Dave’s blood froze when he made out the word “kill” in the heated discussion outside his tent.

Aside from that one word in Fulani, Dave had understood almost nothing of what his kidnappers argued about until now … but what if they had finally found that damn picture in his wallet, where he kissed Kevin?

He cursed under his breath. The patchwork of militant Islamist factions fighting to establish the Caliphate in West Africa had been an abstraction to Dave back home in the relative normality of the U.S. Now, in his murky tent-prison in the outback of Mali, it had become deadly concrete. 

Dave could move his tied legs enough to push himself closer to the side of the tent where he heard the voices. He hoped he might be able to make out some more specific words. But all he got from his efforts was more gnawing from his ropes into his skin, which was already very sore and red from weeks of captivity. 

He had to know if they had discovered the photo.

But it was hopeless. He couldn’t understand much else of what was said, no matter how close he was to the tent cloth. He knew maybe 10 words in Fulani and he wasn’t even sure if they all belonged to the same dialect.

All that was left to do then was to try hard to convince himself they would ignore the photo, that maybe they hadn’t even discovered it among his meager belongings at all, and that this incessant argument outside was about something entirely different.

They would have looked through his personal items just after the kidnapping, right? And he didn’t have much more on him than his wallet, keys, necklace, and a bottle of water. And even if they by some miracle had not found the photo until tonight it was only a kiss on the cheek. And half in fun. At some party a lifetime ago. What could it matter?

But deep down he knew the answer would not be to his liking.

On his first day in Bamako, Nicole had asked him to get rid of the old photo with Kevin after that long face-to-face interview in the badly air-conditioned organization headquarters. 

Maybe he shouldn’t have mentioned it to her, but Nicole Delon was a boss that it was hard to lie to. He had asked what she thought about this token from his previous life and she had been clear:

“Jihadists are still very active where you are going to work for us. It is an unnecessary risk.”

When Dave did not reply, the middle-aged, stout woman pushed her glasses down on her nose and looked straight at him. “You know, monsieur Reese. The people of this country are the friendliest, warmest, and most hospitable I have met in my 28 years in Africa working for the World Life Health organization,” she said. “Except for the ones who will stone you to death if you don’t fit into their worldview.”

Dave twitched slightly on the wooden chair. Nicole did not blink.

“Why keep that old print, anyway?” she said in a milder tone. “You said you and your spouse had been separate for some time, correct?”

“That’s right.” Dave sipped lukewarm water from the Diago bottle he crammed in his hand. “But I always find it best to cherish the good memories, and forget the bad.”

She had ordered him to get rid of it, anyway. Or at least not carry with him into the desert region where they were to service one of its only hospitals. 

But he had chosen not to.

In the unlit tent, Dave closed his eyes and tried to force himself to think of the good memories.

During all his bouts with depression, it was the only strategy that had worked, never medicine or therapy. 

But memories were frail. You had to keep them alive all the time or they would become nothing.

*

Last Christmas, Arizona. 

They were hunkered down in Carrie and Jon’s living room in their cardboard box house in Yuma. Beyond the rows of similar suburban boxes, there was the gravel and emu bushes, all the way to the border with Mexico. 

The only indication of the season was an iPad in a rubbery children’s protection cover playing X-massy children’s songs from YouTube Kids on repeat. Most people had seemingly left the neighborhood to go somewhere more exciting to celebrate.

Michael was on Dave’s knees tamping on Carrie’s old laptop. He was barely six but already quite heavy and Dave had to concentrate to keep his legs steady. 

The laptop had several small dark islands on the screen where the pixels had died and was slow as fuck, but Michael didn’t seem to mind. In yet another new Google Spreadsheet, he wrote in the title field (and only in the title field): 

WELCOME TO SPREAD, AND SOIL, TOY STORE, AND TOILET PAPER, AND PANCAKE

All caps as usual. Some of it making sense, some of it not. As usual.

“Do you want to go to the toy store and buy soil? Hmm?” Dave adjusted Michael’s position on his knees, so the boy didn’t fall. In his eagerness to get the words out, Michael sometimes forgot his balance. The laptop was also perched precariously close to the edge of the sofa table, but Michael wanted it exactly there and pulled it closer each time Dave tried to get it a little more centered on the table.

