Chapter One
Life in a Hole
The rain hit the roof hard and with powerful wind gusts. The small wax candle that had been Felicity’s only real light in the room had flickered and died, leaving the room pitch black. It was the dead of night, and now the baby had decided he’d enter into the world. Now, rather than at any reasonable hour. Were the Hell was this doctor they had sent for. Emily’s screams echoed across all four walls of the room. People were running everywhere and each one thinking they knew what was best. Felicity, however, knew better then to fool herself with such talk. The girl was under her care. She had spent enough time with the young woman to know that the she had made her choice. No matter what they did, doctor or not, Emily had given up on life. When that decision is made, there is no saving anyone.
She was right, the doctor never arrived before the delivery was carried out, and despite everyone’s efforts, everyone’s insight and everyone’s experience, Emily slipped into the unconscious grave just after the life giving push that sent the red, gooey mess of tears falling into Felicity’s outstretched hands. Felicity cut the infant’s umbilical cord, wrapped him in a blanket and bouncing the child up and down against her chest, “There, there child, you’re alright. Now what’s do we call you?"
Felicity had no reason to stay in one place for very long. Her family was all gone, and she had no husband or home, and due to an accident in childhood she was permanently disfigured. She could stand five feet tall if she ever stood up straight, rather than her normal slouch. She had long brown hair that she kept slightly above the waist covering her left side, obscuring part of her face including one of her beautiful blue eyes. She kept her hair like this to hide significant scarring along the left side of her face and neck that made her feel nothing but ugly, despite her more pleasant qualities. She might have only been in her mid-thirties, but her sense of self-worth would only allow her to feel much older. Felicity had been through hardship after hardship in her life, having lost her family at a very young age in a fire that destroyed everything she had ever known. She was left with nothing, and had to learn to live on her own. Being a merchant by trade, she fashioned herself a living in whatever way she could, usually making wreaths or selling flowers and clover she would pick on the side of the road. Her small business brought in the money needed for food and shelter during the winter.
Winter also meant a small change in her daily routine. Instead of spending her morning gathering flowers, she’d spend them heading up to the Elmer’s farm and green house. Mr. Elmer was a kind old man who would usually give goods in trade. Felicity made a point of buying large bags of white sugar, an expense usually avoided by most families, during early fall when the train shipments remained steady and prices were at their cheapest, and trade it for greenhouse flowers during the winter. Selling flowers in the dead of winter was surprisingly very profitable, despite the cost of the sugar she traded for them. She would find herself making twice, sometimes three times as much as she made in spring or summer. However, winter didn’t stick around forever, and neither the benefits nor the disadvantages would last. Felicity soon found herself back to harvesting her supply of goods from the fields again come spring. Along with weather, costumers often came and went. As business began die down she found herself wandering further and further from town to find new clientele, once more on the road.
Over time she made her way to the railroad and bought the cheapest ticket north. The baby had earned the name of Shayden, due to its unique and uncommon sound that Felicity had fell in love with. Shayden was now an active energetic baby of three months and had begun to develop a personality of his very own. Although not having given birth to the child herself, Felicity found she was developing a strong love for the child that grew more and more each passing day. As Shayden grew, he spent more and more time awake, and in the way. Her business was becoming more and more difficult as the young child squirmed and cried in her arms, causing potential customers to avoid her before she decided to make the trip, and she frequently had to let him down to burn off energy. Although crawling was still beyond him, he’d touch and taste everything his small hands could reach. He enjoyed it when Felicity would rest with him on her lap and he could see all the people and wagons go by. He loved the train with everyone coming over to see the “baby”. It didn’t matter they were in the poor cart, that there were no chairs or restrooms. Shayden would giggle and laugh as he was held up to the widows, close his little eyes, and smile as the breeze threaten to detach his small head from his shoulders. Felicity was definitely beginning to grow more and more attached to the child.
Felicity left the train with the hope of finding a fresh city to sell to, she had picked her destination based solely on name, and Golden Port sounded like just the busy and bustling city she was looking for. Sadly, it was anything but. Upon leaving the train and stepping off the rickety old wooden platform all her hopes faded. There would be no selling flowers on a busy corner here. There was no one willing to buy any flowers here. Crushed, she set eyes on the one bench sitting outside a dusty, rotting, cobweb covered shack. Knowing better than to look for a station operator, she walked past and down the steps, searching the flat grassland for farmhouses out in the distance.
