Chapter 1
CHAPTER
AGNES WAS BURYING something beneath the elm tree.
From the window above the back stairwell, I caught the bent shape of her. The hem of her pinafore darkened with soil. Her hands moved quickly while working the earth.
I stepped outside. My boots sank into the lawn, damp with morning dew. Fog blanketed the perimeter of the grounds, and for a moment, it felt like nothing existed beyond the estate.
“Agnes?” I said, not too loudly, so as not to wake the rest of the children inside.
She didn’t turn around.
Perhaps she didn’t hear me. Or maybe she was just too busy at her task.
I crouched beside her. The soil seeped through my skirt.
“Hi, Miss Wendy.” She turned to face me, her bright face flecked with dirt. The ends of her braids were darkened with mud.
“You should be asleep. What are you doing out here so early this morning?”
A tiny palm opened, revealing a bright white bird skull, delicate as fine lacework. Its hollow eyes were fixed on nothing and everything.
“Planting this,” Agnes said, sounding very proud of herself.
“Planting?” I laughed, both curious and confused. “My dear, seeds are planted. Not bones.”
“No,” she said quite sure of herself. “This will sprout up. Bones are like seeds. If you bury them, they’ll grow.”
“Agnes,” I said gently, “where did you learn that?”
She didn’t pause her work. Instead, she dropped the bird skull into the hole she’d made. Slowly she began scooping up dirt from the mound and sprinkling it atop.
She looked up at me, eyes wide and unblinking. “From the boy in my dream.”
“A boy in your dream,” I repeated.
I turned back and looked at the timeworn manor, its stone walls fading into the morning mist.
“One of the children here?” I asked, thinking that’s what she’d meant.
A smile formed on her lips. With the bird skull now covered, she pressed her hand on top of the mound. A final flourish, as if to say, all done.
“No, someone I’d never seen before.”
“Miss Wendy?”
I stood up and brushed dirt away from my hands.
Rosie stood at the entrance, her apron flaring in the cold air. “Miss Eleanor would like to see you upstairs.”
I nodded. “On our way.” I extended a hand for Agnes. “Come along now.”
She told me how she’d like to come back tomorrow morning and check if the bird skull had sprouted. I just nodded and continued listening to her, because that’s what adults should do, listen to the stories that children tell.
It was then that I heard a great caw. My body flinched. The call of those birds felt like a strike, and no matter how often I heard them, their call was always a terror. I looked behind my shoulders and watched as it swooped low and landed on a branch just above Agnes’s bird skull.
Miss Eleanor stood in the doorway.
As always, she was wearing black from collar to cuff.
Her husband had died so long ago, leaving her this huge home.
She grew lonely here. For some time it was just her and Rosie, the cook; Lucy and Hannah, who helped with the household duties; and Samuel, who maintained the property.
She wanted life in this house, and so she opened the doors to children who had nowhere to go and whom nobody wanted.
The October sun caught the silver edges of her brooch, and for an instant when she angled her face, she looked less like a woman in her sixties and more like some sort of eternal magical creature.
I stifled a laugh, but as always, she spotted my mind as it raced to create a story.
“What’s that?”
I cleared my throat. “Nothing, I just …”
The apartment was all warm wood and afternoon light. I crossed to the window seat and lowered myself there.
“Many will continue to arrive here over the course of the war, in different ways, for different reasons. Hunger. Loss of a parent. We’ll make room for as many as we can.” Her voice quieted.
I nodded. I suppose she stood at the doorway to give me a moment to imagine what this space would feel like if I made it my own.
The noises below grew as the children were awakened, gathering their things for the day. With their voices came the clamoring of feet and shouts:
“Who’s got my socks?”
“Stop tugging at my hair ribbon, Beatrice!”
“Miss Lucy, I can’t find my jumper.”
The house came alive with the sound of children and the smells of breakfast. From the kitchen downstairs emerged the scent of porridge and cinnamon. I’d meet them soon in the classroom for their lessons.
Eleanor took a step forward and kept talking.
I shifted in the seat, my fingers brushing the worn leather strap of my satchel where it hung at my side. My journal sat inside. Just feeling its weight steadied me. Some people clutch rosaries or talismans for protection. I clutched paper.
The garden shimmered in autumn colors. Trees shrugged off gold and copper leaves, and for a moment I just let myself breathe. My fingers found the window latch before I decided to check it. Locked. Good. I pressed my palm to the glass and focused my attention on the garden below.
