I woke with a start.  I was covered in sweat and couldn’t catch my breath.  I had been running through the village and pale ones were chasing me with their strange weapons and nets.  Just a dream.  Just a dream.  More like a nightmare.  I could hear the sounds of my mother starting the morning meal.  I smelled the rice being cooked over the flame in one of the pots I had made with Grandmother Judada.  My baby brother, Arol, stirred beside me and I carried him to my mother for his morning feeding.  That’s when I heard the scream.  “Momma, what was that?”  She cradled Arol in her arms, “Nothing Flista, just the chickens.  Can you go fetch some water for me?”  It didn’t sound like a chicken to me but I didn’t question her.  
                I am very proud of my name, Flista.  It was my great-grandmother’s and she was a very strong person.  She was the woman most tribesmen had gone to for healing and herbs when they had gotten sick.  My name means “fierce” in Bento tongue and often my mother warned me, “Many will not like how intense you are since you are a woman.  Do not change for them.”  My mother’s name, Lillana, means wise; we are very close.
Outside our squat hut the air was wet and humid.  The long rains were coming.  The sky was dark and ominous and the wind rustled the leaves of the trees around me.  I heard another scream.  Still holding the water pot I ran toward the source of the sound.  As I rounded the corner of one of the huts toward the brinks of our village I smelled a strange, new smell.  Somehow it revolted me and I started to back away from the odor.  As I was retreating I saw ghostlike spirits moving through the trees.  Pale ones!  They came out of the forest much like the ferocious beasts in some of the stories Grandmother Judada told the young children.  Bearing their long, silver sticks they moved swiftly toward me.  I screamed in terror.  Others rushed from their huts and Bento tribesmen grabbed their weapons.  Yet the pale ones kept coming.  They moved steadily towards us like the river across the riverbed and were soon close enough for me to see the sweat on their brow.  I was frozen in place, too scared to move.  One of the pale ones lunged toward me and I awoke from my fear begotten trance.  I barely dodged him in time.  He lunged again and managed to roll just out of his reach.  It was much like a dance.  Every time he ran at me I would either dodge him or run just out of his reach.  Then I remembered the pot.  It was resting on the ground right next to my foot.  The next time he ran at me….SMACK.  He held his head as blood rushed from a wound on the side of his face.  I could see the hatred in the glare of his intense, azure eyes.  These eyes will always haunt me.  He lunged at me but wobbled like a new babe just learning to walk and I managed to slip away.  
It was then I noticed the chaos around me.  Homes were on fire.  Bodies, some of men and women I knew, were scattered on the ground.  Too much blood.  Too much pain.  My senses were sharpened by fear and hatred of the pale ones.
I grabbed a stray spear off the blood strung ground.  I did not want to think of the Bento it had belonged to or his ugly fate.  I mimicked the form I had seen the hunters use when taking down an animal and attacked a nearby pale man starting fire to another hut.  He turned in surprise when my spear went into his back, and then fell to the ground, never to move again.  Allah help me, I killed a man.  Not a man…a monster.  I setout with renewed rage and managed to injure another inhuman, ashen beast before I was disarmed and restrained.  Tied like an animal, trapped, helpless.  
I hoped my family had escaped without injury.  The pale beasts tied us to a pole and whipped us until we moved docilely.  My legs were trembling from exhaustion.  The soles of my feet bled.  I could not keep moving like this.  I heard the groans of the men and women around me as we shuffled along.  Some women cried hysterically and begged Allah for help.  Men moaned from the pain of the deep cuts in their backs.  In the distance I could hear the pleas of the young children left behind to starve and die on their own.  My thoughts strayed to my family.  Memories of little Arol, Mother’s comforting voice, and Father’s quiet solemnity caused a horrible pain in my heart.  Please let them live.  
I do not know how long we walked.  Eventually we were forced to stop by many more beatings and much yelling.  In the pale glow of the moon I could see the others around me.  Not all of the captured were from my tribe but I checked their faces and was slightly relieved not to find the face of my mother’s or father’s among them.  All I could hope was that they had escaped during the attack.
