Devour | on hold

Chapter 18 (Across the river)

- Chapter Eighteen -

*LENMANA'S POV*

Across the river

A month has passed. I haven’t seen Lenno for thirty days, and I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again. I don’t know if he’s alive, and I don't know if he's dead. All I want is for my brain to work, to figure out something, to find some way out of it. And I want my heart to be stronger, and thus strengthen me.

I’ve been spending too much time with Akando, the two of us trying to think of something. But we couldn’t deny that this is bigger than the both of us. This is serious. What we’re planning could either create a new life, or eternally end the one we're living. It could build and unite this tribe, or destroy it beyond mending.

I wake up at home this time. I quickly change my clothes, give Kaya and Jacy quick pecks on the cheeks and leave before anyone wakes up. Summer is waving at us goodbye with the last hot breezes, almost lost between the cold ones. I’m thankful for the cold weather on its way, and welcoming Autumn with a pile of problems, hoping it blows them away like the wind does to the piles of dried and fallen leaves.

Akando meets me on the river, and greets me with a warm smile on his face. I return it brokenly. My lips forgot how to draw the shape of a smile.

“I was thinking of changing the plan yesterday,” he starts without any introductions.

“How?” I knit my eyebrows.

“We’ve been thinking of something so much greater than what we really can do,” he explains, “starting a rebellion is not that easy, these people are not the helpful type.” He stops to breathe, “do you think the Eyotes or Pallantons or Sinopas or Tiriaqs or any of those would risk their lives for someone who’s not from their family? I actually doubt they would do it for someone who is.” I consider his words, and they absolutely make sense to me.

“No,” I reply disappointedly.

“We cannot just climb a tree, and talk to them from up there, telling them to protest and get ready to fight,” he looks at me and smiles, remembering the day of the internal war when I stood on a tree in the warzone and shouted at them to stop. I smile too. That won't work now, and I would be silly to think it would.

“Then what do you think we should do?”

“I’ve been thinking a lot about it, and this is what I came to: we will completely count on the two of us. We will ask for the help of people we trust the most. This might seem risky, and indeed it is, it could be the greatest risk we ever take, we will wait for the suitable time, and sneak to the Cannibals’ Land, accompanied by those whom we trust.”

I stay silent for a short while, letting his words sink deep into my mind, thinking them over and over again. This is crazily dangerous. We will be alone, few in number, unarmed and unsupported. We can get caught here before we leave to the Cannibals’ Land, thrown in prison and punished. Even if I was excluded for being the Leader’s daughter, Akando and the others –whom I still don’t know who they are– will be hurt. However, even if father didn’t throw me in prison, people wouldn’t just let that go, and I can imagine a life in a prison with no walls.

And if we were lucky enough to get there secretly, there is a high chance of getting caught by the cannibals, and that’s even worse, they’d either eat us alive and then humiliate our tribe for the rest of their lives and add rules to the rules. Or put us in prison like they did to Lenno, which would be totally useful. Note the sarcasm.

But there is a slight, tiny silver of hope that we reach Lenno, sneak him out of there, and run back here, totally uncertain of the consequences. Which is still risky. But it’ll save Lenno’s life, nonetheless. And bring him back to his mother, siblings and me.