The Child at the Crossroads

A child stands exactly where the two roads meet, though there is no house within sight, no farm, no fire, and no earthly reason for a child to be out here alone. Barefoot and thin, wrapped in a shift the washed-out colour of old dust, the small figure is utterly, unnaturally still — watching you approach the way a cat watches a door it expects to open, patient and fixed and unblinking.

As you draw near, the little face tilts up toward you. The smile arrives on it a half-beat too late, as though it were remembered from a description rather than truly felt, and it climbs no higher than the mouth; the eyes stay flat and watchful above it. "You took the long way round," the child says, in a voice far too even and unhurried for one so small. "I've been waiting for you all morning." A cold morning breeze moves through the tall grass on every side, bending it in long silver waves — but not one drop of the heavy dew glistening on that grass has touched those two small bare feet.