Beneath the Darkening Sky (3 page)

The fires rise higher and come closer, spitting red. They crack and spread, glowing orange. When the hut crashes, the yellow and red flames sparkle into the sky and then fall back down again,
raining fire.

I can barely see because I’m crying so hard. It’s the worst smell – burning flesh and fresh blood and shit. Mama whimpers like a little girl. Two of the rebels come and drag
her out. Mama screams. One of the rebels spins and hits Mama in the face with his gun. I reach out.

No!

‘Mama!’

As if on cue, the beasts turn. All eyes on the mango tree.

Darkness stalks me in the tall grass on the far side of the field. I can almost hear it growl and see it quiver, as if it’s breathing. What does it look like? Does it
have big teeth? Or tusks? As I crouch behind the smelly goat, catching glimpses of the shadow, the sour taste of fear fills my mouth.

‘Hey!’ Akot yells. ‘Quit daydreaming!’

I turn. Akot whips the goats with his long stick. We’re supposed to be driving them home. Akot’s clothes are so clean and white. They always are after Mama washes them.

‘I’m not daydreaming,’ I say. Quietly, in case the dark thing gets spooked. ‘There’s something over there.’

‘It’s probably a jackal,’ Akot says. ‘If it gets too close, it’ll eat you.’

‘I want to see it.’

‘You’ve already seen jackals! Come on, let’s go home.’

‘I want to see it up close.’

‘Why? Do you think they get cuter up close? The closer you get, the uglier it’ll get and then it’ll eat you. Come on!’ He walks up behind me and whacks my shins with his
stick. ‘Come on.’

‘Ouch! Akot, that hurt.’

‘Then hurry back to Mama and tell on me. Just help me get these goats back first.’

I give one of the goats a hard whack on the rear and scowl at Akot. He doesn’t care, he just wants to get home and eat. Back in our village, we put the goats in their pen. A man stands
near the gate. He is wearing dark-green army clothes, almost black. He leans against the fence and chews on a stick, staring at me and Akot.

I turn and look at the village. Every door is shut and the only people I see are more soldiers in their dark-green clothes. Akot is gone.

‘Akot?’ Now the soldiers are gone. ‘Mama?’ I run for Mama’s hut. She is waiting for me inside, with Papa and a soldier. My parents are wearing such beautifully
clean clothes, pure white. Mama’s weeping. She runs to me and picks me up, holding me tightly. Over her shoulder, I can see my father trying to keep a brave face. He doesn’t smile and I
feel he should hate the soldier, but he shows no hate either.

‘Mama,’ I whisper. ‘Why are there soldiers?’

Mama cries.

‘We have come for you,’ the soldier says. ‘The revolution needs soldiers and you have been chosen to join the movement. You will share in the glory when the oppressive
government is torn down and our glorious new world rises up.’

‘New world?’

‘Yes.’ The soldier smiles. ‘Everything will be reborn in the revolution, but first we must pull out the weeds so that the flowers can grow.’

Then why is Mama crying?

‘He will come with us.’ I feel the soldier’s rough hands around my waist, pulling me from Mama. She cries more and won’t let go, but he walks up behind her and touches
her arms. Then her arms relax and she lets me go. The soldier pulls me away and I watch my parents getting smaller and further away. Mama’s hands reach out for me.

Chanting hums and rides the air from a distant chorus. Old spirit songs. Grandfather’s songs. The soldier grabs my arms, pulls me up and pushes me over into the big open circle where we
dance in festivals and play at night. All the huts face the circle, so our mothers can watch us children play. My grandparents sit in the middle and I perch in front of them on a three-legged
wooden stool. A special calabash is in front of them, filled with the red ash made from cow dung. It is magic ash, carefully prepared for talking to the gods.

Grandfather chants with his eyes closed, calling out to the gods of the village. In the air a little cloud of white smoke floats by. It curls up and dances above us, I watch it swirl around and
around. Growing bigger and bigger. Lights spark, flash inside the streak of white cloud, and shoot out. A dozen red yellow green lights spin and dance in the air around us. Grandfather’s song
rings out.

