Virginia Hamilton Quotes

“They say the people could fly. Say that long ago in Africa, some of the people knew magic.”

“And they flew like blackbirds over the fields. Black, shiny wings flappin against the blue up there.”

“The slaves who could not fly told about the people who could fly to their children. When they were free.”

“Then, many of the people were captured for Slavery. The ones that could fly shed their wings.”

“They couldn’t take their wings across the water on the slave ships. Too crowded, don’t you know.”

“The people who could fly kept their power, although they shed their wings. They kept their secret magic in the land of slavery.”

″‘Yes, Daughter, the time is come,’ Toby answered. ‘Go, as you know how to go!‘”

“There was a great outcryin. The bent back straightened up. Old and young who were called slaves and could fly joined hands.”

“She flew clumsily at first, with the child now held tightly in her arms. Then she felt the magic, the African mystery.”

“Sarah couldn’t stand up straight any longer. She was too weak. The sun burned her faced. The babe cried and cried.”

″‘Oh,’ M.C. said, and then: ‘Are her greens any good this year?’ ‘Nothing’s any good this year,’ Ben replied. ‘My daddy says it will get worse with mining going on everywhere.‘”

“Suddenly he was aware of the deep whine of machines in the hills behind Sarah’s to the north. He raised his arm so that his hand seemed to slide over the perfect roll and curve of the hill range before him to the south. He fluffed the trees out there and smoothed out the sky. All was still and ordered, the way he liked to pretend he arranged it every day.”

“As if in a trance, M.C. gazed out over the rolling hills. He sensed Sarah moving through undergrowth up the mountainside. As if past were present. As if he were a ghost, waiting, and she, the living.”

“The problem for both of them was that they couldn’t walk a path together for fear M.C.‘s father or others might see them. M.C. would walk the paths and Ben would stalk him, hidden in the trees.”

″‘Grandaddy came here in his mama’s, Sarah’s, arms,’ Jones said quietly. ‘She wasn’t free yet. The war wasn’t started but it was coming. Only Sarah couldn’t wait. I expect she ran until she found a place big enough to free her troubles. Just the clothes on her back, that half-dead child and the song she sang to him, my granddaddy. He grew up and sang it to my daddy. And he to me.‘”

″He’s my spirit, M.C. thought. He can see me and everything around me and the path, too. Good old spirit.”

“Will it really be mine—this mountain? Daddy says it will one day. He loved the mountain, its long, lingering dawns. But he frowned, squinting off at the hills with night still huddled in their folds. Now it won’t ever be mine.”

“Calling like birds and animals wasn’t just a game they played. It was the way M.C. announced he was there without Ben’s daddy and his uncles finding out. M.C. wouldn’t have wanted to run into the Killburn men any more than he would want his own father to know he was playing with Ben.”

“Boys scattered around the hills never would play with Ben. They said it was because he was so little and nervous. But M.C. had played with Ben from the time he was a child and didn’t know better. When he was older, he had been told. Now he guessed Ben was like a bad habit he couldn’t break and had to keep secret.”

“There she was, hurrying over the last hill facing the mountain. She always glanced behind her, never trusting the empty trail as she raced ahead, carrying something. M.C. knew the story by heart. He knew she ran for freedom. She carried a baby.”

“From where she was across-river, she could look away to these hills. She might even be able to see M.C.‘s needle of a pole. No, not likely. But maybe a sparkle, maybe a piercing flash in the corner of her eye. She would have to smile and come on home. Jones sighed contentedly.”