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Jenn L. Sullivan

They came on the same day a pack of hyena stole the largest cow from Kioja’s brother’s herd. She’d been sitting at the edge of a small pond, listening to Grandfather meander through one of his stories and watching pale green lights dance on the surface as fireflies drifted through the tall reeds.

“The village used to be twice this size,” he said, chewing slowly on a tender piece of beef. His soft old-man voice was sad. “The illness came long before you did, dear child, and it took so many of us. My wife, one of my sons, and three of my brothers all went home to be with the goddess the same morning, one after the other.” His yellowed eyes, fixed in a perpetual upward gaze, watched the starry sky through the dark net of branches overhead.

Kioja dipped her bare toes in the cool water of the pond and had just opened her mouth to speak when a shrill squeal cut through the quiet night air.

“That’s a cow,” Grandfather said, cocking his head slightly. He brushed his silvery hair away from his face and listened. “You’d better go find your brother, child.”

She nodded, scooped up the empty food basket, and ran towards the distant glow of firelight on the dark horizon. The squat mud huts came slowly into view, bathed in the warm light of the massive bonfire. The smoky smell of cooking flesh drifted to every corner of the village, and she paused to watch the crinkled brown flesh turn on a spit over the blaze. Juices dripped, and the fire hissed. Kioja’s stomach growled.

One of the men that had been charged with cooking the feast and keeping the fire noticed her. “What do you want?” he barked, slamming the butt of his spear into the dirt. “Get inside with your mother.”

She bowed her head so low that the beaded tips of her sleek braids hung in her eyes and she couldn’t see anything but the worn soles of the man’s braided-grass sandals. “I need to find my brother,” she whispered. Her stomach churned. She tensed in expectation of the blow that would certainly come.
The silence stretched for several long moments. “Next to the altar,” he said finally.

She nodded gratefully and turned towards the winding cobblestone path that led to the altar. Despite keeping her eyes respectfully downwards, she thought she saw the man smile out of the corner of her eye.

On the path, the sweet fragrance of the yellow cactus-flowers overpowered the smell of food from the village, and Kioja could almost have enjoyed herself if she hadn’t been in a hurry. Every few seconds, a star streaked across the dark sky, disappearing behind the mountains that held up the distant horizon.

A small animal scurried across the path, freezing in the grasses along the edge as it saw her. The little creatures were everywhere, though their large ears and bulbous night-seeing eyes gave them the advantage and made them devilishly hard to catch. Their meat was tender and sweet, and the soft purple fur, once cured properly and lined, made a warm blanket.

As Kioja grew closer to the dark, rounded outline of the village’s altar, she could hear soft chanting, and she caught a whiff of incense which the wind carried away. Bringing their wishes to the goddess, she thought.

Unwilling to risk the wrath of the goddess even for the sake of the cows, Kioja selected a small piece of incense, lit it in the fire by the edge of the path, and kneeled before the altar. The large, rounded stone, carved with simple images of the Goddess, glowed faintly in the darkness. The soft silver light was comforting, and Kioja felt the tension leave her chest as she sank down into the soft sand and inserted her incense into one of the tiny holes that lined the base. The delicate smoke twisted and curled into the air, spreading its smoky, spicy scent. Kioja whispered a prayer and jumped to her feet.

“Tuwile!” she hissed once she’d found him on the opposite side of the altar. “You have to come with me!”

Her brother’s dark body looked ghostly in the faint light. “What is it?”

“The cows. Grandfather thinks its a hyena.”

Tuwile visibly refrained from cursing, which would have been doubly offensive so close to such sacred space. He climbed to his feet, brushed the sand from his bare knees, and picked up his spear. It was a hot night, and he was naked except for a ragged cloth wrapped loosely around his waist. Kioja knew he’d been avoiding home that night, because if their mother had seem him wearing so little, she would have dragged him inside and made him cover his shoulders.

“I’m going,” he said, motioning for her to go down the path first. “You go back to mother and wait there.”