“I think he has overheard us talking about Christmas and presents,” Carrie said. She was sitting on the couch next to them, arms and legs crossed. She gazed wistfully out the window. It never snowed in Yuma, it just got somewhat overcast during December.

“Why don’t you write to me what kind of present you want?” Dave suggested.

“Your nephew doesn’t understand you,” Carrie said. She sounded tired and resigned. “At least not very much.”

“Okay.”

“—And he’ll probably freak out if you try to type something for him,” she added, reaching for her tea. Then immediately she was back to crossing her arms again, only now with a cup in one hand. She didn’t drink.

“Just one try,” Dave said. He pointed at the word ‘TOY STORE’. “Michael, can you write to Uncle Dave what you want for Christmas? You can write it on that line if it makes you feel better.”

“Dave, Dave—” Carrie interjected. “My little pliskie is a savant with writing random words but he doesn’t talk, doesn’t understand what he is typing—you have to make it much simpler.”

But then Michael took Dave’s hand and led it to the keyboard. He made Dave tap:

PEPPA PIG GLOWPAD LIGHT-UP DRAWING PAD

“Holy Shite—” Carrie leaned forward so fast she almost forgot to get the tea out of the way again. “How did you make him do that?”

Dave smiled. “I think he just did it himself.”

“That’s not what I mean, you daft lump.”

She tried to sound angry, but he could see he wasn’t. 

They had spent hours discussing if there was a way for either of them to do more with their almost ludicrously delayed ambitions for a creative life. It was insane because he was going to Africa in two days, and maybe not be home again until next Christmas. 

But somehow that seemed to move him to want to give some kind of vow, that he would finally get something done. Write something. Finished something. And Carrie had to hear it.

Her situation was not one in which she liked to make vows, though. But none of them needed to. 

They just needed to talk about it. Again. 

What if … 

Carrie—his stressed-out sister-in-law with two kids (one with a diagnosis)—would, somehow, make the time to draw some story of his. Of course.  

And he, Dave, would find some way of closing that big maelstrom in his heart from the day when his father burned his notebooks when he was 12, (which was when he had first hit Samuel Reese). 

So they would have their victory, Carrie and Dave, against all odds. They just needed to talk about it a little longer. 

Now, though, their focus had changed.

For the rest of the evening, everything became about Michael.

Until Jon came home with Emma from the X-mas toy market downtown, they each took turns playing with Michael and trying—gently—to prompt him to communicate something via the laptop. 

Anything … 

And when Dave returned to Philly after Christmas, and his packed suitcases, it felt like he was getting ready to leave someone to work overseas come new year.

Not just an empty apartment.

*

Outside the heated discussion about killing continued. Dave thought he at last recognized one of the voices, although he still understood almost nothing except … that word.

The voice, which was calm and distinct, could belong to a man, whom Dave was sure had been there the very first day and whom he had seen often since then, at a distance. 

He didn’t know this man’s name either but thought of him as ‘willow’ because he was thin like that tree and somewhat pale for a local. Willow had explained their situation to them in perfect French when they had been taken from the hospital and dumped in a truck, gagged and bound:

“Even if you do escape you will die. There is nothing but the desert out here. Remember that. The desert is not your ally. It is ours.”

There was nothing out here. 

The landscape looked like Death Valley, where he had once driven through in their rundown motorhome when he was a kid with Jon and his parents. It had been one of those never-ending treks around the States which was Samuel Reese’s idea of a perfect vacation. It was also just as hot.

No vegetation. No animals. Just rocks and sand, sand, sand.

Since the day they were taken, he never saw the others. Like the land around him, they might just as well be dead.

If he died out here, how soon would anybody know? His brother? Carrie? Little Michael? Would Michael ever understand what had happened?

What about the boy who came in every day with his food, and emptied the waste bucket? The young silent 15-16-something whom he had seen talking often with Willow? 

The boy came each day in his tent around noon, like clockwork. Without a word and only a plate of the same millet porridge Dave had been fed all those weeks

Would the boy care if this ritual suddenly ceased? Probably not. But he would know. 

If they killed Dave, the boy would know. And that seemed … wrong. But why? He was one of them, after all.

Dave forced himself to focus on another memory.

But it became harder each time. It was like even his good memories were beginning to wither. 

He would start with something that at least gave him a feeling of comfort and then at some point he would discover a shadow, like a dark spot on an x-ray.

Would it be like this until the end?

