The Bairn

          My parents are dead, I’m told; drowned, and that I’ll have to stay with Beau for a time, while he calls a friend who can help. His friend is very good with lost little girls, he told me.           But I am distracted by the stormy sea crashing over the upturned rowing boat and beating against the stony beach: I looked for my parents in surf, but they’d gone.           Don’t worry, he said, you’re safe now. He took my hand and led me up the beach and over a weathered seawall to a road where an old red van was parked. He told me to get in.           I got in and he drove me away from the beach and the sunken boat in the surf, along a narrow ribbon of road, and through a wide and windy marsh, towards a white house on a hill. He parked in a shadowy gravel drive. He tells me it’s my new home and to get out.           I got out and he took me up a narrow set of stairs to my room. It’s a twin room with a dresser, empty. Now you behave yourself, he said, or else I’ll have to hurt you, and then he gently closed the door.           I slipped off my clothes and laid on the bed closest the window, and begun to cry.