Sand Red

19

It felt like seconds before I was being shaken awake and Aida's dark face came into view. The room was dark and the sheets had filled up with laughing and whispering children and there were noises in the streets outside.

'We've got to go,' she said, falling back.

I sat up groggily, trying to remember what I had been dreaming about. It had felt important, but my subconscious eluded me.

'Good luck,' Madan's voice called across the room.

'Thanks,' I mumbled, my train of thought cut off. I rubbed my eyes.

Aida stood packed and ready at the door. I lifted myself off the blanket and stumbled over to the doorway. Together, we made our way silently towards the end of the camp. 'Won't we tell anyone we're leaving?' I asked.

'I told them,' Aida replied.

I had seen neither Od nor Yul. I followed Aida, my eyes on my feet. It was late evening and the darkening sky offered poor visibility. It would improve as more and more stars came out.

We hit the edge of the settlement without a sign of the guards and my heart sank further and I was angry with myself a second later. I shook the feeling off and trudged on.

'Where are we going?' I asked as we passed the perimeter.

'There's a settlement five hours due West.'

We weren't going to the Reds. I thought about the rich air of the Reds. My heart ached to see the endless green. I cursed myself for being so cold towards my best friends the past few days. It was my fault. If things were never the same again, it would be my fault. My sleep thickened eyelids fell further as we walked on. The stars came out.

'You were in China, weren't you?' Aida asked without preamble.

My head snapped up. Thoughts of sleep disappeared. 'Why?' I asked, guarded.

'I was there too.'

I looked at her sharply. Why had she been there? I waited for her to continue. There was only the sound of thorn being crushed for a few minutes. Then she spoke.

'When we left Ethiopia because of the War,' she started. The Ethiopian food wars, the bloodiest conflict in the history of mankind. Hardly anyone from the Middle East or Africa had survived them. 'We travelled Northeast along the warfronts. My father was killed in Kyrgyzstan and I fled to China.'

'How did you know I was there?'

She shrugged. 'Seen you fight.'

'You were trained by the Dong too?'

She nodded.

'I was there four years. Never saw a black girl.'

She stifled a laugh. 'That's because I was a boy. Disguised. I was there nearly seven years. I remember you and your mother.'

My mother. I racked my brains, trying to draw from my young memory a boy with outsider skin.

'I was Bojing,' she supplied helpfully.

I remembered vaguely a tall dark boy that fought like lightning. 'I remember, I think.'

'You were small.'

Ma and I had run away when I was perhaps seven. 'You fought well,' I observed.

'I was afraid.' She laughed. 'And angry.'

I wondered how she could laugh her father's death off. My mother had died a year after leaving the Dong, and I had never stopped mourning her.

'How old were you when your father passed?'