heartstringss
Life as a military nurse in the early 20th century was not an easy one, but if anyone was built to handle the stress of that reality, it was Katherine Linden. Before joining the Army with her twin brother at 17, Katherine and Kenneth Linden had already been through a great deal of tragedy on their own. Watching their parents die right before their eyes in their youth, victims among many of a dangerous fever, left them orphans, the last surviving two of their ancestry. Grief was no stranger to the Linden line, the last few generations consisting of hardly nothing else but tragedy and sorrow. How the line had survived this far was a mystery in itself.
Devoting themselves to the good fight and the protection of mankind was only natural – if not to serve, what other excuse could there be for their survival by this point? Maybe it was a death wish, maybe it was a vision… whatever it might be it was destiny for a fact. Somehow, four years later for the male and eight for the female, here at least they were prepared for the fight in their survival.
This was all Kenneth’s reasoning, anyway. The more optimistic and opportunity-driven, purpose-filled of the two, Kenneth was the last dwindling light in Kate’s life that, until it finally sputtered out, was the only thing that kept her going all this time. When his light finally did go out, the new absence left a huge gaping hole in her heart, a scar like no other. Being the last of a lifeline was a huge burden in itself, especially considering the societal expectation that if she wished to solve this problem – this problem, which was the reason for her birth in the first place, being the last fertile female of her line – she need only spread her legs and start a family! Though this was such an absurd notion; how could she manage that being such a pariah in her society, a hard-hearted, worry-worn female – a spinster, she’d even been called? A family was the last thing she wanted, the last thing she was capable of achieving by this point; if not for her brother, she’d rather suffer than conform. And so loneliness was her mate, be it the only one she needed.
And so she devoted herself to a new cause, or maybe it was more an obsession, if you will… The obituary, brief and too-formal, felt forced. There was that great new mystery of her life, her brother “legally declared deceased” though this fact had never been confirmed, no body sent back for the family, no worldly possessions in a neat care package delivered to the home. No, just the notice of death… and even that was hardly enough, especially not for someone as stubborn as Katherine Grace Linden.
It was so unusual of her brother - her best friend, her partner-in-crime - to drift out of communication for such a long period of time. So unusual for him to miss a date on one of her leaves, without any type of letter or notice beforehand to let her know the reason for his absence, and yet that is exactly what happened, that unexpected drifting out of communication over the last few months, until suddenly there was no contact at all. It was hard for Katherine to accept the hard truth of it all: death, something which had stalked her all her life, but now on a much more personal level, the last family she really had left, the only one she cared about in the first place.
She could not, would not accept it. There was no way this could be true! No, not her brother. He had survived so much already, so how could Africa kill him? Africa, the continent he had grown to love so dearly, his last-known dwelling before his so-called “death.”
And so began the hunt.
Retiring from the military for Kate was a feat within itself. Before her brother's disappearance – she refused to call it his “death” - the two had often joked she was going to take up full-time residency within the military. Finally retiring was a sad time, not necessarily for her comrades-in-arms (who had grown to respect her, but also despise her over time) but for her own emotional well-being. This had become her life's purpose, but now there was a new one taking shape: find Kenneth, bring him home... dead or alive, whichever it might be.
It wasn't hard to know where he had been all this time – Africa, that much was obvious – but where in the continent was the more difficult question. Fortunately, her brother had been nothing if not incredibly meticulous in his journey of Africa, a whole wall of journals taking up a bookshelf in the study of the pair's shared home. Kate spent weeks pouring over the books and doing hardly anything else. They were a strange, fascinating detailing, the journals numbering near the hundreds, a great many small, identical-looking leather-clad books, neat and organized on the shelves in chronological order, except for a gap of two months towards the end of the collection. That was the tipping point there, what really pushed her into action: this two-month gap, what was that? The more she thought on it, the closer she came to realizing she had never heard anything of this time period from her brother. All of the other accounts, she could remember bits and pieces of his story-telling, but a strange gap starting around mid-July in 1908, just over two years ago to this day? No, she remembered nothing of that time period...
Except possibly save for a moment of eerie silence on Kenneth's end. The twin-sense had tingled then, alerting her to a possible danger, something wrong on her brother's end, but any time she had asked him about it, he had merely smiled and informed her everything was okay. A fool, such a fool she was that she had believed him then! Surely, whatever the reason for this gap, it must have been the beginning of his undoing... It felt only natural for her to retrace Kenneth's steps in Africa, her own small leather-bound journal in hand, this one detailing a step-by-step list of each place he visited, a brief description of all the different connections he made there. She wasn't nearly as meticulous as Kenneth in her own detailing of the journey, her journals so much sloppier than his own, organized in a way that only she could understand.
It took a whole two years before she finally found her first real clue in Africa. Before that, much of her time was spent retracing, learning the language, the culture, making her own connections. By the time she did get there, it felt like she'd been born for Africa herself, slowly working south up until this point. The clue came in the form of a chance meeting in the capital of Namibia, a hunter who had journeyed with her brother through Africa in the beginning of his own expedition. A large man by the name of Morrow, Jacob Morrow. She recognized the man's name from the early journals of her brother's adventure, but was surprised to learn that apparently that sense of familiarity was a shared experience. Within the first moments of their meeting Morrow had gone stark-white upon seeing her face, almost as if he had seen a ghost! It wasn't a totally unusual occurence for there to be shock whenever someone first met the other half of their pair. The two were twins, after all. In fact, growing up, they had heard numerous times how strange it was that despite the fact they were fraternal, complete opposite sexes, they still looked so identical.
