Chapter 1 #2
In the garden below, something shifted. A shock of color. A lavender blur caught in the blackberry thorn.
“Are any of the children missing a blanket?”
Eleanor’s brow lifted. “No,” she said. “None that I recall.”
Her eyes followed mine. When she spotted it, she gasped. Without another word, she turned, out the door and down the stairs. Her heels echoing down the halls.
I followed.
The hallway carried the smell of fresh bread and soap and a faint hint of coal dust.
Downstairs, breakfast continued: spoons clinking, a kettle screeching from the kitchen, and children’s voices rising and crashing against one another like waves.
We reached the back door. Eleanor pulled it open. Bitter morning air rushed in. She looked down.
A wicker basket sat on the step. Inside, a baby, pale, perfect, and damp. And yet, even with the cold, wet air, she slept peacefully.
Eleanor’s voice fell to a whisper. “They all come in different ways.”
My palm touched the child’s cheek. “She’s so cold.” I picked her up and wrapped my scarf around her, waiting for a cry that didn’t come. She felt good in my arms, my body remembering the rhythm of rocking a sleeping infant. I had rocked so many here when they were much smaller.
“Why isn’t she crying?”
“She’ll wake up soon, I’m sure.” Eleanor stepped past me into the garden and crossed over to the blackberry bushes. She returned with the lavender blanket in her hands. “Thank goodness the fairies didn’t take her,” she said.
I wondered if it was a joke, but I remained silent.
Rosie appeared, her apron dusted with flour and her dark hair slipping from its pins. “My goodness, look at this sleeping beauty,” she said, taking the baby from my arms.
Samuel appeared, standing outside beside Miss Eleanor. He grasped at his head in a panic, as if he were the one to have left the baby out there.
“I … I didn’t hear a thing,” he stammered. His eyes wide with awe and guilt and shock. “Is she all right?”
Rosie smiled. “She’s fine,” she said, brushing her nose against the infant’s brow. “Just cold.”
The baby stirred, a tiny fist breaking free from the folds. Her face tightened, and then she unleashed a glorious cry.
Samuel blinked, then let out a short, surprised huff of laughter. “I’ll get back to it then.”
“Oh, you poor darling,” Rosie said, rocking her gently.
Relief coursed through me.
Every child who came to Marigold House carried a mystery. Some arrived without names. Others without memories. Each one had questions.
In all of my years, only one set of parents—mine—had ever returned to reclaim a child.
“I wish they would have knocked, whoever left her, but we found her and she’s well. That’s what matters. We’ll call the doctor to pay her a visit, make sure she’s all right, and she’ll be staying with us,” Eleanor said.
Rosie opened her mouth to say something else, but then—
Glass shattered.
We froze.
Eleanor’s jaw tightened, a small tic flaring at her temple.
“I’ll get it,” I said, knowing it was a child who had gotten into something.
I stepped past Rosie.
Agnes stood near the pantry. At her feet lay a shattered jar. Honey pooled thick and golden around the shards. Her fingers glittered with it.
“Sorry, Miss Wendy,” she whispered. “I wasn’t stealing. Only … Rosie said there was new bread cooling and I thought …”
Her wide eyes flicked toward the hallway where Rosie and Eleanor rushed off with the baby. “I heard Miss Eleanor talking about fairies. That true? Fairies take children away?”
“It’s just an old superstition,” I said. Not wanting to speak more of things that children should fear.
“I heard her crying,” she whispered.
“The baby will stay with us,” I said. “At least for a while.”
Agnes bent to gather the shards, but I reached a hand out quickly, stopping her before she sliced her fingers. Her braids swung forward, brushing the sticky floor.
“Because of the war?”
I gave a nod.
“Harold said lots of soldiers stay where they die. I suppose that means they become bones right there. Maybe they’ll sprout too, like the bird skull I buried. Bones planted in the garden.”
I opened my mouth to correct her, to say that isn’t how death works.
One can’t just plant the dead and expect them to revive.
But that felt too cruel to tell a nine-year-old child with no family at this early hour.
There was no need for her to know the reality of loss right now. So I remained silent.
The honey smell thickened. Sweet, then bitter. It coated the air. I carefully brushed the shards into a dustpan.
Agnes wrinkled her nose. “Why does it smell like that?”
“Not sure,” I replied, knowing I’d smelled this smell long ago, but trying to brush that from my thoughts.
“Go wash your hands,” I told her softly. “We’ll be starting lessons soon.”
“I’m sorry again, Miss Wendy,” she said before darting away.
I poured warm water on the floor and scrubbed until the honey loosened and washed away.
Down the hall, I heard the baby crying and children squealing with delight to discover they were no longer the littlest ones here.
Then came a tap. Quick. Measured. Like the tip of a finger against glass.
My body went still before I could tell it to.
I turned around and faced the back door. Perhaps Samuel had locked himself out. Perhaps one of the children was playing a trick. If so, there would be a face behind that glass.
There was no face.
What was there was a faint handprint on the surface. Small, faint fingers spread wide.
I stared.
Wind. It’s the wind. Wind can press against glass. No, wind couldn’t leave handprints. Maybe it was a child’s print from earlier I hadn’t noticed.
“It’s just wind,” I said aloud. Or even a twig that’d come loose and crashed against the door.
But still, I should check, because what if it was a child outside? It was almost time for their lessons and they should be making their way to the classroom.
I eased the back door open to brush away whatever had struck it. Cold air rushed in. See, the wind. Nothing more.
I looked down and staggered back before my mind could catch up. My hip struck against the counter.
A black bird. Small. Still.
Its feathers were stiff with honey, gleaming like amber. Where its eyes should be, only two dark hollows stared back.
A cat. It must have been a cat. Cats kill birds. Cats eat the soft parts. And the honey, maybe they found it somewhere? Maybe the bird died elsewhere and the cat dragged it here.
Hollow bird eyes watched me attempt to explain it all away.
I looked past it, into the garden, searching for something ordinary. The oak tree, its familiar shadow stretching across the lawn. This existed here, in a world where things behaved as they should.
The shadow lengthened. I watched it bend. Stretch. And then … no.
It unhooked itself from the trunk. Peeled away from its source like the skin from some fruit. It moved with purpose, slinking across the lawn toward the blackberry bushes until it disappeared out of sight.
I slammed the door, locked it, and pressed my back against the wood. My heart beating as if trying to crack through my ribs.
That Wendy Darling …
Your daughter should be sent to the Bethlem asylum …
I didn’t see that. I didn’t see that. I didn’t see any of that.
It returned.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I covered my mouth with both hands, trapping the scream that had lived inside me for twelve years. A scream I didn’t think I’d ever need again.
My hands shook. My legs shook. I squeezed my eyes shut.
No. No. No. No.
This isn’t real. You’re tired. You’ve been reading the newspapers and sleeping badly because of it.
The tapping stopped. Silence pressed against the door.
And then, slipping through the seam between wood and glass, a whisper.
Wendy.
I didn’t answer. I wouldn’t answer. But my shadow answered for me.
It stretched across the kitchen floor, and flickered once, like something that remembered what I had been trying all of these years to forget.