The Water Dancer

Hiram begins to have frequent, involuntary Conductions, leaving him feeling exhausted and emotionally raw. On one of the many walks he takes to clear his head, one of Ryland’s Hounds kidnaps Hiram. Shortly after the kidnapper begins moving Hiram across country, Bland kills the Hounds and frees Hiram. On the way back to Philadelphia, Hiram and Bland run into Moses (Harriet Tubman), who teases him for allowing the Hounds to get the jump on him.

Back in Philadelphia, Hiram has an emotional breakdown when he realizes that the Underground did not intervene in the kidnapping because they wanted to send a message by killing the Hounds out in the country. When Bland explains all of this to Hiram, Hiram is at first angry but then comes to see that the actions of the Underground are for the greater good. Nevertheless, the experience brings up still unhealed trauma from the failed escape attempt that landed Hiram and Sophia in Ryland’s Jail.

Later that evening, Raymond and Bland tell Hiram that they do not approve of the methods—the time in the pit and the hunt—that Corrine used to force Hiram’s power to manifest. Even more important is that they know where Sophia is. Sophia is right back at Lockless because Corrine convinced Howell to take her back. Raymond and Bland want to liberate Sophia as a sort of apology for Corrine’s actions.

Two weeks letter, Raymond informs Hiram that the plan to liberate Sophia is complicated because Lydia (Otha’s wife) and Otha’s children are in Alabama and must be rescued quickly. Because there is no strategic importance in rescuing them, Corrine is not interested in helping. Raymond recruits Hiram to help with the documents needed to free Otha’s family. Raymond also gives Hiram access to a cache of personal files that include an overwhelming array of stories about the people rescued from slavery by the Underground. The desperation, resilience, and bravery of the Tasked in the stories solidifies Hiram’s commitment to doing whatever he can to end slavery.

Still later, Hiram meets with Bland, who tells him they must talk with Corrine before rescuing Sophia since their actions will have an impact on the Underground in Virginia. Hiram is furious at Corrine that Sophia is still held, so much so that his anger causes him accidentally to Conduct right there in the room as he talks with Bland. As soon as Hiram tries to direct the Conduction, he loses control over it. Bland is frightened by what he sees but realizes that this power is exactly what Corrine has been hoping for. Later, Bland explains to Hiram that although he understands Hiram’s anger at Corrine, Corrine has made many sacrifices and the Underground needs someone like Hiram to help them succeed. His point is that being morally right is not the same thing as being morally pure. Bland walks Hiram home safely. 

Hiram, Bland, and the White brothers move ahead with the preparations to rescue Lydia and her children. They end up blackmailing a slave seller to steal papers from Elon Simpson, a man who frequently purchases slaves from Lydia’s current master, McKiernan. The plan is for Hiram to forge documents to make it look like Lydia and the children McKiernan sold then to a new owner; Bland will disguise himself as a person conducting Lydia and the children to this new owner to free Lydia and the children. Hiram and Bland manage to secure the papers. 

It is the end of summer by the time all preparations are complete. Bland leaves to put the plan into effect. Hiram has the chance to attend a big abolitionist convention in Philadelphia, where he runs into Moses and Kessiah, a former Tasked from Lockless who used to watch Hiram when he was a baby. Kessiah, it turns out, is one of Thena’s daughters. Kessiah had the good fortune to marry into Moses’ family and gain her freedom after Howell sold her off. Hiram feels more connected to Lockless after meeting Kessiah. The reformers at the convention support many issues beyond abolition, leading Hiram to realize that “[s]lavery was the root of all struggle” (251-2) because exploitation of the bodies of men, women, and children was the foundation for oppression. Hiram is ruminating on the connection between slavery and the corruption at the heart of the American system when the Whites receive word that Bland has Lydia and the children in his custody.

The next day at the convention, Hiram has a conversation with Moses. She explains to him that the many rumors about her power are ones she does nothing to dispel. She keeps her own counsel about the extent of her powers and refuses to talk about the Underground openly because this information has the potential to impede her success as a conductor. She also recruits Hiram to help her with a mission. She promises to contact him when the time comes.

The next morning the Philadelphia Underground station receives devastating news. Bland is dead, having been killed during his mission to Alabama, and Lydia and the children are in bondage once again. Otha is hysterical and angry at first. Later, Otha tells Hiram about the story of how he and Lydia always understood that their love for each other transcended being Tasked. Lydia once stopped Otha from attempting to kill the overseer who whipped Lydia for refusing to give in to sexual demands. Lydia helped Otha to see that the focus needed to be on surviving, not satisfying Otha’s misguided sense that the overseer’s abuse of Lydia was an affront Otha’s manhood. Their vow to survive gives Otha hope that the failed mission is not the end for his family.

