“No one knew where Liana came from, or why she was left in a nest of twigs with her two fists trembling in the air, outraged that she’d been left all alone.”
However, said Basuma, a farmer on his way to sell his fruit in the hamlet of Oakside, not too far from the pool of knowledge, heard the tinkling of chimes in the wind, and after that, a baby whimpering. He halted his mule to listen more closely. “Mule, stop!”
The farmer scooped up the bundle before him and realized he held a tiny infant, who was red in the face from crying. He touched her nose with one finger. She looked at him with blue-black eyes. All his life, he’d been around calves and piglets, but never so enchanted as by this little creature. She had a crop of thick black hair and hands that kept moving. They rode to the market where he placed the baby in a small wooden crate alongside his apples and pears. He covered the baby with a cloth, soaked a rag in fresh milk, and gave it to the baby. For a moment, the farmer thought about bringing the child home, but knew that he wouldn’t be able care for her. His hands were badly crippled from arthritis.
People stopped and told him what a cute infant he had in his crate, but no one wanted to take her home until a woman whose job it was to clean up the marketplace came by and asked, “You leaving that pile of junk here?”
The farmer gently lifted the box and pressed it into the woman’s arms. “It’s not junk,” he said. “It’s a baby girl.”
“Right. What would an old codger like you be doing with a baby?” The woman complained that she was tired of cleaning up other peoples’ trash—watermelon rinds and peach pits everywhere, smashed sausages, plus the nasty leavings of pigs, cattle, and horses. “It’s not just the smell either. After I sweep everything into a big pile,” she said, “I have to fill up several wooden bins, and cart the mess to a garbage pile at the end of town where the dogs do their business. “Of course, sometimes I find good stuff like a few silver coins or a peacock feather, even once I found a nice blue sweater that someone had left on a fencepost. But that doesn’t happen every day,” she said. Cleo’s husband made mostly coffins. Being well-versed in the business of wooden boxes, Cleo had a fine eye for handicrafts, and without looking any further, she judged the farmer’s makeshift crib as a piece of junk. “I’m not going to clean this up. Do I look like your maid?”
“But ma’am,” said the farmer. “Look more closely. I found this baby abandoned in the woods. If I hadn’t rescued her, she would’ve been hamburger meat for a wild animal.”
Cleo finally saw that she held a baby sucking as hard as she could on a milk rag. “She’s hungry little thing, ain’t she?” Cleo bounced the baby up and down and kissed the baby’s forehead. “I didn’t need to drink from some pool of knowledge to figure that one out, did I?”
“No, you sure didn’t. You’re a smart one, you are.” The farmer hoped that he’d found the baby a mother.
“All those pool drinkers,” she said. “I even filled out a 10-page application to drink at the pool of water. It took me an entire weekend.” Cleo wrapped her own scarf around the baby. The afternoon was getting colder. “But I was denied a spot.”
“How come?” asked the farmer who hoped that the longer that Cleo hugged the baby to her chest, that more the tendrils of a bond would grow between them. As a farmer, he knew about these things.
“They asked why I was applying, and I checked the last box–I wanted to see what would happen. I mean, for years I’ve been hearing how a drink from the pool changed people, so why wouldn’t I want to see what would happen?” Cleo tickled the baby’s chin.
“Guess I’ll be going,” said the farmer. He’d done well at the market. It was pie-making season and his fruit had been in high demand. He pulled on a pair of gloves, opened and closed his fingers before feeding his trusty mule one last nuzzle of hay. He grabbed the mules’ bridle.
“Wait a second!” said Cleo. “Hey you!”
But even though the farmer had arthritic hands, he was very fast on his feet, and had jogged quickly away without looking back.