Chapter 15

Victor didn’t say a word to her. Not when he dragged her out of the car, not when he undid the padlock on the hut, not when he threw her inside and slammed the door. He shoved her so hard she fell on the floor and hit her head.

She didn’t bother getting up.

She lay there in the dark, her breathes coming in tiny little gasps, hearing the mosquitoes buzzing around her face. She was so tired, she didn’t even bother batting them away.

It wasn’t long before she realized that the hut smelled different. It wasn’t the usual, damp, earthy odor she had noticed before. It was the smell of a sweaty body, mixed with some sort of musk.

Then she heard a sound. She almost jumped out of her skin. At first she thought it was a rat and, although she had hit rats with sticks in the past, there was no stick in sight (actually it was so dark in the hut, there was nothing in sight). She couldn’t fall asleep knowing that rats were circling her, just waiting to devour her as soon as she closed her eyes. They could give you a virus that kills you by dissolving your organs, and blood cells and tissues. And the worst part about it was that it took forever to die.

Or maybe a bat was flying inches above her head. A bat who would get into her greasy, unwashed hair. A bat who would give her rabies.

Only she probably wouldn’t live to die of rabies.

She crawled into the corner and started to pray.

A man’s voice. “Who’s there?” he sounded as terrified as she was and Jean felt slightly consoled by the tone of his voice.

Jean thought of telling him her name but then decided against it. If she had never talked to Peter, she probably wouldn’t be a prisoner in the hut right now.

“Who are you?” she retorted back.

“Don’t I know your voice?” the man mumbled.

Jean thought it best not to answer. Although he did sound vaguely familiar, that didn’t mean anything. She had met a lot of people, especially in the last couple of days. And maybe this wasn’t a good man. Maybe he meant her harm. He could do anything he wanted with her and stuck in the middle of no where, locked in this building, who would hear her if she screamed?

And even if they did, who would come to her aid?

Maybe Victor put him in there, knowing he would kill Jean.

She heard him coming towards her. She folded herself up and kept right on saying the Hail Mary.

“What are you here for?” The man slid next to her.

Jean could see his form in the dark. A big, tall man with bad breath.

“I’m here because,” she paused, “because they think I’m a witch child,” she added quickly.

“Hey, you’re the kid I picked up.”

It was Peter. In the dark, with just a sliver of moonlight, Jean could see his profile.

“I thought you were dead.”

He didn’t say anything for a while. That made Jean nervous. Maybe he was planning something—against her.

He finally spoke, his voice coming out raspy, like a whisper. “I wish I were. But they only shot me in the leg, so I couldn’t run away. Listen, kid, if you know where those stones are, you got to give them back.”

“I lost them,” Jean said, “I swear I did. I want to give them back.” She wasn’t going to say that she didn’t know where the stones were. That would be a lie. And Jean didn’t think it would wise to lie. Not when she was so close to death.

Peter didn’t say anything for a few more minutes. Jean began to relax. She could hear him breathing, slow and steady. She wondered if he had gone to sleep.

“What is coltan?” she asked suddenly.

Peter chuckled in the dark.

“I mean, to me, they just look like a bunch of rocks.”

“Yeah, they’re rocks all right. Very valuable rocks.”

“But why?”

“Coltan is an ore and when you mix it with niobium and tantalum, it turns into a powder.”

“Drugs,” Jean said softly.

“Ain’t no drugs. This powder, it holds a high electrical charge. That coltan, they use it in every computer, every cell phone, every play station—”

“What’s a play station?”

Peter ignored her question. “Without that coltan, the world of technology is caput—over.”

“Is it illegal?” she asked.

“No, but there is a real high price on coltan, even more if we can smuggle it out of the country.”

Jean didn’t know what to say. But, at least, now she knew what she was dying for.

Peter was quiet for a few minutes and then he asked, “So are you?”

“Am I what?”

“A witch child?”

“No. I pray a lot and sometimes my prayers get answered. But not lately.”

“You know, if I had never picked you up, I wouldn’t be in this situation. They would have their damn coltan.”

Jean didn’t answer but she was thinking that if Peter had never picked her up, she would be in a better situation herself. Or, at the very least, she wouldn’t be in this dark hut, being held prisoner by vicious robbers.

“They might have killed you,” Jean said.