“Willie, you’re going to hurt yourself!” Lucy said below.
I looked to the opened door.
A loud thud rattled the house. Shrieks, followed by laughter.
I stood. My satchel tumbled, sending all its contents spilling out. Books, chalk, my pencil case, all scattered across the floor.
Rosie called from downstairs. “It’s just Willie jumping from the stairs again.”
“That child,” Eleanor muttered.
I crouched, gathering my things. “He’s quite spirited, that boy,” I said.
Noise swelled again from downstairs. I pictured Rosie as she herded the children toward the dining room.
Soon came the faint clatter of spoons against bowls and children’s chatter, bits of dreams recalled, and sightings of rabbits spotted in the garden from the windows.
Yes, little ones arrived here carrying grief. Many cried for parents and siblings who could no longer care for them, or who no longer existed. But it was moments like these, the joyful chaos, in which I found delight. They all sounded as they should, like happy little children.
“Well,” Eleanor said. “What do you think?”
“It’s a generous offer.”
My house was gray and silent. It was a home where laughter had lived at one time. Today, however, it felt more like a mausoleum. Yet I felt bound there, a guardian to a room I believed should be kept locked forever.
Eleanor’s tone softened. “Take the time you need to consider,” she said. “But we will need you here, Wendy. The children will need you here. All of us must prepare for the changes of the coming months.”
She was right.
The war crept closer each day. More children would arrive at our door. Small faces stunned and silent. They’d ask when Mummy and Daddy were coming back. And I would have no answer except to say that they were safe here with us at Marigold House.
Something shifted then, in the light. A streak of shadow—no, not a streak. A shape. Moving wrong. Shadows don’t move against their source.
I turned back to the window. A flicker drew my gaze upward. My stomach dropped. Against the dull gray, a bird. A crow. Another one. I said it aloud. “A crow.” Not quite believing myself.
My fingers had already found the fabric of my wool skirt, digging into it. Twelve years of telling myself they were just birds was a very long time.
Eleanor’s voice came behind me. “It can’t hurt you.”
“I know,” I said.
That Wendy Darling with such fancies in her head.
It was there in my past, further back than That Place. The fear of crows. Flapping its wings. All my brothers could do was stare.
I ran. My shoes slipped in the wet grass until I came upon a giant tree. Its bark was slick and sticky with sap, but I climbed.
My brothers vanished through the garden gate, calling for Mother.
I climbed onto a sturdy branch, my whole body shaking, the tree shaking with me.
It landed right beside me. I remember how its talons curled around the bark. Sharp claws. Its feathers gleamed blue-black. It smelled of rain and dirt, and something else.
The crow tilted its head, moving an inch toward me. Inspecting me. Gathering me in with its shiny black marble eyes.
“Get out of here, you stupid bird!” In the depths of its eye I saw something behind me stir. A shadow. A boy’s silhouette.
I gasped but was too afraid to look behind me.
The crow opened its mouth, and a whisper followed.
Wendy …
Its breath was so cold it felt like ice against my skin.
I gripped the bark, so scared to fall. The crow moved closer.
Come with me, Wendy. He’s waiting, it said, though its beak hadn’t opened again.
Mother’s voice reached me and I exhaled relief. “Wendy! Get down here. It’s only a bird. Just shoo it away!”
The crow jerked its head toward the sound of my mother. And then it extended its wings and was gone.
I scrambled down the trunk, slipping on the last branch, falling, stumbling, running into my mother’s arms.
Even as she held me, and even as I cried, I still felt the cold breath of that black bird on my cheek. Sometimes I still feel it.
“Wendy?” Eleanor’s voice drew me back.
“The bird’s gone,” I said.
My shadow seemed to be missing in the reflection of the glass.
“This entire flat would be yours,” Eleanor said.
High plaster ceilings. Rich wood molding with detailed carvings, leaves and berries and pinecones. Light loved this room. It poured in through the windows in soft ribbons.
My gaze drifted to another window latch.
A lot of my time at Marigold House was spent checking and rechecking to make sure the windows were locked.
There were those narrow windows in the hall.
The arched panes in the classroom. The stained glass in the chapel.
Each window was an opening. Each window could become a lifetime wound, so each window must always be shut and latched.
“You must start thinking of yourself,” Eleanor said.
“I’m not sure if I know how.”
“You can’t sit in that house alone every night for the rest of your life, especially when we all want you here.”