Chapter 1: Life in Camp Seven

The elders say our land, Alkebulan, was once free. People sang. Many peoples lived side by side, in great kingdoms and small free villages.

Then the Shadow Lord took the throne of the Ngaru Empire. He destroyed the other kingdoms, and he burned every scroll, every carving, and every song that remembered them. He did not want us to know who we were.

Now nobody in the Ngaru Empire owns anything. Even your shadow belongs to the crown. For us, it is worse. The Shadow Lord built Camp Seven, and now it is our whole world. We cannot reach our ancestors. All we have left is each other.

Someone once whispered to me about a person who would bring back what the Shadow Lord destroyed. I do not know if that person is real, or if I want them to be. All I want is to get through each day without losing my people.

Then, this morning, a boy with strange eyes caught a pebble he was not looking at.

In his dream, a woman was singing.

Her voice was soft and sweet. Lumani did not know the words, but he knew the song. It always made him feel warm and safe, and a little lost.

CLANG!

An iron pipe slammed against the wooden door.

“Outside, worms!” a guard shouted.

The song broke apart. Lumani opened his eyes to the cold, damp air of Camp Seven. He tried to hold on to the tune, but it was already gone.

He never saw her face. He always woke up wishing he had.

Outside, the whole camp was waking up. Doors banged, and somewhere, someone coughed and could not stop. In the trees beyond the wall, the ibis birds were already screaming, and the air smelled of wet clay and old smoke.

Inside their small mud-brick shed, Mama Leki was already folding her blanket. Kamau, the old man who had raised Lumani since he was a baby, was rolling up his mat by the door. Kofi was still asleep, with his blanket pulled over his head and one foot sticking out.

“Psst, weird-eyes.”

The voice came from the straw mat beside him. It was Jabari, grinning at him. Jabari was fourteen years old. He was built like he had been carrying heavy rocks since birth, which was not far from the truth.

Lumani was ten years old. One of his eyes was blue, like the sky after rain. The other was amber, like honey. Nobody else in Camp Seven had eyes like his, so most people just called him weird-eyes. He also had a dark mark on his chest. Kamau said it was only a birthmark.

“Are you going to stare at the ceiling all day, or are you going to help me ‘steal breakfast’?”

“I am not stealing anything, Loudmouth.” Lumani rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “Last time you ‘stole breakfast,’ we had extra work for a whole week.”

“That was because Ayo told on us.”

“I did not tell on you!” Ayo’s voice came sharply from across the shed. She was twelve, with a small scar on her cheek and no patience at all for Jabari’s silly ideas. “The guards caught you because you are as loud as a drum.”

“I am stealthy!” Jabari whispered.

“You trip over your own feet,” Ayo said.

“That is a strategy,” Lumani said. “It confuses the guards. They never expect a thief to fall face-first into the mud.”

Jabari took a small pebble from his pocket and threw it at him. Lumani caught it in the air without even looking.

“How did you do that?” Jabari asked.

“Lucky!” Lumani said quickly. He tossed it back.

Jabari grabbed for it and missed. The pebble bounced off his chest and rolled away across the floor.

“Also lucky,” Ayo said.

Mornings like this were not so bad.

By the door, Kamau bent down and picked up the pebble. He turned it over in his fingers. Then he looked at Lumani and kept it.

Lumani looked away first. He had one rule in Camp Seven: do not get noticed doing anything strange.

The guards marched them outside. A cold gray mist lay over the brick pits. The red clay was wet, and it stuck to their feet with every step.

Smoke drifted from the ovens where yesterday’s bricks were baking. Past the ovens stood a stone wall, with thorn branches on top and rusty wire above that. It was the first thing Lumani saw every morning, and the last thing he saw every night. When the wind blew through the thorns, the wall made a thin, high whistle.

“Even the wall is cold,” Jabari said, rubbing his arms. “Listen. It is crying.”

“It is not crying,” Ayo said. “It is laughing at you.”

Their work was simple: make bricks, then stack the dry ones.

Beyond the brick frames, the women spread green leaves on woven mats to dry in the pale sun. For the healers, they said.

Drying leaves was women’s work, but Ayo was too stubborn for that. She was the only girl at the brick frames.

Lumani picked up a handful of clay and pushed it into a wooden frame. He made the top flat with his hand, turned the frame over, and hit it twice with a stone. A new brick fell out, dark and wet. He set it down to dry.

Near him, Jabari carried an armful of dry bricks and stacked them on a pile that was already taller than his waist.

“My arms are going to fall off,” Jabari groaned.

“Good,” Ayo said. “Then you will finally stop dropping bricks on my foot.”

“That was one time!”

“It was four times.”

In the next pit, Kofi laughed so hard he nearly fell over. He was small and wiry, the youngest of the four, with a grin that almost never went away, even on the worst mornings.

