The Little Village

They gathered together, these people of the dawn. The ones that rose with the Sun, and set with it too. Farming was a hard labour for little reward, but it was a necessity of life. Without it, they would have no purpose to their lives, and they would likely starve not only themselves, but some of the general population too. Neighbouring towns relied on their crops, without wheat there would be no bread. And the crops would not tend to themselves. And so there was no kindness or gentleness of life to these hardy people, just the reality of a daily struggle for survival and a simple understanding of the realities of life - and death.

But for them, who knew nothing else, it didn't matter. This was the fact of life for them and they were grateful for small mercies; a good crop, rain that came at the right time, and season free of pests.

They were by no means stupid, they knew their craft intimately, in a way that one not born to this life would never learn in a lifetime. They knew how to coax new growth from the hardened soils, they knew when to rotate the crop for the season, and they knew how to watch until the right moment to harvest. They just didn't know the rules to society - how to hold a knife with delicacy or how to say the right thing when given some news that might have elicited sympathy from a different listener. So they preferred the company of their own, and for that the neighbouring town was thankful. Because they, too, weren't sure how to handle these folk that said so little but thought so deeply.

Life in any outback may be alone and lost in it's own set of rules, but general governance was still in charge of all crime and punishment scenarios that could arise. And over the years there had been a few; a stranger in town who was looking to escape to a place where he thought he would be hidden from view forever and so would not be called to account for his crimes; or the child who had run away from the community because she thought she was better than what was on offer to her who eventually turned to unsavoury and illegal methods of earning a living, who's crimes caught up with her. Eventually when she returned to the community, word spread and the long arm of the Law arrived to carry her off. So even with their close knit community and even closer mouths, word got out and they were reminded once again that they may live by their own right and wrong, but that their own justice was nowhere near the end of the case in the eyes of the law.

And so it happened one day that one of their own had fallen foul of the Law of the Land. Old man Eli had been preparing his grounds for a new season of crops, when he had come across what at first glance appeared to be some sort of organ. He shifted the blade of grass he had between his teeth from one side to the other, hoping that it would disappear in the time he stood contemplating it. When it didn't, he stepped away from his horse who was pulling the plough and indicated to the intelligent creature that he was to wait with a motion of his hand and an inclination of his head. The boy running behind the plough grabbing at the stray bits of weed being churned up looked up expectantly. He was a little less intelligent than the horse and needed a bit more instruction than just a few motions of the hand, but he knew better than to interrupt Old Man Eli's thoughts. He stood watching curiously as Old Man Eli walked a few paces ahead of the horse and plough. His curiousity was peaked further when he saw the old man fall to his knees. The boy stood for a minute watching the scene unfold before him, mirroring Old Man Eli's movents of a moment before, until he realised that this was so beyond the boundaries of normal that it bordered on perhaps being an emergency of sorts. Rushing forward now, worried that perhaps Old Man Eli was having a heart attack, he was horrified to see the old man lift something up. Something that appeared bloodied and broken, but that had some form of a human shape evident in the way Old Man Eli was cradling it. The boy stopped in his tracks and stared.

Old Man Eli's face crumpled as he cradled the broken baby to his chest. For a man who had lost his wife to childbirth many, many years ago and never having had the willing to find a new wife, it seemed like he knew exactly how to hold the little thing.

"Oh no," yelled the boy, "I will fetch my Mama Old Man Eli. She knows what to do with dem babies." The boy's mother was the community midwife, the community having a strong distrust of the local Town's Doctor (who had an equal distrust of them), and she having earned the position by birthing thirteen of her own children over the years without mishap. Before the old man could tell him not to bother, the boy was bouncing over the fields like a jackrabbit being hounded by dogs and was gone into the distance.

The old man held the child to his chest and felt his tears run down his leathery face. He may seem hard as granite to the country folk around him, he the natural leader by virtue of his age, but inside he still felt the hurt of the loss of his wife and family that he never had keenly. He closed the baby's eyes and brushed the ants off it's ear, the tiny perfect little being.

