1
They killed our people. They plundered our homes in the name of their god and in the name of their people. They showed us their ways and forced us to adopt their beliefs, promising us that they were the right ones, that they were doing us a favor. They forced their language and communication onto us, and destroyed what we held most valuable. Now it’s time for retribution.
They came thirty years ago. I was still a baby, but I feel like I remember the story, since I’ve heard it being tall about a hundred times. During the late hours of a quiet day, a violet light appeared in the middle of the village, slowly expanding until it was big enough for a person to fit through it. Inside, everyone saw what appeared to be a metal structure, and then a group of people came through, the first one holding a waving flag with stars on a blue square and a set of red and white stripes covering the rest. He set it there, right where he first touched the soil of our world, and then told us that they would be commanding our territory from then on.
In the early days, my name was Mn’yär, but apparently they had no idea how to pronounce it, so they changed my name to Minor. The only person that remembers my name apart from me is my mother, and she’s never stopped calling me that behind closed doors, where the weapons of the colonizers can’t hurt us. Because it wasn’t only me. Everyone had their name changed when they came through the portal, waving their star-streaked flag as if they had any right to be here. Ryrdïs were called Randys, Tän’ky Tanyas and W’üyan Wendys.
My mother’s name is Jennifer, but it used to be Jëyur, which, in our language means forest. She has been the main reason why I remained hopeful for so many years about being able to regain our land and running the invaders out of here and back through the portal once and for all. Growing up, I had this wild idea that I’d lead the revolution into a better future, but I’m thirty years old now, and even though I still hold hope, it’s slowly fading and being replaced by submission.
Today I come from the corn field, it’s high harvest and it’s been a rough couple of days of reaping cobs and cobs of corn and taking them to the mill. I enter our thatched roof hut and take my cotton shirt off. We used to wear other kinds of clothes before, but cotton was forced onto us and it’s almost all we use now.
“How was the harvest today, Mn’yär?” my mother asks as I sit on a chair and get a glass of water.
“Plentiful,” I reply. “We’re almost halfway through. Tomorrow will be the busiest day yet.”
“That’s good,” she fixes her benevolent eyes upon me and smiles. “You know,” she confides, “I heard word that the general is leaving tomorrow for a vacation in his world. He’ll leave Ernest in charge.”
Ernest was the only one who had a rather soft spot for us. That didn’t make him good, just a little less horrible. It was just our luck that he’d been named second-in-command by the general himself.
“And?” I try to look unbothered. “Let him enjoy his vacation.”
“You know that’s not what I’m talking about.”
I hesitate, then go on. “Yes, I know it’s not. But what chance do we have? Every time someone’s tried to fight them and reclaim our land, it results in another massive genocide for our people.” I frowned, but deep inside I wanted my mother to convince me.
“Yes, I know. But we didn’t have this advantage any of the other times. The captain is leaving, and for the first time the man in charge is someone who is at least friendly to us.”
“I don’t think we’ll get far. We’ll go down in flames and we’re going to regret it. Remember they told us that if we tried it again they would kill every last one of us?”
“Yes, I remember. I remember everything. That is something they will never take away from me. But we have to do something, this is our best chance to act. I—I think they said that they’ll kill us all because they know that we are getting stronger.” Her eyes well with tears and she brushes one away with the back of her right hand. “Why don’t you come with me?”
She leads me out of the hut and we near the part of the village where the houses become bigger and made of concrete. Houses we built with our hands and without pay for the invaders. To add insult to injury, that part of the city is walled all around, with a guard keeping watch outside, pointing at our people with a rifle if they dare get too close.
My mother stops outside and tells me to look up. “Do you remember what this was before the invasion?” she whispers. We are not supposed to call it an invasion.
“I don’t remember, but I know it was forest. A forest filled with nature and hundreds of animals that we held sacred.”
“Yes. Now all that nature is gone, the trees cut down, the animals killed or fled. Do you know how much I would give to have all of that back?”
I don’t know, but I nod. It’s been my dream to know the village as it was before all this, to see it prosperous and peaceful, without an enemy constantly stalking us and keeping a lookout because we can’t be trusted, as if we were the ones who had to be feared.
I turn to my mother and I hug her. Then I bring my mouth close to her ear and whisper, “Let’s do it, then.”
We enroll the help of two of our closest friends, An’yn (or Anna) and Göb’r (or Gabriel). They have several plans of the city inside the wall, and they know them like the palm of their hand. They also have a lot of experience with fire weapons.
The hardest part is making it inside their walled haven (their words, not mine). We have to convince Ernest to let us in. My mother, who is already quite old, pretends to be frail and hopeless, and approaches the entrance in the wall with An’yn pretending to be her granddaughter, who just wants to grant her dying grandma her last wish: see the inside of the walled city. They convince the guard to grant them an audience with Ernest, and after a lot of pleading, he agrees, just to get them out of his skin.
Ernest appears about twenty minutes later and asks what happens. They don sad, pitiful eyes and tell him their made-up story. He feels a pang of sympathy toward my mother and An’yn and tells them that, as a one-time exception, he’ll give them a guided tour himself, and they go in.
