Free A Dream of Lights by Kerry Drewery

back and forth in silence, rubbing my head, my breath shallow. What can I do? What can I do? What can I do?
    I just wanted it to stop. My face was wet with silent tears of pain and anguish and hatred at myself and at Sook. I wanted to shout at him and hit him – shout out, What have you done? But it was me. It was my fault. My family were going to die and it was my fault.
    I stopped and I breathed. And my dizziness passed.
    They can’t execute them, can they? Surely they don’t deserve to die?
    But it wasn’t only the crime that mattered, and I knew that; it was your standing, your social class, if your life mattered to anyone important. Ours didn’t.
    I wiped away my tears and climbed out of the window again, dodging along the backs of the houses in our row, moving up and towards the site of the trial, keeping low, hidden from windows, even though by now everyone in the village should’ve been gathered to learn my family’s fate. To cheer, as was expected, when they were announced guilty, as everybody always was; to watch them die, if execution was the punishment.
    I dashed from the houses, across a gap to the public toilets, remembering the first time I met Sook. I reached the end, peering out from behind the wall, the crowd of people with their backs to me, soldiers standing around, watching.
    Are they looking for me? Would they recognise me this far away?
    One of them glanced my way, a rifle in his hands, and I waited, watching his head pan across the countryside. As he turned the other way, I walked out, my eyes flitting from one soldier to another, to another, and back. I made it to the greenhouses and I remembered crouching outside them with Sook, the night we held hands, the night I opened my mouth and betrayed my family. I felt sadness pour through me, the disappointment of realising it hadn’t been even a friendship.
    I reached the end of the greenhouses, skirted along the side and ran, heading for a bank to the side of where everyone was gathered. I threw myself down, hidden again, rolled over on to my stomach and crawled to the top, peering through a clump of dead grass.
    The village children sat together at the front, a good view, chattering and pointing, excited, all with their school uniforms on of blue skirts and white shirts, red scarves tied round their necks to show their allegiance to our Dear Leader. The adults stood behind them, their faces drawn and quiet, their blank eyes betraying no thoughts or opinions as they took everything in, a reminder of the eyes and ears of so many being ever-present in every place. Of suspicion ruling with an invisible force.
    I peered through the grass, squinting against the bright winter morning at the faces of my family, trying to will them to turn round, to see me. My grandmother so small and frail, my father with his hands tied behind his back, my grandfather with his head still held high. But no Mother.
    The wind took away most of the soldier’s words as he began to speak and I heard only the briefest snatches about anti-state crimes, plotting against our Dear Leader and mutterings of guilt as he turned to the crowd.
    I didn’t see any evidence given or witnesses heard. Didn’t hear any defence or see a judge or a jury. Because there were none. He asked the crowd for their judgement and they shouted their replies, and although tainted with self-preservation, I knew they were right.
    They gave my family’s sentence of guilt.
    They gave my father’s sentence of death.

I knew what was coming, had seen it before, had sat at the front as a child and cheered, knowing it to be deserved.
    But this was my father. A good man. Who wished nobody any harm. Who worked hard. Who loved us and cared for us. But…
    Ever since that dream and that night and that conversation outside, there had been this but. He had shown me another side to him and I didn’t understand how the two could exist together.
    I peered across the field, watching the people. My chest was empty, my