Two: June

June had been orphaned in July. His father was working in the tool shed when it exploded in a spreading plume of splinter and fire. The wind carried the fire to the orchard and the main house. The neighbors found his mother's bones near the well pump between the stubs of lemon trees. June had not been home. His parents had sent him to Engineers School for the summer. Although his family did not have the monies for tattoos or infectia, June had tested well. School had been rigorous and lonely. June ate alone in firm standing outside the lines of privilege and alteration.

One: The Winter

It had been a bad year for children. The winter was long and the reserves of coal at the Orphanage had vanished by the second month. By the third month snowfall reached the sills of the second floor. The world had been obliterated to icy blur, the horizon an unblemished sheet except for the tops of the ornamental trees that lined the drive poking through the snow like rotted teeth.

The warden first took axes to the dining hall's tables and chairs. The fires burned of deep lacquer and the cinnamon smell of besa wood. The bunks went next but these fires went quickly, the hunger of the flames greedy for the dried pulp pine. The library went last, books and shelving. The cook kept the book leathers for soup but no page was spared the furnace. Every record and document since the manor had been converted to orphanage disappeared to ash. A hundred year history of lost boys and forgotten girls surrendered to warmth for the abandoned living. With the last burnable scrap fading to ember and the orphans threatening to pull up floorboards and stair railing, the warden consented to sent a small group of boys to brave the outside and the things of winter.

The Last Letter

June,


I wish that I had good news but things are not good. We have children in the trees again. They infest the lower branches and they are eating the early fruit. Your father has locked himself in the tool shed. I'm afraid he is inventing again. I didn't have the heart to take his gun from him. His father gave it to him when he returned from the war. Your Oppa smuggled it from overseas disassembled, wrapped in strips of oilskin and sewn into the lining of his peacoat and bedroll.

It was common then. Your uncle brought home a canteen filled with foreign buttons and shell casings. Trinkets for pride and memory. So I could not take away the gun that Oppa and your father built and rebuilt together a hundred times together when they thought I was unaware quilting. But I have hidden his munitions. Every stray bullet from every kitchen drawer and the small flat box stored with the socks and ties. I worry that your father is building new bullets in the shed. Or worse, some infernal machine to scatter those children.

Dearly,

Madra