Author’s note: This is a part of a creative series that borrows from archetypal myths and reimagines them as coal camp legends.

Odysseus Powers lie on the battlefield, his body broken, his Light pulling away from his bones. A bullet had torn through him as he and a band of Melungeons rode through the woods on the way to Harper’s Ferry.

They were too late.

Militia had already captured John Brown and were posted up, waiting for reinforcements.

A blast went through his ribs and knocked him off his horse, then two militia men came to mock him and finish the job. They left him there to die alone, bleeding, gasping, many of his bones broken.

His home, tucked away in the hollers of what was still Virginia, felt impossibly far away. He thought of his wife, Penny, and his son, Mackie. “Give them hell,” she told him before he left, her eyes brimming.

He couldn’t leave them until the Work was finished.

He felt the exact moment, like a vacuum seal had broken loose, that his Light slipped free from his bones. He hovered above his broken body, still breathing, rasping, eyes open but empty. For hours, he tried to find a way to return to his body.

The last ragged breaths in his body came slower, weaker, only evidenced by a frosty wisp of occasional heat escaping from his lips. He hollered and hollered at the moonlit sky, growing more angry the more aware he was that his voice wouldn’t reach the ears of anyone living.

A voice broke his cries.

It was Soluwa, the Alma of the Moon. Her black form shimmered like the night sky, her yellow eyes pooling with sorrow and ancient knowing.

“Even the marrow of your bones is stubborn,” she nodded toward the blue-lipped body on the field.

“I can’t go,” Odysseus rasped. “Not yet. We are so close. The Mountaineers must always be free.”

Soluwa tilted her head, considering. “You would defy the pull of the stars for them?”

“I would tear the gates off the veil.”

Soluwa already had a plan for Odysseus. “I have called for Heph of All, a blacksmith and bonesetter, and his wife Aggie. They will care for your body as it heals. I need you until then. The recovery will be long and slow.”

Soluwa placed a necklace around the body on the ground, its silvery beads reflecting the moonlight. “With this, you are granted the Gifts of the Almas, so long as your heart remains dispossessed from greed,” Soluwa said. “Your body will not fail you. Your strength will be magnified, and your bravery will lead you to free your people. Your spirit is duty-bound to the task— protect your people.”

As a spirit, Odysseus labored in the service of Soluwa for two years, helping her collect the souls of soldiers fighting in the war between the states and the insurrections between the Mountaineers of the western hills of Virginia and the secessionists of the eastern plantations.

Odysseus encountered many of his fallen friends, strategizing with them and vowing to each that he would return to finish what they had started. Several men said that rumors he was dead had spread, but Penny wouldn’t have it. A lot of men wanted Odysseus’s land and his lumber business.

Finally, Soluwa brought Odysseus to the blacksmith, Heph of All, and his wife, Aggie, the medicine woman. His body, free of its Light, had no will of its own. It worked silently and without complaint under the command of Heph, tending the fields and working the forge.

The tattered necklace still hung around his neck, his body tightly muscled from the work.

Soluwa thanked him for his help and told him what would happen next. “You will return and will not die. So long as you wear this necklace, you will have all of the Gifts of the Almas. But, you will feel every bit of the pain.

“You must secure the mountains. Your people lose their Light if they are made to leave, will comply as machines, like your body has done here with Heph.”

Heph of All was working in the forge as Aggie reknotted the necklace. Soluwa took out rainbow thread and began the slow work of weaving Odysseus’s spirit back into his body.

To be continued…