Her Whole body was numb. She no longer felt the cold. She no longer felt anything, other than emptiness. And at the bottom of it, a biting bitterness. More biting than the cold that had overwhelmed her for hours. Well before the tossing boat finally capsized and she found herself among scores of flailing bodies in the murderous water.

People were still managing to scream afresh after they had gone hoarse during the hours during which the waves threw them about and the wind howled its anger at their presumptuousness and stupidity, and the rain lashed at them, drowning their tears in its viciousness.

The cries of despair of the men, women and children crammed on the boat penetrated the terrible sounds of the furious elements, but not so loudly as to soften them. And if many of them prayed, it seemed that their God was in no mood to listen to them.

Never stop praying, her mother had always taught her. God never fails to hear us, to listen to us.

The bitterness that continued to engulf the girl's soul as the first light of dawn began to break had not begun with anger at her plight, but with that very thought of God and prayer.

Their God had not heard the prayers screamed by her mother and the other boat people, had He? He had never heard their prayers at all, her soul said. For as long as she could remember, they had suffered. Watching her younger sisters and brothers, she knew that she too must have suffered from the scarcity of milk and nourishment in her mother's breasts. Food was always scarce in their shack and village. Medicines, the little that came their way, were only for the elders and the soldiers. Her mother's prayers and of individuals like her never yielded any sustenance.

Yet, the girl had learned to feel as she moved on from infancy, such deprivation was not the worst part of it. Much worse was to be deprived of love. Her father was only around for short periods, with her mother beginning to grow heavy again not long after he left once more. He never had any time for her, the eldest of his children, she who yearned to be his pride and joy.

Not before long, he was not around at all any more. He never returned to his family from wherever he was fighting. They were even deprived of the protection of his name and status as a warrior.

It was the mother who protected them, and her in particular. She spoke to her plainly.

Not only must you work like a grown-up, she told her, remember that young as you are some men will feel you as already a woman. Be careful!

And she told her as bluntly as could be what she had to be careful of, as the budding of her future being began early in her body. And she told her, always pray.

The girl prayed with her mother but, not before very long, stopped praying with her heart. As time passed, she became more and more convinced that their prayers did not carry; there was no sign at all that anyone was hearing them. No matter how tearfully her mother pleaded with her God, her brothers and sisters died one by one. They badly needed medicines, but her mother could not get them. They were too expensive. Whatever she was ready to sell to obtain them, including her pitiful body, was never enough.

Not before long there was no more need for medicines. The younger children were no more. One by one, they were gone.

Her Mother continued to sell herself, but fiercely resisted offers to sell her, the surviving daughter, as well.

I do this for you, for you! she would tell her, replying to the accusing, bitter eyes. For you, do you understand?

She would weep harsh tears when the child would not reply but only looked through her.

I do it for you, and now you shall see, she told her once, taking out a wad of hidden money. I shall take you away.

Where? the child asked listlessly. Away to what?

Away up north to a land from where we can go across the sea. To a new life for you, even if it is too late for me. Pray for a new beginning, my daughter. Pray!

The money she had acquired got them with others to a place where so many seemed to be waiting, where there was further deprivation, which her mother could only ease by again getting pittances in the only way that was left to her, while her protection for the child grew fiercer.

She was the easiest and cheapest to be had on that outlying shore as they waited and waited for days and weeks and their provisions ran out. But nobody could have her child, no matter what they offered, including the men of various colours who grabbed her money and that of the others who wanted a place on a boat to cross the sea to where, so those waiting desperately had been told, life was good and there was enough to eat and good shelter on one's head and medicines for the sick and assistance for the needy.

Pray, my daughter, pray, the mother would tell her daughter. Pray: we shall soon be there.

Soon Was late in coming. As they waited and waited, they heard stories that chilled their hearts. Of others who had gone before them but did not make it for the sea swallowed them up, or they were cast into it far from land by those who ferried them.

Of others who were saved from the storms and taken on land by their rescuers, but were then placed in confinement since they could not produce identification and were considered as people without a country not entitled to a permanent haven, notwithstanding whatever kindness was shown to them.

Do not be afraid, my daughter, her mother would tell the child. Pray, and all will be well. A new beginning will dawn.

In time she would also warn her to pray that if things went wrong their God would give her a helping hand and lead her to safety, away from the dangers of the sea and away too from certain places where people like them were resented, even despised and made to suffer.