I wait ten minutes, as that is what An’yn and Göb’r told me it would take for them to reach the armory. When those minutes are over, I head to the center of the village, where their flag waves as a cruel reminder of what they brought us. I retrieve a can of gasoline and a lighter that Göb’r had stolen some time before. I douse the flag with gasoline and make a circle around it, then a back up, making a straight line with it. When I judge I am far enough from the flag, I activate the lighter and throw it into the ensuing flames. It takes several minutes, but after a while, an alarm starts wailing inside the wall, and dozens of people come out to fight the fire and search for the culprit. Satisfied, I see that Ernest comes out by himself. The plan worked.
One thing you need to know about us is that we don’t hesitate when a chance for revolution presents itself. It might take its time coming, but once it is here, we respond immediately. As the invaders are too worried about their precious flag and bringing whoever burned it to justice, I rally the restless people who came out of their huts to witness the racket and take them to the opposite side of the wall, where my mother and An’yn are supposed to come out with an arsenal for all of us. Because this door is normally not used, the guard apparently decided to leave his post and see the fire. My heart leaps with joy; we got lucky.
That proves, however, to be just partly true a few moments later, when my mother and An’yn approach carrying three enormous sacks of weapons and the guard trailing them, shooting his rifle at them.
I panic. “RUN! You have almost made it.” In my mind, I say, Please let them be okay, please let my mother make it to this side without problems.
An’yn is fumbling with a pistol she presumably retrieved from one of the sacks, loading it and trying to cock it. My mother is simply running. Bullets fly every which way. Just as they are about to cross to our side, An’yn turns and fires at the guard and gets him straight in the chest, sending him backwards. He shoots one last time, and that is the one fatal shot he fires. The bullet gets my mother in the head. She seems to fumble for a moment, and then goes down face first to the ground.
I run to her and try to find a pulse. It’s still there, but it’s waning.
“MOTHER! Talk to me, please.” I know she won’t, but I have to try. It cannot end like this. After all the years she’s dreamed with a better tomorrow, she won’t live to see it. I put my hand on her face and close her eyes. Blood stains my shirt and my pants and starts to puddle on the ground. She looks almost peaceful.
“Come on, we need to hurry!” An’yn and Göb’r grab me by the arms and take me with them. “I’m so sorry.”
I don’t realize that I’m screaming hysterically until An’yn shakes me by the shoulders and asks me to calm down. “There will be time to mourn later, but for now we need to focus or we’ll end up like her.”
She’s right. I brush a tear away just like my mother had done yesterday and grab the gun An’yn offers me. “Let’s burn this place to the ground!” I yell, and a roar of enthusiastic cries joins me.
We charge into the center of the village, where the enemies are still dealing with the fire. They don’t seem to notice us, or, if they do, they don’t pay any attention to us.
I step forward and raise my voice over the cacophony of mingled screams and curses. “Attention. We are here to warn you just once. Leave, and we will not kill you. Give us trouble and… we won’t rest until every last one of you is dead,” I finish, echoing the words of their captain to us after our last attempt at a coup. I cock my gun and hear a hundred other guns cocking behind me, their satisfying clicks sound like music in my ears.
Most of them are unarmed and defenseless, the burning of the flag had caught them by surprise. They raise their hands in surrender. There are, nevertheless, a couple carrying rifles. Among them is Ernest. He is the only one who doesn’t raise his weapon. The others aim and fire.
My rage reaches a boiling point, and with the echoes of their shots still ringing in my head, I scream, “CHARGE!”
Pandemonium ensues. We quickly overpower the people with guns and bring down several others. Ernest doesn’t intervene, his face is ashen and his eyes are as big as bowls. His hands are still up. When no more of them are resisting, we stop shooting and I ask them, “Ready to surrender?” Some of them nod. That’s enough for me.
I get Ernest and check his pockets. Inside the right one there is a small red button. I know what it does, I’ve seen it many a time. It opens the portal into their world. And that is what I do now. We lead all of them into the portal, but not without claiming whatever they have in their pockets for ourselves. Some things prove useful, like lighters and weapons and keys, others we’ll dispose of, like pictures and drawings.
When all of them have gone through, we close the portal and scout the whole village for any remaining enemies. We find a couple, and send them over promptly. Then it’s all over.
I stand before my mother’s grave, where I have planted a cedar tree. Within a couple of decades, it will grow strong, and whoever is still here to behold it, will carve her name on the bark.
“I wish you were still be here,” I tell her. “You wouldn’t recognize this place. We are already taking down the walled city and planting trees. Actually, one of first ones is yours!” My eyes well with tears. “Anyway, I think it is going to be more difficult to shake their influence on us than we had originally believed. I mean, like it or not, they ruled us for thirty years, and it is difficult to shake such a strong foundation. But we are trying,” I add. “I promise that we are.”
And it is true. For now, we are still speaking their language, and some of us still default to our new names once in a while, but we are working to eradicate their influence once and for all, and I know that with a lot of hard work, we’ll make our land completely ours again one day.
