The Atlas of Forgotten Places

by Jenny D. Williams

  “They sent them away?”

  “Yes,” she said. The word felt vast and hollow. “I never told anyone else. Not even Hannah. I kept up the search for a little while on my own, but nothing ever came of it.”

  “And then came aid work.”

  “I thought I could … balance it out somehow,” she said. “I wanted to believe that if I had been alive—if it had been me at the door—I wouldn’t have turned them away. I imagined that when my moment came, I would make the selfless choice. But I was wrong.”

  An insect chirruped from the direction of the river, and Sabine lengthened her legs out in front of her, took a deep breath. Probably no more than ten minutes had passed, but she’d gone elsewhere in the meantime, and her feet were numb; they prickled painfully with the return of feeling. She waited for Christoph to speak. If he felt disgust or anger or disappointment, he masked it well, Sabine thought, and surely he felt all of those things. He had the blood of righteous gentiles coursing through his veins.

  At last he stirred. “How were you wrong?”

  She felt a flare of frustration. Had he not been listening? “I told you about the woman with the baby in Kitgum, along the side of the road. That was it—that was the moment. I could have saved them and I didn’t. I’m just like him.” She felt a strain in her chest, something tugging for freedom—an unbinding.

  She sensed his touch half a second before his hand actually came to rest upon her outstretched leg. The warmth of his palm seeped through her jeans against her skin. The blackness between them became charged and alive.

  “You have to forgive yourself, Sabine.”

  “Forgiveness,” she scoffed. “You think that makes it better? You think forgiveness fixes anything?”

  He was silent.

  “It doesn’t bring anyone back,” she said.

  “No. It doesn’t.” There was just enough moonlight to see the outline of his face. “Neither does your guilt. You can’t stay stuck looking back forever. You have to figure out a way to take what you’ve learned and go on.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said wearily. “Nothing matters. Nothing makes a difference.”

  “I don’t believe you. This cynicism—I don’t believe that’s how you want to live.”

  “How do I want to live, then?”

  “Like all of us. With love,” he said simply.

  As soon as he spoke the word, a spark of light appeared before her: the briefest of blinks, with a greenish tint. It was so quick she thought she’d imagined it.

  Then another appeared, six feet away.

  Then blackness.

  Then two more tiny flashes, suspended in the air, a flickering dance.

  Fireflies.

  First there were only a handful, circling around one another in miniature, slow-motion bursts of brilliance, then there were a dozen, two dozen. Some lights stayed on for several seconds, zigzagging dreamily through the blackness. Others sparked on and off, on and off, on and off in the scintillating dark.

  Sabine was transfixed. As she watched, mesmerized, the flashes began to occur at more regular intervals, closer and closer together. Her vision became filled with dozens of fireflies blinking in perfect unison. Illumination, then dark. Illumination. Dark. On and off.

  Something inside her split open. The borders of her self dissolved, and she felt the pattern’s resonance as if it were the beating of her own heart.

  The synchronicity lasted less than a minute before it fumbled, and the flashes became erratic. A breath later the fireflies went dark, apart from a few lingering blinks.

  “Do you know what day it is?” Christoph said.

  She still felt dizzy from the trance. “What do you mean?”

  “The thirty-first of December. New Year’s Eve.”

  “New Year’s Eve,” she echoed. The thought baffled her: had it only been six days since she’d landed in Entebbe? Two days since they left Kitgum? Uganda was a lifetime ago.

  “It must be close to midnight,” he said. “Should we count down?”

  She felt in his voice an invitation—something like magnetism. There was more than exchange between them: there was collision, collapse. His hand was still on her jeans. His words came back to her: You’re a fascinating creature, Sabine Hardt.

  A branch cracked nearby, and Sabine snapped alert. “What was that?”

  Christoph’s hand stiffened with tension. “Rose? Is that you?”

  Sabine only now realized how long it had been since Rose left with the headlamp. But there was no reply, and no bobbing light—only the last remaining fireflies, scattered.

