I hauled a moon-knife from my leather waist belt and chopped up the last strands of weeds from the dry, crispy earth. It’s really supposed to be called a sickle, but I just call it a moon-knife.  Our tribe had cut down some trees and made an empty lot for our tents and campfires, but grass kept growing into it. It was my job to get rid of that problem. The sun hit my back at an angle, creating a long, twig-like shadow across the black dirt. Soon, dusk would come lurking underneath the rocks and bushes, slowly taking over the bright orange sun. The branches overhead would look like as my older sister, “Red Flower” had described – twisted fingers of a witch. As l continued scraping my moon-knife across the soil, a red head bobbed up and down the dense blanket of woods surrounding the campsite in the distance. The person was my older sister, Red Flower. She looked just like her name – fiery red hair, rosy cheeks and pink fingers – all the older boys in the tribe followed her around like a mother duck and her little ducklings in line. 

“Hey, Capibara Poop, did the boys leave you out of their shooting game again?”

Red Flower asked me, her voice loud and resonant. I nodded, and her face crumpled at once. 

I blinked. Red Flower put her eyebrows back and pulled the two ends of her crimson-colored lips up. 

“Let’s go and gather some blackberries with Mum, eh? You love them, right?”

Red Flower suggested. Mum was said to be the best blackberry finder in the whole clan. Red Flower was so proud of her mother. She sent me to fetch Mum, who sent me to fetch a straw basket. Soon, the three of us were ready to go, a basket strapped around each of our shoulders by a leather band.

 We ventured off into the damp forest, hand in hand. We passed by a crystal clear creek that ran between a couple of boulders slippery with moss. Occasionally, a tree, or the monkeys on it, would shoot down a colorful fruit of any kind and “bless” us with the joy of sharing it between the three of us, like Red Flower had described. Twisted trees stood in dense rows and columns, vines entwined on their trunks, branches and some even weaving in between two trees, like a very, very outstretched snake. I blinked. The sunlight beamed its final rays through the branches, leaves, and fruits of the trees, not only creating spotted patterns on the muddy soil, but leaving very little light for us to see. Still, this didn’t stop Red Flower from talking about the wonderful things in life until we finally found a gigantic blackberry bush as tall as l was. Mum, Red Flower and l crouched down to our haunches and started picking the fruits, tossing them into the baskets. Soon, Mum sprung back up and eyed the bushels and bushels of more fruits that lay ahead of us. 

“This could feed the whole clan,”  Mum opened her eyes wide as she stepped forward, one by one, for even more blackberries. 

Red Flower and I watched as Mum stepped forward. But as Mum reached out to the nearest bush, the ground beneath her rumbled. She was like the wooden boat my sister and I sent floating down the strongest river in the whole forest last summer. 

Mum fell to the real ground. 

Red Flower went pale. She thrusted me to the ground behind a bush and whispered, “shut up and don’t move”. I did what I was told, ignoring the pain on my ribs from the crash my sister had caused me. I brought my knees to my chest and hugged them. 

A tiger’s roar.

Mum’s blood-curdling scream.

 My sister screeched at me to go back home… 

When I crept out of the bush, the tiger was gone, Mum and Red Flower were sprawled motionless on the ground. Their red, red blood soaked into the black, black soil. I blinked. I went up to Mum first, whose pale-pinkish guts were all uncovered from the tiger’s bite marks. Blood was welling up between the wrinkles in her organs and flowed out of her agape mouth. She was dead. Like Dad was seven years ago, from a venomous snake who bit him. I blinked, now turning away to Red Flower.

My sister was gasping for breath, face almost as white as the moon. The pink blush on her cheeks were gone now. The red claw marks on her chest were almost two inches deep. I took off the tight plant-woven clothing off her to let her breathe, and Red Flower filled her lungs with the damp forest air and coughed out thick, bright red blood. It was darker than her hair color. 

“Go back home,” she spluttered, breath fastening. I nodded in return, and raced back to the campsite, as fast as the wind, dodging twisted tree roots and vines and jumping over greenish rocks. I ran all the way to the tribe’s camping grounds, and it took me at least thirty minutes. When I got back, the sun had disappeared completely and the goddess Nyx had spread her long black cape peppered with stars across the woods. I panted as I leaned forward, then howled – 

 “Mum and Red Flower are dead!”

A few boys, Red Flower’s ducklings, glanced at me from what they were doing and soon formed a circle around me. They took hold of my left ear until it got red and questioned my honesty, how come I’m not crying if I’m telling the truth, where the two women are – the boys were all at least a head or two taller than me. The Ducklings were like mountains, each of them bellowing a barrage of words at me. I blinked. One of them paused, then suggested they should go look for Red Flower in the morning since it was so dark out, and they could not risk the life of another ten people. The others reluctantly agreed and left me alone. 

I trudged back to the family tent, lay on my pile of leaves Red Flower had collected for me to use as a bed, and drifted off to sleep. But after what seemed like a few moments later, dawn dawned upon the campsite and woke everyone up, including the boys. I told them where Red Flower and Mum were attacked, and they gave me a side-eye as they left, completely armed with daggers and bows with arrows. And once again, I was out doing chores. I filled up the tribe’s water bucket with gallons of freshwater from a nearby creek, rubbed dry sticks and bark together to light up the hearth one more time, and chopped up weeds from the village areas that had grown overnight. And once again, the sun tortured me with its rays, travelling from being on my face, to the top of my head, and the back of my neck as time passed on. Everyone else was out in the forest collecting wood, fruits, or hunting – or, in this case, looking for my family. I blinked. As I put my moon-knife’s blades on a little strand of weed, the Ducklings came back. They all looked “devastated”, like Red Flower would have said. One had tears rolling down his cheeks. The other had red, swollen eyes. They were carrying Mum and Red Flower. 

“Duckling 1” and “Duckling 2” were both holding Mum – one on her shoulders, one on her legs. “Duckling 3” had Red Flower in his arms, face looking “grim”, like Red Flower would have said. Seeing the Ducklings like that put the other people’s faces in “shock”, like Red Flower would have said, and every single mouth was dropped to the ground… Except for mine. The lady next door saw that I didn’t react, and that made her “mad”, like Red Flower would have said. The lady stomped up to me like a gorilla and let her fists fall onto my head and body. 

“You are a monster!” the lady yelled. “Your whole family has died and you spare not a single drop of tears!” 

I blinked. I’m just like that, I thought, but of course no-one listened. 

“We always knew he was odd, but not this much – come on, we all saw him expressionless when that damn snake bit his own father! When that poisonous spider took his own grandmother!  And now, his grandmother, mother, father, and sister have died and he shows no feelings! He’s just too different. He must be a devil’s child – if we keep him, another bad incident will happen!” 

I blinked. I’m not guilty for what happened, I thought, but of course no-one listened. They never did. They just threw sticks and pebbles at me. They just roared and booed at me. They just pushed me out of my home by force. I blinked. I’d gone so far, I could no longer see the community fire. Instead, I could feel the rich, thick soil underneath my bare feet, low branches and vines and bushes swiping my cheeks and arms. A bird flew overhead, racing against the sun, who was racing against dusk. Night was coming, and I had to find shelter somewhere. Maybe one of the vines would lead me up onto a fruit tree of some sort. So I took hold of the nearest vine that looked secure enough and began climbing up, up, up.