The store is empty as it usually is at the end of the month before the Gandole “humanitarian aid” gives shops the new supplies of food, water, soaps, but never dishware. Stores have to pay for the supplies given. It’s getting harder and harder to do so. The government fell years ago and money lost its value. So we must trade valuables for the supplies. Still they are always certain only to give enough to keep us under their boot; a hungry people lose the will to fight. Some of the Gandole traders have tried several times to take Fantasia as payment but we made sure they knew there was no way that would happen. Yet month after month they come back with the same offer.
I am Kai Excalibur cashier of Haven Drive Café. I am counting the few dollars in the cash register while Nova and Fantasia are in the kitchen washing up before bed. Timpuji is in the manager’s office to my right around this time of the month he is usually seeing what we can give up to the Gandole traders for shop supplies. I’m tired of this. The Gandole spill Aidoshian blood daily and try to make up with their “charity missions” however there is a right and wrong way to go about rebellion. If we attack the traders, there will be no more food and people die. Right now the Gandole have us in a tight chokehold but our day will come.
It’s not much money but I’ve got to report to Timpuji. So I walk to his office door knock a couple of times and walk in. He is filling out the Gandole trading papers while smoking what looks like the last of his cigars. Ever since the traders started coming, they decided they might as well make the trading a contract so their government won’t be seen as horrid monsters by other nations. They can say “they freely signed away their rights. We did not take anything they did not want us to have.”
“I told you smoking is bad for your health,” I say.
“Ha, ha, ha I have to say you have, but at a time like this it’s good to try and keep a cool head and enjoy the little things while we can.” He pauses for a second and rubs his head and his cheerful attitude leaves him. “What are we going to do, Kai? There is nothing left to give except the kitchen itself.” He stares down at the papers on his desk.
“Go get some rest,” I say as I take the cigar from his hand. “We can look over this tomorrow and have a family meeting on what we can give up.”
He rubs his hand through his thinning gray hair downward to his wrinkled face and tired eyes stopping right under his nose. He gets up from his seat.
“You are really stepping up for her, Fantasia I mean. I am proud of you for taking on her burden and keeping this ol’ man in check.”
“We’re a family. What did you expect?” I ask as my mind drifts off.
I never really knew my parents. They were both Aidoshian soldiers and they left me with my uncle during the war. He was killed during one of the first raids on the Northern part of Aidon near Mount Kyro and my father and mother never returned. Frightened people ran by me as they escaped from the flames of death. Friends, neighbors, and even church members did not want anything to do with me. Their own lives were more important.
One man stopped. He reached out his hand and pick me up underneath his arm. With him was a goofy little boy. This would be my new family. Later on our journey, we found a girl two years older than me sleeping on a bench in the middle of the war zone as if she was waiting on us. She was as mean as a cobra and twice as strict. I don’t know why, but she got along well with Nova. I guess he reminds her of someone she lost. She always keeps her pain deep within. I look up to her because she has the strength to fight off her own inner demons. There is one other that joined our makeshift family after Fantasia—a military girl that Timpuji saved from a couple of Gandole troops named Reaka Kimpu. She did not stay with us long though, only a year before she joined the Univer Knights and soon after became their leader.
Timpuji grabs me by the shoulder and shakes me. He must have noticed my blank stare. “We are family now and we will always be,” he says as he lets me go and walks toward the door.
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I couldn’t help but smile. The respect I have for this man is something that can never die! I take the red papers on his desk stacking them neatly to the side. I open a window to let the smoke dissipate and throw the cigar out the window. I put the money in the safe on the way out of the room.
“You should stay away from that Brotherhoodlum nonsense…” I suddenly hear Timpuji yelling in the next room.
By the time I rush into the kitchen Timpuji has already finished yelling and the room falls silent.
“What’s going on in here?” I ask hoping to get some answers.
“Nova told Mr. Timpuji he joined the Brotherhood,” Fantasia responds as blissfully as she normally does, without a care in the world.