*

Summer last year. Rouen. France.

It had been their final vacation together before the break-up. Kevin paid for most of it, but so what else was new?

Dave craned his neck to see up to the top of the ominous tower, which looked like a frozen giant in the middle of the busy modern street. The last relic of an ancient nightmare. 

He’d always wanted to go to France, for some reason. It was so odd. Like missing a place you had never lived. And now, for the first time, he felt like it had been a trap.

Like the tower had been waiting for him. To remind him of feelings of darkness he’d rather have forgotten.

“Not so nice, huh?” Kevin was beside him, resting one hand on the rugged wall of the tower. 

Dave looked at him, then over his shoulder at the people going to and fro. Work. Vacation. Fun. It was July. You did these things. You lived. But as he placed his hand on the wall he felt only a chill, as from a tombstone.

“This is it?” he asked, although he knew the answer.

“Well,” Kevin said, with the casual confidence of an experienced francophile, “it’s the only thing left of the Medieval castle, but she was kept in another tower. Not this one.”

“You sure?”

Kevin grinned. He was beautiful when he did that. And so many other things.

Beautiful despite last night, when Dave had had to walk the streets near Place du Vieux Marche alone for several hours until he felt it was right to come back to the hotel room. Kevin had been asleep. In the morning they had not talked about the fight. It still worked.

Today was a new day. But somehow the memory of the fight came back. And much more. Dave removed his hand.

“I wish I could have met her.”

“Joan of Arc?” Kevin’s grin changed into a knowing smile. “Yeah, many people do, I guess. She was one of a kind.”

They left the tower to walk a bit, down Rue de Donjon. People still flooded the streets around them, like waves of color and laughs. Dave put his hands in his pockets and looked down.

“Hey,” Kevin’s hand brushed his discreetly. “Having the gloomies again?”

It was their slang for Dave’s periods of melancholy, or almost-depression, or whatever the hell it was. 

“No, no.” Dave shook his head unconvincingly. “But the story of Joan was one of the first things that got me interested in France. That and Richard the Lionheart.”

“Oh, yeah,” Kevin shrugged. “Dickie Lionheart was kind of French. That’s right. But what’s up?”

Dave glanced around him. The old streets seemed distant, like images from a brochure, or something staged.

Coming to Rouen felt so different from what he had imagined.

“It’s nothing,” he said. “Maybe I was just thinking about how everything good—really good—seems to be the first thing God kills.”

“You don’t believe in God!” Kevin blurted.

“Don’t I?”

“Well, you never told me that you did?!”

“You never asked.”

Kevin frowned. “Look, hon, I don’t know what to say to that. But your La Pucelle there—” he nodded back towards the tower that Joan of Arc had seen but perhaps never set foot in “—she died believing she did it for God.”

“Why should God require us to die to believe in Him?” Dave said, more to himself than to Kevin. “That is the question.”

“David, we are on vacation. You are thinking way too much about this.”

“I just wonder …” Dave said, and now his voice felt unreal. “If you are in prison, waiting to be executed—burnt at the fucking stake—is it enough to know that you die for God? Is it enough?”

“You mean—why would anyone die for God or…?”

“Yes!”

“Well, she had visions.”

Dave shook his head. “I don’t think I could die for God, for anything, even if I had a vision. I don’t want to die.”

“You’re not going to.” Kevin put an arm around Dave’s shoulder. It was very affectionate and everyone passing them could see. Perhaps that’s why Dave appreciated it so much.

It was the last time Kevin had touched him like this or in any other way. Two weeks later they were history. 

Ashes.

*

The discussion had stopped. Dave had not heard the word “kill” or anything else he recognized again. He hadn’t heard anything either that could give him a clue to what was going on.

And now there was only the wind, rustling the tent’s flaps. It was as if a storm was coming.

Dave wondered if the weather was deteriorating, and if they had to move again.

He had to keep his thoughts in check.

Old Samuel Reese had always said, “He needs to get his shit together. He’s always running in seven different directions. Boy has to learn to focus—to make it to something.”

And Dave had learned but not in the way Dad had liked. The first time had been when he had taken those six months in juvenile detention. 

Jon had stolen the car, but Dave did not want his brother to go to prison, and he was old enough for it—that was for sure. 

Dave would barely make it to juvie, and he didn’t want Jon who had always taken the beatings for him—he didn’t want anything to happen to his big brother. 

