The girl heard the pound of marching feet, but it didn’t register with her what it meant. She was too busy trying to protect herself from the biting wind with her thin cloak. She was almost home.
The girl’s name was Anaya. Herself and her family lived in their home town of Ottowaso, even in this time of war. But soldiers were everywhere, “protecting” the small town. They were supposedly allies, but they took money and the best clothes and food for themselves, leaving the locals with pittance, ragged clothes and empty stomachs.
Anaya may not have noticed the marching feet, but she did notice when it abruptly ceased. She froze in the newborn silence, her heart thumping in her chest, her cloak wrapped tight around her.
The silence was broken momentarily by an early-morning bird chirping. Suddenly there was a sound like a cracking whip, a smell of smoke and a faint thump. There wasn’t another sound from the bird.
The noise had woken more of the inhabitants of Ottowaso, including the soldiers who were supposed to be on watch. People poked their heads out fearfully from behind doors. The Ally soldiers were marched out of their dormitory cabins by the commanding officer, and spread quickly out around the town.
Anaya cowered behind a wooden barrel as three Ally soldiers thundered past. A sudden strangled yell, followed by another gunshot, made her clap her hands over her ears in fright. The air was now awash with a volley of gunshots, coming from every direction.
The Ottowasions slammed, bolted and barricaded their doors. Women and children screamed in terror, as the Enemy soldiers swarmed in towards the Centre Square. From her hiding place, Anaya could see nothing, but still she kept her eyes clamped shut.
Nothing could block out the screams and cries of pain and despair. One by one, doors were broken down and windows were smashed as the Enemy soldiers hard-heartedly slaughtered every living creature within shooting range.
“I’m going to be found, I’m going to be found,” panicked Anaya silently. Bile rose in her throat. She looked around desperately, holding back cries of anger, tears of anguish and yesterday’s dinner.
A minute later Enemy were tramping down every side-street and alleyway, including the one where Anaya hid. But they didn’t find her. They left, after torching every building and wooden structure.
What might have been hours later, Anaya scrambled cautiously out of the remains of the wooden water barrel she had hidden herself in. A pool of water lay ankle deep around her feet. Unwillingly, they took her up the alley to the Centre Square.
There, devastation reigned. Blood, guts and lone body parts lay on the familiar cobbles. Heaps of ashes surrounded it all; the only remains of what had once been homes.
A wave of loss and angst rose up inside her as she recognised her mother’s corpse. Kneeling by the body she carefully closed the cold lids of the blank eyes staring up at her. The same eyes that, so often before, had looked at her with love and affection. Anaya buried her ash-and-smoke-blackened, tear-streaked face in her mother’s front and stayed that way for an age.
She didn’t understand. She was only six years old.
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