THE LONELY DESERT 

By Tessa Harvey

    Ruth acted immediately and hastily pulled Shayla and the precious wailing child into the hallway and into the back kitchen, shutting all doors firmly with one hand, waving Shayla to be quiet with the other. The child insisted on being heard. It was cold, it was miserable, it was hungry.     

    Auntie Ruth was old, at least to her niece, but even Shayla was stunned to silence as her aunt quickly boiled a kettle, rocking the child with one arm. Relieved, the younger woman had opened the lounge door, managing to close it and disappeared. She trusted Auntie Ruth.

    Ruth had a tiny dropper and syringe. Waiting for the water to cool, she then looked at the baby for the first time. He was looking at her, very dark eyes scarcely blinking. An old soul, she thought, though she no longer believed such things.

    The dropper was carefully washed in very hot water. It was old and Ruth sighed with relief. She placed the nipple between the tiny lips. "Alfie, he's Alfie," her niece murmured in the doorway. 

    Go back to sleep, Shayla." "Can't, someone's knocking softly at the back. "I will go," the girl said, bravely. "Help him, please Auntie."

    She shuffled to the back door, unlocked it, and a quiet, plump female pushed in belligerently. "'Ere, wot you lot up to? I ain't deaf, nor...." She saw Ruth's hard face and swallowed the worst of the epithets 'nor gormless'." But she had kept her voice low.

    Then Coriander saw the baby. It was sucking up moisture like a thorny devil catching dew on top of a sand dune in the desert dawn, soaking it up.

    Alfie paused, feeling the draught, and later Ruth would always believe the child stiffened in fear in the cold.