The Remembering Spring
There was once a girl who didn’t speak. She wasn’t so little anymore; she would soon come up to her mother’s shoulders, but she never breathed a word, not of human language anyway. She was clever enough; anyone who had seen the glint in her eyes knew that. And no one could think her dumb, because she made the most wonderful woodland noises. And she clearly wasn’t deaf, as she could mimic the rush of the wind over the field, and the humming of the grasses. And yet, she didn’t speak. She just sat all day on the ledge that ran round the family’s mud-brick stove, smiling. When she was asked to do something, she would do it quickly and neatly, but when she was asked a question, she said not a word in reply.