The village rose out of the desert in the distance. Acharya wasn’t even sure he was seeing what he was seeing until Mary pointed it out to him, asking if anyone else saw it. He was just glad it wasn’t the heat and another mirage, unless they were all hallucinating together.

  It was a scattered array of small earth and grass huts, with large sections of green that he couldn’t really identify how they irrigated the fields. This was the first piece of civilization they had come across in a long, long time. The village was small and he guessed that only a few hundred people lived there, if that. But anything was better than having bullets flying over his head.

  “Do you think we’ve made it into Ethiopia yet? Or are we still in Sudan?” Malikah asked looking up into the hot afternoon sun.

  “I don’t know, maybe somebody speaks English in the village?” Tara responded.

  Asclepius whined a little as he snorted and shook his head. The maned wolf had a large tuft of fur on his neck and upper back which ruffled as he shook himself. The sun was bad for the humans but for the wolf, he carried a year-round winter fur coat with him. Tara felt bad for him.

  Aiman shook his head, “I don’t think anyone would speak English anywhere this rural. I don’t see any sign of a road or electricity or anything else. Which might be a good thing.”

  “How is not getting to take a shower, or using a proper toilet anything even resembling a ‘good thing’ Aiman?” Mary snapped harshly.

  The tall Muslim pointed to a hut on the outskirts of the village and the line of smoke that rose from the top of it. “What can you think of that would cause someone to have a fire burning in the middle of the day in over a hundred-degree weather?”

  Acharya smiled and nodded, “A blacksmith?”

  “Or something very similar,” Tara responded. “Well shit, I guess we better go have a look. But if they don’t speak English, I have no idea how much help I’m going to be.”

  The group made their way to the smoking hut. They garnered a lot of attention. As they neared the village it seemed like every person who lived there had come out of their huts to see what these strange visitors were doing here. Malikah made the best of it by smiling and waving, even though Mary told her not too.

  “Why not?” Malikah asked with a smile on her face waving.

  “Because you don’t know how a gesture like that is going to be taken by the locals. You might be doing something like flipping them the bird right now, or worse, trying to curse them,” Mary responded curtly.

  Malikah paled a little, “Oh, yeah. I guess I forgot about that.” She dropped her hands to her side and decided to focus on the smoking hut in front of them.

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  When they reached the hut, Acharya knocked loudly on the wood that made up the huts walls, being that there wasn’t a proper door.

  An aged man ran out screaming about something. The group looked at the man as he screamed and threw his arms in the air. He spat in the dirt and waved his fingers in their face. He threw his arm out in a shooing gesture and then disappeared back into the hut.

  The pack stared at each other in wide eyed shocked silence. “That could have gone better,” Mary commented as she ran her hands over her face, through her hair, and back down her neck.

  “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he thought we were white?” Acharya said light heartedly.

  Aiman stepped up to the hut wall and pounded on it again. It didn’t take long for the aged man to come out screaming at them all over again.

  Mary wanted to punch the guy. She didn’t like getting yelled at by people she understood, much less a total stranger who was probably cursing at her, but didn’t even have to decency to do it in a language she could understand.

  “Bultungin” Aiman said quietly but forcefully staring directly into the man’s eyes.

  The old man stopped as if he had been slapped. He looked sideways at the strangers then turned and disappeared back inside the hut.

  Acharya looked over at his friend, “Open sesame.” And ducked down to enter the hut before a teenager ran past him in a panicked state. The pack stared after the boy in a sort of amused shock.

  “Wonder where’s he going?” Mary asked wryly as they all ducked into the hut.

  The hut was a simple round enclosure. The middle was occupied by a crude circle. The small pile of embers of the fire were piled on top of a piece of metal that the old man was moving and sliding beneath the coals. He didn’t bother to look up at the visitors. A young man, older than the one who had fled the hut, was punching down on two billows, they were little more than bags just outside the ring of stones in the middle of the hut. He would punch one bag down and then another. The crude bellows were attached to metal poles that were blowing onto the coals. There was no anvil that the pack could see, but the old man gripped the red-hot metal with blacksmith tangs and held the piece of hot metal in place over a flat rock as he pounded the metal with his hammer.

  What the blacksmith was forging was a mystery to the pack; it looked like a flat piece of metal to them. Maybe a hoe blade, or scythe for the harvest? It could be anything, but the old man’s attention was consumed by the piece of metal and the rhythmic beating of his hammer. Each strike throwing up a small shower of sparks into the air. While the blacksmith worked, the young man at the bellow bags ceased his punching and kneeled on the balls of his feet watching every movement of the craftsman.

  Acharya looked over at Aiman and then down at Asclepius. The three women shared a glace between each other before having their eyes drawn back to the hammer pounding the still red-hot metal.

  The young boy who had fled returned into the hut through the opening that served as the door. The kid was breathless and started talking excitedly to the blacksmith. Behind him a boy of about eight or nine walked in through the hut. His eyes grew wide at the sight of the five strangers. His eyes fell on the wolf standing next to them and he took an involuntary step backwards towards the door.

  With one last crash of the hammer upon the metal, the blacksmith shoved the metal back under the coals. He glared at the boy who looked as if he was about to leave the hut. He started yelling at the boy and pointing at him, motioning for him to move away from the door, to come and stand near him. The boy was visibly afraid and he responded with an agitated scared tone. The old man yelled at him louder and the boy replied in kind and yelled back at the old man.