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Felicity despised begging, but found herself doing just that for food to merely survive. This countryside was brutal for the poor. Here you either owned land, helped someone who did, or you moved. There was little in the way of roses or pretty flowers out here, save for some few jealously guarded gardens that she would never be allowed to pick. Most of what grew here was cultivated with sweat and plow, and every last bit of land outside of the original, now dead, mining town was devoted to agriculture. Selling some of the tough, stringy plants that passed for flowers on the packed roads around here brought her little in the way of actual money. She soon found that the folks here, unlike what she was used to, were very kind and would accept the flower not paying in coins but with large plates overflowing with food for herself and the child. Not everyone in the countryside was nice though, and going door to door as she had to did get her chased off. Sometimes gun in hand, sometimes on horseback, sometimes with dogs at her heels. Sadly, goodwill wore thin if she tried to stay with any given family more than once or twice, and she simply wasn’t fit for farm work.
The unpredictable turnout, danger, and concern for the small life in her hands led her to do something she always thought herself above ever having to do. She found herself walking to the nearby poorhouse. The poorhouse had a way of trying to humiliate its occupants, causing only those in the worst possible positions to venture inside. They tore families apart and forced those capable of working to do so whether old enough, healthy enough, or strong enough to do so. Felicity felt absolutely terrible having bring them here, but at least for a little while food, clothing, and healthcare would be provided to them. Felicity was almost certain they would take Shayden from her, but to her surprise they didn’t, and instead allowed him to sleep in a small basket with a blanket beside her bed.
Both were examined by doctors. The doctor gasped when he saw Felicity’s scarring, and he took pity on them. He made some assumptions it was this tragedy that had landed her in this place, which was all to Felicity’s advantage. If the management thought their plight was due to the fire it was all the better, and probably enough of the truth anyway. If her family hadn’t died all those years ago, Felicity would probably have been taught to be a nurse or midwife, with a loving husband, rather than poor and trying to make a living however she could. Felicity didn’t offer any information she wasn’t specifically asked, letting everyone make their own assumptions. By the end of it, she could guess the story they concocted was that she was Shayden’s mother and that her husband, parents, and possibly older children were all dead and that she had nowhere else to go without the family farm. The doctor had them moved to a room for widows with young children, and saw that their needs were met. After a while Felicity was assigned a job in the home and found herself in charge of running the daycare Shayden was soon placed in. Her job was to look after the children from ages two through six and see that they grew to an old enough age to work for the house.
***
Meanwhile back in town, Nicholas was desperately searching for his nephew, with missing child posters plastered on every pole promising a large reward for information on the woman who had taken the child. He had spoken to many who could not give a name, but could offer a rough description of having seen a little old lady running around with Emily in her later months of pregnancy. No one knew for sure if she had took the baby, and if she had what she did with the child, but no one could provide him with were the woman was now. On other situation’s he heard of the same old woman running around with an infant, with the same come out as before, no idea where she was now or if she still even had the child in her care. The same guesses as always, “She probably dropped the child on some work house, or orphanage. Did you check there?” But Nicholas had checked “there” he had checked every “there” from miles away in every direction and each week riding long distances he would try another.
One afternoon while Nicholas was meeting with a particular owner of a work house, he noticed a middle aged woman with hair blocking half her face sitting outside the big wooden doors slowly rocking a screaming child as a handful of young children aged three to six played tag. Laughing and smiling, he looked from children to woman. Would this be a nice place for his nephew to have ended up? The home was 20 miles from his home, and knowing the likeliness the kid had made it this far wasn’t good, he removed his hat and asked the middle age woman where he could find Mr. Hague. She smiled and placed the baby on some blankets to continue drinking from its bottle. She walked the young man inside just as one of the little boys let out a heartbreaking cry and both looked back to see a small, fair skinned boy with bright green eyes and light brown hair holding a skinned knee. Nicholas thought the boy looked to be about 3, the same age as his nephew. The same eyes as Emily too. The woman ran to the child instantly. “Shayden, child what did you do?” She sat down next to the boy to help him with his injury and Nicholas walked to the desk Felicity had pointed him to.
As Mr. Hague lead Nick from the housing building next door to the work house, Nicholas soon changed his mind about the place as children as young as six where put to work in hard, hazardous, and straining conditions. Nicholas found his heart going out to these children. Their clothing tattered, their noses running, their bodies thin with fatigue. He wished he could just take them all home and show them what life was really like. He knew how work camps operated, having been subjected to one himself until age fifteen. The idea of his nephew living life like this after all he had accomplished to give his family a decent future sickened him. As usual, he gave his nephew’s birthday and location of birth, with the whole story he had. This particular poorhouse was rather small, being in the middle of a farming area, so they only had one child of the right age. They gave the story they had come up with for Felicity and her “son” named Shayden, and Nicholas shook his head and left, not knowing how close he came to ending his long search.