Chapter Three

Oh my God! Not another one! The scream had come from the direction of the boiling shed of the sugar mill. Tess's stomach bottomed out at the sudden onslaught of the piercing cry, her heart already pounding so hard that it nearly choked her.

Her eyes flickered over her daughter's stirring form before locking on her grandmother's face. Even from across the kitchen Emma's jaw was noticeably set.

"Go!" Emma commanded her granddaughter. "Yer William's gone down to the bay, an' me Brigsy is inland collecting sulfur at the mudpots. There's no one else to help! Go quickly now, ya hear? I'll look after the wee one." Not needing any of this prodding, Tess was already charging out the door before her grandmother had completed the sentence.

The agonized cries continued to puncture the air, their volume fuelled as they always were, as much by terror as by pain.

At the open doorway of the boiling shed, a wall of heat from the massive fires burning in the shallow pits under the copper vats hit Tess with a searing scorch to the skin on her face and arms. She squinted into the semi-darkness of the building, half expecting to see a burning body writhing on the floor.

"Missy Willoughby!" The chorus of voices collectively shrilled a note of desperation. Urgent pointing of fingers and flapping of hands directed her through and out of the back doors. "Hurry! Up in de crush mill!"

A flash of relief shot through Tess's veins. Not a burn then. She half-ran, half-climbed up the steep beaten path to the crushing mill which stood on the hilltop behind the boiling shed. Before she reached it, she was met by a young man supported at his waist by a woman who with her other hand, clenched her apron around the man's right hand.

Tess sucked in a hard breath. She recognized them both.

Dom and Maria.

Two of the ex-slaves freed after Thomas became alligator lunch, and who still worked the sugar plantation in exchange for a percentage of the business profit.

And damned hard and dangerous work it was. Tess had suspected and even hoped, that Dom and Maria had plans of making a future together. They were barely out of their teens and shy but ambitious and no strangers to the hard work. Tess frowned, her heart thudding at the speed of their frantic approach.

Dom's ebony skin camouflaged any blood running down his forearm but the apron did not. Even before Tess peeled away the blood-soaked, grimy cloth she knew what she would find.

There it was. A mangled hand. Or what was left of one.

This was not going to be good. Never was.

Tess peeled back the thin strip of soiled apron wrapped around the remaining bloodied stubs where there should have been fingers. Only the thumb remained intact.

"Goddamn it!" Tess spat out loud, not caring who heard. Four fingers gone. No loss of life, but in a careless – or more likely a fatigue-driven moment – Dom's future had been changed forever.

And the damned mill was to blame. No matter that everyone who still lived and worked at the plantation had freely chosen to do so.

Another accident – a disgusting maiming – that proves there aren't enough of us left to keep it running.

The entire sugar cane plantation was too demanding, too dangerous, for the small band of remaining freed slaves, even with William and Brigs, to work it. Nearly twenty years old, William was young and strong, but he was just one man. And Brigs, middle-aged and with one foot amputated, was effectively limited in his ability to participate in the brute labor of the mill. The meager end results were barely enough to make decent trades for essentials like candles, medicines, livestock, and tools, on the rare occasion when a merchant ship did stop.

We have to find another way to make a living. A safer way. And that means getting off this damned island! Finding a buyer for the plantation! And the sooner, the better. We can't justify any more injuries like this.

Hardened to the grisly task of taking care of such wounds and often much worse, Tess examined the stump tips. Although contaminated with dirt and slivers of cane fibers, the wounded hand had not bled as much as it might have, having been partially sealed from the pressure of the rollers. Tess slowly exhaled the breath she'd been holding.

It could have been so much worse.

The giant rollers used to crush the sugar cane stalks in the plantation's mill rarely stopped at a man's palm when fingers were caught between them like this. In this instance however, the rollers had torn the fingers from his palm. Dom's screams had likely alerted his coworkers who would have halted the pair of harnessed oxen that powered the iron rollers before any more of Dom' hand and arm could be sucked into the press.

And if he'd still been enslaved, stopping the animals like that would never have been allowed, Tess admitted to herself. No wonder two dozen of the former slaves thought their working conditions had improved enough to stay.

If only more of them had decided to stay.

There existed a certain comfort level with more people around. Actually, Tess had to admit, it was more than just comfort. It was a feeling of genuine safety.

Mostly. Except for times like this.

William seemed to think that the ocean presented more perils than the island, but Tess frequently argued that by just staying on this uncivilized island, they were constantly at the mercy of many dangers. Fierce storms. Vicious pirates.

And accidents like this one.

She examined the crushed hand more closely. The bleeding at the palm's edge of the exposed ridge of joints had already slowed to just a gradual seepage.

At least the mill's rollers have spared both Dom and me from having to finish the amputation. Now to keep his wounds free of mortification.

In this part of the world it was nearly impossible to prevent sepsis from settling in to open wounds. The tropical island air, so humid, was full of unseen dangers – the swamp winds blowing from the far side of the island brought with it the fevers that turned skin yellow, and the breezes that rustled through the air here at the plantation's Big House often spread coughs and weeping red rashes which quickly sickened people, who then often as not died before she could even tend to them.

Tess nodded to Maria. "Get me a bowl of rum."

Maria's eyes, still wide with fright, locked onto Tess's face. "You use your magic, too? Your ring?" she pleaded.

"Yes, of course. But I need the rum first. And clean strips of cloth. Hurry now." Tess watched Maria tear down the pathway towards the storage barrels as fast as her legs could carry her, as though Dom's life depended on her every step.

And it does, Tess nodded to herself.