Days passed in mumbled rage: Didn’t these men know better? Wouldn’t they stand before the judgment? Isn’t there one righteous man among them? Where are their mothers? And what of their fathers? Yes! These seasoned men of valor and pride. Where are they? Or their fathers’ elders. They must have elders. And when do they do their rituals? In their cabins at night? But rituals cannot be done alone! Perhaps they live only in one realm. Yes, there’s the answer! They have only two eyes and as such cannot see how this realm prepares them for the next. And that realm for the next. And so on. But still if we had listened to the old prophets, we would’ve seen these pale people coming before they came. In the end, we cursed ourselves alone.

The evening and the morning were the fifty-fourth day.

* * *

The nauseating stench never went away. It loitered in the air like smoke. It was the smell of feces, musty bodies, and death. It was a peculiar odor, unlike anything we’d ever known. It violated our nostrils, causing nose hairs to tingle. It was a heavy odor that lingered in our throats and stifled our breathing. We never forgot it. Often, when taken above deck for dancing, we gave thanks for clean, salty air. Then, descending the staircase, we were once again overcome by the pungent, sickening scent. Our bellies rumbled. At times they tried to cleanse the hold with buckets of seawater, but that only increased the moisture in an already damp, musty space. Defecation, puke, spoiled food, urine, menstrual blood, pus, mucus from open sores, and mounds of spittle combined to create a half-inch gravy that covered the ship floor. It was a haven for diseases, waiting to multiply and devour us. A crewman appeared one day with a broom, and after two strokes shook his head and left. He tried to clamp his nose with one hand and manipulate the broomstick with the other, but it was impossible. As for us, we learned to breathe less often and to spit when particles gathered on our tongues.

Some of the stench was our hatred for pale flesh. Malice has an odor, we knew, like that of musty armpits. We’d smelled it before. Now it wafted through the air as we dreamed, day after day, of mutilating captors. One man’s teeth chattered whenever crewmen approached. Words of fury burbled from his lips, explaining how he envisioned dismembering these people, one arm, one leg, one foot at a time. Another man announced, in the silence of midnight, that if he ever got free, he would sacrifice his life to bury a machete in the hearts of as many crewmen as possible. He’d lost the hope for laughing children and magenta sunsets; all he desired was the slaughter of those who’d slaughtered us. He wanted to make them pay for thinking we weren’t men. For ruining homes and villages they had not built. For separating us from people we’d always known. For leaving children to rebuild villages without instructions. And for taking us so far away we could never return. We listened and nodded.