A Million Shades of Gray by Cynthia Kadohata

school today and might never have to go to school again. And all of a sudden, he actually
wanted
to go to school. School had been predictable, but now he
wanted
a predictable life.
    â€œDid you hear the gunfire last night?” Tomas asked. Tomas spent about half his nights sleeping near the elephants and the other half in his longhouse with his family. Y’Siu approached and sat down without even a greeting. That was his way.
    Y’Tin shook his head. Y’Tin hadn’t heard anything. The first time he had heard gunfire in the distance, he was surprised how harmless it sounded.
    â€œMy father says there’s a meeting of the whole village today,” Tomas said.
    â€œYes, I’ve heard. Are you scared?” Y’Tin asked.
    â€œNo … yes. Yes, I am. What about you?”
    â€œYes. I just want the war to be over. Then we can go back to our regular lives.” Yet even as Y’Tin spoke, he knew he was wrong. They would never go back to their regular lives.
    Y’Siu climbed to the top of Y’Tin’s hutch and slid across Dok’s back. Then the three of them took the elephants down the wide path to the river. Atthe river the elephants drank and drank the way they did every morning. Elephants could drink two hundred liters a day. That took a while.
    â€œI’m not leaving without the elephants,” Y’Siu announced.
    No one replied. Of course Y’Tin wouldn’t leave without the elephants either. But where would they go? After drinking their fill, the elephants wandered over to a bamboo grove, where Lady picked young shoots and then pushed them around on the ground for a few minutes before eating them. Usually, Y’Tin was the last to leave the river, but this time the others lingered as well. Y’Siu lay atop Dok. Suddenly, tears were falling down his face. Though Y’Siu was fifteen, Y’Tin always thought of him as the youngest. His voice hadn’t changed yet, and you always had to be careful what you said to him because you might hurt his feelings.
    Y’Tin and Tomas glanced at each other, then Y’Tin said, “It’s okay, Y’Siu.”
    â€œI’m scared.” He was sobbing now.
    â€œWe’re all scared,” Tomas said. “Everyone is scared. Our fathers are scared. Our grandfathers are scared. The chief is scared.”
    â€œY’Siu, we’ll live in the jungle. We know how tohunt. We’ll be safe,” Y’Tin said, trying to comfort Y’Siu. Anyway, it was possible that they would be safe.
    â€œI don’t want to live in the jungle. I want to stay here with Dok.”
    The elephants finished eating before Y’Siu finished crying.
    Back at the pen Tomas said, “Don’t chain your elephants. If the enemy comes, the elephants may need to flee into the jungle.”
    â€œGo ahead and wander, Lady,” said Y’Tin. He patted her pregnant belly. “I’ll be right back.” But he knew she wouldn’t wander. She would walk only as far as her chain would have let her. She was so domesticated, he worried that she might not be able to survive in the jungle if something happened to him. For the first time in his life, he regretted that Lady had ever been captured.
    Y’Tin, Tomas, and Y’Siu walked across the empty fields. Y’Tin had never seen the fields like that in the morning. Everybody always started working before Y’Tin headed for school. The Rhade prided themselves on how hard they worked. Their whole lives revolved around working. But that didn’t matter now.

Chapter Five
    Y’Tin had expected to find all the villagers talking animatedly about the big meeting. Instead, an eerie silence had fallen like ashes from the sky. The yellow, grass roofs of the houses shivered in the wind. The private gardens and rice paddies were unattended, and nobody seemed to have remembered to let their chickens out. Usually at this time of morning, chickens were