“But-”

“Kioja!” He looked at her with dark, angry eyes. “Do as I say.”

She obediently headed down the path, walking as quickly as her short, knobby legs would allow. The charms on Tuwile’s spear jingled behind her with each of his heavy footsteps.

And when the tops of the roofs of their home had just slid into view over the edge of the horizon, they came.

Kioja never did figure out how they snuck through the scraggly dry grass so quietly, nor how they came up behind them without Tuwile sensing their presence. But suddenly they were there, slicing Kioja’s arm with one of their knives and kicking Tuwile to the ground. One of them whooped, placing his heavy boot on Tuwile’s neck.

Kioja tried to run, but the second of the intruders grabbed her arms and held her tightly. The cut on her arm was deep, and it wasn’t long before sticky blood was trickling freely over the man’s pale fingers.

The smell of sweat and alcohol lingered in her nostrils. The men were talking, but the words were as strange as their pale skin, and she didn’t understand a single one. Their strange language, however, didn’t prevent her from being able to hear the humor in their voices and see the wicked gleam in their eyes. Their heavy clothes and their thin white faces might have been foreign, but she knew hatred and malice when she saw it.

One of the men picked up Tuwile’s spear. Kioja’s brother had started carving it when he was still a boy, and over time the colorfully-painted symbols and carvings had grown very elaborate and beautiful. During the last rainy season, he’d even traded with the village to the east for bits of soft metal, which he twisted into charms that would bring him luck on the hunt.

Kioja watched in horror as the man that was holding Tuwile against the ground bent over, picked up the spear, and snapped it easily over his knee. His laughter scared away a small flock of birds that had been resting in a nearby tree.

“Goddess curse you!” she cried, staring at the splintered ends of the spear lying in the dirt.

Tuwile’s next movement was so quick and so fluid that Kioja didn’t even see exactly what he did, but in less than a second he was on his feet and was holding the sharp end of the spear to the man’s neck.

“Who are you?” he growled, pushing the tip into the man’s skin until a bead of blood slid down his neck. Kioja was surprised to see bright crimson fluid that didn’t look any different from what was pouring down her arm.

The man clenched his jaw and his eyes grew wide. The rippled muscles of Tuwile’s back tightened, and Kioja knew he was about to plunge his spear through the man’s soft flesh.

The man holding Kioja tossed her to the ground and slid his long, rusted knife into Tuwile’s back, as if his skin and bones were nothing more than soft river clay.

Tuwile dropped his spear and tried to reach around behind his back to pull out the knife, but he couldn’t reach. His arms flailed wildly, and he spun and spun, trying to stretch his arms around to the thing that was causing him so much pain. Finally, in a rush of dark blood, the knife slid out of his body and fell to the ground.

Tuwile kept spinning. Foam gathered at the corner of his mouth, and his wild eyes stared into the night. He spun and spun until his body died and dropped heavily to the sand.

Kioja screamed and tried to crawl to him. The man that had stabbed him, laughing throatily at Tuwile’s tormented last moments, stepped on her ankle so heavily that bones crunched and splintered through her skin. White-hot pain screamed through her leg, but still she clawed her way to Tuwile.

“Brother,” she whimpered, grabbing at his arm. Shakily, she leaned forward and pressed her lips to his forehead. It was already cold.

“Goddess take you home,” she whispered.

Something large and heavy struck the back of her head. She collapsed onto Tuwile’s chest, forcing the last bit of air from his lungs as she faded into darkness.



She awoke with the salty taste of blood in her mouth and a terrible pain in her head and ankle. She was on the ground again, and there were people all around her. She couldn’t see them, but she could hear the hiss and murmur of frightened conversation and muffled tears.

“Kioja?” A warm, dry hand touched the small of her back.

“Mother?” Kioja’s cracked, stinging lips didn’t want to form words, but she forced them out.

“Yes. Don’t try to move, or you’ll be sick.”

