Sarah groaned as she straightened her shoulders. She was hungry, for they had been fed only a few vile scraps of food. They had been beaten, both she and Swiftwind, the night before, and she shuddered to think of how awful it had been. Her lips were dry, and she went over and picked up the single pot of tepid, stale-tasting water and drank a few swallows. She shuddered again and made a face, then went back and sat down on the filthy blanket that served her for a bed.
“You can't sleep, can you?” Swiftwind had been lying across the room and now struggled to a sitting position. His face was bloody, for he had fought hard against the jailers who had administered the beating. They had treated him cruelly, but he had not uttered a single word as they had held him down and beaten him terribly.
A faint ray of light trickled through a single small window, no more than two or three inches wide and a foot high. It lit the miserable cell casting a feeble glow on the pair.
Sarah said, “Let me wash your back.” He protested, but she poured water into the single basin and made a rag out of the shirttail of the garment she wore. “Lie down,” she said quietly. “These cuts are deep. They might get infected. I wish I had some disinfectant.”
“Disin—what?” Swiftwind muttered.
As soon as Sarah touched his back, she knew he had fever. The cuts made by the guards' whips were ugly, and she washed them carefully, wishing she had something to make bandages out of. “You'll have to sleep on your stomach, I think, for a while,” she said quietly.
Swiftwind sat up and stared at her. “A warrior doesn't cry,” he said grimly.
Sarah sat down and looked at him, “Well, girls do,” she said. “I already have.” As desperate as her situation was, she managed a smile. “You ought to try it sometime.”
He stared at her, his face flushed. “Try crying? Not if they kill me!”
“I didn't think you would,” Sarah said. “Boys don't cry. They keep everything all bottled up inside of them. That's where we girls have it over you.” She thought it well to keep talking, for they were both thinking of the next visit of their cruel captors. “When we girls have trouble, we can go off somewhere and have a good cry. Then we feel better.”
Swiftwind looked at her curiously. “Well,” he admitted finally, “I might try it, if I thought it would help, but you can't let your enemies see you are hurting.”
“I know that's the way with you men,” Sarah said. She moved her arms carefully. Their captors had been much less vicious with her. Still she ached from the blows that she had taken. She sat silently for a while and then said, “What do you think will happen?”
“Happen? They'll kill us, that's what'll happen.”
Sarah was shocked at the bluntness of his words. “Why would they do that?”
“Because we're their enemies. I am anyway.” He looked over at her and said grimly, “They'll probably make a slave out of you.” He shook his head, adding, “But it won't be like it was back with my people. These are hard enemies. They treat each other badly, much more slaves.”
Sarah sat in the semidarkness thinking about Josh and the others. “Josh will be coming to get me,” she said. “And your father, he'll come for you, won't he?”
“That's probably just what the Shadow Wings want.”
“What do you mean?”
“We had a war once. It nearly wiped out both tribes. Since then the Shadow Wings have been looking for a way to get their revenge. This time it looks like they've got it.” Despair filled his eyes. “My father will come, but the Shadow Wings have a strong defensive position here. They can hide in the rocks and shoot as my people come in. We've talked about it many times, but always we knew it was too hard. I hope they don't come—but I know my father. He'll come to save me.”
Sarah sat quietly, thinking for a moment. She had been in cells before. As soon as they got to Nuworld, she and the others had been held by the Sanhedrin and expected to be executed. She began to speak now of those times, relating how when the darkness was worst and there was no hope, somehow Goél had delivered them. She spoke warmly and passionately and finally reached out and touched Swiftwind's shoulder. “We must never give in to despair. There was a very great man once back in my world. His name was Winston Churchill, and, when it looked as though his country was going to be annihilated, he said over and over, ‘Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never.’”
Swiftwind stared at her. “I like that! He sounds like he would have made a good Winged Raider.”
Sarah giggled. “No, he was too fat for that, but he was a great man.”
Neither spoke for a while, and finally Swiftwind got up and began to pace the floor. He was gritting his teeth and slapping his hands together despite the pain. His face was feverish, and he muttered, “I hate these Shadow Wings. I wish they had just one throat and I could get my hands around it and kill them all at once.”