  “Maybe she…” But there were too many awful ways that sentence could end. Christoph didn’t respond. Another crack came from the darkness. Wind? Sabine hoped desperately. Animal? Perhaps it was only the hippos, emerging from the water to graze.

  Then she heard whispering. More than one voice. The sounds were disturbingly near, but Sabine couldn’t see anything in the pitch-blackness beyond a few meters.

  “Rose?” Christoph repeated, louder this time.

  The whispering stopped.

  This is how we die, she thought. Her throat locked; she couldn’t speak. Her legs were rigid. This was the calm before the attack, the slowed-down seconds before it was over. The rebels had found them, by intention or by chance. Sabine wanted to cry out for the futility of it all, but her body wouldn’t respond.

  She felt Christoph’s hand slide into hers. “I have a knife,” he said, so quietly it was barely more than a breath. He spoke urgently and without hesitation. “On my signal, I want you to move as fast as you can toward the river. Stick to the shoreline. Get to Nagero.”

  Run? She could hardly tremble. How could she explain that her legs weren’t working when her voice, too, had failed?

  “Get ready,” Christoph said, squeezing her hand.

  No, she thought frantically. Not yet. Not ever.

  But before he could say anything more, four figures advanced into the clearing: two men and two women. Everything was in shadows; Christoph sprang to his feet—how quickly he moved!—and stood in front of her protectively. The approaching party halted, and for a long moment all was still. Then, slowly, the two men lifted their hands in a universal gesture of we mean no harm.

  With relief, Sabine saw that none of them appeared to be carrying any weapons; each woman had a tightly wrapped bundle upon her head. Sabine looked closer at the nearest woman’s face, pale hints of starlight defining the curve of her forehead—and there, a catch of unevenness. The line of a wound. In an instant Sabine recognized her: she was the one from the homestead they’d passed that afternoon during their escape. Without a word, the woman lowered the bundle to the ground and pulled back the folds.

  Groundnuts. Chapati. Bananas. Tears came to Sabine’s eyes.

  The second woman revealed her gifts, too: a small pile of blankets, which she set on the ground before Christoph. Shakily Sabine rose to standing. Christoph put away his knife.

  “Merci,” he said.

  From the opposite direction, a thin beam of light cut through the dark, then grew steadily stronger. Rose appeared a moment later. When she caught sight of the newcomers, she hesitated half a second, then strode into their circle.

  CHAPTER 20

  ROSE

  December 31

  The four visitors did not stay long in the makeshift camp at the river. Before the villagers left, Christoph tried to give them the Congolese francs he’d gotten from Patrick, but they would not accept them. Their refusal touched Rose more profoundly than the food they’d brought. After a wordless farewell of clasped hands, they melted back into the blackness from which they’d come. The clearing seemed colder and darker without them there. Rose, Christoph, and Sabine ate the groundnuts and bananas in silence; afterward all that remained was a short stack of chapati, which they agreed they’d keep for the morning. By the light of Christoph’s headlamp, they draped two blankets over an outstretched branch and pulled the bottom edges away, sec
uring them with rocks, to make a sort of tent. Two people could lie down underneath comfortably—or as comfortably as possible, given the circumstances.

  “I’ll take first watch,” Christoph said, setting himself up against a tree trunk. “You both try to get some sleep.”

  “Wake me in a few hours,” Sabine said.

  “Then me,” Rose said to Sabine, who nodded.

  Christoph kept the light aimed into the shelter until they’d crawled in and were each wrapped in a blanket, then he switched off the lamp and said, “Rest well.”

  Rose and Sabine were so close that Rose could feel the warmth emanating from the woman’s body.

  “You were gone for a long time,” Sabine whispered. “Is everything all right?”

  Rose felt a quick thrum of guilt. “I thought I was lost. But I found my way.”

  “I’m glad you’re safe,” Sabine said. Then Rose heard rustling as she turned onto her side, facing the other direction.

