The Children
We were paralyzed, ground to bits finer than dust. When the bus returned from Bézam that day with the news that we had little left with which to fight, our bravest having been dumped in one grave, we knelt and banged the earth. We begged the Spirit to forgive our growing doubt of its existence, for though we had seen proof of its supremacy, we’d also seen evidence of its weakness, and we couldn’t reconcile this, its inability to do no more than stand by and watch them destroy us. We had no Sakani for guidance, no one to help us comprehend what we were living through, so we crawled from one day to the next, too weakened to rise. How could we have been so reckless as to dream? Why did we for so long refuse to lie prostrate before the inevitable? Because we carry the blood of men who stood on a land between two rivers and received it from the Spirit? Because they told themselves that this land was theirs, to be passed to their children and their children’s children, generation after generation? If our forefathers had known of the oil beneath their feet, would they have so gladly bequeathed it to us? They thought we’d never know such degradation, because we carry the blood of the leopard, but if they had seen the extent of our enemies’ powers, their beliefs would have turned to ashes.
In the early months of the Four’s imprisonment, the Restoration Movement had gone to dozens of newspapers across America with our story. Some of the newspapers sent men from Bézam to take pictures and ask us more questions about what we had endured at the hands of His Excellency’s government and Pexton. Every time the Sweet One and the Cute One visited, they assured us that we had growing multitudes of supporters across the ocean. They showed us pictures of people in America shaking their fists in front of the office of Pexton. People all over America wrote letters to Pexton, begging for the Four to be released. Pexton told them that they had nothing to do with the men’s arrest, it was up to His Excellency. The American people asked their leaders to speak to His Excellency, to threaten him if necessary, to say they would no longer help his government in times of crisis, they would eject him from groups he ought to belong in, they would punish our country so severely a recovery would be years-long. The American leaders said these things and more, and leaders the world over said the same, because people in their countries wanted no association with evil. Corporations in Europe that often gave His Excellency loans to create shared wealth told him that if he didn’t release the Four they’d stop lending to him, they couldn’t condone the unjust treatment of any human, but everyone knew that these lenders wouldn’t stop making the loans—keeping countries like ours in their debt was why they existed. That is why His Excellency had laughed at their threats. He’d proceeded to show the European and American people how irrelevant their opinions were to him, for on the day he decided to hang the Four, he’d done exactly as he wished. Pexton had condemned what he’d done, and governments worldwide had done the same, but His Excellency had merely laughed some more and told Pexton that if they were so disappointed with him they could leave his country. But Pexton couldn’t leave. There was still so much oil under our land—why abandon it because of a conscience?
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Our village took the money Pexton gave as a token of solidarity, though, simultaneously, we cursed everyone who worked there. Alas, our curses can only harm those with whom we share blood, so no harm ever befell our foes because of the words of our mouths.
Indignant as our parents were, when the Restoration Movement began sending a school bus that Pexton had purchased as a gift to us—the Restoration Movement paid for the driver and the maintenance of the bus—they put us on it. In that first year, only a few of us went; most of our parents were distrustful. By the time the school year ended and none of us had been killed in Lokunja, more parents began putting children on the bus. Before long, the Restoration Movement needed to use its own funds to buy another bus, because all the parents wanted their sons over twelve to go to the school in Lokunja.
We knew the day was bound to come when our bonds as age-mates would start to fray, and we’d depend less on each other for friendship. We’d seen it happen to age-mates born before us. We’d noticed our older siblings’ circles of age-mates dwindle when the girls’ bodies started showing signs of womanhood, leading them to prefer the company of young men capable of giving them things their boy age-mates didn’t yet have. By the time most children in Kosawa got to eleven or twelve, they’d decided that a shared birth year need not be the paramount basis for mutual closeness, leading to a rise in friendships with older adolescents. That is what happened to us when the boys continued going to school while the girls stayed home. The girls began spending more time with older girls and women: going to the farm, doing laundry, going to the market, taking care of babies, gossiping in kitchens. The boys went to school and spent their evenings hunting or playing football. Thus, it so happened that even before the end of our second year of taking the bus to Lokunja, we