So Jon had protected Dave for years in the streets of San Pedro, after they had left Louisiana. Jon had taken care of the gangs to help Dave survive. Dave got his shit together and repaid his big brother. Samuel Reese went ballistic, but no one, except Jon and Dave, knew the truth about what had happened that night and the admission was enough for the cops who just wanted to fill their quota. 

His father never forgave him and his mother, well, she withdrew even more. He wondered how she was these days. Could she still recognize him?

So that was the first time in prison, or what went for it. The only valuable thing he had done, but he also paid a hefty price for it. It taught him the simple math, though. He was using that now, trying not to go insane in the tent prison here on the edge of the Sahara:

It didn’t matter that you were going to lose, and hurt and maybe die. As long as you could think of enough good things, you’d get close to evening the score, maybe even surviving.

It wasn’t a matter of suppressing the fear and anxiety, but of lighting something else in your mind so you could endure them. Like back in the day when they had used booze to get soldiers crazy drunk before they sawed their shattered leg off.

You saw what happened, you even felt it, but the booze had numbed you. So you could endure the horror. Most of the time, at least.

And Dave had a lot of things he needed to numb, so this wasn’t anything new—the horror of being a hostage and maybe getting a bullet through your head behind some rock in the middle of nowhere, if his employers didn’t play ball. Or if they discovered the photo … 

Dave would never lie to himself. Just as he knew he had been a failure in life, he knew his life was likely to end here, in the desert.

But he would try to even the score, in his mind, or at the very least get close to it.

The only problem was, how many good memories he could force himself to think of would equal or maybe even outweigh his impending death?

*

Deer Island, Biloxi, years ago … 

Darkness was closing in fast, as Jon pulled up the boat on the long, flat beach. 

Behind the beach, there were dunes with grass and not much else, but that’s what made this long, pencil-like island a perfect sanctuary for birds. And two teenagers.

Dave waded ashore, not caring that he got his trousers wet. He had pulled off his sneakers and left them in the boat. As usual this time of year he had no socks, just jeans and a T-shirt. 

He looked around the empty beach and then came over to Jon, who was checking if the rowboat was secure. The tide wasn’t strong yet, but his older brother didn’t want any surprises. And they planned to stay the night, after all.

“Do you think Dad knows yet?” Dave asked, chewing on a straw of marram grass he had plucked. 

“Nah,” Jon said. “And if he does, does it matter?”

“Only to Mom, I guess.”

Jon grinned. “Well, there you have it. Let’s go up.”

They took their sleeping bags from the boat and a small duffel bag with water, some chocolate, and bread, and off they were. 

As they waded through the sand and grass to try to find a good spot, Dave said, “You know, I was thinking about what you said about Tyler … ”

Jon didn’t look back. “What about it?”

Dave hesitated. “Well, it’s just that I think he is doing all of this because his dad is even more fucked up than Dad. He is not evil, Jonathan.”

Jon had stopped at a hollow between the dunes, which he seemed to evaluate. He still didn’t look at Dave, but there was something more slow and deliberate in his speech now. As if he was alert.

“Dave, I don’t understand why you keep making excuses for Tyler. He knocked out your tooth. He slaps around Marie. And I think he stole that four-wheeler from O’Hara’s Shop. He doesn’t care about anyone.”

Jon said “anyone” with a tone of finality. Then he unfolded his sleeping bag on the sand.

Dave looked up. Above them, there were a few faint specks of stars. Dusk had almost given way to the night.

“Jon … I think I like Tyler.”

Jon let the bag drop beside his sleeping bag. He turned slowly. “Didn’t you hear me? You can’t trust him.”

Dave shook his head. “I talk to him. A lot. He is not like you all think.”

Jon slowly walked the few steps back to where Dave stood and looked him in the eyes. He was a head taller than his little brother. After a few seconds, Dave looked down.

“He is not good for you, bro.” Jon crossed his arms.

“But I … I think you are wrong about him. I think everybody is.” Dave looked at Jon again, defiantly.

Jon shook his head and flumped down on the sleeping bag. Somewhere in the distance, they could hear gulls. There was almost no light left, but they had flashlights. Jon turned one of them on and put it beside the sleeping bag. “You can lie here.” He nodded at a clear spot to the left before the dune began to rise again.

Dave kept standing, frozen in place, at the edge of the hollow. “You have to believe me, Jon.”