The midwife arrived back with the boy, and she took stock of the situation in one glance. Her eyes met the old man's in grim understanding, and she held his elbow as he lifted himself off the ground. She turned briefly away to her son, instructing him to unharness the horse as the work would not be continued today. The bewildered boy looked to ask if his mother wasn't going to do something with the baby, but her look stopped his words from forming in his mouth. He simply did as she had told him to, taking the horse back to his barn and the food he had not so rightly earned by doing so little today.

That evening the little community of country workers gathered in Old Man Eli's even older house. All the children of the community had been left behind in the midwife's home, being cared for by the older children and the young unmarried-as-yet girls. This was not something that the children needed to be privy to.

It was obvious that they knew who the mother was. She was the most beautiful girl that had ever been born in their village, and they took such pride in her. She was their harvest princess every year, she was the face of them. She was joyful and her kindess shone out of her face like the warming rays of the sun. They had watched her fade over the last few months too, and now they knew why. They, in their own intuitive way, had watched her grow bigger every month, but had hoped that she would come forward to one of them. It was not their place to pry. It was clear she hadn't been able to tell anyone, to look to any of them for help. She must have been terrified of disappointing them, it must have been that that held her back. It was equally clear that the baby had probably been born live, but had no chance of survival after having been abandoned in the field to fend for itself. Old Man Eli wished with all his heart that he had begun his ploughing earlier, there may have been a chance...

They knew the Law would require notice of the happenings. But they also knew that the girl required protection. She would be harassed by the Law that didn't understand, and they thought that they did. They had seen her head off to the Town wearing her best and with flowers in her hair. They thought maybe she would bridge the two different groups of society, that she would be the one that brought them all together. They heard talk of the going's on in the big house; with the son who promised her the moon and gave her grief instead. They watched as her carefree face faded and her belly grew, and they watched as she didn't come forward to them and noted how he had gone away.

Some of the harder village folk were keen to wash their hands of her, to get on with their own lives and let her pick up the pieces of hers. These were the people who preferred to stay on the right side of the Law, they feared the retribution to their village community life if they were to be found out. The women particularly, maybe secretly they had envied her and this felt like vindication. She was no better than them after all, she was simply a vain and silly girl who had got her comeuppance.

But some of the village community were stricken by double-grief. Grief for the little lost soul that had gone to it's death unwanted and unloved; and also grief for the girl who had held their world in her hands, who had endured what she had alone and scared, right at the rock bottom of the wheel of fortune. A girl who's life had held so much promise and had landed up in the depths of tragedy. Was this not punishment enough?

The village debated all night, little factions dividing what had always been a collective. There was anger, there was sadness, there was fear too. By going to the Law, they were doing what was required. By not going to the Law and handling it in their own way, they were doing what felt right. But which was the right choice?

Eventually Old Man Eli, the natural Leader of the community, the one who had perhaps therefore rightfully been the finder of the baby, stood up. He was not going to watch his community fall apart, torn to shreds by this terrible ordeal. He stood up for them all, and spoke of the way that they were, and what made them who they are. He spoke of right and wrong, the laws of the land and indeed their own unofficial laws, and what they were going to do. Old Man Eli ended the argument with one final statement: that as the patriarch of their community, he had decided that they were going to stick together and protect their own.

They took a moment to digest this, these simple folk. They weighed up the pro's and con's in their own minds, and one by one they nodded. It took a little bit of time, a few muttered words from one or two of the more embittered members, but soon they all nodded in agreement, happy that the decision had been made for them.

And they came together like a village community should when called to action; to protect the girl, and to shield her from the horror of what she had been through. They dealt with the matter in their own way and in their own time, preferring to attend to their own business without the outside world interfering in the way they ran their community. The baby was laid to rest in a purpose built shrine that had appeared almost overnight, where no plaque was laid but where fresh flowers were left weekly by the villagers as they remembered the circumstances that had nearly pulled them apart. That baby became legendary as a lesson to love, protect and speak out when you feel someone is carrying far more burdens than they should. It was a lesson that the village would never forget.