The man stopped fiddling with his moustache and frowned. “Very well.”

Chapter 10

The second I was standing on the platform I regretted my decision and changed my mind. Before me there was a crowd that filled the town square and spilled out into the alleys. On the rooftops there were brutish men with bows and arrows, I recognized one of them as the gorilla from the prison. They were using me as bate and the crowd were lambs to the slaughter. I was being paranoid, the men on the rooftops were only a precaution for if there was a riot.

“Hello, I am Perista, many of you know mw as Carissa Callistine. I respect what you are trying to do by refusing to work; though I worry that there will be consequences. You are right to deny them your service.” I ignored the man twirling his moustache that coughed and stamped his foot, “You deserve rights and salaries. You deserve freedom!” I noticed the arrows on the rooftops were now directed at me.

“So not use violence to gain your freedom if it is avoidable, for that makes you no better then they are. They have seen that I can read, and write and speak to them as equals. They have seen that am more than a mere animal! We are people! But I have betrayed their trust in pretending to be someone I am not. I want you to show them your intelligence but more importantly I want you to show them your moral standards. Make THEM change the way they treat us.”

From out of nowhere Echo jumped up onto the stage and cried out, “If you have any decency at all you will free your slaves,”

There was a flash of light and a whooshing in the air that send me hurtling into the past.

I walk down the hill to the bread stand, and I’m lookin’ at what kinda bread I should get when there’s a big bang and the ground shakes. It’s real hot and I can’t see. There’s red in my eye and it’s gooey. Kinda smells like blood. It’s hot. I aint never been so hot. I can’t hear nothing “cept a ringin noise in my ears and it hurts to roll over. When I do get turned over and wipe the blood out of my eyes, I wish I never. The store Tobey went in aint there no more, just a big black mark. All the buildings beside are on fire and people are burning. Then I can”t see no more cus the blood’s back in my eyes.

An onslaught of arrows was flying in from all directions and I cringed, expecting to be struck. “Quick like the guillotine,” I whispered. It was not me they were aiming at, but I did not perceive this until the first arrow pierced Echo’s back. Only seconds after the first, he was torn apart by the others, his body collapsing into a disgruntled heap of organs.

I wanted to cry out, to run to him, to save him somehow, but thick fingers grasped my shoulder and pulled me away from him. It has not happened! Not again! I felt cursed, as though everyone I touched would be killed or suffer. As I was dragged away I stared at what was once Echo, and the image was overlapped with the memory of the scared ground where Tobey had been. I reached out, desperately trying to grasp one of them, trying to hold onto something that was gone, to a hope.

To this day I can’t imagine why they would have shot him rather than me. I was a slave, I was “expendable”, and I had not said what they had told me to. I suppose they could not have a noble who was on the slaves’ side; they must have feared others would join his way of thinking.

I sat in the rusted slave trade wagon, decaying hay picking into my legs and my hands clutching the cold bars. I stared with horror struck eyes, tears streaming down my dirt smeared face, at the malicious nobleman handing my master a pouch of coins. I remembered the frightened child I had freed.