The provenance of the dove

Out in the fields, the sweetcorn was growing tall. Now, you could run through tunnels and, even as an adult, be hidden from view if you wanted to be. It felt magical. On this particular day, Laura was alone, but still she ran sometimes. The sky was almost violent in its blue, a shock against the  bright green of the stems and growing leaves around the miniature husks. But it was not the blue that Laura was looking at; it was the dark ploughed soil. Because, when the farmers had turned over the soil, there was always treasure to be found.

Laura had always liked to collect the old clay pipe stems that you find in pretty much every field in Britain, if you care to look. From centuries of people working the land, stopping for a smoke or skilfully keeping the pipe in the mouth as they worked. So, today, a haul of old pipe stems of various lengths and thickness and a lovely pipe bowl with a scalloped design around it. She would give all these to her boys. But, eyes down, she found what she thought was a strange-shaped piece of bone. Wiping off the dirt, it revealed itself as a dove, with one wing broken but otherwise perfect and raising up its one remaining wing as if about to fly. The bird's head was raised and its wingtip was sharp. It was carved quite intricately, too and might have been made of bone or ivory - or just pottery with the patina of age.

Now how, do you suppose, it came to be there? What could have been its provenance? It didn't seem like something a child would have lost, carelessly, in the field. Laura constructed a scenario. Was it something a man working in the field had given to his sweetie? Had she received it but later dropped it? Or had she rejected him and the dove been lost - worse, thrown into the field, either by him or by her? Maybe, prosaically, it just been what to someone else, some years ago, had been worthless rubbish, put in a fire at the edge of the furrows and eventually integrated into the soil of the field through repeated ploughing and sowing. Laura decided that she liked this story best: that a man who loved a woman gave her a present: a perfect little white dove, with two outstretched wings. By accident she dropped it and could not find it. She never told him but he loved her anyway and always. Eventually, the little dove got buried. But one day, many years later, someone else found it, thought it lovely and carried it home where it was enjoyed and wondered at by a family and anyone else who cared to look.

And that, thought Laura, was a much better story. She walked on through the tunnels of sweetcorn, but still keeping her eyes down just in case.

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The dove I describe is, indeed, something I found yesterday while out in the sweetcorn field.
"That's wonderful" said Susie
"A little bird" said Polly (6)
"It is a dove" said Ethan (8) "and its wing is broken."
"What a funny little thing" said Isaac (6).
"Put it on the window sill where everyone can see it" said Elijah (8).