They called it the month of the lilies. Everywhere there were the white flowers. The family only went in the house at night, to sleep. Every meal was on the veranda. She wore a white dress, like the lily, and she would cry when spilling something on it. They were down by the water, and Lyla shelled peas whilst talking to her, and she liked the babble of Lyla’s voice, which she kept listening for to know that she hadn’t wandered too far; but she had found something to interest her. There was something under the water, a fish perhaps, or a piece of cloth, she could just about see its movement, as the ripples eddied back and forth. The flowers on the bank swayed languidly, and a light buzz of insects accompanied the babble of Lyla’s voice and the rhythmic cracking of the pods.

            She must have edged closer to see better. She felt different that day, though it was not so unusual for her to be out playing, whilst Lyla worked. In the distance, she heard the engine of a plane. She liked to look up and count the seconds before it came into view. She had mentioned this to her teacher, and he had shown her how if the engine was this size, and the plane was this far away, then you could work out how long until it came into view, you could calculate the speed. She looked up, completing the mental arithmetic in her head. She didn’t tell Lyla that’s what she did. Other girls didn’t do this kind of sum, she knew.

            You could hear the plane before you could see it, and she thought maybe it was bringing her brother back. Paul had been away for several months and she had almost forgotten what he looked like. But the plane’s engines grew fainter, and she realised that it must be going in another direction. In those few minutes concentrating on the skies, she’d slipped further down the slope leading to the water. She closed her eyes, as the sun was making her drowsy, and she felt a little sick. It was very quiet. She noticed that Lyla had stopped talking. The clack-clack of the shelling had also stopped. She felt the warm sun on her face, and something wet on her legs. She closed her eyes. The cold water tickled her.

            Next thing she knew she was being yanked from the river.

            “Oh my dear, my poor dear, what happened? Oh, you have to be careful. I looked up and you had gone. I saw you slipping in the water. You had me so worried.” And Lyla was clasping her to her bosom, in the tightest of hugs. The girl’s white dress was soaked, and now Lyla’s was as well. Lyla was not usually the most demonstrative of women, but that time she hugged the girl like nobody had ever hugged her before, like she was a part of her.

Lyla started to babble again, about what she’d tell them, and how she’d explain, and took hold of the soaking dress, and the garment, heavy with water, lifted off her, making her feel light as a feather. She sat there in her under-garments, whilst Lyla fashioned a washing line between two branches and hung the dress between them. She took off her own damp top and gave that to the girl to cover up.

            “No harm done,” she said, but the girl didn’t believe her. Lyla looked older all of a sudden, and there was fear in her eyes. It was the last day she would ever see her.

It was an old building and contained old memories and she stood there on the threshold for a minute before going back in. The air was dusty and she tightened the scarf around her mouth so she wouldn’t immediately start coughing.

            Here and there were things that people had left, or rather, not seen the value of removing, but she didn’t recognise anything. Yet, this was the building, they had assured her of that. A sudden noise made her swing round. A scuttling rat perhaps; after all, the distinction between the building and its surroundings was hardly there anymore; the doors ripped from their frames, or hanging there rotting; the vegetation crawling up and around but not getting much further than the sandy floors.

            This was the entrance where she’d have been bushelled in and out, a hood over her head, for they had not wanted her to know where she was. It was easier that way, for her, as well, so she had no way of knowing, if she ever came back, where they had kept her. It protected, the less she knew. But now, here she was.

            She steadied herself, and as there was no electricity – had there been any, even back then, a generator perhaps? – she switched on the torch they had told her to bring, walked through the narrow corridors, and, after feeling her way carefully along, she came to an intact doorway. There was nothing outwardly special about it, but she knew.

            “Once inside we will take off your hood. You will be safe then.”

            Safe.

She had wanted that then more than anything. Her throat was tight and dry, and she coughed under her scarf. She breathed heavily as she pushed at the door. Here was the brick stairway, and she descended – knowing it was the right place, but not knowing how she knew.

It was in the cluster of rooms below that the memories flooded back. How can it be that just a few small things can summon up a memory? There was little there. Just a few bare bones of furniture, and a few hangings on the wall. Not that there had ever been that much, but when you are in a prison cell for months, you get to know its dimensions to the millimetre, and this had been hers. It was as if she recognised the very air of the place.

            The man had come into the room and talked to her in his stilted English. She had counted the hairs on his beard.

“No harm,” he kept saying, and because Lyla had said the same thing, before all of this, and there had definitely been harm, now she was frightened. As he approached her she felt her body stiffening in the chair. She was close enough to smell his breath. She closed her eyes and thought of slipping down the bank into the water. But when she opened her eyes again he was gone.

