Chains of the Broken

Chapter 1: August 1781

I heard an ear-splitting sound.

Then all hell broke loose.

People were screaming.

Smoke filled my lungs.

My head whipped back and forth.

I moved my foot, landing on something sticky.

Blood.

My eyes flitted upwards to the roof of our burning hut. Shrieks and screams of pain and anguish filled my ears. I covered them with my hands, the sound making them feel like they were going to burst. Suddenly, fear wrenched my gut. Where was Desta? My older brother was not in the hut and he was not not calling my name. Was he dead? If I did not get out soon, I would be the one to die.

I shot out of the hut, the smoky air making my lungs burn and my eyes water. Then I remembered. My mother's necklace. The only thing that I had left of her. Sprinting back, I was about to grab it when a hand snatched my arm and yanked me away from the hut threshold. It whipped me around so fast, I did not see the hand's owner, but my village suddenly spanned in front of my eyes.

The grip on my arm tightened but I did not pay attention to that. Everything was on fire. Huts burned, many crashing to the ground. My jaw dropped. There were strange men holding metal things and cuffing my people together. They were all being placed in lines and led out of the village. Screams threatened to burst my eardrums. There were huge, wild beasts that I had never seen with long brown hair, pawing at the ground and emitting unusual grunts. What was going on? People were burning and the smell of carnage traveled through the air. I would have not seen the men's skin color if not for the light of the fire burning all the huts. It was the color of an ivory elephant tusk. Who were these men? What was going on? Where was my brother? Suddenly I heard a yell and anxiety clawed at my heart, threatening to rip it apart.

Someone was yelling. It was not not anyone from my village or someone I knew. They were screaming in a tongue I had never heard before. I heard my name being yelled by that same voice. Something hard hit the back of my head.

Then everything went black.

I woke up, finding myself completely soaked. There was a stranger in front of me, one of the pale-skins, throwing a bucket to the ground next to me. He barked at me, but I knew not what he said. Where was Desta? Where was I? The memories of the day before came flooding back to me as images of my village on fire and people's bodies on the floor littered my brain.

Questions flooded my head as I looked around. We were not in the village anymore and I could see smoke in the distance. We were in the rainforest and there people spanning my vision. Everybody was chained together, in groups of ten and twenty. They were all chained by the neck. I gasped. The man reached forward and slapped me. I gasped and he began to chain my arms together. The chains, however, were all connected to one another and hooked up to others. A loud voice cried out and I was yanked by the person in front of me. My ankles, neck, and wrists were all chained so I had no option but to move with the person in front of me. Without warning, I was wrenched to the ground from my neck as I landed with a thump. Everyone behind me followed, being pulled by their necks, falling on their faces. I tried getting up, but was pulled down by the chains.

"We have to get up together," the woman behind me whispered. I nodded a thank you to her and at the count of three, led by the woman, we all stood up at the same time, succeeding, as we stabilized ourselves. We continued walking on and on, through desert and grasslands for at least 2 days and I had yet to find Desta. The whole time we were walking, the strange men barely gave us water and we would only rest at nightfall. On the third day and counting, we were walking through a patch of desert, the only time my lips had touched water being at the crack of dawn. The sun was beaming down on my back, the heat becoming unbearable. The world started spinning around me. I tripped and fell, then everything was dark once again.

I woke up to a jolt, my head feeling as if it were being trampled by a herd of elephants. I was insensible, black dots blinding and blurring my vision. All I knew was that I was moving, but not of my own accord so I closed my eyes, and let sleep wash over me.