The trees that surrounded the field I was standing on were now replaced by rocks, a valley of sorts enveloped the gathered students and teachers as everyone tried to place where we were located. My first thought was that we were all drugged and kidnapped but if that was the case how did I end up standing in the same position this whole time? The same held true for everyone around me as they were placed in the same order as they were before the light came. I eventually noticed a group of people about fifty paces away from us, dressed in a peculiar manner. A woman was kneeling on both her legs seemingly in prayer, holding her hands together with closed eyes and her mouth moving ever so slightly but the sound did not carry over to where I was standing. She was dressed in robes the equivalent of which I have never seen and surrounding her were a few dozen men in armor. This kind of armor reminded me of the chainmail I have seen in some of the video games I played, with interlocking rings covering the torso and arms, in each of their hands was a shield emblazoned with a bird of some sort, and a wooden spear with a shiny tip. The strangeness of the situation made everyone stand quietly, not sure as to what was going on and our minds locking up in confusion. Eventually Mr. Hendricks, one of the supervising teachers called out to the group in English which caused her to rise up from her kneeling position and stare in awe at us, as if we were aliens descending upon the world from the skies. She turned her sight from one end of the group to the other, perhaps trying to gauge how many of us there were, eventually she said something to the men around her and they began to approach us. Some of the students gathered became intimidated at the sight of so many armed men approaching us, and I heard whispers about whether it would be wise to run from them since we were dressed quite lightly in comparison to the supposedly heavy metal armor they wore. One of the more reasonable students reminded them that we did not know where we were and until we could ascertain what their intentions were it would not be wise to run without knowing in which direction safety was. As the mysterious group approached us, the woman came forth with only two men flanking her on either side. She approached Mr. Hendricks, our mathematics teacher, said something in a language which I have never heard. Mr. Hendricks took on a confused expression trying to understand her words, but after a few moments turned around and gestured for Ms. Cardoza, our French teacher, to come help him.
“I don’t understand what this woman is saying, maybe you’ll have better luck than I did” Mr. Hendricks said.
Ms. Cardoza then began trying to hold a conversation with her in the three languages she spoke, English, Spanish, and French although none of them seemed to elicit any kind of understanding from the woman. When the group approached us, I first noticed how different this woman looked from any person I have ever seen before. Her hair was tied up around her head in a braid, and I would describe its color as closest to silver or platinum. This was odd as she did not look old enough to already be going gray, she was in her early-to-mid twenties I would assume. The looks the armed men were giving us through the slits in their helmets was varied, some looked on at us to gauge if we would be any sort of threat to them, although I don’t know how that could be possible as we were still dressed in our light sportswear with nothing to use as weapons. Others would look at us with mild curiosity, the same looks I remembered seeing at the zoo when a child would see some exotic animal for the first time, the last group of looks I noticed were the leers directed at some of my female classmates. They were dressed in revealing clothing in comparison to the woman that they were accompanying, and something was hinting to me that they did not have the best intentions. Most, if not all, were focused on the attempt at communication between our two teachers and the mysterious woman, the ones that did notice the unfriendly gazes of the armed men, attempted to blend in and hide within the crowd.
After a few minutes of attempted communication eventually both parties came to understand that their languages did not resemble anything similar to what the others knew, and defaulted to communicating by gestures and facial expressions. The woman's face took on a very friendly expression, and gestured with her hands to open a path between the soldiers, where she pointed past where they came.
“I think she wants us to follow them somewhere” Ms. Cardoza, looked at Mr. Hendricks with a confused expression.
“Are you sure they’re friendly? I mean if we didn’t have these kids with us I would have bolted the second I saw them, do you see how weirdly they’re dressed? Its as if they came out of some medieval fair and we still don’t know how we ended up in this valley”
“I know this is all quite weird, but do you see the weapons they’re holding? If they wanted to harm us in some way they could have just used them to corral us like some cattle, instead the woman attempted to speak to us and even if we can’t understand one another I doubt they’d be here by themselves. I can’t see anything but trees and rock around us so staying here wouldn’t do us any good, let’s just follow them and see if we can find out where we are and how to get back to the field”
“Alright, lets go talk to the others and see if they agree, the kids can’t stay in this valley for too long either, I’m pretty sure it gets quite cold here at night”
Mr. Hendricks and Ms. Cardoza approached the other group of teachers that was waiting for them anxiously and they had some conversations about what to do from here on out. Eventually they came to the conclusion that they might as well follow them, since they’re the only people they could see around here. Mr. Hendricks raised his voice to address the three hundred or so students.
