Children of Famine

Prologue

Prologue


A long time ago, a little band of twenty-four children ran wild in school. They romped and shrieked and tumbled over each other. The air was filled with their noises, on the creaking swings, the scattered rocks, the vast field of tall grass. The field was a gathering ground. The little ragamuffins lay down on their backs, immersing themselves in the rich softness of rolling green. They’d take turns sucking on grass roots, picking and comparing the bitter-sweet juiciness of each. In those days the sun seemed always to shine, and the butterflies flickered their bright colors. The children would laugh because the sky was blue and the wind was clean and the green grass tingled beneath their bodies. They were happy.

However, they were not always wild and free. They only were allowed to do what they pleased after 4 o’clock, the Sacred Four. They were afraid, very much afraid, of their Teachers. The Teachers were the ones who grabbed them by the ear to class, yelled at them to write ugly scratches on paper, and forced them into bed every night because this was a boarding school. Every day the little children had to march in straight lines with their arms swinging high, and beware the one who dared lift the wrong foot.

The children were worshippers of Sand Rats, a group of child heroes who, ages ago, led the Balloon Rebellion against the infamous Teacher Shrimp. Legend had it that the Sand Rats popped hundreds of balloons in defiance of the Rule of Silence during the noon napping time. The children were always awed at the tale of raw courage, because they knew they lacked the bravery to stand up against the complete, awesome authority of a Teacher. They listened to everything the Teachers said, obeyed every rule, so that each day, after the Sacred Four, they could be allowed to play. They were complacent, and had no will to fight. After all, they led happy and carefree lives, with food and play.

This day, Shorty, the storyteller of the children, led the ecstatic band to the cafeteria for dinner. They were ragged and dirty, and mud clung to their knees because they had been digging for worms in puddles of new rain. Shorty grinned as she pushed into line for food. She was shorter than the rest, but strong and fun, so no one pushed her around. Besides, she told the best stories, with her carrying voice and enthusiastic gestures. After getting her meal, she found her table, and plopped down her fully-laden tray. Cow and Captain, already seated, were digging into their food with grimy fingers, exactly the way they rummaged for worms.

“Did you hear?” asked Captain eagerly as Shorty sat. Shorty leaned back to dodge the specks of rice fleeing Captain’s mouth.

“Hear what?” Shorty usually heard all the news, but she wondered which one Captain was so excited about.

“The shortages, duh!” Captain rolled his eyes as if in exasperation, but he was pleased to be the one breaking the tidings. “All the Teachers talk about it. They hush up when we are around, but I always hear them.”

Captain, the undeclared leader of the band, was skinny and pale. It was hard to believe he could become the respected one in a group of rough, heedless little monsters. But his eyes were dark and intelligent, and his voice had an authoritative tone. Most importantly, as class leader, he bore much weight with the Teachers. He didn’t necessarily like the scratches on paper, but he read them well. He also understood the alien symbols that sometimes meant apples being taken away or more apples dumped in, or in other words, Math. This elevated her almost to the level of a god among the children. Cow was another matter. She liked good food, good movies, good clothes, and good friends. Though her flat nose did not help her beauty, she liked to preen and comb and stare at the mirror. This was incomprehensible to Shorty, who liked better to fight, or spin new stories. Now Cow, curious, spoke up. “Shortages…of what?”

“Food, stupid, food. We all gonna run out of food and starve or something. I heard a Teacher whispering about it yesterday.” It was Shorty who answered. “I hear that when you don’t have food you get really skinny but your stomach bloats up…”

“And?” pressed Cow earnestly.

“And…and you explode! Like a balloon the Sand Rats used,” explained Shorty, and Cow made a disgusted face.

“That’s not gonna happen,” said another voice, and Shorty grinned because it was her friend Squirrel, who sat down without ceremony. “We always have the two cats kept in the Petting Zoo. We won’t eat the dog until last because I like dogs.”

“Well, what if we eat all the animals in the Petting Zoo? What next?” asked Captain, ever the thinker.

“I bet there’s tons of food buried under the cafeteria. Where else do they get the food? And we can buy lots of snacks in the school shop. After that, there’s always grass roots in the field,” answered Squirrel confidently. She was a tall and plump girl, full of wit and always sure of her rightness.

“There’s no buried food, silly. It’s in the storage. I know where it is,” said Shorty, impaling another piece of chicken on her fork. But suddenly, she began to think about it seriously. What if there was really going to be no food left? She had heard about this from her parents, a period without food and when everyone starved and…but she had never seen it happen. This was a peaceful age. There was no war, no fear, no lack of anything.

“What’s the word for it, Captain? The word for the time with no food?” Shorty turned to the dictionary Captain.

“Umm…’famine’,” he replied. “Well I don’t think they really gonna have a famine. I mean, come on. Don’t they grow lots and lots of food in those big fields we see on TV with the tractors and stuff?”

“Well, if it comes to it we can always eat a Teacher,” joked Squirrel, but everyone fell silent.

“You mustn’t say something like that, Squirrel,” whispered Cow fearfully. “They’d hear and you’d get punished. Big ruler and whack!”

With that, the talk about the food shortages was over, because a kid had just been caught trying to dump his leftovers away. A Teacher silenced the whole cafeteria and began to drone on relentlessly about the wastefulness of the modern generation. Then they were all sent to the dorm. There, Shorty and Squirrel both claimed an empty bed as territory, and they fought with pillows. Shorty won because she was strong and liked winning, and she forgot all about her fear of the famine. Then they began to jump on their beds until the ceilings shook with their laughter. After that a Teacher yelled, and they all went to bed.

The next morning, the children pranced to the cafeteria, but there was no breakfast.