The Lies of the Ajungo (Forever Desert #1)

by Moses Ose Utomi

It was a twofold price, a price of blood and a price of history: an untongued people cannot tell their story.

Tears are precious, his mama always said. Don’t waste them on your enemies. Save them for your friends.

He prayed for a little water. Not too much, but enough that he could keep going. The whole city needed him, after all. And the gods answered his prayer. They said no.

That’s what crying was—freedom. You could only cry when there were no more urgent responsibilities. Only when there was no one watching you who depended on your strength. Only when the people around you wouldn’t take advantage of your tears.

“Ya still young, Tutu. When ya reach our age, understanding comes—evil in one place is evil in every place. We will help this man.”

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.

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.

The better you understood the world and the more fully you believed it, the more powerfully you could See.

They knew that all of history was a lie told to instill fear in those whose fearlessness could have rewritten 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.