Titters of laughter rippled through our corner of the meadow where red, blue, yellow, white, and orange flowers were so plentiful we didn’t even feel guilty disturbing them. Having filled every nook of my backpack with senaba, I stretched out in a clump of soft grass, cutting a small hole in the fruit and putting in a straw as Malaiki had taught me.

Just then I heard strange voices at the far edge of the meadow, out in a clump of oak trees.

“I’m taking a walk,” I called to Victoria, who hadn’t heard the voices or was too tired to care. I got up and followed the voices and finally came to an old wooden structure that appeared to be a makeshift jail, made of thick, tightly meshed oak logs, with a locking metal gate built into the wood.

I saw three men inside, threadbare and ragged, wearing handcuffs.

“How long have you been here?” I asked.

“Twenty-five years for me,” said a crotchety voice coming from a short, muscular man in a blue denim jacket. “Name’s Zed. Gordy, there, now he’s been here what, sixteen years? Roy’s the newcomer; nine years for him. Ain’t that right, Roy?”

“But … what’s this all about?” I asked. “How could you possibly live here all those years? And how did you get locked up?”

“Seen a lotta things these twenty-five years,” Zed replied, picking his teeth with a sliver of wood. “Got some stories to tell, I reckon.”

I looked at Gordy and Roy, hoping they might answer me. Roy never looked up. He just kept dealing cards, a bit awkwardly due to his handcuffs. Gordy, his long blond hair in a ponytail and his pale chalky face strewn with red splotches, was extremely thin and gaunt, dangerously so. Sucking his teeth and staring at the dirt floor, he appeared to be watching spiders and centipedes and chiggers and beetles, all of which came and went as they pleased through the small cracks in the logs and the four-inch spaces between the cell door’s iron bars. I heard him call some of them by name. I had the uneasy feeling he was waiting for his next meal to walk through.

A hundred questions assaulted me, like how they got food and especially water, and what they did in bad weather, and who provided them clothes, but answers wouldn’t come easily from this tribe. I decided to check the metal door. I looked for rust and possible weak spots but saw nothing. I stooped and examined the lock and the latch. I leaned forward for a closer look, then lost my balance and fell against the door.

It swung open, and I tumbled into the cell. The prisoners barely looked up, as if this was a casual occurrence. I jumped up and yelled, “It’s unlocked. You’re free!”