Keziah sat in the middle of her room, staring at the cracks in the floorboards. She could hear her grandmother humming from downstairs as she went about her cleaning. Keziah could feel the heat of the swamp move in through her window as she focused on her surroundings, trying to remember what the man told her. The room was silent; the only thing she could hear was her grandmother sweeping the floor downstairs.

Keziah loved her grandmother more than anything in the world. She always felt safe when she was around her. She loved the atmosphere of the bayou that sat within her, in her voice, her hair, her demeanor. Keziah’s grandmother was the very essence of the bayou, and her house that sat on its edge was her castle.

On Fridays, Keziah’s grandmother would make gumbo. She would take her big, cast-iron pot out of the cabinet, pull out her chopping board and ingredients and begin the ritual. She would start in the morning and she’d finish right around the time Keziah would get dropped off by her mother in the afternoon. By that time the smell would have already spread through the entire house.

Her grandmother had a way of stirring the pot – it was almost magical. She would dig the spoon into the bottom of the pot, then mix up all the ingredients, stirring them as she hummed in the heat of her house.

Keziah’s mind went back to a time when she was dancing with her grandmother in the kitchen. They had all of the windows open. They swayed to the music pouring from the cassette player, the sound of the gumbo pot bubbling as they continued to dance.

Her grandmother’s hair flowed down her back, waving back and forth like the current in a lake. The veins in her arms and hands resembled the entangled branches of the trees, and her eyes resembled the sky at sunset. They danced until the song ended.

Keziah would always watch her grandmother stir the pot, moving the spoon back and forth. Each time she would move it slower and slower. The simple stirring reminded Keziah of the way Carlos controlled the water in the lake.

Keziah’s mind drifted to her recent nights by the lake, spending time with the bayou man who’d been helping her with her magic. She could picture him shifting the water, molding it into a ball, and swinging it back and forth slowly through the air. He steadied it in mid-air and for a moment it gleamed in the midst of the moon. Then, it vanished, evaporating into the air, and a gust of heat dispersed from the former ball of water.

Keziah’s thoughts shifted again, to her grandmother stirring the gumbo pot, slowly, looking back over her shoulder at Keziah, her gold tooth gleaming the heat of the room.

Keziah opened her wide eyes. She’d never realized until now that the man, Carlos, reminded her of her grandmother. She could hear the sweeping from downstairs subside and she could hear her grandmother walking up the stairs.

Her hands clenched and the air around her grew warmer. The books on Keziah’s shelf started to rise daintily into the air, the sheets draped on her bed began to gather themselves into a cottony lump.

Her grandmother grew closer to the door. As the objects in Keziah’s room started floating around her, the footsteps were drowned out by a swirl of heat that began to surround her.

Matthew Draughter can be reached at [email protected]