Here and There

Here and There is Apollo Kagwa’s name for a moment of shared existence across the boundary between reality and eternity. First attached to Brian Kagwa’s birth, the expression returns in a darkened room as Apollo imagines that the boundary might still be within reach; its meaning rests in that unresolved passage between the known and the unknowable.

Birth Across Two Worlds

Apollo’s recollection turns not to the surrounding events but to the instant when Brian’s head, still enclosed in the amniotic sac, pressed against his open palm. The sac burst as Brian slipped out, covering Apollo’s hands and the dirty floor. In Apollo’s memory, time slowed: their child seemed to exist in two worlds at once, reality and eternity.

Because Apollo and Emma Valentine were both touching Brian at that instant, Apollo imagines that they, too, crossed between those worlds. For a moment, the three of them were together in Here and There. The phrase gives the birth a fairy-tale dimension, while Apollo’s reflection presents such stories as having once been meant for adults as well as children.

The Boundary Returns

Later, standing in semidarkness, Apollo feels much as he did during the birth. He thinks he could reach out and touch a thin membrane in the air, like a curtain he might part. The remembered threshold thus becomes a possibility in the present, not merely a description of the past.

Apollo’s questions about what he might find on the other side—and what might find him—leave the boundary open and unsettling. Before the uncertainty is answered, Lillian Kagwa turns on the light. She says she woke with the worst feeling that Apollo had disappeared. Her words echo the scene’s concern with presence and absence, but neither she nor the light explains what Here and There ultimately contains.