Children of the Uprising (43 page)

The survivors gathered around Addy and Evan instead, wanting to hear more. They knew it wasn't over because how could it be over? They had one more mission. One more, Evan promised them, and
then
it would be over.

Sixty-eight

“So that's how the War started?” the young girl asked, barely able to cover the skepticism in her voice.

“You think I'm telling you stories?” the old woman responded to her.

“I don't know. It's just seems tooâ”

The old woman cut her off. “It seems too easy? Too fast?” The girl nodded her head. “You think that because it's so hard to end a war, it should also be hard to start one.” The old woman remembered the bloody details that she was glossing overâthe battles, the losses, the victories. Sure, there was more to the start of the war than she was letting on, but none of it mattered. The war was inevitable from the moment that Addy and Evan, the new war's Adam and Eve, decided to fight on.

“Shouldn't it be hard to start a war?” the girl asked.

“It should,” the old woman told her, “but it's not. It never has been. Someday, maybe, it will be.”

“If that's how the War started, then which side are we on?” the girl asked. “Are we on Addy and Evan's side or are we on the other side?”

The old woman sighed, wondering if it even mattered. “As time goes on, it becomes harder and harder to remember. It's been two generations already since the old war ended and the new war began. With each passing generation, the two sides seem to triple in size, no matter how many people are killed. Both sides know all too well how to make a war grow.”

“I still don't know if I believe you,” the young girl said.

The old woman looked past the girl and into her house. She wondered if she should open the old chest she kept in her bedroom to show the girl what was inside. Maybe those old journals would make the girl believe. But no, the old woman decided, the journals should stay hidden. The girl would have to decide what to believe on her own. “Why don't you believe me?” the old woman asked.

“Because the story is too sad to be true,” the young girl said.

“How would a story being sad make it any less true?”

“Well, if the story is true, then that means that everything was pointless. It means that everyone was either a bad guy or a failure.”

“Is that what you think?” the old woman asked.

The girl shrugged again. “Well, there doesn't seem much point in trying to end the War if it's only going to lead to another war.”

“Listen,” the old woman told her, “I'm going to teach you the most important thing you'll ever learn.” The girl leaned in toward her. “Are you ready?” The girl nodded vigorously.

The old woman began slowly, trying to find the right words. “You can't judge people by the outcome of their actions. There's far too much chance in the world for that. If you judge people only by the outcome of their actions, you will grow up to be cynical and disappointed.”

“Then how should we judge people?” the girl asked, confused.

“Judge them on what they try to achieve and how much they risk in trying to achieve it. Judge them based on the courage they have to muster to roll the dice when it counts and not on how those dice land.”

“What does that do?”

“It takes all those people that you want to call bad guys and failures and turns them into heroesâevery single one of them.”

The young girl thought about it. She thought about the stories the old woman had told her. She thought about Joseph and Maria and Christopher. She thought about Michael and Reggie and Brian. Then she thought about Addy and Evan and even Jared. “Can they really all be heroes?” the girl asked the old woman.

The old woman's heart throbbed, knowing the type of War-torn world the young girl was going to have to grow up in, knowing all too well about the paranoia and the loneliness and the sadness that would surround her for her entire life. “Wouldn't you like to live in a world full of heroes?” the old woman answered the girl.

“That would be nice,” the young girl replied, looking up at the old woman with a smile full of naive hope.