"The Gypsy Girl"

“The child is playing in the wood box.” “The child has gone off with the boys.” “The child is still sleeping.” She didn’t have a name, the little orphan girl. She’d been in and out of different orphanages. No one ever wanted to adopt her, and many places were running out of room. It was a dirty place, where she last was. On the outskirts of town, with tired old workers, it loomed black and dreary on the Scottish highlands, shrouded in mist. The place was practically waiting to be raided. But not by the camps of soldiers, that so often flooded the streets of the towns; foreigners just trying to get some food. It was another rainy night when the band of gypsies crept over the asylum walls. The crumbling brick dragging dust into the darkened, silent hallways. The men were scavenging for food or fuel when they came across the toddler girl in her crib. She was the only toddler they had; the rest all adopted or recently died from common children’s illnesses. One young man came close and reached out to touch her dark hair. His barren wife had always wanted a daughter. A scoop of his arm and she was gently placed in the large rucksack, along with the food and trinkets. Carried swiftly over the walls and down the road, out of the orphanage. And so the child joined the small band, on an impulse. She grew up with them quite happily. Wanting for nothing. She learned the feel of the hills rolling beneath her feet, the sun on her face and the wind in her hair. Her hands were never clean and her feet were always calloused. But she was free and she was unafraid.