Stop. Stop. Stop.
Those were the only words running through Faith’s head as she reached for the pure white cotton balls surrounded by clumps of prickly thorns, eagerly waiting to cut her fingers whenever her hands got near. Beads of perspiration dripped down her forehead, and the words continued to echo in her mind, loud and clear. But she didn’t dare stop working, yanking the soft tufts of cotton off of the plant that snaked onward for as far as she could see. Looking up, she saw the blazing yellow sun high in the sky and immediately regretted it. The only thing that let her carry on was to think about what she had learned. If she let herself focus on all of the long and hard work that was ahead of her, she might as well have been dead already.
Shaking her head, she returned her thoughts to the letters that she had heard through eavesdropping on Master Martin’s son’s lessons every Sunday evening.
“A...B….D?”, she whispered quietly, straining to remember the order of the alphabet. In her struggle, she did not notice Master Martin standing behind her, a whip in his hand.
Crack! Crack! Crack! Only after Faith heard the sound did she feel the immense pain that followed it. Her thoughts quickly went from confusion to excruciating agony as three more lashes came down on her back.
“What’d ya say?”, the man asked. “Says it again, will ya?” He brought the whip down once more, this time on her shoulder. “Now I better not sees you trying to learn again, ya hear? Otherwise, this gonna be nothing compared to what you gonna get. Now go back to work, ya worthless girl!”
Lying in bed, her wounds stinging at every small movement, tears welled up in Faith’s eyes and trickled down her cheeks. She was not crying because of the pain. She remembered it clearly, on a cold winter day the year before, when her family was sold away. One night they were all there, and the next morning she woke up, shivering, in an empty cabin. She recalled how she had torn through the fields, sprinting toward Mistress Molly, who was standing outside in a warm blanket, yelling at the freezing slaves to work faster.
“Where are they?”, she shrieked. The Mistress gave her a puzzled look, and Faith clamped a hand over her mouth, but it was too late. She had talked to her Mistress without being spoken to first. After a good beating, Faith asked again. “Where is my family?”, she managed through sobs.
“Oh, those good for nothing slaves! Your parents have been sold to Louisiana, way down South, your brother was given to a cruel slave owner in Virginia, and all three of your sisters are at different plantations in Texas, all far away from each other.”, she laughed. “They’re all far away from us in Mississippi.”
Faith’s anger rose so much that she screamed at her Mistress to shut up, and, in her rage, punched the woman in the stomach, making her double over in pain. When others learned of the incident, they debated on whether or not she should be hung, but Master Martin, whose business had been suffering at the time, decided that he could not lose yet another slave. She was given a brutal beating and many sharp lashes from the whip, though, and had to work twice as hard as she usually had to. She was not given anything that Christmas.
Faith’s thoughts were interrupted by the sound of loud arguing in the distance. She followed the sound to Master Martin and Mistress Molly’s mansion and listened closely.
“They’re going to try soon,” she heard her Mistress say. “I just know it! With so many slaves being sold away, they will run!”
“Calm down, Molly,” Master Martin’s booming voice came through the open window. “That Underground Railroad is nothing but nonsense, and none of those stupid blacks will take the chance of running after they saw what happened to Ella.”
Faith winced. She remembered Ella, remembered her plan to run all the way to Canada. Her punishment had been a warning for any other slaves who had been thinking of running, and Faith couldn’t bear to think about the dreadful night, so she shut those thoughts, along with any other memories of her old friend, out of her head. She raced back to the small cabin, question after question filling her mind. What was the Underground Railroad? Would it help slaves escape? If it did, would she be willing to run? Faith stopped at that thought. Would she be willing to run away? She had never thought about it before, never even dreamed about escape after Ella’s death. Instead of heading towards her own lonely cabin, she took a detour to her grandmother’s. She usually stayed there, taking any opportunity to stay away from her old quarters, which were full of memories.
“Hello? It’s Faith,” she called softly, knocking on the door. A few moments later, her old, cheerful grandmother came out, a wide smile spread across her face.
“Oh, my baby girl is back!”, her grandmother exclaimed. She was about to wrap her in a huge hug when she noticed to look on Faith’s face and asked, “Something you want to talk to me about?”
As her grandmother sat with her, tending to the wounds on her back that had appeared after her whipping, Faith told her about what she had overheard and asked her all of the questions that had been floating around in her mind for almost an hour.
“So what do you think?”, Faith asked boldly. “Should we run?”
“Slow down, little one,” her grandmother answered in a thoughtful voice. “We don’t know how reliable this Underground whatever - it - is will be, so we can’t just go for it.”
Faith barely considered this before answering, “ We have to try. We need to gain our freedom. We can’t keep living like this!” Her voice was rising with anger and outrage, and her grandmother hurriedly calmed her down.
“You’re right about that, baby girl, for sure. We can’t keep living like this. But if we run and get caught…?
Faith wiped the tears that had been welling up in her eyes away and stood up. “We still need to try,” she decided confidently.
“Well,” her grandmother began. “If you think so, then I’m with you, Faith.”
By the next afternoon, Faith and her grandmother, along with two other slaves from a nearby plantation, had decided to run the next morning. They had met a Quaker that lived down the road the last night, and the woman just happened to be part of a family of conductors on the Underground Railroad. They were willing to help Faith and the others, and they decided to meet up at an overgrown clearing between the house and the plantations at the crack of dawn the next morning. Faith worried that her grandmother would not have the strength to make the long and perilous journey, but she waved that thought off and replied, “I still have some energy left in me. I’ll be fine.”