I never wanted Nova to join the Brotherhood, but Amùsen has other plans. He wants to get back at Timpuji for leaving years ago. He often talks of Timpuji as a traitor and to him, getting Nova to join would be ample payback. I never told Nova Timpuji is the founder of the Brotherhood. I know the day will come when he finds out on his own.
“At least I’ll be making a difference in the Brotherhood and if I die I’ll be a hero,” Nova yells with all his soul. “What have you done, old man? All you do is stay locked up in this shop and pretend the Gandole army is not slaughtering us like animals. We can’t live this way anymore,” Nova yells.
“You think I don’t know what’s going on outside these walls. You think I haven’t grown tired of stepping outside when it is filled with the foul stench of a failing nation? I go to bed every night and thank Univer I have you kids in my life, because if it weren’t for you I would have died long ago. Univer teaches us that violence cannot defeat violence,” Timpuji says in a stern voice.
“Where is he then? Where is Univer now, huh? We are his people, aren’t we? What are you waiting for, Univer to show his wrath? He is a dead God and I don’t need the words of a God that can’t even save one person! If he were our God, if he were a real God he with his boundless power would have saved us long ago, don’t you think? I don’t see the golden chariot carrying Univer as he throws lightning bolts so powerful they split the sky and shake the earth, do you?”
Timpuji is speechless not because he did not have anything to say but rather to keep himself from saying too much. I cannot let this moment pass. It sickens me, so I walk in from the doorway over to Nova and I punch him square in the face.
“You’ve gone too far, Nova, I can’t stomach seeing this anymore. How could you speak to this man that way? Have you forgotten who has been taking care of you for over a decade?”
Am I being a hypocrite? I too feel as though the Brotherhood is our last hope for survival…I too find Univer’s lack of care for his “chosen people” strange and somewhat disheartening, but that does not excuse Nova. I would not allow anyone to talk to Timpuji that way.
“All finished,” Fantasia shouts happily to get our attention. It works. Timpuji even manages to smile at her.
“Good work, Fantasia. And you did it all by yourself too.” Timpuji says.
“Yeah, well um, Nova helped me,” She says in her cutesy voice, while playing in the dish water.
“You can do it by yourself tomorrow, but for now go get ready for bed, okay?” Timpuji asks.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Timpuji!” She says as she hops over Nova and skips out of the room.
I often find myself wondering if this was what she was like before the war and she met us. I know she is the last of Univer’s Great Oracles and sees visions of the future. Was it a vision of the future that drove her to insanity or did something happen so horrifying that she no longer wanted this life? Whatever the case, her existence though sad is a happy one of which any Aidoshian would be envious.
Nova rises to his feet but refuses to look up at us as he walks to the door. I guess he thinks he’s being noble or something but it’s just annoying. I start walking after him but I feel Timpuji grab my arm.
“I’m sorry, Kai, but I need you to stay with Fantasia. Nova is my battle.”
“But…”
“There’s something I have to settle with him and the Brotherhood,” he cuts me off. “So do me this favor and stay with her.”
For some reason I can’t shake the eerie feeling that this is the last time I’ll see Timpuji, though I don’t know why. I feel as if he knows as well. I walk into the hallway as Timpuji leaves the store. Fantasia is just now on her way up the stairs, which I find unusual since Timpuji sent her to bed nearly five minutes ago. So I follow her up the stairs, she doesn’t make it all the way up before she collapses. I quickly leap to keep her from falling down the stairs, she is shaking, tears flowing from her eyes.
“Lock the doors quickly!” she says.
“Why,” I ask.
“Nova lied,” she replies as she rubs tears from her eyes. “He isn’t coming back! The monsters that took my mother are coming. You can’t save him! You won’t save him!”
I can’t believe it. She is having a vision and a horrid one at that; which means that the Gandole are going to attack us tonight, and Timpuji and Nova aren’t going to make it.
“It’s going to be all right. I swear,” I say to calm her.
“Don’t lie to me. We’re going to die. We’re going to die like everyone else! Just like all of the Brotherhood!”