“It was five times,” Kofi said, catching himself on the edge of the pit. “I was there for at least three of them.”

“Nobody asked you,” Jabari said.

“Nobody has to ask me.”

“Whose side are you on, Lumani?” Jabari asked.

“The side with no bruised toes.”

Kofi went back to scooping clay, humming something low under his breath, the way he always did, without noticing.

“You are doing it again,” Ayo said.

“Doing what?” Kofi asked.

“The humming.”

“I always hum. You would miss it if I stopped.”

“I really would not.”

“You really would. Camp Seven would feel too quiet, and then you would all remember where we actually are.”

Across the dividing ditch, another crew worked in near silence, heads down. One of the older boys caught Lumani’s eye, then looked away fast.

By late morning, the mist was gone. The sun burned down on the pits, and there was no shade anywhere. The wet bricks cracked at the edges, and red dust blew into everyone’s eyes.

Lumani stood up to wipe his face. Past the wall, yellow grass ran flat all the way to the sky. Far out stood one huge baobab tree. He had looked at it for as long as he could remember. He had never touched it.

As he stared at it, a few notes of the song from his dream came back to him. He opened his mouth to hum them, and they were gone.

Jabari was big and strong, but his brain and his feet usually agreed on one thing: bad ideas.

At midday, he decided it was time for breakfast.

“It is too hot to work,” he whispered. “Watch this.”

Ayo did not look up from her row of bricks.

“That is what you always say before something terrible happens,” she said.

Jabari placed one foot on a flat board lying in the wet clay. He pushed himself forward with the other.

“Mud-skating,” he announced.

For three whole steps, it worked. Then the board turned sideways. His arms shot into the air. His legs went in opposite directions, and he landed in the mud with a heavy splat, breaking a couple of bricks.

Kofi covered his mouth, but the laugh escaped through his fingers.

Ayo closed her eyes. “I warned you,” she muttered.

Jabari sat up slowly. Mud covered him from his chest to his toes, with a thick lump resting on his head like a crooked crown.

“I actually meant to do that,” he said.

At the far end of the work line, Kamau stopped lifting stones.

A guard came quickly.

“What happened here?”

Jabari stood up. Clay ran from his clothes. The guard looked at the broken bricks. Then he lifted his whip.

Lumani did not think. He stepped forward.

“Sir! Please do not punish him.”

The guard turned and looked at Lumani.

“Did I ask you to speak, weird-eyes?”

“No, sir.” Lumani forced himself to keep a serious face. “But Jabari was not destroying the bricks. He was showing us his legendary warrior camouflage.”

The guard stared at him.

“His what?”

“His camouflage, sir.” Lumani pointed at Jabari. “He was teaching us how to hide in the mud. Watch. If he closes his eyes, he becomes invisible.”

Jabari squeezed his eyes shut. He stood perfectly still, with mud running down his face.

“He does not look invisible,” the guard said. “He looks like a fool covered in mud.”

“That is the trick, sir. Everyone thinks that at first.”

“There is no trick.”

“Yes, sir. That is how you know the trick is good. You cannot see it.”

The guard opened his mouth. Then he closed it again.

Kofi laughed. Ayo pressed her arm against her mouth, her shoulders shaking.

The guard glanced down at his own muddy boots, as if he were checking whether they had disappeared. Then he saw the other workers watching him, and his face went cold.

“You think you are clever?”

He raised the whip again.

“Enough,” Kamau said.

He walked into the pit with his eyes low and stopped beside Lumani.

“You have something to say, old man?” the guard asked.

“Yes, sir,” Kamau replied. He looked at the damaged bricks. “The clay is still wet. Nothing has been lost.”

The guard pointed the whip at Jabari. “He destroyed the Lord’s property.”

“Then let him repair it. He is also the Lord’s property.”

“I decide his punishment.”

“Yes, sir.” Kamau’s voice did not change.

The guard stepped closer. “Do you question me?”

“No.” Kamau looked toward the work rows. “I am thinking about our brick numbers for today.”

“If you punish the boy now, the bricks remain broken,” Kamau continued. “If he returns the clay to the frames, the Lord still receives his bricks.”

“And what do I receive?”

“Twenty extra bricks before the evening horn.”

Jabari opened his eyes. “Twenty?”

Ayo kicked his ankle.

“Expensive breakfast,” Kofi whispered.

The guard studied Kamau. “And if the count is short?”

“Then the fault is mine.”

The guard lowered his whip slightly. “You will help him.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And the strange-eyed one will clean the pit.”

Lumani nodded. “Yes, sir.”

The guard pointed at him. “No more jokes.”

Kamau rested a hand on Lumani’s shoulder.

“He understands.”

The guard walked away. Nobody moved until he reached the fence.

Kamau’s hand stayed on Lumani’s shoulder a moment longer.

“Tonight,” he said quietly. “We talk.”

Lumani thought he meant the jokes.