Chapter Eleven

The ride up to the labor camp was fairly quiet, except for our dear Captain; he wouldn't stop trying to scream. It was starting to give me a headache. I was aching to hit him again, but doubted that Hilltop would let me do anything like that. That old monk is too nice for his own good, I thought with fondness.

"Oh, shut up!" Nick roared. Terrified, Moto finally fell silent.

"Thanks Nick," Mya said, relieved. The look she threw him.... well, it made me blurt out the first thing on the top of my head. I had a habit of doing that and, more often than not, it got me into trouble.

"You guys should be a couple," I cried out. I clamped my mouth shut as soon as the words left my mouth. Mya and Nick stared at me as if I had spoken in a different language that they didn't understand.

"What?" they said in unison, startled. I couldn't help but laugh.

"You know.... become a couple," I said again. Nick's eyes got even wider, and Mya blushed to where the roots of her hair would be. I wish I could have seen her hair before she had to shave it off for her disguise. The book said it was beautiful.

"I.... he..... don't.....," Mya spluttered incoherently. Nick wasn't doing much better. At least he formed part of a sentence.

"I don't think..... I mean, I never thought of her....." he tried, blushing a nice color of russet under his tan. I leaned over across Miss Pretty to Hannibal and whispered,

"Nick, I read the dang book; I know you're lying." I leaned back with a smile as he went even redder. "Just think about it." I winked at him as Nick turned to look at Mya. When he looked over into her confused eyes I think he nearly toppled of Hannibal's back. It would have been a very long fall too. I smiled to myself. I probably should have waited to say something, but being a girl who will get a whim and carry it out, I didn't. I didn't really feel bad either; I love making people blush.

It took another few hours, but we eventually saw the camp. We parked the elephants deep in a dense stand of trees and Nick, Mya, and I climbed off.

"I want to go see the camp," Nick said immediately.

"I'll go with you," Mya said.

"Me too," I piped up. Hilltop shook his head and sighed.

'I wish I could make you all staying here, but I can't. I have to go meet with a friend," he said.

"If it's who I think it is, give him this," Nick said, and handed Hilltop a folded piece of paper. It was thin, and looked like it had been torn out of a book. Hilltop nodded.

"I will. Now go! And don't get caught!" We wasted no time in taking off. Silently we ran through the forest, keeping our eyes trained on the large labor camp. It was a huge thing, with turrets and guards posted at regular intervals. And as if one fence wasn't enough, some areas of the camp were surrounded by three fences, all topped with barbed wire. A terrible smell wafted from the place that I identified as human refuse and death.

Together, we ran through the cover of the forest. We found a large tree, and climbed it easily. I sat in between Mya and Nick on the biggest branch that would hold all of us and give us coverage without breaking under our weight. From this angle we could see the towers looming over the labor camp, guards milling around buildings, and guards patrolling the stone wall. I could see that the camp was virtually empty. Most of the prisoners must have been working. I could see a bamboo barrack on the right side, with a red cross painted on the thatched roof. I knew from my training that that was the hospital, if you could really call that thing a place to get better. For the laborers it was the place they went to die.

"They hold prisoners of war here too," Nick whispered to me. I nodded. I already had an idea that might have been the case.

"From the looks of it, the other camp with the mahouts is not nearly as bad," Mya whispered. I looked at her, and just caught her wiping away a tear.

"Is that where your brother is?" I whispered. She nodded.

"Indaw told me 'If anything happens, just get out of here.' I'm probably not going to listen though...."

"Quiet!" Nick said sternly. I could hear them calling out numbers, the way they identified the prisoners. When their number was called, the prisoners would call out, "Here" Sometimes, an officer or doctor would shout out, "Dead!" Some of the people looked like they were about to keel over. Open sores oozed puss and gaunt, hungry faces stared emptily around.

"There he is!" Nick said suddenly. I whipped my head around to where Nick was pointing and saw Sergeant Sonji. He looked like a kind man, despite the fact he was the enemy. Three prisoners were with him. They looked like they were on burial duty. As I watched the sergeant started to help them bury the piles of men in the cart they were lugging around. I felt my heart constrict, seeing all those dead. At least he was helping those poor souls; most would just laugh at their feeble efforts to dig through the tough soil. Burial duty was a job for those who would be joining the ranks of the dead soon themselves. It was considered an easy job by the Japanese.

"There's my father," Nick said, pointing to a tall man with big black boots and thick black hair, the color Nick's would be if he wasn't bald. He was working faster than the other two prisoners, and even though Sonji yelled at him a lot, I could tell he liked Jackson.

"Nick! Sarae! A guard is looking our way!" Mya hissed at us. I instinctively froze, trying not to move, to make myself as invisible as possible. I felt Nick do the same, and saw Mya scrunch down slightly. After a few seconds (though it felt like hours) Mya said, "He's gone." I relaxed and started to shimmy down the tree.

"What are you doing?" Nick asked.

"It's way too dangerous! We have to go before we're caught!" I said.

"She's got a point," Mya said, and climbed down after me. Nick sighed and reluctantly followed us down the tree. It took us maybe thirty seconds to climb down and start running stealthily back to the elephants.

As I was running with Mya next to me and Nick ahead, a question stirred in my mind. One I really needed answered for when I got back home.

"Mya?" I asked hesitantly. She looked at me through the corner of her eye, but didn't break pace.

"Yes?" she replied. I slowed down a little bit, and she slowed down with me.

"How badly did the English treat the Burmese?" I asked. "In my time, it's a little sketchy...."

Mya was quiet for a little while, long enough that I thought that maybe she wasn't going to answer. Finally, she spoke.

"It was pretty bad. They came and took our jobs, our money, our family and friends, even our freedom. Things have been getting better, but still.... times have been hard. A lot of people were desperate for a savior, anyone. When the Japanese came, well, nobody examined them too closely. They promised us freedom, and people blinded by their false hope. They ignored the Japanese's evil, even when examples of it happened right in front of them." She made a disgusted face. "And look where that got us!"

"I'm sorry," I murmured. "I just needed to know."

I thought back to the troubling dilemma in my own time. It seemed that no matter which country we allied ourselves with, no good would come from it. Burma was going to stay neutral. We had to if we wanted to stay free.