belowground

Emmitt is kidnapped and imprisoned by the Aboveground military police while stealing water for his Belowground community, and his four best friends use ancestral magic to try and rescue him.

“We have to figure this out!” exclaims Aisha as she paces the hard dirt floor of the secret meeting place of her and her friends. “The longer we wait, the harder it will be to rescue Emmett and free the rest of our people,” Aisha goes on to explain, in her shrill voice, that belies the height of her dark red body.

“I say we try to summon the spirits again,” Belle offers.

“We’ve tried twice already and it didn’t work. Obviously our ancestors don’t care to help us,” says Aisha with frustration.

“That’s not true, exclaims Sara, and it will work this time. We just have to have believe it.”

“Sara’s right, Saffronia piped up, in order to rescue Emmett and free our people is if we receive guidance from our ancestors. They survived so much, and we need their powerful and resilient spirits.”

“We can do this, Belle pleads while taking hold of Aisha’s hands. We’re young, but we’re also intelligent and intentional about our mission. We need to show the Council that our voices deserve to be heard!”

“Ok, let’s do it,” says Aisha, hugging Belle, Sara and Saffronia. Forming a circle, holding tight to each other’s hands, the girls close their eyes, take deep breaths, and begin their summoning of the ancestors.

……………………………………………….

Laying on the hard cot in the tiny cell, Emmett struggles to contain his thoughts. Afraid of crying, he tries to repress thoughts of his family and love, Tomas. Crying equals weakness in this prison hellhole, and he doesn’t want to become a target. But with the screams and other angry sounds entering his head from the other cells, he couldn’t sleep. Emmett let his mind drift to the night he was captured…

It had been Emmett’s turn to steal water from the lake, and like the other times he went and how he was taught, he made sure to cover every inch of skin on his body. Since the second civil war began, having red skin meant you were imprisoned or shot dead, depending on if the police thought you could be of use, or just based on his feelings that day. It was July, and the temperature had still been 90 degrees even at 1 am; so just for a moment, in order to breathe better, Emmett removed his hood as he gathered water. He tried unsuccessfully to not let memories of frolicking on the beach with his friends and Tomas rise forward in his mind; those days are over and might never return.

When the resistance was in full swing, and it seemed we were making substantial change, Emmett’s grandma was proud of all the young people resisting police violence, but she was also afraid. How would the country try to decimate this rebellion, as it did over hundreds of years before? With nuclear weapons that can destroy whole cities in mere minutes, and 24 hour government controlled “news” with fanning the flames of violent retribution against resistors, she imagined their tactics would be far worse than anything they could imagine. And sadly, she was right…

Lost in his memories, Emmett didn’t hear the footsteps approaching from all sides until it was too late. He was tackled to the ground and felt fists and heavy boots attacking his body, from head to toe.

“This red one thought he escaped from my prison, huh,” wildly shouted a big, tall, white-skinned man with a buzz cut in army uniform. “Where did you think you were gonna run to, huh? We own you people, and there’s no escaping that.”

“Answer him N!” yells a shorter white-skinned guy. Emmett could barely see through his swollen brown eyes. “I just wanted water,” he gasps through a broken jaw. There’s enough water in prison you stupid N!, shouts the shorter one.

“Come on, let’s take him back to the prison before other people come out here. We’re gonna already have to reassure people tomorrow that we have iron-clad control of the prisoners,” commands the third soldier, who pulls Emmitt up off the ground with one hand as if he was just a rag doll.

Help me, Emmett said in his mind, hoping someone or something, would save him.