The Light of Hope

by Ernie Lindsey

  It takes so long for all forty thousand future slaves to pass that my legs feel somewhat normal again by the time I’m ready to catch up to the lagging stragglers.

  This goes on for another week.

  Track quietly, rest, sleep, and eat what I can find in the mountains. Twice now, I’ve sneaked into the camp in the middle of the night and snitched some bread and dried meats from a supply wagon. Since it’s only me and not a gang of starving Republicons, the guards don’t notice that something is missing when they do inventory each morning.

  If it were me, and if I were leading the march, I would be sure to post sentries around each of the supply wagons because there have to be some folks who have gone hunger-mad willing to mount an uprising, or attempt to raid the wagons when everyone else is asleep.

  Regardless of their reasoning—and it’s my guess that the commanders are using every available hand to make sure there are no escapees at night—I’m grateful for their ignorance or misguided attention.

  For the longest time, James and I both had wondered how the blackcoat guards like Horse Face and Chicken Legs were able to keep up, marching all day, keeping watch all night. And then one day I see how—the DAV army has a number of sleeping carts scattered throughout the procession and the soldiers take turns. Only God knows how they’re able to catch some shuteye during the day with all the noise of tens of thousands of people crying, moaning, and complaining, coupled with the rattling of an unstable cart, but they do.

  It’s bad news, really, because that means the DAV has double the guarding forces we thought they did.

  I can’t believe we hadn’t noticed this before, considering the number of times we had slithered around among the makeshift camps each night. Then again, we had been searching for provisions and my parents. Our minds were elsewhere.

  I get up from my perch on a ridge overlooking the group and brush the damp leaves and dirt from the back of my legs. I don’t know why I’m allowing this discovery to be such a burden on my mind. So what if the DAV guards are double in number? I can’t do anything about it.

  Maybe if James and the rest were here, we could’ve continued with our eventual plans of taking the guards out one by one, but now, I don’t dare.

  If I slip up, if I make a mistake, I have no backup. If I’m captured, I’ll never get to meet Nurse and—I hope—get my Kinder abilities back.

  If I slip up and they kill me, then, well, that’s the end of that, and this has all been for nothing.

  I have to be smart.

  Down below, a gunshot fires, once, twice, three times. The same round of shots fire off in the middle of the pack, then closer to me at the rear. It’s the signal to break for a midday feeding. Two days ago, extra supply carts arrived from the north, and my people have been fed slightly better. From what I can see, the guards are handing out extra portions of beef jerky and two slices of bread instead of one. Also, there are a number of huge carts stacked high with bushel baskets of green apples.

  I don’t recognize the area where we are, because I’ve never been this far east before, but we must be getting closer to the borders of the Democratic Alliance of Virginia. Blackvale won’t be too far beyond that, according to the Elders and the stories they told ages ago.

  If we’re closer to the capital city, that means it’ll be easier for them to deliver supplies to their spoils of war. They can feed and strengthen their slaves and have them in better working condition.

  Being this close also means we can’t be too far from my home.

  The realization has a powerful effect on me. I trudge aimlessly in a daze for miles, trying to decide if I want to go pay a visit or not.

  How many spirits will be there? Will the decision to go come back to haunt me?

  As I ponder this, I hear some excited shouting down below. The guard we had called Left Foot, for the way he seemed to be so clumsy all the time, comes thrashing through the river of citizen-slaves, holding his arms up and waving to Horse Face and Chicken Legs.

  He shouts to them from a distance, loudly, and from my hiding spot—I’d drifted dangerously close—I’m able to make out what he says, but only just: “General says three days from home, boys! Woohoo!” and then he promptly trips over his own feet and falls face down. He thrusts himself up from the ground and shoves the man closest to him. “God dang fool, get out of my way.”

  Left Foot trudges over to the other guards, and they chat with excitement, likely talking about what they’ll do once they get back home. I imagine they’re conversing about warm baths and soft beds, maybe a hot meal, too. All things I could use, and may never see again.

