Home, At Last
The games had ended.
The Colosseum was empty and silent as Juba walked across the sand. Juba, now dressed in his African clothes, was a free man again. And soon he was going home.
He still heard one voice in the arena, though. He heard Maximus, the great fighter, asking about his home in Africa and talking to him about his own home in Spain.
Juba moved to the center of the arena and found the exact place he was looking for: a small area of blood on the sand. He dropped to his knees and made a little hole in the ground. He took something from his pocket-the small wooden figures of Maximus's wife and son.
He carefully put them in the hole and covered them with the earth that carried their loved one's blood. Now it would be easier for them to find each other in the next world.
"Now we are free," he said loudly, looking around at the empty, silent arena. "This place will become dust, but I will not forget you."
He stood above the place where Maximus had died. "I will see you again," he said to his friend. He smiled the wide smile that he had smiled for Maximus in life and would soon smile for his own wife and daughters. "But not yet."
He walked slowly out of the arena, looking back just once at the place, as the wind blew red flowers across the killing ground.
by Dewey Gram