The Water Dancer

That evening, Hiram smells food cooking and comes downstairs to find Corrine, Hawkins, Amy, Mr. Fields, and three unknown black people. Seeing Hiram, Corrine invites him to join them. The food is extravagant, “the most indulgent meal” Hiram has ever eaten. After, he is shocked to see Corrine help clear the table with everyone else. The group then go to the parlor to play a game of blind man’s bluff; Hiram suspects that they are celebrating something. The next morning, Hiram sleeps late and eats two muffins for breakfast. He then walks outside and, surveying the landscape, concludes that they are somewhere around Virginia’s border.

Hiram watches two white people come out of the woods in the distance, seemingly a father and son. The son greets him with a nod, but then they disappear. Hiram falls asleep and dreams of all the things he has undergone recently. He is awoken by Amy coming out onto the porch. She says she knows that Hiram probably has lots of questions, but also understands that he doesn’t want to talk much. She confirms that they are at Corrine’s property, Bryceton. As an only child, she inherited the estate after her parents died. Influenced by ideas from the North, Corrine is opposed to slavery, and Bryceton is a station on the Underground Railroad. Everyone who lives and works there is an Underground Agent.

Being an agent takes many different forms. Some devote themselves to “paperwork,” a vital element of securing people’s freedom. Others work on gathering information through “gossip” and media. Amy says that she and Hawkins used to be enslaved by the “meanest man in the world.” That man married Corrine, and now he is dead. Amy explains that the “field agents” of the Underground are those who actually assist in whisking enslaved people off of plantations. She herself is a field agent, a position that helps her remember her own freedom.

At Bryceton, Hiram is trained to be an agent. He also spends time working on furniture. Every night he completes a training regime, which includes running a distance of six or seven miles in an hour. The men who lead the agents through this training regime are all white, some Quality and some Low. Meanwhile, Hiram also resumes his studies with Mr. Fields, picking up where they left off as if no time has passed at all. Hiram is able to browse through the library and pick up any books he wants; he also starts writing, recording his thoughts and experiences.

After a month of life at Bryceton, Hiram comes to meet Mr. Fields and finds Corrine there instead. Hiram is impressed by Corrine, but also intimidated. He feels that he recognizes some of his own loneliness in her. She reflects that as a woman of Quality, she was encouraged to have an education, but that any knowledge she gained was supposed to be “ornamental.” She places a package in front of Hiram: it is a bundle of documents, including letters, authorizations, and bills of sale. She says that Hiram may keep them for a week in order to memorize their characteristics. They belong to an enslaver, an educated man, and Hiram must memorize their contents as well as learn to recreate their style.

Hiram spends a week studying the documents before meeting Corrine, who “rigorously” questions him about the details of the enslaver’s life. These interrogations take place over several nights. On the last night, Corrine mentions a jockey owned by the enslaver called Levity Williams. Hiram must fake documents for him, including “a day-pass for the road,” “a letter of introduction” and, eventually, free papers. Hiram does so, although he never finds out if Williams is successfully freed. Still, writing these fake documents makes him feel powerful, and this soon becomes his main role at Bryceton. Every few weeks, Corrine brings him a new bundle of documents to memorize.  

Hiram finds it surprisingly moving to learn such intimate details about the lives of enslavers. At night, he dreams about Sophia or has nightmares about the time he spent in jail. Over time, he learns about another person in the Underground who also has the power of Conduction. She is “beloved and famed” all over the North and has been granted the nickname Moses. Although those in the Virginia Underground know that she is capable of Conduction, they don’t know how she does it, and thus they launch a series of experiments in order to see how Hiram can make himself conduct. Trying to summon his memories doesn’t work.  

One day, after another failed experiment, Corrine tells Hiram that his training is nearly complete; he is almost ready to go out into the field as an agent. She says that before they brought Hiram to Bryceton, they knew he was educated and intelligent, with a fiercely powerful memory. However, they desperately need him to be able to master his power of Conduction. The current techniques they possess are not enough to rescue people from the “coffin” of slavery in the Deep South. Hiram asks what will happen if he is never able to use Conduction in service of the Underground, imagining he will be forced to do forgeries forever. However, Corrine emphasizes that he is free and can do whatever he wants. Growing indignant, Hiram asks to meet the people whom the Underground is saving. Corrine agrees to show him.