway nigger in one easy lesson, he thought, suddenly experienced a strange empathy with the naive prey. He was just live prey himself in the minds of the men chasing him. They brought their bloodthirsty hounds and merciless eyes to hunt him down like an animal, to be taken alive or dead, and perhaps only his woolly black head taken back as proof of his failure to escape. Once they caught a runaway out here in the Bayou, it mattered little that the plantation owner paying them wanted a live slave returned, if only to demonstrate the often fatal punishment to other would-be escapees. But he knew that if these men caught him, they would have their depraved fun with him, before a slow and painful death…

Chapter 1

A cardinal sin

Simon the hedjacated nigger had committed a cardinal sin as the leader of the men coming for him had called it. You’re mine, and you’re dead nigger, he’d drawled, looking Simon in the eye with a burning passion to destroy. You done committed the cardinal sin boy! he had claimed.

As he ran on into the night, Simon thought back to his life on the plantation and how it had all changed so dramatically just these few short hours ago.

Simon – bonded slave, descendant of Haitian kings and a smart young survivor – had become more fearful daily of the plantation owner’s son, the same man who stood so arrogantly in front of him as judge, jury and executioner this day. He’d watched in mounting horror as absolute power had transformed him and his fellow white masters from arrogant young men into depraved beasts. Earlier today, Simon had been certain of one thing only: he did not wish to find out what was hidden behind the hungry declaration that blazed out of young Henry McGibbon’s wild eyes.

Clueless as to what else he could do at the time, Simon had thrown the heavy box he still held when his life came apart, straight at Massa Henry’s head and immediately turned tail and ran, surprising himself, the group of angry men in front of him, Missy Violet and all the goggle-eyed fellow slaves he saw as he flew past them. He’d jumped the two garden fences and bolted as fast as his legs would take him toward Mexico or the sea: just away from that awful hungry look on the young Massa’s face.

The terrified man had not stayed around long enough to know where the box had landed nor did he know where his feet were taking him, and he didn’t care. I just want away; away from this terrible living nightmare, he silently screamed to himself as his strong legs took him away from the horrors that had awakened his terror and his unplanned and immediate flight. The terror he was escaping was real; he’d seen noble strong men capitulate - and been hung, burned alive or drawn and quartered as the