The Butcher did not let her rest.
He made her watch the fields every morning, made her stand beneath the punishing sun while we labored and suffered.
But it was the nights that broke her the most.
Because at night, when the estate was quiet, when the overseers had retreated, he would summon her.
And she would go.
We never knew what happened behind those doors, but we were certain that he had taken advantage of her and when we saw her when she emerge,
Her eyes darker.
Her shoulders heavier.
Her spirit quieter.
She no longer flinched when the whip cracked.
No longer gasped when someone fell.
She was being hollowed out, piece by piece.
And the Butcher was enjoying it.
I wanted to believe her people were coming.
That any day now, a storm would rise, and we would be freed.
But we were deep in another man's land.
Did they know the way?
Had something gone wrong?
Had they even tried?
Doubt crept into our hearts like poison
And in that doubt, the Butcher grew bolder.
One evening, as we were marched back from the fields, he stepped onto his balcony and called down to us.
"There will be no salvation for you," he said, his voice smooth and unhurried. "No one is coming. No one cares."
I heard the woman's sharp breath beside him.
She had not expected him to say that.
Maybe she had not expected it to be true.
But we had been here long enough to know—
Hope was a cruel thing.
And the Butcher loved to twist the knife.
The woman had lost hope.
She had counted the days, clung to the fifth as if it were a lifeline.
But the fifth day had passed.
And no one had come.
She had told herself that she had been a fool to believe.
That no one was coming.
That she was truly alone.
And the Butcher had seen it. We all knew she was hoping on something big but we couldn't tell what it was.
He had smiled that night when he looked at her.
Because he knew.
She had broken.
Or so he thought.
On the sixth day, she stopped looking at the horizon.
On the seventh day, she stopped praying.
By the eighth day, she had accepted it—this was her life now.
She had traded her freedom for a futile cause.
She had lost.
But then—
The ground trembled.
It was faint at first, barely noticeable over the sound of the wind.
Then came the shouts.
Distant. Growing.
A horn.
A warning.
A storm was coming.
The Butcher's estate had never known fear.
Not until that moment.
Overseers scrambled.
Doors slammed.
Men shouted orders.
The Butcher stood on his balcony, his jaw tight, his eyes narrowing as he watched dust rise in the distance.
Riders.
Warriors.
Coming for him.
Coming for his slaves.
Coming for her.
The woman saw it too, but she did not move.
She barely breathed.
Because she had not known.
She had truly believed they had abandoned her.
And yet—
They had come.
Not on the fifth day.
But on the eighth.
And now, hell was about to be unleashed.
The riders came like a storm.
The Butcher's estate, once a fortress of cruelty, now trembled under the weight of approaching vengeance.
Dust rose in the distance, thick as smoke. The thunder of hooves echoed through the air. Shouts rang out—some in warning, others in fear.
The woman did not move. She barely breathed.
She had lost all hope, convinced her people had abandoned her.
But now they were here.
Not on the fifth day.
But on the eighth.
And the Butcher's world was about to burn.
The Butcher did not flinch.
He stood on his balcony, his hands resting on the iron rail, his face carved from stone.
"They think they can take what is mine," he murmured.
A slow, terrible smile spread across his lips.
He turned to the overseers below.
"Arm yourselves."
Men scrambled, weapons clanking. Muskets were loaded, swords drawn.
The gates were reinforced.
The Butcher exhaled, savoring the moment.
Then he turned to the woman.
She felt his eyes on her, sharp as a blade.
"You thought they had abandoned you," he said softly.
She did not answer.
He chuckled, stepping closer.
"They came too late."
Her breath caught in her throat.
Because she understood what he meant.
This was not going to be a rescue.
This was going to be a massacre.
A single war cry shattered the silence.
The riders surged forward.
Arrows flew, finding their marks.
Overseers fell, screaming.
The slaves—weak, starved, hopeless—lifted their heads at the sound of battle.
Could it be?
Could this be the moment?
I felt my heart pound.
I wanted to believe.
But the Butcher had ruled this land for years.
And he was not a man who lost.
Not easily.
The first wave of attackers crashed against the estate's defenses.
A battering ram slammed into the gates.
Gunshots cracked through the air.
Men fell—on both sides.
The Butcher watched, calm.
"They will break before I do," he whispered.
He turned to the woman.
And then—before she could react—
He seized her wrist.
Dragged her inside, She tried screaming but couldn't.
And he slammed the door.
Because if the riders had come for her—
Then he would make sure they never saw her again.
The door slammed shut behind her.
Darkness swallowed her as the Butcher dragged her through narrow corridors deep into the estate. His grip was iron, his silence more terrifying than any threat.
Outside, the battle raged—shouts, gunfire, the clash of steel, the cries of the dying.
