‘You saw your friend get shot,’ Njinga growled, her fierce eyes convex lenses that focused the heat burning within her into twin rays of ferocious destruction. ‘You know what it looks like. Now picture it, picture the bullet that’s in the chamber coming out a’ that gun, punchin’ through my chest, rippin’ a hole through my heart, ricochetin’ around my torso an’ tearin’ up my vital organs. Look at my eyes, I said look at ‘em, kid!’
Chloe’s teary eyes met Njinga’s and found in them a soul effulging like the dazzling Evening Star, beyond blinding in its intensity, at once as hot as the core of the earth and cold as the ancient ice of the Earth’s poles.
‘I’m ready to die,’ Njinga murmured, her voice dropping to a barely audible, croaked-out whisper. ‘I’m ready for that bullet. I’ve looked Death in the face so many times now that all I can do is laugh at it. Not because I’m brave, not because I’m strong, not because I’m crazy … I can look Death in the face an’ laugh because I know without a shadow of a doubt that my life means somethin’, that it’s meant something up to now, that I have a purpose beyond myself an’ whatever selfish concerns might have motivated me in the past. There is somethin’ so much greater than me that I’m fightin’ for, so much more gigantic than me that I’m like an insect, an amoeba in comparison to it. An’ when you fully understand the immensity a’ it, when you can finally begin to wrap your mind around what it is we’re fightin’ for … you can understand that that terrible, ugly weight you’re feelin’ in your hands, the hateful coldness of the steel, the nightmarish potential in your forefinger to unleash Death by your hand with one lil’ contraction of your muscles … then you can understand that the weight you now have to carry is a necessary weight. We’ve reached the end a’ history, kid, the end a’ all things that are wild, beautiful, free, an’ truly alive … an’ whether y’all understand that or not, it’s a fact that nobody can dispute. An’ those that are bringing about the end, who are killing everythin’, destroyin’ it all in the name of greed an’ profit an’ power … this is the only thing they understand,’ she growled, snatching the pistol out of Chole’s hands. ‘We have to fight ‘em with things that can actually hurt ‘em: bullets. Bombs. Blades. They don’t care about anything else. They understand power only in its rawest, ugliest form – an’ power, kids, is already a hideous thing, even when it’s all dressed up an’ made up an’ smilin’. The battle we’re fighting, an’ the way we’re fighting it, is as primal a struggle now as it was millions of years ago, as it’s been throughout the whole of history. Now, though, the stakes are higher than they’ve ever been. We’re talkin’ about a mass extinction! We’re talkin’ about systematically dismantlin’ the very systems that support life – all life, not just fuckin’ human beings – on this planet! An’ those fuckers will do just that, they’ll destroy everythin’ in their pursuit of power an’ profit … because they’re like you.’
‘Like us?’ Chloe gasped indignantly.
‘What I mean is, they’re human,’ Njinga clarified with a tragic sigh, her shoulders slumping and the forge-heat that had been glowing through her skin subsiding. ‘Short-sighted. Driven by urges they’ve barely got any control over. Y’all can’t help it; you only get eighty years on this planet if you’re lucky. Some a lil’ more, most a lot less. An’ in such a short time – short from where I’m sitting, an’ real short from where the old Council members once sat, some of whom lived for thousands of years – how can we expect any of y’all to even comprehend a fraction a’ the true scope a’ everythin’? How, with such short lives, can we hope that y’all could have any hope a’ understandin’ long-term consequences, a’ wrapping your minds around the chain reactions that seemingly insignificant acts can set off? Hell, it’s all about fuckin’ YOLO these days, isn’t it? Livin’ your best damn life, livin’ in the moment, fuck what tomorrow might bring. Goddamn it, sometimes the depression an’ despair that comes with thinkin’ about shit like this is worse than anythin’ those Huntsmen bitches could do to me.’
‘We may just be kids,’ Paola ventured, ‘an’ we may not have been on this planet nearly as long as you have, but we understand more than you give us credit for. We were doing what we could to fight for the environment, for the living world, for the planet. An’ we’ve all done a lot of reading about all that stuff, an’ we know more about it than most kids, I bet. Even though we aren’t fighting the way you beastwalkers, oh, uh, satyadutas are, with guns an’ bombs an’ stuff, we’re doing what we could.’
‘I know kid, I know,’ Njinga said softly, ‘an’ I apologise for getting so worked up. But I need y’all to seriously wrap your heads around the seriousness of the situation here, to get an idea of what it really means to fight for this cause. Because, like I was trying to tell y’all before I went off on that tangent, I ain’t no warrior. Neither is he,’ she continued, pointing at Lightning Bird, who was still sleeping soundly. ‘He ain’t one neither,’ she said, shifting the focus of her gaze to William, ‘but okay, the big man in the corner, Zakaria, yeah, he is a soldier, an’ he’s always been one. But he’s only one out of us four, an’ for the rest of the satyaduta it’s the same thing. We weren’t ever warriors, or at least the majority a’ us weren’t, even though there were always one or two fighters in our ranks. Like I told y’all, what the old Councils
