Before the Cock Crows

The sky held its breath like a mother standing at the edge of her child’s silence.

Darkness still laid heavy on the mountain, wet with night sweat and unshed rain. The stars above had not blinked in hours, and the trees, old as revolution, listened. They always did.

Sanité Bélair sat in the dirt outside the sleeping camp, her legs folded beneath her like roots. Her hands moved slow and sure, threading a bone needle with red cloth pulled from the hem of her old headwrap. That thread had seen weddings and burials, promises and betrayals. And now it would hold her musket sash together, because a woman had to be mended to march. Even a warrior.

Each stitch was a prayer that didn’t need words.

Each pull of the thread: I am still here.

Each knot: We still ain’t free.

The thread caught a breath of moonlight and glowed like a fresh wound. The ground beneath her smelled like ash and old rain. She liked that smell. It meant things had burned. And grown.

Behind her, the camp slept fitful and quiet. The kind of quiet that hums with breath and dreaming. Some rebels mumbled half-prayers into their blankets. Others just lay still, clutching knives or powder bags like they were newborns. Matias, the youngest boy, gripped his rosary like it could bite. And Marise—the one with hands that once embroidered flags for a free Saint-Domingue—curled her fingers round the blade at her hip and didn’t let go, not even in sleep.

Then came the whisper.

“Will it hurt?”

Sanité looked up.

The voice was small, but it carried like smoke.

There stood Nadège, all knees and wide eyes, barely thirteen and trying to stand like she wasn’t scared. But her hands said otherwise. They trembled like wet leaves.

Sanité didn’t coddle. Didn’t smile. She just told her the truth.

“Yes. But only for a moment.”

Nadège nodded slow. Like she was tasting the shape of pain in her mouth and deciding to swallow anyway.

Sanité tied the last stitch, bit the thread clean, and fastened the sash around her waist. Red against brown. Tight against heart. It wasn’t armor. It was something older. Something inherited.

The dark before dawn stretched thin. The stars were fading, and the trees began to breathe again.

Sanité rose and wandered through the camp like a ghost checking on her living. She moved past bodies curled close, passed murmurs and sighs, the crackle of a fire down to its bones. She passed Charles, too. Charles with his dreaming face and his musket close, like always. His lips moved in sleep, like he was whispering things he never said awake.

She paused. Let herself look.

Charles had that kind of quiet that sat next to you without asking questions. The kind that made you feel less alone without needing to talk. He never promised her freedom. He just walked beside her when she chased it.

The wind shifted.

It smelled like oranges and gunpowder. Like something holy and dangerous.

Sanité closed her eyes and remembered her first night in the mountains. The chill. The ache. The hollow in her chest when she realized there was no going back. She remembered the room in Verrettes, her mother’s rough hands guiding the needle through white cloth, whispering in Kreyòl: "Sew what they cannot erase."

And Sanité had. With thread. With fire. With her own two hands.

She sat for a moment longer. Let the quiet sink in.

Then came the dream.

She saw her mother again, stitching in the moonlight, humming a hymn too old for church. A loom of memory. A thread of names no longer spoken. Behind her, Sanité’s younger self sat on the floor, tracing the lines of a map she couldn’t yet read. A rooster crowed in the distance, and her mother paused, looked back, and said: “You hear that? That’s a reckoning.”

A rustle pulled her from sleep. The camp stirred. Shadows leaned in close. Word had come: soldiers moved in the valley below. French dogs, they said. With blood on their teeth.

She stood.

Walked to Nadège.

Reached into her pocket and pulled out a scrap of that red thread. Pressed it into the girl’s palm like a secret.

“Keep this,” she said. “It’s a promise. Of who you are. And what you’re about to do.”

Nadège didn’t answer. Just gripped it tight.

And then—

A single rooster crowed in the east. Thin. Harsh. But proud.

The trees leaned forward. The stars blinked away.

Sanité’s spine straightened like a matchstick. She looked around. Nodded once.

“Now,” she said.

The word fell heavy as stone.

The camp shifted from sleeping to rising. No fanfare. Just motion. Just breath and readiness. Some kissed beads. Others kissed dirt. They all moved with that hush only the brave know.

Charles met her at the edge of the clearing. Gave her a water pouch and powder wrapped in cloth. Didn’t speak right away.

Finally: “It’s almost time.”

She nodded.

Their hands brushed.

That was enough.

She turned to go, then paused.

Behind her: “Will it hurt?” Nadège asked again.

Sanité didn’t turn.

“Yes. But only for a moment.”

She walked into the hush of trees, musket on her shoulder, thread in her sash, and her people in her heart.

The path ahead was rough and red with memory. Each step a drumbeat. Each leaf overhead a witness. She reached the outcrop above the valley and looked back once—at the flickering camp, at the slivers of light, at what they’d been and what they were becoming.

She could still hear her mother: “When the world is dark, even a single flame is enough.”

Sanité touched her sash.

And walked on.

At Morne Rouge, the rebels waited. Tired eyes. Bloodied hands. Hope like smoke in their lungs.

Charles was there, setting position. Marise stood tall. Matias clutched his rosary still.

“Are you ready?” Charles asked.

Sanité didn’t blink.

“I was born ready.”

The first real light spilled across the trees. Warm and gold like victory.

The drums began—low, steady, like thunder just beyond the hill.

Sanité stepped forward. Lifted her head.

“Viv libèté,” she whispered. And the wind carried it.

Long live freedom.

And with that, they rose.