This was The Coming.

* * *

Those they bought they took right away. Within seconds they were loosed of their chains and ushered off the boat. That was the last time we saw them. Each of them turned and looked back with sorrow. We were being separated once again from those we’d grown to love. Most of us had survived only because we’d chosen to fight for one another, because we’d decided, together, not to die. Now we were divided again, into fractions of the original fraction. We were diminished into a mere band of bound men and women when, in truth, we’d come from great nations of thousands. Life had changed in one season on the ship, and we weren’t sure now what tomorrow would bring.

From the corners of our eyes, we saw the pale boy hiding behind a barrel of grain. His bottom lip shuddered each time one of us was sold away. His eyes begged us to believe he was not one of them. To know that, if he’d had his way, he would’ve set us free. To trust that if he could’ve forced his fathers to take us home he would’ve. We believed him. But his mouth said nothing, and we understood why. Any gesture of kindness shown us during the journey had been met with severe punishment. So the boy was right to believe he could do nothing. Still, his eyes exposed that he wanted to.

Even in our misery, we saw the beauty of his heart. It bore the strength of elephant’s tusks and the majesty of peacock’s wings. It had quenched our thirsts that fateful day and assured us that spirit can dwell in pale flesh, too. We didn’t know what would become of him, but we knew his potential to change the world—if it didn’t change him first. He’d have to defy everything he knew, to go against every example his fathers had set, in order to realign what they had misaligned, but we held out hope that he would. For us. For himself. For the balance of the earth. We had survived, so anything was possible.

After that day we never saw him again. But we remembered him. We hoped he would someday heal diseases lurking in the hearts of his people. He was a flicker of light in a dark world, and we knew why he’d been sent. And by whom. We prayed he’d discover it, too, and eventually mend his people’s brokenness. Like all the others who’d died along the way, he lived in our collective memory of those who’d sacrificed for our survival. A few blinked at him, hiding behind the barrel, trusting in their hearts as they were dragged away that he wouldn’t become one of them.

As for the rest of us, mere skin and bones, we were returned to our holding places belowdecks. With so many gone, the room felt vacant and hollow, like a cave. We were scattered throughout the hull without the luxury of human contact. We, the undesirable, were left to ponder what further abuses we could endure. Knowing nothing else to do, we brooded in silence. And waited.