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Chapter 12
It was approaching dusk yet the sky remained as clear as crystal. The land lay stiff and barren - no edible plants and animals, no grains, and many were the lives she had swallowed. She looked like a ravenous giantess craving for any living prey. She wanted to devour as many living creatures as she could. On her belly rested the ailing countryside, as quiet as if nobody lived in it.
The four and other three men were now moving towards River Awach. The family had alighted from the wagons at Wang'-arot and luckily found three men loafing about who offered to help with carrying the heavy sacks of food. The Blue-eyed had constructed a murram road from Kisumu to Usenge, but the paths leading to the river off the main road, through the forests, were narrow and could not be used by wagon-riders. Even so, the family objected using the Gem route fearing they might be attacked by a gang, and so the riders had to leave them at the Wang'arot junction.
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The Long-lasting Tree Chapter 14
Okech squatted down to the flowing water to fill his barrel. He was now seventeen seasons old, tall and mascular, already initiated into adulthood, and possessed with decade-old momories of his family. He missed the company of his siblings and parents. For a moment, his eyes shifted onto the scar on his left leg, the only relic of his childhood life. His mind toured the past. He remembered the dreadful scene at the river - how the Blue-eyed pointed at and shot him with a strange item, an item that sparked fire. The wound had taken time to heal and the huge scar left marked a page in his life that had not yet been closed. He kept asking himself: were his brothers and friends back in Seme safe? And his insane father? What about his mother who had left only months after their father turned mad? Would he ever meet them again? As he though about these, he forgot himself and the barrel he wa
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