The Child

by Dana Littlepage Smith

One day a child was walking with her parents. Many people were walking, they formed a long line. By accident, her mother's hand slipped from hers. One morning, her father was gone. Soon she was walking with many other children.

Everyone wondered, but no one dared ask, why they had to leave their friends, their houses, their schools, their gardens and even their cats behind.

They walked for many days and nights. Many people cried. The child wanted to ask why. Why must I leave my friends, my house, my school, my garden and even my cat behind?

But she simply kept walking. By that time hundreds and thousands of others were walking too.

All the people made up a long line that curved through the hills. A great sea of faces arose.

As they walked, the child watched. One day she saw a snail. "Snails are smarter than we are," she said to a new friend she'd met in the line. "Why?" the other child asked.

"They carry their homes on their backs. They'll never have to leave their house, their school, their garden, and all that they love behind."

"Oh," said her friend who wasn't quite sure she understood why the child wanted to be like the snail.

Each night the children slept beneath the trees. They were cold. The moon shone. She was their single light sailing through the dark sky.

"The moon is also more clever than we," said the child to her new friend who was shivering as she tried to fall to sleep.

The girl was too tired to ask why.

Still the child spoke quietly, "She carries her light with her. All that she is, she gives. All that she needs, she has. She'll never be forced to leave her house, her school, her garden, and even her cat behind."

"Wise moon," smiled the other child who was now dreaming of loaves of bread as big as planets and pats of butter blazing like the stars. She, like all the others, had grown very hungry.

Still they walked, day and night. No one knew just where they were going. By now they were too hungry and too tired to ask why.

Each day there were more and more people walking.

Thousands and thousands, grandmothers and babies, were made to leave their towns and villages and fields and friends behind.

The child kept watching. She hoped that if she looked very carefully she would learn a way to be like the moon and the snail who never had to leave their house, their school, their garden, their cat and all that they loved behind.

The child looked and looked but saw nothing new. The fields of mud where they slept each night just grew.

One dawn, while the other children slept, she tried to put her teddy bear and her doll on her back. Maybe she could be like the snail who never had to leave everything behind. She wanted to smile, but deep inside she knew she had left her friends, her school, her garden, and even her cat behind.

That night she decided, if I can't be a snail, I'll be like the moon. I'll keep nothing. That way I'll never have to leave everything I love behind. So she hid her bear and her doll behind a tree. She stood alone in the forest. It made her sad to have nothing now. She scrambled across the wood and clutched her toys closely.

She understood, she could not be like the moon. She was not a snail either. She was only a child.

Rain fell and the people grew sadder. After weeks and weeks, the child closed her eyes and felt a wind on her face.

The wind whispered, "I have nothing, no home of my own, no loaf of bread, no house, no school, no garden, yet everything in the world is mine. I blow through the bakery and smell the fresh loaves, I curve through the pines. I move where I like. Still I am only the wind. Yet you are a child!"

The child wrinkled her brow, she didn't understand. "Yes, I am a child. Sadly, I can never be like the snail who leaves nothing that she loves behind. Nor can I be like the moon who sails so brightly through the sky. I can only be me, a small child."

The wind whispered, "Yes and that is your wonderful secret. You are a child! Unlike the moon you can't live without bread. Unlike the snail, you need a house and a school and a garden with your friends. Unlike me, you cannot fly.

Yet on your long walk you have been very wise, you have learned many things. You have made a new friend and watched the snail and the moon. You have even learned to listen to me, the wild wind."

And as the wind disappeared the child heard these last words,

"Keep looking. Keep watching and wondering. See and think & always ask why, for these are your greatest gifts and they belong to you and only to you because you are a child."

Dana Smith writes & illustrates from Devon England and teaches creative writing and other classes in Exeter Prison.