If I am the sick heart, Maart is the cold heart. He locks people out. He doesn’t let anyone in to warm him up. He is cool, and even, and unshakable.
But today is not just any day. It is our last day. And if Irina were still here, she would pat his chest too and she would set him straight. She would say, There is no cold in there. It is nothing but fire.
I sigh and then, finally, Anya is walking off the ship. She looks nothing like the girl I met four months ago. Not even close. Her body is brown now, her skin glowing from the heat of the sun, her muscles tempered from the weeks of training, her hair wild from the rain, and the wind, and the ocean.
She is a goddess in her bare feet, and her borrowed denim shorts, and her tattered white tank top.
And even though, of all the kids that just walked off that ship, her future is the most precarious, she is smiling in a way I’ve never seen before.
She is happy.
“I just want to say”—Maart’s low, soft words tear me away from the beautiful girl walking towards us—“that if ever there was proof that what we are doing is good, she is it.”
I scoff. “How do you figure?”
Maart turns his head to look me in the eyes. “Just look at her, Cort. She is nak su. They are all nak su. We have raised warriors in this camp. We have taught them all the skills they need to survive. It’s not their fault the entire world is corrupt. It’s not their fault they are born, and live, and die in the shadows of the forgotten.” His eyes dart down to the skulls tattooed on my body, then rise back up to meet my gaze. “And it’s not our fault they were forced to fight their way into the next world. We. Raised. Warriors. Don’t you ever fucking forget that.”
Then Anya is walking up to us and, once again, there is no time to process all the words that are being dropped at my feet today. After decades of time that has flowed too slow—that has dragged on like torture—it is suddenly going all too fast.
Anya stops at Maart first and bows to him. Not the pathetic slave bow from months ago, but a proper, reverent, solemn bow with praying hands and thumbs at her eyebrows. She holds that position, but she’s looking straight at him. “Ajarn Maart,” she says. “Thank you.”
He nods to her. Bows back. Then she moves on to Rainer and repeats her gestures of gratitude.
Then she is standing in front of me. And this is the moment when the full meaning of Anya hits me.
Maart was right.
She is a warrior.
But we didn’t make her that way.
She was always a warrior.
A silent ninja.
A master of mental assaults.
A champion in the ring of survival.
We just taught her more.
We made her better.
But for what? To be Udulf’s prize? His possession? His property?
Her eyes pierce mine and her silence is loud. Don’t you dare feel sorry for me. Don’t you dare reduce me.
So I don’t.
I bow to her before she can bow to me.
The four of us enter the thick, jungle understory via a smooth dirt path. Our world becomes something made of shadows. The blazing sun is on the other side of the canopy leaves above our head. Monkeys swing through the trees and birds chatter and scream at us as we pass through their domain. We are walking single file because the path is narrow. So I am the first to walk out into the large, open clearing we call the base camp.
This place is home, but it is also a prison.
And it’s weird. Because there are no walls around us. There are no guards here. I am not in cuffs. No one wears a collar.
But we are all in a cage.
It’s an invisible cage but that’s not why most people can’t see it.
They can’t see it because they don’t understand what it means to be owned in this day and age.
There is no escape from these people.
There is no walking away.
There is no way out and that’s not the brainwashing talking.
It’s just the truth.
These men who own us, they are a global network. You can run. Lots of slaves and fighters have tried. But you can’t hide. They find you in the end. Even if it’s only to kill you and turn you into an example.
So no walls or guards are necessary.
All they need is that threat.
And I bought into it.
We all bought in to it.
The temperature difference when we leave the jungle is immediate. The still, humid air of the trees is replaced with the searing afternoon sun.
The path widens so Anya, Maart, and Rainer all come up next to me as we walk forward.