Abraham's Treasure (eBook)

Joanne Skerrett (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2018 | 1. Auflage
184 Seiten
Papillote Press (Verlag)
978-0-9571186-8-3 (ISBN)

Infos

'A moving coming of age story packed with tropical adventure.' - Ros Asquith Teenage twins James and Jerome discover that treasure, buried during the days of slavery, is their rightful inheritance. As the boys de-code the clues that will lead to the treasure, they have some strange encounters: there's a helpful parrot, a ghostly figure from the past and a legless man who can walk; they escape from a falling tower and discover a boiling lake. And, of course, there's also an evil stranger who confronts them in an exciting climax. Abraham's Treasure mixes a classical hunt-the-treasure plot with a hint of magical realism to give a real page-turning quality. The twins are typical teenagers who have some very untypical experiences as they desperately strive to reach the treasure - whatever that may be - before their adversary. Great for boys but girls, too, will identify with the twins and also with Petra, an annoying neighbour who is just as smart as they are. And the wild landscape of Dominica makes it a perfect location for a spot of treasure-hunting. Joanne Skerrett was born and brought up in Dominica. She moved with her family to the United States during the 1980s. She graduated from the University of Massachusetts with a BA in English and later attended Northeastern University where she earned an MBA. She also holds a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania. She has been a journalist on newspapers including the Boston Globe and Chicago Tribune. Joanne lives in Washington DC where she works as a lawyer. Abraham's Treasure is her fifth novel and her first book for young people.

Textauszug

Chapter 1

‘This place so strange.’ Petra’s calves felt as if someone had lit a bonfire inside them. They’d been walking for hours, and the ground underneath her feet was soft and unstable. She caught a ragged breath and looked around. She could see slices of blue sky through the heavy tree cover, but there was no escaping the shroud of deep, dark forest that enveloped her.

‘Mark! Slow down!’ Her cousin Mark patiently turned around. ‘You writing this all down while you’re walking? No wonder you’re all out of breath,’ he scolded. ‘No need to write down everything I say, Petra. It’s just folklore stuff, superstition. No one really believes it. And it’s always rainy up here; that’s why the earth is so soft.’ Mark had recently returned home to Dominica and was starting a touring company. Petra had agreed to go hiking with him for the exercise and to relieve the boredom of the summer holidays.

‘But it’s so interesting…and it could be true…’ Petra wiped her brow with a cloth and turned a page in her notebook. ‘Whew. OK. Let’s start walking again. Slower. But you don’t think this place is…eerie.’ They were midway up a mountain. Trees with golden leaves surrounded them, hiding most of the sun and casting a golden shadiness over the grass. Petra looked off in the distance and thought she saw a shadow moving through the forest, but Mark’s voice interrupted her thoughts.

‘It’s supposed to be eerie. This is the only place on the island where you’ll find these trees. They were supposedly planted here by a slave.’

‘Right, the same slave who got this treasure chest from his master and buried it around here somewhere.’ There he was again! A tall, dark man wearing an off-white long-sleeved shirt and a big hat. The rough material of the shirt stood out to Petra as did the looseness of the man’s pants, which seemed to be held up by a cloth belt. His hat was large and old-fashioned; clearly its main purpose was to fend off an unforgiving sun. She had seen the type of shirt before. ‘Osnaburg,’ her father had called it. His great-great-grandfather, a slave, had been given such a shirt by his master on a plantation. But this particular man was just standing there staring at them. Petra looked over at Mark but he didn’t appear to notice the man.

Mark shrugged. ‘So the story goes. But it’s more likely that the slave owner deeded this land to the slave and his descendants. I don’t think there’s any treasure or anything magical about this place. Doesn’t matter much anyway. No one wants to live up here.’

‘So, what’s that man doing here, then?’ Petra said. She nodded in the direction where she’d just seen the man.

‘What man?’ Mark followed her gaze.

The figure wasn’t there anymore. ‘I just saw a tall man standing between those trees. He was just there!’ She looked around. There was no man. No one else but she and Mark.

Mark narrowed his eyes at her. ‘Maybe you should have some more water. Dehydration can cause…’

‘I know what I saw!’

‘OK. Maybe, it’s one of the villagers just taking a walk,’ Mark said.

Petra sighed, angry at Mark for not believing her. ‘It’s spooky up here. Maybe there’s evil spirits up here.’

Mark laughed. ‘I’m telling that to the next group of tourists I bring up here. They’ll love the thrills of a haunted tropical forest with underground spirits.’ When it came to Dominica there were plenty of crazy stories but this hike was built around the craziest story Petra had ever heard.

‘OK, so tell me again so I can write it down,’ Petra said. ‘It’s going to be part of the history book I will write someday that will make me famous. Oh, and wait till James and Jerome hear about this. They will not believe I found out about this before they did!’

Mark looked at his thirteen-year-old cousin and shook his head. ‘OK, Petra. You really need to stop this battle with those two boys.’