“Nah, they need me. I’m one of the top miners. I know just how to get that coltan, to scrap away the dirt every so nicely, to slosh that water around, so the coltan sinks to the bottom. Yep, they need me but I’m surprised they just didn’t kill you. Or send you to one of those places that claim that they can get rid of Lucifer. You know they starve him out or burn him. Whatever.”

It was quiet for a while.

“You believe that? About witches, I mean.” Jean asked.

“I believe there’s bad stuff in the world but I don’t believe it’s because of any witches. We got lots of people dying, nobody to take care of the kids, no one to feed them. It’s just an excuse to get rid of them. Everyone is looking for someone to blame. That’s the easy way out, all right.”

“Why doesn’t someone do something?” Jean said. “The government—”

Peter began to laugh so loudly that, at first, Jean was afraid that someone would hear him. Then she remembered that it didn’t matter. “You kidding me? The government? What does the government care about some skinny, needy kids? These priests that are cropping up all over the place, they’re valuable. They pay taxes. They give the government thousands of dollars. What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to grow up,” Jean said, “and I’m going to change the world.”

Peter began to laugh harder. “Yeah, you, me, my brother, my cousin. We’re all going to change the world when we grow up. Except most of you are never going to grow up. And when you do, you’re just going to have more skinny, needy brats. You know, I knew you were running from something when I picked you up. You weren’t going to any uncle. But I thought I would do something nice.’ Peter let out a long, slow sigh. “I guess, it didn’t work out good for either one of us.”

Jean didn’t say anything.

“I’m going to get some shut eye before they come for me.”

Jean could think of no response to this, so she said nothing. Instead she closed her eyes and started to drift.

It seemed to Jean that she had only been asleep for a few minutes when she was awoken by the sound of someone juggling the padlock. She jumped and rubbed her eyes. Peter shot up also. When the door opened, Jean squinted in the sudden light and then took a good hard look at Peter. In two days he seemed to have aged. The huge hole in his pants was circled by dried blood. His face was caked in dirt. When he saw Victor standing at the door, his expression hardened.

“Come on, you’re leaving.” Victor pulled on Jean and she winced as she landed on her sore foot.

Peter stared at her. “Hey, she’s only a little girl and you’re hurting her.”

“That’s just too darn bad,” Victor smirked. “I’ll be back for you.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you will.” Peter couldn’t keep the despair out of his voice.

Victor threw him a mango and pushed Jean out the door. She didn’t have to ask where they were headed. She knew. Back to the woods to look for the coltan Ruth had already taken, so it was a futile search. And the thought of trekking through the woods looking for something she couldn’t possibly find, digging up dirt, dragging her injured foot (and now her injured leg) was just too harrowing a thought.

Jean decided it was easier to tell them the truth. What was the sense of prolonging her misery? They were going to kill her anyway. Maybe she’d get lucky and they’d send her back to Pastor Francis.

But there was a problem. How could Jean have come by that information in the middle of the night? She would have to have known before they threw her into the hut and then Victor would be enraged that she hadn’t said a peep then.

An idea began to form in her mind. But before she had a chance to even articulate it, something happened.

They were trooping through the woods, Victor behind her holding a stick, in case she decided to run away. But there was no question of that.

Jean couldn’t run away. The truth was that she could barely walk. But she went through the motions anyway. Looking down, pretending that there was hope, and all the while wishing that she was somewhere else. Anywhere else.

And then she heard a sound, a loud, heavy thump in the bushes behind them, the footsteps of a wild animal. With great trepidation she turned around and saw a leopard, less than a foot away, staring at Victor. She watched Victor as he drew his pistol.

That was mistake. Jean knew it. The truth was that if you stayed perfectly still and quiet, there was a good chance that the animal would lose interest and just walk away. Or become distracted, the way the lion had. But if the animal felt in anyway threatened, he would attack. It was as simple as that.

Jean didn’t move a muscle.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the shadow of the leopard approaching Victor. She watched as Victor curled his index finger on the trigger. Jean felt an overwhelming sympathy for the leopard, whose life was about to end just because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Victor shot. The sound was deafening. What Jean couldn’t predict was that he would miss. Although how that happened, Jean couldn’t imagine. Perhaps Victor was flustered or the leopard moved, but the booming noise put the leopard on the defensive. He immediately lunged for Victor.

Jean didn’t waste a minute. She turned around and hobbled further into the woods. She heard Victor’s cries and she was tempted to go for help. But she was afraid to walk towards the river bank. She thought of her brother, Lawrence. She still heard his screams in her nightmares and she knew how horrible a violent death could be.

