*
Many times in those few days I looked down upon them with pity.
I felt a twinge in my stony heart.
I felt guilty.
It was their faces that did it.
Their looks of utter helplessness,
the look one gets when they are just about ready to give up.
I couldn't stand it.
Not Florence.
Not Ben.
They were too strong.
They couldn't give up.
Not them.
You may have guessed that as usual,
I ignored my guilt and left them there.
Wrong.
I cracked.
I sent for help.
Grace.
I sent her some help too.
A plan.
I gave her a plan and some courage and threw her into the lion's cage.
Only she was more than willing.
Willing to fight those lions with just her fingers and thumbs.
Well done me.
*
Jael's turning point
8th September 1939
Two more days had passed and Rafael remained undecided. He chose to remain undecided. Being the cruel beast he was, he revelled in watching them struggle helplessly.
Sick.
That's what he was.
Each day he would walk around his village, looking up at the swinging cage, smiling at it. In his mind they deserved it. Bloody, inferior scum. That's what they were. In his mind.
Their energy-less faces gave him a spark, convinced he was right. Justice in the most painful, torturous form seemed so right to him.
*
Every time Rafael walked past their cage, both Florence and Ben felt their anger threaten to bubble over and drip down onto the village below like a waking volcano.
"How did you fall for this? How Flory?" Ben had asked the same question too many times to count over those past few days. Each time Florence couldn't answer, she could only frown and look away. He hadn't been there. He hadn't been there with Florence. Not at the beginning when she was gullible and blind, misguided by Rafael's keen act.
Ben was the lucky one.
*
Rafael was wise. But not as wise a Grace.
For over a year she had been saving up on goods. Bribes. Waiting for the right time.
The day Florence had been taken with Ben, she knew the time was right, plus it had only been two days since the plan had come to her.
With her husband, she went around the village pulling quiet and outspoken frescreets aside.
"If I give you this handful of cotton will you do something for me?" she would ask them to help her set Florence and Ben free. The answer was always no. She would give them the bribe anyway, to keep them quiet before moving onto the next frescreet.
Soon, they had run out of candidates. They had all turned them down, calling them demented. They had each walked away quickly with the bribe in their hands, not looking back, not wanting any association. Grace had worked her way down to the last crumbs. The crumbs that she really didn't want to touch, the only two left.
Jael.
Rafael.
It didn't take them long to decide between them.
Jael it was. There was no one left and they were prepared to risk their plan if it meant they had one more shot at getting some help.
It was when Rafael was out that Grace went in. Her heart was racing so fast she thought it would stall and stop. Her knuckle was just centimetres away from the door when it dawned on her.
This would be the end of her chances to rescue her sister. Jael would side with Rafael, calling for him to lock her up. Jael seemed different to her husband, but Grace realised it might well be an act.
Rafael had played that game. He had failed.
Jael may just be better at playing it than him.
Better at hiding. Hiding herself.
Squeezing her eyes shut tight, tears forming in the corners, she gathered her courage. Grace opened them and brought her fist down upon the door with a mighty blow.
She heard footsteps approaching quickly.
Or was that her heart beating?
No time to think.
The door creaked open and it revealed Jael, standing in the doorway with a surprised look on her face.
*
Inside, sitting in the kitchen, Grace faced her.
"Jael, I would like you to have these." Florence handed over the remainder of her bribes. Jael peered at the pile of items and then at Grace.
"What can I do for you Grace?"
"I need your help, Jael," she breathed in, 'just do it' she told herself. "but it will mean working against your husband." She braced herself, getting ready for Jael to call her a traitor and scream for Rafael. But it didn't come. Instead, Jael looked at her, interested.
"Go on." Jael urged her on, obvious eagerness in her eyes.
"I need your help to free Florence and Ben." Grace noticed the puzzled look on Jael's wrinkly face.
'Oh, she doesn't know.' Grace realised that Rafael hadn't only deceived Florence and the village. He had lied to his wife too.
"I am Florence's sister." Horror crept over Jael's face. Her eyes were disbelieving, flicking around the earthy room, as if looking for reassurance.
"What are you talking about girl? You're talking nonsense. Aren't you?"
"I think I should tell you what your husband seems to have failed to. I will have to be quick, but I will start from the beginning." Grace hastily explained all that had happened, unveiling the true Rafael to his shocked wife. It seemed to grow colder in the dark room as the minutes ticked by. When the words had run out and the story was complete, Grace looked back at Jael. The fire in her eyes and her stone set jaw was enough. The next few words needn't have been said.
"I will do whatever needs to be done."
The lonely bits of the missing girl
9th September 1939
When Grace had left the house at the edge of the clearing, Jael had left too, leaving a note for Rafael. A note with a lie on it.
Jael followed Grace to her house, sticking to the shadows, never nearing the strolling Rafael. Her old bones awoke after so many years, finally stretching in those cold, night time shadows. Grace watched as Jael transformed, the old miserable housewife was left behind. Grace wondered how old she actually was. It was impossible to tell.
