The wagoner stood up on his seat and peered off into the woodland. All of us followed his gaze. Frost singed every brown leaf that dared to still cling to a tree. Nothing moved. I was the only one who had the naivete to ask aloud, “Is that a baby?”
The cry was sharp and distressed, more animal than I had ever heard a baby sound before, really wailing. It was the cry of an infant. Its pitch was high, its shrieks were breathless. I stepped off the road and tried to focus my vision through the tangle of trees and brambles. Some distance away, I thought I could see an unnatural bundle of cloth on the ground. I took another step.
“George, don’t,” said Simon.
“What do you mean?”
“Just don’t. Don’t go any farther.” His face was stoic. Morose but not shocked. The older couple was the same, they could only shake their heads. They murmured something to each other, then the driver signaled to the mule. The wagon’s wheels slidstubbornly in the mud for a second before rolling into their old momentum, moving on. But the baby’s cries continued.
“Come along, dears,” said the woman.
“George,” said Simon.
But all I could say in return was “Simon,” saying his name in periled awe as the most horrific acquiescence washed over me like the iciest of seawater, aided in part by simple disbelief. Was there really a baby over there? Why? The shock of nonreality once again rejigged me from the world, made me question my own ears and the screams knifing into them. A baby was crying in the middle of nowhere. I couldn’t quite move. I was a bystander not knowing where to stand, and Simon, as if sensing this, came and put his arm around my shoulder.
“Let’s go,” he said. And finally my legs moved.
The driver decided we’d travel all through the night if everyone could manage. No one questioned the decision. At some point a nonsunset occurred and white afternoon turned to black night and we continued our journey in darkness, the joy of it gone, our movement powered only by unlit coals in our stomachs.
What was—I couldn’t even think it.
Why would—I told myself it wasn’t what I thought it was.
Maybe I had misheard it and it was nothing. Something was lost in translation and there was an explanation. I’d see this was just another strange custom I didn’t understand, something that was done on the regular and not a big deal—and it wasn’t what you thought it was, George. You don’t have babies screaming in the woods where you come from?
We reached the city of Lincoln and paid our tolls, paid our fees for arriving in the middle of the night. We rolled throughthe beyond-midnight streets with only one torch guiding us to the massive cathedral where we would be sleeping. I marveled in silence at the spires that appeared like spider legs, which seemed to travel up until they disappeared into a ceiling of blackness, not a sky. How could there be a sky in a place like this? I could still hear the baby’s cries ringing in my ears. We entered the cathedral and it was still cold. Clergymen welcomed us but I still felt like I was outside. I stared at the ceiling, wondering where it was.
“I thought you said you’d been to Lincoln before?” said Simon, seeing my wonderment. I could sense he wanted to ease the eerie grief that had stung all of us back in the woods.
“I’ve been to Scunthorpe,” I said. “Farther north, but only to visit an aunt once when I was really little, I barely remember it. We took a train.” Halfheartedly, I explained what a train was.
“You’re saying you once traveled from London to Scunthorpe in just one day?”
“Just a few hours,” I said. I smiled, but it felt sacrilegious. Still, it warmed my body. Simon smiled back, dipping his toe in too.
“What does it feel like to move so fast?” he asked.
I didn’t say anything for the longest time, then finally, as if opening a trusted drawer only to find it empty, I said, “I don’t know.” Trains and hallways, waiting in queues, ticket checkers, sandwich boxes—that didn’t feel like the same world as this. Physics didn’t apply the way they applied here, where the air itself was heavy with damp, an air I felt I had to scoop with my palms. The silence, the stony cold.
Our traveling companions had all gone ahead to the guest quarters and only Simon and I stood alone in the center of thecathedral’s nave. Only three faint candles were lit at this hour of night, spreading a low mist of dim orange across the empty wooden pews.
“Simon,” I finally said. Once again, I could only say his name. I noticed how freeing it felt to say it, to have a friend. “What was that back there?”
Thick stone walls created a cocoon. I could hear Simon’s eyes looking, watching, analyzing. “It could have been a couple of things,” he said. “I don’t know. It could have all beenfine—it could have been there with its mother and we just didn’t see her, with its family, and it was just making a fuss for everyone to hear. It could have been an animal, maybe. It could have been a trap. Bait. You have to be careful out there.” He paused, searching for words. He exhaled. “It was probably what you think it was.”
“And that’s just something that happens?” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “And I don’t see how it couldn’t happen, sometimes. Especially this time of year.”
“I mean, we could have done something.”
“I don’t think so.” Simon’s voice was hollow like I had never heard it before. “We don’t know what kind of state it was in. We wouldn’t have been able to take it with us. I don’t even know if Lincoln accepts foundlings. It’s most likely that it came from here anyway. Stepping in and helping in those cases isn’t...”
Reasonable? Meant to be? Simon didn’t say and instead let silence drip and gather. I tried to keep my expression blank, tried not to seem like I knew any better or had some futureman, utopic vision of humanity because I didn’t. I had delusions of a moral high ground I could have tapped into, something condescending and self-soothing, but I said nothing. I joinedSimon’s unanswerable silence and in doing so, let my idea of human life—the brass tacks function of our bones and brains—recalibrate.
The chattering trill of a magpie sounded from somewhere outside the cathedral. Something smaller and braver chirped in return. The sun was already making its way back to this side of the planet. In silent agreement, Simon and I stayed where we were, there in the nave. We sat in the pews and over the next few hours watched the black stained glass windows fade to pure blue, their stains of red, green, and yellow slowly coming to life. Faces awakened and I realized my way of seeing had been permanently altered. With no TV, no films, no easy reservoir of human representation to tap into besides what I could see in front of me, I felt real fear as the figures in the windows came to life with daylight. Apostles, saviors, and virgins all awakened as sentient, shimmering creatures and I felt an animalistic sense of fear tickle me, right at the back of my neck, making me blush, skittish as if exposed, weak as if the stone walls were an imposing god’s giant hands about to slap together and squash me—and the conflicting sensation ofwantingthis to happen, of wanting to be crushed. The only thing I can compare it to is a feeling I once had in Italy, on a trip I had taken with my boyfriend early in our relationship, where I had felt a similar, destructive awe.
“This reminds me,” I suddenly said. My voice was a croak. I cleared my throat. The sudden noise jolted Simon awake and he looked at me with his regular eager self, eyes wide and blue. I didn’t know what I was saying but I needed to say it, to let the pressure out of what I was feeling. “Back in my old life,” I began, “I had a boyfriend.” I let that drop. Simon had no reaction.“And early in our relationship, we took a trip to Italy, which is a place—”
