Storyteller's Cabin
Margaret took the news of Joshua's death hard. She was so grief stricken that she isolated herself from the community. The only time she would speak to anyone was when she was teaching the children. The rest of the time, she wandered the backroads of the island, alone and sad.
It was while she was walking down an island road one day that she had a strange feeling she was being watched. She looked above her and saw a large black raven flying overhead, seemingly following her. As the days passed, the same raven would always seem to be around her. Whenever she arrived at school in the morning, the raven would perch upon the windowsill and watch her teach the children. And when she would go home, the raven would follow her and perch in a tree near her front door.
At the end of one of the school days, after all of the children had left, Margaret was cleaning the classroom while the raven watched her from the window. She looked at the bird and thought about how much she missed Joshua, for this was the time of day she used to teach him one-on-one. She picked up a poetry book and began to read to the raven. The raven bobbed its head up and down, as if understanding what Margaret was reading. Margaret smiled and read more poetry to the bird, and before she knew it, she was reading lessons to the bird every day after school. Margaret would sometimes laugh at herself for reading aloud to a bird, but strange as it was, she found it to be a good way to deal with her grief.
Late one afternoon, some white children returned to school to pick up some belongings they had left behind. When they got to the school, they saw Margaret speaking to the large black raven on the windowsill, reading the day's lesson. They ran back to their parents screaming, "The teacher's a witch! She's a witch! She's brought that little black boy Joshua back from the dead as a bird!"
The parents didn't believe them at first, but they agreed to accompany the children back to the schoolhouse. When they got there, they also saw Margaret reading poetry aloud to the bird. When they saw Margaret smile at the bird, and the bird nod its head back, the parents ran back to town and, like their children before them, screamed "The teacher's a witch!"
The islanders were a close-knit, fiercely religious community, and were frightened of anyone who practiced black magic or witchcraft. The rumors of Margaret being a witch also fueled many islanders' long-held suspicions about her. So it wasn't long before an angry white mob marched to the school, dragged Margaret outside and killed her, leaving her body for the vultures.
When the time came to bury her body, one of the plantation owners had pity for Margaret. He tried to have her buried at Christ's Church, a famous church on the island where John Wesley had preached. But the other plantation owners wouldn't hear of a witch being buried in a church cemetery, or in any other cemetery on the island. So the kind owner buried her body on a small piece of land he owned off the main road. He had a grave marker made for her that was inscribed with three simple words - "A Beloved Teacher."
Within a month, the locals who happened to visit the grave noticed that all the vegetation had died within a few feet of where Margaret was buried. And for the next hundred years, nothing grew around the grave - no trees, no grass, no moss. If you're ever in the area, ask one of the locals where the grave marker is and see for yourself. You'll see that nothing grows around where they buried the beloved teacher.
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