The girl listened but there was no prayer within her. And when the crossing began and the nightmare opened shortly after as the white sea of hope her mother had spoken of became a heaving black mass that not only threatened but also wrought destruction she thought bitterly that the fact that her mother had prayed enough for both of them had not helped, had it?

Those who ran their boat wrestled with the waves and did not throw anyone overboard to lighten the load. That did not save them. In the end the boat capsized. In the darkness frequently split only by furious lightning her mother held her as fiercely as she could against a lid from the boat she had managed to grab in the water.

She held right up to her end as the waters dragged at her and she let go of her daughter and the lid, and the running sea took her into a darker shade of pitch black. In time the screaming of others who too had held on desperately to parts of the boat was also no more and the girl was all alone with her cold, her numbness and her bitterness.

She Did not pray. But perhaps her mother's pleas had reached somewhere after all: the girl did not drown. At the first light of dawn she was numb and unfeeling, but alive, clinging to the wooden lid which somehow her mother had grasped as they slid off the boat into the heaving sea and pushed it towards her yelling to her above the howling of the wind to hold on to it, hold on, hold on!

Hold on for what? she thought as the early faint light grew stronger in the sky, and by and by the sun began to rise in the waters beyond. Why did I not drown with the others? What is my future now, especially if I land where, so had my mother learned, there are false Christians who dislike and resent the likes of me?

And as some warmth came along with the rising sun and the numbness of her body began to ease, her soul told her that she might as well let go; what was there to try to hold on for? She felt weak and grew more and more faint. I can't hold on any more and I don't want to, anyway, she whispered wearily to the nothingness in her...

No! No, Hold On, do hold on, a gentle voice said. Do not let go.

The girl was startled. She had not been aware that there was anyone else close by in the darkness and cold of the night. Who was this talking to her in the language of her village, entreating her to remain and trying to give her hope? She raised her face from the wooden lid to which it had been pressed. Ahead of her in a small boat she could not quite make out she saw a boy. He looked younger then her.

The girl shook her head, trying to clear her eyes, wondering whether she was hallucinating. The boy spoke in the tongue of her people but was like no one she knew from her village, and it was not just his light skin that said it. None had gone with her mother and her, or been on the boat, anyway.

"Who are you?" she said.

"I am your friend," the boy replied.

"How can you be my friend? I do not know you."

"I know your mother, she has often spoken to me."

"To you?"

"Well, yes. But, you might understand better if I said, to my Father."

"What are you talking about? You were not on the boat but, wherever you came from, the storm has addled your brain."

She shook her head again and peered to see the boy better. He seemed to be walking over the water as he stood smiling in the prow of the strange boat drifting so low in the water. He held his hands out towards her as he drew closer.

"Trust in me," he said. "You'll be safe."

Her bitterness welled up once again.

"Safe with a mere boy? The storm has spared us both, but the sun will shrivel us up. Who are you, anyway?"

His hands continued to reach out towards the girl.

"I am, if you like, a beginning," he said gently, "and if you let me, I can help you towards a good end."

You babble so, she was about to say, the bitterness filling her mouth. She stopped. As she looked into the boy's eyes, feeling them warm her, feeling his smile reach her soul, she felt her bitterness begin to relent.

"I am afraid," she whispered, "even my mother is lost to me now."

"There was much to frighten you," the child said in his gentle voice, "but do not be afraid. Your mother's love can never be lost."

"She is gone."

"Yes, but what she wanted and prayed for you will remain. Hope always remains. You can find it."

"How?"

"I shall show you."

"But how can a little child like you know the way?" the girl cried.

"I do, yes," the Gentle Child said. "For, you see, I am the Way."

And as his eyes held hers, she felt her bitterness and despair ebb. She held out her hands towards his...

In The Afternoon, as the sun began to set, a patrol boat moved slowly towards one more piece of evidence of disaster floating on the waves, calm now after they had left no survivor of their turbulence during the night.

"Dear God," said the officer in charge, looking through his binoculars as they drew close, "it's a little girl."

He went down himself in a boat and as it moved by her he bent over, turned the plank towards him, fearful of what he would find. He turned the piece of wood with the body lying on it so that he could see the head. As the wooden lid turned, the officer saw that the face was turned up. He gasped as the girl's eyes met his.

"God in heaven, she's alive!" he cried, bending to lift the girl out of the water.

The man held the girl tight against him. By all accounts she should be dead, he whispered in wonder. How did she survive? And how could her eyes be shining so?

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