“I’m not the one who needs convincing.” Jon was barely 18 yet, but he sounded as weary as their father now.

“What do you mean?”

“In what way do you ‘like’ Tyler, Dave?”

“I-I think people don’t … know what he is really like.”

“You sure?” Jon looked up. The shadows were marked on his face now, because of the flashlight on the ground beside him. “You can tell me.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“Do you ‘like’ him in the same way I like Alison?”

“Wha—no!” Dave shook his head furiously, but there was a despair now in his eyes that hadn’t been there before.

Somewhere out in the Bay, there was a green light flashing on and off. It was minute and far away and might have been the end of a dock, except that Biloxi’s harbor was in the other direction. It had to be from a lonely ship out on the water, too far away for them to see in the oncoming night.

Dave sat down, too, and pulled his legs up under himself. But it was on the opposite end of the hollow. He kept shaking his head as if he was trying to wake up from something.

Finally, he said, “Maybe.”

Jon nodded. “I thought as much.”

Dave looked at him. “You … know?”

Jon smiled grimly. “I’m your brother. Do you think I’m stupid? You’ve been talking about Tyler like this for a long time. And before him it was Jason. Never Marie, though, and she is crazy about you.”

Dave swallowed. “I’ve … I like Marie. And I’ve told Tyler I don’t think he should treat her … ”

Jon waved a dismissive gesture. “I know you are doing what you can. But I think you are making things worse. I think Tyler knows Marie has the hots for you and he is jealous.” Jon looked directly at Dave again. “And I think he is going to kill you when he finds out.”

“About Marie?”

“No, about how you feel about him.”

There was a long silence. Now the darkness had completely enveloped the Bay, and along with it there was mist and even if Dave got up again and looked hard in the direction of the city, all he would see would be a blur.

“I … I can’t stop feeling what I feel about Tyler,” he stammered.

“You have to.” Jon’s voice was steel. “Did I tell you, I saw him beat up this hooker two weeks ago?”

“No? What—”

“It was a guy, Dave. A guy in ladies’ clothes. Tyler broke his nose. And his arm.”

Dave’s face became white. 

Jon bit his lip. “You have to stay away from him.”

“It’s … it’s not the same,” Dave stammered. He held his legs so tight under himself that he was almost shaking.

Jon looked down, away from the flashlight so his face was almost completely in shadow. “It is for Tyler. Whatever you imagine about him … ” He looked again at Dave, almost pleading. “Bro, it’s not real.”

“My feelings are real.”

“Yeah, but not what you feel he should be.”

For a long time, they were both quiet again. Then Dave got up and rolled out his sleeping bag beside Jon’s, without a word.

*

There was only the wind outside the tent again. The angry voices had disappeared.

Dave felt cold inside. He tried to think of something, a memory, anything—if only he could think of more good moments than bad. If only he could stem the fear.

But the fear was too strong and it swelled in him, like a tidal wave. He was sure something would happen tonight. He would die. 

The feeling overwhelmed him, and even with all his willpower he could not make it go away. He couldn’t even balance it with … memories.

Then there was a sound. Like a dry branch being snapped.

Then another.

He heard a single voice cry out. Something that could have been a curse. Or was it a prayer? 

Then something like a thud. Like wet clothes being slapped together.

Then a series of slaps and thuds, maybe for 5-10 seconds, not more.

Then absolute silence. It was as if even the wind had gone away.

The tent flaps were pulled aside, and a man clad all in shadows, emerged in the opening. 

But he wasn’t one of them.

Somebody yelled outside. In French: 

“La zone est sécurisée!”

The man stepped close to Dave and swiftly cut his ropes with a small knife. He was wearing a black camouflage uniform and body armor, helmet, and goggles, Dave could now see. But it was like it did not register. It was an event so profoundly strange and unexpected that his brain refused to accept it.

The man loosened his goggles and Dave looked into the face of a thirty-something, closely shaven face, heavy set jaw, and intense blue eyes. A soldier if there ever was one. 

With clipped professionalism, the soldier asked in French, “Can you stand?”

Dave nodded slowly. He got up. For some reason, he still tried to think of a memory, but it was like time no longer existed. There was no past anymore.

Only the world outside.

*

Dave was sitting in the sand, as far away from the helicopter as he could. It was big and ugly. 

