Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: JOY (12/07/17)
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TITLE: Emergence | Previous Challenge Entry
By Ann Stocking
12/14/17 -
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“Water?” A tin cup appeared, and I shook my head. I decided I would not drink or eat until I returned to Mother and home. I sniffled, wiping my running nose on my sleeve, forgetting the handkerchief Mother’d tucked in my pocket when she kissed me good-bye.
We arrived in a village before sundown. The other children were claimed, and Teacher stood with me, her hand on my shoulder, waiting. Then out of the gloaming, an old man drew up in a tiny cart pulled by a pony hardly larger than a big dog.
“Go along, Meredith.” Teacher nudged me.
“Meredith, are ye? Well, come on, child,” he said, his accent so strong I barely recognized my name.
I clambered into the wagon, which had room for a little girl, a satchel holding her best dress, and the old man. He clucked to the pony and we set out.
By dark, we’d come to a cottage. But I was so grieved, I was oblivious to its charms: the glowing fire, the snug warmth, the simple furniture.
“Ye’ll sleep yonder.” The man pointed to a cot by the hearth. “Are ye hungry, child?”
My growling belly betrayed me. A slab of butter-slathered bread and jam was placed before me, but I was soon too weary to chew.
Sunshine was streaming in the window when I awoke, tucked in the cot. The old man was gone, but a pot of porridge simmered over the fire. I leaped up, found my shoes, and ran outside. Green hills rolled to the horizon under a sky so wide and bright, it made my eyes smart.
“Aye, there ye are.” The old man popped around the shed door, his silvery hair sticking out around his head like a dandelion clock. He lifted a pail, grinning. “Milk for our breakfast. Shall we?”
The old man’s name was Thomas. I was to help him, but I didn’t know how to stack firewood in the basket or wash up the crockery or get water from the spring. I was afraid of the chickens, the cow.
“Ye’ll learn, child. The old man smiled patiently, guiding my reluctant hands. I wished to tell him I didn’t want to learn anything or be friendly with the animals. My unhappiness smothered me like a woolen sweater on a hot day, prickly and uncomfortable. Every night, I cried in the little cot by the fire, thinking of my own bed and Mother.
One day, as the rain slanted down, the vicar came. Jubilation filled my heart as he drew a telegram from his pocket.
“You’ve come to take me home! Tell me you are.”
“Oh, child.” The vicar took Thomas aside and they spoke quietly, grimly. Then the vicar touched my cheek and left.
Our neighbourhood in London had been bombed. Our home was gone.
And Mother, too.
I don’t remember much about the following days, as I grasped that I’d never see Mother again. Thomas was kind, as I dropped deeper into sorrow, but neither he, nor Christmastime, nor the greening of spring lifted me.
One day, we went to the meadow, where the sheep were. One of the ewes was giving birth, and awed, I watched as a tiny lamb was born. But our elation was fleeting; it wasn’t well with the ewe.
“Meredith, the lamb.”
I looked from Thomas, who was tending the stricken ewe, to the lamb, enclosed and still within a slimy membrane. Urged by instinct, I tore the film from the lamb’s nose, and as I rubbed the lamb with my sweater, willing the tiny animal to breathe, anguished sobs surged from me. When the lamb was breathing and bleating, I looked up at Thomas. The ewe was dead.
“The lamb is yours, Meredith.”
Those words kindled a fierce, insistent fire.
I tried, in vain, to join her to another ewe, so she sucked milk droplets from my fingers instead. I kept her warm in my cot by the hearth. Always, Thomas nodded, smiling.
The lamb thrived, in spite of, or maybe because of, my ineptness. In time, though my heart ached, I learned that in despair, there is hope. In death, there is life.
And like seeds, joy must be sown in a dark place.
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I cried at the end of this sad but poignant story.
Penny N.