“Alright students, listen up! We don’t know how we ended up here and I can’t say I’ve ever been in this valley before so we’re gonna follow these people and try to find out a way to communicate with them, we’re all gonna be moving together. Don’t cause any trouble and don’t run off by yourselves as your parents will be quite worried if you don’t all come back safe and sound”
The teachers broke up and started arranging for us to walk in an organized manner with the woman and some of the armed men leading the way, with some taking up position behind our group. After walking for about ten minutes I started to lament the fact that I was in my running shoes and not some hiking boots as they would be much more appropriate for moving along this uneven ground. There was something akin to a trail between the trees which could fit about four people side by side comfortably. I remained somewhere in the middle of the mass of moving people until we reached a clearing where some horses and wooden wagons were arranged to make a camp of sorts. The smoke from the fires reached high into the sky before dissipating, and there was about a dozen more armed men watching over the camp. As we approached, the men became startled at the size of the approaching group, until they spotted the mysterious woman and walked to her. They had a conversation with her, the contents of which I could not understand, which got more heated as time went on. Eventually the man who I assume is the leader of the armed men, turned around and grabbed one of the horses that were tied down nearby and jumped on its saddle. He spat some more words in the direction of the woman and rode off, leaving the camp and I wondered just how far someone could hope to get on a horse. Wouldn’t an offroad vehicle be more convenient? Especially until they found a highway. After seeing the horses and the wooden wagons I wondered if these people were Amish? Although even Amish should have been able to speak some form of English, and the theory held true until I remembered that the Amish were pacifists so the armed men holding spears and shields definitely did not fit the bill.
The woman gestured for us to approach the camp. I saw some of the armed men taking out axes and heading for the woods from which they came back a while later, multiple men carrying logs which they placed around the fires, and then making more of them which was for our benefit I suppose. The teachers began arranging for us to sit down on the logs for now and wait for another attempt at communication. I sat down in between two other boys in my class and began observing some of the teachers attempting to speak with the mysterious woman. I heard a grumble from my left and realized that I myself was quite hungry as I had not eaten since breakfast. After almost every teacher and even some students attempted to communicate with the woman in different languages it became apparent that none of us could understand their tongue, nor could she understand any of ours. This was quite odd as in our school there are many people whose families came to America from abroad, we had Chinese, some Indian, some African, Arabic, and multiple European languages present and the woman could not understand any of them. I realized now, that either her people were very isolationist and had no contact with the rest of the world and as such did not adopt any of the words from other languages for her own, or her language was one that came to be in an entirely different place than ours. That would explain why I haven’t seen any of the armed men pull out their phones to begin checking their social media, evidently no one from our group did either as everyone had left their phones in the changing area, teachers included. I glanced at the wrist of the boy sitting next to me and saw that he had an electronic watch. It said that the time now was past 4 PM. This meant that we were already two hours past the supposed end of Athletics Day, and the buses that were meant to arrive to pick us up must already know that we were missing. The teachers defaulted to attempting to learn her language by pointing their fingers at one another, trying to convey their names to the woman. She eventually caught on and pointed her finger at herself and said “Kuvira”. Well there’s progress, we at least know her name now. The next few hours went by with the teachers either talking amongst themselves or continuing to point and try and learn words in each other’s languages, while students spent the time talking to each other about how weird the whole situation was, while others kept complaining about how they’d miss out on their Friday evening plans or even the whole weekend.
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At some point Mr. Hendricks realized that everyone was probably starving by now and gestured to Kuvira with his hands that he was hungry and then gestured to the rest of us to say that we were hungry as well. She understood and spoke in a commanding tone to one of the armed men still guarding her during her conversations, after which he walked off and came back a few minutes later with a few of his comrades in tow carrying massive sacks. Surprisingly on those sacks numbers were written, numbers I could understand. The sacks were full of some sort of bread, although it was much darker than the bread I was used to. The men passed out the pieces of bread to the students seated on logs, giving them half a loaf each. When the armed men neared me I could hear how loud the ‘crack’ was as the soldiers split the loaves. This bread was stale and I just hoped that it was still edible, although I doubt I would have cared given how famished I was. As I received the bread and nearly broke my teeth as I bit in I began to wonder how Kuvira couldn’t understand our language if they used Arabic numerals just like we did. How could there have been proof of exchanges between our people and hers and yet the only thing that was exchanged was the manner in which we counted, but not some words here and there. I pondered this question as I ate the stale and dry bread at which point the armed men came back carrying cups and some sacks of water. The water sacks looked to be made of leather and as the students and teachers observed them they realized the same thing I did: they didn’t use bottles. Unfortunately we left our bottles to the side of the area where the awards ceremony was held, and as such, we didn’t have them with us at the moment. The armed men gave each of the ‘logs’ one cup and left a waterskin with us. At this point I realized they wanted us to share the cup as we drank from it, the cup was made of wood and was not uniformly made. Watching as the cup was being given to the log next to us, this meant that they were hand carved, are these guys hippies or something that they prefer to use hand-crafted wooden cups instead of plastic ones?