But the important fact was that Meddur, Sharon, Estelle, Nicolas, and Alfred were also alive, too.

And none of them had been killed during the raid. Only their captors.

Dave, though, hadn’t rejoiced. At all.

He felt nothing at seeing them all again. Not relief. Not annoyance. Nothing. 

No matter how hard he tried, it was like all feelings had been drained.

Dave had to clear his head. So he had asked if he could sit for himself for a little time before take-off and the commander of the Special Forces had pointed to the shadow of a large dune nearby where he could easily be watched from the camp. 

It was where he had sometimes been taken out to take a dump if for some reason they wouldn’t let him do it in the bucket in the tent. It was here the kidnappers had done it as well. Dave didn’t care.

. 

The attack had been just before dawn and as the rising sun dominated more and more of the empty sky, it cast a sharp, unforgiving light on the desolate landscape around him.

A few hundred meters from the chopper were the sad remnants of the camp and seven bodies in the sand. Dave had been let past them before the last corpse was completely covered up. One soldier—a medic?—had not finished checking on it. 

Dave had recognized the boy. 

There was a hole in his head near the right temple. Half-coagulated blood was smeared over his bare cheeks.

Dave had turned away and tried to reach one of the tents before he threw up. He didn’t make it. The Special Forces soldier who escorted him had watched him without expression.

“I believe this is yours,” a voice to his side said in French.

Dave turned to look up at the soldier who had freed him just a few hours ago. He was a beautiful man, Dave thought, but now in the sharp Saharan light of dawn, he also looked hard and distant, like a statue that had only a resemblance to real life.

The man held out a wallet.

“We found various belongings in the camp that we are positive were taken from your group. The money and phone you mentioned are gone for good, but at least you can have this.” He flipped the wallet open, and Dave’s driver’s license with a photo was visible. 

“Merci,” Dave said without joy, taking the wallet. He looked through it. The photo of him and Kevin was gone.

“You are going home now,” the man said. “You can call me … Jean. If you need anything else that we haven’t already provided—food, water, you ask me. I will give it to you.”

Dave nodded toward the helicopter. “When is it ready to go?”

Jean smiled. “Ah, still some things that need to be checked. But we will be ready soon. Anything else?”

“Was … it necessary to kill them all?” Dave looked stiffly at the bodies lined up in a neat row in the central space between the tents. 

He knew his captors had had a fire there where they had been eating and talking many nights. That would not happen again

He had barely spoken to any of them, except Willow, but he had imagined who they were, from their voices alone. And how he might connect with them. Maybe even earn somebody’s trust so they could help … somehow.

Now there were only the bodies, already in bags. He didn’t even know which one was Willow. Their identities had been stripped as had their lives.

And he felt … strange. He felt like he should have known them—for real. Despite what they had done.

Jean regarded him in silence. Then he said, “Would you rather we had not come?”

“My organization’s policy is to negotiate and pay ransom.” Dave tried to keep his voice even. “You could have gotten us killed.”

Jean didn’t blink. “Well, the Malian government’s policy is not to negotiate with terrorists. And we do what the government says.”

“Do you?” Dave felt a rising anger. He tried to suppress it but it only became worse. “You think you still own this country, don’t you?”

Jean just looked at him blankly. Before he could reply, though, another soldier approached. “We have the last piece on board. Fifteen minutes.”
 

Jean just nodded and the soldier went away as quickly as he had come.

Dave looked up as if to ask a question, but Jean held up a hand. “A malfunctioning drone. It fell down some miles away. We collect its remains before we can be on our way.”

An icy thought came to Dave. “Did they find it? Our captors?”

Jean shook his head. “We do not think so. But on the other hand, we decided not to take chances.”

“It feels like you are taking a lot of chances—with our lives.” 

“You have to go now,” Jean said, unphased. Behind them, the helicopter was powering up its rotors.

Jean retrieved a slender necklace from one of his uniform pockets. The gossamer chain held a small, coin-sized medallion. “I found this, too. It is the one you mentioned, yes? I see you know something of French history.”

The medallion had an image of Joan of Arc, or at least how some artist had imagined her. Dave had bought it in the souvenir shop at the museum in Rouen, but he had never worn it. It somehow felt wrong to wear. He had always had it in his wallet, chain and all.

