The Foundling Read online

THE FOUNDLING

  By Mark Knight

  Copyright © 2012 by Mark Knight

  All Rights Reserved.

  THE FOUNDLING

  A nervous rattling of the windows was the first sign that a real stinker of a storm was coming.

  Maeva was eighty-four years old and had seen plenty of storms. The one that she remembered most clearly was, oddly enough, the one furthest back in her memory. She had been four years old. The house seemed big back then – even with her three brothers, mother, and father all elbowing for living space within its three tiny rooms. The little Irish island’s noon sky had gone a very contrary shade of purple, like a great big bruised backside. Cows and sheep huddled together in groups. The leaves on the trees hung on for dear life as winds full of devilment snapped them this way and that. Although safe indoors, the scenes outside of the windows had put fear in her little heart, the first real fear she had known. Mother, as always, had been there to comfort her, tucking her in to bed and staying with her, enfolded in bedside candlelight.

  Another horrific storm had been back in the Sixties. High winds had caused the cargo vessel, Plassey, to smash against jagged rocks just off Inis Oírr. Every one of the crew was saved, thanks to some quick-thinking – and very brave – islanders. An event that island folk still talked about today … as far as she knew.

  The coming tempest had resurrected those feelings of fear. Maeva had been kind, helpful, and faithful to God for year upon year. When she’d needed help, or food, or a doctor, it came. Somehow, it always came. In the past year, since the passing of her dear husband, the help arrived less and less. After the funeral, the nearest of her island neighbours had knocked upon her door every morning to see if she needed anything. Her favourite (and only surviving) niece, Róisín, then took over that duty. Every Monday morning she ferried from Ros an Mhíl in Connemara, across the cold waters of Galway Bay, with food, woollen socks, and any medicines that had been on Maeva’s list. That had ended as well. Róisín had passed away on New Year’s Day, after a long bout with influenza.

  Maeva knew she wasn’t completely alone. After all, Inis Oírr, one of the Aran Islands, warmed itself with just over three hundred inhabitants. At one time, she could see the neighbours’ houses from her own. But her eyes were just too poor now. The dim images were her only friends now. No living family members to look in on her. No friends or neighbours to come to call.

  The winds got louder. Moving from window to window, she closed every curtain, keeping cold at bay. Waddling over to the range, she pushed open the metal door with her cane and threw in two more pieces of turf. The earthy aroma that already pervaded the house became even richer.

  Something went thunk and Maeva jumped. Usually a sound like that meant she’d dropped her cane. But her cane was still firmly in her grasp.

  Maeva rubbed her chin. Something had hit the roof. Braving the winds, she went outside to have a look. If the storm had blown a branch on to her roof, she wanted to know just how big it was.

  What she saw embedded in the thatch made her doubt what little eyesight she had. It was not a branch. The thing was small, white, and wriggling.

  “Mother of God,” she breathed. “What are you?”

  At first, she thought it was some large bird, like a goose or duck. Geese and ducks, however, didn’t cry. Whatever creature had fell on to her house was bawling its eyes out. Rather like …

  “A child!” Maeva exclaimed.

  That hardly cleared up the mystery. How could a child fall out of the sky and hit her roof? And why did the tot seem to have – she squinted hard – wings?

  The next thing she knew, the tiny person was airborne. The child spiralled around in the air like an excited bee, finally swooping right in to Maeva’s arms. Although small, the impact was enough to knock the poor old woman on to her well-padded rump.

  “Well, this is a fine turn of events!” Maeva exclaimed, holding the child so that she could see him clearly. Him? Yes. She decided it was, indeed, a him. Not much older than a year, the babe was chubby-cheeked and blue-eyed, head bursting with white-blonde curls. He wore only a wrap of flaxen cloth around his waist. And, of course, there were the wings. Each wing was about a foot long, as white as alabaster, and as lushly feathered as that of a swan.

  With some effort, Maeva stood up with child in arms. She looked him over, and over again, puzzling and puzzling as to just how such a creature could exist. But he did exist, and this was not a dream. For now, she decided, she’d have to settle on that. The sky had become darker, the wind laced with searing cold rain.

