Their sister Mary spoke with Nigel Marsh of aid agency World Vision. Names of children and their relatives have been changed to protect their identity.
It is growing dark and Mary&${esc.hash}39;s sisters hurriedly finish their chores. Other children from the village of Forgod are already walking past outside, flittering ghosts disappearing into the gathering gloom.
The three girls hate to leave home, but a tense knot in their stomachs urges them to head outside and join the Pied Piper&${esc.hash}39;s procession into the town of Gulu, 2 kilometres (1.2 miles) away.
Mary, 15, shares the sentiments, but she steels herself to remain at home. She arrived today from her first term at boarding school in Masaka, far to the south, and she wants to stay home, whatever the risk.
As the rain-burdened clouds pile up, the younger girls glance fearfully into the gathering Ugandan twilight.
Annette, 12, sweeps around the packed-earth compound. Priscilla, 11, straightens out their few possessions and tidies up the reed mats and blankets on the floor of their mud-and-thatch hut. Constance, five, stands at the door and watches, wide-eyed, tightly clutching a thin grey blanket.
It has been more than a year since they dared to sleep at home.
The girls finish. Without a pause they brush past Mary, touching her gently on the shoulder, eager to be with their newly returned sister, but having to leave. They bid goodbye to the aunt who has cared for them since their parents died of AIDS and briskly kiss their sickly baby sister.
Annette grabs Constance&${esc.hash}39;s hand and leads the way down the earthen road into the dusk. As they walk, fast and wordless, towards town, the red-stained cumulus clouds flicker menacingly with rain-season lightning.
The girls soon become anonymous, swallowed up among dozens, hundreds and finally thousands of other children all heading into Gulu, the "night commuters" of northern Uganda.
This is a generation for whom safety means leaving adults at home and spending each night under canvas, or in rough shelters, or on the verandahs of schools and hospitals.
Almost 20,000 children each night make the walk into 20 makeshift centres around the town. At times when security is worse and the dreaded Lord&${esc.hash}39;s Resistance Army is murdering and abducting children, the centres are overwhelmed with four times that number.
Mary, staying at home in Forgod, is taking a calculated risk. If she gets it wrong, and the rebels come to her home as they have in the past, they will take her and force her to carry their stolen bounty. They will beat her mercilessly, kill her if she doesn&${esc.hash}39;t walk fast, or force her to become a child-bearing "wife" to a rebel commander.
"I was very scared to stay home, to be honest," Mary says the next morning, serving tea and ground nuts to her visitors." It took me a long time to get to sleep, thinking about what could happen to me if the rebels came."
Until Mary started at boarding school, she was playing the role of parent.
"My parents died of AIDS in 2003, both of them. I was helping as they got sick and died - I had to fetch water, give mum her drinking water, prepare food for her. I washed the clothes, because she was so weak."
She speaks softly, but without hesitation in good English. Children in Gulu have seen so much horror that HIV is a less potent source of shame and discrimination than it is in other parts of Africa.
"I had to take care of the children, because mum was always sleeping toward the end," she continues. Then, with an air of finality and a cheerless smile, as though explaining why taxes exist: "They are still young, I am the eldest; I have to care for them."
There are very few ways a young girl can earn money to feed her starving siblings, and baby Grace, who shows all the signs of AIDS, was a demanding one-year-old to look after. The pressures led Mary into some difficult choices for raising money.
Christine Ajok, volunteer matron at the Noah&${esc.hash}39;s Ark centre for night commuters to sleep, explains: "Some of the older girls don&${esc.hash}39;t come to the centre when they leave home at night. Instead they come to the town and find someone to sleep with, for money.
"They can earn 500 to 1000 shillings (30 to 60 cents). And that&${esc.hash}39;s going to lead them to our biggest problem here - the spread of HIV/AIDS."
Staff at the centre managed to find a sponsor for Mary and send her to school.
Sharon&${esc.hash}39;s great uncle, 26-year-old James, tries to keep a watchful eye on his extended family, but a lot of his time is taken up caring for his younger brother, a recently returned abductee.
"All the children here, from an age when they can walk, have to go to town to sleep, to be safe from the rebels," says William. Along the way, he says, older boys try to persuade girls to have sex.
"During school time the children get home when they are tired, sometimes they have homework - and then they have to walk to Noah&${esc.hash}39;s Ark to sleep for the night!
"In the morning they get up when it is light, and walk back home in time to get ready for school again. It affects them all, in one way or another. They become sad, or they don&${esc.hash}39;t do so well at school."
Interview with Nigel Marsh, World Vision, May 2005Read about the AlertNet poll of child danger spots:
- LEAD STORY: Sudan is most dangerous place for children - poll
- CONGO CASE STUDY: Aimerance, girl soldier
- SUDAN CASE STUDY: Mohammed, displaced in Darfur
Visit World Vision&${esc.hash}39;s website to find out more about its work in northern Uganda.
Find out more in our Uganda violence crisis briefing.
Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of Reuters.Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
