Then
- Toussaint wakes up from a weird dream and meets with a houngan. The guy tells him that something entered his soul during the battle.
- He should have died from the hit that he took to the back of the spine, but he didn't.
- Even though he doesn't want to think about it too much, Toussaint knows the guy is right. After all, he can read now, and he couldn't before. How else do you explain that?
- Toussaint explains that when he was a kid, everyone said he had half a soul since he was a twin. Then his sister died and no one talked much about it anymore.
- Well, he definitely has one soul, the houngan reassures him.
- After the houngan leaves, Toussaint goes back to bed.
- As he tries to sleep, he thinks that there are three types of slaves: (1) Slaves filled with hate who want to destroy anyone and anything in their path, even if it doesn't make sense; (2) slaves who are so filled with sadness that they end up hurting themselves; and (3) slaves longing for justice because of what's been done to them.
- You don't have to think about it too long before figuring out that Toussaint fits in the third category.
- He thinks back to stuff he's seen that haunts him.
- Like, say, the woman who gave birth to a baby but couldn't keep it since it was her master's "property." She tried to run away and get help from Toussaint's dad, but her master killed the infant just to teach her a lesson—right in front of her and a young Toussaint.
- Then there was a guy who was whipped for stealing some bread to eat. Toussaint's dad wants to try to heal his wounds, but it will take a lot of time and rest, he explains to the master.
- Instead the master cuts his head off with a machete. He doesn't want to waste time on a slave, and he can't be bothered to waste a bullet from his gun either.
- Finally, Toussaint remembers riding home from delivering a woman's baby when he came upon some men beating a woman in a field. He told them off for doing so.
- Pretty quickly, they turned on him instead, and before he knew it his eye was swollen shut and his ribs were broken.
- Toussaint's master gave him time off so he could heal. He also reported how much he hates slave owners like that, saying they give the rest of the fair slaver owners a bad rap.
- It's then that Toussaint realizes that slavery turns all men into evil versions of themselves. Sure, his master is kind to him, but he doesn't do anything to stand up to the other men who beat and kill their slaves either.
- A little while later, the men who beat up Toussaint come by his owner's house to pay for his time off work. Since they damaged Bayou de Libertas's property (a.k.a. Toussaint), it's only right that they pay for it, they figure.
- Bayou is a little embarrassed, but he accepts the money nonetheless.
- Toussaint knows that he can't stick around with Bayou forever, even if the guy is relatively kind.
- He decides right then and there to join Boukman in the revolution to free the enslaved.