The last thing Kioja wanted to do was move. She hugged the earth, pressing the cool dirt against her burning cheek. A blurry red sunrise was spreading across the sky to the north, and as her eyes followed the hazy tendrils of light and cloud, she wondered what it would feel like to die, to be carried by the goddess into the fading sunset.

“There are men here,” her mother whispered, laying alongside Kioja so that she could whisper into her ear. “Strange men. They killed many of us, and gathered everyone here, by the fire.”

“Tuwile,” she croaked, choking on her own blood.

“I know.” She was silent for a long moment. “My brother saw his body. Cowards, that would stab a warrior in the back.”

Her mother would not cry loudly. Kioja knew she didn’t want his spirit to stay behind. But she could feel her mother’s slender body convulsing with grief as she held in her sobs.

There was movement near the bonfire in the middle of the village. Kioja’s vision was still fuzzy, but she could see the outlines of her people, gathered in small groups. The air was filled with the sounds of whispers and tears. Someone poked at the fire, which spit sparks into the dry breeze.

“Who are they?” she asked, lying her head and her pain on her mother’s bony shoulder.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “I’ve heard things. People are saying that they came to take us as their property. My sister told me they have a boy from another village that can actually speak with them.”

“They are demons,” Kioja spat, trying to sit up. The pain overwhelmed her, and she rolled away to vomit quietly in the sand. “Where is your sister?” she asked a few moments later, wiping her mouth.

“She is with everyone else.”

On the other side of the fire, Kioja realized, staring at the dark, haunted forms huddled together. The empty earth between she and her mother and the rest of the village stretched on forever.

“They said they would make an example out of you,” Kioja’s mother said. Her voice wavered. “To show the rest of us how to act.”

“Go,” Kioja said, forcing herself upright. She pushed against her mother’s bare arm and wanted to cry at the weakness she felt there. “I’ll survive it. You won’t. Go.”

As her mother crawled away, Kioja wanted to scream, to beg her to come back, to take her in her arms. Kioja wanted to bury her face in her mother’s shoulder and lose herself in the smell of cooking spices and the sweet white flowers that grew near the well.

When she noticed that her mother had wrapped her broken ankle, she couldn’t stop the tears from falling.

The young boy from a distant village stood up a short time later to speak. His voice was strong, but empty. They’d preserved his body but destroyed his spirit, and his dark eyes revealed nothing. He’d been broken, so that the voices of the strange men would fit through his small body.

“You belong to us now,” the boy translated. His voice was soft, but it carried easily over the terrified silence. “And to show you what happens if you-” The boy stopped and turned to look up at the strange man, confusion filling his face. There was a short exchange.

“If you won’t do what we say,” the boy continued on a moment later, “this is what will happen to you.”

Two of the men moved towards Kioja. They were drenched in acrid-smelling sweat, unused to the sweltering temperatures of the desert. Their heads were bald, like many of the men in Kioja’s village, but they wore strange brown hats with wide brims. Stupid, she thought. That will only keep the heat in their bodies and the cool breeze out.

As their heavy boots crunched over the rocky earth, Kioja found her mind refusing to accept what was about to happen. Instead, she focused on odd details. The rough, dark material of their shirts; the strange blue material that covered their short legs; the shiny metal rings they wore around their wrists.

“No!” Kioja’s mother threw herself in their path. She held her palms upwards. “Me,” she said slowly, clearly, trying to make them understand. She slapped her chest with her palms. Loose, dark flesh shook from the force of her blows. “Me!”

The man who was obviously their leader said something to the boy.

“As you wish,” he said, looking down at his dirty feet.




The gritty desert sands were white under the black sky except for the long, slow line of Kioja‘s people stretched out across the desert. The heat from the day’s sun burned their bare feet, but Kioja hardly felt it. Her eyes didn’t see the sharp rocks that lay in her path, or the stiff back of the hunched figure shuffling in front of her, and she hardly felt the pain in her shattered ankle. Her mother’s body, lying broken in the dirt, her limbs sticking out at odd angles, filled her gaze.

