Chanda's Wars by Allan Stratton

Author:Allan Stratton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2008-09-23T04:00:00+00:00

23

WE PRESS OURSELVES against the ground.

“The clearing’s just ahead. I promise.” It’s Pako. His voice is hoarse and frightened. “There’s an old ruins in the center. Nobody’s ever there. Not ever.”

The high grass rustles. We cower like ground swallows hiding from hunters. I have a desperate urge to run. Nelson knows it. He grips my shoulder. I close my eyes and pray to disappear. To vanish into the air.

“There it is! The dead land,” Pako says. “Straight ahead. See?”

They’re on top of us now, so near we could trip them. Boots crunch a few feet to my right. I look up. Out of the heavy dusk, a line of men rises above the stalks. As it forges forward, the thick blades bend over us.

Mixed in with the men, I see the bobbing heads and shoulders of children, some with automatic rifles, others loaded down with sacks and crates. They focus ahead, faces hard. After them comes a man yanking a line of boys tied to a length of rope. Burlap bags hang over their heads. As they pass, Nelson shudders like he knows them. His herd boys? Another man brings up the rear, shoving the last one forward with the muzzle of his automatic rifle.

They move into the compound ahead. I peek through the row of bent stalks beside my head, and up the newly trampled path. I can’t see to the sides, but I have a view straight in front of me. My heart flutters, but not like before; buried in deep grass, we’re far enough back not to be seen, so long as we don’t move.

In the deepening gloom, I see the men, maybe fifteen or twenty, toting machine guns and rifles. Twice as many children—girls and boys both—setting down their burdens. Directly ahead, Nelson’s herd boys huddled together in front of a man with a little boy: Mandiki and Pako.

Bird whistles echo from all sides of the compound. At the sound of the all-clear, Mandiki claps his hands. “Build me a fire. Make an altar beside it.” He points to my family’s old resting place at the back of the compound. “Use that waste of rocks.”

“No, don’t take those,” Pako cries out. “They’re Thela burial stones. They’ve been there since forever. Since before the village cemetery even. They belong to the ancestors. We’ll be haunted.”

“You’ll be haunted, little scout, not me.” Mandiki laughs. “I own the dead.”

A handful of rebels yank the hooded line of herd boys over to my family’s graves. They hoist the rocks into the boys’ arms, destroying the resting place of my Auntie Amanthe, my great-grandparents, and generations of Thelas before them. I struggle to see.

Nelson touches my shoulder. I keep down and watch as the boys stagger back with their load, suffocating under the burlap hoods. They heave my family’s burial stones into a pile. The men drag them back to the graves for a second load, a third, while other men shape the pile into a pyramid.

Meanwhile, children Pako’s age, weapons

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