  So, this is it. We’re almost there. The dreams have given me no direction and no instructions. I don’t know where I’m supposed to go or how I’m supposed to find Nurse, but I figure whatever is guiding these visions will show me the way once I get to Blackvale. If it’s God, and he’s present enough to be involved, then perhaps I have nothing to worry about, and I’ll know what to do once I see it.

  I take a deep breath and push a branch out of the way. I watch all of these people walking by. Their determination to survive seems to be strengthened by the new food and by overhearing the news that their journey is almost over.

  They’ll be okay for now, I think. So will my parents. I’ve spied on them once or twice within the past few days, and they seem to be handling things well for the time being. They remain near the front of the pack, and though I haven’t noticed any special treatment, they’ve been involved in conversation with some of the blackcoat captains and the man who may be the general leading this march. What they could be talking about is anyone’s guess, yet if I had to pick, I would say they’re being grilled about my life as a Kinder. How did I get the abilities? When did Ellery arrive in camp? Why did they leave me behind? Things like that.

  Or, they could be asking them if they can make it stop raining. Who knows? Whatever the subject may be, neither appears to be in pain, only exhausted, and that’ll have to be okay until I get back.

  I’ve made up my mind. I’m going back to the encampment.

  I’m going to go visit the empty hole of a life I used to have. I’m going to look over what little remains, and I’m going to use it as firewood for the burning flames in my belly. It’s time. No more pouting. No more whining. I’ve made it this far. We’ve all made it this far.

  That man right there, with the hat tipped sideways, carrying an ancient woman on his back—I’m fighting for him.

  The woman with the purple shirt that’s soggy and ripped underneath the arms…her too.

  I did it before, and I’m going to do it again. I’m fighting for them, but I’m also fighting for me.

  I’m sick to death of these emotional valleys. No more.

  It’s time to fuel the fire.

  It’s time to feel the rage.

  It’s time to use it.

  8

  It’s worse than I could’ve imagined.

  I’ve already lost track of time. How long has it been since I’ve been here? Six weeks? Longer? Less? God, I can’t even remember. The days have all blended together by now, one tree looking just like the last. Day and night cycle through, and yet I feel like I’ve passed the same mountain maple a thousand times.

  This is horrendous.

  I stand at the northern edge of my former encampment. I remember running through here on the day I heard those horrid drums pounding out the beat of the war rhythm.

  Boom, boom, ba-boom. Boom, boom, ba-boom.

  I ran back here as fast I could. Brandon went back north with me to survey the forward runners and the vanguard. Brandon died saving my life.

  And nearby is where Finn unleashed the genesis of his Great Betrayal.

  We thought we were rescuing him from certain death. He was leading us to ours.

  I hold my position fast, ready but not ready to go in. The fires have long, long burned out. All that’s left is a graveyard of charred, skeletal remains of every single hovel someone called home
. Even General Chief Hawkins’s house, five times the size of any shack, is nothing but sticks and timbers. Support posts look like blackened, picked over cornstalks, stripped of their cobs and leaves. Some personal items are scattered about, like books and clothes, shoes and a frying pan lying upside down in the mud.

  I spot an empty sack that looks like the one that used to contain sugar that Grandfather and I adored so much. Sugar. It’s been so long and I’ll probably never taste it again.

  Our little valley where we lived looks the same, but so much different now that I can see it completely. My view isn’t blocked by wooden shacks and chimneys belching smoke, or wet clothes hanging underneath canopies to block the continual rain from soaking them all over again.

  It’s wide and spacious, this valley, and I recall a time when the sun used to set down between those two dipping hills to the west. Back before the rains came, on days where clouds speckled the horizon, there would be the most unbelievable pinks, oranges, and reds. Words can’t do the beauty justice.

  I feel the pure hatred for Finn and the blackcoats boiling inside me.