            In a movie they would visualise her captivity through her making a tally on the wall with a stick – and the sequence would show the passing of days – the tally on the wall going on for many rows. Months later, she would be appear dirtier, with sunken eyes, and her hair long and bedraggled. How she had looked was probably like this, but the only tally she made was in her head. They would tell her later, that she was there for one-hundred and fifty days, and she had to believe them, but by her count it was twice that number. There was no night or day, you slept when you could and ate when they brought in your food. The days in captivity were not like the days in the real world. In that time, he would be taken out on several occasions, she never knew why, but she never felt that she was going to be released, and it was a relief, almost, when she was back in her room. They asked her if her captors had threatened her and she didn’t know how to answer. One answer was “every day.” Another answer was “never.” Both of these were true. But she had come closer to dying the day that Lyla pulled her from the water. The day that everything changed.

Lyla walked back with her. The dress had dried remarkably quickly, but you could probably tell by its crumpled nature that there had been an incident. She remembered the river. She remembered seeing the blood. She didn’t remember all of what Lyla said to her, but it was kind and would turn out to be helpful.

            On the way back she could hear the plane again, and she looked up in the direction that the sound came from. She again counted how long it would be before it appeared, for indeed, it was getting louder, but at the moment she expected to see it, instead, there was an almighty bang, and where she expected to see the plane, was a trail of smoke. A few seconds later, another loud explosion, as the plane crashed to ground. She knew, without knowing how, that she would never see her brother again.

            They would probably have sent a search party out for them, but not that day, they couldn’t spare the people. The house was in chaos. People were running around, emptying drawers, working out what they could carry, what they would have to leave behind. Outside there was a makeshift bonfire, its smoke-trail a smaller version of the pyre coming from the crashed plane. A radio was tuned to the news, as she was told to get her stuff. Lyla grabbed her by the hand and took her to her room at the back of the house. She handed her a bag full of toiletries.

            “I had this ready for you,” she said, “I didn’t realise you would need it so soon.”

            “Where are we going, Lyla?”

            “You are going to a safe place,” she said, “on a plane.”

            “I don’t want to go on a plane. They are dangerous.”

“This one will be very safe,” said Lyla.

“I’m scared.”

            Lyla went silent. Round her neck she had a St. Christopher. The girl had often admired it, and when she was a child Lyla had let look at it, but in the all the years she had been cared for by her, it had never left her neck. She reached round and unclasped it, and then clasped it round the girl’s neck.

            “This will protect you,” she said, and kissed her, for what would be the last time.

            They bundled her into the car.         

            “What about Lyla?”

            “You will see Lyla later,” they lied. 

            What happened next she would not really remember. She must have fallen asleep in the car on the way to the airport. Then the gunshots, the roadblock, the shouting, the car overturning; then they pulled her from the wreckage, placed the hood on her head and the rope round her arms, and brought her here.

She walked through the various rooms. It had seemed a labyrinth then, with so many men living there between sorties. Mostly they kept her in the same small room, at least to start with, and they would bring her some food and leave her for hours. For days she wouldn’t eat, and then they would get angry with her. Then one of the men started to stay with her for longer, and talk to her. She was still scared, but he would say something, then hand her a patty or a piece of fruit, and without realising it, she’d eat, because he was there. She built up her strength.

            She knew from the first moment that she had to hide Lyla’s charm, before it was stolen from her. Without it, how would she find her way back to her?

            At first she put it in the toiletries bag, but she knew they would check it, and so she would have to find somewhere else.

            Her room was the first place they’d look, so she started to consider other hiding places, for as time went on, they were more relaxed about her movements. They would leave her door open, or bring her into one of the other spaces. There was always someone with her, but if she was quiet and caused no trouble, it was like they forgot she was there at all. In one of the rooms, there was an alcove, with a table in front of it. If you had lithe limbs, and tiny hands, and she had both, you could just about reach around and under, and there she’d found a loose brick. Having identified a hiding place she would have to try and place the St. Christopher there.

First, she would have to orientate myself. The rooms were pretty indistinguishable from each other, particularly now they had been emptied of most of their contents and left to decay. She knew where the entrance was and from there she counted the steps she used to take before she would turn, and then how many down the corridor, and then how long it would take to get into her room. Once that had been identified, she could work out her route back, to the room where she had hidden the charm. She found it, but now, with nothing much in it, it evoked no more memory than any of the others. It was dank and cold, and there was water dripping from a hole above, leaving a puddle of water on one side of the room. The torch wasn’t helping much. She closed her eyes, and retraced her steps, imagining where the table had been, and from there moved her arm the way she would have done once before. She felt along the wall, feeling for the loose brick with her hand, but it wasn’t where she thought it was. She sighed. Maybe memory was playing tricks. She then remembered, she was taller than the girl she once was. She bent her knees, shrunk into her memory, and moved her arm lower, and reaching out she found the loose brick. She clawed the gap with her finger, nothing. How foolish she was to think there would be.

