The world is stirring when me born. Turn of the century, Massa call it. Him say is a world full of possibility. Of sights yet unseen. But this world him speak of not meant for the likes of me. Didn’t know this as I lay in the warm waters of the womb, watched over by the Ancestors. Didn’t know that Stella, me mama, still deciding if she going keep me or kill me. She just turn nineteen, late for a first pickney slave woman.

‘Is what we all do. Protect our babies by refusing dem life,’ Stella say, rocking me gently. ‘Drink bitter herbs. Make our wombs heave and cramp and push the unborn out. Bury dem bloody lump of a body under the big old mango tree. Send dem spirits back to the Ancestors. But you me baby,’ she say, while I lay there suckling. ‘You was different. Me felt you strength inside me, grasping at life. And when you slipped from out me womb, and me held you up in the dawn light, and you looked pon me with dem big brown eyes, me knew you going be the one that can survive. Grow tall. Live. And you have that copper skin. Not like me. Dark as the bottom of the old cooking pot.’

At first is a small world I live in, gurgling in the soft, leaf-shadowed morning light. A world of bird song. Of patches of sunlight. Of river water. Of milk and the sweet breath of Stella when she bend down to kiss me. And everywhere round me is a world full up with bright colours and the sun is warm, gentle on me skin.

Most nights, Stella hug me close, rub me back, sing till I fall into a trouble-less sleep. Not this night. This night, a cane come tapping down the path. And when the tapping stop outside the hut, is only a waiting stillness. The silence broken by the lonely hooting of a patoo, high up in one of the tree them.

Tap, tap, tap. In come an old woman dressed in white with a face that have not a wrinkle. Skin so black is blue, and eyes so deep them suck in all the light from the flickering candle flame.

‘New moon and the pickney still living. Praise be, lockjaw don’t catch’im,’ the old woman say. ‘No need to trouble meself with burial rites,’ and she sigh like thunder rolling.

Then them big eyes look me up and down, from the top of me head to the bottom of me feet. Eyes that can look right through you. Seeing back to who you was before and who you was before that.

‘Old man in a baby body. Eager to learn. But him going need plenty strength to walk the path him born on.’

‘What you mean?’ Stella ask, full of worry as she pick me up, hold me close.

‘Him going travel far.’