I dreamed I was nine years old again.

It was bright and warm outside. I was playing with the other kids on top of the hill that overlooked our village, right by the fields where our people toiled in the fields. I had left my rag doll on my sleeping pallet, and I was glad that for once, I didn’t bring it.

We were all involved in a very intense game of capture the flag and divided into two teams, which were red and blue. Our flags were torn rags tied clumsily with sticks we found in the woods by the spring nearby. The boy who had snuck into our territory and was trying to steal ours had his fingers barely wrapped around it. I leaped out of the bushes. My teammates were miles behind him, because he was one of the fastest runners on the red team.

“Gotcha!” I yelled.

A frightened look appeared on his face as he began to sprint away, the flag clutched in his right hand. I took after him, clumsily making my way through the tall grass. He began to giggle as I tackled him sideways to the ground, clouds of dust flying in the air around us. Something flew in my mouth, and I couldn’t stop coughing and laughing at the same time as I snatched the flag from his hand.

“You run too fast for a girl,” the boy said, grinning.

“And you run too slow for a boy,” I replied, holding out a hand. “The only reason your team is two points ahead of us is because I came to the game late since I was helping out with chores.”

He rolled his eyes, but accepted it as I pulled him up. My throat felt sore for the rest of the day, so Papa made me some willow tea.

Throughout the next several days, I couldn’t stop coughing. It felt like razor blades were going down my throat, and it was painful to swallow. Papa made me drink a ginger poultice, but when I woke up the middle of the night spitting up blood, he grabbed my hand and took to the village healer, Lafren.The entrance to her hut was covered in different herbs hanging by strings as we stepped inside. She was sitting on a mat, pounding something in a bowl.

Lafren barely looked up. “Is this how you enter other people’s homes, Matthias?”

Papa stepped behind me and placed both hands on my shoulders. “Forgive me. My...my daughter, she’s ill. It’s not a fever; she’s not burning up. She has been coughing day and night, and I don’t know what to do.”

“Have you tried ginger?” Lafren asked, setting down the wooden block she was using the grind the paste with. “It’s probably a cold. It will go away.”

“I don’t want ginger,” I said, wincing at the pain in my throat. “It’s nasty, and I hate having to drink it all the time. Can’t I have something else?”

“Honda, please,” Papa murmured.

“It makes my throat sting.”

“This has been going on for four weeks,” he said, ignoring me. “It’s a lot of blood she has been coughing up. Please, don’t you have some sort of remedy that you can give me? I don’t have much to give in return; I’m an honest man. But I can pay you with what I have gathered from last week’s harvest.”

Lafren sighed and gestured at me as she got to her feet. Her legs, bent with age, shook beneath her. “Come, child.”

I obeyed and she gently felt the lumps around my neck with her cool hands. The heat of the torch was dangerously close to my face as she held in her hand to see clearly past my tongue. Yet I knew if I moved or jerked away, I would make things worse. Lafren frowned and turned away, rummaging through her things. A hopeful look appeared on Papa’s face.

“It looks like her lymph nodes are swollen,” the old woman muttered. “Happens all the time with children her age. Perhaps an infection.”

“Will I get better, Papa?” I asked.

“Of course you will, poppet,” he said, kneeling down and scooping me into a hug. “Soon. Don’t worry.”

I began to cough as the woman approached us with something wrapped in her hands. She sighed as Papa straightened up and took it from her.

“Make her gargle this three times a day, after meals. It’s a garlic and vinegar mixture. Should help the swelling and the bleeding.” Lafren narrowed her eyes. “Do not forgot your promise, Matthias.”

“Y-Yes... of course. Thank you. Thank you so much.” He gently nudged me out of the hut and slipped the container into my palms. “I will bring it to you tomorrow. You have my word.”

It didn’t help, even though Papa gave Lafren his share of potatoes and corn. Not even after the aftertaste of phlegm mixed with garlic that lingered in my mouth when I had to eat. Not even after each coughing fit, which grew so bad that I sobbed in Papa’s arms at night because I was scared by how much blood was appearing on the pillow. The pain worsened.