“What are you doing?”

            “I thought I saw a mouse.”

            “And what were you going to do with it?”

            “I thought it could be my pet.”

            They laughed.

            “You need food, to keep a mouse,” one of them said, and ripped a portion of bread and threw it over to her.

            The bread was stale. Was this what the soldiers ate? The bread they gave her to eat was much fresher than this.

            “Thank you,” she said, “if I find the mouse, I will now be able to feed it.”

            “Then you will have your own prisoner.”

            And they laughed again and went back to their card game.

            She had the St. Christopher clenched in her palm, and she pushed it further into the hole, so far that only a child’s hand would be small enough to retrieve it.

She tried again, and reached as far back as she could. Surely her hand had also grown since she was that girl? But she had always been very dextrous, and squeezing her hand tightly, and stretching her fingers out, she felt something at the tip. She squeezed just a millimetre more and managed to hook something. Her hand felt caught in the hole, but she concentrated and wiggled it until she was able to remove it from the cavity.

            A few seconds later, in the palm of her hand, dusty and muddied, was Lyla’s St. Christopher.

            It wasn’t the first time since her rescue that she had cried, but her sadness had never felt as real as now.

Paul and her would play games. Or rather he would treat her as if she was his living doll. He had been top of his class for gym as an eleven-year old, but as he grew older, his physique had developed in a different way. He’d be a runner, a fighter maybe, but not a gymnast. Still, it didn’t stop him when he was with his sister. He used to pick her up above his head, and spin her around. He would hold her feet as she did a handstand or catch her after a triple somersault.

            After Paul had left home, she stopped playing these games, but whenever he came back he would want to pick her up and throw her around, like he used to. That last time, he didn’t realise his own strength, or she hadn’t realised the changes in her own body, and he accidentally knocked her down.

            She started crying.

            “You can’t just push me when you want to hit a small person,” she said, “I’m only little, and you’re so big.”

            He was devastated.

            “I didn’t realise my own strength, I’m sorry,” he said. They sat at either end of the room for ten minutes or so, his head in his hands. He looked up and started to explain. “In the army, we are taught not to think of the other person, but to just do what is necessary,” he said.

            “It’s meant to be a game,” she said.

            He got up as if to leave. “I know,” he said, “I’d forgot.” He approached her again, and got her to stand up. He spun her around.

“Remember?” he said.

“I’ve not grown too big?” she said, in anticipation.

            “I’m stronger now. I think I’ve got this,” he replied. 

He picked her in his arms again, and lifted her up, and just as he had when she was a little girl he spun her round above his head. She didn’t know how long he held her there, but by the time she was let go, and brought her back to ground, the room was spinning.

            “Remember,” he said, “this feeling.”

            “I always trust you,” she said. “I know you wouldn’t let me fall.”

            “I never would,” he said.

            They held each other for a second – even if in her memory of it, it lasted much longer. She wanted him to never let her go. You had to trust other people so, didn’t you? Otherwise how would you ever live your life? When he had held her above her head, even though the whole world was spinning, she was never once scared. In her imprisonment, she had tried to remember that feeling.

And one day, after it had been many hours since she had seen anyone, she made her way out of her room and back through the labyrinth. They had all gone. She had come up against the final door, but of course, it was still locked. She’d pushed and pushed, and shouted for someone to come and get her, but the entrance was hidden. There wouldn’t be anyone to hear her cries. It took her a while, but eventually she found a bunch of keys. She tried them in the door, one by one, until one of them fit. She turned it in the lock, and with some difficulty, the door opened. She walked out into the sunlight, not knowing what it was she was going to find.

She clutched the St. Christopher in her hand, and walked back through the rooms one last time, up the stairwell, and into the open. She would not be returning.

It was another sunny day.

She washed the charm in the stream.

White flowers moved languidly in the breeze.

Once again, it was the month of the lilies.

Adrian Slatcher

Adrian Slatcher is a writer based in Manchester, UK, and writes poetry and fiction. His short story collection “Loners” was published in 2024 by Confingo Publishing, a collaboration with the artist Steven Heaton. He has previously had stories chosen for inclusion in Best British Short Stories 2018 and 2020 and is widely published in magazines and anthologies.

aftermath captivity childhood family literary fiction memory return survival trauma