BERTA WAS AN EXPERT SHOT, BUT she’d only been able to pick off a few of the soldiers before the boat capsized. Rin pulled Lulu out of the crocodile-infested waters while dodging the bullets. Pulling her sword out of her chest, she threw it with precision at the gunman nearest her, stabbing him in the chest, sending his bullet ricocheting through the trees.
“Hold your breath!” Rin commanded Lulu and Berta, not waiting for a response before she plunged herself and Lulu into the waters. The current slowed down the bullets—enough to avoid them, but not by much. She saw one whiz down into the deep, inches away from Lulu’s face.
They swam for safer waters, holding their breath for as long as they could. Rin’s white crystal sword could appear and disappear at will. It was a tiny blessing, as she used it to stab a crocodile in the neck. Lulu, whose hands clung to her for dear life, began shaking her head.
Just hold on, you weakling, Rin commanded while she swam, Berta following close behind. Her eyepatch slipped from her face and sank through the water as Lulu began beating her chest. Hold on! Rin thought, panicking. Aren’t you made of tougher stuff?
Rin had had no one to help her when she was an orphan child. No one to save her when guns and machetes were forced into her hands. It shouldn’t be any different for this little girl. Why should it be any different?
Lulu snapped her eyes open. There in the Kunene River, though her pupils must have stung, she kept them open. Rin could see the desperation within them.
She wouldn’t be able to make it. They had to come up for air.
What do I do? Rin thought frantically. They’d been lucky so far. But once they came up for air, she’d be shot. In the military, she’d been forced to face impossible situations, but with a half-drowned child clinging to her side, her mind went blank.
Blank but for the powerful resolve to protect her.
The three came up for air, and Rin and Berta grabbed onto a floating rock near the shore. It was Berta who put a hand up, blocking her face as if it would protect it from a bullet.
“We surrender!” Berta shouted immediately, waving her free hand. “We surrender!” Then she whispered to Rin, “Hurry, duck behind the rock as much as you can. I’ll handle it.”
Rin balked. She’d handle it? What if she got shot instead? Rin’s mind blanked as Berta continued to scream out their surrender. She held her breath, terrified, as she saw one soldier lift his gun anyway.
A man’s scream pierced the air. Rin recognized the fury within it.
It was a war cry.
The soldiers looked in the direction from where it had come, but it was too late. They were already being bludgeoned with flaming sticks and rocks, spears, and bullets. It was an ambush.
“What… what the hell is going on?” Berta said, lowering her hand.
An attack. As the sun set, men and women—some dressed in farmers’ clothes, some in soldier uniforms, while others had only cloths wrapped around their waists—fought the soldiers. Rin didn’t waste the opportunity.
“Take Lulu and get to land!” she told Berta, passing the child to her before swimming to shore on her own. No sooner had she crawled out of the Kunene River did she begin swinging her sword. The ambushers watched her in awe but didn’t stop their assault. Rin made short work of the remaining soldiers, cutting the limbs from those who had dared raise their guns again. Before long, the rest of the soldiers had fled deep into the forest.
The ragtag group of fighters raised their weapons and cheered. But when they saw Rin’s sword disappear into white crystal dust, a hush fell over them. Exchanging frantic glances, they stared at her as if she were a demon. Her lips quirked into a wry grin. As if the blood she’d just shed wasn’t proof enough.
A tall, slender man emerged from within the group. He had a stern, proud look about him, one that Rin instantly respected, though she stayed on guard. His black, coiled beard, closely shaven, reached up to his ears.
“Samuel,” she heard the others call him, though Rin couldn’t understand their language. But from their look of defiance, she could tell she was in their lands. The Herero.
The man spoke to her, first in his native tongue, then in German, frustrated when Rin shook her head.
“I don’t understand,” she said in English, and almost laughed at the irony of trying to communicate in a language she used to hate.
“You,” said someone from within the crowd. A man dressed as a German soldier with a rifle in hand. “Where from?”
Someone she could speak to. The small cross-shaped scar on his sunken cheek looked fresh. Rin began to answer, but Lulu’s wail cut off her words. Relief turned to dread as she turned and saw the child crying on the shore, clutching her right arm. Rin could tell Lulu had been holding her tears in until now. She knew all too well what it looked like the moment pain broke one’s will.
“She’s been shot,” Berta said, and the words fell upon Rin like boulders. “It’s not serious, but we need to check it out!”
Rin rushed to them, supporting Lulu’s other side as the little girl gasped through the agony.
“It—it’s okay,” Lulu said. “I can handle it.”
Something about seeing a child cry and bleed seemed to soften Samuel’s men. Samuel himself nodded and spoke to the man who’d spoken English.
“Come quickly,” the man said. “And bring the girl.”
Even during the onslaught from the soldiers, Lulu had managed to keep the pouch safe. It was smart thinking from the girl and allowed them to explain their journey to Samuel and his men—at least the parts of the journey that were explainable to the common man. As far as they needed to know, they were on their way to Opuwo to retrieve a sentimental item for a friend.
