The Gladiator and the
Guard by Annie Douglass Lima is book 2 in a
speculative fiction trilogy set in a world where slavery is legal. In this
scene, Ellie, a little girl adopted from a life of slavery, is trying to help
her dad, an athletic trainer, find a way to free her teenage brother Bensin.
Accused of a crime he didn’t commit, Bensin was sentenced to the dangerous life
and early death of a gladiator.
Ellie woke up
earlier than Dad on Sunday, and she had to wait a long time before he finally
got up. But at last he walked into the living room, yawning, and she looked up
from her cartoons. “Hi, Dad. You know what I think we should do today?”
“G’morning. You’re
up early for a weekend. Yeah, I think I should go jogging and then we should
have smoothies, then I’ll take a shower, and after that I’ll make us some
oatmeal for the rest of our breakfast.”
“Okay, but after
the normal Sunday morning stuff.” Ellie turned off the TV so he would know what
she was about to say was important. “I thought of a awesome idea!” One she
should have thought of a lot sooner.
“Oh yeah?” Dad went
into the kitchen and took out the blender.
“Yeah. I think we
should go find Ricky and invite him to come over, like Bensin used to always do
on Sundays.”
“Oh. Sure, that’s a
good idea.” Dad opened the fridge and pulled out a box of strawberries and a
bag of kale. He began to wash the berries at the sink. “I bet Ricky’d like to
have lunch at our house. But he might not be quite as eager to hang out here
the whole day if it’s just you and me. We’re not going to be as good company
for him as Bensin was.”
“But it’s not just
to hang out. It’s to have a important meeting.”
“Another meeting?”
Plucking stems off, Dad dropped strawberries into the blender one by one. “What
kind of important meeting?”
“To decide how to
help Bensin escape.” He looked up at her over the counter, but she hurried on
before he could say anything. “Bensin is Ricky’s best friend. He’s not going to
tell on us to anyone. And Ricky always knows everything about stuff like that,
and if he doesn’t know, he knows people he can talk to who do. He’s the one who
helped Bensin figure out how to escape with me those three times we tried.”
“And maybe you
recall that none of those times turned out well.” Dad washed a few kale leaves,
tore them apart, and dropped them into the blender too. “If I recall the story
correctly, the first couple of times the two of you got caught by the Watch and
Bensin was lashed. The third time, you were kidnapped by a criminal, and Bensin
and I barely managed to rescue you from being sold on the black market.” He
broke a couple of bananas off the bunch sitting on the counter and began to
peel them.
Ellie could still
remember how it felt to have duct tape plastered over her mouth and wrapped
around her wrists and ankles. That warehouse had been so dark, so scary. She
hadn’t been brave and strong back then. “Yeah, but none of that was Ricky’s
fault. He can help us make a plan. I know he can!”
Dad broke the
bananas in half and dropped them into the blender. “Well, I guess it wouldn’t
hurt to ask if he has any suggestions.” He took the package of chia seeds out
of the cupboard and spooned some into the blender as well, before adding
coconut water from the bottle in the fridge. “After breakfast we can see about
going to find him.” He blended everything up in a bubbling mass of pink froth,
poured the smoothie into two cups, and set them in the fridge. “I’m going
jogging now. Lock the door behind me, remember.” He disappeared out the front
door. But before Ellie could get up to lock it, he stuck his head back in. “I
reserve the right to veto any ideas that don’t seem safe.”
Annie
Douglass Lima spent most of her childhood in Kenya and later graduated from Biola
University in Southern California. She and her husband Floyd currently live in
Taiwan, where she teaches fifth grade at Morrison Academy. She has been writing
poetry, short stories, and novels since her childhood, and to date has
published eighteen books in a wide variety of genres (science fiction, fantasy,
YA action and adventure novels, a puppet script, anthologies of her students’
poetry, and a Bible verse coloring and activity book). Besides writing, her
hobbies include reading (especially fantasy and science fiction), scrapbooking,
and international travel.
Email:
AnnieDouglassLima@gmail.com
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/princeofalasia
Amazon
Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/author/anniedouglasslima
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