The convention ends the next day. Corrine shows up, and members of the Underground meet: With Bland dead, important plans of the Underground must be revised. Hiram is deeply burdened because he begins to suspect that some flaw in his forgery of the papers to allow Lydia, Bland, and the children to escape caused the failure of the mission. Hawkins tells him that one of the children got sick. As a result, Bland and his charges had to travel by day, which brought them to the notice of the authorities, who held Lydia and the children to check for any recent runaways. Their descriptions matched a runaway notice. Bland was killed—chained and dumped into the river—after he kept trying to break them out of the jail where he was held. Hawkins is angry. Bland was his friend, and he believes the death of Bland on a personal mission is a waste of a life and resources that should have gone to support the Underground.

Two months pass, during which Hiram bides his time, grieves, and visits with Kessiah to reminisce about his mother and Lockless. In mid-October, the mission with Moses finally commences. Moses uses her power to Conduct herself and Hiram across the Delaware River. To exercise her power, Moses assembles her memories of loved ones sold off and weaves them into a story. When the Conduction ends, they are far from Philadelphia. Moses loses consciousness.

Eager to protect Moses, Hiram takes her deep into the surrounding woods and hides her until she wakes. Upon wakening, she tells him how she Conducted them. She says, “The jump is done by the power of our story. It pulls from our particular histories, from all our loves and all our losses. All that feeling is called up, and on the strength of our remembrances, we are moved” (278). Struggling to make sense of what she has just told him, Hiram tells her about how Santi Bess walked into the Goose and left behind Rose; Hiram also tells her he that he cannot remember his mother and wonders if these gaps in memory explain his inability to control his power. Moses listens to Hiram’s stories of the crucial moments when the power did work, then she explains that Conduction requires two additional elements beyond memory: water and knowledge of the end point of the journey. She also points out that maybe Hiram cannot remember his mother because he wants to forget the trauma of their separation.

Having recovered, Moses begin working on their mission, which is to rescue some of Moses’ family members—her brothers Robert, Henry, and Ben as well as Jane, Henry’s wife—from Broadus Plantation. There is one hitch. Everyone but Robert is waiting for them in a cabin, but Robert must be retrieved from the plantation. Robert has a pregnant partner, Mary, with whom he wanted to spend as long as possible with before leaving. Before Hiram leaves to get Robert, Moses reminds them all of her one unbreakable rule—”none shall turn back” (284); information about a mission is on a strictly need-to-know basis to protect all involved in case of capture. When Hiram arrives to take Robert away, Robert and Mary are engaged in an angry argument because Mary has intuited that something is up. She thinks Robert is leaving her for another woman and threatens to set the Hounds on him if he leaves. Desperate to be away, Hiram tells Mary the truth and promises to come back for her later. She relents.

On the way back to the escape party, Robert tells Hiram that he did intend to leave Mary behind because he resents that she is pregnant not with his child, but that of their master’s son. This feeling of resentment against a Tasked woman for sexual involvement with a master is one that Hiram recognizes: He felt it himself as he imagined Sophia with Nathanial Walker until Sophia called him out about it. Robert complains that the tasked “can’t ever have nothing pure” or “clean” (293) because of slavery. Hiram takes Robert to task by telling him that there is no such thing for anyone involved in slavery. The important thing is to recognize the truth. Refusing to recognize this truth is to be willfully blind like the Quality, who are still under the illusion that they are clean and pure despite soling their hands with slavery, sexual exploitation, and selling the children they produce from this exploitation.

Moses conducts her family members to Philadelphia. The escape is powered by a call-and-response story performed by the members of the party. The story is of how Moses was separated from her first husband, John Tubman.

The mission is a success. Hiram then tells Moses that he had to promise to return for Mary to get Robert away. She is not pleased with this news. Meanwhile, the Philadelphia Underground station learns that the owner of Lydia and the children may be willing to sell because he is in dire financial straits. The plan is for Otha and a few others to raise the money by traveling North and telling the story of Otha’s escape to abolitionists. Otha’s story has been assembled into a slave narrative for sale. After the momentous events of October, Hiram informs them that he must go back to Lockless. He has received a letter with information that gives him some sense of urgency.

Before returning to Lockless, Hiram has a conversation with Moses, during which she gives him the advice to keep his power and plans close. He doesn’t owe Corrine or the Underground any more than he is willing to give, no matter what emotional blackmail Corrine brings to bear on him. Hiram returns to Virginia, where he has a meeting with Corrine. It would be dangerous to make an enemy of Corrine, so Hiram strikes a deal with her. In exchange for her promise to get Thena and Sophia away from Lockless at some time of her choosing, Hiram will return to Lockless, where he will replace Roscoe by serving as the head servant to his father. His role will be to secure information about Lockless and forward it to the Underground.