The Freedom Maze by Delia Sherman

the ceiling and shadows of hunting bats flitted silently across the sky. And then it was night, and a slave she hadn’t seen before was at the door with a lantern, telling her to come along.
    “Mammy, she say you sleep in the Quarters tonight, maybe it teach you to mind you manners.”
    As the slave girl led her through the fragrant, buggy darkness, Sophie leaned that her name was Sally, that she was a housemaid, and just about the nosiest person Sophie had ever met. Too tired to think of any answers to her questions about New Orleans and Sophie’s mother and Mr. Robert, Sophie just shook her head, which brought on a furious speech about folks who thought they were better than other folks that kept Sally busy until they reached the oak grove.
    “See this here?” Sally swung the lantern to illuminate the first few feet of a narrow path. “Just follow it on a ways, and you come to the Quarters. Africa say she take you in, the good Lord know why. First cabin to the right.”
    It’s not easy to follow a path you can’t see. Sophie groped her way forward step by step, jumping at every noise and stubbing her bare toes on every stick and stone. By the time she reached the end of the trees, she was jumpy as a cat. She also desperately needed a bathroom.
    In front of her, a double row of cabins glowed faintly in the moonlight, their doors open to catch whatever breeze should happen to chance along. Behind them, a field of young cane rustled sleepily to itself, and cicadas fiddled wildly.
    Sophie climbed to the porch of the first cabin to the right and peeked cautiously through the uncurtained window. Firelight flickered on the face of the slave woman who’d given her the corn cake, stirring an iron pot hung over the fire on a hook. On the floor, a child was playing with a baby, and three men sat around a rough table, their faces grim in the flickering light of a smoky candle.
    Sophie’s pulse stuttered nervously. The men looked just exactly like the kind of dirty, ragged Negroes Mama had warned her against, except they were all working. One was stuffing a sack with what looked like a tangle of black thread; the second was sewing another sack closed. The third man sat in the only chair in the room whittling with his head bent like he was too tired to hold it up. Around them, the walls were covered with clothes and tools hung on hooks; baskets and bunches of herbs dangled from the ceiling. The air was still and hot and thick with grease and sweat and small, biting insects.
    If there’d been anywhere else to go, Sophie would have crept away again. As it was, she hesitated until the child looked up and saw her at the window. “Who that?”
    Sophie moved shyly to the door. “Sophie.”
    The child scrambled to its feet. Sophie couldn’t tell whether it was a girl or a boy, its hair trimmed like a lamb’s wool close to his head, its bony body covered by a coarse brown shirt. “My name’s Canada. You come to supper?” The child took Sophie’s hand and pulled her forward. “This here’s Sophie. She ain’t borned here.”
    “She sure as shooting ain’t,” one of the men said. “Dr. Charles a good Christian gentleman. Ain’t it just like Mr. Robert, though?”
    Africa turned from the fire. “Hush, Flanders. Ain’t her fault who her pa is. Come here, sugar.”
    Sophie edged around the table, clutching her skirt so it wouldn’t touch anything.
    “This here’s my husband, Ned.” Africa laid a gentle hand on the skinny man’s shoulder. He raised his face, pale brown and deeply lined.
    “Pleased to meet you, sir,” Sophie said shyly.
    Ned showed a graveyard of yellow teeth in a wide smile. “I pleased to meet you, too, child.”
    “The boys are Poland and Flanders,” Africa said. “The baby’s Saxony. Tote me some water, Canny girl. I’m making us some spoon bread to welcome Sophie to Oak River.”
    By this time, Sophie was ready to burst. Not wanting to ask about a bathroom where the men could hear, she