At first I think is a fear that me one and only friend going die, but when I surrender, look at the fear, little by little, I come to see is a different kind of fear. A different shadow to the one I used to carry. Is a fear not based on the whim of Massa, but is a fear that I going end up being a convict slave forever, working till I drop down dead. And that after all that slaving, all them wasted years, when is time to finally pass over to the Ancestors, who going help me to find the way, to speak the words of the dead?

And where will me bones lay? Not up on a little hill, close to family. No, me bones going be thrown into a burial pit with plenty other convict bones. Buried like I have no name, only a number, with no one to hold the memory of me or mourn over the little bit of life that I lived. It make me weak, this fear. It make me chafe at the chains that bind me to this place. But it also force me to accept that no matter how much I wish it, I probably never going return to the island, the family I still hold dear. I must try to pick up the threads of fate, weave them together, find a way that going help me to escape. Or die trying.

I just bout give up that James going get better when, one evening after I return from building the wall down at the harbour, I see James walking cross the courtyard. Him turn thin as a reed, the clothes hanging off him body, but him smiling and winking, happy. Looks like fate decide not to open the door of death. James return become like a sign. Somehow we going find a way to leave this barren place, and I bow down, give silent thanks to the Ancestors and the Lord, just in case.

Is then I decide to draw a line cross me heart.

Any goodness and kindness that happen in me life, I place in front of that line. Use the colour-filled memories to light up the darkness of me life.

Anything else, like when fate strike hard, them memories get pushed behind the line. Left to slumber, to wilt in the harshness of sun after clanking day. But no matter how I chain them down, sometimes, in the dead of night, after that number clock strike twelve times, me mind get pulled into them memories, the ones filled up with shades of death, shadows, made of sorrow.