I should have stayed and done what’s right, she thought. Tears burned behind her eyes, but she wouldn’t let them fall. She didn’t want her mother’s spirit to stay behind and have to see what she knew was going to happen to her.

“Go home,” she whispered, hoping the winds would carry her words to the charred remains of what had once been her home, and to her mother. “Go home to the goddess and wait for me.”

The wind drifted over her bare shoulders.

“I’ll be home soon.”

As the words left her mouth, a whistle cut through the plodding beat of heavy footsteps. It trilled, like the small brown birds that lived in the scraggy desert trees, but turned upwards at the end.

Several heads jerked towards the sound, then held carefully still. The strange men, gathered at the front, back, and middle of the line both on horseback and on foot, didn’t seem to notice.

Kioja couldn’t quite bring herself to smile, because she didn’t know how Grandfather’s weak arms could dig through the ash and dirt to make a place to hold her mother’s body. He would try, though, and maybe that would be enough to placate her mother’s spirit and guide it home.




They walked through most of the night. The sliver of moon that cast just enough pale light for them to see by had drifted halfway across the sky when they reached the tall wooden fence. The beams were thick and sturdy, but built vertically, and they‘d twisted dry thorny vines around the two sets of horizontal beams. So no one can climb out, Kioja thought, spitting on the ground.

She couldn’t bring herself to look at the haunted eyes hovering behind the fence. They were sunken and captive. Broken. Bones jutted out beneath their dark skin. They’d ceased to be human a long time ago.

The gate swung open unwillingly, with a long, high-pitched whine, and Kioja’s village was herded inside like the cows whose uneaten corpses were collecting flies along with her mother. We’re dead too, she thought as she limped inside. Our bodies are just waiting to catch up.

At least part of her body seemed to know its fate. Her ankle was past the point of swelling and pain. Her dark blue foot flopped on the useless joint, and several hours ago it had become easier to walk on the side of it, dragging it forward with each step through the sand.

The stench of the enclosure was overwhelming. There was a small heap of dead and dying bodies in one corner. Between the smell and the hoards of flies, no one tried to get close enough to identify relatives or friends.

Kioja had to walk to the other side before she could stake out a small space as her own. She collapsed against the fence and slid to the ground. The wood tore at her back, but it was only another layer of warm pain atop so many more. She tried to spit, to get rid of the salty, rancid taste in her mouth, but her tongue was dry.

I want to go home, she thought, and in the smallest, darkest recess of her mind, she allowed herself a bare moment to remember the life she’d had only a day ago.

Dizziness overwhelmed her. The stars spun in the sky and fell like rain. She hit the ground hard.

Warm brown eyes the color of honey and streaked with a faint silver glow stared down at her.

“Mother?” she croaked, smiling until warm blood ran down her chin and dripped into the sand.

“That’s right.” A cool hand brushed her forehead, pushed a damp piece of hair out of her face. “And it’s time for you to come home.”

“Home,” she whispered. And then she saw it.

It was small, so small, growing out of a crack next to one of the fence posts, and so weak it had to lean against it for support. At first she didn’t think they could have been so stupid as to leave it for someone to find, but then she realized it wouldn’t matter. The edges of the tiny heart-shaped leaves had started to turn brown, and the delicate flowers drooped towards the earth. But it was alive. And now they could go home together.

With trembling fingers she reached out and plucked it from the earth. It tasted earthy with just a hint of sweet nectar, and the tender flesh was crushed easily between her teeth. Once she swallowed, the warmth spread immediately from her stomach to her chest and limbs. Only her broken ankle stayed cold.

A few feet to her left, she saw the arching rough branches of a desert tree. Bruised, bloodied, and so weak she could barely crawl, she dragged her dying body across the cold sand until she reached the scraggly bush. She rolled beneath it, looked up at the stars, and wondered if Grandfather was still sitting near the charred remains of the village, looking up at the same night sky. Then, one by one, the stars blinked out, and the sky was black.