Free A Million Shades of Gray by Cynthia Kadohata Page B

was another tangle of limbs.
    â€œWho is that? Go to sleep.”
    â€œI’m trying,” Y’Tin responded. He found a space and squeezed between a body and the wall. He lay wide awake. In fact, he felt as if he had never been so wide awake. “Logically, there’s nothing to be gained by killing us,” he said to anyone else who was awake.
    There was a long silence. Then: “You can’t use logic to understand war. Who is that?”
    â€œIt’s Y’Tin. Who are you?”
    â€œJoseph.” Joseph was the shaman. “Have you seen any of my family? I think I saw yours getting away.”
    â€œWhat?” said Y’Tin. “You did?”
    â€œI think so. But it was all happening so fast.”
    â€œDid you see Jujubee?”
    â€œNo. I saw your parents.”
    Y’Tin wished he had seen Joseph’s family as well, but all he could remember from those early moments was the kick on his nose. He gingerly felt his nose now. It hurt to touch.
    His mind began racing. He was scared to sleep. Someone might kill him while he slept. It wasn’t logical, but it was possible. Why else had the soldiers herded them all to one place? But he was trying to use logic again. He realized that he heard wailing from a distance. One of the ladies. Then a gunshot sounded, and the wailing stopped. Why were the soldiers holding them here? There was no logic in it. But he had to get this idea of logic out of his head. It would do him no good, and it might do him harm if the soldiers were using emotions. He had to escape. But he couldn’t say anything now, with Y’Elur in the next room.
    â€œGo to sleep, Y’Tin,” Joseph said.
    Y’Tin wondered how the shaman had known he was still awake. He supposed that it was the shaman’s job to know everything.
    Now that the thought of truly escaping had entered his head, he couldn’t get it out. His heart filled with fear over this idea of escape. How would he do it? Would he go by himself? With Y’Juen? If no one would come with him, he would do it alone.
    He lay shivering, listening to the rain, wondering how Lady was, wondering how his family was, and wondering when he would finally fall asleep.

Chapter Seven
    The soldiers kept the men inside for the next day and night, giving them water but no food. Y’Tin tried not to think too much about escaping in case one of the
m’tao
or
k’sok
—the lower-ranking evil spirits who served the great evil spirit Yang Lie—told the soldiers what he was thinking. Every so often he couldn’t resist going to one of the doorways to see what was going on. Tin wondered whether more soldiers were coming. The soldiers all seemed bored. The thought of whether the Rhade lived or died bored them, Y’Tin realized.
    On the second night everyone gathered around the shaman.
    â€œI was just a boy when I realized my talents,” he was telling them. “I liked to hunt like any young boy. I didn’t like farming, but I helped in the fields anyway. People started noticing that my friends never fell ill. They learned that ever since I could talk, I had told my friends what they should sacrifice to keep healthy and prosperous. Then the old shaman trained me in the ways of the stick. He would throw the stick to the ground, and it would shake and bounce though nobody was touching it. I saw this myself.” The shaman closed his eyes. “And now our story ends.”
    Y’Tin thought about this and realized that’s what was happening. The North Vietnamese were trying to end the Rhade’s story. And they were bored with this ending.
    On the third morning Y’Tin heard shouting outside, and he recognized one of the voices as Y’Siu’s. He wondered why Y’Siu was outside. Were they interrogating him? The shouting turned to grunts and the grunts turned into a gun firing. Then Y’Siu was quiet. It seemed unreal—almost