But in here, it was quiet.
Too quiet.
She stumbled as he yanked her down a stone stairway, her bare feet scraping against the cold steps.
"You thought they'd save you," he growled. "You thought you were clever."
She did not answer. Her breath was short, her body trembling—but her eyes were locked on his back, memorizing every step.
Because this—this was the end.
She could feel it.
One way or another.
The Butcher shoved open a heavy door and threw her into the chamber beyond.
It was small, windowless—damp stone walls and rusted chains bolted into the floor.
The smell of old blood lingered like rot.
She had never seen this place.
She hadn't known it existed.
"Since you brought death to my doorstep," he said, "you will watch it all."
He fastened one of the chains around her ankle. The iron bit into her skin. She didn't fight.
She just stared at him.
"What are you going to do?" she whispered.
He crouched in front of her, his eyes gleaming.
"I'm going to win."
And with that, he left her there.
Alone.
Chained.
While the battle raged above.
I ducked behind the stable, blood smeared across his cheek.
I had seen men fall—both the cruel and the brave.
I had seen fire lick the edges of the Butcher's grand house.
And i had seen his people fight with the fury of those who had nothing left to lose.
But they were outnumbered.
And the Butcher's men were ruthless.
Still—something had changed.
We were no longer waiting to be saved.
We were fighting.
Even without weapons, even with bleeding hands, they struck back.
And for the first time in all his years of suffering—
I believed.
In the chaos, one of the warriors from the woman's village burst through the grand hallway of the estate.
He searched every room, every corridor.
He shouted her name.
But no answer came.
The house was too large.
The enemy too many.
And she—was somewhere beneath it all.
Waiting.
Chained.
The Butcher had hidden her like a stolen treasure.
Because even in defeat, he wanted the last word.
The house burned.
Flames clawed at the walls, licking the rafters with hunger. The air was thick with smoke, screams, and gunpowder. Cries of men—dying, desperate, ruthless—echoed through the chaos. The Butcher's once-mighty estate, a kingdom of cruelty, now stood at the edge of ruin.
But deep beneath the flames…
She still waited.
Eyes burning from smoke drifting through hidden vents.
Heart pounding.
Not from fear.
From hope.
Because she heard it now—closer.
Footsteps.
Voices.
A war fought for her.
And the slaves.
The Butcher stood atop the staircase, shirt torn, blade in hand, eyes red with hatred.
"You dare destroy what I built!" he roared at the warriors storming his home.
Blood coated his arms. His left eye was swollen shut. Yet he laughed like a madman.
"You will die in my house! All of you!"
One of the warriors battered and bruised, stood at the base of the stairs.
He had picked up the musket of a fallen man.
It trembled in his hands.
But he aimed.
"This is not your house anymore," He said.
The Butcher lunged.
The musket fired.
Silence.
Then—the Butcher tumbled down the stairs.
Crashing.
Broken.
Still.
He dropped the musket, chest heaving.
He had not meant to kill.
Only to stop him.
But perhaps—he was already dead inside.
"Find her!" someone shouted.
They searched the halls.
The floors.
The back rooms.
It was one of the elders who found it—
A narrow stair, hidden behind a false wall in the kitchen.
Cloaked in shadow.
Torch in hand, Her manager descended first.
His heart thudded louder with every step.
The air grew colder.
He reached the chamber door.
He pushed it open.
And there she was.
Curled in the corner, chained, eyes glistening with tears.
"Oliver…" she whispered.
He rushed to her.
Shattered the lock with the torch handle.
Held her as the chain dropped.
"You came…" she breathed.
"Too late," he said. "But not never."
She collapsed against his chest.
Above them, the roof groaned.
The house would fall soon.
But freedom was a breath away.
They burst into the night as the estate behind them crumbled.
Smoke billowed into the dark sky.
The last of the Butcher's legacy turned to ash.
The surviving slaves—bloodied, silent—watched the inferno with hollow eyes.
They were free.
But at what cost?
Dozens had died.
Wounds ran deep—on their backs, their hearts, their minds.
We stood among them.
The woman at the right hand side.
Alive.
And i wept.
Not because of the pain.
But because for the first time in our lives…
We could finally imagine a world without chains.
The sky had not yet cleared.
Smoke still drifted across the plains like a restless spirit, carrying with it the scent of ash, blood, and something deeper—loss.
The Butcher's estate, once towering with cruelty, now lay in blackened ruin. Only scorched earth remained where walls once stood. No more chains. No more whips. No more screams echoing through corridors.
But silence…
It had its own weight.
The survivors gathered beneath a dying tree, the only one left untouched by flame. Their bodies were battered—backs raw, limbs bruised—but it was their eyes that told the truth.
