Assignment Eleven: Sam Clark

When I first met Katie Marvolo Chen, strife filled the world. The war trickled into our village, slowly saturating our lives with bloodshed and anger. We were nine when the first bombs fell. Ten when the men left. Eleven when the women followed. Twelve when they started drafting children. They picked the strong ones first, then, as fighting became more intense, the weaklings. In our world, no child was free from fear, though Katie managed to cope. She moved into the village just before the conflict became a conflict, when the enemies of foreign extraction hadn’t been extracted yet. We watched together as our families and playmates were slowly dragged away, kicking and screaming. And then they came for her. Our infantile minds fantasized that a great polar bear, the udjuk nanuk, watched over us, a protector from the great evils. When they took her, they shot nanuk, spilling his red, red blood over our his white hide, our childhood innocence.