The Price of Freedom: Innocence Lost

A New Friend

The hull is like something out of a nightmare. The smell hits you like a hammer and makes you want to gag. The slaves are all crammed together so tight they barely have room to sit and it's so dark that you can hardly see an inch in front of your face. All you want to do is run. You want to get as far away from that ship as possible, but the chain that links you to the other slaves keeps pulling you forward. Eventually, the line stops, and you're forced to sit down with the others. It doesn't take long after that for the rest of the slaves to get loaded down into the hull and, once you are all chained up securely, the sailors in charge of loading you up head back to the deck and close the door behind them, leaving you in pitch darkness. That's when Alexius bursts into tears.

A few of the other slaves are crying, but they're sobbing quietly to themselves, not wailing like your brother. You're deciding whether to console him or yell at him to be quiet when another voice speaks up out of the darkness.

"Why you cry?" Comes a young, female voice with a thick Ethiopian accent. "Why you cry boy? Huh? Why cry? Do not cry. Is too soon for cry. Nothing bad happen yet." Her tone is very firm and you can't tell if she's trying to scold your brother or comfort him.

Alexius doesn't reply, but his sobs grow slowly quieter. The girl is stubborn though and doesn't pick up on the fact that your brother doesn't want to talk. "Why you say nothing? What wrong? You no speak Latin?" She asks, speaking slowly as if that would help him understand her better.

"We both speak Latin." You correct her... And you speak it a lot better than she does too.

"This you brother?" The girl asks, turning her attention to you. "Why he cry? What happen? The boy hurt? One of the sailors beat on him? What happen?"

"Leave me alone!" Alexius finally snaps at the girl, taking a few deep breaths and trying to calm himself down. "I'm not hurt, I just... I want to go home!"

The girl's voice lifts higher and for some reason she seems confident when Alexius explains why he's crying. "Oh! You boys new slaves, yes? You live here in Greece? No been slaves before?" She asks, sounding like she's trying to be friendly. "Is okay boy. Do no cry. On this boat, no so bad. From where I come from, is very, very bad. To get here to Greece, many days in boat, yes? Get many sick. Many die. Very, very hungry. On this boat, is okay. To go to Rome, not many days. Will be there soon, yes?"

"I don't want to go to Rome!" Alexius screams, resuming his loud and inconsolable wailing. "I want to go home!"

As your brother bawls his eyes out, the girl's voice becomes firmer. "Oh, you child! No cry! No cry! You make big fuss like baby. You are man now. Men do no cry."

Alexius does seem to be making more of a fuss than any of the other slaves, and you don't want his wailing to get too much attention. Right now, you're not sure whether to stick up for him or to agree with the girl and tell him he needs to toughen up.

"Men do cry sometimes." You tell the girl, remembering the few occasions in your life when you heard your father crying. For a second, you wonder if your father cried after the slaver took you away. You then decide that it doesn't matter. Nothing your father does matters anymore. He stopped being your father when he took away your rights as a human being and traded them for a pocket full of coins.

"Really?" The girl asked. "Men cry in you country? In my country, no. In my country only the babies cry. Unless someone die, then much crying." Despite what she's saying, the girl doesn't seem to be trying to insult you. She simply seems interested in the differences between your two cultures. "What you names?" She asked quietly.

Alexius seems to have calmed down now and answers her after sniffing and rubbing his eyes. "I'm Alexius." He tells her. "This is my brother Andreas."

"I am Lula." She introduces herself. "I come from country far, far away. My mother, she die. I steal food for to eat. The men, they catch me. They beat me with bamboo stick and take me to man with pale face like you. Pale man pay them for me and now, I slave too." At first you don't understand why the girl keeps talking to you both. Then you realize that, despite the situation, she seems to be trying to make friends. "How many years you have?"

Alexius doesn't seem to understand the question, so you answer for him. "I'm ten. Alexius is seven."

"Nearly eight!" He adds, as if that makes him any more mature.

"I have nine years." Lula tells you happily. "We nearly the same."

Perhaps in more ways than one. Her circumstances might've been different from yours, but the girl understands what it's like to have her life snatched away from her. Both literally and figuratively, you're all in the same boat. Maybe you and Alexius could use a friend for the long journey you have ahead of you.

Lula continues to make conversation with you for awhile. Mostly she talks about her life back in Ethiopia, but her small talk seems to have a positive effect on Alexius, since it distracts him from thinking about his own life back in Greece. It's only in the moments of silence that Alexius starts sobbing again, telling you he wants to go home back to mama. Whenever he starts though, Lula will shuffle closer to you both and reach her hand out to stroke your brother's hair, singing a gentle tune in a strange language from her own country. You don't understand what it means, but it calms Alexius down anyway.

It's in the middle of one of Lula's songs that the door to the deck flies open and you see two sailors standing outside, holding large baskets of bread. At this moment, all the slaves start calling together in their various languages, getting to their feet and holding their hands out towards the door. Lula jumps to her feet with the rest of them and starts begging for food in her own language, leaving you and Alexius alone on the ground, looking lost and confused.

Feeding time seems to have an all for one policy as the sailors start throwing rolls of bread across the hull. The slaves start grabbing it out of the air, ripping it out of each others hands, shoving as much as they can in their mouths before someone else tries to take it from them. Still, through whatever small measure of luck you still happen to possess, one of the rolls falls directly into your lap.

You hug it tightly against your chest, having only a few seconds to decide what to do with it before a bigger, stronger slave tries to take it away from you. As the oldest, it could be considered your responsibility to provide for your little brother, or you could try and use the bread to strengthen your friendship with Lula. Then again, you haven't eaten since yesterday and you don't know when you'll get the chance to eat again. Maybe you should just eat the bread to keep your own strength up.

Before anyone else can take it away, you quickly hand the loaf of bread to your brother. "Here." You whisper to him. "Quick, eat it!"

Alexius looks at you nervously for a second before taking the bread from you. He only manages to eat a bite of it before one of the adult slaves snatches it out of his hands and pushes him to the ground.

"Oi!" Lula yells, shoving the man away and yelling something at him in her own language that you can only assume is an insult. The man leaves you alone after that and Lula leans down, putting her hand on your brother's shoulder. "You need to eat quicker than that." She tells him firmly. "Next time you have food, hold in tight in you hands. Turn away from other people. No let no one take it off you."

Alexius looks extremely sorry for himself as he turns to you. "Thank you Andreas." He tells you quietly. "I know you're hungry too, and I'm really sorry. I didn't mean to let go of the bread."

"It's okay." You reassure him. "You'll do better next time."