But what could she do?

She was afraid of Matthew, she was afraid of the townspeople, she was afraid of Ruth (was probably selling off the coltan bit by bit), she was afraid of the leopard and, if Victor were still alive, she was afraid of him (hadn’t he threatened over and over again to kill her).

So she kept going forward, having no idea of where she was going and not caring. I’m free, she thought.

She finally reached the stream and she slumped down. She cupped some water in her hand and drank greedily. She wondered how long it would be before they found her again. There was no doubt in her mind that they’d catch her. She was fifteen years old with a bad foot. How long could she survive on her own?

She heard a sound behind her. She whipped around, thinking surly it was a leopard, or maybe Victor, all mauled up, just waiting to shoot her in the head, the way he had planned on shooting the leopard.

But it was only the lady she met on the beach last night, smirking at Jean.

“The witch child again,” she sank down. “You broke your promise to me.”

Jean didn’t answer. She didn’t think she was expected to.

“You promised you’d cast a spell to give me good fortune. I got no good fortune. Nothing changed.”

Jean repeated a phrase she had often heard her mother utter. “God’s delays are not denials.”

The woman threw her a dirty look. She obviously didn’t want to hear about God.

“It doesn’t matter anyway. Everyone knows that witches are evil. I can’t believe what they’re doing to Pastor Francis, who happens to be a very good man.”

Jean felt her heart flutter. “What’s happening to Pastor Francis?”

“They want to arrest him. A man who God choose to be his instrument, who God actually spoke to. Do you know that he fasted for twelve days, without food or water, just so he could listen to God?”

“I think if he did that, he would probably be dead,” Jean mumbled.

“Not if God was on his side! He’s trying to destroy witches.” She turned at Jean and practically spit at her. Jean wondered if the woman would be in the spitting mood, if like her friend Ruth, she had come into good fortune. “He was trying to drive the devil out of girls like you. They even want the children to testify against him.”

Jean was just about to say I’ll do that when the woman said, “But that’s not going to happen. They’re taking the children away. They’re going to make sure that they can never say a word.”

Jean could barely catch her breath. “Where are they taking them?”

The woman shrugged. “They’re going to send them to be soldiers.”

“Soldiers!” Jean’s heart sank like a stone. “The little girl is barely six years old.”

“So?” the woman shrugged indifferently. “They’ll use her as a human shield. Who cares? As far as I’m concerned those kids should get the same punishment that they’re threatening Pastor Francis with. That horrible woman, they call her a sister, what kind of a sister, could destroy a good man like Pastor Francis, I ask you?”

“What sister?”

“Sister Mary Jude. She should have been hung. Instead she made it to the Red Cross and is betraying her country. Someone like her who doesn’t understand—”

But the woman never got to finish her sentence. All of a sudden a shrill scream broke through the air.

Jean guessed that someone had found Victor’s body. The woman seemed puzzled and then there were light footsteps heading in their direction. Jean knew that she should flee, but she could barely walk.

A little girl, panting, approached them. Gasping, she shouted, “Grandmama, there has been a terrible accident. A man got mauled by a gorilla. Or maybe a tiger. Some kind of wild animal.”

“Is he dead?” Jean asked, swallowing hard.

The girls shook her head. “They called the medics. His name was Victor, they said—”

The woman took several steps away from Jean. She cuddled the little girl in her arms. “You did this,” she hissed at Jean. “You turned into a wild animal. You hurt that man. I know you did.”

Jean was about to deny it, but then she changed her mind. It wouldn’t matter what she said.

“Please,” the woman pleaded, “go away. Just leave us alone.”

“I’ll leave you alone,” Jean tried to sound firm. “But first you tell where Pastor Francis is hiding those children.”

“I don’t know. I’m—”

Jean limped towards the little girl.

The woman screamed as though Jean had already harmed her. “Please.” She took her granddaughter’s face and hid it in her stomach. “Sophia, don’t look at her.”

“Where are the children?” Jean repeated.

“They are bringing the children to the next village. They’re hiding them there until the soldiers can pick them up.”

“What village?”

“About ten kilometers away, that way.” The woman pointed towards the right.

It could be fifty kilometers away, Jean thought. It might as will be fifty kilometers away. She drew a deep breath. The woman turned around and scurried away with her daughter.

How nice to have a grandmother to protect you, Jean thought. Even from this distance, Jean could hear the noise and the confusion.

She had no choice but to walk to the right, for ten kilometers.