We have another reading suggestion for your middle graders and pre-teens. This time, we are sharing a preview of A Fever, a Flight, and a Fight for the World by J. A. Myhre, the fourth book in The Rwendigo Tales series.
The author is a missionary with Serge and doctor living and working in East Africa. The four books in the series teach readers of all ages important truths about justice, overcoming evil, and the courage to make a difference. She started writing the books for own children when they were around 8-12 years old, and added a new story every year for Christmas.
Myhre explores significant social and spiritual issues throughout The Rwendigo Tales, and because of her own life experiences in East Africa, the series is full of rich world building and compelling storytelling for readers of all ages.
Fire and Freeze
Before the man opened his eyes, he heard a gentle rattling rustle, and a rhythmic background murmur, but he could not quite focus long enough to connect those sounds with their source. The effort of opening his eyes seemed too great, so he fell back into a deep and dreamless sleep.
Hours later, the man surfaced into consciousness again. His limbs felt unaccountably heavy, but this time he managed to open his eyes. Above him, palm fronds scraped and whispered together in a breath of wind, causing the rustling sound that drew him from the darkness of sleep. But now the world was dark, the palms silhouetted against moon-tinged clouds. He felt thirsty, but soon sleep pulled him back into forgetfulness.
This time he dreamed, and in his dream, he heard a lullaby from his childhood, and saw a dragon falling through stars. As he watched the dragon fall, it opened its mouth and the sweetness of the song was lost in a horrible screech when the dragon suddenly turned toward him. He threw up an arm to protect his face and woke up.
There was no dragon, only cawing crows, three black ones perched on the palm fronds above him. It was light again, the dim light of dawn, though it could also have been dusk. The rhythmic murmur he had noticed earlier was louder, more insistent, pulsating. He blinked and looked around. Sand had been scooped over his body and fell into disordered piles around him when he sat up. He had been lying beneath palms in a small clearing, and beside his head, he saw a fibrous brown husk filled with water. He rubbed his eyes, but instead of providing relief, his sandy hands scratched his face. He could not remember anything of how he came to be in this place. Only thirst and weariness.
The man picked up the husk and sniffed the water; it was odor- less. He held the husk to his lips and dampened them. It tasted woody but pure. He took a sip, and then forgot all caution in his thirst. He drained the crude cup and lay back down. I should get up and look for more water, he thought vaguely, but it seemed impos- sibly difficult to move. Just a little rest first. The sand, the palms, the constant rising and falling sound . . . the sea, he thought, I’m near the sea. Then he slept again.
The next time he woke up shivering, impossibly cold, emerging from a dream of distant snows and swirling lostness. He opened his eyes only a sliver, and saw that the sand had been piled back onto his limbs. Did I do that? His shivering shook the sand, sifting it down from his chest. I should get more sand; the air is too cold. But he didn’t. He slept again, until the aching cold melted into fire.
This time he woke from thirst. He must have thrashed about in his sleep so that the sand no longer covered him, but even with- out the warmth from the sand, he was damp with perspiration. The crows had flown away. The shell was full of water again. Had it rained? The ground looked dry. He downed the water, gulping. As he drank, he thought he heard a different rustle coming from somewhere other than the palms, and caught a flicker of motion in the periphery of the clearing. But by the time he focused his aching gaze to the right, he saw only the irregular bob of bushy branches moving in the breeze, and the flash of an orange butter- fly. The sun was strong now, and he rallied the strength to push himself back toward the closest palm, into the shade. The man sat leaning against the palm, squinting in the bright light. He could now make out the dull green of shallow water through the trees, which reminded him of his thirst. It hurt to think. He looked at the cup-like husk in his hand and recognized a coconut shell.
Now the absence of sounds caught his attention. Besides the wind and the waves, the caw of the crows and the chirp of hidden birds in the bush, he heard nothing. No people. No children, no vehicles, no goats, no bustle. The man slowly realized that he was alone. He tried to remember where he was, or more importantly, who he was, but the sound of the surf and the clicking palms lulled him into the blissful forgetfulness of sleep.
When he next woke, it was night, and his mind felt clearer. Instinctively he looked for the coconut shell, and was relieved to find it once again full of drinkable water. Beside it lay a papaya. He looked up, expecting to see the broad, scalloped leaves of the papaya tree from which this fruit had fallen. However, he saw only the fringed outlines of palms in the moonlight. Beside the papaya was a sharp clamshell. He picked it up without thinking and used it to cut the fruit in half. He scooped the fleshy balls of dark seeds aside with his fingers, and then used the shell once again to carve out soft orange sweet lumps of the fruit. He could not remember anything tasting so perfect before. The juice dribbled down his chin as he sucked every last fibrous shred of fruit from the thin rind.
Holding on to the firm pole of the palm trunk, he now managed to stand. The fruit and water had given him enough energy to pick his way slowly in the moonlight toward the sea. The tide was rising, with gentle waves breaking on the sand. He waded out and felt the tepid salty water washing away the sweat and grime of his sandy sleep. He lay on his back in the water, rising and falling with the swell of the waves. The moon was ascending over the water, which meant his shore faced east. He could see the tiniest sliver of brightness against the shadow of the full orb, and above him the constellations blinked in the swath of stars that he had learned in school was called the Milky Way. School . . . he suddenly had a flash of memory, a class of students under a tree, a teacher writing on a board. Was that a dream or an earlier part of his life?
As the warm ocean washed over his aching limbs, he tried to reconstruct how he came to be alone with the waves on this deserted shore.
Start reading The Rwendigo Tales from the beginning!
Excerpted from A Fever, a Flight, and a Fight for the World © 2018 by J.A. Myhre. Used with permission of New Growth Press. May not be reproduced without prior written permission.
A Fever, a Flight, and a Fight for the World
A doctor volunteering in a village plagued by a mysterious virus wakes up on a deserted island injured, sick, and near death—with no memory of how he got there. A young girl named Nyakato—the only other survivor—nurses him back to health, Dr. Mujuni must devise a plan to make their way back to the mainland, but what they discover on their journey is even more dangerous than they could ever imagine. Through a series of perils and hazards, Mujuni and Nyakato must fight for more than their own lives, learning the true cost of overcoming evil and greed.