My grandmother gets up, holding the calabash and reaching into it. At first, her chant is quiet. I know the words because I’ve heard the song so many times. A little red ash spills from
her hand onto my head. Her song gets louder, raising a call to the spirits, begging for my protection. More ash falls. As Grandmother sings louder, her hand shakes faster and more ash dusts me.
Though my eyes are closed, I see flashes of colour twirl around me. I can feel their heat.

My grandparents chant their songs, moving from soft, sweet sounds to harsh notes that grate on my ears. The lights spin faster, solid warmth wraps around me. They call on the gods of the village
always to guide me home. They ask the higher spirits to give me courage. They say I am going to war and that bullets only kill those who fear them, so they banish fear from me.

The song ends and I open my eyes. The lights swarm close to my skin.

My grandfather stands. ‘Come, child,’ he says. ‘Pass through my legs and the blessing will be complete.’

A new chant, low and fast, flies from his lips. I crawl between my grandfather’s legs. The closer I get, the faster the lights spin and encircle me. Like they are pushing me forward. Under
my grandfather’s legs, their heat rises and fills my body, like a sun inside me. On the other side the lights raise me up, flying around and around and around. My feet leave the ground and
the perfect blue sky becomes dark. A glorious night with so many stars, I can’t even see the ancient shapes in them. Red, blue, yellow, green, purple lights fly into my mouth, their warmth
spreads through my body.

I plummet back to earth.

I’m awake and it’s bright again. The truck’s engine shakes underneath me as it idles. More kids pile in with us and then the truck starts to move off
slowly.

Leaning against Akot, I see families huddled in what’s left of their doorways, watching us go. Watching their kids fade into the distance. Only a few men stand on those thresholds, all of
them bandaged. Most of the women are bandaged too. I think about the doctor and I wonder if the rebels hurt him. It doesn’t make sense to hurt doctors, but the rebels do many things I
don’t understand.

In the truck the kids are piled together. The adults sit along the sides. I recognise a dozen kids here from my village, and we’ve joined boys I’ve never seen before, who must have
been taken from other villages. Everyone looks really scared, except for Akot. He’s just staring out as the land passes by.

It’s my first time in a truck, and Akot’s too. But I’ve seen them before. Trucks are always driving down the big road. You can see them from where we take the goats to feed.
Who’s going to look after the goats?

My first time on a truck should be fun. And I should be with all my family. I shouldn’t be a soldier. I feel tears in my eyes. I was crying before, until I fell asleep. Now I want to cry
again. Anything, think about anything except last night. Anything, anything, anything.

I think about my last sight of home. Mama and the younger ones clinging to her skirts. Her teeth were chattering. She wasn’t whimpering or crying, she was just trembling with her mouth
half opened and her eyes staring into the emptiness of space, and then she turned and stared into my eyes. I looked down for a second, I felt weak when I saw her eyes like that. I felt like it was
my responsibility to protect Papa and her but I didn’t do anything, I can’t do anything. I lifted my face and met her eyes for a second that seemed like forever. My eyes were dry. There
was no hate in my system, no anything.

‘Hey, are you sleeping again?’

I look up and a soldier is staring down at me. The sleeves have been cut off his jacket and it’s too big for him. He uses his gun for balance as he sits on the side of the truck.
He’s smiling, but it isn’t a nice smile.

‘I’ve never seen a new recruit sleeping on the way to camp,’ the soldier says. ‘Most of them just cry until we beat them. They like the beatings, though. We beat all the
tears out of them and they never cry again. No more crying! It’s like heaven!’ He laughs. ‘We are taking you to the Promised Land!’

The rebels around him laugh. Most of them are kids but they’re already soldiers. Some of the new kids laugh too, not knowing what to do. Others just look confused, a couple aren’t
listening. I can see they want to cry, but they don’t. It’s true. They can beat your tears out of you.

‘We are
making
the Promised Land,’ comes a powerful voice. Everyone falls quiet. Whoever is talking doesn’t like the joke. ‘We are making a free world, a better
world. The revolution is the promise, and when the oppression of the government is overthrown and their flags are burned and the blasphemous idols they erect to their leaders and place in front of
their temple-courts and synagogue-senates, when those have been torn down and the greedy leaders brought low, then yes, we will have brought them to the Promised Land.’

‘Yes, Captain!’ the soldiers shout.