And when I tried to talk one morning, I couldn’t. Every time when I went out to play for the next five months, it was impossible to even make a whisper. I tried to holler and sing, but it felt like something was blocking my throat.

Papa spent more time out in the fields. I stayed with Benny, who was only three years old at that time. He was too young to understand any of this, and just sat in the corner of our hut, quietly playing with the acorns he had found outside. There was no point in engaging with the other kids outside, and I blankly stared at the doll in my hand before throwing her against the wall. I wished I could scream.

It was late one evening when Papa finally returned, his face plastered with fright. I had just put Benny to bed and was cooking potatoes over the fire when he stepped behind the tapestry, something bulging beneath his shirt.

“Honda,” he whispered. “Can you keep a secret?”

I stared at him through my tear stained vision. He knelt down and gently held me in his arms, smelling like grass. I wanted to tell him that nobody really wanted to play with me anymore, because they thought I was ignoring them when they spoke to me. I didn’t trust Lafren, either.

Papa let go of me and pulled out a rectangular object. I flinched and scooted backwards. Some strange marks, enlarged and in white, were scrawled across the front.

“I know, I know,” he said, his brown eyes wide with fear. “This is dangerous, and it is a bad example I’m setting up for you. But this may be the only option we have left. I snuck into the civilian world today, into a building where they keep more of these. Hundreds, if not, thousands of them. I can read a little, since your grandmother had taught me a few words. You can’t show anybody this, or we will be in trouble. Books are a tool used by the civilians to cause destruction, so we must use it the right way.”

I shook my head and folded my arms, but Papa made me face him, placing the blue and white thing between us.

“You have to listen to me. People in this world won’t pity you because your voice is gone. Wipe those eyes. Pouting won’t solve anything. Lafren can’t do a thing about it, so we’re going have to figure this out ourselves.” He gently placed my hand over the cover. “It’s a book, Honda. Where the civilians get their knowledge and wisdom. Their ideology is deadly, so we must be wise when handling this, okay? My mother had a great interest in them, but we won’t repeat her mistake.”

I looked at him, confused, as he opened it. The white sheets felt very dry underneath my thumb, and a lot of black and white printed pictures of hands appeared in front of my eyes. They were displayed in different positions. Papa’s fingers glided to the very first one.

“Hold out your hand for me.”

I raised up my right one, and he arranged my fingers in a way that matched the picture before saying a letter, pronouncing it as slowly as he could. He helped me do it four times with several other pictures in the book before he allowed me to stop.

“Do you know what that means?” Papa asked, tears beading up in his eyes. I shook my head and grabbed both of his hands eagerly. I didn’t understand what I had just done, but I was glad to see him happy.

”You just told me your name, poppet.”

I smiled at him.

* * * * * * * *

When I opened my eyes, the women crowded in the wooden barracks beside me huddled against each other, trying to get as close as possible for body heat. It was still dark outside, but the sound of pouring rain filled my ears. In the open doorway, a female soldier stood in front of us, her hands on her hips. Her voice was loud and commanding.

“Get up, you dogs. Role call. Now. One minute.”

I shook Bithia awake, who had her head buried in her arms. She looked up, her eyes bloodshot before swinging one foot over the barrack. Murmured voices filled our quarters as the women started to get up. I jumped down and reached up to help her.

“That fucking bitch,” she swore in a low voice, her warm hand holding onto my arm. “She thinks she’s all that because she’s wearing a nice, ironed uniform and had a good breakfast, that she owns the place.”

I shook my head at her and rubbed my stomach. Now was not the time to talk about food. We hadn’t eaten in three days so far, just drank from the muddy puddles on the ground from all the rain we were receiving.

“Hurry,” I gestured.