Empty.
Hollow.
Searching.
We stood among them, unable to speak. chests rose and fell, but we felt no breath. Our heart beats, but it did not feel alive.
We looked at each other —what was left of us.
Old men who had survived a hundred lashes.
Children who had forgotten how to smile.
Mothers holding the ashes of their sons.
Fathers missing hands, legs, hope.
And beside us…
The woman who had risked everything.
Her face was smudged with soot, her dress torn, her feet blistered.
But her eyes were fierce.
Still burning with purpose.
They had won.
But it did not feel like victory.
Counting the Dead,
They laid the bodies in rows.
Some were familiar.
Others had no names.
The boy who used to sing in the mornings was among them—throat slashed.
The girl who always dreamed of the river was found crushed beneath fallen beams.
An elder—the one who used to whisper stories of a land beyond suffering—was burned beyond recognition, holding another close.
The woman wept openly.
We could not.
Our tears had dried somewhere deep within us.
"We are free," someone whispered.
But it didn't feel true.
Freedom shouldn't come with so much sorrow.
We had nowhere to go.
We were in another man's land.
The roads led only to other estates, other masters, other dangers.
They were hunted, hated, unwelcomed and they were so far away.
Even the stars overhead felt unfamiliar.
Even the wind smelled like someone else's soil.
"We should return home," one of the elders said.
But our home—Africa—was oceans away.
And we had no ship.
No guide.
No map.
And even if we did…
Would there be anything left to return to?
"I don't know who I am anymore," a man said.
"I only know the name they gave me. I don't even remember my real one."
That silence again.
Heavier than chains.
That night, the woman stood before us, her voice hoarse but steady.
"I didn't come here just to free you," she said. "I came to remind you that your blood still burns. That your names—your real names—still live in your bones."
Some looked away.
Some stared.
Some began to cry.
"You are not broken. You are not what they made you."
She stepped forward, raising her voice.
"We bury the dead. We honor them with our lives. We will not scatter like dust."
She pointed toward the hills.
"Beyond that ridge, there's land. Water. Space. We build something new. Together."
We watched her, our hearts slowly waking from the numbness.
She still had fire.
After everything, she still believed.
And maybe… maybe that was enough.
The next morning, they buried the last body.
The flames had died.
The ash had settled.
And one by one, we began to walk.
Away from the house of torment.
Away from the graves.
No longer slaves.
But not yet free.
Just survivors.
Carrying the past on their backs.
Carrying each other.
We looked at the woman walking beside us. The surviving warriors had bid her goodbye and left
She didn't speak.
She didn't smile.
But her eyes said everything:
This is only the beginning of something new.
We left with nothing but the ash in our lungs and the pain in our bones.
No drums marked our journey.
No farewells were spoken to the land of torment behind us.
We simply walked—quiet, wounded, and unsure if we were even truly free.
The sun rose behind us, but its warmth did not reach our hearts.
Ahead was only the unknown.
Strange trees.
Distant hills.
And a silence filled with waiting eyes—watching, judging.
The woman led us.
She had no map.
Only determination etched into every scar on her body.
We followed her not because we believed in hope, but because we had nothing else left to follow.
Hope had died too many times in the Butcher's house.
But something… something flickered quietly in our footsteps.
A stubborn will.
A refusal to vanish.
The Land Spoke with Thorns
The first days were cruel.
The forest did not welcome us.
We trudged through thick undergrowth that tore at our legs and arms.
Nights brought cold that crept beneath our skin and made even the strongest shiver.
Insects bit without mercy.
The rivers were harsh, their currents dragging away two children before our screams could reach them.
Food was scarce.
Water, bitter and muddy.
But still, we moved.
The weak leaned on the strong.
The old were carried when their legs could no longer obey.
And every night, we gathered around a single fire, huddled close.
Sometimes we sang.
Not the songs of our captors.
But songs from long ago—songs whispered in secret when chains clanked too loud for comfort.
Songs our ancestors used to sing before the foreign ships came.
I remembered my mother's voice in those songs.
I remembered my real name.
Adewale.
The name they tried to beat out of me.
But I still carried it.
I still carried her.
We all carried someone.
On the fourth day, we saw movement in the trees.
Not animals.
Men.
Strangers. Watching. Waiting.
Some of our people panicked. They whispered about other raiders, other slavers, another Butcher in hiding.
But the woman didn't falter.
She walked ahead, hands raised, and spoke.
We couldn't hear what she said.
But they didn't attack.
They vanished like ghosts into the shadows, and we kept walking.
Later, I asked her, "Were they slavers?"
"No," she said softly. "But they would have killed us all if I had spoken the wrong word."
"Then why did you risk it?"
