Karo and his mother just relocated to a new village to settle in the fertile land that's good for okro farming. On the second day of their settlement in the new environment, Karo, the 16-year-old boy, decided to tour the village to get a better sense of the community.
He pleaded for permission from his mother, but the mother refused to let him go, "I'm not letting you go anywhere. Aren't you scared? "What if you get kidnapped or miss your way?"
"Miss my way, don't you know the kind of village we were coming from?" He said back to his mother, but she still insisted that he shouldn't leave the house.
Karo agreed just for the mom to be at peace, but when the mom left, he sneaked out to tour the village.
He passed through many places, he visited the market square, the football viewing center, the streams, rivers, and he was amazed to see fishes in the river.
On his way back, he met a well, and the noises from inside the well got his attention. He moved closely and saw fishes inside. He became surprised because that was his first time seeing fishes inside a well.
He got home around 5:00pm to meet his mom waiting for him with a cane at the front of the door. He knew he had fucked up already, so he willingly took himself to meet his mom for wiping, but when the mom saw how he brought himself to be wiped with the cane, she became weak and couldn't flog him.
*"Karo, I just let you be today because I didn't want neighbors to start hearing our voices at this early stage. If you go out again, you know what I'm capable of." *She said this while dragging Karo by the ear.
When they got inside, he told his mom about the well that has fishes in it.
"If there are fishes inside the well, that means those fish are from the river because Wells don't produce fish... there's a way those fish are finding their way from the river to the well," the mother gave him a clear explanation.
"Hmmmm, that's interesting," he said while nodding his head.
The mom got up, stood at his front and gave him a sounding warning, "What's interesting there? Don't go and catch those fishes, you heard me?"
He nodded his head in agreement to what his mom just said.
The next day, when his mom had left for the early market to get okro seedlings, Karo sneaked out again, bought fishing hooks, and headed straight to do some fishing in the well.
He got to the spot and met a terrifying scene, three huge guys were mercilessly beating a young man, and a man that seemed to be their boss was standing and watching with a pistol in his hand.
From the angle he was peeping, he didn't know what to do, whether to run away or to go and save the man, of which he can't fight four hefty men.
"I wish I had a superpower," he said, shaking his head in regret. He couldn't just leave the scene and let the man die without doing anything.
He summoned courage, came out of from his hiding, and approached them.
"Stop that!" He shouted at them and all of them paused, they stopped beating the man immediately. They turned and were surprised by the statue of the person who had just paused their activities.
"If you want to kill him, why not use the gun in your hand instead of putting bruises on his body?" He said this with boldness, pointing his finger at the leader.
The other three guys couldn't take it anymore, so one of them rushed and carried the boy to throw him inside the well, but the leader stopped him, "Wait, don't do that yet, put him down."
Immediately after he was put down, he shift close to the man that was being beaten and whispered something into his ear. All of them were standing in awe.
The leader, in his surprise, began to walk close to the boy to examine where the boy was getting his fearless courage from, but before he could get close enough, Karo and the man jumped inside the well.
The leader got angry and began to shoot at them inside the well, but the blood that saturated the water surface made him stop shooting because because he believed that the bullet hit them.
After waiting for 10 minutes to see if they would swim up, they didn't, and they left with the conclusion that they're dead.
Inside the well, a bullet touched the man in his left leg and it was bleeding badly. Karo took him by the hand while they swam deeply, looking for the entrance the fishes use to enter the well from the river.
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Luckily for him, he saw the passage slightly covered with a large, oval-shaped steel plate. He shifted part of it and pulled the man through it. He covered it back up after they passed, and that is how they found themselves in an open river.
By this time, the man was almost dead due to the gunshot wound on his leg and the flow of water into his body. He was able to drag him out of the river, and he quickly followed a narrow route to sort for help.
He succeeded in getting help, and the man was conveyed to the hospital.
Luckily for the man, he survived death after lying unconscious for three days, and immediately after he regained his conscience, he asked about the young boy that saved his life.
"Where is the boy?" not minding the presence of his family members( Royal family) around him.
His mom, the queen, became so happy to see her son back to life that she moved to the bed and kissed him.
"Mom, wait, you guys are yet to answer my question, where's the boy?" He said it with more seriousness adjusting away from the Queen's warm gesture.
"He went...." The dad (the king) was about to answer when the door opened and Karo and his mother entered. They were very happy to see the man alive, which happens to be the prince
"How did you know that there was an escape route in the well? I'm curious, I want to know" the prince) asked Karo.
"It was my mom that gave me the idea; she said since there were wet fishes inside the well, then those fishes came from the nearby river—there's a link between the well and the river." Karo explained.
"That's very clever of you," the king added.
Karo and his mother were taken into the palace to live with the royal family, and that ended their struggling lives.
The assassins were arrested and they confessed that it was a friend of the king that sent them kill the prince in a long painful death.
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