As she joined me and filed in with the other women, I couldn’t help but noticed how much her hips stuck out. Bithia resembled a walking skeleton almost, and I prepared myself for the freezing rain as we left the warm quarters. Those who could not get up were shot immediately by other guards, their blood staining the wood. I turned my head away and closed my eyes.

* * * * *

We worked in the muddy fields for hours. Some of it was so deep it reached up to my knees, and my bare feet were caked with it. I could not stop shivering as I continued digging deeper holes in the ground, though they were starting to fill in with water with the bodies. The female soldiers strutted around like peacocks, their warm raincoats looking shiny from the rain.

The loud sound of the truck engines made me look up. Thousands of individuals were just arriving, on the far side of the camp. My people were lined up, wearing their beautiful robes and dresses, screaming and crying. The branding station was located underneath a white tent, smoke rising in the air, so that the poker could not be extinguished.

And leaving.

There was another truck, where they were hauling off a group of men, women, and children towards a different entrance leading out of the barbed wire fence was clear, straight into the woods, which were dark and empty.

“No!”

The voice sounded familiar, too familiar. Everyone was shouting, but this one in particular stuck out to me. One of the female soldiers was dragging a boy backwards in the dirt, who was fighting her as she tried to get him onto the truck. Other adults were banging on the cage attached to the back of it. The shovel slipped out of my hands and fell into the mud when I saw my brother’s face.

I took off, running, ignoring the shouts of the guard watching us. The sound of gunshots flew in the air, and I felt one hit me in the leg. The female soldier shoved my brother on the truck and slammed the latch of the door. I landed on my stomach, hard, before somehow scrambling to my feet and lunging at her, catching her off guard. She looked no older than eighteen, and she reached for her rifle.

“Fucking Khonie! Get back!”

I plowed my right fist as hard as I could against her cheek. She landed sideways on the ground. After unlatching the wet metal hook, I pulled Benny out. The others in the truck jumped out and took off through the open gates. He clung to me, but another bullet struck me in the side, and I gritted my teeth in pain as I doubled over. He reached out to touch my new wound, but I grabbed his hand.

“Go,” I signed frantically, “and don’t ever stop.” Hot tears ran down my cheeks. It broke my heart that he had to leave me, but there was no other choice.

“But—-“

“Now!” I slapped at his arm to get him moving.

To my relief, he joined the others, disappearing in the woods. Several guards were running towards the truck now. Someone shoved me down in the earth and a cold metal circle was pressed against my forehead. The female soldier spat in my face. Blood trickled from her nose to her chin, and she clenched her jaw as her fingers wrapped around the trigger.

“I’m going to blow your brains out and use them to decorate my walls, you filthy Khonie,” she snarled. “You dare think of laying a finger on a civilian?”

I slowly exhaled, bracing myself.

Something struck her on the side of her head, causing her to look up. Bithia had a hand curled around a rock. With one swift motion, I yanked the weapon out of her hands, grateful for the moment of distraction, and smacked her in the face. Some other women from my quarters were holding the guard that had shot at me down, and she was spitting and coughing up grass.

A loud whistle filled the air, and I saw male guards running and firing towards us. Several people went down. I raised the butt of the rifle in the air and slammed it in the soldier’s head, who was trying to pin me back down. Her blood splattered on my rags and arms, but I didn’t stop. I did it again and again and again until there was nothing but a mass of bone and tissue on the ground and she stopped moving. Her dark hair was spread out like a halo.

My stomach churned.

I threw the rifle in the grass and sprinted into the woods, bullet holes appearing in the mud besides me. Birds fluttered in the air above as I tripped and rolled down a hill, landing at the very bottom of a cluster of bushes. I couldn’t see anyone else, so I dove underneath a rotten tree, trying not to look at my bloody hands.

My breathing grew more out of control as I crawled up further and further into the trunk. I curled up into a ball, waiting for the gunshots to stop. I was bleeding from two different places, but I could hardly feel it. They were going to find me and rip me limb by limb, and the soul of the woman with the bashed skull would haunt me forever.

I hoped Benny and the others were safe.