She looked at me with tired eyes.
"Because I would rather die standing than return to chains."
Her voice never wavered.
And I believed her.
On the seventh day, we reached a village.
Its people were dark like us.
But they stared as if we were ghosts.
We begged for food.
Water.
A place to rest.
They gave nothing.
Not because they were cruel.
But because they were afraid.
Afraid of those who had chased us.
Afraid that helping us would bring down punishment from traders or soldiers.
"We're in their shadow," one of the villagers whispered. "We're all slaves… just pretending not to be."
We left that night. Hungry. Exhausted. Betrayed.
The woman said nothing.
But I saw her hands trembling as she walked.
It is one thing to fight your enemy.
It is another to be feared by those who should call you kin.
That night, as we made camp, an old man named Kabiru spoke.
He had once been a priest in his homeland, before his capture. His voice was frail but held strength like stone.
"They call us broken," he said. "But broken things still cut deep."
He stood and pointed to the stars.
"Let them fear us. Let them whisper. But we will build. We will fight. We will become the storm they dread."
The fire crackled.
And for the first time, we didn't just warm ourselves.
We felt something else.
A stirring.
Not hope.
Not yet.
But defiance.
The woman nodded slowly, her voice rising.
"If this land won't take us, then we'll carve our own."
And I believed her cause she had vowed to see us through and to be with us through thick and thin
Because fire, even smothered, still remembers how to burn.
We found a clearing on the edge of a forgotten valley—thick trees on one side, a narrow stream on the other. It wasn't paradise. It wasn't even safe. But it was ours, at least for now.
No whips cracked here.
No overseers shouted.
No chains clanked in the night.
It felt like breathing for the first time in years.
But freedom was never easy.
We didn't know how to begin.
Some of us had forgotten what it meant to decide things for ourselves.
Others couldn't sleep without waking from nightmares, still hearing the Butcher's laughter echoing in their minds.
The woman gathered us one evening and stood beside the stream, her voice steady as the wind.
"We're still alive. And that means we choose what happens next."
We started small.
Men built huts with trembling hands.
Women fetched water and searched for roots and fruits.
Children, silent for days, began to play again—though their laughter was faint and fleeting.
We planted no flags.
We declared no kingdom.
We simply survived.
And that… that was the beginning of rebellion.
It didn't take long before we knew we weren't alone.
Smoke curled in the distance some mornings.
We found footprints along the stream—too large to be ours, too fresh to ignore.
Twice, arrows were left in trees, never aimed to harm, just to warn.
The woman took no chances.
She began training some of us—those strong enough to hold a spear, those fast enough to scout the woods. Even I, though my arms still ached from old beatings, learned how to hold a blade.
"We are not warriors," she said one night, "but we must be ready to bleed like them."
And we were.
Because we knew this peace was borrowed time.
It happened in the dead of night.
A scream tore through the camp—sharp, high, then suddenly silent.
By the time we gathered, we found a woman lying in the grass, her eyes wide and staring at the stars. Blood stained the earth beneath her. Her child, gone.
The woman's face twisted with rage, but her eyes held something worse.
Recognition.
"They've found us."
She didn't explain. She didn't have to.
The foreign traders, or others like them, had discovered the path we'd taken. Maybe it was the butcher's concubines. Maybe someone had watched from the trees and sold our location for coin.
But it didn't matter how.
They were coming.
And they wouldn't come to talk.
That night, the fire burned lower than usual.
The children were pulled closer.
The men sharpened the few blades we had, and the women buried their fear beneath clenched jaws.
We had tasted freedom.
And now, they wanted to rip it from us.
Some wanted to run.
"We're too weak," they said. "We'll be slaughtered."
Others said we should fight.
"Better to die here with our backs straight than beg again in chains."
The camp almost fractured.
It was the old priest, Kabiru, who silenced the quarrel.
He rose slowly, bones creaking, and said, "We are not just escaping. We are becoming."
"What do you mean?" someone asked.
"I mean they don't fear us because we ran. They fear us because we remember. And memory… is rebellion."
He pointed to me.
"This boy remembers."
He pointed to the woman.
"She remembers."
And then to the silent night around us.
"So we fight. Not just for today. But so that tomorrow, someone might sing about us."
We stood in silence.
The woman turned and looked at each of us.
"If you choose to leave," she said, "I won't stop you. But if you stay, know this—there will be blood. There will be screams. But there will also be a chance to end this cycle."
And one by one, we stayed.
Even the ones who trembled.
Even the ones who had no strength left.
Because we were tired of running.
We had found each other in pain.
We had lost too much to lose again.
And so we waited.
Sharpening sticks.
Digging shallow traps.
Holding our breath.
For the day they would come.