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It was a twofold price, a price of blood and a price of history: an untongued people cannot tell their story.
When water was low and thirst was high, it was risky to waste energy helping others. He understood. But he hated them all the same.
“Seeing,” they told him at the beginning of every training session, “is conviction.” The power came from translating understanding into belief, from standing so firmly in one’s knowledge of the world that the knowledge itself became an armor—and a weapon.
Maybe they didn’t know the truth. Maybe they did. Tutu didn’t know which was worse.
Adults were always scared. They hid it in a million ways—caution or confidence, disinterest or anger, a firm hand or warm embrace or sage advice—but the fear was always there if you knew how to see it.
But they didn’t know powerlessness. They didn’t know what it meant to have your gods stolen from you, leaving you blind to your own past. They didn’t know what it was to be deprived of iron, waiting helplessly for monsters to come ruin everything you loved. They didn’t know how it felt to live in a world with no friends, no heroes. A world of never-ending thirst. And their ignorance made them weak.
