Read The Day of the Pelican for Free Online

Though, at that moment, having a bed and a roof and warm water to bathe in seemed like the height of luxury.
    ***
    The KLA soldiers who appeared through the woods almost daily to inspect the family camp didn't look like much of an army to Meli. They wore ragged clothes with a makeshift double-eagle insignia sewn on the back, and they carried ancient guns, which Mehmet identified as cast-off Chinese or Russian weapons, some of them dating back to the fifties. "It was better at my other camp," he said. "They had weapons smuggled in from America." Meli found that hard to believe, but she didn't try to argue. Like everyone else in the hill camp, the soldiers had trouble keeping clean. Baba's once handsome mustache was now just the top of a scraggly beard. All of the men grew beards, because that was easier than trying to shave. Mehmet couldn't have grown a beard to save his life, but, like the older boys who could, he hung around with the soldiers as much as possible.
    It seemed to Meli that the soldiers regarded Mehmet as a sort of pet. They gave him an old gypsy stove—"so your mama can bake you bread and make you strong." The Lleshis rejoiced over that old iron stove, Mama most of all. It was an iron box with one side for the fire and the other for an oven. You could make soup or stew on top, or boil coffee—if you had any. Mehmet walked around like a farmyard cock, he was so proud of "his" stove.
    Then one day Meli discovered that one of the soldiers had loaned Mehmet his rifle and had taken him into the woods to teach him how to shoot.
    "Baba will be angry," she said to him later. "You know how he feels about guns."
    Mehmet shrugged. "Baba is the only man I know who hates guns. Someone needs to learn how to defend our family," he said. "And our country."
    "Don't even think of joining up," she said. "You re only a beardless boy."
    "Once you've been in jail, you're not a kid anymore," he replied, the words sending a chill up his sister's spine. He was no longer the brother she thought she knew. He didn't speak about that terrible time, but it had changed him. He was harder, and he rarely joked or played with his little brothers. Despite his squawky voice and smooth cheeks, Meli knew that he was becoming a man—not the sort of kind, loving man that Baba was, but a secretive man with the sharp and watchful eyes of a blackbird.
    So it was a relief to Meli when she realized that no one from the KLA had been around for several days. "They're fighting down below," Mehmet told her. After several weeks the rumor spread around the family camp that there was only a handful of fighters left in the hills. Down on the plains the KLA were waging a major campaign. "We're winning!" Mehmet said. At first that seemed to be true, but by the end of August word came to the camp that President Milosević had launched another offensive. Serbian soldiers were pouring over the border from the north. Before long, the KLA fighters began to come straggling back up the hill, many of them wounded. The soldier who had loaned Mehmet his rifle for practice was among those who never returned.
    ***
    On the hillsides the chestnut flowers had turned into burrs. Before long they would pop open to reveal the nuts they protected, and it would be fully autumn. The days grew shorter and the nights colder. The Lleshis had brought jackets and blankets, but still they shivered. In some ways it was lucky that the tent was so small. They had to sleep close together, which kept them warm. Meli liked the feeling of having her family huddled close. Not only were the younger children's bodies like little stoves, but they slept so peacefully that it helped her relax and fall asleep herself. Mehmet always took the place by the tent flap, a little apart from the rest. Sometimes Meli would wake in the night to see him sitting bolt upright, as though listening. One night in early September, she woke up with the strange sensation that something was wrong. She sat up and looked