A small girl crouched under an ancient willow, its swaying branches shrouding her slight form from view on a chilly fall morning. Wisps of cloud swirled in the sky, and the wind stirred up frigid waves in the pond on whose banks the proud tree stood alone. The sun shone, pale and cold, in the distant east. Reeds drooped around the edge of the water; long pallid strands of grass overlaid the ground. No bird’s shrill cry pierced the whistling of wind nor the rustling of leaves, and thus the colourless surroundings were plunged into an eerie, whispering stillness.
Huddled inside the rippling curtain of viridescent foliage, the girl, not yet ten, had dug a crater in the hard grey earth, into which she now placed a tattered shoebox with a cloth-swathed bundle concealed within. With her head bowed toward the box, she stood up, her arms at her sides, a carefully blank expression on her young face. Putting a hand on the rugged bark in front of her, she turned, looked out over the stormy surface of the pond, and shivered, black hair streaming in the chill breeze, and clothes fluttering around her.
With automated movements, she knelt back down, meticulously filled the depression with dirt. Straightening again, she stared at the fresh grave in front of her feet, the disturbed soil, darker than the ground around it, the almost-imperceptible mound. She patted it level with one sneakered toe. Then she burst into tears, shaking her head in confusion, stepping back. Ripping her eyes from the spot, the nine year-old murderess glanced fleetingly over her shoulder at the water one last time, and fled.