That night, Faith began packing provisions for the journey ahead. She had snuck some bread and corn from the kitchen, and Anna, one of the cooks, gave her four full canteens of water and wished her luck. “Get to Canada safely for me,” she whispered in her ear. “Please.”
After she had helped her grandma get ready, they left for the clearing, where they could just make out the shapes of the two slaves and the young woman in the dim light. As they followed the Quaker, Faith looked back at the plantation, the cotton fields, the mansion, and decided right then and there that she was never going back.
“Come on in, quickly, the woman insisted as she ushered them into the small stone house. Despite the size and the fact that lives were being risked inside it, the Quaker woman’s home was bursting with cheerfulness and light.
The brightness stung Faith’s eyes as she entered a tiny living room where a man and two kids were sitting at a table, talking and laughing. When they noticed the slaves, the man came forward.
“You must be those brave runaways,” he told them. “Welcome, and please make yourselves at home. I am Michael Walker, and my wife, who brought you here, is Susan Walker. Please, sit down.”
After drinking some hot tea and getting supplies for the trip, they were ready to be hidden in the wagon. Sacks of flour were loaded on, and the four laid down on them. Then they were covered by bags of wheat and more flour, and all of that was covered by a large black cloth. The slaves thanked the Quakers for everything, and the youngest child, a little girl, waved to Faith, who smiled and waved back, trying not to think about how if someone figured out that they had helped slaves, the happy family would be broken apart forever.
She and the others got into the wagon, and when they were completely hidden, Mr. Walker signaled for the horse to start trotting into the woods. Faith prayed for the Quakers and for her and her grandmother and for the rest of the group as they bumped along on the dry dirt road.
When she awoke, the sunlight shining through the heavy thick cloth was blinding. She turned around sleepily, and a few minutes later she felt the wagon stop. The cloth was lifted, and the slaves slowly sat up, wondering what was going on.
“You are now in Tennessee, and it is time for me to leave you on your own,” he announced. After her grandmother consulted the Quaker and told the rest of the group the directions to the next station, the four slaves thanked him, and they went their separate ways. The group trudged along through the forest for a few hours, her grandmother occasionally dropping pepper on the ground or making everybody rub garlic on their feet to throw off the bloodthirsty hounds that were no doubt pursuing them. Faith and the group crossed multiple streams and rivers as well, some where they almost drowned, and some where Faith, who was the smallest of the four, could feel the smooth rocks of the riverbed sliding under her feet. Soon they came to the face of a little cliff. At the top, the path continued on. The older girl, Alicia, was the first to climb, sliding around on the steep and rocky surface before finding tiny footholds and ledges that allowed her to clamber up. She was at the top and about to place her hand on the flat ground above when she let out a sharp scream that pierced the silence of the morning. She lay there, barely moving, breathing fast and taking in short gasps of air.  They saw a striped rattlesnake disappear into a nearby bush.
“Come on, Alicia, come on!”, Faith shrieked, kneeling over her. She rummaged around in the sack they had brought, hoping to find medicine, but they didn’t manage to smuggle any away with them. The venom from the bite had already reached her bloodstream. After a few jagged gasps and a small whimper, Alicia’s body became still. She did not take another breath or open her eyes ever again.
The light coming from the window of the cottage cast an eerie glow on the woods around. The small house stood there, looking safe and welcoming, but Faith had the nagging feeling that something was wrong. She shook it off, remembering the words of the honest Quaker man. This was the right place. There was a candle in the window, indicating that the station master was ready for the runaways, but Faith couldn’t help noticing that the flame was flickering uncertainly.
Her grandmother took a deep breath and, hesitantly, knocked on the door in the pattern that the Quaker woman had told her to. A moment later, it opened.
It all happened too fast for Faith to process. When the door was swung open, and she saw the station master. The young woman was being clutched by the neck, the slave catcher’s grip tight around her throat. When he saw the three slaves he threw the wheezing abolitionist aside. Before anyone could react, Richard, the other slave that was traveling with them, was quickly and viciously beaten to death, and the old man fell, never to get up again. The catcher threw a punch at her grandmother, and Faith screamed as she dropped to the ground in front of her. Suddenly her rage was unleashed and she lashed out at him. She fought and kicked and struggled in his grasp, and one good kick in the face was enough to make the man fall to the ground, bleeding. She helped her grandmother up and they quickly began to run while they had the chance, without any idea where they were going or what they were trying to get to.
They had to try. The large stone house that stood in front of them had no signals, nothing indicating that it was safe, but Faith walked up to it anyway. She had been injured in their encounter with the slave catcher, and she winced as she raised her broken arm to knock on the wooden door.
It opened. The white woman standing in the doorway had an angry look on her face.
“What do you want?”, she asked harshly. “Get inside, both of you. I’m going to report you!”
Faith and her grandmother cast frightened glances at each other as they were shoved into the house. Once they were inside, everything changed.
“Are you on the Underground Railroad?”, the woman asked in a suddenly gentle voice. All Faith could do was nod. “Oh, I’m so sorry that I scared you! I pretend to support slavery so that the slave catchers around here don’t suspect me.”
Feeling relieved, Faith and her grandmother sat down. They were cared for, and almost immediately fell asleep on the soft, warm beds in the secret room.
The train ride was a blur, and soon they’d made it. After telling them about how they could start their new life in freedom, he asked Faith, “Did you ever have any family members?” The question puzzled Faith. “Yes. My parents, a brother, and three sisters. Why?” The look on the man’s face showed absolute jubilance.
It was them. It was really them. At first, Faith refused to believe that the five people standing just on the other side of the road were her family members, but as they got closer and called out to her, she knew it. For the first time in life, she felt like she had all the parts, like she was truly complete.