  Rose thought back to those long moments in the darkness, before her return to the camp. She had not strayed far, knowing how easily one got turned around, and how many dangers lurked in the night, and she’d turned off the headlamp right away, afraid to draw attention to herself. She had been crouched within a thicket of grass perhaps twenty meters from camp when she heard murmuring nearby. Rose hadn’t even dared to breathe. The voices seemed to be coming from another twenty or so meters in the direction of the road; Rose was roughly halfway between them and camp. She caught the subtle sounds of motion in the bush—humans who were accustomed to silence. Her mind raced: if she went back now, quickly and with great stealth, she might get there in time to warn Christoph and Sabine. But her present location was well hidden; if she stayed, she could remain undetected. Go or stay? She’d thought of Christoph, his formal white shirt and paper cranes, and Sabine, all that rugged toughness swaddling a tender core. She could still run. Then the murmuring came again, closer, muted by the dead air, and Rose squeezed her eyes shut and wrapped her arm around her knees and folded herself within the hollow of a bush. She stayed.

  After the group had passed by, Rose crept out behind and followed them from a safe distance. From the voices and the noise Rose guessed the group to be on the small side; still, she took extreme caution, staying far enough behind that when the group finally did enter the camp, Rose from her hiding place couldn’t quite be sure what was happening. It was too dark to see, and she heard no dialogue. But neither were there screams. She stole closer until she could make out in the moonlight Christoph’s glinting knife, poised but motionless, and a woman with a basket atop her head. Rose watched as she set it onto the ground before Christoph. His stance instantly relaxed. A second woman laid down her basket as well, then Sabine stood behind Christoph, and Rose turned on the headlamp. She’d been struck dumb by a second blaze of fear when she came into the clearing and saw the two other men with their heavy black gumboots; it took her a second of fighting to breathe before she realized their hands were empty.

  Now, in the intimate space of their improvised tent, Rose listened to Sabine’s even breathing. It was a peaceful sound, almost a lullaby, and Rose felt the weight of her own exhaustion settling upon her. Outside, Christoph was shifting to get comfortable. Rose heard him crack a stick in two and then begin to tap it against his jeans. Tak tak, tak tak tak. Warm memories of childhood trickled through her, the hollow half shell and its earthy smell, the cozy darkness, the rhythm of her mother’s patter. Ocen and Opiyo, small and naughty and full of play.

  * * *

  She opened her eyes to the pale brightness of dawn. Her mind felt swimmy and slack, and she struggled to focus: why hadn’t she been woken for watch? Was something wrong? She rolled over and found Sabine still sleeping beside her. Careful not to rouse her, Rose extracted herself from the blanket and crawled out into the fresh, dewy air.

  Two birds trilled from the trees above, but the scene was otherwise deathly quiet. There was no sign of Christoph. Rose noted the undisturbed stack of chapati resting on a rock. A line of ants had found its way to the food. Her heartbeat began to stutter. She made a quick round of the clearing: no articles of clothing, no sign of a struggle. Then she looked toward the river. Christoph sat on a boulder at the shore, facing the blue-gray water flecked with yellow light; the sun was just beginning to appear over the canopy on the far side of the river. As she watched, he took a tiny pebble, and with a flick of his wrist, sent it skittering across the surface.

  She picked her way between the rocks and bushes and came to sit beside him. Christoph turned just once with a quick smile when he heard her approach.

  “You didn’t wake us,” she said.

  “I wasn’t tired. You needed your sleep.”

  “Nagero is not so far,” she said. “We will reach there by midday.”

  He nodded.

  “It is better that we leave soon,” she said.

  Christoph didn’t move.

  “Come, let us wake Sabine.”

  He sent another pebble skimming across the water. “I was so scared, Rose,” he said. “Last night. When those people came. I’ve never been so frightened in my life. And you—you lived like that. For years.”

  She reached out and rested her hand lightly on his shoulder. What could she say?

  He gripped her hand with surprising force. “We’ll be all right,” he said. “We’ll get out of this.”

  “Yes,” she said, though the word felt hollow.

  “You’ll finish your education. I’ll help you.”

  She felt a welling of tears. “Yes.”

  “And your brother,” he said. “And his family. I can help them, too. We can help them.”

