use are you to whoever you are going for in the dirt?”
He stopped. The old man was right. He could charge in there all he wanted, but all he would achieve was…
nothing. Seeing him hesitate, the old man called to him.
“
Come with me instead.”
Go with him!? Was this cripple joking? He wanted him to leave his mother and sister their and go with him!
He turned to him looking as though the man was mad.
“
It’s not that bad a choice. I can teach you how to fight. I can teach you how to get in to find your sister,
considering what your father is doing right now. Come with me.”
If he went, he could come back for his family. He could save them! But that meant leaving them their fate
now. He wavered, his resolution fading.
“
Besides, what can you do now?”
With that last line, he knew what he had to do, no, what he would do. He would leave them here, but he
would return to them. He would return to save them! This he swore to himself, before turning away from the
wall.
“
So you’ve seen sense. Well, boy, my residence is some ways from here. I suggest we head off now before
night falls.”
BZZZZT!
Xiaoren started, the sound of her alarm shocking her awake. She had fallen asleep last night reading the
book, and she had dreamed. What had she dreamed? There had been a man, and she had been… She had been
the boy once more. It had been the same as the other night. She traced the line she had fallen asleep reading.
“…
lack of labor meant that the Emperor’s army had to take some from local populations. Entire villages were
sent off to work…”
“
XIAOREN, GET UP OR YOU WILL BE LATE”
That was her mother. Sighing, she prepared herself for another day at the school. Maybe she should skip
and read today instead…
“
THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING XIAOREN”
She left the room, all thoughts of skiving driven from her mind.
On her way back home, she bumped into a decrepit old man, dressed in a faded suit. When she apologized,
he simply handed her a card, then vanished into the crowd, leaving her gripping a leaflet denoting the funeral
atop the wall, the wall that she had such vivid dreams of.
That night, she prepared to sleep again, switching on her light and opening the book again. “These workers
toiled on day after day, and were given only basic rations to survive on…”
He swung the sword, as he had done so for the past two summers. He devoted his soul to training, waiting
for the day that he could return and take back what he had lost. He could now best most grown men in
swordplay, and he only waited for his master before he left for the wall. Over the last two summers, what had
begun as a meager line of bricks had risen up to quite a high wall, with trenches dug along the side. He had
made excursions to the outskirts of it, perching atop hills and trees, hoping for a glimpse of what he searched for.
He never found it.
He left on another one of these excursions. Finding his usual vantage point, he noticed something wrong.
There were noticeably fewer workers today. He wondered where they were. It was very much unlike them to let
any workers leave, if anything, they would rather kill any fleeing worker than let him leave. Pondering on this
conundrum, he turned around, heading back to the cabin his master called home.
He paused, as he caught a glimpse of something in the trees. He changed directions, heading toward the dull
black that contrasted sharply with the verdant green countryside. He broke free of the cover, and saw what he
thought he would. Burnt wood. The remains of a conflagration. Dead grass. A single pole, stuck to the ground.
And a hanging skeleton, it’s face seemingly grinning.
Xiaoren woke up panting, her breath taken away by that last sight. The grotesque skeleton had been his
father. He had found his old house, the place where it all began. She looked around, realizing that she had
woken much too early, and that it was not even dawn yet. She opened the book again, determined to see this
through. “…to survive on, and as such, the death count numbered in thousands daily. While many experts agree
on this figure, no one can work out where the corpses are.”
Winter. A few months had passed since he had rediscovered his old home, and had seen the skeleton of his
father. His master had passed away a few weeks since his return, and he was readying to do what he had sworn
to do all those years ago. He had found them, looking as thin as all the other workers, but that would change
once he found them.