Dave took the necklace slowly and looked at it. Joan was staring back at him across six centuries. A young girl. Short-cropped hair. Armor. Ready to do the will of God whom she believed in with all her heart.

“You must go now,” Jean repeated.

“You’re not coming with us?”

Jean smiled thinly. “Some of us stay here for more … tasks. You leave now.”

Dave could see Meddur was waving for him to come over and board the Chinook with the others. 

He got to his feet, heavily, and brushed off the sand from his trousers. It felt oddly cold on his hands and it was like he couldn’t get it all off despite his best efforts.

Jean regarded him with an inscrutable expression. “If you are interested in Jeanne d’Arc, monsieur, then I think you will soon feel better.”

“What do you mean?”

Jean barely smiled this time. “With her story in mind, it can be argued there is truly a purpose to all things. That perspective can help if one has too many … doubts. Wouldn’t you say?”

“I’d say she got burned alive for believing in a god, I’m not even sure exists,” Dave said flatly. “She might as well have been shot through the head.” He glanced at the line of dead bodies. 

They felt like shadowy sand piles now. Part of the desert. And somehow that made him even angrier.

“Get to the helicopter,” Jean said. 

It was no longer a request. 

*

They were airlifted to the nearest French base which was nothing more than a few barracks in a valley of sand between nameless hills and a small landing zone where the sand was flattest. 

Then they were shuffled together in the back of a truck, not unlike the one they had been in after the kidnapping. Two French APVs with armed soldiers drove in front and behind. 

It would still be awhile until they reached the nearest larger settlement under tenuous government control and everyone was dead-tired, but at least they were moving away from the vast region, where scattered Islamist factions still roamed with impunity, despite peace treaties and victories declared in official press releases.

The real Mali was not at peace.

The French were quiet, efficient, and only offered Dave and the others some water and scrapes from field rations. In all other respects, they moved like a machine that seemed oblivious to the presence of the liberated prisoners. Dave and his friends were just one more cargo load to be brought from A to B.

He did not see ‘Jean’ again.

Most of his colleagues slept or dozed off as if the sudden change from imprisonment to liberty had exhausted them. Dave felt exhausted, too, but he couldn’t rest. Not like that. 

He deliberately avoided talking when the others were awake and only gave the barest hint that he was present when somebody asked him about something.

Meddur came over and sat beside the bench, where Dave had withdrawn to. It was in the back part of the truck. There was a small opening in the tarpaulin to the rear of the vehicle and through it, they could see the sun sinking in an empty sky. They had been on the move for most of a day, but to Dave, it felt like all time had ceased.

“Are you all right, David?”

Meddur was about the same age as Dave, in his mid-thirties, but his beard and the lines under his eyes told a different story. He looked more like he was in his late forties. He had looked like that, too, before being kidnapped.

Meddur had worked in Mali for the last ten years, usually as an interpreter for foreign NGOs. He spoke a handful of Berber languages and some Fulani. He was a workaholic. Dave had only seen him take time off once. 

If you didn’t know you’d never have guessed he was born and grew up in Marseilles. But now Mali was his home.

Most people fled north from this part of the world, towards France and Europe. For Meddur it had been the other way around. Dave had never asked him about it.

“It’s okay if you don’t say anything,” Meddur continued when Dave just kept looking out the small opening. 

The desert was still there. It never seemed to stop.

Meddur shrugged. “At least we got away alive. I don’t think those fanatics would have let us go.”

Dave frowned. “They would have—if somebody had given them the bloody time to ransom us for the right price.”

“And what is the right price?” Meddur scoffed. “I do not think any price would have sufficed once they decided who we were.” He lowered his voice. “You know, that little print of you and Kevin … I was in the tent when the boy looked through your things and found it.”

“When? Why?” Dave felt something stir in him, finally. An emotion. Not anger, though. More like quiet desperation.

Meddur shrugged again. “I don’t know. I think in some ways they were as confused as we. It was a last-minute decision to take us from the hospital after the siege of their rivals’ village failed. I don’t think they have procedures for everything—like our French friends have.” He smiled but without warmth. “Whatever the case, the kidnappers threw the bag in ‘my’ tent with all of our things when we arrived at the camp. And the boy was there and he was the first to rummage through them.”

“He took the  photo from my wallet?”

Meddur nodded.

Dave couldn’t help thinking about the quiet boy again, all the times he had come in with that plate of porridge, never looking his prisoner in the eye. 

