CANDLELIT CHRONICLES: HISTORIC HAUNTS

June 22_Logging Bird Habitats-& Free Read 681 wc

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-oil-spill-bird-count-201006...











from my novel-in-progress, an Environmental Disaster Fantasy (study the above cited article, and you will weep) Finding The Abandoned Child:





Chapter Six





         ““I can show you exactly the spot,” I had told the Constable about the location where I had spotted the naked, silent, infant a few minutes earlier. Once the Healer had arrived in his carriage and had pulled out the portable oxygen mask and gurney, and brought over his bag of implements, I agreed to relinquish the child for checking over his state of health. He looked fine to me (other than being unswaddled) but the fact that he was curiously silent and had been ever since, apparently, before I found him, did not necessarily bode well. Silence in an infant, I was sure, was not always a good thing, unless the child was asleep, as this one was not.





         The Healer took charge of the child, placing him securely on a gurney and fastened with restraints, while the woman who had called City Dispatch for me and her son-or nephew-watched over these proceedings silently and solemnly. Expressionless would have described the lady indeed. The lady Constable-in-Training and I walked back up the alley toward the street and then turned right to cross an unevenly-grassed expanse dividing the alley, and its first shed, from Denguer Street. I took her across Denguer and up on to the curb, where I stood on the grassy sward between street and sidewalk and pointed at the spot in the house's yard where I had first seen the silent unblinking infant. The Constable-in-Training-she now introduced herself to me at Pegolet Larrs-stepped carefully onto the edge of the sidewalk closer to where I waited, and leaned over to peer into the high grass of the lawn. I asked her why she didn't step out on to the sidewalk.





         “Well, you walked here, didn't you, Miss?”





“Fenrich-Fenrich Wales. Yes, I came up this sidewalk to the end right there, at Swan. As far as I know, my Mother walked this way too, but she had been out of sight, oh, several blocks earlier, maybe five or six blocks. But I walked to the edge of Swan, thought about crossing, decided not to, then stepped back up on to the curb there”-I pointed to the edge where the Denguer Street sidewalk stopped at Swan Street's edge-


“and then I paused for not more than a couple of moments, decided to return to the Gymnasium, and turned around and started back this way, down this sidewalk-so, yes.”





“Well, you passed on the sidewalk-you saw no one then for several blocks?”





“Not on this street-Denguer-across Swan I saw a few folks crossing between apartment houses, maybe two or three or half a dozen, just walking in and out and back and forth, some carrying boxes, others beverage cups, one had a guitar-”





“Okay, but no one carried an infant?”





“Oh no, these were folks of the age of Apothecary students, casually dressed.”





“You would make a good detector, Miss Wales. Very keenly observant.”





         At this I blushed, while she continued:





                   “Did you see anything in this lawn, notice anything odd, about this yard or this house, or any other, when you first passed as you walked toward Swan Street?”





“Oh no-no I did not. If you are going to ask me if I glanced down at the lawn, no-because I had my mind on tracking my Mother, and I was looking straight ahead, actually sort of looking into the distance, trying to see if I could spot her. That is probably why I noticed the people walking on the far side of Swan, because I was always looking some distance ahead of me.”





“So the infant might have lain here as you passed the first time, and you would not have noticed it, because you neither looked down nor heard it-or it might have been placed here while your back was turned and you faced across Swan, lost in thought?”





“Either could have been.”