She shrugged. ‘They started it. Now tell me the story.’

Mark nodded. ‘So. Jeremiah Mackey was a very wealthy man,’ Mark said effortlessly as he bounded over tree stumps and rocks.

‘That’s the slave owner,’ Petra wrote as quickly as she could, taking care not to trip on the rocks as she followed Mark.

‘Jeremiah Mackey had been one of the most successful plantation owners in the Caribbean. He owned hundreds of slaves, many houses, businesses. Rich men, poor men; everybody knew his name.

One day, while walking through his cane fields here in Dominica, he saw a group of slaves, laughing, around noontime, I guess – the time when the sun was highest in the sky and the slaves were less likely to want to cut down the cane.

He tried to listen to what the group was so excited about. He heard the small voice of a boy, rising above the laughter. What was he was saying? Reciting some sort of poetry? Jeremiah listened closer. The boy’s voice rang out over the crowd. The boy was reciting words that sounded familiar: it was The Sermon on the Mount, from the Bible.

Jeremiah thought the boy had excellent delivery! He must have been about eight years old, yet his voice was clear, mature sounding and his confidence probably made him sound much better than the priests Jeremiah heard during Mass. He listened and listened. Everyone was clapping as the boy finished speaking.

‘Do it again,’ some of the men cried. ‘Say it again!’

‘Jeremiah wondered who this boy was, how he’d learned and memorised this passage, and who taught him. So he asked. When the overseer saw his boss standing nearby he immediately ordered everyone back to work. The slaves scrambled, as the whip cracked the air, leaving only the overseer and the little boy in Jeremiah’s presence.

‘Who are you? And where did you learn that?’ Jeremiah asked the boy.

‘My Papa taught me, sah,’ the boy said.

‘Who’s your Papa?’ Jeremiah asked. The boy answered. His father, Abraham Mackey, was the preacher who held services every Sunday at the edge of the field. Jeremiah knew the man – one of his best slaves but an agitator who was always asking for favours on behalf of other slaves. It pained Jeremiah, who thought himself a fair master that a man who carried his own name could be conspiring against him with the other slaves. Abraham was also well known for being a hard worker and a man of God.

‘What is your name?’ Jeremiah asked the boy.

‘Abe Mackey, sah,’ the boy said confidently.

‘Mackey is my name too,’ Jeremiah said smiling.

The boy nodded. ‘I know. My Papa told me I might never know my real name so I must carry yours because you are my owner.’

Jeremiah flinched briefly at the sting of the boy’s words. ‘Well…you clearly are a smart young man,’ Jeremiah said. ‘Will your Papa mind if you come to my house this weekend and recite for my dinner guests?’ Mackey asked the boy.

That Saturday evening, little Abe Mackey recited the Sermon on the Mount in Jeremiah’s lavish plantation house before a group of planters, who beamed over their cognacs and smoking pipes as he performed his act full of righteousness. They clapped and laughed and asked him to do it again and again.

And this is how Abe Mackey became Jeremiah Mackey’s personal poet, his entertainer. By the time Abe Mackey was a teenager, he’d learned how to read the Great Books that were in Jeremiah Mackey’s library – even ones the master himself had not read. He was writing poetry and the stories of his fellow slaves at night after a long day of working in the fields. He read his poetry to the master’s friends and they all agreed: this was one fine, young entertaining fellow.

When Abe Mackey got older and married, the master gave him a new house, and said that his wife did not have to return to work in the fields until her babies were old enough to walk. By then Abe’s father had died and he had become the voice of the slaves.

One day, he asked for his family’s freedom. The talk of emancipation was everywhere; news of uprisings in Jamaica and Haiti had spread to Dominica. But Abe’s request bothered Mackey because he did not want to lose his favourite slave. Jeremiah Mackey was now so rich that he felt that he had accomplished everything there was to in life. All he wanted was to hear Abe’s poetry; the soothing dark-as-night sound that never ceased to assure that a reward awaited his soul in heaven.

He made a deal with Abe: ‘Stay on the plantation and I will pay you to write and recite poetry for me.’ Abe agreed on one condition – that his children would be free. Jeremiah Mackey thought this was a huge sacrifice. He did not want to anger the other slaves but he felt he had no choice. Abe’s poetry had often hinted that he thought of running away to a faraway land where a man could be free to be himself. Jeremiah reluctantly agreed.’

‘So he stayed?’ Petra...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 4.12.2018
• Verlagsort: Newcastle upon Tyne
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Kinder- / Jugendbuch ► Jugendbücher ab 12 Jahre
• Themenwelt: Kinder- / Jugendbuch ► Kinderbücher bis 11 Jahre
• Themenwelt: Kinder- / Jugendbuch ► Spielen / Lernen ► Abenteuer / Spielgeschichten
• Schlagworte: Adventure • Caribbean • Dominica • Treasure
• ISBN-10: 0-9571186-8-6 / 0957118686
• ISBN-13: 978-0-9571186-8-3 / 9780957118683