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Show 139 The song of birds wakened me, and I saw that ahead was a clearing where sunlight had reached through a sparse growth of trees to warm the ground. I dragged myself to the clearing and sat propped against a fallen log, allowing my bare skin to be comforted by the sun's heat. The sky was cloudless and blue overhead. My thoughts turned to the children of Hamelin. Where were they? How had they spent the night? And Hilde.... It was too painful to think about. That morning I was able to swallow a little water, but the long day passed much as the one before. Toward evening I came to the edge of a woodland and spied a crossroads. A shrine had been erected beside it, and somewhere deep, through the throbbing in my head, a memory stirred. We had rested at a shrine when I was taken to Hamelin by the Director General - could it be the same one? But there were wayside shrines at nearly every crossroads in Germany. After it grew darker I crept out and stood next to the shrine, trying hard to remember- The painted wooden face of the Virgin smiled down at me as her infant son reached out to touch the lily-wand in her hand. One point was broken off the Virgin's crown, and it seemed to me that I could recall that uneven edge from six years earlier. None of the four roads went in any true direction, but the river was to the west of me and I knew we had not crossed any river, so I chose the path to the southeast. Walking was easier on the beaten earth of a travelled roadway, yet after a mile or two I grew so weary, and so discouraged because nothing looked familiar in the pale starlight, that I curled up in a copse of trees and slept for a few hours. |