  A wave of pain washed through her. She hadn’t told him. But Grace, she thought. Isaac. Wilborn.

  “Yes.”

  He nodded, turning his face back toward the river. “We’re almost there. It’s so close.”

  “Alunya loyo lakwong,” she murmured.

  “What’s that?”

  “The second surpasses the first.”

  “Meaning?”

  “What follows will be more severe than what has come.”

  As the last tip of sun rose above the trees, Christoph said, “I hope your Acholi wisdom is wrong about that.”

  Ten minutes later, after folding and stacking the blankets and leaving them on a rock in the clearing—along with the Congolese francs the group had refused the night before—they were on their way. Sabine and Rose had changed back into their own clothes, dirty as they were; Christoph’s were too big for comfortable trekking. Around her shoulder Rose still carried the little purse with its contents of shillings. Sabine, though annoyed that Christoph had let her sleep, looked visibly refreshed, and Christoph showed no signs of exhaustion. Rose felt fit enough, but in her chest a kind of dread had lodged overnight, and it grew with every step they took toward Nagero. Logically speaking, Nagero was safety: satellite phones, the protection of armed rangers and possibly UPDF soldiers. But it held, too, the truth about Lily and Ocen—their purpose, their pact. She was in no hurry to meet it.

  Passage along the river was more difficult than through the bush. The riverbank was for the most part steep and snarled with shrubs and boulders, and where the shoreline flattened and became sandy, hippos or crocodiles often lay in the shallow, murky water beyond. Sometimes the river forked into smaller branches, and the group would have to make a long detour to find a suitable place to cross before following the branch back up toward the main channel. The sun grew in height and intensity, and the mosquitoes were vicious.

  Once, the group had to take cover as a military helicopter flew almost directly overhead. It was the first sign of war they’d seen since the attack, and it shook them badly enough that they didn’t dare move for a long time after the choppy thrum of the rotor had faded.

  At least the sky was blue: no more rain. And there were, Rose admitted, moments of tremendous beauty: a flock of white egrets lifting in unison; two vervet monkeys in a
tree overhanging the water, their faces intelligently attentive toward the humans’ progress; and on a cliff on the far side, a vast colony of brilliantly colored birds with crimson bodies and turquoise heads. The staccato rik rik rik rik of their calls carried across the river in a rich chorus of cheer.

  The group reached Nagero sometime after midday. Christoph was the first to spot the smooth slope of a building’s roof, pronounced against the erratic curves of the tree canopy, a little ways in from the river. “Thank God,” Sabine said as they quickened their pace. Rose’s senses were on high alert for soldiers; surely there were men on watch, patrolling the periphery. But they met no one as they emerged into a wide, flat space crisscrossed by dirt roads and scattered with trees. It looked like a parade ground, Rose thought, where soldiers might do drills. A tall silver pole, slightly bowed, bore the Congolese flag at the top; the fabric drooped listlessly toward the earth. A handful of small buildings and huts stood around the periphery, a large mud-splattered truck was parked next to a brick shed, and the structure they’d seen from the river was just beyond, an imposing sight with tiered concrete steps and yellow archways all the way around. Rose nearly stopped at the vision; it was the grandest building she thought she’d ever seen—more magnificent, even, than the Kitgum Mission. Here lay her fate. Her footfalls became heavier with each step.

  Two men appeared from behind the building, dressed in camouflage fatigues, black gumboots, and floppy wide-brimmed hats. Each carried an automatic weapon. They were walking in the other direction, following the dirt tracks toward a second largish structure—longer and lower than the first—a few hundred meters away. They didn’t seem to have noticed the newcomers. They reacted quickly enough, though, as soon as Christoph shouted out and began to jog toward them. Rose halted and held Sabine back when the soldiers pivoted and dropped to one knee, rifles raised. Christoph stopped, his palms up. There was less than a hundred meters’ space between them.

  “Is this Nagero?” Christoph called. The soldiers stayed put. Christoph threw a glance back at Sabine. “What was the name of the woman you spoke with?”