In normal circumstances, I’m sure the students would be disgusted to have to share a drinking cup with multiple others but we haven’t had anything to drink for hours and as such our thirst overtook us and the person being given the cup gulped down its contents before handing it to the others. Some people evidently weren’t as thirsty as I was and began to loudly complain about how unhygienic it was to share a cup between multiple people but this resulted in Mr. Morris, our literature teacher yelling for everyone to just tough it out until we got home, as it would be better to stay hydrated. After getting my turn with the wooden cup I handed it to Brian on my left and after he was finished getting his fill he turned and spoke to me.
“Hey Leon, how do you handle eating this piece of garbage? Every time I try to bite down it hurts my teeth”
“I don’t know, I’m quite hungry and I just bite off small chunks and then I guess it becomes less hard in my mouth as I chew” I replied.
“I’ll try that then” he responded.
Brian is one of the nicer people in my class and I’m pretty sure he received the same sort of attention that I did throughout his one year in high school. As such I saw no problem giving some advice on how I managed to get this sawdust-like bread down my throat. Seeing that the students got at least some form of food and water Mr. Hendricks and the rest of the teachers returned to their attempts at understanding Kuvira's language although this time it didn’t last as long.
We were alerted by one of the armed men yelling something in his native tongue and some of the students and teachers became panicked thinking that something dangerous was about to happen, Kuvira on the other hand did not seem as flustered and gestured with her hands to the teachers to calm down.
“I don’t think this is anything dangerous people, Kuvira here seems to be telling us to stay calm” Mr. Hendricks raised his voice and told us.
I kept looking in the direction the armed soldier who yelled something came from and eventually wagons came through the dirt path being pulled by four horses each, far more wagons than were present in this camp originally. Following up the group of wagons from the back was the man who Kuvira had some sort of conversation with as we arrived in the camp. Kuvira stood up and walked towards him, exchanging a more peaceful but still tense conversation with the man after which she returned to the teachers and began trying to convey something to them accompanied by gestures at the wagons that just arrived.
“I think she wants us to get on those wagons so we can get somewhere, what do you think?” Mr. Hendricks asked the others.
“I don’t know where we are honestly, and staying here in the forest won’t do us much good, I assume seeing as how they are all wearing clothes and have food and such that there must be some sort of civilization nearby and that’s where those wagons came from, maybe we should follow her” Ms. Cardoza replied hopefully.
“But what if we encounter something dangerous on the way, I personally would like to try and find a way to ask her if she has a phone so we can call 911” Mr. Morris commented.
“Are you really so dense that you don’t understand what kind of technological level they are at to ask such a question? Of course they don’t have phones! They are dressed in only what I can describe as pre-industrial clothing so there’s no chance of that” Mr. Hendricks said.
“Alright, alright, no need to get pissy with me man, I’m just a little stressed. Let’s go with Kuvira then, get on these wagons and hopefully someone in a town will be able to tell us where we are” Mr. Morris answered, the stress of the situation influencing his choice of vocabulary.
The teachers arranged for all of us to gather and divided us up into a little more than dozens and sat us down in the wagons that came, they had benches on either side and in each wagon at least one armed man joined us for what I assume was our “safety”. After everyone was settled in and Kuvira made sure no one was left behind, the wagon I was in began to tremble as it moved along the dirt path that led to the encampment. I dare say this is the worst means of transportation I have ever used and I am beginning to miss my mothers car that I would have to ride in at least once a week for groceries. As we moved along I had a view of the surroundings as they slowly passed by and in different circumstances this would be a very enjoyable journey. The scenery was truly beautiful, as if untouched by the hands of man throughout the ages. Kuvira rode in a wagon with some of the other teachers and some of the armed men rode on horses instead of in the wagons with us, where some space still remained. I myself have never ridden a horse but from what I can see these men were used to it. They replaced the spears they carried earlier with a lance of sorts which looked a lot more elegant and well-made than the spears, which I assumed were made to be disposable. The man who came back with the wagons rode past us in the direction of the one at the front with Kuvira and the teachers and I noticed he was now dressed differently from the other armed men which was not the case earlier. He now wore a yellow cape and his armor and weapons seemed a cut above the rest compared to the soldier in the wagon. Was he some sort of rich person? The soldier riding with us noticed me staring at him, examining his equipment, and just for a moment gave me a menacing glare before returning to his default indifferent expression.
The journey in the wagons began taking a toll on my backside after an hour or so, and I wished I was wearing thicker shorts than the sportswear I currently had on. At this point we have long since exited the forest and before me I saw massive fields with the occasional group of houses in between. The fields were green which made sense since it was only spring and the harvest season was not yet here. Some of the fields of green were clearly used for agriculture as I saw empty ones with green spots here and there meaning the seeds were just planted. I wondered where the farming equipment usually present in the sowing period was, until we eventually crossed a mound on the other side of which was a town. When I first laid eyes on it I noticed one detail which finally convinced me of my previous contemplations about Kuvira and her people, there definitely was no town in America surrounded by a stone wall.