“Don't say that,” Sarah said quickly. “You only hurt yourself when you talk like that, Swiftwind.”
“What are you talking about, ‘hurt yourself’?”
“Hatred always does that to people,” Sarah said simply. “Didn't you know that?”
“Of course I don't know that, and you don't either. You love your friends, and you hate your enemies.”
“No, hatred doesn't just hurt the one it's against,” Sarah protested. “It hurts the one that has it. It's like—it's like—” She could not finish for a moment. It was difficult to put these things into words. She had seen in her life gentleness and goodness and love. But this fierce young warrior had seen none of this. She sat there seeking for words to speak that would touch his heart, knowing that it was hard, and finally began to say quietly, “Have you ever—you know how food goes bad sometimes, Swiftwind?”
“Why, yes, everyone's seen that.”
“It starts with just a little thing. Take an apple, for example. You can take one bad apple that's starting to go rotten and put it into a basketful of other apples. What happens if you leave it there?”
“Why, the whole basket of apples will go rotten,” he answered.
“Exactly, and that's what happens when you hate someone. It's a rotten thing, and it begins to touch other things in your life.”
“What do you mean, ‘touch other things’?” Swiftwind was clearly puzzled and stared at her in bewilderment.
Sarah struggled again to find words. “Hatred in a man or woman or a boy or girl is a rotten thing. It begins to turn you sour, and the longer you let it stay there, the worse it gets. Surely you must have noticed that people who have hatred don't just wind up hating the one person.
They get mean toward everyone, and pretty soon they're just sour and filled with bitterness.”
“I guess I have seen some like that,” he said finally. He pondered on what Sarah had said and finally shook his head, asking, “What would you have a warrior to do? He has to fight sometimes—his enemies.”
“It is hard,” Sarah admitted, “but back in my world we were taught that you had to love your enemies.”
“Love your enemies? Why, that's impossible!”
“No, it's not.” Sarah shook her head. Her hair was dirty and lank, and she brushed it back from her forehead, then folded her hands. “It's a hard thing to do, but in the end it's better for you. I know that's hard, but you don't get sour and mean that way.”
“Well, I could never do that!”
“It would be hard for you because you're strong. There's something about strong people. They just don't want to give in.”
The two talked on for a long time. Finally the jailers came and interrogated them. They did not beat them this time, but the leader, a wiry-looking man of about fifty, stared at Swiftwind. “You might as well give up,” he said. “Your father will be coming. I know Chief White Storm. He'll never leave his son here. We've got every man of our tribe out waiting for him, with our quivers full of arrows. When they come, we'll kill them all.” He laughed loudly, saying, “Those we don't kill, we'll make slaves, as we will you.”
The small, wiry chieftain looked at Sarah. “Who are you? You're not one of the people of the desert. You're too fair for that.”
Sarah tried to explain the Seven Sleepers and their mission, but the leader only laughed. “You'll make a good slave,” he said. “I may take you into my own household.”
He came closer to her, held her arm with a steel grip, and forced her head up. She could feel his eyes seeming to eat into her. There was something cruel about his gaze. She wanted to cry out from the pain of his grip, but she did not. “You're a pretty little thing,” he muttered. “Yes, I think I'll take you to be mine.” He tormented her for a while, seeing the pain and fear in her eyes and finally laughed, saying, “We'll have a good time, you and I.”
Then he looked over at Swiftwind. “And you'll be good for digging caves. You'll think you're a mole before this is over.” He laughed again and then left the room.
When the door clanged shut, Swiftwind stared at Sarah. “Well, there it is. Don't you hate him?”
Sarah shivered. “He's a wicked, evil man.”
“Of course he is, and that's why we hate him.”
Sarah wanted to give in, but she finally said swiftly, “No, if I hated him, I'd begin to let my whole spirit get bad. So I just choose not to hate him.”
Swiftwind said in disgust, “I'll never understand that. But I bet after he abuses you, you'll think differently.”
“I hope not. If I do, I'll only be hurting myself.”
The day wore on, and the next day, and more than once Sarah began to wonder. She did feel hatred creeping up in her, and she knew that she could not live with it. She thought of Goél, and just before she went to sleep on her filthy blanket that night, she whispered, “Don't let me hate. Somehow, don't let me hate.”