Coffey was delirious. It was late July and there were no clouds in the Carolina sky to shield her from the sun. She could feel the rays mashing into her skin and where they connected, her body was hot from the friction. She wanted to collapse under the perceived weight of the heat that mixed with the ambient moisture in the air and made standing a chore. She had been speed walking for most of the day and even if her body wanted to quit, her good sense wouldn’t let her. To stop was to accept death, and Coffey hadn’t come all this way just to die in the middle of nowhere.
She was a tall woman, and though she had a slender build, she was very strong with muscles rippling her arms, shoulders, and her back that was exposed in the flimsy gray dress she wore. Her skin was dark, hence the name, and her hair was an unmoving afro on her head; it came to jagged peaks and valleys. She was a pretty woman, very piercing, brown eyes and soft facial features that made her beautiful to most men, no matter the blackness of her skin. She was dirty as she walked, she had been wandering through wooded areas and fields of grass for days, putting distance between herself and civilization. She had been headed south, Florida was closer than Canada in South Carolina where she had slipped away, though she had to really stay away from anyone who might see her and ask questions.
The day was young, the sun had been up for hours, and Coffey had been speed walking in the thick humidity for all of it. She waded through tall grass toward a hill and just as she started her ascent, her ears perked up at a distant sound. Even though it was too far away to determine the source, Coffey was sure that there were dogs sniffing out her trail and men on horseback galloping behind them, intent on capturing her. She mustered the strength that had kept her upright on her feet and she ran up the hill. When she made it to the top, she collapsed into the grasses, cursing herself for expending so much energy. The sound that had motivated her up the hill was more distinct than it had been, and she was sure that the dogs were getting closer. She prepared herself to roll down the other side of the hill, but before she could, she noticed the flickering of tiny, bright white lights before her eyes, like tiny dots of white that exploded and then dissipated.
“You Alita’s daughter,” Coffey heard a voice say. “You far from home.”
Coffey knew that she had lost her mind in that moment. The strange lights sparking around her and the disembodied voice, she had heard of things like that on the plantation she’d fled. Her mother, Alita, had a close friend called Sissy who helped her with the plantation laundry, and while they scrubbed and beat dirt out of linen and clothing in a nearby creek, Sissy would tell her stories about the fairies that lived in the woods. They were easy to mistake for the lightning bugs that seemed to congregate in the evening and dot the darkened landscape with tiny pulses of yellow-white light. When Alita told Coffey about the fairies, she told bedtime stories to distract her daughter from the horrid conditions in which they slept, and she was sure to emphasize that the stories were made up fun. She didn’t want her daughter chasing lightning bugs like Sissy had, hoping to make the acquaintance of a fairy that could spirit her far away from the bondage of their daily lives. Sissy had gotten so lost in the tale, hoping to catch a fairy in the mass of lightning bugs, that she would often leave her quarters at night to go to the fields next to the dense woods at the edge of the plantation, where slaves knew that patrolmen regularly rode their horses with rifles to capture any potential runaways. That was how Sissy died, a patrolman assumed she was trying to escape and shot her through the chest; she bled out immediately.
Coffey could hear the dogs barking and she knew that she had to make a move if she wanted to stay ahead of her potential captors. But the tiny, bright lights began to coalesce around a human body that was less than a foot tall with glistening skin that either reflected the sparkling light or was made of the light itself. Coffey saw a pair of wings beating steadily at the back of the light form, keeping it aloft.
“Shame what happened to your mama,” the voice spoke again.
After Alita found out about Sissy’s death, something snapped in her. Even though they were both grown women and had each given birth to many children, most of whom were sold away when they reached puberty, Sissy had always had a childlike aura that made daily life on the plantation bearable for Alita. She’d thought about escaping everyday of her life, but Sissy showed her how to find peace in the violence they endured. In her absence, Alita was so desperate for freedom that she tried to run when Coffey was just ten years old. She was caught and mutilated, and she told Coffey that she loved her, but she had to run as far and fast as she could and didn’t want her daughter to suffer like she would. Coffey understood and by the time she was a young woman of sixteen, she took over her mother’s laundry duties. The woman had tried to run so many times that by the end, she had lost all the fingers of one hand, her face had been burned, and her leg chopped off at the knee. She was a ragged corpse when she died slowly, on display for all the other slaves to see the consequences of rebellion.
“She was trying to find us,” the voice said, “but she always ran in the wrong direction. You came to the right spot. If you come with me, they won’t catch you.”
Coffey nodded desperately. The dogs were ascending the hill. She could already feel their teeth in her back.
“Please…” Coffey said as the light of the flying human form intensified. She heard dogs whimpering and people cursing as she was swallowed by white light.
Coffey had been sitting on the hill before she was enveloped in the bright light, and when the light dimmed, she was sitting on a log in a forested area next to a large swamp.
“How am I here?” she asked, looking around herself. She didn’t know exactly where she was, but the flora looked familiar and she assumed she was still in South Carolina.
The tiny, bright human that had been hovering before her on the hill appeared now as a full grown man with shiny, golden skin and wings at his back. He was taller than Coffey and he had features on his face that hadn’t been visible before. His eyes were bright and seemed to rest on his cheekbones, and his smooth face was very angular and handsome. He was bare chested, but there was a cloth draped at his waist to hide his modesty. His body wasn’t muscular or fat, but his limbs and belly looked plump and soft.
“You’re here as my guest. And we hope you can help us,” the man said, smiling weakly, hopefully.
– – –
from the Manual and Reference of the Fonlands
The beings of the Fonlands are a complex family with the Ruling Gods, Mawu-Lisa, as the progenitor. All Fonlanders have at least one parent and they exhibit characteristics of their parents, though Fonlanders are not clones or exact duplicates of their parents. The various species of Fonlanders are catalogued according to their disc of origin and physical features. All Fonlanders are capable of mating and producing offspring with one another. The concept of gender in the Fonlands can be very confusing to an Earther, though Earthers generally recognize Fonlanders of two genders like that of humans.
Many of the Fonlanders who permanently inhabit Earth are descended from multiple species of the Fonlands and there are very few Earth-bound Fonlanders who would be considered purely one species that originates in the Fonlands. Earthborn Fonlanders seldom travel to the Fonlands and those that do are treated as outsiders.
Fonlanders can mate with and produce children with Earthers of various species including humans, but only a select few Earther species are able to carry offspring created with an Fonlander.
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