"Jael?" Grace's husband sat in the kitchen, staring at them. Despite how much he believed in Grace, he would never have expected Jael to actually agree, let alone turn up in his house on the very same night.
"That's right. Now, what's the plan?" A stool was pulled up and they sat around the table, curtains were closed and the door locked. They just prayed that no one had seen them come in. For over an hour, they talked. First Grace, her plan was shared.
"This is what we have so far. In two days’ time..." Then Jael, with one thousand questions in need of answers.
"How will I cover it up from Rafael?"
Finally Grace's husband, setting rules with no exceptions.
"You will not tell anyone. You will not show anyone. You will not betray us..."
No risks were going to be taken.
Except for the one thousand unavoidable ones that were.
Later that night when Jael had left, they stayed around the table. Staring. Thinking.
"What if we do fail? What then?" Grace wondered aloud, not really wanting an answer.
"I don't know Gracie, I don't know."
*
Each night Lisette would lie awake for hours. She hated having to rely on someone to help her search for Florence and Ben. If she could, she would spend the whole night searching. Never had she felt more alone.
It was just her.
Or what was left anyway. She felt like there was only one third of her left. The other two thirds were lost in the forest. Unfound.
Ben and Florence.
Two thirds of her that she relied on. Gone.
/>
It hurt like hell. She couldn't sleep, not while they were out there. They were all she thought of, day and night, always on her mind. What were they doing? Where were they? Were they alright? Were they even alive? Each day she searched nonstop for those answers, disappointed each time the sun began to set. Disappointed but not disheartened. She vowed she would never give up on them. Not until she was laid to rest in her grave. When you have lost so much, especially when it is most of your own soul, you never give up searching until your lonely-self catches up with the rest of you and forces you back into reality.
Worldwide war
*
The war.
Oh that terrible war.
So much innocent blood on my dutiful hands.
So much guilty blood too.
The blood dripped from fingers.
It fell to the earth,
to you.
Your earth was flooding with your own blood yet you still bled each other to your graves.
Oh that terrible war.
*
Bullet rattle and bomb rumble was felt around the earth. Nonstop. Whether you hid ten metres underground or lived in the clouds, your bones would be rattling no end. Everywhere you ran the war would follow.
News. Fear. Refugees. Rationing. Telegrams. Soldiers. Guns. Bullets. Death.
No matter your escape, traces of the evils happening on the front lines or behind would always make their way to you.
Lisette felt them, the traces. It seemed that with every passing plane in war stripes, a fresh layer of fear would be airdropped to her and the town.
The people would be crushed by the falling fear and there were no survivors. No one survived the fear. It drove them all mad. They lived on through those six terror ridden years but they lived a life they were afraid of.
While the war invaded the minds of Lisette and all those around the world, two people escaped.
*
I don't know if it was the thickness of the trees.
Or if it was the secrecy of their location.
Or even the fact that the planes never found them to airdrop them a dose of fear.
But Ben and Florence escaped the wrath of the war.
I told you she’d thank me for being purine.
I saved her
*
An unexpected parcel
11th September 1939
The sun had just risen directly overhead and Jael left for the hall. She trembled as she left her home, head down but with her jaw set. Rafael saw her go and when she told him where she was headed, he was furious.
"Jael! What on earth do you think you are doing? Don't you dare mix with the captives." he shouted, racing after her, anger and panic in his voice. If his own wife were to betray him, that would be the beginning of end. His closest ally gone, his village would begin to crumble from the foundations to the top.
Putting on her best face Jael replied as sweetly as she could. Disgusted by the beast she saw.
"Don't worry, I am simply bringing their food up to them so I can tease them. I have a long line of insults at the ready." Rafael was fooled.
"Oh, splendid. Be sure to put in a word from me." he nodded at his quietly fuming wife and hobbled away, muttering about barbaric traitors and bloody purines that don't exist. Jael had difficulty restraining herself to not shout a rally of insults at him. In just three days, Jael had gone from being suspicious of her husband, to hating him. There was nothing that sparked her fury more than seeing his face.
She walked on quickly. Before she did something that she would regret.
*
They had been tied up in the ropy cage for eight days and they were at their wits end. With permanent scars from the rope cutting into their backs and bruises from the knots, they were numb all over. They had never been more tired but still sleep refused to come. The humiliation had been torturous above all. Especially for Florence. It was all day, every day. Whenever someone walked past, she would feel the knives in her skin. The scowls, the spitting, the curses, the insults. Each more painful than the last as she slowly filled up with sharp metal. All Ben could do was watch. Watch and hold her, comfort her, hug her. But his arms couldn't keep the knives out. They just stabbed him too.
On the eighth day when the sun was overhead, burning their scalps through the leaves, their stomachs were empty as usual. Their parcel hadn't come yet. It worried them. Anything out of order worried them. They were afraid it meant Rafael had decided what to do with them.
A stick snapped on the tree beside them, making them jump. Peering into the leaves, into the shadows, they saw something unexpected. The last thing they thought would be there.
"Jael?!"
Only time for action
11th September 1939
Dedication
For all the undiscovered tribes in the Amazon who knew I was going to dedicate this book to them.
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