But now he was as vivid to Dave as if he was right here in the truck, right in front of him and Meddur. Holding out the plate like it was an offering.

They had never exchanged any words, perhaps because of the language barrier, or maybe the boy had been forbidden to speak with him. But Dave thought that the boy appeared to somehow be different from the others. Not just because of his youth. 

Perhaps his reasons for being there were not religion, rebellion, or even money. Maybe he was just Willow’s son?

Or was it all Dave’s imagination? How could he possibly know the real reason this teenager had followed grown men to their own version of holy war?

He would never know. The boy was dead. 

“I don’t carry photos,” Meddur said, his voice low and even. “I never did.”

Dave shook his head. “I know.”

“You think you are lucky, my friend?” Meddur asked cryptically.

“I don’t feel lucky.” Dave felt something sting in his eyes. They were free, but … why couldn’t he feel happy?

“What’s bothering you?” Meddur moved closer on the bench. Dave let him. 

The others didn’t seem to care. They were either dozing or engaged in their own worlds, their own private processing of this new lease on life they had been given.

Thoughts about the past and the future ahead of them. There was so much, wasn’t there?

Dave felt sick again.

The desert just continued outside. Endless.

Dave swallowed. If he could tell anyone, it would probably be Meddur. Even if that night in Bamako hadn’t really meant anything. Or had it?

“I just … ” His voice felt dry, but he forced himself to say it, word for word. “I just wonder sometimes, what is it worth, trying to do the right thing—to help? If we can die at any moment, for any reason?”

“Some would say that’s the best reason of them all.” Meddur looked at Dave, unmoving.

“They believed Allah told them to conquer this country and kill people like you and me,” Dave said. “The French killed them like they were targets on a range.”

Meddur didn’t blink. “I do not think it was my Allah who told our kidnappers to do anything.”

“You saying that’s why they died?”

Meddur spoke slowly. “No. As you say, it could have happened to anyone, even the peaceful Imam in Marseilles who wanted to teach us to read and write our own language. He was mugged and killed on his way home from the grocer.” Meddur closed his eyes.

“I remember you told me that,” Dave said hollowly. “And Joan of Arc believed God had told her to save France. And she, too, died—horribly.”

“So did Jesus,” Meddur said. His eyes were still closed.

Dave didn’t answer that; he was still looking at the desert. “I never wanted to jack cars. I never wanted to try to write an unfinished fantasy novel for 20 years. I never wanted to hit my dad. Or Kevin. All I really, ever wanted was to do some good, to help …” Dave trailed off. 

Something outside had caught his eyes. 

On a ridge, there was a fine hedge of several desert date bushes, the first vegetation he had seen for over a month, a sure sign of leaving the desert. 

Behind the bushes was an abandoned, roofless house made of the usual dried mud bricks everyone used out here because there was little else. But it looked like the roof had collapsed from a fire because blackened rafters were sticking out from it.  And the hedge still seemed to be smoldering.

Dave felt dizzy and thirsty and angry at the same time. Somebody has even set the damn dates on fire, after demolishing the smallholder’s house. Just to make a point. ‘We take your house, and we take your food—leave our turf.’

Had it been some of the other Islamist fighters out there? Or perhaps Tuareg rebels who still hadn’t given up? Did it matter?

The first sign of life here, and it was already being extinguished.

“It’s like that poor guy’s farm up there … ” Dave pointed angrily at the blaze on the ridge. “Doesn’t matter if you are a homophobic militant, a certified saint, or a nobody who fixes cars because he can never be the new Naomi Novik. I know we all have to die, but … I’m sick of everyone getting the same shitty deal from life by God, Allah, fate, or whatever … that no matter what we do, we all go down in flames—like the last of those bushes.” 

“They are not on fire,” Meddur said.

“What?” Dave lifted a hand to his brow. He felt a headache sneaking up on him. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“The dates are not burning,” Meddur said. “What you see are the rays of the sun.”

Dave looked again, and Meddur was right. They had driven further down the track that made for a road, and the ridge soon disappeared behind them. 

He could now see the setting sun from a slightly different angle over the ridge. And it was clear that its rays were only background embers to the hedge rather than the fiery whirls that for a few moments seemed to have torched everything.

The bushes had never really been on fire.

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Cover photo by Aarón Blanco Tejedor on Unsplash

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