But Samuel still seemed suspicious. Rin could tell by how they’d built this camp of makeshift tents within a forest, away from any village and out of sight, that their well-oiled attack against the soldiers hadn’t been by accident. They were planning a rebellion.
“The Germans. They take our land and cattle,” said the English-speaking man, who hadn’t trusted Rin with his name. “They harm and force us to work.”
Inside this tent, Rin didn’t need any more words to understand. This was a revolt. Luckily for them, they didn’t look like settlers. Though some worried glances lingered on Berta, they didn’t question her as she helped one of the men in farm clothes extract the bullet from Lulu’s forearm. The girl bit on a stick of wood to keep from crying.
“Lulu! Hey, kid! You okay?” Berta squeezed her from behind as the man wrapped her arm in white cloth. Lulu could only whimper in response.
Rin turned from them. “Tell Samuel,” she said to the English-speaking man with the cross-shaped scar, “that we’re strangers here. We don’t wish to interfere in your fight. We simply want to travel to Opuwo.”
Rin showed them John Temple’s map and the land Uma had circled. A few of the men nodded their heads as if they knew the place. But Samuel laughed. He said something to Cross-Scar before the man faced Rin once more, his eyes narrowed.
“He said the place is guarded by soldiers,” the man interpreted. Rin already knew this. It was land John Temple had purchased, after all, most likely from the German colonial administrators. Land that didn’t belong to any of them. “He does not believe you are there on behalf of a friend.”
Samuel smirked. Rin stared him down, unmoved.
“However,” said Cross-Scar with a wicked smile, “he cares not for the property of white men. As long as you don’t interfere in our battle.”
Rin nodded and bowed her head in gratitude. And when Samuel extended his hand, she shook it.
“Samuel Maharero,” he said, lifting his chin—taking in the sight of a fellow warrior, no doubt.
“Olarinde of the Dahomey.” She said it automatically. But now, as the words escaped her lips, they sounded strange. Like her parents, she did not have a last name. But she’d stopped introducing herself as their daughter the moment she had been kidnapped and forced to work in the mino regiment. These people had pride—pride enough to fight to take their lands back. It was a cultural pride Rin couldn’t claim, because she was neither one thing nor the other.
But at least I was her friend.
Samuel let them stay in their camp for the night. And while Berta slept outside the tent, inside Lulu stayed awake, likely from the pain. There wasn’t an antidote ready to take it away. No herbs to make her sleep. She would simply have to live with the agony.
“It’s the burden every warrior must face,” Rin told her, sitting down next to the girl. They’d been given fresh clothes for their journey: simple blouses and farmers’ pants that were too big for them. Lulu’s clothes swallowed her up as she tossed and turned and bit her lip to keep from crying. At least she didn’t have a fever. Rin had checked.
Aside from that, they’d only given Rin the long wooden smoking pipe she had asked for. It was half the length of her forearm. That would do. Rin used a knife to whittle down the bowl so that only the shank remained.
“It really hurts,” Lulu said in a squeaky voice before bursting into tears. “My arm hurts! I’m tired and my hair’s a mess!”
Rin lowered her pipe and arched an eyebrow. “Your hair?”
“It’s a mess! I haven’t been able to wash it. And I don’t have anyone to do it for me anymore!” Lulu lowered her head. “My mama used to, but…”
Lulu’s hair did look dirtier and unrulier than ever. Rin watched her sob. Sometimes when one was in distress, every little inconvenience felt like the world’s end. But this child had truly witnessed horrors no child ever should. It was only now, after everything, that Rin had seen her shed a single tear. Rin lowered her gaze. You’re much stronger than I was….
“I’ll help you,” Rin finally said, whittling the wood from her pipe again.
Lulu sucked in a ragged breath. “Huh? R-really?” she stuttered.
“Once I’m done here, I’ll wash your hair and braid it.”
“Thank you,” Lulu replied in a weak voice. Lulu’s last few teardrops fell upon her quivering smile, which collapsed as soon as it had formed. “Oh, Miss Rin. I’m sorry to bother you. I’m such a wimp. I wish I were stronger.”
“Ain’t nobody stronger than you, kid,” said Berta, who had just slipped inside the tent.
“Berta,” Lulu whined, though Rin could tell she was happy.
Berta tossed Rin a nectarine before sitting on Lulu’s other side and feeding another to her. Rin watched Berta, touched and perplexed all at once. She remembered the first time someone had scarred her right eye. How she’d wanted to cry then. She hadn’t, thinking that she’d have been punished if she did. But now, as Lulu’s little body quivered while she swallowed the sweet nectarine juice, Rin realized it had only been her assumption. She had assumed she would have been punished. She had assumed there wasn’t a single woman in the regiment who would have reached out to help her. What else had she assumed while working under the king? What other assumptions had kept her from making connections that could have saved her soul?
Setting down her knife, Rin touched her newly re-bandaged eye. “Your scars are a sign of your strength,” she told Lulu before taking the little girl’s hand in hers. “Wear them with pride.”
Lulu’s hands felt warm. So did her smile.