OUTSIDE THE WALLS

     I am always amazed at the evolution of any story I write. The more I   follow the characters around, the more I begin to understand their world, their hearts. This place is a bleak one, I knew that from the start. I have been reading about child labor, witch trials, faeries, folk tales, and the history of segregation in many cultures, recent and ancient. So.... 

Here is the first page of the book as of this morning. 

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                                               Chapter One  

                       

            The night-walkers only come when the moon is a thin, curved slit of cold light. They wear black robes and each one carries a sleeping child. Sometimes there are three or four night-walkers. Sometimes there are ten or twenty.  Each child is left to wake up on the riverbank below the Old City. 

            They don’t know where they are. 

            They don’t know who they are.

            They can’t remember where they came from or anything else.

            I couldn't.

            No one ever can.          

            A few of them will sit and stare at their own bare feet long enough to starve. Every year, some wander into the river, and let the water bury them somewhere far downstream. But most of them stop crying and start looking for food when the sun comes up. 

            Almost everyone helps them at first.

            We all know how hard it is.  

            But there are as many hungry children in the Old City as there are pigeons, crows, mice, rats and ants. And there is never enough food for all of us. Never. 

                               I don't use plot charts, but if I did, they would look like this: