This Is War

         The screaming began so suddenly that I jumped. I was asleep for a moment, had only closed my eyes for a second. I looked around the room. He stared back at me with wide eyes, so bright in the surrounding dark that they seemed to be their own light. But he wasn’t the one screaming. I took his hand in mine, pushed aside the door. It creaked on rusting hinges, wood groaned. I closed my eyes to the sun on the mountains’ crest.
         The soldiers had taken them from their beds, pulled them from their parents’ arms. They crawled over each other, down from the lorry and through the mud in their bare feet, only to be picked up by a soldier and tossed back. They were wild with fear, only half awake. I watched in silence. My soul trembled inside me, my heart shuddered.
         Fourteen years. Each boy crying out for a mother, a father, for comfort, for the nightmare to end, had lived only fourteen years. And now the army was claiming those short lives. The army was taking them away to war, though it wasn’t our army.
He gripped my hand tighter. I felt him move behind me, felt him bury his face in my back, felt his sobs. I couldn’t stand there and watch these strange creatures fight the inevitable, yet I couldn’t turn away.
         The screaming slowly turned to crying. It was an awful wail, low and long and pitiful, coming from every throat. It filled the air, pressed against your senses, turned your fingers numb and your blood to ice. My heart beat faster. The wail continued long after the last child had been collected. The soldiers counted once, twice, three times, checked a paper, counted again. They took a bag from inside. It clinked as it hit the ground, spilling into the mud. No one moved toward it. The soldiers shrugged, entered the truck, rode out of the town. One stayed.
         His hair was beginning to grey, his beard a dark brown, eyes a green as deep as the sea that gleamed. His uniform was clean, sharp, but tattered at the cuffs. The buttons and medals shone dull in the morning light. He rubbed his hair, walked to me. I straightened my shoulders – bigger prey is harder to catch.
         “How old are you, boy.”
         “Thirteen,” I said. He nodded thoughtfully, stared at Pieter’s shaking form behind me. My hands turned to fists as I waited, though I didn’t know what I waited for.
         “How old is he?” I was silent. “When do you turn fourteen?” He looked around at the faces, challenging them to speak for me. None would. I was alone in the world, save for Pieter. It was just us two, I clinging to him, he clinging to me. The man turned his green eyes to me. “How long until you are fourteen, boy.”
         “Two weeks.”
         He looked down at his paper. “I’ll give you that, then” he muttered. “Come without a fight. All this screaming, crying, gets on my nerves. Two weeks, boy. No more.”


         Those two weeks passed like a breath. I couldn’t do anything to slow it down, make it last longer, not because I was afraid of what came next but because I worried. Pieter would be alone.
         I passed my time scrubbing the floor of the butcher’s shop. It was the same work I’d done for years, since ten, working the water to suds until my hands disappeared into them, until Momma stopped me and took me home. It wasn’t hard. It was busy work, gave the body something to do but often it let the mind stray. I spent too much time scrubbing, until Pieter was so bored he joined the task, scooting about on his hands and knees, his clothes soaking up as much as the rag he had.
         Reed walked in, untied the blood-stained apron and hung it above the counter. He watched us, I watched him. Then he shook his head. “The boy’s doing a best job over you, Rehan.” I stopped. “You spent too much time here. Tell me –” Pieter was still scrubbing, humming. “What happens to him when the big brother is gone?” My hands turned to fists, my jaw hurt from how tightly I closed it.
         He knew the answer, I knew, and the town knew. Pieter would be forgotten, be alone, a street orphan left to die with no one who cared about him. He had been like that before. Momma and Papa said to pity but never play, that he was no better than an animal. But it wasn’t true. I closed my eyes, sighed. That was the answer Reed wanted, and Reed always got an answer.
         I felt the smile tug at my lips. Already it seemed like something from another life. I hadn’t smiled in two weeks.
         “What’s funny?”
         Pieter’s hand was in mine. He was smiling, blue eyes light, pants dripping dirty water but he didn’t notice. Reed straightened. We walked to the door, let the night in.
         “Rehan, what happens with him when you go tomorrow?”
         I looked back, smiling wide. “It’s up to you.”


         It had been summer the day before. Now it was autumn. The air was crisp and cool, breath hung in white clouds, the sky grey above us. The lorry waited, shuddering, growling, soldiers staring back at me. Pieter’s hand was warm, tight in mine. He wasn’t afraid.
         Reed stood behind us, arms crossed over his chest, frown on his face. He was waiting, ready to take Pieter when I left. He would have work, food, a house, family, everything I’d tried to give him in the year we were together. But I was still scared, worried he’d forget me.
         “Rehan Berness.”
         I let go.
         The air was thick in my lungs, my chest heaved, I swallowed, mouth dry as summer lightning. If Pieter wasn’t afraid how could I be so terrified? But then he was screaming, crying, fighting the arms around him. I stood for a moment, climbed into the lorry and turned to face him. The soldiers disappeared into the front, the recruiter stood motionless at the wheel, the town was frozen in the autumn morning. I gripped the bar above me, the frame of the truck too similar to a skeleton.
         “I’ll come back. If you wait for me I’ll come back.”
         He was silent, tears in his eyes, eyes as blue as the sky and just as bright, brown hair curly around his face. He was so small in Reed’s arms. The lorry lurched forward.
         “Pieter!” But I didn’t know what to say. He stared at me, chin trembling, nose running, fists full of his too-big shirt. He ran forward, out of Reed’s arms, boots splashing in the night’s rain but the lorry moved faster. He stopped at the gate. We didn’t.
         “Every day!” He smiled. “As long as it takes, every day, here. Home!”
         “It’ll be over before you know it, little brother.”
         “Then it’s a promise!” His smile was bigger than I’d ever seen it. I held my thumb up, a smile tugging at only one corner of my mouth. He copied the motion, fading. I sat, leaned against the metal skeleton.
         “You’ll probably never see him again.” The recruiter’s green eyes were staring at me. I stared, silent until he looked away, closed his eyes. “You need to do ten weeks’ training in eight, but it takes nearly two weeks to sail through undetected. There’ll be someone on the boat to start those two weeks. You’re a recruit now, a member of the Brant armies, a civilian in the Kingdom of Brant. I doubt you’ll ever see or touch Senin soil again. Only way you’ll see that boy is when he joins you on the front lines, if you live long enough. War is all about chance, death, surviving, luck. So good luck.”