I don’t dare to look around at the Captain, but I know which one he is. Everyone is silent for a little.

The one teasing me looks at his feet. He turns to me again and says, quieter, ‘You’ve got strong legs. I bet you’re a real fast runner, aren’t you?’

I’m the fastest, except sometimes Pina. But I’m not telling him that.

‘No one can outrun a bullet.’ He looks at the land flying by. ‘Try to run and you’ll end up like them.’

I get up on my knees so I can see. Now there are fewer huts, and there are holes. Big square ones. Fresh graves. I know that much. People stand in the holes, digging, all in bandages, some still
wearing bloody clothes. Other big empty graves surround them like hyena dens. Some are as big as elephant wallows. How many people are now dead?

When another grandpa died last year, my grandfather called on the spirits for him and we had a big feast for the whole village. We had to wait for the grandpa’s family to come from other
places. He’d had a lot of kids and most of them had left. They said one of his sons was a doctor and lived in America, so he couldn’t come. The body rested in a small hut at the edge of
the village for weeks, where the family could visit him. My grandmother wove sacred plants into wreaths and placed them at the entrance and around the body. Grandfather said that the smell of the
plants called to the good spirits, so that they would find the old man and carry him to heaven.

It took weeks for all of the man’s children to arrive. Grandmother would go in before them to swat away the flies from the swollen body. She would have wanted to cover her nose with a mask
but they say that can drive the gods crazy and kill more people. But still she went in. It was hard enough to see a loved one dead, she told me, flies just made it worse. Only when all his
children, except the doctor in America, had come, did they bury him. The hut was burned as a signal to the spirits that it was okay to take his soul away.

But when illness comes and many people die, it’s different. No funerals and no banquets and no saying goodbye. You have to dig the graves and put the bodies in the ground as quick as you
can. One body smells a bit, but a lot of bodies smell a lot and then animals come for their own feast. Lions, even. The carrion feeders don’t usually come near the villages, because they know
men will try to kill them, and even if they get away they won’t get any food. But with so much to eat, they can’t resist. You have to dig the graves deep, or the stink still escapes.
And jackals will come and dig up the bodies. There’s nothing you can do about diseases, so people do what they have to.

Dirt sits in big piles next to each grave. Some little kids play on one of the piles. A woman is digging nearby. Maybe she is digging her husband’s grave, their papa’s grave. I watch
the kids running up the little hill, laughing. Maybe the rebels will come for them one day. Maybe Mama will dig Papa’s grave.

I want to run. Not like escape running. Just running.

When I’m running, I just think about my feet and the ground and the wind and I can pretend that I’m a cheetah or a bird. The village and the goats and the big boys at school who hate
me for being smarter than them just blow away. Then it’s just me running and the ground and I can feel the wind. I can taste the fresh air. I am free and alive. That’s what I want to
do. But I’m all squished in this truck with Akot and Otim on his other side and Akidi across from us with two other girls, then other kids from other villages and the kids who are already
soldiers.

On a hill by the road, one of the little ones they left behind stands watching us. He’s all alone on his hill, just air around him.

I look up to the sky. There’s no air in this truck, even though it doesn’t have a roof. The air is too high above us. I sit and stare at the people around me. One of the boys in the
back of the truck is wide-eyed and keeps looking around, like this is all a prank and he’s waiting for the big joke to end it. Another rubs his face, again and again. The biggest one is
crying. I don’t feel scared. At least, I don’t think so. I’m not sure what I’m feeling. Right now I just want to get out of this truck.

And we’re slowing down, perhaps they’re going to let us out. I look to see where we are – the grassland between our village and the next, where Pina lives.

Pina has goats too, and we play together on the fields while the goats eat. Sometimes our goats get mixed up, but it’s okay. Pina and I don’t fight. We like racing out in the field
while our goats eat. Pina is a really good runner. She says I run like a giraffe, but I’m as fast as she is. Her mama braids her hair like the missionary girls do. She has a big smile even
though she’s missing a front tooth. Mama says she’s going to have a really beautiful smile when she grows up. Mama says her papa is going to have to put a veil over Pina’s face so
that boys aren’t chasing after her all day. Maybe Pina’s papa is dead too.