They were in an old village, a cramped marketplace, standing shoulder-to-shoulder at a shopping cart that was selling local fruits when the two first met. They had bumped elbows pretty hard in the jostling of the crowd, which led to Morrow turning towards her to apologize, and then the shock had resulted, the ghastly expression. Kate stood stock-still confused in the circumstances of the encounter until the details became more clear. The man's expression of surprise grew even stronger when he seemed to notice the name inscribed on the dog-tags hanging around her neck – K. Linden, the same thing it had said on her brother's dog-tags. Seeing a similar chain hanging around the man's own neck more or less confirmed her suspicion: this man must have known her brother, most likely from the military. Judging by his reaction, he must have known him pretty well, too.
Once the two got to talking, and finally introduced themselves, that much became obvious. The more they spoke, the more Morrow wound up being actually quite useful in Kate's search. He spoke of that same mystery, Kenneth's disappearance, and recounted a time when the two had parted ways, a legend in a jungle being the reason for their split. So strange her brother's fascination had been, that it was in fact unstoppable. Even more so, the time Morrow spoke of overlapped with the gap in the journals!
When she returned back home she felt once again renewed with purpose, almost feverish as she tore apart her brother's study for any clue of this strange jungle Kenneth had grown so fascinated in. It took days, almost two whole weeks of searching before she finally stumbled upon the hidden shelf, not in his study with the rest of the journals, but rather his own bedroom, of all places. It was so well-hidden, it was hard to believe Kenneth had ever kept a secret like this from her. Settling down onto the edge of a still neatly tucked, but now rather dusty small mattress in the corner of his bedroom with the book in her lap, it wasn't long before Kate realized her hands had now begun to shake, her chest tight as she stared down at the journal, unable to open it.
Even on the surface, the journal was different from the rest: it bore the same leather binding, but was more worn, pages rumpled and torn in places, ink smeared along the edges. Once she finally mustered up the courage to turn the first page, that's when the real amazement began. Over the last two years, she had read and re-read so many of these journals, and never once had she seen one as disorganized as this one. It was hard to believe this was even her brother's work, but judging by the familiar (albeit messier than usual) handwriting and the curvy signature scrawled into the lower corner of the first front page, she couldn't deny the truth: this was Kenneth's work all right, and not only that, but it was indeed the account for the missing months!
After reading the journal for the first time, Kate went days without sleeping, unable to rest, simply reading and re-reading it over again and again. This wasn't altogether unusual, as Kate had suffered from night terrors since childhood, therefore restlessness was a common issue, but this time around it was so much worse than usual. When she finally did sleep for the first time after discovering the journal, even with the help of alcohol to dull her senses and stave off the usual terrors, it was inevitable. That first night was terrible, heart-wrenching, her throat sore and raw-red from all the times she had woken up in the middle of the night to find herself either screaming or crying or both.
Finally, after nearly two weeks of repeating this ritual, she gave in. Retracing Kenneth's footsteps in Africa had been exciting before, but no longer could she settle for only knowing half of the truth. And so, packing her bags, she returned to Africa, working her way further and further south to Kenneth's last-known resting place and closest detailed location from the home of this mysterious jungle, which she only knew as Mlezi wa Msitu, the home of the one called “Imamu”, some type of spiritual leader for the forest - not just a spirit, but a real live person. The whole thing was a headache in itself, just this insane unending search, which was now leading to a more mysterious part of Africa, some place only few knew of and even fewer ventured. It was exciting, but also heart-wrenching to go to Africa on her own, a place she had never pictured herself going without the accompaniment of her twin. Fortunately, the two shared their great love of adventure. With many of Kenneth's connections now serving as her own connections, she picked her way through Africa, sometimes in the accompaniment of others, and other times traveling alone. Though, in her mind, this one truth remained: as long as she had the journals, she was never truly alone.
It took months of wandering around the lower half of the continent in search of the mystery village, fueled only by exhaustion, before she received her next clue: another man, this one local, who claimed he knew of her brother and could provide her with the answers to all of the questions she so desired on his disappearance. She was hesitant at first, but reminded herself to remain calm. Tracking Kenneth's connections, it wasn't the first time she had heard someone say they knew her brother, but the more south she got, the more promising each exchange became. If nothing else, this was just another lead she needed to follow up.
“I believe I knew your brother,” the man spoke when they first met, his hand rising to lift the thin chain from around her neck, thumb grazing over the two small stainless steel plates detailing the usual army markings: blood type, service number, last name, initials, sex, and religious designation (the last of which simply said NP, for no preference). With the man leaning down so close to her face inspect the necklace, Kate couldn't help but withdraw within herself. She visibly flinched, but restrained herself just enough so that when her hand moved up to pull the chain out from beneath his fingers and tuck it back into her blouse, the gesture would hopefully come across less rude and rather more reserved in the end.
She gave a thin, tight-lipped smile as she took a seat atop a nearby upturned bucket at what the man seemed to be using as a table beneath the canopy that extended out from the roof of his small, makeshift home. She put on her best smile, unaware of herself leaning in like a lion inspecting its prey just before it goes to strike. A stray wavy brown lock fell into her face as she leaned down, obstructing her view and those sharp green eyes which she was known best for, and she reached up to tuck it back behind her ear before going on. Her voice was low, husky, still raw from the night terrors which had plagued her for what felt like months by this point.
“K. Linden, yes... we are the same. Did you, by chance, know where he spent his last few months?” she spoke in rough Swahili, a language which had taken her months to learn. “A village, by the name of – Mlezi wa Msitu,” She pulled out Kenneth's journal on the village, and watched as the man's eyes lit up with recognition. “If so, I would like to go there... Could you take me?”
