Blood at the Root

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of enslavement, cursing, death, and graphic violence.

Seven-year-old Malik Baron is at a 4th of July party at his Aunt Denise’s house in Helena, Alabama. He is overwhelmed by the feeling that he needs to get home, so he races there on his bike.

Malik hears a noise in his mother Lorraine’s room. He finds her chanting in a language he doesn’t understand, surrounded by four cloaked figures. He desperately tries to get to her, but a fierce wind stops him from moving.

Suddenly, as his mother screams, a green light engulfs the room. He looks down at his own hands and sees blue “electric bolts flowing through” them (6). One of the men reaches for him, and Malik screams as blue light shoots from his hands. The room erupts in fire.

In the silence that follows, Malik looks around and sees a destroyed room with three dead bodies. The fourth figure and his mother are gone. He sees blue light still swirling around his arms and realizes that his magical powers have been awakened.