We were then separated into two groups: one of men and one of women.  The tears on the faces of the women around me had long dried and now they held a look of hopelessness and fear.  I was angered by this, how could they so easily be manipulated?  I thrashed at the rope tying my wrists and ankles together.  One of the white beasts noticed and smacked me across the face.  I burned with hatred as he turned away from me and dredged up enough saliva to spit in his direction.  One of the tribeswomen around me said urgently, “Do not anger them.  Do you want to be beaten?  Do you want to die and be left here to rot?”  I turned my head to the sound of the voice, “How can you not fight back?  You will never see your home again.”  There was no reply and I laid my head down onto the dirt floor of the forest clearing.  
I don’t know how I managed to fall asleep but the next thing I knew I was being kicked awake.  I was picked up and forced to stand in the middle of the clearing.  Men started to remove my clothing and I squirmed and struggled against them and my bonds.  I managed to yank a wrist free and scratched at the eyes of the pale ones around me.  They cursed at me and one grabbed a nearby whip.  Severe pain then darkness.
I remember being forced to stand up and being dragged by others tied to the same pole as me.  The man in front of me called out at one of the ashen ones, “This girl behind me is dead, cut her loose.”  Was he saying this for his own benefit or trying to help me escape?  There is no doubt he could hear my ragged breaths behind him.  The white one glanced at him, uninterested, not understanding his plea.  
We were led up a ramp onto a giant canoe; I had heard of these before but had not believed they existed.  There was a strange rocking motion.  I opened my eyes completely but soon clamped them shut.  Too much light.  When my eyes had adjusted I noticed the other women around me, they all were naked and bruised.  Older children of eight or nine rains were huddling in the corner, their laughter gone forever.  I couldn’t feel anything other than the constant rocking.  I tried to ask one of the women where we were and what was going to happen to us but it took too much effort to even move my lips.  A man came up to us with a bucket and a giant spoon and dumped some nasty mush into outstretched hands.  I copied the others around me and weakly stuck out mine and got some of the gross substance.  I watched as others began to devour it.  This is food?  I looked at the slop and decided I better put something into my empty stomach.  The instant the food touched my tongue I vomited.  It tasted like filth.  I had no choice but to force it down or else I would die of starvation.  This process went on for many days and I wondered if it would ever end.
One day I was curious enough to ask the woman chained next to me where we were being taken.  “To the lands of the white man,” that is all she said and refused to answer any of my other questions.  I wondered where the rest of the captured tribesmen were.  All I had seen for days were women and children.  I soon found out when they were taken out of a dark whole in the bottom of the large canoe.  They were sickly looking and very thin.  When the pale ones had taken many up on deck the stench of them was overwhelming.  It smelled like rotting, decaying flesh and I couldn’t help being sick.  
The pale ones lugged water out of the great pond around us and proceeded to scrub the men.  Many screamed in pain as the white beasts took their giant brushes over their deep wounds.  I winced in horror.  The men were then covered in some substance that made them shine and had some strange yellow powder dusted on their worse gashes.  It reminded me of preparing a chicken for supper.  Were they going to eat us?  I shivered at the idea and I couldn’t help a moan escape my lips.  Even after all this I did not want to die.  I hoped my family was safe and I cried for them.  I watched as the little sliver of land I used to call home faded into the horizon.
                                           *              *              *
It must have been about five moons when I smelled a change in the environment.  We had reached land.  Soon the ship stopped and many of the strange, ashen creatures were pointing at us.  A strange sound came out of them.  It was laughter; they were laughing at us.  I couldn’t understand why.  Soon a man that I could tell had authority over the other white ones, pointed to some of us and began to inspect our teeth, hair, and physical condition.  I had no spirit in me left to fight them.  The man then took some of us off of the canoe and chained us together.  Where was I now?  What was going to happen to me?  Tears gushed from my eyes and I didn’t bother to stop them.  The end had come.