Hang a Thousand Trees with Ribbons Read Online Free Page A

arms.
    It was still not light, but I could see her clearly. And she could see me.
    Then, as I ran to her, another figure leaped out and grabbed her.
    Before I got to her, she was struggling in the grip of the strong arms of a large dark man, a kidnapper. Likely one of Dahobar's men.
    I fought him for Obour. And for myself. I scratched and bit, hit him with sticks. All I knew was that he was hurting my friend.
    Soon, without my understanding it, another person was fighting him. My mother. She had seen me leave the house and had followed me.
    The man pushed me and Obour aside. He hit my mother in the head with a big stick. Then, even while we clung to his legs and still attacked him, he tied my mother with grass rope, and then he tied us.
    Some other children who had just come into the fields to work saw what was happening and ran for help. But it was too late.
    By the time help came the three of us were gone. The man who captured us took us a distance, to meet with evil companions.
    One was my father's brother, Dahobar. He grinned when he saw us. "The great hunter," he scoffed. "He may have run from me, but now I have hunted what is his. And he will never see you again."
    We were taken on a long walk with Dahobar and his men, through the green forests to the ocean, where a great ship waited in the distance with its sails furled.
    And the man I was to come to know as Captain Quinn.

Chapter Five
    I had never seen the ocean before. I wept when I saw it. Fear swooped down upon me like a great bird, like a roc. Its talons clutched at my heart.
    I was accustomed to the river. It went by us silently, in one direction. You knew what it was about all the time. Rivers play no tricks on you.
    The ocean was a two-headed beast. It went both ways. First it came at us, attacking like the leopard, making great roaring noises and threatening to eat us alive. Then it retreated, creeping backward, making smaller hissing noises. Only to return with even greater force.
    So much openness! The sun on the white soil hurt my eyes. Where were the friendly green trees of the forests that always protected us?
    Obour and I clung together beside my mother.
    We had marched for near a whole day to get here, tied one to the other. We had been given only some thin meal and tepid water. And I was tired.
    Twenty others were with us, men, women, and children. Some we knew, some we did not know. But when we got to the ocean, the men in our group started snapping their fingers.
    This was a bad sign. It meant there was no hope. And then Dahobar ordered those men who had snapped their fingers to be put in irons.
    Soon we saw the great canoes coming toward us on the water.
    "Kroomen," one of the men with us whispered. The word went round and round amongst us.
    Kroomen were a tribe that lived on the Guinea Coast. They made their living by fishing. Until they found they could make a better living carrying people who were sold into slavery from the shore to the ships. They were the only tribe who knew how to get their canoes out over the great crashing waves, which even the sailors on board the ships could not manage.
    They were very big and powerful, these Kroomen. They rubbed their bodies with palm oil. And their canoes were dug out of the trunks of cotton trees.
    They brought the man I now know as Captain Quinn to shore. With some others.
    "Koomi," someone murmured.
    Murmurs of fear went down the line. Koomi were white men who lived in a land across the water. They would eat us!
    There was much haggling then between Captain Quinn and Dahobar. Much pointing to us. Much shaking of Koomi heads.
    Men were separated from women and children. Captain Quinn made us take off our clothes. I shudder to remember how we stood there naked while he opened our mouths, and made us jump up and down and move our arms, and pinched our skin and felt our muscles.
    Some of Dahobar's captives he pushed aside. He did not want them. I heard him say a word I did not understand. "Diseased." He