  They ruined everything. We had good, quiet lives here. We played games outside when the sky graced us with light sprinkles instead of heavy downpours. We met in The Center and told jokes and stories. We shared food over a campfire; deer meat sizzling on a spit, the smoke rising upward, drifting out of a hole in the shelter protecting us from nature’s onslaught.

  Those greedy blackcoat bastards took it all away from us.

  We are a ruined people.

  Worse than that, though, worse than the burned hulls of former homes, worse than the ruined memories, worse than the idea that we’ll never have anything of our own again, unless I can change things, is the mass of bodies scattered everywhere.

  When the DAV army marched through, after James and his gang had eliminated those few blackcoat soldiers in our village and we had retreated to Warrenville, the rest came and they burned whatever they could, but they left the bodies behind.

  If words fail to grasp the beauty of a warm evening sunset, then they certainly fail to grasp the devastation of seeing everyone you used to know in various states of decay.

  I hold a sleeve over my nose to block the smell.

  Some are partial skeletons, some are not. It’s been a while. There are animals in the woods, bears and bobcats, that don’t know that the results of the DAV’s actions should not have been an invitation to a free meal.

  I close my eyes. That’s enough.

  I will not allow the DAV the satisfaction of dwelling on my people and their remains.

  I picture it the way it was, back when it was right.

  Sunshine. Love. Laughter.

  Hugs and kisses. Elder Nunn and Elder Lorra holding hands. Children hiding and chasing each other through the bank of fog drifting down from the lake.

  There, that’s better.

  But it doesn’t last for long, because I have one thing left to do.

  My old shack, my home, is also a skeleton of blackened timbers. The roof is gone. The two mattresses burned through, leaving behind nothing but the metal frames. The bucket is still there. At least it didn’t melt in the heat.

  Whatever the DAV used, it burned hot enough to gut walls and a roof that had been soaked through to the point where you could wring water out of the wood if you were strong enough. It’s all gone but the flooring. Somehow that survived, mostly, and on it is the reason I am really here.

  Grandfather.

  He’s in the same spot where I had to leave him behind and whether it was the unpredictable nature of fire or a gift from above, there’s something left of him, allowing me the opportunity for a proper burial.

  I don’t have any tears left. Though I am soaked from head to toe, my skin so wet that I am pickled and white all over my body, I am bone dry on the inside.

  I feel rage, remorse, and pain so deep that I drop to my knees in the mud, but I cannot cry. Can’t or won’t. Right now it feels like the same thing.

  A crow squawks overhead. I lift my eyes and watch him alight on the limb of a nearby oak tree. He bobs his head and shifts from one foot to the other on the swaying branch. I feel as if he’s waiting for me to move on so he can have his turn.

  Not today.

  I pick up a rock and sling it at him. I miss and the rock goes thunk on the tree trunk and falls to the muddy ground, but at least it scares the crow to flight. He squawks louder this time as he flaps away.

  Filthy creature.

  Who had a shovel? Was it Elder Marcon?

  I push myself to my feet and try to recall the last time I borrowed one.

  No, not Elder Marcon, it was—forget it. There has to be one somewhere.

  Twenty minutes later, after combing through the remains of huts that crumbled under my feet and broke apart in my hands, I find what I’m looking for.

  Elder Brall must have borrowed it from the owner, and there are signs that he had tried to use it as a weapon. His remains are on the ground, clutching it in bony fingers, with a hatchet buried in the wooden handle. There’s another one buried in his skull; signs of a close-quarters battle that didn’t end well for the man who gave me candy each Sunday morning until I was twelve years old.

  I reach down and pull the shovel loose from his grip in the afterlife. The arms fall limply and his head rolls to the side, propped up by the remaining hatchet.

  I… I can barely bring myself to do it, but I can use both of them. They’d make great weapons in the woods over the last couple of days as I journey to Blackvale. Who knows what I’ll run into this far north. Republicons, maybe? Or some blackcoat soldiers patrolling an area that they would consider to be their own now?