  “Right, so, little man,” she said to the child. “Let’s get out of this devilment and into the warm.”

  The door closed and bolted against the gales, Maeva wrapped the child in a blanket and set him upon her soft, well-sat-in reading chair. The house’s meagre bulbs barely illuminated the little lad, but Maeva could see that the rain had plastered his curls to his head. Wrapped in the blanket, wings well hidden, he looked like any ordinary baby boy.

  “We have to get you some food inside you, don’t we, child?” she said in what she hoped was a motherly voice. “Then we can figure out where you came from.”

  The child only sniffled.

  “I don’t have much,” Maeva said, opening each kitchen cupboard in turn and scrutinizing the dim interior. “Not much at all. Pat Connolly’s grocery van used to stop here every Tuesday, but he’s gone and retired. This very week. So, until we have some visitors, we’ll have to make do with cabbage and crusts of bread. I only wish that I still had the old high chair,” she said to the lad. “It was my own high chair, made by my father. ‘Twas in that closet, there, until last April. Tom Collins from down the road took it away to repair it. But he never returned, so he didn’t.” She sighed. “Sure, maybe he got married.”

  A particularly strong gale shook the house. The door to the closet opened. As Maeva went to shut it, she saw something inside that she was sure shouldn’t have been there.

  “It’s the old high chair!”

  Pulling it from the closet, she looked it over in amazement. Indeed, it was her high chair, and as good as new.

  “That’s very peculiar,” she said, lifting the winged tot into the chair. “Tom must have come back and put it in there when I was asleep! Or maybe the old memory is worse than I thought!”

  The little cherub flapped his wings and slapped the high chair table with his little palms, finding this all very interesting.

  “I’m afraid I still haven’t a clue what to feed you,” Maeva confessed, knowing that the child didn’t understand a word she was saying. Looking in the cupboards again, she was surprised to find some tins she hadn’t seen there before. Try as she might, she couldn’t make out the words on the labels. The solution – open them up and sniff.

  “It smells like rice pudding” she exclaimed, truly mystified. “I cannot for the life of me remember buying rice pudding. My old, muddled brain!”

  It didn’t matter. The child loved it.

  After giving the child a warm bath and singing him an old Gaelic lullaby, Maeva laid the boy in the bed that had once belonged to her brother. In fact, it had belonged to all over her brothers, because they had all slept in it together.

  “Good night, little lad,” she said, stroking his curls. Maeva said her rosary and then got in to her own bed.

  The storm had lessened with each passing hour. By morning, sun was shining and the landscape was dry. Only scattered twigs and leaves were the only indication that there had been anything amiss with the weather.

  “Dear, oh, dear, child,” Maeva said to the child after sitting him in the high chair again. “I have no milk for your breakfast. Unless you like Long Life milk – and I fear I’ve none of that!” Checking the cupb
oards, she confirmed her fears. “There’s not a bit in it!”

  Up until last week, she had no concern about food. Someone always came to look in on her. The grocery van always came. As for milk, that came fresh from the cow, until that cow was stolen – probably by tinkers. At a pinch, she could even walk the mile long distance to the shop. But even that was impractical now, her knees being as bad as they were. She had little choice. She’d have to walk. And she’d have to take the little winged marvel with her.

  “What’s Mrs Brody going to say when she sees you in her shop?” Maeva asked of the boy as she put on her coat. “A little ladeen with wings! Surely to God, she’s think she’s gone stone mad.” The babe only smiled back at her. “We’ll just have to wrap them up, out of sight and tucked away.”

  But when she opened the door, babe in arms, an unexpected sight stopped her dead in her tracks.

  “My cow! Saints be praised!”

  Standing right there outside the door was her milking cow, big and black and with an udder bulging with milk. She was eating the grass that grew along the little stone path that led to the entrance, content as can be.

  “Well, boyo,” Maeva said to the child, eyes wide with wonder. “It looks like we’ll be having fresh milk after all!”

  Pain shot through her back. With some effort, she put the child