Ashanti
After Billy’s encounter with the night creatures. Mothers in the village became overprotective of all the kids. In school at playtime, the teacher would stand at the gate. In the morning the pastor would come round and say a prayer for us because it would help get rid of curse our family apparently had. In school, if it rained, we would spend the day praying to God because we knew what it meant.
In the night, my mum forced us to sleep in one room and have the door locked. There was five of us, it was too squashed but my mum didn’t care he wasn’t losing another one of us. A family of 7 went to a family 5 within a space of two years. I lost my naughty little brother and my hard-working dad. My family had a nearly been ready to move on but then the weather had to choose my brother after all of this. My mum went into a deep state of depression. It was horrible she was ratty a lot of the time and she stopped going to work. I and Macy had to look after the little ones. It was hard work with all the whining and crying all the time. The little ones had no clue with what was happening. The good thing was that my grandmother came to live with us after a couple of months. My older sister Macy kept going round to her house explaining how mother had gone into a depressed state and it was affecting the lives of me and Macy. Grandma took some of the jobs on herself now. But because she was told she couldn’t work. So that was I and Macy’s jobs every day after school till 6 we had to go into the fields and work.
We worked on the massive farmland with all the other women. At first, we were the only young ones. The adults would take advantage and make us do the harder jobs. Like picking the stones out of the field or taking the heavy bags inside. But it didn’t last long because more girls came from school to work.
After school, we would all wait near the oak tree outside of school for each other and then we would head off for work. Me, Macy, Lirra and Shine. Lirra was in the same year as me. We weren’t close friends but because we worked together she soon became my best friend. We understood the difficulties of coming from a big family and losing someone close. Lirra lost her dad in the same mining accident as my dad. But her mother had taken to it better she didn’t give up on life like my mum. Shine was Macy best friend. Shine had moved into the village a few years ago from the village called Wu. They grow loads of bamboo. Her dad is one of the chief farmers.
Every Friday after work we would go to the library and browse the books. Or read. We were reading The Little Prince. It is a simple story it is a nice story to read after work with friends. After that, we would walk home absorbed in a conversation about the events of the day. I loved Fridays for this reason, I could be a kid again and forget all the bad things going on. Shine lived near Lirra so she walked with her when we go to the fountain and Me and Macy would head for the church because all live a few minutes away for there.
If life had stayed this way I would have been happy but our village is in the middle of a war. So the night creatures we bound to ruin our happiness.
