“What do you see?” Joseph asked from the other side of the tree, as I watched the men walk towards the women cooking, leaning down to kiss them and smell the food.
“Um, I don’t even know how to explain what I’m looking at,” I said, my eyes widening as a small child ran from a tent to his mother’s arms. She mussed his wiry hair, blew on spoonful of food, and fed it to him, cupping her hand under his chin lovingly. “What can you see?” I asked carefully.
“Trees, chickens, and horses.”
Trees, chickens, and horses?
“Can you see the others?” I asked.
“They’re all tied to trees just behind you,” Joseph answered.
I craned my head, but all I could see was the tip of one sneakered foot. I couldn’t tell whose it was.
One of the women closest to me snapped her head towards in our direction, like she’d only just noticed us. She turned to the man who’d just kissed her and shoved him, her words fast and angry. The man shrugged and gave an explanation, which she didn’t seem to like the sound of since she slapped him. He grabbed her wrist and I winced, expecting him to hit her back, but he just laughed and helped himself to the food she’d been cooking.
She shook her head, scooped some food into a metal bowl, and made her way towards me.
Her eyes were crinkled, her skin as dark as my own but with a more yellowish tinge to it. Her hair was silken black, almost blue, like the wing of a crow. She held a spoonful of food to my lips. I tried to decline, but she shoved it in my mouth anyway. I swirled it around, the complexity of the flavors bursting in my mouth.
“What’s going on?” Joseph asked, trying to shift his position. He soon found out as the woman shuffled around to him and force-fed him some of her soup.
“Just eat it. You saw what they did to that guy back there.”
“His name was Ansel,” Joseph said sadly between mouthfuls.
She fed all of us, throughout the day. Groups were led to the toilet and then tied back up. The day passed dusty and kind of hot, despite the ice creeping around the edges of the camp. They kept their fires so high and strong it fought back the weather.
The day ebbed, and night flowed.
A child of maybe eight or nine dragged a handful of coarse-looking blankets through the dirt and up to us. A woman stood back from him, hands on her hips, eyeing him carefully, proudly. He looked back at her, unsure, and she nodded. He gently draped a blanket over each of our laps, averting his eyes. When he got to me, I tried to catch his eyes and smile at him. He narrowed his eyes and smiled back, revealing a mouthful of fangs, each tooth sharpened to a point. I shuddered. The woman who was watching approached us, tapping the young boy on the bottom and ushering him away. She then proceeded to tuck each blanket awkwardly up to our chins. Then, through a series of hand gestures, ordered all of us to sleep.
I tried to keep my eyes open but once the guards were posted and the fire had burned down to amber coals, my heavy head dropped to my chest, my chin grazing the rough rug, and I was out.
The morning was filled with clanging and water boiling. Children played in front of me, as I struggled to comprehend what I was seeing. This was a small community of people who all looked very similar. They were certainly not All Kind; they were Own Kind, descended from the same race.
With nothing to do except sit and observe, my eyes soaked in the details of this tiny tent town. They had simple dwellings and no technology. Small vegetable patches decorated the spaces in between and in front of the tents, and I watched the women harvest what they needed for our food as they cooked. It was like we had stepped back in time to thousands of years before the war. This was how humans eked out a life when there was nothing to help them. I appreciated the idea, but these people were not kind. They were animalistic. The children fought with teeth bared, the men were rough with each other and even rougher to us. Only one woman fed us and not out of kindness, it was her assigned responsibility.
Gus tripped one up with a protruding foot to get attention. The middle-aged man he tripped, hissed and jumped up agilely, about to walk away. “Wait! What do you want from us? Why are you holding us here?” Gus clamored. The man smiled, giving me chills, and looked past the circle towards the sharp-looking trees. Woods so thick that they held together like a bundle of kindling. He shrugged and shook his head, unwilling or unable to answer. The trees weren’t offering one either, so he moved, kicking dirt in Gus’s face when he was a safe distance away.
An hour later, I stomped the earth as the one who grabbed and threatened me in the brick building passed. Everything was still there, our packs, our handhelds, and my link to Orry. “You.” He stopped and turned, smiling and revealing a mouthful of gaps where teeth should be. “Yeees,” he said in a heavy accent.
He knelt down, and I noticed his face was smudged with soot and dirt. His breath smelled of the strong flavors of last night’s dinner. I had to try. “What do you want with us?”
He cocked his head to the side, thinking over his answer. His hand went to my face, his strong fingers digging hard into my jawbone as I tried to resist. “Preeeetty,” he kind of whistled through his teeth. He ran his hand down my shirt collar to my breastbone. I pushed my chin to my chest anxiously and looked up, locking eyes with the young man, with dark brown lips and narrow eyes. “You didn’t answer my question,” I said in a hard tone.
He removed his hand and dusted it off on his muscled thigh. “Waiting. All Kind will tell.”
I found myself squirming and twisting my wrists at his words. “Did you hear that?” I threw behind me.
“I did,” Joseph answered tersely.
These people answered to the Superiors.
*****
Mid-morning I was released to go to the toilet under the supervision of the young man with whom I’d had my enlightening conversation. I snapped my shoulders when he touched them, recoiled when he smoothed my hair, but he just shrugged and smiled at me with tarry gums.
When I returned, I was tied up but, this time, we all faced inwards toward the center of the camp. My unwelcome friend grazed my cheek with the back of his sandpapery hand and left.
The fires reached into the sky. The women swept the dirt that was threatening to become mud out to the edge of the camp with grass brooms, while a man placed rocks in a tight circle. I turned to Rash who, for once, had a serious expression on his face. Everyone’s gaze was turned towards the circle, all hoping we weren’t going to end up like Ansel.
As I watched puffs of dust pluming and spraying against the trees in a red spritz, I began to understand more about what this culture was based on. Violence.
Two men stood at the edge of the rock circle on their toes, like it was an abyss that would swallow them. Two women took their shirts and placed their palms to the men’s chests, leaving two chalky white imprints like the claw marks of a giant cat. It was primal and savage, until she reached up on her tiptoes and gave him a peck on the nose. I raised my eyebrow and turned to Joseph. He was deep in thought, turning something over in his head as he stared past the circle and into the thickly wooded trees beyond the camp. The men placed two items at the edge—a worn, leather jacket and a heavy iron pot. I stifled the need to shout at them ‘What the hell is going on here?’
Then they stepped into the circle and I was lost to the performance, the viciousness, the aggression of two men clawing and scratching at each other. But lightly. The balls of their feet pushed up and danced in the dirt, yet barely touched it. The movements were swift, the kicks gliding through the air in sweeping arcs.