  Better safe than sorry.

  I wrench the hatchet free from the shovel’s handle, and then I turn my eyes away from Elder Brall. My hand closes around the second hatchet’s handle, and I wiggle it. The thing is in there deep. This won’t be easy.

  My stomach churns and I steady myself. When I try to pull the blade free, Elder Brall’s head moves with it. If I pull too hard, his head could—

  Don’t think like that. Just… Boot. Use your boot.

  I should walk away. I could take the one free hatchet, and that’d be fine.

  But, unfortunately, necessity begs me to try harder.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “So sorry.”

  I tighten my grip, plant a boot heel on the skull of one of my favorite Elders, and then I yank hard once, and then once more. It comes free, and I fall backward, splattering my backside in a puddle. I didn’t think it was possible to get wetter than I already am, yet this soaks me through.

  I am victorious, however, pleased by the small battle won over an axe buried in the head of a neighbor and friend.

  It feels wrong to be excited. It does, really. I’ve seen too much though. I am bitter and angry.

  I have to become a monster if I am going to kill a monster.

  Grandfather’s remains rest underneath a weeping willow tree a few hundred yards north of the encampment. Its drooping limbs hang over his favorite fishing hole, and if I had a tear to shed, if I hadn’t been emptied of everything other than the need to get revenge, I would let the flood loose from my eyes.

  A weeping willow. How appropriate is that?

  I recite what I remember of James’s Republicon Prayer because it’s the only thing I know all the words to, unlike the Bible. We were never that religious, yet I should, at least, remember the Lord’s Prayer. The words aren’t there.

  Exhausted from the digging, I’m not sure I can head back this evening, not without some rest.

  I gather reeds and some dry brush I find underneath the dense boughs of a pine tree, along with some pine needles that are only slightly damp from the same place. I make myself a bed on the ground and lie down next to Grandfather’s grave. Some rain seeps through the limbs and leaves above me, but it’s not anything I can’t handle. I’ve slept in downpours. Under here, it’s a trickle. This is alm
ost like sleeping in sunshine. Not really, but having something to look forward to makes the bed a little softer.

  I kept clear signs of how to get back to the group this time. There were no Republicon markers that I could see either, and it won’t hurt to rest for a little while. From what James had told me over the past month, Republicons rarely venture this far north, especially when there are easier resources to be had further south. The only reason they were up in this area on the day the DAV invaded was because they had run out of leather to repair old boots. Another gang of Republicons had mentioned that there was a supply of abandoned shoes at an army base somewhere up close to Rafael’s Ridge.

  When I’d told him it wasn’t ours, and when he learned that I hadn’t seen anything like that for miles around during all our salvage missions, he cursed the man who’d told him. “I bet he just wanted to poach our territory while we were gone. Son of a gun.”

  James had also mentioned that there weren’t many Republicon families who were as bad as Crockett’s. Most of them didn’t live up to the common misconception of being vile thieves, murderers, and pillagers. “They’re like us,” he’d told me. “We believe that the world was meant for sharing, which sounds an awful lot like the way your people ran things in your encampment. Only difference is, we’ll only take something when someone doesn’t feel like sharing. See? And don’t give me that look. Stealing is just a word. Out here, it’s eat or be eaten. You think a hungry bear feels bad about taking something that isn’t his? Guilt, Caroline, is a human construction.”

  I cover my eyes with the crook of my elbow to block out the cloud-covered light.

  I miss James. The others were wonderful, and I doubt I would’ve survived without all of them by my side, but James was special.

  My rock. My friend. My brother.

  James is gone.

  Grandfather is gone.

  Brandon is gone.

  The Finn I knew and loved, before the betrayal, is gone.

  If guilt is a human construction, then I guess Fate doesn’t feel bad for stealing everything away from me either.